From Midnight, With Love

The Grey

2012-01-30T22:07:00.000-06:00

(2012, Dir. by Joe Carnahan.)

Almost three years to the day after Taken opened in the US and made us all turn our heads in surprise, Liam Neeson is still laying claim to his new found role as a bonafide action hero. Though his 60th birthday is coming up this summer, Neeson has re-established himself as a star through a series of tough guy roles, a trend that continued with this weekend's release of The Grey.

Re-uniting Neeson with The A-Team director, Joe Carnahan, The Grey lets Neeson take charge as a hired gun whose job is to eliminate wolves at an Alaskan outpost. That job lasts for about two scenes - long enough to establish via voice over and a shot of him preparing to kill himself - setting up the character's depressed mental state just before he's involved in a freak plane explosion/crash that leaves him and a handful of less hero-esque survivors stranded in the middle of a frozen wasteland.

The biggest problem that Neeson and his followers have to deal with? Wolves, naturally. Many will argue about the use of wolves in the film - some think the director and his crew were abusive toward animals, some think it's silly to assume that wolves would hunt a pack of humans who stand up to them repeatedly - but there are wolves in the movie nonetheless. I'm not an animalologist or a crazy PETA person (You guys: MEAT TASTES AWESOME!), so I'm not gonna comment on any of those speculations. I'll just say that the wolves look incredibly real and are pretty intimidating foes, and they serve their purpose as a plot device in Carnahan's film.

You see, the movie isn't about the wolves. It's about the men and their struggle to survive. You're probably groaning at how cliche that comment is, and you have every right to - most every movie ever made is about the characters' struggle, and a focused "survival" movie like this is nothing new. The most interesting thing about the struggle is the mental state of Neeson's character, whose depression at times makes the viewer wonder if he's a liability to the others on this journey.

The film gets a little heavy handed at times - I particularly groaned at a scene in which Neeson stands up to a challenge from a follower right after the group hears Neeson explain the idea of "Alpha and Omega" wolves to the men - but there are some really interesting moments peppered throughout the film. Moments when the characters reflect upon what they have to live for really hit home, and the opposing viewpoints of Neeson's jaded commentary help strengthen the story. The supporting performances are serviceable, most notably veteran character actor Dermot Mulroney in an almost unrecognizable role as one of the men, and his comments throughout the journey are a welcome addition to the film.

(The most interesting thing I learned after reading about the film today was that the producers advertised the film directly to Christian viewers, which boggles my mind when I consider the main character's vocal disdain toward religion throughout the film. I'd absolutely love to see the 'film companion' that was distributed to religious groups, because I seriously can't fathom what Carnahan and his producers intended to say to Christians.)

The tone of the film is most endearing to me when I look at the director, Carnahan, whose bombastic last two films (Smokin' Aces and The A-Team) lacked the focus on character that was present in his breathtaking debut film, Narc. The fact that I'm talking about the film's attempts to carry a deeper message and to be a character-driven action film is a huge improvement on those fun-but-pointless films. I'm just not sure I think everything about The Grey works. The proceedings become pretty repetitive in the second act - deal with attack, philosophize, argue, repeat - and the momentum that the director and the star bring to the film kind of stalls out at times. I'm usually the last person to use the dreaded "boring" word about a film, but I can't deny that The Grey had me on the edge of sleep a few times.

In the end, I'm really not sure what I think about The Grey. Some of what it offers is incredibly effective, and some of it had me tired and ready for more. It's definitely not a movie for the masses like Taken was three years ago, and an ambiguous ending (Make sure you stay till after the credits!) will probably divide audiences too. I liked the ending, I just wasn't wild about the path the film took to get there. Is it a good film? For the most part, yes. But I'm not ready to proclaim it a must-see addition to the new year just yet. Perhaps you'll disagree.

The Mike's Top 11 Alien Invasion Films of 1950-2000

2012-01-28T17:48:00.000-06:00

When my good buddy Russ of Dead End Drive-In asked me to participate in his Alien Invasion Weekend, I didn't even have to think about my response. Russ asked me to cover some of my favorite alien invasion flicks made before the year 2000 (because we all know Y2K ended civilization back then, of course), and I did what I do: I made a list.

I'm being kind of picky on semantics here, and a couple of my very favorite sci-fi films ever - The Day the Earth Stood Still and Close Encounters of the Third Kind - are getting the shaft due to this. Look, Gort wasn't here to take us out, he was just forced to get a little angry. And those Close Encounters things? Heck, they were just curious. Yes, these might be two of my five favorite sci-fi films, but I'm looking for good old fashioned destructive invaders here.

Also, I cheated several times on this list. There are a few cases once in a while - though most horror fans won't believe me - where both original films and their remakes were awesome. And I've lumped them together here so I can cover more of my favorite invasion flicks. You like more awesome, don't you?

Honorable Mentions? Yeah, we got some honorable mentions for you.

Honorable Mention: War of the Worlds (1953), Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956), Mars Needs Women (1967), Superman II (1980), Night of the Creeps (1986), Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), Independence Day (1996), The Faculty (1998)

Some notes on those Honorable Mentions:

A lot of people will probably balk at the exclusion of War of the Worlds, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, and Independence Day, which have a lot of great publicity and a lot of great special effects for their eras. While each film features a pretty widespread invasion, I got a few more cerebral picks ahead of them. (And a couple that are much dumber too.)
Sure, any Superman film could technically be an Alien Invasion film, but General Zod and his awkward friends are pretty much the best kind of invaders. I won't quite kneel, but I'll give him some props.
YOU GUYS! The Faculty is seriously underrated. There, I said it.

Now, let's see that list!

Number 11 - Bloodsuckers from Outer Space (1984)

Bloodsuckers from Outer Space is certainly one of those movies that is so bad that it's....bad. But at the same time it's kind of not. Heck, the IMDB voters - who are generally the cruelest and most genre unfriendly people on our planet - even have given it a 5.2 out of ten rating. A 5.2 on IMDB for a movie with these production values is like a Nobel Peace Prize for someone with Hitler's racial beliefs. Anyway, Bloodsuckers from Outer Space is terribly silly, but it's got that odd feeling like this whole small town was in on the joke and everyone chipped in and made this goofy flick a ton of fun. So it's kind of awesome.

Number 10 - Not of this Earth (1957, 1988)

Speaking of silly, you won't find two filmmakers who are more open to cheese than Roger Corman and Jim Wynorski. And the story behind Not of this Earth, featuring a nurse who works for an odd character who turns out to be an emissary from a distant land (and I don't mean Kansas), lends itself to their kind of cheese. The former film is a black and white drive-in classic led by Paul "Marlboro Man" Birch, the latter is full of comedic turns and led by former porn star Traci Lords. Both films are charming enough to hit this list, in their own ways.

Number 9 - The Arrival (1996)

It's probably not a good idea to put a Charlie Sheen film this close to one starring a porn star, but I'm gonna risk it. The Arrival arrived (oof, that stung) early in the Summer of 1996 - just before Independence Day was released to much hype - and kind of fell on deaf ears throughout the world. But director David Twohy's film is a pretty smart sci-fi chiller, with Sheen's Zane Zaminski (major bonus points for cool character name!) uncovering a secret signal and then battling wits with a dastardly Ron Silver (and you all should know just how much The Mike loves Ron Silver - it's a lot). The action and the effects that big budget sci-fi flicks are known for aren't here, but I'll take it over its much bigger 1996 counterpart any day of the week.

Number 8 - The Hidden (1987)

I've written about The Hidden before, but it bears repeating that this might be the '80s coolest sci-fi flick. The action packed story follows a creature that inhabits human bodies and gets a little silly when the special effects come into play, but the brisk pace keeps the film going so fast that you barely notice anything amiss. The Hidden also capitalizes on political concerns of the '80s and seems to throw a huge middle finger at the culture of the time, particularly in ritzy Los Angeles. I can dig it.

Number 7 - Men in Black (1997)

The legendary guardians against all kinds of alien invasiony nonsense take form in Barry Sonnenfeld's summer blockbuster, and face off with a one alien wrecking crew: "The Bug", portrayed in human form by Vincent D'Onofrio. Sure, the invasion is a secondary part of the film to Will Smith's evolution from cool dude to wise and cool dude, but it's still one of the most charming sci-fi comedies out there. And Tommy Lee Jones' straight man opposite utter chaos is always welcome.

Number 6 - Invaders from Mars (1953, 1986)

One of the first invasion films to make a connection to the Cold War and communism, the original Invaders from Mars comes to the viewer from the perspective of a young boy who witnesses an invasion. The invasion that follows has the required amount of military involvement and parent manipulation, which helps the film overcome some problems in acting and direction. Tobe Hooper's 1986 remake uses more comedy and more special effects, and is a good time-passer.

Number 5 - The Blob (1958)

Did you really think I wasn't gonna mention The Blob? Sure, his (Or is it a her? Do Blobs even have genders? Are there more than one Blob? We never really know!) invasion was stopped pretty quickly by really old teenagers, but he wins plenty of style points for being one of the few amorphous invaders in film history. And I love The Blob, so it's on the list. NEXT.

Number 4 - Predator (1987)

I'm sure he wasn't voted "Most Likely to Blow Himself Up on Another Planet Because of an Austrian Lunkhead" when he graduated his planet's equivalent of high school, which makes the ill-fated invasion by the Predator all the more sad. But his movie is still pretty amazing, so I'm willing to give some credit to the Predator for being the baddest humanoid one-man invasion crew ever. He couldn't have predicted that he was going to run into Schwarzenegger, Weathers, and the rest of the bad-asses, and we can't hold that against him.

Number 3 - The Thing From Another World/The Thing (1951, 1982)

I'm probably undervaluing The Thing here, mostly because it wins almost every time I make a list. Both versions of this story vary greatly, and both represent different kinds of invaders. Much like the last two films, the invaders are slowed by factors outside their control - in these cases, location. The original Thing gets bonus points for basically birthing the "watch the skies" craze of the '50s, while the remake gets bonus points for just being really awesome.

Number 2 - They Live (1988)

What if the invasion is already here? That's the question asked - and answered by a nameless blue-collar worker - in They Live, which has has long been one of my favorite movies to talk about. Like The Hidden, we get a look at how greed can be involved in an '80s Los Angeles invasion, but this time it's human greed taking the lead instead of alien greed. I've spent a lot of words on how important I think They Live is before, so I'm just gonna let it tell its own story this time around.

Number 1 - Invasion of Body Snatchers/Body Snatchers (1956, 1978, 1993)

First things first - I'm not as wild about the '78 remake as everyone else is. Yes, Sutherland and Nimoy. No, it's not as scary as people say and the ending's kind of dumb. And it's way too long. It's good. It's not great.

