Rambo

In 1982's First Blood, during an exchange between Brian Dennehy's out-of-his-league small town sheriff Will Teasle - who is trying to flush rampaging Vietnam vet John Rambo out of the woods - and Richard Crenna's Col. Trautman, Teasle is incredulous at Rambo's ex-superior officer's claims as to Rambo's combat skills - "Are you telling me that 200 of our men against your boy is a no-win situation for us?"

To which Trautman replies that if Teasle plans to send that many men against Rambo, he should bring a good supply of body bags. That same advice applies to this latest installment of the Rambo saga, except that much of the carnage that Rambo leaves in his wake here calls for a mop more than it does for body bags as Rambo reduces most of his adversaries to wet red stains.

When Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem's red-band trailer was released last year, fans were amped at the promise of that trailer's violent highlights only to be disappointed to find that the trailer contained almost all of that film's gore shots. Well, Rambo's early trailer created the same fan excitement with some spectacularly brutal clips. But what's shocking about the film is that its trailer proves to be only the tip of the iceberg! They actually left at least a half hour of good shit for the movie itself! I only wish Joe Bob Briggs could step in to deliver the Drive-In Totals on this because they'd be some incredible numbers.

As a bloody last hurrah for the Rambo franchise, this is right up there with Stallone's well-recieved final bell for Rocky Balboa last year. Of course, Rambo isn't all about heart like Rocky is - Rambo's all about dealing out death. And writer/director Stallone gives his steadfast sociopath ample reason to maim and kill by putting him at odds with the military dirtbags of Burma.

In showing us the kind of atrocities taking place in this far-flung region (highlighted by a prolonged village raid that single-handedly earns this film its hard R rating), the first half of Stallone's Rambo will have many a genre fan flashing back to the Italian-made 'mondo' films popular in the early days of home video such as Shocking Asia and Mondo Cane that traded on exploitative, documentary-real imagery - films where you could practically wave the gathering flies off the death on the screen. Call this Mondo Rambo.

And when the reclusive Rambo ("Fuck the world" he declares at one point) decides to save a group of missionaries he had reluctantly agreed to transport into a volitile area only to be later informed that they'd been kidnapped by the Burmese Army, the violence that ensues could only have been topped if Stallone personally came into the theater to murder you.

Not only is this one of the most violent films ever to play in U.S. theaters but as a director, Stallone should be commeneded for making a contemporary action film where fast edits and shaky camerawork never take the place of coherence (I'm looking at you, Paul Greengrass!). During Rambo, even when the screen is filled with various warring factions engaged in mutiple battles, confusion never sets in.

I just hope that audiences turn out to support Rambo. Not that I'd want to see the series itself continue (why run the risk of spoiling a perfectly good finale?) but I would love to see Rambo's success spur current action films to follow its lead.

Oh, and if Stallone has any thoughts on what he'd do with a sequel to his underrated cop flick Nighthawks (1981), I think there's an eager audience waiting to see that movie. Bring back Billy Dee, man!

One Missed Opportunity

This latest, and very late to the party, entry in the J-Horror remake sub-genre is evidence that this well has dried up creatively and commercially. The 2004 original by Takashi Miike was no great shakes - an usually mainstream venture by Miike - but at least it didn't make me want to punch anyone in the face. This remake from director Eric Valette on the other hand made me glad that one rarely has the opportunity to watch a movie in the company of anyone able to take the blame for what you just watched (on the other hand, that might actually prompt filmmakers to make better movies).

The storyline here is the usual brand of supernatural hot air - a group of friends (which includes Shannyn Sossamonfind as psychology student Beth Raymond) find that they're being called by themselves (!) from a date several days in the future (!!) and the snippets of what they hear are their own last moments on Earth (!!!). Before each doomed character dies, they see weird visions of characters sporting surreal features such as mouths for eyes and so on. I'm all for that and for a brief while I was optimistic that this would be a totally pedestrian but not unwatchable movie (when you're talking about the first horror release of the year, which is historically awful, you've got to have adjusted expectations) but then it's as though the movie realizes it's supposed to be shit ("Hey, aren't we coming out in January?") and starts to act accordingly.

