Dinner With Max Jenke

The Man Show

2012-01-30T06:49:00.000-08:00

If you survived a plane crash only to find yourself stranded in a hostile, frozen environment with no signs of civilization or rescue and with a pack of wolves stalking your every move, what would you do? For myself, I know I would never be in that situation because I have a deep - and I don't think unreasonable - fear of flying so I would not be in the air in the first place. If by chance I were, though, I know for a fact that my survival prospects would be very, very dim. Curling into a ball and sobbing is not the best way to dissuade wolves from eating you.

The seven men in The Grey who initially survive the sudden crash of their plane (including Liam Nesson as John Ottway, a man hired by oil companies to keep wolves away from their drilling teams) are a little more equipped to cope than I would be. Immediately after emerging from the wreckage, they seek out heat, food, and shelter. Besides Ottway, all these guys are members of the drill team so these dudes aren't soft but just because they're more gruff outdoorsmen than pencil pushers doesn't mean they're qualified to survive their present predicament.

Besides the harsh natural elements, the real issue is the pack of wolves that come upon them. Because it's his job to kill wolves, Ottway knows a thing or two about these animals and he knows that if they're close to the wolves' den, then their collective gooses are pretty much cooked so he suggests that the men make their way from the crash site to the woods where they can better defend themselves and hopefully get further from the wolves turf.

Speaking of wolves, even though the advertising for The Grey has centered on the sight of Nesson taping broken bottles to his fists and charging a wolf, in the interest of helping you enjoy the film, I have to say that this movie contains no actual wolf-punching. I won't go too deep into it for fear of spoilers but I can tell you that the ads are incredibly misleading and really do the film wrong. I usually hold the audience responsible for reacting in stupid ways, like hating Drive because it isn't more like a Fast and Furious film. But based on the marketing, it's hard to fault anyone for calling bullshit on The Grey. Which is a shame because once you get past the deceptive way it was sold, it's actually a very good film.

Written and directed by Joe Carnahan, The Grey is a survivalist horror film rather than an action film. This film has gotten advance attention in the genre press and it really does belong under the horror umbrella. For one, you've got the wolf attacks. The many scenes of the survivors being stalked and suddenly attacked by these merciless predators are staged for maximum terror. Secondly, an action film would be about perseverance where these guys MacGuyver their way out of an impossible situation (MacGuyver actually does get a shout-out in one scene) but The Grey is much more grim than that.

I was really struck, in fact, by just how cruel and unsparing this movie is. Characters call to God for help or for some kind of sign, they rationalize that there must be some reason they survived the crash when so many others didn't - that they weren't meant to live through something so catastrophic only to perish in even more brutal ways afterwards - but Carnahan repeatedly slaps down these fleeting bids for spiritually. He always brings it back to physical reality and shitty luck. I doubt if I would give The Grey a second viewing and to be honest, my initial viewing left me feeling somewhat half-hearted towards it, but reflecting back on Carnahan's film I have to say my respect for it has grown.

I just wish that the marketing had represented the film more accurately. Then again, if it had the tagline would've probably have to have been changed from "Live Or Die On This Day" to "You're Fucked." Anything less blunt would leave too many shades of grey.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Underworld

2012-01-23T07:25:00.000-08:00

When the first Underworld arrived in 2003 - a film that no doubt owed its existence to the then-current Blade series which had made the mix of action/horror and vampires a hot box office commodity - I felt lukewarm towards it. It was a little too glossy and a lot too CGI - not the kind of werewolves vs. vampires movie I was looking for.

In 2003, Underworld was too easy to shrug off in favor of more diverting offerings. You know, like Wrong Turn, Haute Tension or the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But while genre trends have come and gone in the years since, Underworld has kept chugging along. And while the films haven't gotten any better, I like the fact that the new Underworld movie in 2012 looks exactly like the original Underworld movie from 2003. Same blue/black lighting, same costumes, the same shit CGI. While Underworld: Awakening represents no special leap in quality for the franchise, I've come to appreciate the fact that these films are stylistically frozen in time. Their unchanging nature has made them into a comfort food kind of experience.

I didn't pay enough attention to tell you who directed this latest Underworld or who wrote it and I'm uninterested in looking up that information so don't consider this a real review of any kind. All I can say is that I had a fair amount of fun watching this, more fun than I've had with any other Underworld film. That might have to do with my mellowing attitude towards the series (or my mellowing attitude toward life in general) but I also would say that this has substantially more action than the previous installments (it seemed to me that Kate Beckinsale had even less dialogue here than non-actress Gina Carano did in Haywire*). Maybe the people behind the series finally realized that there was never anything interesting to be said by any of the characters in these films so it'd be better to just have them all fighting non-stop.

If so, I applaud that decision.

* By the way, if I can make a non-genre recommendation, Haywire is a really solid piece of work. For some reason, audiences seem to be down on it (it earned a D+ on Cinemascore) but I think anyone with a taste for action cinema will enjoy it.

The Upside To "Inside"

2012-01-12T07:39:00.001-08:00

By the time its first showings had ended last week, The Devil Inside was already infamous thanks to an abrupt ending that had audiences booing the screen. And yet this low budget shocker cleaned up at the box office on its opening weekend to the tune of almost $35 million.

Will it fall sharply going into its second weekend? Sure. Horror pictures are typically front loaded anyway but even if it vanished from theaters today, the movie would still be a huge success. Some fans might (understandably) grouse about how unjust it is that The Devil Inside is a box office blockbuster while so many better horror movies often go ignored during their theatrical runs (or don't even get theatrical runs). Personally, I celebrate any genre film's success.

Obviously I prefer to see good movies do well but even when a mediocre-to-poor horror movie is a hit, I see it as an overall victory for the genre.

There's been a lot of gloomy talk lately about theater attendance, with 2011 having the lowest turnout to theaters since the mid-'90s. Some commentators have looked at those figures and wondered whether Americans have fallen out of love with going to the movies but the massive turnout for The Devil Inside is an encouraging reminder that audiences will still pack their local theaters if they're genuinely excited about a movie. Of course, it'd be better if most of the audience didn't leave feeling like they've been ripped off but whenever studios are reminded (for the umpteenth time) that horror is a hot commodity, it gives other, hopefully better, filmmakers a chance to make the kind of horror movie that really deserves to be a hit.

With Any Luck, This'll Be The Worst Horror Movie Of 2012

2012-01-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

It's never fun to report that the first horror movie of the year is lousy but yet that seems to be an annual tradition. January releases are notoriously bad, with the likes of The Rite (2011), Legion (2010), and One Missed Call (2008) standing as evidence to that. Now we can add The Devil Inside to that list. No doubt looking to score another Paranormal Activity-sized hit, Paramount has heavily promoted this exorcism thriller. What a shame that they couldn't have spent a little of that ad money on fixing The Devil Inside's dismal climax so that the word of mouth wouldn't be so poisonous.

For most of its running time, The Devil Inside is agreeable nonsense. Director and co-writer William Brent Bell plays it all straight-faced and faux-educational. Even if you think exorcisms and religion are a bunch of hooey, the clinical presentation that Bell goes for early on is involving and seems to show some research into the subject (Did you know that a key sign of possession is extreme pupil dialation? I didn't.).

With cameras documenting her journey, Isabella (Fernanda Andrade), travels to Rome to visit her institutionalized mother Maria (Suzan Crowley) who Isabella believes may have been possessed when she committed three murders twenty years earlier. Isabella's investigation into her mother's condition puts her in contact with Ben (Simon Quarterman) and David (Evan Helmuth), two priests who are conducting exorcisms without the church's approval. Together they attempt to discern the true nature of Maria's condition.

From this set-up, there's the potential for an eerie, ambiguous film. But Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman aren't out to make that kind of movie. Instead they're going for all the satanic (tubular) bells and whistles they can conjure. Once the first onscreen exorcism hits, and any doubt in the supernatural goes along with it, events become more crazed and mad-cap as the movie hurtles towards what promises to be an exciting climax - but then it all abruptly comes to a (literally) crashing halt in a manner so sudden that audiences will do their own version of Linda Blair's 360 degree head spin.

The sizable audience I saw The Devil Inside with was totally on board with the movie up until its final seconds - screaming, gasping, and occasionally chuckling throughout its running time. But when the movie suddenly cut to the credits (with a helpful web address provided for anyone who wants to learn more about the case!), the unanimous outburst of disappointment was loud and immediate.

No ad campaign can keep bad word of mouth from spreading once a film is out - especially not in the age of the internet - so instead of studios putting so much money into tricking people into seeing a turkey, shouldn't they do all they can to make a movie that people can legitimately enjoy and recommend rather than just leaving them feeling suckered? I just don't get it. And the selling of the movie aside, when filmmakers bungle a horror movie so badly, I have to wonder - is it because they don't have the talent to do better, or because they don't have a feel for the genre, or is it because they have such a contempt for the audience that they don't think anyone going to see a movie like The Devil Inside has any critical faculties?

Whatever the case, The Devil Inside is a letdown. Bad horror movies don't dampen my love of the genre but they do make me feel had and that's never a good feeling. Here's hoping that with the release of The Devil Inside that the worst of 2012's horror crop is already out of the way.

A Very Cobra Christmas

2011-12-31T15:05:00.000-08:00

I understand that most of you might already be out of the Yuletide spirit what with the clock about to turn over to 2012 but until the New Year is officially rung in, I feel like it's not too late to show some appreciation for an unsung holiday romp - Sylvester Stallone's action/horror hybrid Cobra (1986).

Before we go any further, for anyone who might be questioning Cobra's status as a Christmas movie let me offer a few screen shots as evidence:

See? Cobra is as Christmas as jolly ol' St. Nick! This George P. Cosmatos-directed film belongs to that small but much-loved subgenre of Christmas-set action movies - a group that houses the likes of Invasion U.S.A. (1985), Trancers (1985), and Die Hard (1988). Apparently the opportunity to juxtapose violence with the iconography of Christmas is too hard for filmmakers to resist. And frankly, who can blame them?

Despite its cop movie trappings of shoot-outs and car chases, Cobra represented a throwback to the seedier slasher stylings of the early '80s (one hospital-set sequence recalls 1982's Visiting Hours). In 1983, it would've fit in perfectly on a drive-in double bill with the Charles Bronson film 10 to Midnight, another film that straddled the action and horror genres by having a cop pursuing a vicious psycho.

And what a four-star psycho Cobra had in the form of Brian Thompson as the Night Slasher. A pure, unrepentant homicidal maniac, the Night Slasher is a killing machine who would eat lesser psychos for breakfast. The Night Slasher isn't one of those psychos who seems mild-mannered on the surface, either. No, just by looking at him there'd be no mistaking what this guy's favorite past time is. You'd be like, "That guy loves killing people. He loves it like kids love ice cream."

While even Joe Spinell's title character in Maniac (1980) tried to spend some time developing a social life outside of his hobby of scalping women, you can't even imagine the Night Slasher ever having the least passing interest in anything that doesn't involve snuffing out human life. I wouldn't even be surprised if his name had been legally changed to "Night Slasher" because, you know, why not? There's no way this guy is ever planning on holding down a job of any kind so there's no need to have a regular name like Bob or Chuck.

Worse yet, he's the leader of an army of kill-crazy sickos who travel around in a van at night and randomly jump out with their axes and slaughter any lone woman they come across.

Because he looks like a guy who could kill you with his bare hands without even breaking a sweat, Thompson is scary as hell just standing around but Cosmatos goes ahead and gives him a blade with a spiked handle that would make you nervous even if a little old lady were holding it, never mind a hulking psychopath.

In the annals of cinematic psychos, Thompson doesn't seem to get much attention (his most famous role remains that of the Alien Bounty Hunter on The X-Files) but I'm all about the Night Slasher. You could say that Thompson is playing nothing more than a one note character here but if the Night Slasher was more layered, he'd have much more to say to Cobra when they face off than "I want your eyes, PIG!" and personally I love that The Night Slasher never, ever has anything remotely clever to say. He's all business and he gets more mileage out of the word "pig" than anyone ever has.

As Cobra is an 87 minute movie that seems to only have about 20 pages of script (the entire last half hour seems based around a few loose ideas for action scenes), there's plenty of room in Cobra for time-filling montages - my favorite featuring Brigitte Nielsen as statuesque model Ingrid Knudsen posing with a group of robots.

I don't know what magazine or product these pics could possibly be for. Personally, I suspect that Stallone just wasn't over with his robot fetish from Rocky III (1982).

At the time, I was surprised that Cannon never went ahead with a Cobra sequel as clearly this was meant to kick off another franchise for Stallone. I don't know why a Cobra 2 never came to be but I think the real bummer is that no one ever had the notion to mount a dual sequel/crossover with the Chuck Norris hit Silent Rage, the 1982 film that pitted Norris as a small town sheriff against a nearly invulnerable, scientifically altered psycho, played by Brian Libby.

To have Stallone and Norris in their prime taking on the team of Libby and Thompson - man, what a gift that would've been to '80s action buffs. But, as every kid learns on Christmas morning, you can't always get what you want.

Say It Isn't So!

2011-12-28T21:27:00.000-08:00

Fans of quality film criticism and of great writing in general suffered a blow yesterday as the mystery man behind Arbogast on Film posted his final blog entry, citing personal reasons for closing shop. Even though AoF's subheading promised "an investigation into the mystery of cinema that can only end with my death," I have to say I'm happy that much less drastic circumstances were responsible for the end of my favorite blog.

While no new entries will be coming (unless Arbo experiences a change of heart down the line), the good news is that AoF's blog archive will remain online as a resource. Personally, I think Arbo ought to compile his many posts and put 'em in a book. I know for damn sure that's a volume of film criticism I'd be happy to own.

The Best Of 2011

2011-12-27T06:49:00.000-08:00

This year wasn't exactly a booming one for horror but even if 2011 was somewhat soft for genre fare, it still delivered its share of memorable scares - even if some of the best were found on the small screen. Over at Shock Till You Drop, my top five of 2011 are listed, along with a few honorable mentions. Some might find my top pick questionable (or all of my picks, for that matter) but when I look back on 2011, there's no question what my number one genre addiction was.

All in all, I'd consider 2011 to be a definite improvement over 2010. Hopefully the films of 2012 will be even better.

Happy Holidays

2011-12-25T19:27:00.001-08:00

The Christmas crunch has taken its toll on my productivity here but now that the holiday is winding down at last, I expect to be blogging more frequently. Whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year and whoever you celebrate it with, I hope it was a joyous occasion.

"What Happened To Old-Fashioned Horror?"

2011-12-11T17:43:00.003-08:00

Here's a clip (posted by Freddy in Space as their Vintage Video of the Week) that will stir some memories for any horror fan who grew up in the '80s: a concerned report circa 1987 titled "VCR Horrors" from ABC's newsmagazine 20/20 on the rising appetite among America's young people for violent entertainment, then more readily accessible than ever thanks to home video.

Here, give it a watch:

Man, that's good stuff. Vintage cluelessness towards horror. But the kind of uninformed hand-wringing found in that report was a big part of what made the genre so appealing to kids back in the '80s - like heavy metal, horror was outlaw stuff, considered dangerous by most parents and teachers. Watching that report actually makes me a little sad that those alarmist days are gone for good. Now that the generation that grew up renting hardcore horror every week have become adults with kids of their own, it's hard for even the most extreme horror to be seen as a threat to the fabric of society. You know, when you spent your teen years watching films like Make Them Die Slowly and grew up mentally unscathed, The Human Centipede doesn't seem like a viable scapegoat for society's ills.

Along those same lines, you'd also think that a generation that grew up on such disreputable pop culture touchstones as EC Comics and Hitchcock's Psycho wouldn't have lost their shit over splatter movies but yet somehow they did. Luckily, no one from my generation is going to ever claim that filmmakers today lack the classy touch of William Lustig! If anything, they complain that today's movies aren't as gory as the ones they watched as kids. We want movies to be old-school, not old-fashioned.

This report also evokes a real pang of nostalgia for the era of the video store. All matters of convenience aside, getting movies off of Netflix or OnDemand or whatever just isn't as cool as getting a video off a shelf. I know that's the old-fogiest of outlooks and that everyone loves having movies at their fingertips now but, jeez, video stores added so much to the aura of horror in the '80s. Now that's all just a memory.

Even sadder is to revisit a robust Chas. Balun (who probably felt like his comments weren't entirely well-served here) and scream queen Linnea Quigley, both then in their prime. Beloved genre critic Balun passed away too young at age 61 in 2009 after a long battle with cancer and not only has Quigley endured a natural fade from her B-movie glory days but she also represents the kind of semi-famous exploitation starlet (whose ranks would include Michelle Bauer and Brinke Stevens) that just doesn't exist anymore.

But apart from nostalgia, the one thing that most people will probably take away from this report is how all the kids seem so grounded, sensible, and untroubled about their viewing choices (sez young Josh Butler: "This guy just goes around killing people. That's the plot of all scary movies."). It's enough to make you wonder why anyone would have ever worried about their psychological well-being in the first place.

But then, hindsight is 20/20.

2012: A Look Ahead

2011-12-09T08:41:00.000-08:00

At every year's end, because I'm a giant nerd, I like to preview the upcoming year and go on about all the movies I'm most excited to see. But with 2012, there's so much coming out I hardly know where to begin. Obviously, a good chunk of next year's films will prove to be letdowns - I'm not expecting them all to be pure gold - but I never get discouraged when it comes to movies. When it comes to horror, I'm like a Pollyanna of Putrescence!

Plenty of movies test my tolerance but never so much that I don't go into the next one hoping for the best. And I find that even most of the bad ones are easy to look back on fondly, sometimes even more so than the great ones. Anyhow, all this is just a roundabout way of saying that I can't wait for the movies of 2012 to arrive, my first preferences going to the ones that (one or two exceptions aside) I know for sure will be hitting the big screen in my neck of the woods.

These movies, in particular:

20. Paranormal Activity 4
I didn't even think that the first sequel to Paranormal Activity would work but it did, as did the second, and now here we are expecting the third. These movies aren't everybody's ideal spook house but I really dig them. The challenge, naturally, as the series continues is for the filmmakers to maintain the "found footage" conceit while not making it seem shoehorned onto the film. The series is at a tipping point right now (most series peak with their 3rd or 4th installments) so it'll be interesting to see how PA 4 shapes up.

19. Silent Hill: Revelation 3D
I'm not a game player so I have no insight into how well 2006's Silent Hill represented its source material but I can say I really enjoyed that movie for its surreal, grotesque imagery. I wish that director Christophe Gans had stuck around for this second installment (or that he'd get a new movie of any kind going - it's been five years now since SH!) but hopefully writer/director Michael J. Bassett (Deathwatch, Solomon Kane) will do a great job at the helm. I definitely think a 3D film set in the world of Silent Hill has great potential so here's hoping this will be more than a half-baked follow-up.

18. Piranha 3DD
I didn't think that much of Alexandra Aja's Piranha remake. But I'd say that's mostly to do with the shoddy, post-coverted 3D as in other ways I thought it's heart was in the right place. With this sequel being shot in the 3D format to begin with, I'm hoping the results this time around will be much better. Plus, I'm rooting for director John Gulager to score a hit as I'm pretty fond of Feast (2005). If anyone has the right sensibility to make this movie work, it's him. Judging by the trailer, featuring David Hasselhoff, Ving Rhames with robotic legs, and more breast implants than you can shake a pool of piranha at, I think this'll be fun.

17. Lords of Salem
I'm not a fan of Rob Zombie's films to date. Outside of Devil's Rejects (2005), they're just not that good to my mind. And even Devil's Rejects I had issues with. But Zombie does has a flair for visuals that I'd like to see attached to a decent movie one day. Will this be the one? Hmm, probably not but I'm open to the possibility that it might be.

16. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D
Maybe it's due to spending my adolescent years in the '80s during the heyday of slasher sequels or maybe it's because I have shitty taste but I'm hopelessly addicted to horror franchises, no matter how many times I've been burned by them. I'm sure this will be lousy but a TCM film shredding its way into theaters in 3D is nothing that I'll pass up.

15. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
Most of the advanced comments on this sequel (reboot?) are from people saying that, hey, at least it looks better than the abominable first film. But I didn't hate the first film at all (even if it did have more than its share of lame bits) so imagine how excited I am for this one! Very fucking excited!

14. The Raven
The potential for this to be cheesy is high, I won't deny that. The concept alone screams silliness - that the real life Edgar Allan Poe was involved in solving a series of murders in which the killer was using Poe's stories as inspiration. But for me that's part of its appeal, that this is kind of a stylized, comic book-ish take on Poe. I've enjoyed director James McTeigue's films so far (yes, even Ninja Assassin) and I'm curious to see how John Cusack fares as Poe so consider me all in for The Raven.

13. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter/Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
I'm pairing these two films together because they're both new, big-budget entries in the monster hunter genre. And also because I can't really decide which one is more appealing to me. I guess Lincoln would have to take the edge just because it's based on a book that got fair-to-positive reviews (author Seth Grahame-Smith worked on the screenplay as well), Lincoln director Timur Bekmambetov did at least one film I liked (Wanted), and Tim Burton is producing. On the other hand, H&G director Tommy Wirkola did the Nazi Zombie movie Dead Snow, which I got a kick out of. Also, Jeremy Renner plays Hansel. Oh, and Wirkola claims this is going to be a bloody, R-rated movie. And it's in 3-D, too. Damn it, now I feel like I've got to give the edge to H&G! Well, let's just say they both look like fun and leave it at that.

12. The Bay
I haven't read too many details about this one - apparently it involves a biological disaster of some kind - but the fact that director Barry Levinson (Diner, Rain Man) is doing a horror movie, a found-footage movie at that, and one produced by the people behind Paranormal Activity, is enough to make The Bay a must-see.

11. The House At The End Of The Street
I've been reading about this project for years. I seem to remember that it was due to be directed by Jonathan Mostow after he did Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines way back in 2003 but for whatever reason it didn't happen so he we are coming up on 2011 and now it's done (under director Mark Tonderai) and due to hit theaters. From what I've read of the plot description, this sounds like a generic psychological thriller but I have to imagine that if the script stayed alive all these years, after so many set-backs, there must be something more to it. We'll see.