That said, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the definitive sci-fi paranoia epic. From Kevin McCarthy's howling lead performance to the cool pod people effects, there's plenty to love about the movie that's spawned three remakes. My favorite of those, as evidenced above, is Abel Ferrara's 1993 Body Snatchers. With a script by horror maestros Stuart Gordon and Larry Cohen, an ominous army base setting, and wonderful performances by the Gabrielle Anwar, Meg Tilly, and Forest Whitaker.

Though the flying saucers and little green men get the most headlines, it's the invaders that we can't easily see that provide the most chills and thrills for viewers. Siegel knew that, and the story he created lives on - in many different tellings (though it's best we just don't mention The Invasion, isn't it?) - as my favorite alien invasion.

Except for maybe this one....

Midnight Movie of the Week #108 - The Devil's Rain

2012-01-26T21:55:00.000-06:00

William Shatner's back for a second week in the Midnight Movie of the Week spotlight, but this time he's just a small reason I'm talking about a kooky '70s desert-based horror. This week we're talking about The Devil's Rain, which allows one of my all-time favorite actors (and possibly one of my all-time favorite people, even though I've never met him) to lead a Satanic cult through a demented plot.

That actor is the unmistakable Ernest Borgnine, who gained my love through roles like the lead character in the Oscar winning romance Marty and the memorable Cabbie from Escape from New York. But The Devil's Rain lets him - under the "techinical" guidance of real-world Satanist cult leader Anton LaVey - take on a heavy role as the high priest of a dangerous church. His character, Corbis, turns out to be more than 200 years old, and is still leading in his attempts to get revenge on a family that once betrayed him.

The first antagonist from that family - at least that is shown in the film, which means that nothing too memorable must have happened in the last 200 years of him torturing the family - is Mark Preston, played by The Shat. We meet him as the film opens, and are quickly made to know that Corbis has some kind of power over his family. How do we know that? Well, we know that because Mark's dad's face melts.

The result is a showdown in the desert between Borgnine's Corbis and Shatner's Mark, which the satanist dubs "a battle of faith". Using plenty of conjurer's tricks, Corbis defeats and enslaves Shatner, which leads to two things. In the film, it leads to Tom Skerritt and his attractive young wife (Joan Prather) teaming up with an expert (Eddie Albert) to try and get to the bottom of things and stop Corbis' reign. In the world of horror, Shatner's capture leads to him wearing a cheesy looking mask....the same mask that would be painted white and become the face of Michael Myers three years later.

The rest of the eighty-six minute film - whose plot moves swiftly and carelessly and often doesn't make a lot of sense - focuses on the trio of Skerritt, Prather, and Albert and their attempts to stop Corbis, while Corbis performs ceremonies on Shatner and a young John Travolta and turns into a horned demon. Certain critics have stated that The Devil's Rain doesn't really have enough material in it to be a full feature film, and they're probably right - especially when you get to the end of the film and realize that the climax happens with about 12 minutes left and the rest of the film is the chaotic aftermath.

The titular Devil's Rain is a glass jar/crystal ball lookin' thing that holds the souls of Corbis' slaves, and it plays heavily into the film's final act. At this point in the proceedings we know that everything the film offers is pretty ridiculous - as a Christian, there's a voice inside me that says "What did you expect from a movie whose technical consultant invented a Satan religion?"- but there's a kitschy charm throughout the film thanks to the cast. Director Robert Fuest was no stranger to campy cult flicks - he'd previously directed both Dr. Phibes films with Vincent Price - so he handles things admirably when you consider the script. (I also can't believe that it took three people to write this thing.) Unfortunately, the film's poor reception from critics and failures at the box office pretty much ended Fuest's genre feature career.

It sounds like I'm dissing The Devil's Rain a lot here, and that certainly wasn't my intention when I started typing this. You see, despite all its silly flaws, there's certainly a one-of-a-kind charm to Fuest's film. I attribute much of that to Borgnine, who buys in to the role and makes Corbis a menace throughout the film, and the rest of the cast, and the director's willingness to let things spiral out of control as the film goes on. The effects might not hold up - those masks on the members of Corbis' congregation do the film no favors - and the plot may be lacking, but fans of Satanic cinema will find some great images and fun performances throughout this one.

I've just experienced The Devil's Rain for the first time this week, so the fact that I'm sitting here and talking about it right now is a pretty strong testament regarding the film. I'm willing to give a lot of its more obvious shortcomings a pass. The short run-time ensures that the film doesn't overstay its welcome, and the odd chain of events that we see through the film is certainly unique and interesting. And it has Borgnine. And that's pretty much enough to keep me interested in checking out The Devil's Rain again when I'm craving some cheesy '70s satanism and some diabolical Borgnine goodness.

The Woman

2012-01-25T13:46:00.000-06:00

(2011, Dir. by Lucky McKee.)

Trying to decide which character in The Woman is most terrifying is like trying to decide which flavor of mayonnaise you want to eat. It's a trick question, because no sane person actually wants to eat mayonnaise...especially if it comes in different flavors that still will taste like mayonnaise. The point is that the central conflict of The Woman is one of those situations where no one really wins, everyone really suffers, and it all comes together to form one of the most interesting horror films in years.

Over the past few years, I've occasionally wondered what was up with director Lucky McKee - who wowed me way back in 2002 with the wonderful human horror film May - who seemed to have fallen into a slump after that initial horror hit. But The Woman - which he co-wrote with author Jack Ketchum, who seems to specialize in sadism and real-world torture - is a dramatic statement that the director still has a lot to offer film fans from all walks of life.

Pollyanna McIntosh is featured as the title character, a cannibalistic woman of the forest who is captured and "trained" by a rural family. McIntosh is reprising a role that she originated in a less publicized and poorly-reviewed Ketchum adaptation, entitled Offspring, but it's easy to see who and what she is even if you don't know that. (I found out this was a sequel about 30 minutes into the film, and didn't consider that a drawback to this film at all.) The actress physically transforms into the terrifying character, and it's pretty near impossible for the viewer to recognize her supermodel-esque stature as she writhes through the film as the monstrous man-eater. Silent and demonic isn't a new task for a horror antagonist, but McIntosh's woman is one of the more unique and unsettling visions I've seen in a long, long time.

I almost stopped myself when I called McIntosh the antagonist a moment ago, because - as I mentioned at the top of this review - those who oppose her are terrifying in their own way. The main oppressor is the patriarch of the family played by Sean Bridgers, a lanky actor who seems kind of goofy by Hollywood standards and is kind of a mixture of Will Ferrell and Anthony Perkins. Bridgers is a demanding father who rules through passive means (when he's not getting physical with his kids, wife, and captive), and the progression from kind-of-a-dick to full-fledged sociopath that his character makes is handled perfectly throughout the film. Bridgers is such a natural in the role that I'd imagine he's one of those people who would creep me out if I ran into him on the street, even though I know he's just an actor.

(In the same vein as that last comment, I'd like to point out that I'd also never, ever, no matter how supermodel she looks, put anything near McIntosh's mouth. Even though I know she's just an actor too.)

The father's family are made up of several scared and confused young folks, led by May star Angela Bettis as his wife and Lauren Ashley Carter and Zach Rand as their elder children. Bettis gives a frail performance as the wife, who is the victim of a few of his assaults, while the children represent opposite ends of the spectrum of abuse. When the father lets them all know that this beast of a woman is trapped on their property, we get to witness the varied reactions of his family - and how they deal with that knowledge in their own ways sells the film's perspective quite well.

With a terrifying physical specimen on one end of the story and an uncontrollable male with no conscience on the other, the questions that are raised by The Woman become more complex and more thought-provoking as the film goes on. There are several details - specifically in the final act - that are left to the viewer to interpret in their own ways. This will probably confuse and bewilder some viewers, and I admit that I had to take pause and wonder if I missed something along the way at a couple of moments, but the final conflicts of the film speak their own language to the viewer. There's plenty of blood and guts as the arrangement between the family and the woman finally is shaken up, and it all leads to a satisfying, if not open-ended, conclusion.

When I put the events of the film together in retrospect - and I had to "sleep on it" to really get everything straight in my head - The Woman stands up as one of the more fascinating films I've seen in a long time. There's so much said about human cruelty and nature vs. nurture and even gender roles - perhaps my first reaction to the film was to feel like my own gender has never done anything right for our female counterparts - in The Woman, and almost all of it is handled with care by Ketchum and McKee.

The Woman is surely not a popcorn horror film that viewers will want to consume often, but I didn't think it was as heavy as some of Ketchum's other works (I'm still debating whether I'll ever feel safe to watch The Girl Next Door again) and it's pretty accessible for horror fans of all types. I can't recommend it enough.

(Oh, the trailer just reminded me of one complaint that's pretty minor. I wasn't wild about the soundtrack. I like that the film doesn't have your average horror movie score with all the pulsating and screaming, but the indie rock/emo thing bugged me after a while. I'm not sure what I'd have done differently, but at times I was concerned the film was trying to dictate my emotions via music, and it took away from the film at times.

But, that doesn't change the fact that this is a must-see horror film. So see it!)

The Last Circus (or, Balada Triste de Trompeta)

2012-01-23T22:39:00.000-06:00

(2010, Dir. by Alex de la Iglesia.)

Any reference to horror's early years - the times when Lon Chaney ruled the world and led to the era of Karloff and Lugosi - is welcome in Mike's world, but I didn't really expect a connection between these horror icons and The Last Circus, which was promoted as a bombastic onslaught of violence that might have been the Spanish answer to violent filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino. In fact, there are some loose parallels between this film and Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, both in theme and in execution, though I'm not entirely sure the similar tone was intentional.

The fact that I'm talking about Chaney and Karloff and Tarantino while talking about a flick I didn't really care to see speaks volumes about how surprised I was to find myself caught up in The Last Circus - or, as the Spanish title says, A Sad Trumpet Ballad - as it unfolded before me. I expected it to be a film about sadistic disfigured clowns who run around with high-powered weapons - and, for the most part, it is - but that literal Spanish title is a lot more telling than the American advertisements would have you believe.

Director Alex de la Iglesias may not directly reference his contemporaries, but the opening credit montage - a montage of images that follows the events of the twentieth century and focuses heavily on war imagery - spends several moments featuring Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff and even Charles B. Middleton (and his portrayal of the diabolical Ming the Merciless in the initial Flash Gordon serials). This isn't just a cute homage, it's a warning of things to come, because the director's story clearly draws from the tortured-soul-turned-monster themes that filled early horror films.

The plot follows the doomed existence of Javier, the son of a clown who is destined to be a "sad clown" after witnessing his father's involvement in World War II. The father leads the first action-packed sequence - one of the countless moments in the film which feature dudes in clown makeup killing efficiently - before being imprisoned and eventually killed by a vicious general. Before his death, he gets a chance to remind his son of his fate and the one thing that can save him - revenge.