The main problem here - as it often is with supernatural stories - is in the explanation or backstory for the haunting at the heart of this movie. Sadly we live in a time where writers are directors are convinced to the bottom of their souls that explanations are the earmark of good writing. The more that they've explained, the more on-the-nose they can be, the more modern filmmakers think that they've their job. So a movie like this can't use the one thing that might make it compelling - ambiguity. That means even the creepy little ghouls that rear their heads here have to be explained. But how do you even begin to explain a figure with mouths for eyes? Oh, wait - let's discover that all these weird figures originally existed as toys in a child's bedroom! Yeah, that makes SO much sense!

I imagine that if The Exorcist were made today, some asshole involved in the production would probably insist that they find a way to work in an explanation for the briefly-glimpsed, white-faced "Captain Howdy" image that subliminally flashes on the screen at key moments. And I'm sure they would be totally convinced that doing so would be a sign of the creative ingenuity they were bringing to the production (I can hear the oblivious pride in the voice of the makers of an Exorcist remake right now - "in the original they never explained who that face belonged to - they just put it in there for no reason. But here we really get into who Captain Howdy is!"). And so it goes with One Missed Call.

But while Klavan and Valette take so many pains to offer explanations for their film's surreal images, they ironically don't give too many reasons for their ghost's actions. That normally wouldn't bother me but as the story develops it seems like we really should know a little bit more than the film is telling us. By the end of the film, there's not just an evil ghost but a good ghost as well and I think it could've been laid in better as to why the good ghost never did much to help anyone besides the main character. It's also unclear as to whether the conflict between these warring spirits is resolved or not. And not in an intriguing, gotta-think-about-that-ending kind of way but in a "looks like they just decided to insult us" way.

Sometimes I get the feeling that filmmakers think that any ending is suitable for a horror film, as long as it's bizarre and open-ended. They'll explain every other thing along the way but they don't think that the story they're telling needs a proper ending. That's probably because they're not really sure where their film is going in the first place.

Maybe it would've helped if Valette and Klavan could've gotten a call from the future before starting to work on this - although given how their film turned out, I think all they would've heard was dead air.

New Year's Evil

Before the release of One Missed Call officially gets 2008 off on a shit note, I thought it'd be worth listing some the movies I'm most excited to see this year.

Excluding titles that have already been reviewed in advance elsewhere like All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, Diary of the Dead, Trick 'R' Treat, Rogue, Mother of Tears, REC, Inside and Stuck, here's fifteen films due in '08 that I've optimistically earmarked for excellence.

1. The Ruins

The book by Scott Smith was great but didn't seem like something that begged to be brought to the screen. If anything, while it was a simple story - vacationing kids stumble on ancient ruins and the man-eating plant life that lives there - it seemed like a lot could go wrong if you actually had to make a movie out of it. But with Smith adapting his own work (as he did with A Simple Plan) and the early teaser looking promisingly creepy, I'm hoping the vicious vines of Smith's book will be 2008's most memorable monster.

2. Drag Me To Hell

Sam Raimi's return to hardcore horror. 'Nuff said! And really, even if this were PG-13 I'd be very ok with that. I'm sure he's going to make a fun movie and I can't believe that he wouldn't go all out to make his first non-Spider-Man movie since 2001 (!) a special event. And regardless of the film itself, I just want to see the title Drag Me To Hell on a theater marquee.

3. The Happening

A lot of people might be off the M. Night Shyamalan train after The Village and Lady in the Water but I'm still interested in anything he does. If nothing else, I think the blow dealt to him with Lady in the Water might've fueled his ambition to get back in the good graces of the movie going public. I also hope it inspired him to go for the jugular in a way he hasn't before.

4. Midnight Meat Train

It's been too long since I read the short story to have any feelings on what does or doesn't need to make it to the screen here to do this right (I should probably try and find my old dog-earred copy of Books of Blood) - I just hope this is a scary, stylish flick. I'd hate to have a great title like "Midnight Meat Train" go to waste on anything less.