10. Dracula 3D
The saddest thing about this movie is that I can't imagine that it'll get a decent theatrical release in the US. I'd love to be proven wrong on that but it just seems unlikely to me. I mean, the one and only Argento movie I've ever seen at the movies is Phenomena, under its US title of Creepers, and that was back in the day. But all that aside, I hope this movie proves to be a comeback for Argento. I find it sad when great directors go into a long decline and I'd love it if Argento could turn the tide on his latter-day career. And if nothing else, the fact that this is Argento, taking on Dracula, with Rutger Hauer as Van Helsing, makes this an instant must-see even if it unfairly goes direct-to-DVD here in the States.

9. World War Z
I have to say that the Max Brooks novel didn't do much for me. In fact, I didn't even finish it. And WWZ's director did that lousy Bond movie Quantum of Solace. But I'm all for a big budget zombie movie that delivers living dead action on a global scale so any reservations I have about this film will be put aside.

8. Sinister
One of the many new genre pics coming from the Paranormal Activity/Insidious producing team and clearly with that title, they're trying to make at least a spiritual (heh) connection to Insidious. The story - about a journalist (Ethan Hawke) discovering the truth about a home where a horrible tragedy occurred - doesn't sound like much but the fact that Scott Derrickson is directing makes me interested as I thought The Exorcism of Emily Rose was one of the best horror films of the last decade.

7. The Woman In Black
I'd love it if a classic-style ghost story could turn out to be a big hit (as well as being a good movie to boot). It's certainly not unheard of - The Others was huge back in 2001. And ghost stories are bigger than ever now with the success of the Paranormal Activity films so The Woman in Black has a better-than-average chance of pulling people in. We'll have to wait until February to find out how good WIB is or isn't but at least its trailers so far have been spooky perfection.

6. John Dies At The End
A new film from Don Coscarelli is always cause for celebration. Some fans might have preferred that he return to the world of Phantasm but I'm betting this will turn out to be one of the coolest films of the year. I haven't read the book this is based on but how can the combo of Coscarelli and star Paul Giamatti not result in greatness?

5. Dark Shadows
I was never a fan of Dark Shadows. It was ahead of my time as a '70s kid so I never saw it at the right impressionable age. By the time it aired on the Sci-Fi Channel in syndication in the '90s, that ship had sailed for me. But the idea of Tim Burton tackling a monster mash mixed with '70s kitsch sounds good to me. I haven't enjoyed a lot of what Burton has done lately but I have a good feeling about Dark Shadows.

4. Maniac
When it comes to William Lustig's 1980 supremely sleazy slasher classic, I've always loved its revolting poster but not so much the revolting movie itself. But despite my lack of love for the original, the idea of Elijah Wood stepping into the shoes of Joe Spinell is too batshit to ignore.

3. The Cabin in the Woods
The less I know about this Joss Whedon-penned film ahead of time, the better. All I need to see is its M.C. Escher-esque poster to know that this is not going to be a lazy, retro-flavored horror offering.

2. You're Next
I've read nothing but raves so far about this home invasion film. And now I'm done reading anything about it until after I see the movie next October. I'm really glad to see that with this and The Cabin In The Woods that Lionsgate is still very much in the horror game post-Saw.

1. Prometheus
Sometimes going back to past triumphs doesn't work out but I have a feeling that Ridley Scott will not fail with his return to the world of Alien. In fact, I bet this is going to be flat-out great. And if Prometheus does well, hopefully it'll encourage more studios to invest in ambitious, big budget horror and sci-fi.

Other 2012 titles I'm looking forward to are Sleep Tight by REC director Jaume Balagueró, The Tall Man from Martyrs director Pascal Laugier, the Guillermo del Toro-produced Mama, the all-star anthology The Theater Bizarre, Intruders from 28 Weeks Later director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, and Frontier(s) director Xavier Gens' The Divide.

I also have to give special mention to The Pact, from writer/director (and fellow Horror Dad!) Nicholas McCarthy, which will make its premiere at Sundance in January.

And with 2012 representing an apex for geek cinema, I have to give some mention to the non-horror offerings that I'm jazzed about:

10. Kill Bin Laden
I don't know what the eventual movie of Kill Bin Laden will be like but I love that it has a title like an exploitation film. It makes me wish that director Kathryn Bigelow would shoot it like an exploitation movie, too.

When someone gets shot in a movie now, instead of a squib exploding, the burst of blood is added by computer in post-production because that way there's less hassle to go through, less set-up involved. But I think squibs have to make a comeback for this one. It should look like an old-school action movie kill when Bin Laden gets riddled with bullets (even if he only got put down with, like, one bullet in real life, it has to be at least twenty in the movie) and then cut to the title filling the screen and roll end credits. None of that will happen of course so, really, my excitement over Kill Bin Laden is for a version of the movie that will never exist but I'm sure Bigelow will make a great movie nonetheless.

Still, to my mind the only man qualified to kill Bin Laden on screen is Tom Savini.

9. Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films
The '80s would not have been half as much fun without the magnificent output of Cannon Films so the fact that a documentary about the studio responsible for Chuck Norris' career, among other things, is on the way is nothing but good news.

8. Chronicle
I hadn't heard a thing about this movie until I saw the trailer a month back or so. I don't know anything about Chronicle yet other than what was shown in that trailer but I'm intrigued to see how well the found footage genre and the superhero genre go together.

7. The Raid
It looks like this Indonesian action film that everyone is going nuts about might actually get a decent release in the US so I'm optimistic that I'll actually see this on the big screen and not just have it come to DVD where inevitably, like so many other indie and foreign films, I'll forget that it even came out.

6. Looper
It's been awhile since Bruce Willis was in a movie that I really loved. It's also been awhile since I've seen a really great time travel movie so I'm hoping that Looper from director Rian Johnson will kill two birds with one stone. Advance word has been super-strong so I'm hoping that unless ill-advised tampering gets in the way that Looper will be a 2012 highlight.

5. The Expendables 2
Some people thought the first Expendables wasn't all that but I thought it delivered exactly as promised. The only thing missing from that film for me was the Cannon Films logo on the front. The sequel still won't have that Cannon Films logo, sadly, but it will have Chuck Norris and Van Damme (along with reportedly bigger roles for Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger) so this'll be a true Mt. Rushmore of '80s action icons.

4. Django Unchained
It's Tarantino. Kurt Russell's in it. That didn't add up to much with Death-Proof (even if Russell was great as Stuntman Mike) but I feel like after Inglorious Basterds that Tarantino is going to be on a roll for awhile.

3. Skyfall
After the high of Casino Royale, it was crushing to have Quantum of Solace be such a bore but I hope that Skyfall can restore Daniel Craig's tenure as Bond to its original excellence and that Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition) will prove to be an inspired choice as director.

2. The Amazing Spider-Man
It would've been nice if Sam Raimi and co. had been given one last crack at the web-spinner but maybe a reboot of the franchise was in order. Some are balking at another telling of Spidey's origin but that doesn't seem like such a chore to sit through to me. Andrew Garfield looks like he'll make for a perfect Peter Parker and I love that they're finally going with The Lizard as the villain (even if it's a crime that Dylan Baker never got to go there in Raimi's films).

1. TIE: The Avengers/The Dark Knight Rises

It's natural to try and pit these two films against each other and their camps of supporters will divide along the usual lines of Marvel and DC fandom but at the end of the day, I think most comic fans will have to say that we're just lucky to have both films to look forward to - and in the same summer no less. With The Avengers, you've got a true cinematic first - a superhero team assembled over the course of multiple films with an eye to comic book-style continuity, penned and directed by a genuine comic book aficionado. With The Dark Knight Rises, you've got the concluding chapter of a Batman trilogy that's been helmed with pure artistic integrity from the start. No matter how these films turn out, just the fact that they were made in the first place is proof that geek cinema is hitting a high point.

And if you read all of the above, it's proof that you're as big a horror/comic book/movie nerd as I am. Congratulations! Let's keep comparing notes in 2012.

The Night HE Came Home...In 3-D

2011-11-30T07:15:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I saw Martin Scorsese's Hugo and found it to be not just one of the best films of the year but also one that proves how terrifically effective 3-D can be and how some films can benefit from it.

Beforehand, a trailer for the 3-D release of Titanic screened and while Titanic is a movie I have no interest in revisiting, seeing how stunning it looked in 3-D was nearly enough to convince me to see it again on the big screen.

In the lobby was a standee promoting the February release of The Phantom Menace - again, another movie that I have no special interest in but yet I can't help but be intrigued as to how it'll play in 3-D.

With these two films returning to theaters in 3-D next year, along with Disney's dimensionally enhanced Beauty and the Beast, I had to wonder when a classic horror movie might get the same treatment and which movie would be the ideal candidate for that and my immediate thought was of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978).

Halloween is damn near custom made for 3-D, beginning with the floating jack o' lantern in its title sequence that moves from deep in the back of the screen...

...All the way to a tight close-up of one of its glowing eyes to the point where we can see the details of the pumpkin's lit insides.

Carpenter's prowling, seemingly weightless Panaglide shots are ideal for the 3-D format - beginning with the famous POV opening scene...

...In which Michael Myers begins his career in evil.

There's so much in Halloween that would naturally play well in 3-D, from the sight of the escaped Smith Grove patients wandering in the rain...

...To the fall leaves that blow through so many shots (actually painted leaves that had to be rounded up by the crew after each take and reused)...

...To the various moments when we're placed just behind Michael's shoulder as he watches his prey in the background...

...To shots like this, with Michael standing amid billowing sheets...

...Or this one, where we're placed in the backseat of Annie's car (I find it eerie, by the way, that in this scene we find ourselves "sitting" exactly where Michael will later wait for Annie).

There's already a deliberate sense of depth to the composition of the shots in Halloween, wherein suspense is achieved by emphasizing the importance of background vs. foreground - and that's something that 3-D would only enhance.

Carpenter and cinematographer Dean Cundey also staged many of their shots so that the audience would be observing the film's action through the separating element of a window...

...Or sometimes multiple windows...

And Halloween is a film in which danger often materializes in the background of shots, rather than just lunging out (although there's plenty of that, too).

Carpenter has often cited 1953's It Came From Outer Space as a seminal moment in forming his love of movies. As he said in John Carpenter: The Prince of Darkness, by Gilles Boulenger:

"...At the beginning it was lightly in 3-D. but when this meteor appeared to come out of the screen and exploded, the impact gave me the impression that a lightning ball had struck me, and I got terrified...That's where I think probably the beginning of that love for horror and scaring people came because I got so scared and it was so much fun to be scared."

Given the impact that 3-D had on both his love of horror and on his eventual career, how fitting would it be for his most celebrated film to be re-released in 3-D?

In his review at the time, Roger Ebert described Halloween as "a visceral experience" and said "we aren't seeing the movie, we're having it happen to us." To see it in 3D would only amplify that.

The idea of converting Halloween to 3D will surely strike some as an unconscionable move, a cheap gimmick that would only desecrate a classic. But I maintain that it would be a treat and not a trick. It'd be The Shape like you've never seen him.

And do I even have to point out how cool it would be to see Donald Pleasence's irreplacable Loomis in action in 3-D? No, I didn't think so.

A Rat For Turkey Day

2011-11-23T22:21:00.000-08:00

In most North American households today, the meat of choice will be turkey. But can I suggest making room for some prime rat on this day of thanks? Specifically, I'm thinking of the rampaging rodent that wreaks havoc in 1983's Of Unknown Origin.

Of Unknown Origin stars a pre-Buckaroo Banzai, pre-Robocop Peter Weller as Bart Hughes, a young and ambitious Wall Street banker living large in a Manhattan brownstone (although the movie was actually filmed in Montreal, Quebec) with his trophy wife Meg (Shannon Tweed, now Mrs. Gene Simmons) and young son Peter (Leif Anderson). As proficient as Bart is at navigating the professional rat race, he finds himself tested with the real deal when Meg and Peter travel to Vermont to visit family, leaving a work-strapped Bart home alone with an unexpected and unwanted visitor.

As Bart struggles to deliver on an important work assignment that could vault his career to the next level, he discovers that his upscale home is infested with a rat. And not just any rat but a Total Asshole Rat that fucks with Bart at every turn. Bart's guest initially just seems like a major nuisance, first announcing its presence by chewing through the drain hose in the dishwasher, causing a flood in the kitchen. But soon it's clear that this rat has a real hate-on for Bart. Unwilling to call in an exterminator - a move that will surely result in his home (which Bart renovated from the ground up) being trashed - Bart takes matters into his own hands.

Naturally, this rat proves difficult to kill. And as one attempt after another fails to produce a dead rat, the rat's counterattacks against Bart escalate in return. Immersing himself in all things Rat, Bart soon becomes the kind of person who can't even attend a posh dinner party without turning the conversation into a long lecture on Rattus norvegicus.

At one point late in the film, a copy of Herman Melville's Moby Dick makes an appearance - an unsubtle nod to Bart's growing Ahab-like obsession. By the climax, full-on war between man and rodent has been declared but in the end, only one can be the big cheese.

Directed by George P. Cosmatos (Cobra), Of Unknown Origin was adapted by Brian Taggert from the book The Visitor by Chauncey G. Parker III. Even though the film is largely a one-man show with most scenes involving Weller alone in his home, when Bart does venture out to go to work or to solicit professional advice on rat disposal, plenty of familiar faces are on hand. Besides Tweed, there's Lawrence Dane (Scannners), Kenneth Walsh (Twin Peaks), Keith Knight (My Bloody Valentine), and Maury Chaykin (War Games).

For reasons unexplained, 1983 proved to be something of a banner year for rat fans as just over a month before Origin's November 24th release date, on September 9th, the anthology film Nightmares - featuring the story "Night of the Rat" - was released. But whereas the Nightmares segment had featured a family terrorized by a giant rat of mystical origin, Bart's foe was just a normal, if hefty, rat but tenacious enough to drive a successful, educated professional into a savage showdown, street rules only.

Of Unknown Origin isn't a lost classic by any means but it's a taut effort that had a decent rep back in the day but seems to have fallen into obscurity in the years since. In light of current real world events, it's interesting to see a Wall Street executive portrayed as a sympathetic protagonist - as practically an Everyman, even. Today, the rat Bart faces would likely be perceived as a symbolic stand-in for the economically oppressed masses but in '83, it was no more than determined vermin with Bart locked in a turf war, protecting his home. Sure, his turf was a little nicer than our turf but that was nothing to begrudge him. Not back when things seemed to be a little more even-handed in the world.

Still, rich or poor, everybody should be thankful for what they've got.

Dinner With Max Jenke: The Original Recipe

2011-11-20T17:21:00.000-08:00

Well, after giving the new review format a test spin I've decided that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Or, as my wife said when I asked her what she thought of the changes: "You've been doing the same thing for years. You shouldn't try to jazz it up now."

I could keep going with it - and I do appreciate the supportive comments, by the way - but all I really needed to do was break myself out of my own lingering funk and I feel like I have.

Every horror fan knows that no horror franchise ever did itself a favor by veering too far from its formula. So, with that in mind I think it's wise that I return to the basics here straightaway - before I get to the point where DWMJ finds itself in the blogging equivalent of "tha hood", space...or Hell.

A Dawn Like Thunder

2011-11-20T07:52:00.000-08:00

The Dish: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1

What's In It: Kristen Stewart as eighteen-year-old Bella, the one true love of the immortal vampire Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson. Taylor Lautner also stars as Jacob, a werewolf and former love interest of Bella's.

Tastes Like: An unexpectedly funky addition to the pregnancy horror sub-genre, a film able to keep company (thematically, at least) with the likes of Grace (2009) and John Carpenter's Pro-Life (2006), from Season Two of Masters of Horror.

Extra Flavor: A too-briefly seen Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon) as Aro, leader of the Volturi vampire clan.

Nutritional Value: While Breaking Dawn - Part 1 has been roundly trashed by critics as being insipid, wrong-headed, and an affront to both art and progressive thinking in general, it merits more than the curt dismissal it's received. I'm pretty out of the loop when it comes to Twilight (the only other chapter in the saga that I've seen was the Catherine Hardwicke-directed original and - surprise! - I've read none of the books) but I found Breaking Dawn - Part 1 to be an intriguingly twisted film by the standards of mainstream fare.

Lingering Aftertaste: I knew the basic storyline going into this movie: Bella and Edward wed, then consummate their union, and then face a life-threatening crisis when Bella finds herself carrying Edward's baby - a trauma that her human body is not equipped for. But that thumbnail sketch doesn't convey the oddness of the film. I'm assuming that screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg's adaptation is mostly faithful to the book, which only leaves me to wonder just how nutty author Stephanie Meyers is and what her personal views on marriage, sex, and motherhood are. Because what's on screen in Breaking Dawn - Part 1 is a vision of masochistic suffering.

In Breaking Dawn - Part 1, we have a story in which the main character loses her virginity in an act of lovemaking so powerful and violent that it leaves her bruised all over her body. After this one punishing night of passion (which she begs to have repeated but Edward, ever the gentleman, demurs - fearing causing further harm to Bella), she then finds herself pregnant with a child that is destroying her from within. In depicting the baby as a virus infecting - and mutating - its host, Breaking Dawn broaches Cronenberg territory. Bella's bodily deterioration is similar to (if less graphic than) Seth Brundle's in 1986's The Fly as both films traffic in imagery that reminds one of real life AIDS victims (at one point, Bella disrobes and we see that her body has become gaunt and skeletal) and Bella eventually craves blood to feed the new lifeform inside her, as does Marilyn Chambers' character in Rabid (1977).

I don't know if there's any data out there to confirm whether I'm right about this or not but I'm willing to bet that a large part of Meyer's readers didn't quite care for her conclusion to the saga because it is so far removed from the world of dreamy adolescent crushes that the series gained its mass audience with. My only previous exposure to Twilight is the original film but that's enough of a comparison to know that Breaking Dawn is surely not what a lot of Meyer's fans signed on for. This is a far cry from the innocent, wish-fulfillment laced romance of the first Twilight. Here, Bella is set on a path of suffering that she is willing to follow up to her own martyr-like death if need be.

While many of Meyer's readers likely hoped to see Edward and Bella together eventually, they probably imagined that the pair's life as a married couple would be much more fun than one night of painful sex followed by an instant - and potentially fatal - pregnancy. To have a story like this created by a woman and sold to an audience largely composed of women makes one wonder what the message is.

Maybe there is no message but it's hard not to see this as a staunch pro-life tract, on top of depicting marriage and motherhood as being womanly duties that must be endured with no soul searching or second guessing involved.

Star Ingredient: Director Bill Condon, who is probably best well-known to the public as the director of 2006's Motown saga Dreamgirls, but is known to genre fans as the writer/director of 1998's acclaimed James Whale bio-pic Gods & Monsters (in a Breaking Dawn flashback, Edward attends a screening of Bride of Frankenstein) as well as having penned the screenplay for the quirky Strange Invaders (1983) and directed 1995's Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh. Condon does an admirable job with Breaking Dawn - Part 1, perserving the arch, operatic nature of the material and delivering some surprisingly unsettling imagery within the confines of a PG-13 movie. He isn't able to prevent the movie from resembling a Bad Acting Contest (or to sell me on the virtues of CG werewolves) but Condon, who prior to his more prestigious successes was interviewed as part of Maitland McDonagh's 1995 book Filmmakers on the Fringe, knows his way around Weird. Breaking Dawn - Part 1's soundtrack may be loaded with candy-assed pop songs but Condon ensures that his movie is more than a bubblegum affair.

Cooking With Hellfire

2011-11-18T21:11:00.000-08:00

The Dish: The First Power (1990)

What's In It: Lou Diamond Phillips, as a hotshot L.A. cop. Tracy Griffith as a just plain hot psychic with a connection to the killer. Jeff Kober as Phillips' quarry, the Pentagram Killer, executed in the electric chair but causing more mayhem than ever, as his malefic soul leaps from one body to another thanks to his eternal allegiance to Satan.

Tastes Like: The Exorcist (1973), heavily seasoned with the hardboiled police action of The French Connection (1971), with a dash of Wes Craven's Shocker (1989).

Extra Flavor: The Police's former drummer Stewart Copeland composed the score.

Nutritional Value: Although it's never gotten much attention, even on the cult film level, The First Power is top-shelf junk food. Writer/director Robert Resnikoff delivered a fast-paced action/horror film filled with the kind of CG-free stunt work that that used to be the bread and butter of exploitation movies.

Lingering Aftertaste: Resnikoff's only previous directing experience was a self-penned 1988 short film starring Terry O'Quinn (The Stepfather) titled The Jogger. He also wrote 1989's Jay Leno and Pat Morita buddy cop vehicle Collision Course. But after his big feature directing break with The First Power, Resnikoff was never heard from in the film world again - at least if IMDB is to be believed.

Resnikoff's vanishing act is a shame as The First Power showed some promise. Of the spate of late '80s/early '90s tales featuring executed killers returning to life, this was the only one that gelled into a decent movie. If The Horror Show's James Isaac could keep on making movies (including 2001's Jason X), then Resnikoff should've done the same. And for a film that came across as slick and generic in 1990, The First Power now has a pleasing old-school vibe to it but without feeling overly dated, thanks to untrendy wardrobe choices and to the film's action mostly taking place in non-descript locations like back alleys and water treatment plants.

Star Ingredient: What really brings The First Power together is Kober's wicked turn as Patrick Channing, aka The Pentagram Killer. This being 1990, Kober's character was naturally groomed to be a possible franchise star. Too bad that didn't happen as Kober had the chops to be a horror heavyweight and The First Power is a movie I would've liked to have seen a second serving of.

Dinner Plans

2011-11-18T20:55:00.000-08:00

As a heads-up, let me tell you that some changes will be coming to the menu here. I always slow down a little on postings in October so that's not unusual but this time, rather than jumping right back in, the break had me thinking about how I feel about blogging and whether I still have the time to commit to it. The answer is that I do have the time (well, kind of), but that I could manage it better.

To that end, I'm going to adopt a formatted style to my reviews. Not every single post will rigidly stick to this style but I'm hoping that, in general, this will will allow me to be a little more productive here.

We'll see how it pans out. Call it an experiment.

Maybe more than anything else, I just feel like DWMJ needs a shot in the arm. A new coat of paint. Something...different. After over five years, I've been feeling some inevitable ennui creeping in.