Javier grows up and accepts his circus job as sad clown - destined to be the butt of all jokes and the recipient of much abuse - and meets the two people who seal his tortured fate. One is the funny clown he works for - an abusive and violent drunk named Sergio - and the other is that clown's beautiful girlfriend, the circus' trapeze artist named Natalia. Despite their vast differences, Natalia quickly becomes interested in the portly sad clown - because he's the one person who stands up to Sergio when he tells a dead baby joke. Unfortunately, Natalia is still interested in Sergio too, due to his violent and sexual nature, which creates the conflict that carries the film.

Throughout the film, all three characters are victims in countless ways. Both clowns end up with facial disfigurements and mental maladies, while Natalia is stuck in the middle to witness their madness. All three characters are drawn really well, and the actors that portray them - Carlos Areces as Javier, Antonio de la Torre as Sergio, and Carolina Bang (who is a) incredibly stunning and b) despite her name, NOT a porn star) as Natalia - do a fantastic job of physically throwing themselves into the film. The disconnect between the timid sad clown and the unhinged funny clown is tested as Javier becomes increasingly demented, but continues to be a key to the film through the impressive cliffhanger of a finale.

The least interesting thing about the film is its violence and carnage - which were one of the main selling points of the film in the first place - but that's not saying the brutality is a distraction from the psychological drama on screen. These scenes of bloodshed are the ones that will remind American audiences of people like Tarantino or Rob Zombie, but I got a little distracted from the main story through them. A mid film sequence that brings Javier back into contact with his father's killer seems especially odd as I look back at the film, as this sequence might only be remembered because it blatantly refuses to put clothes on Areces. It's not a bad sequence in total, but when it's compared to the tragic love triangle that unfolds in the first and third acts it seems like filler.

Tragedy, not brutality, is the key word when it comes to The Last Circus for me. Sure, you get a huge, ugly clown running around with machine guns and threatening children, but it's the dramatic turns that mimic the earliest days of horror that sold The Last Circus to me. I'm not sure the end result is really a great film, but I put a lot more thought into this one than I expected to when i saw the first advertisements, and that alone has me excited to experience The Last Circus - or, should I say, A Sad Trumpet Ballad - again. It's a deviously interesting little film.

Haywire

2012-01-21T15:36:00.000-06:00

(2012, Dir. by Steven Soderbergh.)

Steven Soderbergh has been one of Hollywood's most reliable directors throughout his career, with hits like Traffic, Ocean's Eleven, and last year's Contagion to his credit. But he's also reserved a reputation as a director who loves to experiment with other ideas. For example, he cast small-town workers as small-town workers in 2005's Bubble, and he cast pornographic actress Sasha Grey to headline his 2009 call girl drama The Girlfriend Experience. Soderbergh's outside-the-box approach to casting has become a pattern over more than 15 years, which made it less of a surprise when he cast female MMA fighter Gina Carano as the lead in his latest thriller, Haywire.

Carano - who I first knew as "the cute one" from the American Gladiators reboot with Hulk Hogan - headlines the action-packed flick as Mallory Kane, an ex-Marine who works for a "private contractor" and does odd jobs like extracting hostages from Barcelona or investigating a shady businessman in Dublin. She's surrounded by a cast of powerful Hollywood males - Ewen McGregor, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Douglas as the men in power, Bill Paxton as her concerned father, Michael Fassbender as a British agent, and Channing Tatum as a coworker-turned-opponent - but I really don't think any viewer will leave this film and not realize that this is entirely Carano's film.

You've no doubt seen the plot before - skilled professional is set-up, escapes, seeks to clear name and get vindication - but the script by Lem Dobbs (who wrote one of my favorite Soderbergh flicks, The Limey) and Soderbergh's framing of the action sequences play to the strengths of the star. That means that Carano is free to use plenty of hand-to-hand combat when faced with danger, throwing adversaries with her own momentum, using the walls as springboards when necessary, and focusing on weakening limbs and immobilizing others to control the fight. The film isn't as action-packed as the ads would have you believe and some viewers might complain of lapses between action, but I felt Soderbergh balanced the drama of Mallory's plight with more than enough fast-paced fighting and car chases.

Carano is naturally a little green as an actress - I kept thinking that she was overdoing it with facial expressions to denote every thought or concern - but she does a pretty wonderful job when you consider how little acting she's done. There's a definite Kill Bill vibe to the character, but - unlike Uma Thurman - there's not even a doubt in the viewer's mind that Carano is capable of the things she does on screen. The way she carries herself in the role goes a long way to making the film work, because you can see her confidence in herself shining through in almost every scene.

Much will be made of the fact that Haywire empowers a female action star - though I love the quote in the film that warns "You shouldn't think of her as a woman. That would be a mistake" - and rightfully so. This plays like a tribute to Carano and the abilities that women like her posses. I can't think of a Hollywood actress who could have jumped into this film and brought the same combination of skill and intensity, which makes the minor quirks in her acting style irrelevant. Haywire simply could not be what it is without a woman like Carano.

January is generally a dumping ground for movies that studios don't want, so the release of a well-made action thriller from Soderbergh and a Grade A cast is like found gold. When you look at all the talent that surrounds her - both behind and in front of the camera - it's easy to see that Carano was set up for success here. Her particular set of skills does a lot of the work for the film, and the polish that's provided by Soderbergh and company ensures that few will be disappointed by her or the film. Haywire isn't gonna win Soderbergh another Oscar, but it's a completely entertaining action/thriller that signals the potential birth of a star. If she keeps working with the right people, Carano could be the female action hero that Hollywood's craved for decades.

Midnight Movie of the Week #107 - Kingdom of the Spiders

2012-01-19T23:52:00.000-06:00

The epic journey of Rack Hansen is something any man, woman, or child would want to be a part of. After all, Rack Hansen is a one-of-a-kind cowboy vet, who's not above riding a horse and wearing a pink cowboy shirt and being awesome. And, when you consider the fact that Rack Hansen is played by none less than William Shatner, you kind of get the idea that there should be a whole series of Rack Hansen films out there. Mostly because his name is Rack Hansen, of course.

Unfortunately, there is only one Rack Hansen film - I pray I'm wrong, but that seems to be the truth - and that film is the 1977 arachna-palooza Kingdom of the Spiders. The Shat gets his Arizona swagger on alongside one of FMWL's three (imaginary) brides, Tiffany Bolling - who naturally plays a hot arachnologist - in the battle to save a small Arizona community from a seemingly unending wave of tarantulas. The film is the debut feature by director John "Bud" Cardos, and it's one of those movies that is surprisingly good at what it does if you only consider what it intends to do.

I forgot to mention that the great Woody Strode - who broke the NFL's color barrier and was basically awesome - has a supporting role in the film.

No, Kingdom of the Spiders will never be confused with high art - this is the kind of movie the Criterion collection would pretend to release on April Fool's Day - and it's easy to see the film's flaws. Y'know, flaws like the fact that tarantula venom actually doesn't do much to humans, yet kills several throughout the film. Kingdom of the Spiders was also pretty late to the game among animals-gone-wild films of the 1970s, following plenty of films like The Food of the Gods, that covered similar territory.

Except you rarely saw a cow in the back seat of a car in other movies.

I could argue that Kingdom of the Spiders is a far more competent film than something like Food of the Gods, but I'd be missing the point. The point is that this one has Shatner stomping the crud out of hundreds of real tarantulas. The animal rights folks would probably have a fit if someone tried to make this movie today, because I'm willing to bet that a lot of "innocent" spiders were harmed and or killed during the making of this film. Me, I'm OK with the film, because spiders creep me the heck out. If it has more than 4 legs or less than 2, I kill it - that's my motto.

I don't really need to waste my time discussing what Shatner brings to the film, because the only way to describe a William Shatner performance is by saying he acts like William Shatner. Bolling is certainly more restrained in this PG feature than she is in her other grindhouse roles (check out all my Tiffany Bolling love here), with her primary purpose in the film being that she reminds us that William Shatner is the man of the film. She's still a sight to see, and Cardos does what he can to show her in as much undress as the MPAA will allow under a PG rating, but she's not Shatner and she's not the spiders and thus she's not really that important to the film.

As the film builds toward a final act that resembles "trapped in a house" settings like those of The Birds or Night of the Living Dead, we're treated to an increasing amount of Shatner that's sure to satisfy any cheese lover. Moments like the one when Shatner reaches into a vent and recoils in pain or when he ventures into a cellar only to be blanketed by eight legged critters show off the kind of acting that only the Captain of the Starship Enterprise is capable of. There are sure to be some laughs had at Shatner's expense - then again, when aren't there laughs had at Shatner's expense? - but this certainly wouldn't be as watchable a film without his thespian talents.

It probably sounds like I'm dissing Kingdom of the Spiders, but I really do love this silly little movie. Cardos - who would later direct the odd 1979 chiller The Dark (I dig that one too!) and the 1984 Wings Hauser film Mutant (and I have got to see that!) - keeps the film simple but never seems to be in over his head as a director. When I compared the film to The Birds or NOTLD earlier I certainly didn't mean to compare this director to Hitchcock or Romero, but Cardos is more than capable of keeping the film moving and making the story seem more pulpy than trashy. Though some of the scenes where the spiders meet the main cast seem a bit off - a lot of times the tarantulas don't follow direction and run AWAY from their "victims" - there are some fantastic scenes in which the spiders roam through the small town and crawl all over cast members and extras.

The film's willingness to use real spiders is sure to give anyone with even the slightest case of arachnaphobia some chills, and the director and his talented (in their own ways) stars keep Kingdom of the Spiders feeling like more than just another cheesy animal attack film. It's hard to really explain why - maybe it's just that nerds like me put Shatner on one heckuva pedestal - but Kingdom of the Spiders is greater than the sum of its parts. And now that Shout Factory has rescued it from the public domain and produced a fantastic DVD transfer of the film - please note that the DVD cover implies that a torch comes out of Mr. Shatner's crotch, which sadly does not really happen - there's nothing that should keep any of us from boldly visiting this Kingdom when we need a dose of late '70s cheese.

Oh, and I can't finish this review without referencing the INCREDIBLY AWKWARD quasi-romantic relationship between Rack Hansen (I seriously haven't said Rack Hansen enough tonight) and the widow of his brother, who totally wants a dose of Rack. That's a problem when you consider the fact that Tiffany Bolling is also in the movie, so let's just say that the film wraps up this bit of awkwardness relatively early in the film's plot. But that doesn't make the love triangle any less awkward.

Well done, Rack Hansen. Well done.

Two on a Guillotine

2012-01-16T22:25:00.000-06:00

(1965, Dir. by William Conrad.)