5. Splice

Cube director Vincenzo Natali teamed with producer Guillermo del Toro with Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley starring in a tale of genetic tampering gone haywire sounds like it can't help but be great.

6. Heart-Shaped Box

I haven't read Joe King's novel about a haunted rock star yet but I've heard enough good things to be intrigued by an adaptation. And the fact that Neil Jordon is directing makes me think that it'll be worthwhile.

7. Quarantined

I haven't seen REC yet (the source material that this remake is based on) or The Poughkeepsie Tapes - which is the previous film by director John Erick Dowdle - but the scary scenario of an apartment building hit by a rabies epidemic sounds like it could be a winner. Also, I think actress Jennifer Carpenter (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) is great so putting her in the lead here is all right with me.

8. The Strangers

The fact that this was pushed back from last year (and doesn't have a date in '08 yet) doesn't say good things about this home invasion chiller but I love the fact that the poster looks like it's a lost one-sheet of late '70s/early '80s vintage. And the trailer suggests that the movie will have what it takes to back up that vibe.

9. The Box

I never read the short story or even saw the adapation that was done for the '80s version of The Twilight Zone but I'm hoping that Richard Kelly helming this Richard Matheson adpatation will result in a smart, scary film.

10. Mirrors

I keep hoping to eventually love a film by director Alexandre Aja. I thought both High Tension and his Hills Have Eyes remake were almost good pictures that ultimately left me disappointed. But this supernatural tale of a department store security guard (played by Kiefer Sutherland) who has to contend with creepy reflections in store mirrors sounds like it could offer eerie fun.

11. Scanners

The Saw guy following in the footsteps of David Cronenberg throws any hope of a great movie out the window immeidately. And no Michael Ironside just means that none of this shit matters. But that makes it easier to just sit back and watch heads explode.

12. Dracula Year Zero
I'm soft on the idea of another Dracula movie but I'll give this one a shot in the hopes that director Alex Proyas will be making a film more along the lines of The Crow and Dark City rather than I, Robot.

13. Pig Hunt

Sure, director James Isaac hasn't done anything worth getting excited about to date. We've got The Horror Show (still arguably his finest hour, for what it's worth), Jason X (which should've been a lot more fun than it was) and Skinwalkers (which I'll just assume is atrocious) so why get excited about another film from the man? Two words: Pig Hunt.

Come on, how could a film called Pig Hunt not be good?

14. Hellraiser
I'm usually pretty even tempered on the subject of remakes. What difference does it make to me whether they're good or bad - I'll still love the originals regardless. But just for sentiment's sake I really would love this remake to live up to the taboo-smashing legacy of the original. I haven't seen Inside yet but if it's as good as everyone says, I hope Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury make this follow-up every bit as hardcore.

15. The X-Files 2
It'll probably bite me on the ass to get excited about this but I know as soon as I hear Mark Snow's X-Files theme in the first teaser trailer, I'm going to go nuts. No matter how frustrating the last few years of this show sometimes were, The X-Files is still my favorite genre show ever. Chris Carter may have made some exasperating, ass-brained storytelling decisions during his show's nine year run but when The X-Files worked, it resulted in the some of the scariest hours ever seen on TV. I'm just hoping reports that this sequel will steer clear of the series' mythology are true.

Ok, that's my list. Pig Hunt is on it. And I'm happy about that. I'm also happy that among my picks, original films out-number sequels and remakes. Here's to 2008!

Ten DVD's To Die For

Around the time that Blue Underground released Gary Sherman's 1981 Dead and Buried to disc, I was speculating with a friend over how long it would be before the very finite list of all the great cult movies and TV shows that we wanted to see brought to DVD were burned through and there'd be no more big releases to anticipate.

Well, that had to be probably six or seven years ago and while some titles I never thought would make it eventually arrived in fine form (Hello, Monster Squad!) there's a handful of must-haves that I'm still waiting to put in my collection.