That, coupled with my squeezed schedule, made it tempting to consider packing it in. But in the end, there's little chance of that happening. In whatever capacity I'm able to, I plan on staying put in my corner of the blogosphere.

The first new review will be up soon. Let me know what you think!

11-11-11 Is The Loneliest Number

2011-11-10T21:11:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure why today's date of 11/11/11 is supposed to be a big deal. Is it some Mayan thing? Or is it something out of the Bible? It's definitely not the end of the world, right? I know I could just look it up and find out but I'm not actually interested in educating myself about it. My appetite for knowledge has its limits.

I would, however, be willing to get the lowdown on 11/11/11 through the new Darren Lynn Bousman movie 11-11-11, opening today. Unfortunately, it looks like I won't be seeing 11-11-11 until maybe 2/20/12 or some other random date in the far-ish future. Even though Bousman and co. cannily made their film before its titular date arrived, 11-11-11 is only opening in a handful of theaters in the US today. Is is because the movie's bad? Eh, I doubt it. I mean, the movie could be bad (really bad, even) but that hasn't stopped movies from garnering wide releases before. I do know that 11-11-11 looks more up my alley than anything else Bousman's done to date. In case you haven't seen it, here's the trailer:

I rush out to see every horror movie so I guess saying "I'd rush out to see that!" doesn't mean much but 11-11-11 looks like enjoyable nonsense. But here we are on 11/11/11 and the movie is hardly playing anywhere. What gives? Maybe the answer is that its title stuck 11-11-11 not with a marketing tool but with an expiration date. I mean, honestly - after midnight tonight, the scare factor of 11-11-11 is seriously compromised. The Omen remake might have made a big event out of 6/6/06 but it wasn't as though the events of the movie took place on that date.

Just the same, I'm always game for horror movies centered on religious hooey, half-baked prophecies, and ignorant superstitions so I'm bummed that 11-11-11 isn't playing in my neck of the woods. While I'm sure that it wouldn't have proved to be a horror heavy hitter, it's too bad that 11-11-11 wasn't given a better chance to one up its competition.

All Creatures Great And Small

2011-11-08T06:33:00.000-08:00

H.G. Wells' 1896 novel of scientific shenanigans, The Island of Dr. Moreau, is a genre touchstone that I feel I must have read at some point in my life but as I can't remember a single thing about the book, maybe I didn't. I can, however, finally say that I've now seen all of Moreau's screen adaptations, thanks to the recent Criterion release of Island of Lost Souls (1932).

The 1977 AIP Moreau adaptation starring Michael York and Burt Lancaster was my first exposure to Wells' tale. That film doesn't hold up well, probably because it was never good to begin with, but when I first saw it on TV at the age of nine or ten, I was impressed. Years later, I had high hopes for the Richard Stanley adaptation but how his take on the material would've worked, we'll never know and in its place is the junky, doomed-from-the-get-go 1996 version that John Frankenheimer put together out of what Stanley started.

But the original adaptation, Island of Lost Souls, the one that everyone who's seen it agrees is the best version of Wells' novel, had always eluded me. It seems like a movie that should've been on rotation on TV back when I was a kid. All the classic horror and sci-fi films of the '30s screened on TV on a regular basis when I was growing up in the '70s but if IOLS was ever on, I must've missed it. I don't know its home video history either but I get the feeling it hasn't been in circulation as much as other films of similar vintage. Or maybe it's been out there the whole time and I've just been too lazy in catching up with it. Either way, I've finally filled in that gap in my cinematic education.

Of course the danger in coming belatedly to a classic is that you'll have the unfortunate reaction of wondering what all the fuss was about - especially with a film that's as old as IOLS is. It's impossible for a viewer today to be hit in quite the same way as audiences of 1932 were by this film. That said, IOLS - directed with atmospheric flair by Erle C. Kenton - earns its reputation. It's genuinely nightmarish and the deep depravity of the material hasn't been dulled by time.

The story is one that everyone is familiar with - one of the maddest of all mad scientists, Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton), reigns as a cruel god among the island of man-beasts that he's created within the walls of his "House of Pain." When an outsider - here, Ed Parker (Richard Arlen) - finds himself trapped there thanks to an accident at sea, he finds himself in danger of being caught up in Moreau's ghastly practices.

Wells' story is frequently described as a cautionary tale against the abuse of science (reportedly Wells wrote the novel as an anti-vivisection tract) but on screen, what you've got is an occasion for a menagerie of monsters (led by Bela Lugosi, in his most make-up heavy role) and one kind-of-hot Panther Lady (Kathleen Burke). I don't know how dated I thought the creature make-up would appear in this film but I was surprised by how amazing it still looks. And this wasn't a film like Frankenstein or The Wolf Man where all the effort of the make-up artists went into making one character. Here, there's huge crowd scenes where every extra is monstered-up and while some make-ups are more complicated than others, none of them look just thrown together.

Then there's Laughton as Moreau, decked out in his white suit with his bullwhip always at the ready to crack at his man-monsters as they sulk through the bushes and lurk in the trees. Without making the character cartoonish, Laughton doesn't give Moreau even a hint of redeeming qualities.

This is a man so venal that - outside of the unchecked sadism of his anesthesia-free experiments - he tries to have his Panther Lady seduce Parker in the hopes of getting his abominable creation pregnant. When the romantic approach doesn't seem to be working out fast enough, and Parker's beautiful finance Ruth (Leila Hyams) has arrived on the island, Moreau sees a more expedient opportunity and sends one of his hulking man-beasts to break into Ruth's room at night with the implication that this creature will surely rape her.

This is no case of Beauty and the Beast, no case of The Creature from the Black Lagoon carrying Julie Adams away for unspecified purposes. When Moreau's monster enters Ruth's bedroom, there's no doubt as to what will happen unless someone intervenes. This is appalling stuff even now - it's not surprising that this film was banned in Britain on its original release. This may not have been scorned on the level that Tod Browning's Freaks (1932) was but it was a film that, in its day, went too far for many.

Like Richard Matheson's also thrice-adapted novel I Am Legend (1954), The Island of Dr. Moreau arguably hasn't had its definitive adaptation yet - and likely never will - but Island of Lost Souls is certainly a classic and if you've never seen it, rush to get the Criterion DVD. Even if you have to run on all fours to do it.

Trick Or Trailers

2011-10-31T07:46:00.001-07:00

Every Halloween, fear fans schedule their own movie marathons to celebrate the occasion (if you're stuck for ideas, by the way, feel free to check out the HorrorDad's recommendations). But as nice as it sounds to curl up with a line-up of your favorite frights, the sad truth of adult life is that there isn't always time to devote six hours or more - anything less than that can't be properly called a marathon - to watching movies. Often times if you get a chance to crash in front of the TV for just one movie at the end of the night, that's an accomplishment. But while you may not be able to enjoy every movie you'd like to before All Hallow's Eve is over, there's always time to fill up on horror trailers.

Whether you're taking a break from your Halloween horrorthon or you're just looking for a bite-sized, Halloween candy version of one, here's ten of my favorite horror trailers.

10. White Noise (2005)

Any time you put ghostly audio recordings into a trailer, you're gold. The movie itself was a ho-hum affair but I love the spooky In Search Of vibe of this trailer.

9. Of Unknown Origin (1983)

It was a curious decision on the part of Warner Bros.' marketing department to have the brownstone home of Peter Weller filled with an unearthly light at the end of this trailer. The movie is about Weller's character's life or death battle with a rat but all that light leads you to believe that something supernatural or even extraterrestrial is afoot. But I love it when horror trailers mislead the audience for no apparent reason so this one rates as a favorite with me.

8. Q: The Winged Serpent (1982)

If you want to know why I'm so sour on the majority of contemporary monster movies, look no further than this trailer for Larry Cohen's Q: The Winged Serpent. This quirky low budget offering shows more cool monster action in its trailer than most mega-million productions show in their entire film.

7. Nomads (1986)

This is the first movie from Die Hard director John McTiernan and it's one of those movies that I still only know through its trailer. I hear that Nomads isn't so good - one reason why I've never made a point to see it - but every time that I watch this trailer, I think I'm missing out on something great.

6. The House Where Evil Dwells (1982)

I know for a fact that The House Where Evil Dwells is lousy but whenever I see the ghostly samurai in this trailer, I'm tempted to give the movie another shot.

5. The Boogeyman (1980)

I miss the days when a horror trailer would leave me thinking "what the hell was that?" The Boogeyman definitely fits into that category of making the movie look like an incomprehensible hodgepodge of weird shit. Naturally, it terrified me to no end back in the day.

4. Silent Scream (1980)

I recently went looking through my collection to see if I could find my VHS copy of this little-known slasher gem. No dice, so I can't verify whether it holds up after all these years but the trailer is terrific. Overwrought narration has sadly gone out of fashion in trailers but this one has it in spades.

3. Dead & Buried (1981)

Any horror trailer that markets a tale about an idyllic small town hiding an evil secret scores an automatic win. It just happens that this is one movie that lives up to - and even exceeds - the expectations set up by the trailer. Bonus points for the few frames of animation at the end.

2. The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

Even though I'm not at all religious, I think this trailer is supremely freaky. The brooding tone, the sensationalistic assertions that it's based on a true story (complete with "authentic" audio recordings), and all the glimpses of people with demonic black goo running down their faces, make this trailer a winner to me.

1. The Beast Within (1981)

Horror movies used to be sold with full-on hyperbole and few did it better than this trailer for The Beast Within. You probably will find that you're able to remain seated during the last thirty minutes of the movie, despite the warnings of this trailer, but you won't be able to say that the filmmakers didn't pull out every stop to make this the horror experience of a lifetime.

And if your heart can stand the terror, here's my Trick Or Trailers posts from '09:

The Shining (1980)

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

Magic (1978)

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

When A Stranger Calls (1978)

The Manitou (1978)

Motel Hell (1980)

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Alien (1979)

The Ghost And Mr. Chicken (1966)

Suspiria (1977)

Paranormal Pros And Cons

2011-10-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

Back in September, I wrote about how I felt the Paranormal Activity films were a good thing for the genre, with their reliance on old-school, gore-free scares, and now having seen the third film in the series, those opinions still hold - even if the early hints of franchise fatigue are starting to appear. To be fair, a lot of people feel that PA 3 is an improvement over PA 2 but I'd say the two are about about even, with PA 2 having a slight edge in some ways. I liked the bitter twist that PA 2 offered, putting the events of the first film in a cruel context of familial betrayal. PA 3 gives us even more sinister backstory information but it doesn't have quite the same kick as the revelations found in PA 2. What we discover in PA 3 seems more like a standard horror movie villain reveal, a little old hat.

As with any long-running horror series, the PA films are starting to feel ham-strung by their own mythology. Some franchise fans - of whatever franchise it may be - thrive off of that kind of stuff but it always brings a series to its tipping point, in my opinion. You know, the first Halloween was so terrifying because it was a scenario that you felt could happen to you or to anyone else but the sequels only served to dilute that. Even sharks, the most random predators of all, had to be given a personal agenda in the Jaws sequels, pursuing the Brody family to Jamaica or where ever. PA isn't off the rails yet but the ghostly handwriting is starting to appear on the walls.

For the bulk of PA 3, directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost hit every beat perfectly, nailing every scare and ramping up the tension to a crescendo, but PA 3's final moments could've benefited from an additional moment - one more scare, another line of dialogue.

You can feel the different vibe in a theater between an audience that's waiting for a little more from a film and when they go out on a high note and PA 3 is more the former than the latter. That said, I thought the scares in PA 3 were generally more inventive than those of its two predecessors.

Part of the fun of the PA movies is seeing how the filmmakers use their ingenuity to pull off jumps scares and FX shots while making such moments appear as invisible of artifice as possible and in PA 3, Schulman and Joost, under the guidance of PA mastermind Oren Peli, deliver some of the most satisfying scares of the series - some of them loud, some of them elegant (a quiet moment involving a sheet being my favorite). I continue to find it interesting that Peli doesn't do any kind of sucking up to the horror press, he doesn't sell himself as a hardcore genre aficionado and create a following for himself, but yet he clearly has a better handle on what makes horror films work than "fan-friendly" directors who always say the right things in interviews and nostalgically pine for a return to the good old days of the '70s and '80s but whose films never quite deliver.

Whether you're a fan of the PA films or not, the success of this latest entry is a heartening reminder that, yes, audiences still want to see horror movies. Even if a horror movie looks awful, I'll still see it but for the average person who doesn't live and breathe this stuff and who isn't able to convince themselves that, hey, there really is a good chance that The Rite won't be atrocious, it's about waiting for the right movie to come along. As someone who doesn't pick and choose, someone who just automatically shows up on opening day for any horror movie, it's always interesting for me to see what brings everyone else into the theater. At the end of the day, the answer is always as simple as "something scary." There's an obvious reason why a movie like the Fright Night remake failed and why a movie like PA 3 succeeds. Or why The Blair Witch Project was a hit and The Haunting remake wasn't. Sometimes a really scary movie will still flop but more often than not, if a movie works, word gets out.

The only downside to the success of the PA films is that studios might take it as a sign that audiences only want "found-footage" horror but that's an avoidable side effect of any successful film - a market flooded with copycats - but hopefully the success of PA 3 will help more horror films of every type make it to theaters. The real lesson to be learned is that - in or out of October - scary movies are always in season if they're done right.

When There's No More Room In Whitewood, The Dead Will Walk The Earth

2011-10-28T07:13:00.000-07:00

At the climax of 1960's witchcraft thriller The City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel), things don't look too sunny for the forces of good. The witches that have ruled the secluded town of Whitewood, Massachusetts for centuries have gotten the best of our heroes.

Richard Barlow (Dennis Lotis), brother to slain college student Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson), is in the clutches of Whitewood's evil coven, along with local librarian Betta St. John (Patricia Russell).

As the two struggle in the town's cemetery with their black robed opponents, Nan's brother Tom (Bill Maitland) arrives - much the worse for wear, having experienced a supernaturally-induced car wreck on the way into Whitewood.

Staggering among the gravestones, half dead already, and in no condition to fight a coven of witches on his own, Tom is quickly dealt a fatal blow by a dagger thrown by the coven's wicked leader, Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessell).

The coven then turns their attention back to Richard and Betta but Tom isn't taking his death lying down. He gets to his feet, rips a cross out of the ground and uses its shadow as a holy weapon to torch the members of the coven. But the movie never answers the question of whether we're watching Tom use every last bit of life in his body to vanquish the witches that murdered his sister (even though he dies not being aware of the details of Nan's death) or whether he died before he even hit the ground and we're seeing Tom as an undead avenger.

I like to think it's the latter. But look and decide for yourself:

Living or The Living Dead? Only Tom's undertaker knows for sure.

Get Your Halloween Horrorthon On!

2011-10-21T10:11:00.000-07:00

With Halloween approaching, the HorrorDads - Richard Harland Smith, Dennis Cozzalio, Greg Ferrara, Paul Gaita, Nicholas McCarthy, and myself - have taken a break from sewing our costumes and carving pumpkins to program our dream horrorthon.

When you watch horror nearly every day of the year, it's hard to single out a few films that deserve a prime spot on a Halloween playlist but I think we've come up with a line-up that will keep any fan shivering and shrieking from dusk till dawn.

Sadly, time, money and distance prevents the HorrorDads from renting out an old theater for real, serving up popcorn, sailing plastic skeletons over the audience, and insuring patrons against death by fright, but if you include any of our picks among your Halloween viewing this year, we'll surely be with you in spirit.

Read our entire talk at TCM's Movie Morlocks.

The Magazine That Bleeds!

2011-10-18T05:58:00.000-07:00

As someone who owns the entire twenty-six issue run of GOREZONE, the recently released compilation THE BLOODY BEST OF GOREZONE wasn't an opportunity for me to rediscover lost memories but yet the many reminisces this issue includes from GOREZONE alumni - including editor Tony Timpone, managing editor Michael Gingold, and contributor Tim Lucas, along with a fond appreciation of the late Chas. Balun from new FANGORIA editor Chris Alexander - couldn't help but put me in a reflective mood about what GOREZONE meant during its tenure on the newsstands and how different the cultural climate is today from what it was in the late '80s/early '90s. It also couldn't help but make me feel too old, but that's another story.

For those who may not know, GOREZONE was the sister publication to FANGORIA, launched in 1988 by Fango publisher Norman Jacobs as a means to block any upstarts who might be looking to cut into FANGORIA's dollars. GOREZONE was essential meant to cut Fango's competition off at the curb and was effective at doing so, with Fango wannbes like Slaughterhouse never establishing an audience. But although GOREZONE was hatched with mercenary intentions, Fango head honcho Tony Timpone made sure the magazine was something special in its own right.

While Timpone had inherited a successful template for Fango from former editors Bob Martin and Dave Everitt when he came aboard that mag as editor and wisely stuck with that template, making his own tweaks along the way, GOREZONE was Timpone's from the start and it arguably represents an even more important genre legacy on his behalf than his long-lasting reign as Fango's editor-in-chief. A magazine that felt like a more muscular fanzine, GORZEONE was rowdier, more opinionated, and more personable than Fango. Fango was - rightly so - more even-handed in its coverage and more focused on mainstream offerings while GOREZONE was made for the more discerning, hardcore fan. When GZ's run was finished, its influence inevitably - and appropriately - bled into its parent mag, bringing more eclectic coverage into the pages of FANGORIA itself.

Embodying GOREZONE's style (almost single-handedly) was Chas. Balun. A writer who inspired many but remains unmatched by any, Balun practiced a more gonzo brand of genre journalism, creating a niche all his own with self-published books of reviews like The Connoisseur's Guide to The Contemporary Horror Film (1983). Although he had contributed to Fango, it wasn't until his "Piece O' Mind" column in GOREZONE that he really reached his apex. It's no exaggeration to say that Piece O' Mind changed the way many horror fans felt about the genre - or more specifically, it validated the way they felt about it and articulated that passion in a revolutionary way.

Equally revolutionary - maybe even moreso - were the contributions of Tim Lucas, whose Video Watchdog column was given space to grow in the pages of GOREZONE, eventually leading to Lucas launching his self-published magazine. Prior to those early Watchdog columns, I had never encountered anyone who looked at genre films with that kind of exhaustive attention to detail and it's no exaggeration to say that Lucas' writing permanently changed the mentality with which fans regarded films and also, in time, changed the way that films themselves are treated by studios. Most of Lucas' GZ columns focused on the ways that films were mistreated in their home video incarnations, suffering inexplicable edits and shoddy transfers. Today, people who were influenced by Lucas when they were younger now run specialty video labels like Blue Underground and Synapse. And, as Lucas notes in the new interview included in this BLOODY BEST compilation, "...we've also had longtime readers who were able to get into major companies like MGM and Sony and make a difference." Every time you see a DVD of a classic genre movie in which that film is in the most complete and pristine condition possible, some measure of thanks for that is owed to Tim Lucas.

But while Balun and Lucas were GZ's most famous contributors, the GZ masthead included plenty of other luminaries, like Psychotronic author Michael Weldon, Broken Minds/Broken Mirrors author Maitland McDonagh, and Swamp Thing artist and Taboo publisher Stephen Bissette. Given the amount of talent that was represented in GZ's pages, editor Chris Alexander has done a heroic job of compiling a proper Best Of. Like any fan would, though, I have my own personal nitpicks concerning pieces that I believe ought to have made the cut but didn't - such as Bissette's preview of Alejandro Jodorwky's Santa Sangre (1989) or McDonagh's review of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (both examples of the way that GZ shined a light on fringe films well before any other publication).

Regardless of a few missing favorites, though, THE BLOODY BEST OF GOREZONE is a more than worthy representation of GZ's greatness. And the new content from Timpone, Lucas, Gingold, and Alexander puts a welcome sense of context onto these old pieces, looking back on what was once a very different world for horror fans.

Part of Chris Alexander's stated intention with publishing THE BLOODY BEST OF GOREZONE is to test the waters for a relaunch of the magazine. I hope he can pull it off but looking back on GZ, and the ways in which the culture has changed since the magazine closed shop in 1993, one has to wonder what a new GOREZONE's function would be in today's world.

As Timpone notes in his BLOODY BEST recollections, "audiences today don't know how good they've got it; no way a Saw film or a Hostel would have escaped with an R rating in the late '80s/early '90s." And that, in a nutshell, is why GOREZONE was so vital during its run. GZ was a magazine that was desperately needed by horror fans who were suffering through a restrictive, reactionary era. Even more than Fango itself, GOREZONE was a magazine that connected fans to the beating heart of horror at a time when the MPAA was doing its best to squelch it. Even TV shows like Freddy's Nightmares and Friday the 13th: The Series were being chased off the air by the Religious Right. Horror was fighting for its very existence back then and in the face of that, GOREZONE represented the voice of the unbowed horror masses.

Now cut to today. Just yesterday when I was shopping for Halloween decorations, right next to the kiddie costumes was a rack of horror movie DVDs, stocked with multiple copies of The Human Centipede (2009). No one who wrote for, or read, GOREZONE back in the day could've conceived of a day when a movie like that would be so readily available with barely a peep of outrage. Compare the kinds of films and shows that concerned parent groups would once lose their shit over with what gets released to no response today and, jeez, it's enough to make you wonder what happened to society. Bullshit controversies still erupt here and there but if you took any angry protester from back in the late '80s and timewarped them to today, their heads would explode. And if you took the MPAA panel from that time to now, they wouldn't believe what had become permissible just a few decades down the line.

It's a pretty low point for the genre at the moment, with the latest string of horror offerings getting lukewarm receptions at the box office (mostly with good cause) but yet it's still a more booming time than it was when GOREZONE was around. In the late '80s/early '90s, if you had maybe five genre films get a wide release in theaters in the entire year, you were lucky. But just in the past three months, Final Destination 5, Fright Night, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Apollo 18, Shark Night 3-D, Creature, Straw Dogs, Dream House, The Thing, and - coming this weekend - Paranormal Activity 3 have all hit screens across the country (with films like The Woman, The Human Centipede Part 2, and The Skin I Live In playing in limited release). And on TV, there's the return of Supernatural and The Walking Dead along with the premiere of new genre fare like American Horror Story and Grimm. There's so much horror product out there, I can't keep up with it all (granted, some of it I don't want to keep up with).