Assisted by its attention grabbing title, Two on a Guillotine is one of those movies that just sounds really cool from the minute you know it exists. The black-and-white film (framed well in a widescreen 2.4:1 aspect) follows a young woman who is required to spend seven nights in the home of her deceased father, a macabre magician played by TV's The Joker, Cesar Romero. (And, in case I forget to mention it for the rest of the review, Romero's brief performance is flat out fantastic.)

Any horror fan worth their weight in jumpscares should know that "spend a night in this awful place" is one of the oldest tricks the genre has to offer, and due to this there are times when it appears that our film might fall into cliches we've already seen. Thankfully, there are plenty of moments in the film that had my eyes attached to the screen, and I think a lot of that is owed to the unique vision of director William Conrad.

In an odd twist, Two on the Guillotine was the third movie directed by Conrad to be released in the first five months of 1965. (All three films - Brainstorm, My Blood Runs Cold, and this one - are available via the Warner Archive Collection.) Conrad is best known for his career as a character actor - which led to late career popularity when he starred as title characters on TV shows Cannon and Jake and the Fatman - but now that I've seen two of these films (Brainstorm is one helluva psycho-noir, folks) his work as a director has completely caught my eye.

Perhaps the greatest gift that Conrad brings to the film is his willingness to linger on certain moments. Like Brainstorm, one sequence pumps up a jazzy musical number while the characters share an awkward romantic moment, and there's something kind of hypnotic about the director's willingness to overplay this moment completely. More in tone with the horror genre, Conrad utilizes this patience late in the film as the magician's daughter - played adequately by Connie Stevens - finally is moved to terror by the house and the camera settles in on a doorknob that we just know is going to move at any moment. The camera waits....and waits...and waits...and the tension skyrockets through the roof.

From that moment forward, the film powers through the final act to an interesting conclusion. Screams are screamed, secrets are revealed, and hammy acting is used in the best possible way. The cliches of the script are pretty easily forgotten as the film turns psychological at the end, and the result is an incredibly fascinating thriller. It's not quite a full-fledged horror movie - to quote a famous dude, the biggest thing the characters have to fear at times is probably fear itself - but it's got real tension, a few surprises, and that guillotine that the title hangs over the viewer's head. Two on a Guillotine isn't quite William Castle at his best, but it hits a lot of the same notes and should please anyone who loves a good old fashioned creepy house picture.

NERD ALERT: The Post In Which I Discuss the Horrors of Skyrim

2012-01-15T19:20:00.002-06:00

I'm not the world's biggest gamer, but I - like a whole host of folks across the globe - have recently been caught up in the world of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Most of my life I've been a sports/wrestling games kind of guy, so when I first heard of Skyrim I wasn't sure there was anything for me in this open-world, dragon-slaying, fantasy epic. After a few too many hours in the game's world, I realized just how wrong I was.

In fact, I've kind of ignored the main story that I'm supposed to be playing in the game, because I quickly learned that the side quests in the game are pretty much full of horror movie staples. Let's take a look at just how much horrory goodness is hidden inside this ginormous video game universe.

(I suppose some of the things I'm about to say could be considered SPOILERS, but I'll do my best to keep things vague for the sake of the folks who haven't experienced this addiction....errr, game....yet.)

The Universal Monsters are well represented.
After finding vampires, werewolves, invisibility and mummies throughout the game, I'll pretty shocked if I don't stumble upon a case of grave digging and a mad scientist trying to reanimate tissue any day now.

The first of these you'll probably encounter are the mummies, skeleton-looking fellas that the game calls "Dragur". You're gonna run into these guys ALL THE TIME during this game. Any time you walk into a cave or dungeon or whatever in the middle of Skyrim, you're gonna get draugred up. They come in lots of different shapes - some are Draugr Wights and some are Draugr Overlords and some are Restless Draugrs. I like to just call them all Ivan Draugr and laugh at them and say "I must break you" before I bash them into pieces with a warhammer.

Vampires are still a bit of a mystery in the game for me. I've encountered a few, which are basically normal looking people who come out at night and can be killed just like any other creature in the game - so (as far as I can tell) there's no wooden stakes needed. There's one pretty cool quest that unveils a bit of vampirism that I've been involved with, but it was really short and left me wanting more. Now they just happen upon me at night in the wild sometimes, and I hammer them. Allegedly you can be turned into a vampire in the game, I haven't seen this yet.

I mentioned invisibility up there too, but - so far- there's no real Invisible Man story I've encountered. There are potions that can make your character invisible, but - like everything else - I mostly prefer smashing things with the last warhammer I found over being sneaky.

But really, the werewolves are where it's at.
I've been a werewolf fan ever since I grew my first fur, so the first time I encountered a werewolf in Skyrim was one of the first moments I started screaming OMG and texting my gamer friends. It was part of one of the primary side quests in the game, and I thought I'd screwed up completely when the moment began. Turned out I was stuck in a cutscene - which can sometimes be a bad thing - but this one provided a wolfy reveal that had me fist-pumping and immediately canceling all plans so I could keep playing and see what happens next. (Ah, who am I kidding? I didn't have any plans, I'm a nerd who's blogging about Skyrim.

Eventually my miniature female character who specializes in two-handed weaponry was given a choice. To be a lycanthrope...or not to be a lycanthrope. I don't care if I no longer get a benefit from rest....I'm gonna be a freakin' werewolf. So now my character can turn into a wolfman any time my Magicka's strong enough. I still haven't figured out a time when I really need to use it - but it's incredibly awesome that it's there. Plus, considering my character's gender and choice of marriage partner, my game is actually a lesbian werewolf story. I'm sure that development would make plenty of sleazy Spanish and Italian horror filmmakers - and or equal rights activists - proud.

You want "real world horrors"? They're (kinda) there too.
The quest I've experienced that was probably voted "Most Likely to be Seen on Primetime Network TV" by its graduating class happens in the town of Windhelm, where a killer has been taking out young women during the night. I kind of expected this to turn in to one of those vampire storylines, but the events that unfolded (including my investigation of the murder house that's pictured above) go in a different route.

TV crime aficionados may enjoy the CSI twists of this storyline, I was more concerned by its dark magic related aspects. (Oh, BTW, supernatural stuff and dark magic is pretty much all over this game. I don't get too far into it though, because - you guessed it - I just really like smashing stuff.) I've learned that the story has a few possible endings - and I'm betting I wasn't supposed to let the killer off his final victim in front of me and THEN deal with him - but it's a nice dark detective story in the middle of the otherwise fantasy-laden film.

Speaking of supernatural stuff, I should have already mentioned that there are ghosts all over this game. So that's nice too.

And if that's not enough, there's this part where Sutter Cane meets The Cell.
Even moreso than the werewolf reveal, a side quest entitled "The Mind of Madness" - which I conveniently found a couple days after a re-watch of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness - had me picking my jaw up off the floor.

This is one of those points where I can't really go into too many details - because this odd little story line is one of the truly "figure it out as you go" moments I've found in the game (except for those awful puzzle traps that are in so many dungeons) - but this quest is basically going to take you out of the world you've spent the rest of the film in and drop you smack dab in the middle of a nightmare. We're not quite talking Silent Hill here, as the sequence is pretty tongue in cheek and features a voice actor who hams it up and sounds like a drunk Billy Connolly, but it's a rare devilish little twist. And you can't get out of it until you figure it out, which gives it the same vibe as the tale of Sutter Cane in Carpenter's film.

In the end, Skyrim is first-and-foremost a game about dragons and you being the foretold Dragonborn who can mess up their return to this Middle Earthy land full of unique folks of many races and creeds (there's an article that could be written about how progressive the folks in Skyrim are, but that's a different story for a different blogger). But my point is that the horror aspect of the game is a wonderful and unexpected twist that I didn't expect from the game, and its this unpredictable nature and completely diverse game environment that should really sell Skyrim to even the casual game nerd - because there's something inside this one for everyone with a controller.

Like the folks who want to attack a dragon as a werewolf. Like me.

Midnight Movie of the Week #106 - Flash Gordon

2012-01-14T13:55:00.000-06:00

In my mind, there probably isn't a better sci-fi midnight movie than Flash Gordon. Perhaps that's wrong to most, but I simply can not deny the 1980 cheesefest and the amount of entertainment it's offered me. Sure, I know there are a lot of great sci-fi movies out there, but I'm just terribly partial to this kind of tongue-in-cheek intergalactic adventure. People might think I'm crazy if I say that I'm gonna take a midnight viewing of Flash Gordon over a midnight viewing of something like....well, something like Star Wars.....but I'd make that pick every single day. And I love Star Wars.

Of course, when I start my argument by talking about how Flash Gordon's opening sequence features a "Hot Hail" button, people think I'm crazy. But the opening sequence, in which the diabolical Ming - played by the undeniably cool Max von Sydow and his booming voice - "plays" with the Earth and unleashes his destruction sets the tone for the rest of the pulpy adventure perfectly. Oh, and it - like much of the film - makes me laugh hysterically at how wonderfully silly it is.

Ming the Merciless is rendered in an almost comical fashion - my last viewing of the film happened via blu-ray, which did no favors for the overuse of makeup on von Sydow - but the veteran actor is the absolute perfect choice to bring the dictator to life. The film makes sure to show Ming's power, but also gives him a devilish sense of humor that fits perfectly opposite the hero. My favorite moment might be the arranged wedding late in the film, in which Ming dictates the terms of his vows to the official presiding over the ceremony.

Ming's reign of terror wouldn't be complete without his Earthling adversaries, who hurl their bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out there. They are led by the title character, accompanied by his love interest Dale Arden (the duo certainly have one of the quickest progressions from meeting to love to proposal in film history) and the scientist Hans Zarkov. Zarkov is played by the scenery-chewing Topol, whose deep voice and beardedness are matched only by one of his co-stars.

The man I speak of is the fantastic Brian Blessed, who soars through the film as Prince Vultan of the Hawkmen. The feud between Vultan and Prince Barin (future Bond Timothy Dalton) is an incredibly entertaining side-plot, and it ties in with our hero's journey well. There's a Shakespearean kind of feel to this whole "feuding clans in the same kingdom" side of the plot - though I doubt Shakespeare ever intended to be tied in to something with a soundtrack by Queen.

All of this is brought together by Sam J. Jones as Flash, who's probably the least interesting member of the cast. But something kind of amazing happens due to this. But something kind of amazing happens because Jones is so average as a hero: the supporting folks become that much more interesting. Heck, the fact that I'm just now getting to Jones goes a long way to pointing out how much of the charm of the film - which I've seen like three dozen times - comes from the things that are going on around the hero. Too many films throw a hero at you and leave the rest of the film to fill in around them, while Flash Gordon makes sure that all bases are covered with characters whose antics make sus smile and who often bail out the vanilla hero with the chiseled jaw.