Here's ten titles that I'd love to see make to DVD in 2008:

1. Friday the 13th: The Series (TV, 1987-1990)

This was a late night staple for me during its three year run from '87 to '90 and it was far and away the highlight of the glut of late-'80s horror programs that ran in syndication back then. While I have a huge soft spot for other shows of that time like Tales from the Darkside and Monsters, they were always far too whimsical for my taste whereas Friday the 13th: The Series frequently got downright grim.

A host of notable genre talent both in front of (actors like Fritz Weaver, Ray Walston and Robert A. Silverman) and behind the camera (directors like David Cronenberg, William Fruet, Armand Mastroianni, Tom McLoughlin, and Rob Hedden) all contributed to the series and strong episodes (like the Texas Chainsaw-esque turn towards the "backwoods horror" genre, "The Long Road Home") could be found right up to the end of its run.

With so much genre TV already represented on disc (hell, Swamp Thing is being released this January!), it's long past time for seasons of Friday the 13th: The Series to start appearing as well.

Read more of my thoughts on Friday the 13th: The Series here: http://undertakerslounge.com/Editorials/friday_tv.htm

2. Deadly Blessing (1981)

My favorite Wes Craven film. This often loopy but always atmospheric tale of a widowed woman dealing with an unknown prescene that may or may not be supernatural stalking her in her rural home coupled with her tense relationship with her Hittite neighbors (an Amish-like religious order led by a fearsome Ernest Borgnine) is a jolting ride with several of the best shock scenes that Craven has ever put on film (including a snake joining one unsuspecting character in a bathtub and a memorable dream sequence involving Sharon Stone - in her first film - and a large spider).

Read more of my thoughts on Deadly Blessing here: http://undertakerslounge.com/Editorials/deadly_blessing.htm


3. Dark Night of the Scarecrow (TV, 1981)

This TV movie left a lasting mark on me as a kid. Not just because it was eerie but because it told a very humane and touching tale as well. Larry Drake stars as a mentally hanicapped man who is caught in a misunderstanding and pays a final price for it at the hands of a make-shift mob (played by a round of fine character actors including Charles Durning and Lane Smith) who kill Drake's character as he hides within a scarecrow's clothes. When the men who did the deed hide their crime and subsequently start to meet with grisly ends themselves, panic and paranoia set in among them. This is a perfect morality tale that should be part of everyone's DVD library.

Read more of my thoughts on Dark Night of the Scarecrow here: http://undertakerslounge.com/Editorials/scarecrow.htm


4. The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975)

I've never seen this movie so I can't comment on it but I've always wanted to see it as it was shot in my hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts. This tale of paranormal phenonmenon was never the object of much acclaim but I'd love to see it for myself one day. It has some genre credentials in that Margot Kidder (Sisters, Black Christmas) and Jennifer O'Neil (The Psychic, Scanners) play major roles, famed composer Jerry Goldsmith (The Omen) created the score and J. Lee Thompson (who helmed the original Cape Fear as well as the slasher fave Happy Birthday to Me) directed. I think this only had one VHS release way back at the inception of the video age so this is a film long in need of some attention.


5. Werewolf (TV, 1987-1988)

This slice of late '80s cheese which ran from '87 to '88 was a fun horror show. Lasting only one season, this cribbed the format of the popular Incredible Hulk TV show but with its protagonist cursed to turn into a werewolf rather than into a gamma-spawned beast. Whatever faults it might have had, any show with Chuck Conners cast as an evil werewolf really deserves its due.

6. The Sender (1983)

A wild story of psychic phenonmenon concerning an amnesiac who's able to project vividly real hallucinations into the minds of others got a lot of positive reviews when it was released, despite some jumbled storytelling. This was a mainstay of HBO's programming when I was a kid and The Sender's unusual melancholy mood always sucked me in. Sadly, this ambitious film only saw one pan and scan VHS release.