Not only is there a surplus of genre product, but it's not watered down. Aside from the fact that some of these films and shows are duds, it's not due to censorship but due to creative shortcomings. When I read about Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer in GZ, I had to legitamately wonder if I'd ever get to see that movie. Most of Tony Timpone's GZ editorials back then were about the struggles that filmmakers (especially indie filmmakers) faced with the intractable, and frequently small-minded, judgements of the MPAA. Today, not even the likes of A Serbian Film has to worry about distribution.

Honestly, as much as I appreciate filmmakers having more freedom and viewers having more access to movies, I miss those earlier days. GOREZONE was a magazine for an "Us Against Them" kind of time and that's, unavoidably, a romantic sort of thing. Horror fans were joined together in the trenches, railing against the imperious rule of the MPAA. Now, the MPAA pretty much lets everything skate by - we're not oppressed by any "Them" anymore. Not enough to care about, at least. I mean, Shark Night 3-D would've had to have been cut to earn an R in 1989. Today it gets a PG-13, with no pleas to the MPAA required. So things are better now, yes, but it's hard not to feel nostalgic for what once was and a huge cornerstone of that nostalgia will always be GOREZONE.

Best wishes to Chris Alexander and co. if they go ahead with a new edition of GOREZONE. The challenge, of course, will be to make it as relevant to the current genre scene as its predecessor was to its day but if any mag deserved a second chance, it's GOREZONE.

To see about getting a copy of THE BLOODY BEST OF GOREZONE while they last (if they're not gone already), visit Fangoria's website.

Some Thing Old, Some Thing New

2011-10-15T18:51:00.001-07:00

I was all prepared to love - or at least like - the hell out of the new Thing. Unlike a lot of genre fans, I happily support big budget Hollywood horror. It might not always produce the best results but I always enjoy seeing big money thrown at horror projects. If you can make a kick-ass horror movie with a bunch of no-name actors in a farmhouse or a cabin in the woods, great. But I also like to see bigger scale horror projects realized with state-of-the-art craftsmanship. Movies like The Birds (1963), The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), The Shining (1980) and, well, John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) weren't done on the cheap. It took Hollywood's deep pockets to make them happen. So whenever major studios decide that they want to pony up for a horror project, I'm game to see how it turns out.

And sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots - fans generally hate them but I'm mostly all for them. When they're bad, they don't spoil the originals for me. Given my level-headed attitude, I was certain that The Thing (2011) would score a passing mark from me. I even scoffed at some of the early reviews that panned it for a lack of character development and an over-reliance on FX. I mean, come on. Anyone who knows anything about Carpenter's Thing knows that those were the exact same criticisms that were levelled against that classic. So I wasn't about to be that guy and say the same shit about this movie.

Except, now having seen The Thing '11, I kind of have to say them.

As reported, the characterizations are dead on arrival and the FX are both overused and under realized. Even if I didn't know Carpenter's film chapter and verse, this movie still wouldn't play well in my eyes.

It's a shame, too, because it starts off so well. The first half had me hooked. It wasn't headed for a four-star rating but it was, at least, solid. So much so that I was even willing to overlook the curious fact that it starts off with an old-school version of the Universal logo but the wrong old-school version. You'd think they would have pulled out the early '80s Uni logo - like the one that ran in front of Sam Raimi's Drag Me To Hell (2009) - but instead it's the logo from the early '90s.

Pretty much this one:

Now, I do like that logo - it's attached to some of my favorites, like, um, Dr. Giggles (1992). But it's an odd choice to put on this Thing. Who knows - maybe Universal is just dusting off that old logo for all their movies these days. If so, I hadn't noticed.

Anyhow, a much bigger issue than an oddly chosen studio logo becomes apparent early on in this new Thing: they fuck up the alien spaceship. I mean, everybody who's seen Carpenter's film remembers how the alien spaceship was originally found by the members of Outpost 31 - in an giant open crater, having been revealed by the Norwegians after being buried for God knows how long.

When the men of Outpost 31 watch the video footage of the Norwegians standing in a circle around the buried alien ship, that was Carpenter's nod to the discovery scene in Howard Hawk's 1951 The Thing From Another World (even down to the footage being in black and white). On the video, we see the Norwegians set off their nitrate explosives and later, when MacReady, Norris, and Doc Copper fly out to investigate the site, they stand at the edge of the crater and look down on the exposed ship.

The Thing '11 doesn't bother to match any of this up. At all. In fact it flat-out contradicts it. Kind of a giant fuck-up, if you ask me.

There's no scene of the Norwegian crew standing in a circle to measure the circumference on the saucer, much less anyone videotaping it. There's no setting of explosions to get past the ice to the ship. Instead, they enter through cracks in the ice to find the ship underground.

When a huge selling point from the makers of this film to the fans of Carpenter's film was that this was going to put the pieces of the puzzle together and be a seamless match with the '82 version, well, this is the kind of sloppiness that you just can't forgive. It makes the fact that they take pains to explain the backstory behind such lesser incidents as the the axe embedded in a door that much worse. You know...making sure that the discovery of the spaceship wasn't entirely different in this film from what Carpenter showed probably should've merited more attention. I'm just sayin'.

But even with that colossal gaffe in place, I was still willing to enjoy this Thing as long as the story was involving and the monster action was cool. But on both counts, it comes up short. I bet the original version of the Thing screenplay, by Battlestar Galactica scribe Ronald D. Moore, was pretty good. But the version that director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. ended up working with - a rewrite by Eric Heisserer (Final Destination 5) - is definitely not so hot. I like the actors - especially Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton - but there's only so much they can do to bring their characters to life. And the monster action...well, it's better than anything in this year's Super 8 or Creature, at least, so I'll give it some credit. But what FX artists Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. of Amalgamated Dynamics came up with is ultimately kind of piss poor. With all the advance talk of the film's FX being largely practical and the finished product showing almost no practical FX work, it leads me to think that plans went awry at some point.

I'm not a hater when it comes to CGI but when it's bad, it ought to be called out as such and - outside of a couple of nicely hideous moments - it's pretty bad here. It's not Fright Night bad but it's still not good. Or maybe it'd be more accurate to say that it's badly used. When we see the Thing in full-body action scuttling down hallways after victims, it just looks goofy. Maybe you could objectively study the animation and say that it was a competent job but it's not good for the movie. For the '82 film, Carpenter had a climatic scene of the "Blair-Monster" version of the Thing in action created via stop-motion - by animator Randy Cook - but cut it because it just didn't fit the film. That showed judgment on Carpenter's part. He knew what looked right for his film. Heijningen Jr. - like too many modern directors - doesn't have a clue when it comes to that.

I won't go on and on about how bad this movie is because it isn't terrible so much as it is mediocre. I didn't go in it expecting it to be great but it drops the ball in too many key areas for me to give a favorable nod. Funnily enough, watching this try and fail to successfully imitate Carpenter's film didn't immediate put in the mind to rewatch Carpenter's classic but rather 1989's underwater alien tale Leviathan. That cheeseball Thing rip-off is much more my cup of tea than The Thing 2011. The cast for that - Peter Weller, Daniel Stern, Richard Crenna, Ernie Hudson, Hector Elizondo, Amanda Pays, Meg Foster - has personality to spare and the old-school practical effects by Stan Winston (who famously lent a helping hand to Rob Bottin on The Thing) remain vividly gruesome. That's as much as I wanted out of The Thing '11.

When you set the bar so low (no offense, Leviathan) that a movie can't possibly fail to meet expectations but it does anyway - well, all you can do is sigh and move on. A satisfying prequel to Carpenter's paranoid classic? Eh, looks like some Things just aren't meant to be.

Worshipping At The Altar Of October

2011-10-09T07:39:00.000-07:00

If I went back and checked, I bet I'd find that - year after year - my lightest month of blog posting is always October. While other horror bloggers kick it into high gear in the days ramping up to Halloween, I tend to slack off.

Mostly I'd chalk it up to being preoccupied by the season itself - in greedily trying to soak up all the sights and sounds of October, I don't get on the computer as much. And if I'm going to be able to cram in all the horror movie watching I want to in thirty-one days, there's not much time to write as well. So, October always ends up being lean on content here.

Still, I'd like to give a mention to one of the movies that I always revisit at this time of year - Michele Soavi's The Church (1988). Something about The Church has always marked it as a fall film to me. Eagle-eyed viewers can spot a Halloween decoration on a window in one scene (see photo below) but it's not specifically a Halloween movie.

I don't know what fall looks like in Rome (or Budapest or Hamburg, where location shooting for The Church was done) but what we see of the outside world in The Church doesn't look much like the falls I know here in my home turf of New England. But yet every October I feel an urge to go back to The Church.

Originally conceived as the third Demons movie, director Michele Soavi dropped most of the references to the previous two Demons films when he came onto this project after making his debut film - the underrated slasher Stagefright (1987) - and after serving second unit directing duties on the Terry Gilliam fantasy, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). As an inspired Soavi told Cinefantastique at the time regarding his artistic intentions on The Church: "I didn't want to make a cheap special effects picture after my involvement with Baron Munchausen." Soavi rewrote the existing script completely (which had been developed under the project's original director, Lamberto Bava) before the start of shooting. Producer Dario Argento gave Soavi the leeway to tailor The Church to his own vision. As Soavi told CFQ, "I turned what was conceived as schlock pizza cinema into a strong essay on karma and the ambiguous inner conflicts we all face at some time in our lives."

That might seem like a headier agenda than is reflected in the actual film but I love that The Church is a mix of the kind of graphic gore that fans of the Demons series would be looking for (with FX presided over by Makeup Supervisor Sergio Stivaletti) and the kind of poetic visuals that displayed just how quickly Soavi was advancing as an artist. I get the feeling that this film is too slowly paced for a lot of fans but even though things don't really get rip-roarin' until the fifty minute mark or so, I love the leisurely build-up and deliberate pace of the film so I don't feel any restlessness while watching it. A lot of that might have to do with the fact that I just enjoy listening to the synth-driven score by famed composer Philip Glass and Keith Emerson (of the '70s rock band Emerson Lake & Palmer) so I find it very easy to be patient with The Church.

Once events conspire to seal the film's characters (including a young Asia Argento as Lotte, the rebellious teenage daughter of the church's sacristan) inside the walls of the gothic Cathedral, The Church becomes an usual entry in the siege film subgenre in that its embattled characters are trapped inside with evil forces and unable to make their escape to the outside world. The characters are all thinly written (as well as being too numerous to get a handle on - even late into the film, Soavi is still bringing more people into the storyline) and its story is whatever but it's all just a hook for Soavi to hang his rich, baroque visuals on and on that level, The Church is irresistible to me.

A nostalgic reminder of a now long gone era of Italian horror, The Church is one of those movies that's purely cinematic, with almost every frame being interesting in some way. It's also a testimony to old-school FX ingenuity with rubber monsters getting their share of screen time and a climatic image of a writhing, intertwined mass of bodies - a visual that would be instantly CGI'd today - accomplished with wholly practical means.

It's moments like that that make me a true believer in The Church.

Paranormal Praise

2011-09-29T07:11:00.001-07:00

Even if I wasn't particularly fond of the Paranormal Activity films, I would still feel eternally in their debt for the fact that they drop kicked the yearly blight known as Saw from its Halloween perch and made the witching season safe for fun scares again. Sorry, but Halloween is for ghosts, goblins and the supernatural, not torture.

When Paranormal Activity became a hit in October 2009, I considered it cause for celebration. Even better was the fact that I actually liked the movie itself - I wasn't just grateful that it cleared the stink of Saw out of the room. Some would argue that the couple at the heart of PA were not the most sympathetic of duos but if I had a beef against every horror movie where the protagonists were not especially likable, I wouldn't like many horror movies. Personally, I thought Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat were fine (if a little too rich, but whatever) and I was in their corner enough to care what happened to them. But what I really liked about PA is how director Oren Peli had just one imperative in mind - to scare the shit out of the audience. So many horror films seem made by people oblivious to the mechanics of generating fear but Peli showed an innate understanding of how to build unease and deliver big payoffs.

Like The Blair Witch Project in 1999, Paranormal Activity proved that you don't need big special effects to deliver big scares. And unlike BWP (which I still consider to be brilliant), PA had more showmanship to offer, injecting more audience-pleasing jump scares into the mix. I love the rinky-dink, handmade quality to PA's brand of funhouse tricks (like the Ouija board that bursts into flames) and I love that they've carried that quality onto the rest of the series. It would've been so easy for this series to get off track and become too slick for its own good but PA 2 smartly stuck to what worked in the first film, embodied the same low budget aesthetic, and it did what I would've thought was impossible - allowed lightening to strike twice.

The quality control on that sequel was air tight and it proved that Peli didn't just fall ass backwards into Paranormal Activity's success. This was someone who really knew what they were doing and in his producer capacity, he's continued to guide his series well. Other filmmakers who claim to be such hardcore horror buffs could stand to learn something from him as Peli clearly knows more about what makes a horror film work than many fan-favorite directors who are superstars on the convention circuit and the blogosphere. But that's the subject of another blog post, perhaps.

Now the third PA is arriving in time for another Halloween and the first full trailer indicates that, once again, all involved have kept their eyes on the prize. Early reviews (like this), from a surprise showing at Fantastic Fest, confirm as much. I'll still be keeping my expectations in check, because that's only sensible, but based on the trailer I'm very game for whatever PA 3 has to offer.

Some like to bitch that the PA films don't show anything and that, you know, it's dumb for people to find them scary. Personally, it restores my faith in not just the horror genre but in audiences as well that these films do work. You'd think that modern viewers would be way too jaded for these simple spook house style films but I love the fact that there's enough people out there who appreciate this type of horror to make these movies huge hits. I love hearing an audience scream at a well-timed jump scare and to see rows of people fly back in their seats all at once. That's a part of the horror movie experience that's so essential to the genre's appeal. There's an often unappreciated art to making those moments happen and not every filmmaker can successfully pull them off. In the three decades or so that I've been watching horror films in the theater, I've seldom heard an audience reaction as loud as the shrieks that I heard accompany a key, kitchen-set moment in PA 2.

Movies that revel in atrocities, like the Human Centipede films or A Serbian Film, are not the future of horror. They're curiosities, at best. And I say that as someone who spent their adolescent years combing video stores for films like Cannibal Holocaust and Make Them Die Slowly. Maybe I'm just getting old and I don't need to fly in the face of society's norms as much anymore with my entertainment choices but when I hear that a movie features someone jerking off with sandpaper, it sounds like a waste of time to me. Things that go bump in the night, though?

When done right, that stuff never gets old.

Standing In Front Of the Fridge

2011-09-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

Everyone has had the experience of standing in front of their open refrigerator, unable to choose which plate of leftovers to heat up. That's kind of how I'm feeling at the moment with movies. With my son now back to school and my work hours switched to second shift, I have - for the first time in many months - the weekday mornings and early afternoons to myself. Coming up on these open days, I expected that I'd be logging some serious hours of movie watching. But it hasn't been like that at all. Instead, I'm finding myself simply staring at my tape and DVD collection, unable to make a decision on what the hell to watch - much less what to write about.

There's a kind of denial at work when it comes to collecting - whether it be movies, books, or records. As a fan, you build a collection with the expectation that these are things that you'll be able to enjoy in the days and years ahead, over and over, at your leisure. But at a certain point, you have to realize that your life simply won't be long enough to enjoy all these things that you've amassed. Like, not even if you were a vampire or something. I look at my movie collection, a collection that adds up to tens of thousands of hours of films and televisions shows, and I have to admit that, even if I live an exceptionally long life, that I already own more movies than I'll ever have the time to watch again. As much as I'd like to go back and watch all of them at least one more time, I know that I won't.

Sorry, Ghost Ship. Nothing personal.

Some people lament that they never had the experience of climbing Mt. Everest, or never learned to scuba dive, or never visited Paris before they died but I'm more likely to regret that I didn't watch From Beyond nearly enough. Several years ago, I stopped buying movies with the same frequency that I used to. But even with slowing down, I'm still surrounded by stacks of movies that remind me of just how little time there is in a day, a week, a year, or a life.

In the face of that existential quandary, there's only one decision to make - the same one that I always make while standing at the open fridge.

I go with comfort food.

Whatever It Is, It's Weird And Pissed Off

2011-09-19T20:40:00.000-07:00

With today's release of the red band trailer for Universal's prequel to The Thing, I think we've seen enough of the movie to say with some confidence that this will be a lunkheaded version of Carpenter's 1982 film.

That said, I'm still stubbornly looking forward to this movie. No, it won't be the movie I was optimistically hoping it would be back when information first started leaking out about it but I know from this trailer that The Thing will be a full-on monster movie and man, I'll take it. After the debacle of Creature - a movie that couldn't even get the simple thrills of a guy-in-a-suit swamp monster movie right - and Super 8, which had a huge budget but not a decent creature to show for it, I'm ready for any monster movie that can at least come through on the most basic level.

Judging by this trailer, I feel like The Thing might manage that.

It might not manage anything more than that, but that's fine - I'll keep my expectations low. I'm not even that irate about the CGI. It is what it is. And unlike the CGI in the recent Fright Night remake, this looks like it was rendered by people who knew what they were doing. Yes, it'd be nice if this prequel was as moody and well-played as Carpenter's but failing that, I'll settle for a movie that keeps its alien menace weird and pissed off.

The Post Shark Night 3-D Blues

2011-09-10T19:08:00.000-07:00

I just noticed that it's been over a week since my last post and, upon thinking about it, I guess I have to chalk up the inactivity to a case of the Post Shark Night 3-D Blues. For the record, I enjoyed Shark Night 3-D just fine. I didn't love it - or even like it all that strongly, for that matter - but I thought it was serviceable. It lacked the gonzo, grindhouse attitude of last summer's Piranha but on the upside it's 3-D was the real deal, not a shoddy post-coversion job. Piranha's fun factor was seriously diminished by 3-D so murky it made my eyeballs ache. In contrast, I was able to enjoy Shark Night in ocular comfort and that compensates for a lot of other failings.

I do wish that the movie had been far nuttier than it was but in the end I can't get too fussy over director David R. Ellis hitting only a double rather than a triple (I wasn't even hoping for a home run). As is, I enjoyed the movie's daffier moments (of which there were several) - all the moreso for their being played absolutely straight-faced. I also got a kick out of Donal Logue as a sheriff who has a penchant for '80s hair metal as well as a virtually unrecognizable Joshua Leonard (Blair Witch Project) as a sinister redneck. And I also love that they gave props to L.L. Cool J's still howl-provoking soundtrack tune "Deepest Bluest (Shark Fin)" from Deep Blue Sea by including their own equally absurd rap tune (delivered by the entire cast) after the end credits. On a side note, the mystery only deepens as to why Don't Be Afraid of the Dark was slapped with an R-rating. How this passed with a PG-13 while DBAOTD earned an R is baffling.

So while I'm putting Shark Night 3-D in the win column (it's a marginal win, granted, but still a win), it's position as an underwhelming curtain call to a dry summer season for horror films has me wondering with a hint of despair when a really quality horror movie is going to hit theaters again. That unhappy feeling that horror is currently stalled out wasn't helped at all by my viewings of Contagion and Creature this weekend, two movies that only served to deepen - albeit in different ways - my post-Shark Night malaise.

Contagion was in fact, a very solid film, a clinically told "what if" detailing what might happen should we ever face a worldwide pandemic. But while director Steven Soderbergh has described his film in interviews as a horror film, in fact it's really just a tense, occasionally chilling, drama. Now, if Ridley Scott had directed an adaptation of Richard Preston's The Hot Zone - if Outbreak not went into production first and tragically scuttled plans for Scott's film - I bet that would've been a true bio-horror movie. Contagion, not so much. I was hoping to be truly unsettled by Contagion, yet Soderbergh's coolly intellectual perspective towards the material made it more a movie that I objectively appreciated for its skill rather than felt fully engaged by. And, again, it's not a horror movie.

As for Creature...yeesh. I would like to be heartened by seeing a throwback like this scoring a nationwide release but sadly Creature gives old-school monster movies a bad name. There's a generic set-up, which is fine, but then once the cast of twentysomethings end up in the titular character's swampland stomping grounds, the thrills just never come. There's no memorable splatter, the action is spare (often confoundedly so, as opportunities for exciting fight scenes are set up but then fail to be acted on), and there's no suspense or scares. It's so rare now for a movie like this to be made (much less to make it to screens across the country) that it's doubly depressing to discover that it's been made by people with no feel for the horror and exploitation genres.

While it hasn't been an eternity since anything worthwhile has hit screens - I really liked last spring's Insidious as well as the gleefully gory Final Destination 5 and the lightweight but pleasingly atmospheric Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (I haven't had the chance to see Attack the Block yet but that sounds more sci-fi than horror) - it's still clear that horror has been experiencing a profound lull with no immediate turnaround in sight. My summer-long anticipation for Shark Night 3-D had been enough to keep me distracted but now that's gone and somehow I don't think the prequel to The Thing is going to do as good a job of keeping my spirits up. It just doesn't have that same Shark Night 3-D magic (he said with a sigh).

The year's remaining theatrical releases do feature a few titles that I've got my fingers crossed on but unfortunately I don't think any will be the kind of surprise hit that horror could use right now. The genre can withstand the occasional valley but the pressure is going to be on the films of 2012 to give horror a creative and commercial shot in the arm.

An Open Letter To Shark Night 3-D

2011-09-01T18:59:00.000-07:00

Dear Shark Night 3-D,

If you happen to suck I'll only blame myself for getting all worked up in advance over you. I mean, I'm old enough to know that setting one's expectations too high is a sure way to get smacked down. But really, how else was I supposed to react to a movie called Shark Night 3-D? Rationally? Please, it's just not in me to be aloof when I see those words together. Your working title of Untitled 3-D Shark Thriller was slightly less exciting but even if you stuck with that, I think I'd still be in the same boat that I am now.

Some would say that anyone really excited to see Shark Night 3-D probably has such a high, perhaps even all-compassing, threshold for garbage that their potential for experiencing disappointment is very low. Like, almost nonexistent. But I can testify that even the most willing and avid consumer of junk cinema can be let down - and more frequently than anyone might believe. But no matter how I feel when your end credits roll, Shark Night 3-D, I'm saying that I'll be responsible for my own reaction. Having said that, it would be so much easier for me to deal with my feelings if you didn't disappoint me.