Flash Gordon is spectacle at its cheesiest and cheapest, but it's the kind of pulpy family friendly sci-fi movie that I just love. It might not have the epic scope of other sci-fi franchises - but anyone who condemns it for its dialogue or silly sets or music is clearly missing the point of why those of us who love Flash Gordon love Flash Gordon. Honestly, I'm not even sure why I love Flash Gordon at this point. But there's something calming and exciting and just flat-out lovable about it that I can never deny. I know it's not cool to be the guy who goes "Man, eff Star Wars, let's watch Flash Gordon!"....but I'm that guy and I admit it. Give me cheese or give me death....that's my motto.

8 Things I Love About... Army of Darkness

2012-01-12T00:05:00.000-06:00

If I had it entirely my way, I'd have posted 8 pictures of the guy with the Fu Manchu 'stache. This one's also cool for the kid in the background who's so excited that you'd think he was at a Stryper concert.

The Chainsaw Leap.

"It's a trick. Get an axe."

Attack of the Four-Inch Tall Groovies.

I strongly believe that "I'm blind. I'm blind!" moment that's followed by that wink and that noise is the best thing the great Bruce Campbell has ever done.

The three words from the undeniably great The Day The Earth Stood Still.

That moment when Fu Manchu 'Stache Dude basically saves the day and keeps the movie going.

The S-Mart Ending. Sorry Sam, I know you didn't want this and I may be a primitive knucklehead for saying this, but "Hail to the King, Baby." did a lot more for this movie's success than that goofy time travel ending would have.

The Summer of Massacre

2012-01-11T00:35:00.001-06:00

(2011, Dir. by Joe Castro.)

I'm gonna be up front with you all from the start here. This is the kind of movie that makes me wonder what the hell is wrong with the horror genre.

Allegedly having the highest body count in film history - the film's advertisements claim that Guinness backs this up - The Summer of Massacre is one of the messiest films I've ever seen. Unfortunately, I don't use the word messy due to the film's gore, I use the term messy because it's one of the most poorly made films I've ever seen.

Littered with awful CGI gore - think Birdemic meets one of those Arcade shooters from the mid '90s - and at times lacking a plot entirely, this "Joe Castro Experience" was surely designed with the most hardcore of horror fans in mind. But I simply can not fathom how anyone who - oh, I don't know, has ever seen another movie - would be able to see just how bad The Summer of Massacre is.

Summer of Massacre also claims to be the first ever anthology/slasher film (I'm not enough of a slasher authority to dispute that point, so congrats to the filmmakers for creating a sub-subgenre), which means we're supposed to get five different gory stories. Like messy, I suppose I should clarify my use of the term "story" here. For example, the first segment of the film doesn't really seem to have a plot at all. In it, a naked man wakes up, puts on some shorts, goes running, gets beat down, then runs around enraged killing someone every 12 seconds while a truly terrible pulsating demo-button-on-a-kids-keyboard type musical score hammers home how EXTREME the sequence is. But the thing is - it's NOT EXTREME AT ALL. It has no point, it's horribly put together, and the effects are so bad that even the gore hounds will be disappointed. The sequence ends with the killer saying something that might have been an explanation for what went on, but the sequence - and the actor - are so unintelligible that I don't think it's possible to make sense out of the gibberish that was spoken.

The film's second full segment features the star of the proceedings, '80s scream queen Brinke Stevens, who gives a brief performance as the mother of a deformed invalid whose good-looking sister tries to kill her. This sequence is a bit more competent than the first, but is still riddled with the same distracting and amateur computer effects and plenty of awful dialogue, punctuated by a random sexual revelation that comes of as immature and silly.

By this point in the film - which makes 97 minutes as tedious as possible - I was pretty far gone from the ability to think of this film as anything but a disaster. Surprisingly, the final two segments were a bit less off-putting, but still suffered the same problems as the rest of the film, primarily via bad acting, awful effects, and poor direction. The final twenty minutes amp up the violence again, but I've already told you the problem with that - it's all awful digital crap that would make a Geocities website from 1998 proud. There are some practical effects too, but they're just as overblown and ridiculous as the CGI gore too. Oh, and the CGI doesn't stop at the gore - there are times when entire shots have clearly been digitally rendered - which makes the film seem even that much more impotent

I guess I could say that The Summer of Massacre improves as it goes on, but the fact that it goes from "potentially the most inept movie of all-time" to "really terrible and horribly made" is no reason to ever come near watching this film. It's the kind of movie that makes me wonder if horror fans and filmmakers really are as sick as the media/researchers/stuck-up tools who whine about the genre's existence are on to something. Is there really an audience for a film that looks and sounds and acts like this? In the name of horror, in the name of filmmaking, and in the name of good old fashioned common sense - I sure as hell hope not.

Against my best judgment, I'm gonna post the film's official website and a link to the trailer here - since the kind folks at Breaking Glass Pictures were nice enough to send along a screener of this one - but I really can't recommend The Summer of Massacre for any reason to anyone. This is not the kind of horror movie I want to see, and I don't believe it's the kind of movie you'll want to see either. I highly doubt I'll see a worse movie in 2012.

The 2011 Midnight Movie of the Week Recap!

2012-01-08T16:37:00.002-06:00

With 2011 behind us, FMWL began its third year in existence last Thursday. That first year was a bit of a wash, but I'm super proud that I've managed to keep up consistently over the past two years. I owe most of that success to my Midnight Movie of the Week series of posts, which has always kept me driven to stay active and keep up to date with my favorite genre flicks.

The first year of the MMOTW was chronicled in a wrap-up style, and I couldn't resist doing the same thing again today. Mostly because I want to share my favorite screengrabs of 2011. Seriously, a great screengrab is about my favorite thing in the world. (Next to grilled cheese and the Packers, of course.) I'mma fit as many of them as I can into this post! Starting now!

So come on in and look around, because here are Midnight Movies of the Week #53-#104 one last time!

53. Burning Bright (2010, Horror, Dir. by Carlos Brooks.)

54. The 'Burbs (1989, Comedy, Dir. by Joe Dante.)

55. The Illustrated Man (1969, Horror, Dir. by Jack Smight.)

56. Phantom of the Paradise (1974, Horror/Musical, Dir. by Brian De Palma.)

57. Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958, Sci-Fi, Dir. by Nathan Juran.)

58. Carnival of Souls (1962, Horror, Dir. by Herk Harvey.)

59. Sisters (1973, Horror, Dir. by Brian De Palma.)

60. The Stepford Wives (1975, Horror, Dir. by Bryan Forbes.)

61. Big Trouble in Little China (1986, Sci-Fi, Dir. by John Carpenter.)

62. Danger: Diabolik (1968, Action/Sci-Fi, Dir. by Mario Bava.)

63. Of Unknown Origin (1983, Horror, Dir. by George P. Cosmatos.)

64. Evil Dead II (1987, Horror, Dir. by Sam Raimi.)

65. Westworld (1973, Sci-Fi, Dir. by Michael Crichton.)

66. The Wicker Man (2006, Comedy, Dir. by Neil Labute.)

67. Scream (1996, Horror, Dir. by Wes Craven.)

68. Red Eye (2005, Thriller, Dir. by Wes Craven.)

69. Blow Out (1981, Thriller, Dir. by Brian De Palma.)

70. Abominable (2006, Horror, Dir. by Ryan Schifrin.)

71. I, Madman (1989, Horror, Dir. by Tibor Takacs.)

72. Escape 2000 (1982, Action/Sci-Fi, Dir. by Brian Trenchard-Smith.)

73. Duel (1971, Thriller, Dir. by Steven Spielberg.)

74. Dead Calm (1989, Thriller, Dir. by Phillip Noyce.)

75. Bloody Birthday (1981, Horror, Dir. by Ed Hunt.)

76. Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986, Horror, Dir. by Tom McLoughlin.)

77. The Hidden (1987, Sci-Fi/Action, Dir. by Jack Sholder.)

78. Dawning (2009, Horror, Dir. by Gregg Holtgrewe.)

79. The Fly (1958, Sci-Fi/Horror, Dir. by Kurt Neumann.)

80. Deranged (1974, Horror, Dir. by Jeff Gillen.)

81. Panic in Year Zero! (1962, Sci-Fi, Dir. by Ray Milland.)

82. Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971, Horror, Dir. by John D. Hancock.)

83. The People Under the Stairs (1991, Horror, Dir. by Wes Craven.)

84. The Toxic Avenger (1984, Action/Horror/Comedy, Dir. by Lloyd Kaufman & Michael Herz.)

85. Night of the Living Dead (1968, Horror, Dir. by George A. Romero.)

86. The Sentinel (1977, Horror, Dir. by Michael Winner.)

87. The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (1992, Thriller, Dir. by Curtis Hanson.)

88. Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972, Horror, Dir. by Alan Gibson.)

89. The Last Winter (2006, Horror, Dir. by Larry Fessenden.)

90. Doctor X (1932, Horror, Dir. by Michael Curtiz.)

91. Dark and Stormy Night (2009, Comedy, Dir by Larry Blamire.)

92. Carrie (1976, Horror, Dir. by Brian De Palma.)

93. The Thing From Another World (1951, Horror/Sci-Fi, Dir. by Christian Nyby.)

94. Malevolence (2004, Horror, Dir. by Stevan Mena.)

95. The Exorcist (1973, Horror, Dir. by William Friedkin.)

96. Fathom (1967, Comedy/Action, Dir. by Leslie H. Martinson.)

97. Escape From New York (1981, Sci-Fi/Action, Dir. by John Carpenter.)

98. Son of Godzilla (1967, Sci-Fi, Dir. by Jun Fukuda.)

99. The Fog (1980, Horror, Dir. by John Carpenter.)

100. Bonnie's Kids (1973, Thriller, Dir. by Arthur Marks.)

101. The Centerfold Girls (1974, Horror/Thriller, Dir. by John Peyser.)

102. Soylent Green (1973, Sci-Fi, Dir. by Richard Fleischer.)

103. Die Hard 2 (1990, Action, Dir. by Renny Harlin.)

104. The Gate (1986, Horror, Dir. by Tibor Takacs.)

Here's some random stats/observations. Because stats and observations make Dennis Franz happy.