7. Resurrection (1980)

I saw this supernatural drama on TV in the early '80s and it's stayed with me ever since. Ellen Burstyn stars as a woman who survives a car accident that kills her husband. She soon discovers that she's come out of the experience with the power to heal people. This sensitively written and acted film deserves far more attention that it's ever recieved from fans and critics. Burstyn gives one of the great forgotten performances of genre cinema here as a woman gifted with a power that ultimately forces her away from everyone she loves.

In its depiction of a woman struggling to understand whether her abilities are a blessing or a curse makes this an excellent companion piece to Cronenberg's The Dead Zone. The performances (Sam Shepard, Richard Farnsworth and genre fave Robert Blossoms all join Burstyn in delivering heartfelt work) along with Daniel Petrie's direction keep Resurrection from becoming the stuff of cheap melodrama.


8. Paperhouse (1988)

This has been released overseas on DVD (although it may be out of print) but we're still waiting for a Region 1 disc. Directed by Bernard Rose (Candyman), this story of a young girl who retreats into a fantasy world expressed through her drawings was a canny mix of kid's film and surreal horror. Described by one critic at the time as being "the thinking person's Nightmare on Elm Street".

8. Vampire (TV, 1979)

I watched this TV movie about a vampire whose sleep is disturbed by the construction of a new church over his resting grounds way back when it was originally aired and sadly I've long since forgotten all but snippets of it. But the fact that it stars the great Richard Lynch as the eponymous bloodsucker and E.G. Marhsall as the Van Helsing type looking to stake him out of existence with The Exorcist's Jason Miller and Kathryn Harrold (The Sender) also starring is all I need to know that this needs to be available on disc as soon as possible. And to further recommend it, Vampire's script was penned by future Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law and NYPD Blue producer Steven Bochco.


10. The Horror Show (1989)

Come on - Max Jenke needs to be on DVD, damn it! Late character actor Brion James will always be best known for his replicant role in Blade Runner ("Wake up, time to die!") but I wish his star turn as "Meat Cleaver Max" had spawned a sequel or two.

James was clearly giving his all to this character and the fact that he's facing off against Lance Henriksen as a cop out to put Jenke down for good gives him a worthy foil to pit his performance against. To see these two great character actors spar with each other elevates an otherwise mediocre film to must-see proportions.


There you have it - ten DVD's that I'll be watching for next year. If even half of these make it to disc, this horror geek will have to call 2008 a very fulfilling year.

Best/Worst Of The Year

Man, the holiday season sure kept me busy this year - leaving me little time to do any sort of extracurricular writing. But now that I'm emerging from my Christmas coma, hopefully I'll be a little more active at the keyboard. Until then, I'd like to point you towards my Best/Worst list for 2007 - posted for your pleasure at Shock Till You Drop:

http://shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=4110

All The Right Notes

When it comes to horror films, critics and audiences have come to prefer their B-movies to really be A-budget studio movies, showing little patience for appreciating the virtues of the former. If it's not the cream of the crop, it's just garbage.

Now I understand that movies are an expensive habit to keep up with and at today's prices it's hard to justify spending hard-earned cash on second rate entertainment but personally I've always liked second rate entertainment. I've known a lot of people over the years who were second rate human beings and they were just fine to talk to - so why should I be such a snob when it comes to movies?

All of which brings me to director Dwight H. Little's much-slighted 1989 version Phantom of the Opera. While Tim Burton is currently being hailed for the efforts of he and scripter John Logan to create a film that evokes Hammer-era Gothic horror with Sweeny Todd, Little attempted to do the same almost twenty years ago with his Phantom. Even if the results weren't entirely stellar, well, that isn't a reason not to give the guy some credit. As I like to say, second rate doesn't mean worthless. Period horror wasn't really what the kids were into back in the late '80s but Little made a valiant effort to make Gaston Leroux's tale appeal to the Jason and Freddy generation.