I know it's too late to change anything about you now because you're, well, done and already in theaters across the country but let me just say it's my hope that you will jockey hard to be at least the third best shark-themed horror movie ever. We both know Jaws is safe. That's so forever in the #1 spot, you two might as well live on different planets but that's ok. If it makes you feel better, I already know you're going to smoke all the Jaws sequels, no question. That leaves Deep Blue Sea as your biggest competitor in the Shark Movie Hall of Fame (sorry, Monster Shark) and there's no shame in coming in behind that but let me tell you, that's not an unbeatable movie. It's no pushover but I'm smelling blood in the water, man - I think you can take it. Imagine being right behind Jaws? Well, not "right behind" - more like "from here to the moon behind" - but still #2. That could be you, my fine-finned friend. Think about that.

As for your PG-13 rating, you might think I'm sweating it like other people seem to be but I'm sanguine about it. I know that sharks are all about the biting and the tearing of limbs and all that stuff that R-ratings are about but I also know that most of my favorite Nature Attacks movies - from the classic (Jaws, duh) to the cheerfully cheesy (Grizzly, Anaconda) - are all either PG or PG-13 so I don't see that rating as being an obstacle to excellence. And, really, I think it would dickish for kids not to be able to see you on their own so I'm good with the rating - even if it means a little less torn flesh in the water and zero exposed breasts. I think even Joe Bob Briggs would be on my side in this.

Anyhow, no matter how things work out, I won't regret being so jazzed about seeing you. When it comes to being a fan, I still believe that it's best to jump in with both feet. Even when - make that especially when - sharks are involved.

Saturday the 14th

2011-08-31T19:14:00.000-07:00

I expect that Sgt. Tierney, as fine a policeman as he may have been, never looked too deeply into Alice Hardy's mad tale of being dragged into the waters of Crystal Lake by a boy named Jason. In coping with the messy aftermath of a major crime, he wouldn't have had time to be distracted by any wild stories. Besides, Alice's account was almost secondary when the facts so clearly spoke for themselves. Right?

Surveying the slaughter the day after, it must've seemed like an open and shut case. Pamela Voorhees, having been unhinged since her son drowned at Camp Crystal Lake due to counselor neglect back in the summer of '57, went on a killing spree spurred by the planned reopening of the camp. But yet, as neatly explained as the events of Friday the 13th might have appeared to be, there were still a few details that ought to have raised the eyebrows of even a lawman like Officer Dorf.

For instance, how did Mrs. Voorhees - a woman in her early '50s - manage to lift a grown man like Ned into an upper bunk without serious difficulty?

Then there's the curious manner in which Jack was killed. A lot of women Mrs. Voorhees' age have to ask for help unscrewing the lid off a jar of pickles but apparently this one is so jacked that she can drive an arrow right through both a mattress and some dude's neck. Damn!

But Tierney must really had to scratch his head at the condition he found poor Bill in. In fact, I'll bet this sight single-handedly blew his mind. Not because of the awful brutality of it, but because he couldn't begin to understand how a fifty-something woman, working alone, could have possibly lifted a grown man off the ground and then impaled him to a door with arrows. That's a mystery on par with the building of the pyramids, I'd say. Definitely the kind of thing that would make a cop ask a lot of questions.

In fact, this case is nothing but questions. Like, how did Mrs. Voorhees hurl a grown woman through a window? Brenda wasn't a heavy gal by any means but we're talking at least a buck nineteen of dead weight. Try throwing that over your head through a window and see how well that works out.

Not only does Mrs. Voorhees do something with pure brute strength that ought to require the use of a plank and fulcrum...

...But after sending Brenda crashing through the window, Mrs. Voorhees is able to run back to the location of her jeep and then drive in to meet Alice and somehow not even appear winded! Had Mrs. Voorhees lived to make it to trial, there isn't a defense lawyer in America that couldn't have convinced a jury that she wasn't the killer. Or at least that she didn't have multiple accomplices.

Maybe Tierney realized that nothing about that terrible night added up. But what could he do - his only living witness wasn't making sense, babbling on about a boy in the lake. As for how a girl could possibly have lopped someone's head off with a swing of a machete, well, that was just one more incredulous detail to add to the legend of Camp Blood.

It's a story not meant for any police report, but one to be told around a campfire.

The Savage Sword Of Conan

2011-08-27T17:48:00.000-07:00

As Robert E. Howard's sword-slinging Cimmerian is a man of few words, I'll keep my comments on this latest cinematic incarnation of Conan the Barbarian short. Basically, I got a big kick out of it. It's not all that good by any objective standards but as a blood-soaked, barbaric romp, it entertained me. Now, I should say that I've never read Howard's stories. If I had, I'd probably feel a lot more affronted by how cheesy the new Conan is. But I haven't, so there you go.

Conan director Marcus Nispel has made something a name for himself by helming remakes of fan favorite properties like Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Friday the 13th. He hasn't made a good name for himself by doing this, but he has made a name. I would say this is better than his other films but maybe that's just because I'm less invested in the world of Conan so whatever atrocities he may have committed against the character, they aren't ones I'm likely to notice or be bothered by. You know, like that whole having Jason living in a series of underground tunnels thing in the Friday the 13th remake. That sure got my attention. Jesus, what the hell was going on there?

Anyhow, even without my whole not knowing anything about Conan thing, it's pretty clear that Nispel's Conan isn't much more than a celebration of brutality but as the word "Barbarian" is right there in the title, I can't call chicanery. This is one of those movies where you're either on its side from the first scene or you're immediately ready to walk out. Its opening is one of the most outrageous I can think of in recent - or even in way fucking back - memory. When a movie begins with a baby floating peacefully in the safety of its mother's womb only to have the womb pierced by a sword and then reveal that the mother is on the field of battle, having just been fatally wounded by an enemy, you can consider my attention gotten.

As Conan hacks and slashes his way through various enemies throughout the course of the film - some of them supernatural, some not - my interest held steady. It might be a slog to some but I've sat through truly tedious examples of this sub-genre over the years and this new Conan isn't one of them. Go on, watch Yor: Hunter from the Future or Steel Dawn if you want to try your luck.

Conan the Barbarian is the kind of movie they don't make anymore and, based on its stillborn performance at the box office, they will continue not to make them. But that's ok. They made this one, I got to see it in theaters (in 2-D, thankfully), and that's enough to make me happy. I do kind of feel bad for star Jason Momoa, though, that this movie tanked as hard as it did as he makes for a good Conan.

At this point I've kind of already said more that I planned to so I'm gonna wrap things up here. You know, after praising this movie - which is far from the first movie of questionable quality that I've raved about - I've gotta wonder if I'm just too supportive of crap and if people just automatically roll their eyes or shake their heads sadly whenever I say I liked a movie like this. If so, I can't blame them. I always like to go with my gut first when it comes to judging how I feel about movies and, as the line goes, I've come to the conclusion that my gut has shit for brains.

Then again, I have been quick to call out nonsense like Skyline so I shouldn't be too hard on myself. Second-guessing your opinions is a waste of time. By Crom, it's the kind of sissy move you'd never catch Conan doing.

Dark Tidings

2011-08-27T06:51:00.000-07:00

Unless you were a kid in the '70s, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is probably a title you're unfamiliar with. And if you did happen to catch up with this 1973 TV movie along the way on VHS or DVD, chances are it didn't resonate with you the way it still does for many Gen-Xers. It's a cult film but hardly a classic. Even those who were given sleepless nights by it as children would be hard-pressed to say that it remains frightening today.

As one of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark's original audience, producer Guillermo del Toro does a fine job of retooling this now-hokey childhood traumatizer into a film that ably works for an audience of 2011 while still retaining enough of the '73 version for fans to recognize. This being the first feature of director Troy Nixey, his contribution to Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is inevitably going to be somewhat overshadowed by the presence of del Toro on the project - especially as this film boasts so many trademark del Toro touches from its story elements to its production design (del Toro wrote the screenplay along with frequent writing partner Matthew Robbins). It will take further films from Nixey to really determine what kind of filmmaker he is but this is unarguably a finely directed film and based on its smooth execution, it seems that the producer/director relationship behind it was an artistically harmonious one.

A key change in this remake from the original is that, unlike the '73 Dark which featured a lonely and neglected housewife (Kim Darby) as the protagonist, here the heroine is a young girl named (after Darby's character) Sally (Bailee Madison). As the movie opens, Sally has just been figuratively dumped on her father's doorstep by her mother. In this case, her father's doorstep is Blackwood Manor, a gloomy piece of Rhode Island real estate that Sally's architect dad (Guy Pearce) is in the midst of restoring with the assist of his new interior decorator girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes).

Sally is miserable in her new surroundings and with her new semi-step mom figure. But then she discovers a long-shuttered basement to Blackwood Manor from which Sally can hear strange whispers, promising friendship. But viewers of the original - as well as anyone who takes in the grisly prologue to this film, for that matter - know that whatever is calling out to Sally only intends to bring her harm.

It was wise of del Toro and Robbins to switch to a child protagonist as Darby's Sally seems like a relic of another time, when (sadly) it wasn't so jarring to see a grown woman be so unable to help herself. To try and retell that character's story for today's audiences would've been disastrous. And while the idea of a kid protagonist can be cause for concern, with expectations of a cloying or obnoxiously precocious character, Madison thankfully doesn't play one of those typical movie kids who seems too advanced for their years. As for Pearce and Holmes, while neither is playing the most vivid of characters, they're both fine in their roles.

In changing the central characters of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark from a young married couple to an ill-fit family unit, del Toro and Robbins still left the basic bones of the original storyline intact and that means that this remains a very simple tale - perhaps too simple for some, given the pedigree behind it. Del Toro's name on a film automatically raises critical expectations and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark may be too modest of a production to please those who go in looking for something along the lines of Pan's Labyrinth. Staying true to the spirit of the original, this is meant as a straight-forward spine-tingler and for those who aren't necessarily genre fans, that might not be enough. For myself, I loved that this was just about crafting a small, solid genre piece. It's not out to rewrite the book or bust any conventions and it doesn't try to be an FX extravaganza.

From the previews, I was worried about the creature's look. I expected to be turned off by the CGI but unless I'm forgetting some other film (or films), this might be the first case in which wholly CGI monsters are pulled off effectively (as opposed to, say, Jurassic Park or Starship Troopers where CGI was combined with other methods).

If it's not the first, it's definitely the first in a while. After seeing so many contemporary monster movies, like Super 8, being let down by disappointingly designed, lazily rendered, instantly forgettable CGI creatures, I was thrilled to see how well the tiny homunculi were realized here. Nixey keeps them in the shadows for the most part but when they need to be revealed, there's as much detail to them as if they'd been sculpted by hand. And they're able to express real emotion as well, with some of their reactions being among the most memorable shots in the film.

There are a few points to quibble with - the relationship between the gruff handyman (Jack Thompson) and the creatures is only vaguely explained and even seemingly impossible, given the length of time the creatures have been sealed off for. And for such malicious creatures, it's curious that they refrain from killing at times where they have ample opportunity, conveniently leaving fallen characters a chance to recover.

I also must've missed out on why Holmes' character has a vintage Polaroid instant camera. At first I thought it was because the story was set in the '70s but cellphones abound so that explanation is out.

The easiest reasoning is that it's a nod to the original in which Darby's Sally used flashbulbs at one point to ward off the creatures (at least I seem to remember that she did) and, in the end, I like that del Toro and Nixey inject this anachronistic tech into their modern movie with no excuse given. In fact, no one even comments on it - although even a young kid in our digital age would remark on what a strange sight it is. The camera is there simply because del Toro and Nixey wanted it to be there. As fans, they understand that in a horror movie, anything to set the proper mood comes before logic.

Mood is something Don't Be Afraid of the Dark has in spades. The production design of Roger Ford is outstanding and even when nothing "big" is going on - which, honestly, is for most of the movie - it's a pleasure to soak in the marvelous sets and autumnal locations (this was filmed in Melbourne, Australia - which does a mostly good job of subbing for New England). For many, this will be an easy film to shrug off but I appreciated the skill behind this minor, but lovingly made, effort.

It's a lesson in the do's - and don't's - of horror filmmaking.

Fright Night: The Vegas Edition

2011-08-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

Some films, no matter how old, can be updated without having to suffer more than the most cosmetic changes of fashion. Others are inescapably products of their time. 1985's Fright Night is an example of the latter. Screenwriter Marti Noxon (responsible for penning several Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes) and director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) make a game attempt to bring writer/director Tom Holland's vampire tale into 2011 with their newly released remake but their film is ultimately more anemic than full-blooded.

In 1985, the original Fright Night was a fresh breath of Gothic air in the middle of a decade not known for its embrace of classic monsters. At a time when slasher superstars like Jason and Freddy were on the ascent, it was novel to see an old-school vampire on the big screen. Unlike other '80s offerings, like Tony Scott's The Hunger (1983), that deliberately went far from the classic cinematic image of the vampire as seen in the Hammer cycle of films, Fright Night homed in on that. By having horror host Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowell) be a washed-up, one-time Peter Cushing type, Holland made his film into a love letter to the vampire movies of yesteryear.

In 2011, however, vampires are hip and popular in a way they weren't in 1985. That means the Fright Night '11 team isn't working under the burden of having to restore the commercial luster of an iconic monster - not with the Twilight series as well as HBO's True Blood and the CW's Vampire Diaries making bloodsuckers into modern day cash cows. If anything, the challenge here is how to remind audiences that vampires are supposed to be scary and not love-lorn puppies.

In the original, Chris Sarandon - as vampire next door Jerry Dandridge - was portrayed as a slightly melancholy, romantic figure but that's become such a played-out notion that Noxon and Gillespie fly in the face of that, making their Jerry (Colin Farrell) into a predator more akin to, as one character says, "the shark in Jaws."

As Jerry, Farrell plays the role as a cutthroat survivor. There's no hint that he has any instincts beyond satisfying his hunger. I like that angle, as it dispenses with any romanticism, and I like the fact that the new film portrays Vegas, with its transient population, as being a perfect place for Jerry to operate. When neighbors vanish in Vegas, unlike in a typical suburbia, it's not immediately seen as a cause for alarm as it's an area where few people put down permanent roots. The Vegas locale also gives Jerry a ready excuse to cover his windows without arousing suspicion as many Vegas residents work all night on the strip and sleep during the day.

The cat and mouse game that the new Jerry plays with the new Charley Brewster (Star Trek's Anton Yelchin) is much more ruthless than in Holland's version - at one point leading to a nice spin on traditional vampire lore. We're familiar with the old trope about vampires not being able to enter a home unless they're invited by its occupants - the celebrated novel and film Let The Right One In even took its title from that bit of myth - but we've never seen a vampire circumvent that by destroying the home itself. When Jerry wants to get at Charley as well as his mother Jane (Toni Collette) and girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots), he rips up the gas lines from under their lawn and blows up the house, and I think that's pretty cool.

I also, for the most part, enjoyed the revamped (heh) version of Peter Vincent, now played by former Dr. Who David Tennant. While Roddy McDowell's PV was a late night horror show, that just wouldn't work now. When Holland made his film, horror hosts were already a dying breed - that was the whole point of McDowell's character. So now Noxon and Gillespie have turned Peter Vincent into a cheesy Las Vegas entertainer - a Criss Angel-type magician whose stage show revolves around vampires.

It's a fairly ingenious update to the character (even if it's one that might be resented by many horror fans) that lets the new PV have some real knowledge and useful occult artifacts to bring to the table as Tennant's PV is a scholar of dark subject matter as well as a collector of rare items meant to thwart supernatural menaces. One of my main problems with the original Fright Night is that it was so idiotic for Charley to solicit Peter Vincent for help. I elaborated on this point in an earlier post but just to reiterate - for Charley to approach an ex-horror movie actor out of the blue and ask him for his expert assistance on killing real vampires is plain goofy.

While it's also nuts for the new Charley to do the same with the new Peter Vincent, this time around Charley is fishing for info rather than looking to recruit Vincent's personal assistance. It's not until Vincent has seen for himself what's going on that Charley asks him to go after Jerry with him. And this Vincent really has the tools for the job. It's not just McDowell putting on his old vampire hunter duds and playing the part for real, Tennant's Vincent is someone who has knowledge of what they're dealing with and possesses mystic items that they'll need.

So...in many ways, I found the new Fright Night to be a smart update. On the other hand, all the changes mean that this movie sure doesn't feel much like Fright Night, which begs the question: "why even bother?" Jerry isn't the Jerry we know, Peter Vincent is completely different, and the same goes for the new Evil Ed - now played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Ed is the most difficult role to update just because the original actor, Stephen Geoffreys, delivered such a one-of-a-kind performance as Charley's, er, quirky best friend that anyone would be hard-pressed to match it.

Fright Night was Holland's first outing as a director and I wonder if a more experienced director would've been quicker to rein in Geoffreys' over-the-top approach. It's a beyond-broad performance that, by rights, shouldn't work but yet somehow does. That leaves Plasse in the losing position of being an inevitably more subdued Ed. More problematic is the fact that, from a story telling point of view, the new Ed no longer serves much purpose. The character seems included solely because it's one that fans would expect to be there but it would've been better for this film had Evil Ed been left behind.

In the new film, Ed is now the one who discovers the truth about Jerry and who then must try to convince Charley. Ed is still a full-fledged geek in the way that his former best friend isn't (leading to a reprise of the line "You're so cool, Brewster!") so Charley doesn't want Ed back in his life - much less back in his life and with crazy talk about vampires. Charley, now with his hot girlfriend and his new non-RPG buddies, shuns Ed - until Ed's sudden disappearance leads Charley to pick up the threads of his lost pal's investigation.

For me, this just didn't work. If Fright Night is Rear Window with a vampire, it's better for the protagonist to be the voyeur who discovers for himself what's going on next door. That's a crucial element that needed to stay in place. Not letting us find out about Jerry through Charley's eyes gets the film off on the wrong foot. His broken relationship with Ed also makes us have to come around to liking Jerry, rather than instantly being on his side. It's just not sympathetic to have him be so dismissive of his former buddy and be so chummy with jerks. The trio of Charley, Amy and Ed in the original seemed comprised of all social misfits. While Charley and Amy weren't nearly as out there as Ed, none of them were part of the in-crowd and that was missed here, at least by me.

I'm willing to concede that some of my dislike for the new takes on Charley, Amy and Ed might be rooted in my affection for the original characters. However, one thing that doesn't work in the new film that I can't just attribute to nostalgia getting the best of me is the woeful special effects work. While it would've been unreasonable for Fright Night to stick to the same practical FX methods of the original, that doesn't mean that laddling on bad CGI was the answer.

I'm not anti-CGI (I love the Final Destination films and I don't think there's a single practical FX shot in that entire series). But, like any FX technique, it's got to look right and the CGI in Fright Night '11 just doesn't. Worse than that, it's often used in instances where no effects were needed at all. I can think of at least two moments - a swimming pool-set attack and a post-car crash confrontation - where a set of novelty store-bought fake fangs, rather than CGI, would've done the trick. As From Dusk Till Dawn featured better CGI vampire effects fifteen years ago, it's hard for to me to believe that no one involved in the execution and supervision of the CGI here wasn't aware of how lackluster this all looked. Or that director Gillespie didn't realize he was sabotaging his own film by including some of these shots. I don't know - maybe to some people this stuff looks ok but I don't see how that's possible.

Fans of the original might never have accepted some of the remake's character and story changes but I think they're all more or less defensible - perhaps save for Ed. But the FX is something that even total new comers to Fright Night can pick out as being a big mistake. If you're familiar with the original, then it's just that much worse. The giant Joker-mouth on Amy in the original might have been a little on the ridiculous side but it had a stylized comic book charm to it. It was a cool appliance and it was perfectly revealed. When they try to duplicate that here with CGI, it looks like something off the SyFy Channel. There's also no scene here that even touches - whether it be FX-wise or emotionally - the prolonged death of Ed, after he was staked through the heart in his wolf form by Peter Vincent. And Jerry's destruction has none of the cool factor of the original Jerry's climatic immolation. It's too bad that Gillespie can't pull his film from theaters and rerelase it in a few months with improved FX because I'd love to know how his Fright Night would play if so many of its moments weren't marred by lousy and/or gratuitous FX.

All complaints aside, I can say that I didn't hate the new Fright Night. If anything, the fact that I liked so many aspects of it (Farrell and Tennant, especially) makes my disappointment in its failings more acute. There are good moments and good performances but what could've been a fun vampire outing never quite pops the way it should.

Finally, how can you have a vampire film set in Vegas and not slip in a Kolchak reference? That's just bad form, man. For real.

If You Want Blood, You've Got It

2011-08-15T14:07:00.000-07:00

Much like the Friday the 13th franchise during its '80s heyday, the Final Destination films are body count pictures sold on the appeal of their spectacular splatter FX. But unlike the MPAA-embattled Fridays, the FD films have never been forced to water down their main asset. With the standards of the MPAA being so much looser now, the makers of the FD films appear to have carte blanche when it comes to carnage as this fifth installment is a riot of hideous gore gags that rival anything the series has produced so far.

As far as Final Destination 5's storyline goes, if you've ever seen a single FD movie, you already know the drill: a group of people are saved from perishing in a cataclysmic accident thanks to an unexplained psychic vision. Soon afterwards, one by one each survivor meets a violent end in what appears to be freak mishaps. In FD 5, we begin with a group of co-workers from a paper factory riding together on a charter bus en route to a corporate retreat.

Sam (Nicholas D'Agosto) - an employee of Presage Paper and an aspiring chef - is the one who sees a horrific vision of mass death as their bus idles in traffic on a suspension bridge under construction and promptly causes his fellow workers to evacuate the bus and the bridge. Sam's vision of the bridge collapse is a masterfully executed disaster, the best FD opener since FD 2.

Director Steven Quale, an associate of James Cameron since the days of The Abyss who recently worked as second unit director and visual effects supervisor on Avatar, proves himself to be a perfect match for FD 5's elaborate mayhem and 3-D thrills.

I used to feel gypped that I had been too young in the early '80s to see the wave of 3-D horror films that hit screens back then but the last few years of 3-D releases has more than made up for it. While last summer's Piranha suffered from a poor post-conversion job, Final Destination 5 is a reminder of how much fun a 3-D horror film can be - as long as your idea of fun is watching someone impaled on a ship's mast, that is.