Only 29 of the 52 are films I'd first identify as horror films, down from 39 in 2010. I've always wanted to cover all kinds of genre flicks here, and I think this year has been a better variance of film types. After horror, we have 11 movies I identify as Sci-Fi, and 6 I'd give the ambiguous thriller label. There were also a couple films I struggled to fit in a specific genre - stuff like The Toxic Avenger and Bonnie's Kids - but I think that's a testament to how varied movies can be. And I dig that.
Three directors - Brian De Palma, John Carpenter, and Wes Craven - directed 10 of this year's 52. De Palma's 4 topped the year (representing a conscious effort I made to cover him more this year), while Carpenter remains my standby for MMOTW goodness - his three movies this year give him 6 MMOTW picks in two years. Other folks who now have more than one film on the MMOTW include Tibor Takacs, Richard Fleischer, George A. Romero, Joe Dante, and Mario Bava.
Actors and actresses who have multiple films on the list are slightly skewed by De Palma, who put Nancy Allen, John Travolta, and William Finley in two MMOTWs this year. Franz also appeared in two - partially thanks to De Palma and Blow Out. Ellen Burstyn is in two MMOTWS from '11, from two different ends of the quality spectrum - The Exorcist and The Wicker Man remake.
Returning actors in MMOTWs include plenty of my long-time favorites. Christopher Lee adds a 4th MMOTW to his resume this year, as does Caroline Munro. Jamie Lee Curtis, Kurt Russell, and Tom Atkins add two more, thanks to Carpenter.
The battle between the decades produced the same two top eras as 2010 - the 1980s and the 1970s - but the gap closed this year. The '80s still had the most MMOTW picks with 15, but the '70s was 1 behind at 14. Next closest decades were the 2000s and 1960s with 7 each. Through two years, the '80s still tops the MMOTW charts with 32 of 104 picks, followed by 25 from the '70s and 15 from the '60s.

Just like last year, I don't think those stats mean much - besides pointing out my tendencies for loving films of directors and actors and times - but it fascinates me nonetheless. Now, let's take a look at some more of my favorite screen shots from this year's MMOTW picks! As always, you can click these caps (and any other caps in the post) to make the images really friggin' bigger.

With that, the sun has set on 2011. The MMOTW's of 2012 are on their way!

Midnight Movie of the Week #105 - The Candy Snatchers

2012-01-06T00:42:00.000-06:00

Back by popular demand (from myself, but who's counting) is that blonde bombshell of the sleazy seventies, Tiffany Bolling - who's quickly become a veteran in the Midnight Movie of the Week canon. This time, I'm taking a look at the 1973 kidnap-xploitation flick (Did I just make that genre up? Maybe.) The Candy Snatchers, which has long been one of Ms. Bolling's films that eluded my eyes.

The film features Bolling and two male conspirators - the smaller and hornier Alan (played by Brad David) and the bigger and dopier Eddy (Vince Martorano) - who snatch up a 16 year old Catholic school girl - named Candy, of course - and set off a chain reaction of violence and mayhem that barrels out of control quickly. The trio have a kidnapping scheme in place, but we all know that things never really go as planned in this type of situation, don't we?

For starters, the girl's stepfather (played by the creepily Andrew-McCarthy-looking Ben Piazza) is a bit more worried about the money - and a lot more worried about having an affair with a fine young woman - than he is about the fate of Candy or her millionaire mother. He's always got that distant look in his eyes, and his unwillingness to go along with the trio's treacherous plan is just another splash of gasoline on their criminal fire.

Meanwhile, poor Candy (played by 20 year old Susan Sennett, who would later become the wife of Crosby, Stills & Nash's Graham Nash), gets abused by the men and ignored by Bolling's Jessie, who seems to grow a little jealous of the attention that's paid to Candy by her male companions. She's buried alive, she's beaten, she's raped (this was the '70s, somebody had to get raped), and she's pretty much tossed around like the plot device she is throughout the film. Ms. Sennett/Nash quit acting in the mid '70s - allegedly walking out on an audition for TV's Three's Company - because she was tired of doing "racy" material. So, basically, the character is abused so thoroughly that it made the actress feel abused four years later.

Which brings us to the real star of The Candy Snatchers - the only witness who has any chance of helping Candy - a mute, autistic child named Sean. Sean is played by Cristophe, the real-life son of director Guerdon Trueblood, and he bumbles through the film in his bib overalls while doing his best to communicate with those around him. Unfortunately, his parents hate him and abuse him because he can't talk, leading to a couple of late film scenes that had me gasping in fear for the little trooper. Sean's pretty much the cutest kid hero ever - particularly for such a sleazy film - and I spent much of the movie just wanting to jump through the screen and help the kid out. And maybe give him a high five for being awesome.

With this many volatile characters in one place - the only people we can really root for are a kid who can't communicate and a girl who's bound and gagged for most of the film - the heavy turns that occur throughout the film's journey cover a wide range of exploitation standards. Disagreements between the criminals and cat-and-mouse games between the sleazy stepfather and the sleazier kidnappers are predictable, but still carry dramatic weight thanks to the performances of the actors and the script's ability to make us sympathize with the abused characters. The antagonists are drawn pretty well too, particularly Martorano's Eddy, a part that was written specifically for the actor because he was a college friend of Trueblood. His character is seen as sympathetic at times and brutal at others, which keeps things tense when we don't really know what to expect from the character.

This is yet another production by Arthur Marks - who also was behind Bolling films Bonnie's Kids and The Centerfold Girls - and after seeing all three films in which he used her talents it's very clear why Marks kept bringing her back to his films. Bolling is once again given the chance to play a strong and occasionally fierce character, and her pretty face quickly fades away when we realize just how vicious she can be. I don't think her role here is as bold as she was in Bonnie's Kids, nor does she reach the primal rage that she released late in The Centerfold Girls, but it is another testament to how strong this Playboy magazine could be without relying on her physical attributes. (Though she does show them off anyway.)

The Candy Snatchers is another vicious little film from the Marks/Bolling machine - I'm glad there's only three of these, because I'm not sure I could keep seeing this kind of dark thriller every week - but it's got a lot of interesting twists and turns thanks to well developed characters and one wonderfully brave little boy. It's pretty good at what it does, and should be an interesting find for fans of '70s drive-in sleaze.

From Midnight, With Love's Top 11 Genre Films of 2011

2012-01-04T09:11:00.000-06:00

A good gimmick never dies, and here at FMWL we will always do our best to go to eleven. Last year we did it, and in 2011 we certainly had to do it again. Honestly, I kinda wanted to go past eleven this year - I haven't actually decided what the 11th film on the list is yet. Why's the decision so hard, you ask? Well, I think it's because this year has been freakin' FANTASTIC.

Across the board, 2011 has provided a lot of fantastic entertainment for genre fans. From mainstream sci-fi blockbusters to independent horror shockers, I was slightly surprised by how impressed I was when I started perusing the list of films I've loved this year. The variance between the films on the list has made sure that the list would be incredibly difficult for me to rank, but I think it also points out the fact that 2011 offered a little bit of something for everyone (unless you like Hollywood produced horror films, because they all pretty much sucked this year).

Enough rambling, let's do this!

Second Runners-Up:
Ashes (Dir. by Elias Matar), Bereavement (Dir. by Stevan Mena), Ghost From The Machine (Dir. by Matt Osterman), The Hagstone Demon (Dir. by Jon Springer), Rubber (Dir. by Quentin Dupieux), The Ward (Dir. by John Carpenter)

First Runners-Up: (You guys! It seriously kills me that I can't fit these movies on the list!)

Attack The Block (Dir. by Joe Cornish): I'm just not as wild about this one as most folks are. But I won't deny that it's an enthralling and fun sci-fi flick that's one of the most unique movies in years.
Drive Angry (Dir. by Patrick Lussier):This one's a guilty pleasure to some, but y'all should know by now that The Mike regrets nothing. There's some serious old-school drive-in stuff goin' on in this one, and I always dig Nic Cage. So sue me.
A Foundling (Dir. by Carly Lin): Way back at the beginning of the year I was tempted into viewing this "Chinese Cowgirls vs. Aliens" movie, and I certainly don't regret it. One of the most well-acted films I saw in 2011; it's a truly sweet and original film.
Grave Encounters (Dir. by The Vicious Brothers): One of the scariest films I experienced in 2011, Grave Encounters balances the found footage formula with some unique twists and an omnipresent sense of dread. The payoff is a little off, but the visceral impact of the film is legit.
A Horrible Way To Die (Dir. by Adam Wingard): This one has grown on me a lot since my initial viewing, primarily due to the fantastic performances by the actors involved. It's probably the best dramatic horror film of the year, and a strong statement that star AJ Bowen is here to stay.
X-Men: First Class (Dir. by Matthew Vaughn): I've never been the biggest X-Fan, but Vaughn's prequel is helped by a fantastic cast - led by Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence - and a fresh 1960s storyline. A great balance of popcorn entertainment and sci-fi smarts.

And now, THE LIST:

Number 11 - Paranormal Activity 3
(Dir. by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman)

I liked the first PA film a lot, and the second one made me interested in where the story was going. The third film - helmed by the folks behind last year's docudrama Catfish - takes the story back to the 1980s, and officially got me hooked on wherever this series is going with its demonic tale. The biggest triumph is probably the wonderful sequences with a camera on an oscillating fan, which is the most effective development in the found footage series' young life. Who knows where the next Paranormal film will go, but I think the third installment is a nice booster shot for these films.

(Check out The Mike's review of Paranormal Activity 3 HERE.)

Number 10 - The Innkeepers
(Dir. by Ti West)

Ti West's latest film didn't blow my socks off like his previous film did, but it's still an incredibly effective ghost story. The performances of the cast - including budding star Sara Paxton - do plenty to sell the film's scares, but it's West's ever-patient camera that really draws us into this haunted hotel chiller. The dose of comedy that's been added to the script feels quite realistic, but I wish the horror side of the film was as fresh. Still, it's a heck of a spook show.

(Check out The Mike's review of The Innkeepers HERE.)

Number 9 - Trollhunter
(Dir. by Andre Overdal)

Another found footage flick - we're down to only three of these on the full list this year! - but Trollhunter is more Cloverfield than Blair Witch. The Norwegian monster mash is certainly the giant monster film of the year, thanks to some fantastic special effects and plenty of great scenes of destruction. The film's spectacle makes the viewer forget about the handheld film's "true story" pledge at times, but I don't think that takes away from one of the most enjoyable films of the year.

(Check out The Mike's review of Trollhunter HERE.)

Number 8 - Black Death
(Dir. by Christopher Smith)

Like Ti West, Christopher Smith moved to 4-for-4 as a horror director in early 2011 with the release of Black Death. A tale of religious fervor and witchcraft that's set during the black plague, Smith's latest is a neat historical horror that has fascinated me a few times already. It's helped greatly by the presence of one of my favorite working actors, Sean Bean, who puts an armor and a sword one more time as the rugged leader of the film's quest. I don't get why this movie didn't get more publicity than it did, but I'm glad I found it.

(Check out The Mike's review of Black Death HERE.)