To that end, Little cast Freddy himself, Robert Englund, in the titular role. The biggest horror star of the '80s by a wide margin (can it even be said that he had competition?), Englund seized the opportunity to play a "classic" monster by giving a performance that left nothing on the table. The hammy gusto that Englund displays in this film is an awesome spectacle, making his work with Freddy look like a study in minimalism. But to anyone who might criticize Englund's approach as being over-the-top, I can only ask: why would an actor play a role like this if they're not going to play it larger than life?

And this being an '80s horror movie, Englund's Phantom is given a ruined face - courtesy of his character's Faustian pact (and Kevin Yagher's notable FX work) - that only FANGORIA could love (as the text on the back of the VHS release proudly announced - "He's Back And He's Uglier Than Ever!"). Little and scripter Duke Sandefur also work in a Freddy-style witticism or two - which Englund dutifully does his best to sell.

As the Phantom's love interest, actress Jill Schoelen was in the middle of her too-brief run as a Scream Queen - having already starred in 1987's The Stepfather and 1989's Cutting Class (and with 1991's Popcorn and 1993's made-for-cable sequel When A Stranger Calls Back yet to come). In Phantom, she plays Juliard student Christine Day, who arrives at a Broadway audition armed with a long-lost piece of music to sing (discovered by her bookish best friend Meg, played by a pre-SNL Molly Shannon) only to be knocked unconscious mid-song by a falling sandbag (which is not as unintentionally funny as it sounds - sorry).

What follows is a lengthy flashback to Christine's past life in nineteenth century London where she was the understudy to the lead in a production of Faust. Here she was also being secretly coached by the Phantom, a figure who never stepped out of the shadows but who was driven to make Christine a star. This process involves not just singing lessons but many slasher movie-style deaths - including one skinned victim that bears the influence of Clive Barker's then-recent Hellraiser and its first sequel, Hellbound. The MPAA may have been cracking down on graphic violence in the late '80s but Little and co. managed to make this a satisfyingly grisly picture.

Dispensing with much - if not quite all - of the romanticism that has been applied to the character in other versions, including most famously in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, Little and Englund's Phantom is a much more vicious beast, making this the most lurid version of the story to date. But there's some poetic moments to appreciate, too - such as when the Phantom uses a violin to serenade Christine in a cemetery during a light snow fall. There's also a nod to Lon Chaney Sr.'s classic 1925 Phantom of the Opera as Englund appears at a masquerade ball in the guise of Poe's Red Death - just as Chaney Sr. did. And Little stages an exciting climatic pursuit of the Phantom through his sewer lair.

Does it all add up to a great film? No, but it's a handsomely produced effort (with Budapest serving as an effective double for 18th century London) that has its heart in the right place, even if it doesn't hit all the right notes.

Join The Mist Militia

With hindsight, fans can look at the box office failure of a classic like John Carpenter's The Thing and shake their collective heads over how such a great movie was left out to dry. But while the hope would be that were such a movie to be released today a more alert generation of horror fans would give it the reception it deserves, to look at the so-so box office take of Frank Darabont's superlative The Mist is to see that horror fans are either just as unmotivated as ever or else they're just too small a group to make a real difference at the box office.

If fans feel that the genre is being undermined by the success of remakes and sequels and PG-13 horror movies, why are those films continuing to thrive yet a picture like The Mist gets a shoulder shrug? I just don't get it. Horror fans love to bitch about how Hollywood caters to the mainstream but if fans take a wait-until-DVD attitude whenever something promising comes along they shouldn't be shocked if the kind of horror films they're looking for aren't around.

Thanks to the internet, it's easier than it's ever been to market to the horror community. And with months of advance hype preceding their releases, it's not as though films like The Mist or Grindhouse flew in below the radar. So either horror fans are just that apathetic or we're just that small of a community. Personally, my gut says it's more a case of the later.

Even though the fan press likes to foster the idea that horror fans are just waiting to be mobilized in service of the right film, I don't think we have the numbers to make a movie into a hit on our own.

We can bring as much grassroots support as possible (Hatchet writer/director Adam Green recently invited fans to "join the Hatchet Army") but ultimately, the future of horror is for mainstream audiences to decide. As much as we may resent it, fans are just along for the ride.