Writer Eric Heisserer (of the upcoming Thing prequel) gives Quale plenty of grisly material to work with. His screenplay may not win any awards - unless Fangoria's Chainsaw Awards includes a Best Screenplay category, maybe - but it triumphs over most of the series' entries by not stalling out after the opening disaster. Heisserer adds an interesting new wrinkle to the series' mythology by suggesting that if a person marked for death takes a life, then they inherit their victim's remaining lifespan. But of course, no matter what loopholes they try to find in death's design, longevity is not in the cards for most of FD 5's characters.

The actors here - including David Koechner and Courtney B. Vance - are all serviceable but the star of any FD film are its flabbergasting fatalities and FD 5 does not disappoint as every doomed character gets it in hardcore fashion (I'm still cringing over the gymnastics scene). One could carp about the lack of a compelling plotline but chances are anyone who would care about that wouldn't be watching the fifth Final Destination movie. If you've stuck with the series this far, I think you ought to know what you're in for.

Even if this is the best sequel in the series by some measure, it's still a Final Destination film. That means that, in the end, it's all about the death toll and for those who enjoy such things, Final Destination 5 represents state-of-the-art slaughter at its finest.

All The Damn Vampires

2011-08-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

For most adolescent boys in 1987, especially those who considered themselves to be hardened horror fans, The Lost Boys wasn't a cool movie to rally around. Even though I didn't hate it, I still felt it was my duty to refer to it condescendingly as an "MTV vampire movie." That brand of high-handed scorn hardly made an impact on The Lost Boys' reception, though, as it became a hit in the summer of '87 and remains a cult favorite to this day.

Whether it was viewed as a positive or a negative, The Lost Boys absolutely was an "MTV vampire movie," aimed squarely at the hip youth culture of the late '80s (if Hot Topic had existed then, this movie would've been a goldmine for them). At the time it was easy to dismiss The Lost Boys as slick nonsense, more of a fashion show than a horror show, but today with neither vampires or MTV being what they used to be, it's a ripe time to develop a new appreciation for director Joel Schumacher's film. Whenever the most emblematic teen films of the '80s are brought up, titles like The Breakfast Club and Say Anything always hit the top of the list but The Lost Boys is so, so '80s. I would say that all it's missing is a Tangerine Dream score but the soundtrack is pretty perfect as is - and unmistakably '80s with tracks by Echo and the Bunnyman and INXS.

Before The Lost Boys, Schumacher made one of the classic "Brat Pack" movies, St. Elmo's Fire, and like that Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, and Emilo Estevez-starring film, The Lost Boys boasted a hot young ensemble of actors. Unlike St. Elmo's, though, The Lost Boys' cast were all virtual unknowns. I can't imagine anything like that happening today - the success of a big movie being allowed to rest on a cast of no names. Jason Patric and Kiefer Sutherland may have had famous fathers (Jason Miller and Donald Sutherland) but neither were anywhere near being stars themselves at the time.

Back then, a movie - especially a youth-orientated one - didn't need stars. In fact, the movies were supposed to turn their neophyte casts into stars but now studios are too cautious not to stock even teen pics with already proven draws.

If studios had the mentality then that they do now, who knows what kind of misguided cast would've made their way into The Lost Boys. Instead of Sutherland as vampire ring leader David, it probably would've been '80s pop star/actor Rick Springfield (who actually did play a vampire in the 1989 TV movie Nick Knight). What a loss that would've been as Sutherland makes for one of the great cinematic vampires. I seldom notice the character appearing in fan discussions of classic vampires, maybe because it's still not fashionable to champion The Lost Boys, but Sutherland really is outstanding here.

Interestingly, while it's no mystery what David and his crew are (even the posters proclaimed "It's fun to be a vampire"), the reveal of their bloodsucking nature doesn't come until late in the movie. It's not until the one hour mark that any fangs are bared. Making the wait seem negligible, Schumacher and screenwriter Jeffrey Boam, along with the cast, do a fine job of making brothers Michael and Sam Emerson's introduction to their new home in the coastal town of Santa Carla ("the Murder Capital of the World" as some graffiti on the back of a billboard ominously dubs it) engaging without having to lean on much in the way of thriller elements.

Most movies would've portrayed the character of younger brother Sam (Corey Haim) as either a Mark Petrie-esque horror fan who's immediately sensitive to what's what in Santa Carla or else as a snooping type who happens across the existence of vampires thanks to his voyeuristic habits but instead, Sam is a happy-go-lucky comic book aficionado (but not a horror fan) who finds the assertions of the young vampire hunting duo of Edgar and Alan Frog (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) - that Santa Carla is a haven for bloodsuckers - to be risible. It's a refreshing change of pace that Sam is not the typical lonely, introverted teen lead as seen in horror movies like Phantasm.

Also flying in the face of convention is the fact that Michael (Patric) is seduced into vampirism by another male vampire. Typically (especially today in our Twilight world), either Michael or David would've been written as a girl but in The Lost Boys you've got a male bringing another male into the fold. There is a female love interest for David in the form of Jami Gertz's character of Star but she's such a wanly handled element as neither Michael or David seem particularly interested in her.

Schumacher clearly knew what he was doing and I appreciate now more than I did then how subversive it was in '87 for him to make a teen film that was so gay-themed (few would blink at it now - hell, Glee 3-D is out this weekend - but in the '80s it wasn't so readily accepted). Even without the homo-erotic tension between Michael and David, Haim's Sam would have had the gay front covered all by himself. You've got his wardrobe choices, which are, um, far more colorful than most straight teen boys would ever be comfortable with; he sings " Ain't Got No Home" by Clarence (Frogman) Henry (with what sounds like the line "I ain't got a man!" which isn't found in the original lyrics) while in the bathtub; and he has a beefcake poster of what looks like Rob Lowe in a half shirt pinned to his closet door rather than a poster of, say, The Fall Guy's Heather Thomas.

All of which is admittedly only circumstantial evidence but I don't think Schumacher is trying to be ambiguous about Sam's sexuality. Putting him in a "Born To Shop" T-shirt (rather, than, say a rock or heavy metal T-shirt) just can't be an accident and by the same token, neither is the fact that Sam is shown to be such an upbeat, angst-free kid.

As a horror film, The Lost Boys still isn't much to write home about but in the wake of Twilight, it looks almost bad-assed and its charismatic cast still charms (and not just its younger players - Barnard Hughes as Grandpa delivers one of moviedom's best last lines). The Lost Boys wasn't the movie I was looking for back in the summer of '87 but now it seems like exactly the kind of movie that summers were made for.

On a final note, no discussion of The Lost Boys would be complete without a shout-out to Jacked Up Sax Player. Seldom has such an impression been made with so little screen time.

Get Your Ape On!

2011-08-06T16:35:00.000-07:00

While watching Rise of the Planet of Apes, besides being thrilled by the fact that the Apes franchise had been revisited with such intelligence and style, I had to flashback to an old review of E.T. by cartoonist Gahan Wilson that appeared in Twilight Zone magazine. In his review, Wilson observed that movies used to be sold on the appeal of their stars - silver screen icons like John Wayne or Clark Gable. Or, for genre fans, someone like Boris Karloff. But, as Wilson wrote, "stars are being replaced by a newer, better product: the non-human lead, or, as I like to think of it, the NHL."

Wilson marked E.T. as the film that would pave the way for more actors to be marginalized by non-human stars. Imagining the '80s to be the golden age of NHLs, Wilson cast his thoughts wryly into the future: "As we all grow older and nostalgic we may look back...with wrinkly smiles and quaver, one old fool to another: "Oh, they knew how to make NHLs back then, you bet - the real thing, the McCoy. Not like the crap you get these days."

Well, flash forward almost thirty years and the NHL is still thriving. In fact, it may soon be collecting an Oscar. Now, I know that a gifted actor - Andy Serkis, who has cornered the market on motion-capture performances - is behind Rise's lead chimp, Caesar, but hey, E.T. was voiced by Debra Winger so I'm still counting Caesar as an NHL. He isn't a puppet but certainly it's the combination of Serkis' performance and the technicians at WETA that brought Caesar to life just as much as it was Winger's voice coupled with the animatronic work of Carlo Rambaldi and his crew that made E.T. into a fully believable character.

In 1968, the original Planet of the Apes was a FX groundbreaker due to the astonishing prosthetic make-ups designed by John Chambers. At the time that film was a major gamble, relying on its convincing make-ups to keep audiences from finding the film unintentionally comical. Given that, it's only fitting that this prequel/reboot should be such a FX marvel as well. I don't know if the Oscar buzz around Serkis' performance will lead to anything but his work here (and the technology abetting it) is worthy of the highest accolades (as a side note, if anyone has issues with the CGI in this movie, they're nuts).

Director Rupert Wyatt and writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver have crafted one of the better sci-fi fables of recent years. Rise could've been a heavy-handed slog, beating the audience over the head with depictions of animal cruelty and stacking the deck in the apes' favor but it's not as pedantic as that. While humans do engage in more than their share of bad behavior, they're not all villains and even Caesar is shown to be not entirely noble.

Playing out as sci-fi tinged drama for most of its running time, Rise's climax is an eye-popping simian showdown as police try to quell the ape uprising. Not only are the FX impressive but it's equally impressive that as a director Wyatt is able to put an action scene on screen that has such cinematic clarity. The trailers and TV spots have given away a good chunk of this section of the movie but it's still thrilling to watch it unfold in its entirety.

Unfortunately, it must be said that most of Rise's human performances come up short. James Franco seems under sedation as scientist Will Rodman. And the performance of Freido Pinto as Franco's love interest is notable for being one of the blandest I've seen in any film. The often times listless acting in Rise isn't enough to completely undermine it, though, and John Lithgow fares well as Franco's Alzheimer’s stricken father.

Rise can't claim to have the knock-you-on-your-ass power of the original POTA but judged on its own merits, Rise is damn effective, with Serkis' performance towering above everything else.

I also liked how the niggling question of how apes could form a serious threat to humanity was handled. Sometimes dominance is a matter of being the right species at the right time. I just hope that this does well enough to warrant a sequel as the prospect of a follow-up done with the same amount of care is very ape-ppealing.

Nothing Stops This Undead Super-Killer

2011-08-03T21:05:00.000-07:00

By the summer of '86, everyone knew what to expect from a Friday the 13th movie. Since 1980, the Friday the 13th films had been an annual event and - as critics were quick to note - each one had been virtually identical to the last. Despite the curve ball that 1985's Part V had thrown by having Jason Voorhees replaced by a copycat killer, all five Fridays had served up similar slasher shenanigans - each one made with the same blunt, no-nonsense approach, with any artistry reserved for their make-up FX. Given the history of the franchise, no one expected much in the way of surprises from the sixth film but in August of '86, writer/director Tom McLaughlin showed what a little extra effort could accomplish within the Friday formula.

Prior to this film, Jason had been something of a mystery. Introduced via flashback in the original Friday as a mongoloid child with buoyancy issues, his appearance at the end of that film as a moss covered avenger dragging Final Girl Alice into the waters of Crystal Lake was only meant to be a dream. But by 1981's Part 2, reports of Jason's death were shown to be greatly exaggerated. His curious upgrade from dead child to living adult never received much in the way of explanation but the impression given in the early Friday sequels was that however it was possible that Jason was up and about, he was still just a really tough dude - nearly impossible to kill but still mortal.

When Jason was slain in 1984's The Final Chapter, it seemed like an affirmation that he really was only human after all. He went down pretty decisively thanks to a machete to the head (among other grievous injuries - the machete was just kind of like that one last piece that brings the Jenga tower down) and stayed dead in A New Beginning. But Jason fans weren't having it with any copycats so the keepers of the franchise were forced to put their star slasher on the road to recovery. With Jason Lives, any further ambiguity about Jason was put to an end. From then on, Jason was no longer either some backwoods hillbilly with a knack for ignoring pain or an undead thing coughed up from Hell. Instead, he officially became a zombie.

McLoughlin opened his film with Jason's spectacular resurrection as Tommy (Thom Mathews), Jason's killer in The Final Chapter, refuses to leave well enough alone and digs up Jason's body, stabs it in the chest with an iron fence post, and then watches agape as a bolt of lightening strikes the post, sending a surge of electricity through Jason that revives his rotting corpse. Then, it's Game On.

Before Jason Lives, the series hadn't exactly been Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer but it wasn't too zany either. Like, no one would've ever thought about having Jason doing far-out things like battle a telekinetic teen or go into space. But after Jason Lives, that stuff didn't seem like such a stretch. Despite the familiar ingredients he was working with, McLoughlin made a monster movie rather than a slasher pic and after that, the latter Friday films inevitably became much more comic book. That's something that exasperated me at the time but now I'm pretty fond of even Jason Takes Manhattan.

Life's too short to hold grudges, I say.

I'm still not that taken with the nudge-nudge style of humor found here but McLoughlin did score an impressive cast of performers who were skilled across the board rather than the hit-or-miss groups that had populated the previous films - and he showed a real eye for atmospherics. This is the first Friday that didn't look cheap, the first where some thought clearly went into the visuals beyond considering the best angle to shoot the FX. Something else that McLoughlin should be commended for is how he kept his storyline moving in a way that previous Fridays didn't. By having Tommy spend the movie breathlessly pursuing Jason all while fighting the pissed off local law who are convinced he's nuts, there's a relentless pace here that the other Fridays didn't have. There's no time for any Strip Monopoly games or idle guitar strumming in Jason Lives, I'll tell you that.

McLoughlin's film, with its more mainstream sensibilities (this is dangerously close to being family-friendly), pointed the way towards a potentially more upscale future for the Friday series but no one helming a subsequent Friday pic ever ran with that. They did, however, continue the monster movie angle (Jason was once again revived by electricity in Part VIII) and embraced the opportunity to incorporate more fantastical elements. Jason Lives did it best, though, and twenty-five years later it remains the last real highpoint of the series and a great memory of the summer of '86.

Kiss Your Nerves Goodbye

2011-07-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

With Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II quickly approaching its 25th (!) anniversary, I wonder how it's perceived by young horror fans just coming to it for the first time. Is it still cool or is it passé? I do think it's very hard for any movie to still be considered hip after twenty five years. To be considered classic, ok. Hip is a little harder to manage. But for fans my age and the generation just below me, Evil Dead II is essential. It's a movie that's intractably ingrained in those who encountered it either first-run in theaters or on its earliest VCR releases or cable showings. But now it's closing in on the quarter century mark and I just don't know if it carries the same cachet with the under 20-crowd. But hell, it's got to. If it doesn't, that's just plain wrong.

I will say one thing: there's no way that younger fans can appreciate just how different Evil Dead II was when it came out. My first viewing of it was at a midnight showing the weekend that it opened in my area. Going in, I assumed I was in for more of the sort of straight-up horror of the original. But when it turned out to be riotously funny, I was completely taken by surprise. None of the trailers or even any of the articles in the genre press had hinted at the shift in tone from the first film to the sequel. For some, the move toward comedy might've been cause to be pissed but the movie was so good, it would be churlish to fault it for not trying to duplicate the scares of the original. I've rarely laughed quite so hard at a film - and I'm someone who's predisposed to laughing their ass off.

From a movie buff's perspective, one of the biggest downfalls of our internet age is that it's almost impossible to be surprised by a film anymore. If Evil Dead II came out for the first time today, it'd be common knowledge many months in advance that it was a horror-comedy. Hell, you'd hear all about it from a mainstream source like Entertainment Weekly. But in '87, even coverage in the pages of genre bible Fangoria didn't tip anyone off to the fact that Raimi had gone for laughs this time around. But being wholly surprised by Evil Dead II was one of the things that I liked best about it.

Thinking back to Evil Dead II makes me miss the days when cult films were discovered by fans a little at a time, gathering pockets of support here and there and building their following over the course of not just weeks but over months and even years instead of how films are now branded out of the gate as cult items on the basis of just a festival screening or two (and sometimes before they're even into production!). You know, Knights of Badassdom might end up being a great film, I don't know, but I feel like there's no excitement in discovering it for myself because it's pre-sold as a ready-made cult movie. Too many films aimed at the geek crowd today feel so safe in their sensibilities, like they're playing to audiences who are already in on the joke. It's like an easy layup and in contrast, Raimi made a full-court press, taking a real gamble by screwing with fan's expectations (most filmmakers doing a sequel to a balls-to-the-wall horror film would not risk ridicule by featuring a zombie doing a full-on stop-motion ballet).

In the years since Evil Dead II, Raimi's hyperkinetic style has been adopted - if rarely equalled - by many other filmmakers, making it seem less unique than it once did, but yet the endless inventiveness of Evil Dead II still jumps off the screen. And the key to why Raimi's style works so well is that it only has the appearance of being unhinged. While Raimi sends his camera prowling, ricocheting, and slingshotting in every direction, underneath that gonzo style there's a serious attention to craft. Every angle, every edit is meticulously thought-out. Low budget genre filmmaking is famous for being done on the fly and under the gun but Evil Dead II is about getting it right and raising the bar.

The original Evil Dead was the work of a talented amateur but by Evil Dead II, Raimi had become a master filmmaker, using every tool at his disposal. Evil Dead II was still a micro-budgeted film compared to anything out of Hollywood but it looks far more lavish than it does crude. Sure, it might be easy to spot a giant tear in the crotch of the Henrietta suit and other gaffes here and there but Evil Dead II is still an accomplished piece of work. And the evolution of Bruce Campbell as an actor can't be underestimated either. His performance in the original was just shy of being outright embarrassing but in Evil Dead II he suddenly possessed a comic flair along with leading man chops.

Raimi has stated many times over the years that horror was never his thing, that he didn't grow up as a fan, but ironically his films show much more affection and respect for the genre than those of many horror filmmakers today who constantly claim what hardcore fans they are. I mean, you look at the films of Rob Zombie and I don't care how many movies and directors he namechecks in interviews, this is a guy who misunderstands the genre so deeply that when he talks about being a fan, it should be regarded as a tongue-in-cheek assertion at best; at worst, a private joke.

Early on in his career, Peter Jackson was considered the heir apparent to Raimi, making his name with splatstick efforts that were clearly indebted to Raimi's example. But while I love Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles (not so much Dead-Alive - for some reason that film just never did it for me), I don't think they've held up quite as well as Evil Dead II has with its high style, rampant silliness, and sense of cinematic precision. It's more than timeless - it's groovy.

The Greatest American Hero

2011-07-23T10:47:00.001-07:00

Captain America has always been something of an anomaly in the Marvel Comics universe. Created in the '40s by Jack Kirby and Jack Simon while at Marvel's predecessor, Timely Comics, Cap was not an obvious fit with the heroes that Marvel made its name on in the '60s - the troubled, flawed, angst-ridden super-beings created by writer Stan Lee along with artists such as Kirby and Steve Ditko.

When Lee brought Cap into the Marvel fold, he had Cap enter the '60s as a character who had been literally frozen since the days of WWII. Cap came into the turbulent '60s as a man out of time, a Living Legend. This was not a counter-culture icon, this was an embodiment of the self-sacrificing ethics of the so-called Greatest Generation, the generation that stopped the spread of fascism.

Lee wisely perceived that Cap must remain a man of his era. Simiarly, director Joe Johnston and writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely succeed with Captain America: The First Avenger by staying true to Cap's roots and by not putting his character in any ironic context. Save for its bookending segments in the modern day, the entirety of Captain America is set during WWII, charting the journey of sickly Steve Rogers as he desperately looks for a way to serve his country and finally finds it as a guinea pig for a newly developed Super Soldier serum. Intended to be the first of an army of super soldiers, Steve instead ends up being the last person to undergo the miraculous transformation as an act of enemy sabotage kills inventor Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) and sees the final batch of serum spilled on the grounds of a Brooklyn shipyard.

At first, it looks like Steve might be consigned to a lab to be studied but the intervention of a PR-savvy senator puts Steve in his first Captain America garb as the star of travelling USO show to sell bonds. Here we see Steve's confidence develop as he becomes accustomed to being a public figure but yet he yearns to be in battle. When his best friend Bucky (Sebastian Shaw) is taken prisoner by the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) along with the rest of his platoon, Steve, while overseas on behalf of the USO tour, takes it upon himself to launch a solo rescue mission. After his first real success as "Captain America," his future as a fighting member of the U.S. forces is guaranteed. Whereas the storyline of Marvel Studio's recent Thor took place over the span of a few days, Captain America tells the tale of Steve Roger's entire WWII career (with the opportunity left for any period-set sequels to fill in some blanks, if desired).

Director Joe Johnston has been a valued player in geek cinema for many decades since his days as a designer and art director on the original Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark but as a filmmaker he's never quite had that one movie where it all came together for him...until now. This is where a lifetime of experience combines with the right material and the right resources and the result is escapism of the highest order. Captain America is not a cinematic game-changer; it's not a reinvention of the action or superhero genres. What it is is a lovingly crafted call-back to an earlier brand of pop cinema. This is an old-fashioned film in all the right ways. It embraces not only Steve Rogers' old-fashioned morality but also old-fashioned ideas about moviemaking.

Johnston doesn't eschew CGI but this is the rare modern blockbuster to be largely rooted in the physical. CG has its place and it has afforded filmmakers incredible opportunities but sometimes the eye craves reality - even amidst fantasy scenarios - and that's what Captain America delivers. From Cap's shield with its battle-scuffed paint job to the silver Hyrda hood ornament on the Red Skull's ride, Captain America shows an exhaustive attention to making every detail matter - a testament to Johnson's background in design.

Johnston also shows his allegiance to older values when it comes to his action scenes. Johnston will never be considered a visionary but he knows how to get scenes on screen the right way and the action here stands out in the way that it's filmed and edited with clarity, sans any shaky camera moves or incoherent editing. When Cap faces off with the Red Skull, or with the Skull's numerous Hydra henchmen, it's not just a meaningless blur of movement. We actually see Cap's fighting skills and just how handy his iconic shield can be. Too often in modern movies, the work of stuntmen is not properly showcased - but not here.

The casting of Chris Evans met with some initial flak from fans due to his previous turn as cocky Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four movies and the belief that his often wise-cracking screen persona wouldn't be the right fit for Steve Rogers. But Evans clearly understood how to play this role. He's decent to his core without being smug or self-righteous. He's a man of innate goodness but rather than preach, he simply leads by example. Humor comes into the film through other characters, like Tommy Lee Jones as Col. Phillips, but there's not a trace of smart ass in Steve.