Number 7 - I Didn't Come Here To Die
(Dir. by Bradley Scott Sullivan)

The most pleasant surprise of 2011, at least for me, was certainly this yet-to-be-released horror film. We've seen "group goes into the woods, death follows" a million times before, but I Didn't Come Here To Die manages to do a couple of things that separate it from other films in similar settings. Most importantly, the film entirely skips the psycho killer/unleashed demons/deadly hillbillies cliches that we've already seen - which means that you really need to see this one, if only to figure out just how someone could make a horror film without those crutches to rely on. The result is a fantastic horror comedy, complete with plenty of gore and one of the most wonderful scream queens I've seen in a long time. (WHAT? Seriously! That Emmy Robbin is GORGEOUS.)

(Check out The Mike's review of I Didn't Come Here To Die HERE.)

Number 6 - Super 8
(Dir. by J.J. Abrams)

I gotta admit, the fact that Super 8 is only number 6 on this list kinda makes me furious. A lot of people like to diss this one - and to compare it to Attack the Block - but I just don't get why. This is movie magic, people! Maybe I'm a sucker for Hollywood (SPOILER ALERT: I am.), but Super 8 is the kind of movie I'd dream of making if I ever had the ability to make a movie. The child actors are fantastic, Coach Eric Taylor is a great lead, the effects are good, and it all looks and sounds like a perfect spectacle. I LOVE IT AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME FROM LOVING IT.

(There's no review because The Mike was on vacation that week in June. BUT I REGRET NOTHING.)

Number 5 - Hobo With a Shotgun
(Dir. by Jason Eisener)

I didn't want to like this movie. That's probably not fair to say - I really want to like EVERY movie - but the amount of hype around this Hobo was like the biggest big fish tale any fisherman or fisherwoman has ever heard. But it was all true. Eisener's film is carried by veteran star Rutger Hauer, but the amount of support around him from the supporting cast and the filmmakers helps the legend come true. The director seems to put the cherry on top of the production with his fantastic vision of carnage, which manages to use some humane scenes to back up the brutally violent side of the proceedings.

(Check out The Mike's review of Hobo With a Shotgun HERE.)

Number 4 - Tucker & Dale vs. Evil
(Dir. by Eli Craig)

Like I Didn't Come Here To Die, this is the rare horror comedy that brings something fresh to the table and doesn't buy in to the standard horror stunts. Tyler Labine leads the charge as Dale, providing a loveable hero for the comedic tale that provides gory mayhem and hearty laughs. This is a film that should make all kinds of viewers laugh, and is surely destined for the kind of cult classic status that's usually reserved for winners like Army of Darkness or Shaun of the Dead.

(Check out The Mike's review of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil HERE.)

Number 3 - Absentia
(Dir. by Mike Flanagan)

One of the most intelligent horror films to come around in a long time, Mike Flanagan's chilling Absentia (which is due for a DVD release this April!) boasts some of the most successful scares I've seen in a long time and a wonderfully acted bit of human drama throughout the film. Stars Courtney Bell and Katie Parker do a lot for the film, and the shift in focus halfway through the film is unexpected, but welcome. Oh, and did I mention that it scared me a lot? Because it did. If you're looking for a horror film for thinking adult audiences, you have got to seek this one out.

(Check out The Mike's review of Absentia HERE.)

Number 2 - Rise of the Planet of the Apes
(Dir. by Rupert Wyatt)

The unexpected big-budget winner of the year is certainly this prequel to the 40+ year-old classic, which offers a fresh origin to the Charlton Heston led sci-fi classic. James Franco gets top billing this time, but it's the jaw dropping ape effects - with the assistance of Lord of the Rings and King Kong veteran Andy Serkis - and a script that's much too intelligent for summer in Hollywood that allow the film to Rise to the top of the class. Hollywood didn't hit many home runs with their genre releases this year, but Rise of the Planet of the Apes will stand tall for years to come as a blueprint for making a successful Hollywood reboot.

(Check out The Mike's review of Rise of the Planet of the Apes HERE.)

Number 1 - Stake Land

To tell the truth, I'm not sure if there's anything more than a gut feeling that has pushed me to put Stake Land (Review HERE) ahead of the rest of the pack at the top of this list. (All of these flicks, especially the top 4, could have easily made the jump to this spot on a good day.) But Jim Mickle's post-apocalyptic vampire film is a strange kind of horror movie comfort food for me, playing off the ideas of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend while providing a beautiful cross-country tale of horror on the open road. It's full of great performances, interesting twists on vampire lore, and a couple of shocking and intense scenes that could remind any horror fan why they love this genre.

Stake Land is one of many triumphs to come out of 2011, but right now it's the one that stands out (if only by the smallest of margins) in my mind as my favorite genre film of the year.

The Innkeepers

2012-01-02T22:02:00.000-06:00

(2011, Dir. by Ti West.)

The Innkeepers is the fourth film by writer/director Ti West - who's quickly become a cult hero in the horror scene - and I feel like I must start any commentary on the film by stating that this is easily West's most fast-paced film. That's not to say West's new tale of terror wants to be one of Michael Bay's blockbusters, it's more of a statement to denote that he's starting to move at a pace that most audiences will be comfortable with. That probably makes The Innkeepers his most accessible film to the masses thus far, but it doesn't mean West's losing his eye for building fantastic tension.

In some ways, The Innkeepers signifies a step forward for West. One of my favorite things about his last film - The House of the Devil, which I've lauded as my favorite horror film of the last decade - was the relationship he built between the lead character and her best friend during the first half of the film. The Innkeepers is built around a similarly natural and realistic relationship between two hotel employees, Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), who are charged with observing the final days of business at The Yankee Pedlar, an old school hotel that's alleged to be haunted. While West's first three films seemed to slip into long sequences without dialogue - a technique that generally served its purpose by drawing us in to the lead characters' fears - The Innkeepers manages to create similar tension while keeping the characters' relationship in the forefront of the film. This focus on the characters and their interactions has several positive effects on the film. The relationship between the leads - who share a drive for paranormal research - adds a surprising amount of humor to the film, and yet it also adds to the tension of the film when Claire is on her own and we already know just how frail she is emotionally and physically.

I mean no disrespect to Healy, who gives a very good performance in the film, but Paxton's performance as Claire is something of a revelation. The 23 year-old actress turned the heads of horror fans when she co-starred in the remake of The Last House on the Left, but her turn in The Innkeepers will certainly go a long way toward establishing her as an actress who can carry a film. I'm often most impressed when actors/actresses can play a "normal" character (it seems Hollywood sells "normal" in a sugar coated format far too often), and Paxton - who spent much of her early career in sugary teen films - really sells out in the name of the film. The miniature actress seems to be a natural as the college drop out who struggles with asthma and low aspirations, and she brings the same kind of charm that House of the Devil lead Jocelin Donahue brought to that film.

And it's Paxton's charismatic performance that leads the film's biggest successes, which come when the film's terrors begin to prey on Claire's frailty. Going into the details of the film's haunting certainly would be a lame move on my part, so I'll simply tell you that I liked the psychological aspect of the film's story more than the supernatural side of it all. I had a brief argument with myself at the end of the film, because I think a case could be made for differing interpretations of the final scenes. None of this mental rumination would have occurred if Paxton hadn't portrayed Claire as an impressionable and overzealous young woman, and in my mind the film capitalized on the performance perfectly.

Aside from the terrific lead performance, West's film has plenty of tense moments where the director shows off the same approach he brought to House of the Devil. We see something, then we don't see something, and then we wait for something to happen, and then we repeat. It sounds typical and cliche - and I do think of the film's scares will look pretty standard to most horror fans - but West's ability to build tension again powers his film to success.

I wasn't as crazy about The Innkeepers as I hoped I'd be when the end credits first rolled, but it's stuck with me in the day since my viewing ended. I might have expected too much from West as he followed up House of the Devil, but The Innkeepers deserves praise on its own. It's a fun horror film with a surprising dose of comedy that compliments the tense scenes well. West has a terrific feel for horror, and when you combine that with the fine performances, you've got a real winner.

Midnight Movie of the Week #104 - The Gate

2011-12-30T09:38:00.000-06:00

People who grew up in the '80s really love the heck out of the horror movies of the '80s. It makes a lot of sense, considering people always love what they grew up with, but sometimes I feel like they're a little misguided. But then again, When I see that crazy fashion and those crazy hairstyles and all those neon colors...well, it's easy to fall for the '80s charms, isn't it?

And when I seriously start thinking about the horror of the '80s and my experience growing up in the genre, I tend to think about The Gate. I'm not sure how the old Christian ladies that ran our small town library ended up getting ahold of The Monster Squad and The Gate and making them available to children like Mikeself, but those little old ladies deserve a hug for bringing this one into my life.

The Gate might be the perfect horror movie for children. In a way, it even kind of follows the Disney formula for kids in peril. Parents go out of town, kids are left in charge with mischievous friends, trouble arrives quickly. It's like The Lion King with a bunch of clay monsters. And no Lions or singing. OK, there's some singing. But that's not the point. The point is that it's a movie about kids facing their fears, which is what Disney does all the damn time.

The Gate isn't about lions or mermaids or any of that boring Disney stuff, thankfully. It's about a hole in the backyard that has weird geodes (aka those rocks you crack open that look pretty inside) in it and also is a gateway to some kind of hell that's full of little angry monsters and unleashes a lot of other weird stuff too. That "weird stuff" takes on all kinds of forms throughout the film, and it seems that most of them - aside from the mini goblins - are the kinds of weird stuff that many kids would have nightmares about.

After all, what kid isn't afraid of whatever is living under their bed? I know I was, and I'm willing to bet you were too. And that's just part of The Gate's weirdness. Other scenes that seem to have been designed to destroy a child's ability to sleep at night involve a dead body coming out of a wall, a badly killed dog, and - in true kid manipulation form - parents turning evil. That last one is still one of the few moments in horror that really gives me the willies; a scene that - thanks to some great sound effects - has stuck in my mind for at least 20 years.

It's a testament to director Tibor Takacs - whose I, Madman is another kinda surreal, kinda creepy, kinda awesome '80s horror movie (that's not for kids) that's been chosen for MMOTW - that The Gate manages to pack so many surprises into 85 minutes. And it's more impressive that the chills still work on me as full grown adult. Sure, the film is as dated as any '80s offering, but the effects still meet the story's needs very well. (I must also mention that the film is helped out today by a shockingly good DVD transfer by Lionsgate, which is seriously one of the best looking restorations I've seen on the format. I had the old bargain full-frame DVD before this one, and the improvements that Lionsgate were able to make are nothing short of amazing. It's one of the best '80s horror DVDs out there.)