Steve's love interest here is played by Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter and for the first time in a Marvel Studios movie, there's a romantic subplot that carries some weight. Steve's relationship with his sidekick Bucky Barnes is somewhat altered from comic lore but the changes work for the better. Instead of meeting during the war, the two are now boyhood friends from Brooklyn. It's a more efficient way of getting them together and giving them the shared history that they need to have. It also presents an effective irony when the once-weak Steve, who had always been pulled out of back alley scrapes by Bucky, becomes the man leading Bucky into battle. It would've been nice to see more of Bucky and Steve together but, in the end, we get enough (including just a hint of Bucky's dark future as The Winter Soldier). That the pair's eventual separation comes in a different way than in the comics might rankle some fans but it's a variation that preserves what's important and smartly leaves the emotional climax of the movie to be between Steve and Peggy.

As the last Marvel Studios movie prior to next summer's The Avengers, a lot is riding on the shoulders of Captain America but unlike, say, Iron Man 2 it doesn't feel like its running time is overly devoted to setting up future plot points. I expect that some unfamiliar with the comics will assume that the consequences of Cap's final face-off with the Red Skull just represents a means of getting everything in place for The Avengers but it's just following the trajectory of the comics.

This summer has produced something of a glut of comic book adaptations but on the Marvel end of things, quality was high across the board. While some argue that comic book adaptations have to go dark or ironic or to deconstruct the genre in order to continue their appeal to audiences, Captain America: The First Avenger proves that old-school heroism done right never goes out of style.

A Moron Movie

2011-07-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

Things started out so well when it came to adapting Stephen King's work from page to film. When your writing is brought to both the big and small screens by the likes of Brian DePalma, Tobe Hooper, Stanley Kubrick, George Romero, David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, and the underrated Lewis Teague, you're talking about some high caliber cinema! But as those early King films came out, save for DePalma's Carrie, they all met with gripes from fans and critics.

Time has been very kind to The Shining, Salem's Lot, The Dead Zone, Creepshow, Cujo and Christine but reactions were initially mixed. And those were the prestige King films - as the '80s wore on, the floodgates were open and many lesser adaptations hit the screen, junk like Children of the Corn and Silver Bullet. The general consensus was that no one was able to do King justice.

Looking back, that doesn't seem to have truly been the case - it was more a case of people being way too hard on mostly solid movies - but in 1986 it didn't seem so outrageous that King himself should be allowed to take a crack at directing his own material. Producer Dino De Laurentiis, who scored a big King win by ushering The Dead Zone to the screen and suffered a couple of misses with Cat's Eye and Silver Bullet offered King the opportunity to get behind the camera and adapt "Trucks," a short story that had appeared in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.

A brief, oddball tale about machinery inexplicably coming to life and subjugating humanity, "Trucks" didn't seem like such a great choice to expand to a full-length film. Unlike, say, "The Body," there wasn't a lot of meat on its bones. More than that, the amount of mayhem required by the story didn't seem like something a first-time director should be taking on. Even an experienced director would've surely run into problems with Maximum Overdrive (by the way, De Laurentiis teamed King with a camera crew that only spoke Italian) - and that's not even taking into account how dirt stupid the material was. Had Maximum Overdrive been the best movie it could've possibly been, it still would've been terrible. To use an apt vehicular analogy, from the start Maximum Overdrive was a car crash waiting to happen. I haven't read much about King's addiction issues, which were reportedly raging in the '80s, but I have to assume that King was at his most coked-out when he willingly signed on to this.

In an interview with Fangoria, King claimed he set out to make a "moron movie." As he went on to say "...they're the best kind of movies as far as I'm concerned. Back to the Future is a moron movie. Rambo is a moron movie. I loved them both." From this quote, it's clear that King was not the right person to direct any movie - whether it be based on his own writing or whether it be the latest installment of the Police Academy saga. The best bad movies are always made by people who tried (and spectacularly failed) to make good ones. Movies that are deliberately dumbed down from the start never work - and the less said about the fact that King considered Back to the Future (a film that boasts a damn sharp screenplay) a "moron movie," the better (even Rambo, with its sleek action and pacing, doesn't deserve that designation).

Watching Maximum Overdrive, it's hard to figure out what King's mindset was, outside of just ascribing it to mountains of blow. He may have claimed he wanted to make a moron movie but even given that, it's hard to understand why he decided to stock his film with so many crude, slobbish, screeching caricatures. His fiction is filled with such types but, if anything, King portrayed these characters in even broader terms on film than on the page. His Creepshow character of luckless hayseed Jordy Verill looks like David McCallum's super-evolved Welsh miner from The Outer Limits episode "The Sixth Finger" next to Maximum Overdrive's cast of rednecks.

There are a few noble souls trapped in the besieged Dixie Boy diner, like Emilo Estevez's ex-con turned short order cook and Laura Harrington as a no nonsense, tomboy-ish hitchhiker, but most of the folks that populate the movie are not so endearing - such as Pat Hingle as the oafish owner of the Dixie Boy, Bubba Hendershot. Hingle's character is of a type that reoccurs often in King's fiction - the small time tyrant who gleefully abuses the tiny bit of power they possess - but King lays it on so thick and he seems to have encouraged his cast to play their roles as grotesquely as possible. Yeardley Smith (who would go on to voice Lisa on The Simpsons), whose character of a newly wed bride ought to be sympathetic, spends most of her screentime shrieking like a cat with its tail caught in a garbage disposal and its whiskers in flames.

On top of its mostly unpleasant characters, Maximum Overdrive also has no scares to offer. I suspect that a more experienced director could've done a better job of goosing the audience with jump scares, for whatever that's worth, but I doubt that any director could've made such a silly concept unsettling. Watching Dennis Weaver pursued by the unseen driver of a tanker truck in Steven Spielberg's gripping Duel is scary. Watching a group of characters forced to pump gas for a miles-long line of sentient trucks, not so much. And King oddly lets far too many members of his large cast make it to the film's conclusion. For a movie that practically begs to have a double digit body count, nearly the entire group that started off being trapped in the Dixie Boy ultimately make their way to freedom.

King joked upon Maximum Overdrive's release that he made have made the modern equivalent of Plan 9 from Outer Space but unfortunately Maximum Overdrive is too plodding to share that film's entertainment value. King did one thing right with his one and only feature film (well, maybe two if you'd like to say that the Green Goblin truck is kind of cool) and that's having rock gods AC/DC supply the score. It isn't the greatest score, no, but at least hearing the occasional thunderous AC/DC riff helps to fight off the powerful urge to sleep.

In the film's hyperbolic trailer, King spoke directly to the audience, saying that "if you want something done right, you ought to do it yourself" and promising "I'm gonna scare the Hell out of you!" When the final product hit screens in July of '86, it was clear that of all the directors who had attempted to bring King to the screen so far, King himself was arguably the worst - sparing Children of the Corn's inept Fritz Kiersch any further shame. As readers of Fangoria knew, the dreaded MPAA had forced King to excise much of Maximum Overdrive's splatter FX to save it from an 'X' rating - something that diluted his film's impact, King argued - but the truth is no amount of gore would've turned Maximum Overdrive into a good movie.

Every once in awhile I'll forget just how shitty this movie is and want to give it another chance. I always sucker myself in with the thought that this must be a fun, trashy movie - an '80s relic that surely plays better today - but it's so not that. I have such fond memories of looking forward to Maximum Overdrive's release back in the summer of '86 that I keep hoping I'll discover that it's become a true guilty pleasure. Instead, it's about as fun as sucking on exhaust fumes.

I will say this, though - if they ever put out a Maximum Overdrive DVD with King paired with Joe Bob Briggs on a commentary track, I couldn't say no to that.

Evil Thoughts

2011-07-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

After many, many years of keeping their rabid fan base guessing about whether an Evil Dead 4 or an Evil Dead remake (or both, or neither) would ever arrive, Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Bruce Campbell announced this week that a remake is in production. This isn't good news for those who had their hearts set on seeing Raimi inflict some punishment on Campbell once again but I, for one, feel relieved.

The idea of Campbell reprising his signature role in another Evil Dead film strikes me as a depressing prospect, one best avoided. Career-wise, Campbell doesn't need to play Ash again - he's part of a successful show as a cast member of USA's Burn Notice in addition to doing voice work for animated films like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Cars 2. At this point it'd be a mistake for him to strap on the chainsaw again. I'm sure that some fans will keep clamoring for a sequel for as long as horror conventions are held but I'm hoping that ship has permanently sailed.

As for the remake, this is definitely a case where age, experience, and added resources could lead to an improved film. As a shining example of DIY resourcefulness, the original remains admirable but as a movie it isn't so thrilling anymore. Raimi already left it in the dust with Evil Dead 2 but that was, by design, a jollier, jokier take on the material. A new Evil Dead that's hellbent on scaring audiences rather than mixing gore and guffaws is something I want to see.

Writer/director Fede Alvarez is an untested commodity but I have faith that Raimi, Tapert, and Campbell have entrusted their film to the right guy. And the idea of Diablo Cody contributing to the script sounds fine to me. If nothing else, it's funny to think of an Oscar winning screenwriter penning an Evil Dead movie. I actually liked Cody's uneven but interesting Jennifer's Body so I do believe she has some credentials as a horror buff.

Once the classic - and even not-so-classic - horror films of the '70s and '80s began to be remade, it wasn't a question of whether The Evil Dead would be remade but when. But unlike the botch jobs that films like Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street endured, I think that the new Evil Dead has a better-than-average chance of actually surpassing the original.

The Thing Before The Thing

2011-07-14T17:38:00.000-07:00

Months after the production had vanished off the radar to the point where I was beginning to wonder whether the movie would make its October release date, on the heels of the appearance of the teaser poster the first trailer for the prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing has made its way online and at first glance, I like what I see. At the very least, there's nothing in this trailer that sets off any red flags.

It's appropriately moody, the paranoia is in play, there's plenty of beards to go around, and it looks like attention is being paid to detail - just from this trailer it's clear that this is going to dovetail nicely with what we learned in Carpenter's film about the Norwegian camp.

In case you haven't already watched the trailer, take a look:

There's a glimpse of CG in this trailer but I also see some practical stuff so I hope that this movie will have a mix of both, but favoring practical as much as possible.

Having been too young to see Carpenter's Thing in theaters, I welcome the chance to see a respectful approximation of it on the big screen (especially if they slip in some of Ennio Morricone's soundtrack). And it's interesting that it's getting an October release rather than the summer one that doomed the original. In John Carpenter: The Prince of Darkness by Gilles Boulenger, Carpenter described how leery he was about The Thing's release date:

"What I could percieve before The Thing was released was that the audience was not interested. I was sitting in my office at Universal a few weeks before the movie came out, and I got to read a little study, a demographic study - it was the first time I ever saw one of these things - and they discovered that the market for horror movies had shrunk by 70% over like six months. Since we were making this movie for over a year, I really did not know what we were going to do. The people clearly did not want to see that type of movie anymore and I forgot why. So I went to Bob Rehme, head of marketing at Universal at the time, and I said to him, "Because of the way things are going, I think you should hold this movie back from the summertime, release it at Halloween, and retitle it Who Goes There? Don't put The Thing on it, I have a funny feeling."

Sadly, history proved Carpenter's "funny feeling" to be dead on. Only time will tell whether the prequel will fare any better. All I can say at this early point is that while this new Thing looks worth believing in, appearances can be decieving. Or, to borrow the watchful words found in a poster seen on the walls of the original's rec center, "They Aren't Labeled, Chum!"

Death Has Never Been Closer

2011-07-12T20:10:00.000-07:00

Call me a sentimentalist but my favorite horror franchises remain the ones that I followed as a teen in the '80s. The one modern day franchise that comes the closest to competing with Friday the 13th or Child's Play for my affection, however, is Final Destination.

Over ten years since the series made its debut with the sleeper success of the James Wong/Glen Morgan original, these films continue to get a lot of flack, not just from critics but also from plenty of horror fans who think the movies are too simple and formulaic. But that's exactly why I love them - they're disreputable, formulaic, junked-up horror movies that cater to their fanbase and to no one else. You could say Saw fits that description, too, but the Saw films are too self-serious (while being empty-headed) to be any fun and their convoluted plotting guarantees that there's no scares to be had.

Final Destination, on the other hand, isn't bogged down with any bullshit. Like the early Friday the 13th films, every subsequent FD is pretty much the same as all the ones before it. Some people label that as a flaw but not me, man. Some franchises can cut loose a little and sometimes it works but in general when it comes to horror sequels, the less each sequel deviates from its predecessors, the better. Friday the 13th was the greatest horror franchise of the '80s because it was the one that went the longest without getting in its own way. For years, they stayed on point. That series only ran into trouble when they stopped making every movie a carbon copy of the last one. There's a little tweaking of the formula in this latest FD - wherein we learn that if someone who was meant to die kills someone they themselves will be spared by Death - but it could be a promising twist to the series' mythology (anything that causes more mayhem is a good thing) and in all other respects it looks like everything fans have come to expect will be served up in spades.

After a long horror drought, there's a lot of genre fare opening next month, including the much-anticipated Guillermo del Toro-produced remake of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, but Final Destination 5 is my top pick.

Yes, it's going to have a lot of competition in theaters. But as the characters in each Final Destination discover, it's never wise to bet against Death.

The Ghost In You

2011-07-07T19:13:00.001-07:00

As I'm sure you're aware, John Carpenter has a new movie out now called The Ward. It's been on VOD for a while but it's hitting select theaters this weekend. Good sense dictates that you try and check it out anyway you can.

The script, by Shawn and Michael Rasmussen, is, well...it's not so good. The not so good part mostly centers on the flabbergasting twist at the end - which isn't flabbergasting at all, save for the fact that you can't believe anyone involved thought it was a good way to go. But...it's not a deal breaker for me. Carpenter handles the resolution of the film's mystery as well as anyone could without calling for a complete rewrite.

Shaky story aside, Carpenter delivers a handful of effective jump scares, gets a strong lead performance out of Amber Heard, and wisely doesn't try to overreach with this slim material. Carpenter's prowling camerawork is in full effect, gliding through the possibly haunted corridors of the North Bend psychiatric hospital.

The Ward might not seem like much, just another underwhelming latter-day entry from Carpenter - a movie that some might say was hardly worth Carpenter getting back in the director's chair for - but I guarantee that time will be kind to it. Not so kind that it'll ever be a classic but it strikes me as the kind of movie that would've once found its audience one viewer at a time in the twilight zone of late night TV - a place where modest but efficiently told B-movies could always get a fair shake, away from heavy expectations.

I do wish that Carpenter had found a meatier project for his comeback but looking at the straight-forward chills that The Ward serves up, it's reassuring to be reminded that Carpenter's far too pragmatic to ever go off his nut like Romero, Argento, or Craven have in recent years. The Ward may not set the world on fire but it's no embarrassment either. Here's hoping that Carpenter will not keep us waiting another ten years for his next movie.

To read my full review of The Ward, go to Shock Till You Drop.

All The Best People

2011-07-03T17:29:00.001-07:00

"There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss."

From "Haunted Houses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1893)

Summer Shocks Revisited

2011-07-02T06:21:00.000-07:00

Last summer I was newly unemployed - a situation that was accommodating to the notion of launching a summer-long series of essays. From May to August last year, Shock Till You Drop head honcho Ryan Turek and I co-penned Summer Shocks, a loving look back at some of our favorite hot weather horrors from 1979 to 1999.

I would have loved to have suggested a Son of Summer Shocks this year but my focus had become almost exclusively directed towards finding work rather than on writing and now that I finally have a job and some economic (and mental) stability is returning to my life, the summer is already at its halfway point.

Still, there's plenty of summer left and while it lasts, I plan to give some shout-outs to a few favorites that weren't gotten to last year. I can't guarantee that I'll post something every week but as much as I can before Labor Day I'll be jumping back in the pool of summer time classics.

In the meantime, here's last year's Summer Shocks:

Summer Shocks 1999: "The Blair Witch Project

Summer Shocks 1998: Blade

Summer Shocks 1997: Mimic

Summer Shocks 1996: The Craft

Summer Shocks 1995: Tales from the Hood

Summer Shocks 1994: The Crow

Summer Shocks 1993: Jason Goes To Hell

Summer Shocks 1992: Single White Female

Summer Shocks 1991: Body Parts

Summer Shocks 1990: Class of 1999

Summer Shocks 1989: Jason Takes Manhattan

Summer Shocks 1988: The Blob

Summer Shocks 1987: Predator

Summer Shocks 1986: The Fly

Summer Shocks 1985: Day of the Dead

Summer Shocks 1984: Dreamscape

Summer Shocks 1983: Psycho II

Summer Shocks 1982: Poltergeist/Friday the 13th Part 3 (Ryan)

Summer Shocks 1981: Deadly Blessing/Wolfen (Ryan)

Summer Shocks 1980: Friday the 13th

Summer Shocks 1979: The Amityville Horror/Phantasm (Ryan)

I just wish that this year was yielding a better crop of horror films.

The only two theatrical releases so far this summer - Priest and Super 8 - have not satisfied. For one, both are more correctly identified as being either action or sci-fi. For another, whatever category you want to put them in, I just didn't care for either film.

So now it's up to next month's releases of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Final Destination 5, Fright Night, Apollo 18, Attack the Block, and Shark Night 3-D (on September 2nd) to save the summer.

My money's on Final Destination 5. Seriously.

Thirteen Months, Twenty-Seven Days

2011-06-29T02:36:00.000-07:00

As some followers of this blogspot may be aware, I was unemployed for some time recently - a situation I was becoming increasingly distressed about, to the point where I found it difficult to focus on much more than the black abyss of my own joblessness. The good news is that I started working at a local television station last week. It's a job that I really, really wanted and that I'm extremely grateful to have gotten.

But along with my great enthusiasm for being back at work is a sobering sense of reflection on my too-long tenure on unemployment. I worked for National Amusements as a theater manager for ten years and when they sold the majority of their assets to a rival chain, I expected some new policies and procedures would need to be implemented. As it turned out, there was but I wouldn't be staying to implement them.

Deciding to give my notice rather than accept the new owner's job offer was a difficult decision and I spent most of the time in the title of this post wondering whether or not I had chosen wisely. On the one hand, to stay would not have been beneficial to me or my family. In fact, it would have been almost a sure guarantee to ruin.

But, as I often thought as I sent out one resume after another to no avail, at least it would have been a job. A job I could no longer make a living off of or receive benefits from, true, but at least it was a paycheck - something to work with. I frequently agonized as to whether I had tragically erred in making a young man's decision to leave to look for something better rather than make a decision more suited to my age and play the safer hand.

When I first left, I felt confident that I would find new work in a relatively short amount of time and I held on to that optimism for the first six months or so. Even though nothing was panning out, I didn't doubt that a break would come. But by the beginning of this year I really begin to worry about whether I would ever be able to break back into the working world.

They say that many people on long term unemployment get to a point where they just give up and I can definitely sympathize with that. News reports about how many companies refuse to hire people who aren't already working and about how the longer a person is unemployed, the more unemployable they become sure don't help.

At the top of this post is a picture of my old desk area at Enfield Cinemas, wallpapered with drawings from my son Owen. I look at that pic now and it seems like it came from another lifetime. I had no idea when I took that shot on my last day of work in April of 2010 what kind of journey I had ahead of me. Now that I'm working again, some might say that I just wasn't meant to get any of those other jobs and that, in the end, things worked out for the best.

I agree on that - but being unemployed in today's America was a long and humbling experience that I'll never forget.

Flash Back

2011-06-23T20:38:00.000-07:00

In light of the sad letdown of Green Lantern, I thought I'd look back on a much more successful adaptation of a DC Comics mainstay - the live-action TV series based on the exploits of The Fastest Man Alive, aka The Flash. Of course, calling The Flash "successful" refers solely to its artistic merits as the show died a quick death after one season following its debut on CBS in 1990. The Flash was an expensive venture for CBS, but a seemingly good bet in the wake of Tim Burton's Batman (1989). Ironically, though, The Flash just didn't find its audience fast enough.

Starring John Wesley Shipp as forensic scientist for Central City PD, Barry Allen, The Flash stuck to the Scarlet Speedster's Silver Age roots. Even though the character of Barry Allen had been dead in the comics for several years since the multi-verse altering events of the DC Comics miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths and the mantle of The Flash had been taken up by Barry's young nephew, Wally West, it was Barry that took center stage in the TV show. Likely this decision was based largely on the fact that Barry's job on the police force was an ideal facilitator for story opportunities. As in the comics, a bolt of lightning strikes Barry as he works with chemicals inside his lab, with the resulting explosion giving him the miraculous gift of super-speed.

In an effort to cope with his new found powers, Barry turns to S.T.A.R. Labs scientist Tina McGee (Amanda Pays) who outfits Barry with a suit initially conceived for deep sea diving that serves to resist the incredible friction that occurs when Barry runs at top speeds. Looking for revenge after the death of his cop brother (Tim Thomerson) at the hands of gang members, Barry goes into action and swiftly develops a taste for crime fighting.

Developed by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo (the duo who also scripted 1991's The Rocketeer), The Flash was clearly indebted to Burton's Batman. The noir-ish design of The Flash's stomping grounds of Central City owed its inspiration to Anton Furst's production design on Batman, the molded Flash suit with its sculpted musculature aped the style of the Batman suit that Michael Keaton had worn (it was designed by the same creator, Robert Short), and even Batman composer Danny Elfman contributed The Flash's theme music (with Shirley Walker, who would go on to handle the musical chores on Batman: The Animated Series, handling the regular score). But despite owing so much creatively to Burton's film, The Flash had its own charm and personality.

Barry Allen, like many of DC Comics' heroes, was never a particularly interesting character but Shipp made for an ingratiating lead. As his Girl Friday, Amanda Pays was an attractive and believably brainy presence and the ongoing romantic tension between Tina and Barry simmered nicely on a low burner throughout the season - even as Barry found himself getting involved with a number of other women, such as Joyce Hyser as tough female P.I. Megan Lockhart. The Flash also had a winning supporting cast, including Alex Desert as Barry's dreadlocked lab mate, Julio Mendez, and Biff Manard and Vito D'Ambrosio as frequently bickering street cops Murphy and Bellows.

Famous - and soon-to-be-famous - guest stars abounded, including Jeffrey Combs, Ken Foree, Dick Miller, Richard Belzer, David Cassidy, and Angela Bassett. Perhaps the most memorable guest star, though, was Mark Hamill as The Trickster. The most garish foe the TV Flash fought, Hamill's performance owed a debt to Frank Gorshin's manic, giggling Riddler and he gave The Flash a run for his money not once but twice, being introduced midway through the season and then encoring in the season finale "The Trial of the Trickster."

For a show that CBS spent so much money on, the network not only did surprisingly little to promote it but, with frequent schedule changes, seemed out to make it impossible for any one to find. During its year-long run, The Flash suffered in competition against the likes of The Cosby Show and The Simpsons and saw several of its episodes preempted by coverage of the Gulf War. By the end of its first season, it was disappointing - if not especially shocking - to learn that CBS felt The Flash had run its course. On the upside, at least CBS footed the bill for a full season and on top of that the show was really friggin' good.

Ironically, in interviews back then the show's producers and stars touted the fact that this was a darker, more adult show than some might expect from a series based on a gaudy superhero. But what passed for mildly dark superheroics in 1990 - basically anything that didn't reflect the camp sensibility of the '60s Batman series fit that bill - simply looks like a sturdy action show now. The show had heart, a love of pulp adventure (two of the series' best episodes - "Ghost in the Machine" and "Deadly Nightshade" - featured the character of Nightshade, a hero in the mold of The Green Hornet and the Golden Age version of The Sandman, who predated The Flash as Central City's masked protector), and the best production values that CBS could afford.

Although The Flash didn't find an audience in its day, it has in the years since as an ever-growing number of fans have continued to acclaim it, giving the show and its creators a delayed victory. In that sense, The Flash was perhaps more tortoise than hare but sometimes the race isn't won by speed but by perseverance.

Shallow Hal

2011-06-18T14:15:00.000-07:00

Superhero films tend to be graded on a generous curve by comics fans. Maybe a little less so now that a good number of quality adaptations have appeared but many comics fans are still accustomed to settling for less and lousy adaptations are passively accepted with comments like "well, it's just cool that they made the movie at all."

I admit, I'm guilty of that myself. The fact that they actually made a Ghost Rider film makes it hard for me to complain that it wasn't all that it could've been. In that light, maybe Green Lantern shouldn't be judged so harshly either. I've never followed the book that closely but I love the concept of GL and I'm glad that Warner Bros.' one-time plans to adapt it as a comedy vehicle for Jack Black didn't happen. But still, this version with Ryan Reynolds...it's not good.

Had Green Lantern appeared in the mid-90's, it would have looked ok next to movies like Batman Forever (1995) and Spawn (1997) but next to Spider-Man 2 (2004), Iron Man (2008), or The Dark Knight (2008) it looks pathetic. It's not nearly spectacular enough (for such a cosmic hero, the movie spends way too much time on mundane, Earth bound business), the love story is flat, and the villains are an embarrassment.

Seriously, I know that both Hector Hammond and Parallax are from the comics but maybe some rethinking was in order so that this wouldn't be a movie about a superhero matching his epic might against a guy with a hydrocephalic head and a sentient, amorphous pile of shit. Just saying.

But weak villains, a lame romance, and lack of spectacle aside, my dislike of Green Lantern ultimately comes down to the fact that I did not like Reynolds as hot shot test pilot turned superhero Hal Jordan. Not because he didn't match my image of Hal from the comics but because as written and performed, the Hal as seen in Green Lantern is kind of a douchebag. To be fair, Hal has always been portrayed as someone lacking on the personal front. After all, this is a character who had to have it pointed out to him in the famous run of Green Lantern/Green Arrow by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams that in being a star-spanning, intergalactic cop that he was often oblivious to the everyday suffering of many people on Earth, particularly minorities.

However, irregardless of that history in the comics, I'm sure that director Martin Campbell and Reynolds had every belief that the Hal they were presenting to us in Green Lantern was a likable guy. I just think they failed.

Reynolds typically plays super-confident wise-asses and I think that works as long as his character is a loser in enough other respects so that some sympathy for him can creep in. In Green Lantern, though, outside of the fact that as a young boy Hal saw his pilot dad die in a runway explosion, there's not a lot to empathize with.

If Thor was the story of a God who can only become a hero once he is punished for his arrogance, in contrast Green Lantern is the story of a man who becomes a hero by being rewarded for his arrogance. As the movie begins, Hal is shown to be a cocky jerk, indifferent to any hardships his actions might cause. Then he becomes the recipient of the most powerful weapon in the universe after which he remains essentially the same cocky jerk he was before.

The problem with Hal is best exemplified by his conflict with Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard), schluby scientist turned supervillain. Hammond's exposure to the evil entity known as Parallax gave him newfound mental powers but it also transformed him from a balding, unkempt nobody into a disgusting freak with a giant melon head. What little we know about Hammond is that he wasn't a bad guy initially and even later his most destructive acts all seem rooted in his long-simmering resentments at being a laughing stock to his class of college students, being a disappointment to his politician father (Tim Robbins as US Senator Robert Hammond), and being perpetually invisible to gorgeous Carol Ferris (Blake Lively). This is a guy who's been carrying around a lot of pain for years.

Hal, on the other hand, is a guy who's always hitting the jackpot. He's incredibly handsome, a naturally gifted pilot, the object of Carol's affection (even when she's angry with him, it's usually only because she wants him to grow up and realize his true potential), and on top of all that he gets to be a full-fledged superhero! At one point, Hal removes his ring to prove to the raging Hammond just how ordinary he really is. But the thing is, when he takes off the ring and his GL costume vanishes, he's still Ryan friggin' Reynolds! It's not like finding out that underneath Spider-Man's mask is really a gawky teenage science nerd. No, underneath Green Lantern's shiny exterior is a male supermodel.

To have this guy who falls into a big bucket of win every time he turns around getting the best of someone who's only gotten the shit end of everything his whole life is not such a fine superhero tale in my eyes.

Based on Sarsgaard's subtle reactions, I have to wonder if he was the only person involved in the production who properly perceived how the deep inequities between Hammond and Hal would drive almost anyone in Hammond's shoes mad. When Hammond realizes that both he and Hal received their powers from more or less the same source but with very different results, his rueful moan speaks volumes.

After his showdown with Hammond, Hal goes on to save the people of Coast City from the living shit-storm known as Parallax so at least he isn't always making a name for himself by pushing back hard against the big-headed losers of the world but when the climatic battle of a superhero film is between the hero and a flowing mass of diarrhea, that's a major problem in itself.

As Green Lantern, Hal saves lives because that's part and parcel of the genre, but he's not any fun to root for. Reynolds has proven to be charming elsewhere but Green Lantern makes the mistake of having a Superman with no Clark Kent to balance him out (Reynolds would've fared far better as the Kyle Rayner GL, a struggling young freelance artist). As a comics fan, I would be glad that they made a movie out of Green Lantern if only they hadn't made it quite so easy for Hal to be a hero.

There's Some Horror Daddin' Going On

2011-06-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

In honor of Father's Day, the Horror Dads have assembled to celebrate. Instead of our usual roundtable format, though, this time around head Horror Dad Richard Harland Smith has given us each a separate spotlight in which to discuss a horror movie dad that sparked our interest. Speaking for myself, I had a tough time narrowing down my picks. In the end I went with a dad that my own fatherhood forced me to reevaluate - Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) of The Omen (1976).

Not to pimp this post too hard but, irrespective of my own contribution, I really think this is one of the finer Horror Dad offerings to date. I love what Dennis Cozzalio, Paul Gaita, Greg Ferrara, Nicholas McCarthy, and Richard Harland Smith have to say about their choices and I bet you will too.

Check out the latest from the Horror Dads at TCM, and we wish you all a Happy Father's Day!

Also, if you're new to The Horror Dads, why not catch up on some of our previous posts?

Salem's Lot (1979)

The Curse of the Cat People (1944)

Who Can Kill A Child? (1976)

The Mist (2007)

And our initial three-part discussion on fatherhood and fandom:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Reflections In A Silver Sphere

2011-06-15T07:14:00.001-07:00

One good thing about the disappointing Super 8 is that its 1979 setting prompted me to revisit 1979's own Phantasm. You see, it just isn't the '70s unless there's some thick-ass shag carpeting and Phantasm has that covered:

In his non-fiction essay on horror, Danse Macabre, Stephen King argued that not all, but surely a very large share, of horror tales could be assembled under three major archetypes: The Thing, The Vampire, and The Werewolf. A film like Alien (1979) would be an example of The Thing. Dawn of the Dead (1978), with its scenes of cannibalism and blood-drinking, has its roots in the myth of the Vampire. And the shadow of The Werewolf can be seen in a film like Psycho (1960), in that it features a character who is outwardly normal but who hides a secret self. But Phantasm? Good luck finding any antecedents or close company for The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm).

Having a mortician as the villain of a horror film isn't in itself such a radical notion. For a society like ours that lives in deep denial about death, morticians and undertakers are naturally ghoulish figures.

The mysteries surrounding their practices, and the fact that most people show an aversion to learning too much about how bodies are prepared for burial, just fuels the taboo aura surrounding their profession. But while morticians and undertakers had appeared in horror films before Phantasm (as in 1964's The Comedy of Terrors and 1966's The Undertaker And His Pals), none had featured a mortician who was also an interdimensional (or is it intergalactic?) being.

We tend to take the original Phantasm a little for granted since it's been in our collective consciousness for over thirty years and since three (mostly worthy) sequels have recycled its imagery but it's worth remembering just how surprising this movie was in 1979. I mean, prior to Phantasm, nobody ever saw anything like this:

Flying silver spheres that drill into people's skulls? That was some next level shit. And just when you thought that Phantasm had played every card it could possibly have to play, Coscarelli introduced us to The Tall Man's "space gate" and this trippy movie got even trippier:

When we think of examples of sci-fi horror, we typically think of films like The Thing from Another World (1951) or Alien - films where either an alien comes to Earth or we go out to space and encounter it. Or else films in which technology runs amuck, like Demon Seed (1977). There are no other sci-fi horror film like Phantasm, though. In fact, I'm still not even sure it is sci-fi.

But with sights like this, don't you think it must be?

Phantasm is the only big horror hit of the '70s that has escaped a remake or a reboot and I think it's because no one beside Coscarelli is capable of navigating that universe. As fans, we know that no one can make a Texas Chainsaw movie the way that Tobe Hooper can or make a Halloween movie like John Carpenter but there's something deceptively simple on the surface of those films that allows some idiots to believe that they can but with Phantasm, I think even the densest studio exec must intuitively realize that they're out of their league.

The same year as Phantasm, Tobe Hooper's adaptation of Stephen King's Salem's Lot featured a young protagonist that was strikingly similar to Phantasm's thirteen-year-old hero Mike Pearson (A. Michael Baldwin). But while Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin) of Salem's Lot was a horror buff whose interests lent him an edge against the evil enveloping his community, Mike had no such advantage. After all, late night creature features can tell you how to kill a vampire but what's a Tall Man?

Being a geek would not have helped Mike. A bedroom full of Aurora models wouldn't have been an asset to him. It does help Mike, however, that he grew up with an older brother that knows his way around cars and guns and can give him useful advice like "Don't aim a gun at a man unless you intend to shoot him. And you don't shoot a man unless you intend to kill him."

Speaking of Mike's older brother, Jody (Bill Thornbury), Wes Craven and the folks behind the Scream franchise like to claim that what makes Scream different from other horror franchises is that it continues the stories of the protagonists, rather than just bringing back the same villain in each sequel to attack a different set of victims. Well, on that count it must be said that Phantasm was there first. They might have had to recast the role of Mike for Phantasm II (1988) but the character was still there and A. Michael Baldwin returned to the Phantasm phold for III and IV. For four movies, Coscarelli made the Phantasm series as much about the camaraderie between Mike, Jody, and their ice cream-slinging buddy Reggie (Reggie Bannister) as much about the immortal evil of The Tall Man.

Some would also say Phantasm had the jump on another famous Craven franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street. In the way that this movie jumps back and forth between dream and reality, Phantasm anticipated Craven's 1984 sleeper hit by five years. I say this not to take anything away from Craven's accomplishment, only to note just how ahead of the curve Coscarelli was.

Or maybe I should say, how on the ball he was.

Super Lame

2011-06-11T23:02:00.000-07:00

I love coming of age films. I love monster movies. And I was ten in 1979 so I'm a ripe target for any sort of nostalgia for that time. Oh, and I'm a Steven Spielberg fan to boot.

So given all that, you'd think that Super 8, the latest film from writer/director J.J. Abrams, would press all the right buttons with me. It's a monster movie taking place against the backdrop of a coming of age film set in 1979, filmed as a loving homage to late '70s/early '80s Spielberg. I'm telling you - this is not a movie you need to hard sell me on! Even though I haven't been too taken with anything that Abrams has done to date, I thought for sure that Super 8 would make a fan out of me - at least for this one film. However, I'd be hard-pressed to think of any other movie in recent memory that's irritated me on such a grand scale.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!

First of all, let's address some points that might be perceived as nit picky - like the fact that Abrams get so much wrong with the 1979 setting. If a filmmaker is going to make the decision to set their film in a particular time period, I think they should feel obliged to get as many details right as they can. Especially if it's a time that the filmmaker was old enough to have lived through. If some twenty-two year-old dope made the mistakes that Abrams makes in Super 8, I might have been inclined to be a little more forgiving but Abrams should remember certain things about '79 - like the fact that words like "bitchin'", "bogus", and "mint" were not slang terms back then. To hear those words coming out of the mouths of characters who are supposed to be living in '79 is instantly jarring. It sounds wrong because it is wrong. In contrast, watch Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused (1993) if you want to see a movie made by someone who has a crystal clear memory of the time they grew up in.

I was also put off by the repeated use of the term "production value" by Super 8's aspiring filmmaker Charles Kaznyk (Riley Griffths). That's the way kids talk today, in a world where everybody with even a passing interest in the movies is hip to filmmkaing jargon, but not how they talked in '79. And when Charles takes his film to a photo shop to be developed, he would have known that it would take up to several days to get his developed film back. He wouldn't ask if it could be done "overnight" - that's a modern term. At best he would've asked if it could be done by "tomorrow." But Abrams has Charles ask for "overnight" just so that he can get a laugh from modern viewers when the photo shop clerk tells the kid that "nothing is overnight" - ha, ha! everything used to take forever back then!

Also on the fact-checking front, the Rubik's Cube didn't come to the US until 1980 so having a character referring to an object as being "like a white Rubik's Cube" is pure carelessness. Further, Walkmans were another item not sold in the US until '80. Even then, as with most new technology, the prices were so high that the average person didn't own them right away. But yet in Super 8, some small town, minimum wage gas station attendant in the summer of '79 is rocking out with his new Walkman - a erroneous detail that Abrams only includes to score a cheap chuckle out of audiences who can't help but laugh at a hilarious cameo from old technology.

Some might think I'm needlessly piling on Abrams for his lack of attention to detail. But the mistakes made in this film are so incredibly lazy and so easily detected by anyone with even the most half-assed recollections of 1979 that Abrams should rightly be called out for them.

But, some will argue that none of this matters. After all, nobody is walking into Super 8 expecting a boring history lesson, right? OK, for the sake of argument then, let's say that none of it matters. But it is fair to say that audiences showed up to Super 8 expecting a kick-ass monster movie, right? After all, the trailers and TV spots were coy about what Super 8 was about but when you see shots of an unknown thing pounding its way out of a crashed railroad car, it's fair to think that some manner of strange creature is going to be rampaging through this movie.

To see a space creature or genetic mutation, or whatever Super 8's monster is, terrorizing a small town and taking on the might of the military sounds good to me so go ahead and show me an amazing creature and I'll gladly let all instances of historical inaccuracies be forgiven. Oh, wait. Turns out this aspect of the film is a total wash out, too. As a creature feature, Super 8 is nothing but weak sauce. I didn't think any movie monster could be more poorly designed than the one in the Abrams-produced, Matt Reeves-directed Cloverfield (2008) but Super 8 has proved me wrong. Nice going, assholes!

Abrams keeps his monster in the shadows for the greater part of Super 8, which is fine. I don't mind waiting for a pay-off and it's an honorable monster movie tradition to tease audiences for as long as possible before revealing the full sight of the monster. I mean, look at how well that approach worked in Ridley Scott's Alien (ironically, a 1979 film). But when we finally do see the monster here, it looks like ass - just another forgettable CGI creation. For decades, makers of B-movies always did their best to hit home runs with their monsters. Whether these monsters came from outer space, from a scientist's lab, from the fall out of nuclear testing, or from the depths of hell, they had to be monsters that audiences would thrill to and remember. Filmmakers used to take pride in their monsters, and with good reason. But who the fuck would take ever pride in Super 8's monster? Seriously, I would take Ro-Man from Robot Monster(1953) over Super 8's creature. At least a friggin' dude in a gorilla suit with like a deep sea diving helmet with antennae is memorable:

It used to be that with limited technology and funds that resourceful moviemakers were able to create the most indelible monsters. Some were so good that even if they were only on screen for mere seconds, they achieved cinematic immortality - like the demon from Curse of the Demon (1957). On the other hand, the monster in Super 8 is so bad, such a miserable digital turd, that you're already forgetting it even as you're looking at it. On top of it's lousy appearance is the fact that it's character is so half-baked. We're supposed to feel some kind of sympathy for it because we learn that it wasn't a violent creature until it spent years being poked, prodded, and experimented on by scientists but outside of when it abstains from eating the film's protagonist, we never see any of it's endearing side so it's hard to feel much when it makes its exit back into space at the end.

Speaking of that exit, how I would have loved it if the alien had finally rebuilt its spaceship, took off with the entire town watching on in awe, then once it got to a certain height in the sky, it unleashed a death ray that obliterated the town as a final "fuck you" for its years of torment 'cause this is one alien that doesn't play the forgiveness game! Later, in an ironic coda, authorities could have discovered the lost reel of super 8 footage that proves the existence of the alien. Da-da-da-duuumm...

But to have that ending would've meant that the film that Super 8's young protagonists were working on had something to do with the movie itself and, well, it doesn't.

I'll get to the film within the film's lack of importance in a sec but first I've got to say that if a bunch of kids were making a zombie film in '79 they'd be emulating the blue-faced zombies of Dawn of the Dead (1978). Instead, the first zombie we see in the super 8 footage with its white, pupil-less eyes looks downright Raimi-esque. Now, one could say that Raimi himself was making the first Evil Dead in '79 or thereabouts and maybe these kids are just equally visionary but I'm not buying that. Still, I'm willing to let this point go.

What I can't let go is the poor integration of the kid's movie making with the larger storyline. One thing that might have helped is if the main character, Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), had been the wanna-be filmmaker. Instead, he's the movie's make-up and model guy and even that aspect to him isn't fully explored. It would have been much more effective to have sensitive Joe be the director rather than his abrasive buddy Charles - especially with Joe dealing with the fallout from the tragic death of his mother in an industrial accident.

To have Joe be single-mindedly focused on making his movie as a way to shut out his grief and escape into another world would have made sense. Instead, the movie only seems like a project that Joe's participating in out of an obligation to his friend and because it gives him the opportunity to get close to Alice (Elle Fanning), who's just been cast as the lead actress in what was formerly an all-male film.

To be positive, there were a couple of details concerning the kid's filming that I enjoyed. One, after Charles gets an Oscar-worthy dramatic take from Alice as she delivers her lines on a train station platform, he does another take of the same scene a minute later against the deafening rush of a coming train in order to maximize his "production values," not considering the fact that all the noise from the train is drowning out anything that Alice is saying. And in another clever scene, the kids use classic low budget ingenuity to employ a group of soldiers as unwitting background extras in a scene.

Other than offering these nicely observed moments, though, nothing about the fact that these kids are making a movie makes any real difference to the plot of Super 8. To have a movie called Super 8 but have the act of moviemaking be superfluous is an especially egregious failing. If only these kids had been making a monster on the loose movie, using every old-school method they had - stop-motion, puppetry, miniatures, etc. - and then find that both to their glee and horror they have a real live flesh and blood monster that they can film but only if they're willing to risk life and limb to get close to it. That I would've enjoyed. That, or the many other possible scenarios where Super 8 could've actually been about young moviemakers making movies. I've heard that Charlie's finished zombie movie plays during the end credits, which sounds like a cute touch, but after suffering through the entirety of Super 8, I just didn't care enough to stay and watch it so I left.

That leaves only Super 8's coming of age story to discuss but there too, Super 8 fails. The cast is very good and the performances are natural and endearing (particularly Elle Fanning) but the character arcs are weak and neither Joe nor Alice do much coming of aging. I don't mean that in a lewd way - just that they end up pretty much where they started at as people, except just a little bit closer to each other. Joe ostensibly has the burden of grief over the loss of his mother to overcome and that's what the climax hinges on but yet this loss is never shown to be such a crippling thing for Joe so to have it be a key moment at the end where he literally and symbolically "lets go" of his mother is a forced bit that doesn't seem related to the movie before it. We know that Joe surely still misses his mother but yet he seems awfully well-adjusted, like he's already moved on in most respects (after the winter-set opening scene, the main story picks up four months after his mother has passed), so for Abrams to stage a big moment where Joe lets go of a locket with his mother's picture doesn't have the emotional impact that it's meant to.

If we're interested in anything, it's how Joe and Alice's stab at romance will shape up but there's not even much to that. The two like each other pretty much from the start so Joe doesn't have to do anything to win Alice's affections except to linger on her porch early on and the only major obstacle their relationship has to overcome is their feuding fathers - such a nothing, lightweight "feud" that there's never any doubt that it'll be resolved as quickly as it takes to make a manly handshake.

Super 8 is a meticulous act of mimicry but anyone who remembers seeing films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) or E.T. (1982) in the theaters will vividly remember what unprecedented events they were and they'll know that Super 8 just doesn't compare, not even with Spielberg himself on board as producer. Some will call this movie an unabashed love letter to both Spielberg and to the spirit of moviemaking itself. But please, just open your eyes and call it what it really is: junk mail.