I'm sure there are viewers out there who haven't seen The Gate yet and who might struggle with its combination of clay monsters and young Stephen Dorff, who already had brooding and squinting down at a young age. But I really don't think it's just nostalgia that has me loving The Gate today. Takacs' film is still a bold and ambitious horror film, with effects scenes - including a fantastic sequence when one of the kids slips into the deadly hole and the final confrontation with a creature from the pit - that would make most horror films jealous. There's a balance between the scares and the action that keeps the viewer involved in the film, and they should be interested in The Gate's tale of terror even if they're not always scared by it.

And, as I already said, I think The Gate's scares will work best on the kids. An early PG-13 horror film (once again debunking the myth that all effective horror films HAVE to be rated R), The Gate might be a perfect starting point for the youngster who's interested in scary stories or monsters and ghosts. It's got just the right mix of scares and action, meaning the kids will not only experience the fear that they desire, but will also witness kids empowering themselves to deal with those fears.

A lot of horror films aren't right for children, often because most kids want to see the spooky stuff but don't have a plan for how they'll not cry themselves to sleep later. The Gate, on the other hand, is a movie that supports the brave kids. Like other empowered kids films - films like '80s classic The Goonies and recent hit Super 8 - The Gate doesn't sell young folks short. If you're gonna give into your kid's demand for "scary movies", you might as well start with one that reminds them they have power over their fears - and The Gate does that. And if you're a kid at heart who's looking for a fun '80s horror film, then The Gate is for you too.

FMWL Indie Spotlight - Rage

2011-12-27T22:25:00.002-06:00

(2010, Dir. By Christopher R. Witherspoon.)

A few months ago I had the film nerd pleasure of showing a room full of folks Steven Spielberg's debut film Duel. I talked a bit about that experience when I covered that film back then, but the biggest thing I took away from the experience was just how much the crowd of viewers wanted to re-wire the mind of the film's lead character. Horror films often get a bad reputation from fans who respond to movies by saying "I liked it, but that character was dumb when they ___________; I would have ________________ instead!", and Spielberg's Duel seems to really abuse that aspect of the film viewing experience. The lead character is not a hero - in fact, I'd say the viewers don't even like him - yet the film captivates us because the conflict he's caught in is one we think we could understand if it happened to us.

Which brings me to Christopher Witherspoon's thriller Rage, a film whose inspiration is evident even before two extras on a bench loudly start discussing Duel and the theme of faceless aggression that is shared by Witherspoon's film. Like Duel, Rage follows a lone man on the road, but this version has a battle between a motorist who is dealing with his own personal issues and a black visor-ed fellow on a motorcycle. The lead - played by Rick Crawford - is a married man who is using his day off to break up with his mistress, but instead ends up trying to outwit that fella, a non-descript guy who carries a big knife and seems to have a built in GPS for finding his human target.

Also like Duel, the movie primarily focuses on our not-a-hero and his inner struggle while trying to figure out who this man on wheels is and why he's made it his personal mission to terrify him. Crawford has the same slightly pathetic charm (can I really even call it "charm"?) that Duel's Dennis Weaver offered, and I imagine viewers will have a similar response to this film thanks to him. I admit that I even caught myself falling into that "Wait, why doesn't he just _______________?!?!?!" trap a few times during the film. That's nothing to be ashamed of, it's the natural response for someone who witnesses a crisis situation. Witherspoon has clearly studied the tricks used in Duel, and he executes them - and plenty of other tricks from horror favorites - well throughout the film.

Rage doesn't have the same tension Duel does, but it's easy to give Witherspoon a pass when you consider that not many filmmakers can be Spielberg. My biggest concerns came when the action-packed film seemed to lose a bit of steam once the story became confined to the lead character's home. The events of the final act do present some human horror when the lead's wife (played by Audrey Walker, who gives a very good performance) becomes involved in the conflict, but the tone seems to shift too dramatically in these scenes. The bloody and sadistic events of the final act should please gore lovers, and I won't deny their impact in pushing Rage toward its conclusion. But I couldn't help wondering if a less bloody conclusion to the story might have helped maintain the interest I had in the film's first hour. There are a lot of films that offer the same things the final act offers, and I was disappointed by the shift from the city-spanning, vehicle-based events that happened earlier in the film.

Those quibbles aside - it seems like I want to re-write the final act of every movie some days, doesn't it? - Rage keeps things simple and works because it focuses on the characters' plight and not the characters themselves. There's something to be said for the power that's wielded by a vicious and faceless antagonist, because you've got no reason to root for them - even if the protagonist is a sniveling wuss. Rage knows that and uses it to its advantage. Heck, I argued about how silly viewers are for imposing their beliefs on this kind of movie two paragraphs ago....and then I tried to impose my beliefs on this movie in the last paragraph.

And that's the beauty you'll find in this kind of thriller; the beauty you'll find in Christopher Witherspoon's Rage. The film grabs hold of the viewer and keeps them staring at the screen, subtly encouraging them to bark instructions at the characters and ruminate about just why this biker is so angry. Even better, it's the kind of film that then resonates after the final shot, because that's when our mind slows back down to normal speed and we start to really understand what we just saw.

Basically, Rage is an effective popcorn thriller because it's got a great concept that it executes that concept with style. The cast does well (BTW, that's Witherspoon under the biker helmet, which makes him the actor/writer/photographer/editor/producer/director of the film), the pacing is brisk up until the final act, and the musical score accentuates everything so well. That's really all I need to recommend this intelligent and entertaining chiller.

For more information on Rage, be sure to head over to the official site, or check out the trailer below!

William Castle's The Old Dark House

2011-12-26T22:28:00.000-06:00

(1963, Dir. by William Castle. Obviously.)

Do I need to give you all another commentary on remakes and horror movies? No, of course I don't. These days remakes go together like reality TV stars and failed marriages. (I really don't watch any TV, but I hear that analogy works, no?) And, let's face it, this isn't at all a new trend. Once studios recognized how much money there was to be made in horror, sequels and re-tellings became all the rage in even the earliest days of cinema.

But one of the more curious remakes I'd never encountered up til now is William Castle's version of The Old Dark House. The original film was one of the most bizarre horror films of the early 1930s, as Frankenstein director James Whale filled a house that fits that description with odd characters ranging from a pyromaniac to a bedridden grandfather to - most importantly - an angry mute bearded giant played by the unmatchable Boris Karloff. So when I learned that Castle - working with Hammer Films at the legendary Bray Studios(!) - had created an updated color version of that story in the 1960s....well, that's when my head exploded.

From frame one, it's pretty clear that Castle's version of The Old Dark House takes a drastically different approach than Whale's film. The color film follows a comical lead character - I use "comical" very loosely here, because really this guy's just a big honkin' doofus - played by Tom Poston. The character, Tom, is an American who is invited to a secluded mansion by the man he shares a flat with, and who is soon stranded with the kooky Femm family in the house, which is referred to by its residents as "old and dark" on at least two occasions.

(Speaking of kooky, one of the highlights of this version has to be the opening title sequence, which were drawn by the legendary Charles Addams - who knows a little bit about kooky families himself.)

Once Poston's Tom is in the house - via a trap door that keeps him contained a bit too often - he meets this family, which is not near as bizarre as the original family. Instead, Castle's film sets out to provide a comedic take on the classic tale. This isn't surprising considering Castle's output - his most famous film is probably House on Haunted Hill, which also ends up more tongue-in-cheek than most horror films - but this House is much further down the comic spectrum than most films that would be called horror comedies. It seems like it's playing off a lot of the same tricks that the recent spoof Dark and Stormy Night would use almost fifty years later, but that 2009 film seems to have a better understanding of '30s "house" flicks than Castle's film does.

Part of me thinks Castle's Old Dark House is as bad as I sound like I'm saying it is, but part of me really wants to say I had fun with this film despite its silly comedic tone. Poston's character definitely wears on the viewer as the non-stop slapstick antics increase throughout the film, but there are plenty of moments in the flick that do provide good chuckles. The supporting cast is more interesting than the lead is by far, with the lovely Janette Scott playing it straight while a host of British character actors - Robert Morely, Mervyn Johns, and Peter Bull (in a dual role) add to the mysterious events of the film. The most odd part of the film might be when we find out that one of the Femms is building an ark and believes the world is about to end, especially when his logic echoes that of the "prophet" who recently predicted the world to end in May 2011.

The film's madcap style of comedy misses as often as it hits - and there's absolutely no real substitute for Karloff - but there's a simple charm to this British comedy version of a Hollywood horror tale. I'm certainly not going to replace my copy of Whale's version with this one, but it's a unique movie that I'm glad I saw. It's far from being Castle's best, but at least it's a cute little adventure (with a lot of the cute little Ms. Scott) that's not completely annoying. If you're a Castle completist you might have fun with this one. If you're one of those folks who loses sleep over remakes, you're best to just stay away.

(Speaking of Castle completists, I got a feeling (not a feeling that tonight's gonna be a good night, though that is a distinct possibility) that we might hear more about Castle in the upcoming weeks at FMWL. The William Castle Collection came to me via Santa this year, which means the schlock business is about to pick up for The Mike! Oh yeah, here's the trailer....)

Merry Christmas to the Midnight Warriors!

2011-12-25T07:41:00.000-06:00

Wishing the best to you and yours this holiday season! Thanks for all your support of FMWL in 2011, your support keeps me rockin'!

Now enjoy these Christmas goodies!

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

2011-12-24T21:26:00.000-06:00

(2011, Dir. by David Fincher.)

David Fincher's juggernaut of a remake/adaptation/end-of-year-awards-movie/trilogy-starter - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - has probably been the most talked about movie of 2011 in many cinema lovin' circles. Though I highly anticipated Fincher's movie thanks to the teaser trailer that pounded the viewer into submission, I did a pretty good job of staying away from info about the movie (including the book and the Swedish film based on it) before I sat down to experience the Americanized movie. Go ahead, call me an ignorant American, I probably deserve it. But we're talkin' Fincher here, I felt I needed to go in blind.

Thus, I really didn't know much about the film, except that the girl had a dragon tattoo and sex with Daniel Craig (you can never block all the plot details tossed around before a big release, can you?). I also was pretty afraid of Craig's co-star, the 26 year-old actress Rooney Mara, who I proclaimed to be the most annoying mouth-breathing actress ever about 18 months ago when she starred in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

For those who are - like I was - unfamiliar with the story of the title Girl, Mara plays a hacker/investigator/badass named Lisabeth Salander. We meet Lisabeth because she's investigating a reporter (Craig) for a seemingly rich dude (Steven Berkoff, aka the bad guy from Beverly Hills Cop, whose presence in the film made me way too happy), and as we follow her we learn an awful lot about her life. Lisabeth is a ward of the state, even though she's 23 years old, and her unstable behavior and the failing health of her guardian lead her down some very dark paths in the film's first half. The abusive relationship between her and the man who takes custody of her is one of the more horrifying examples of sexual predation I've seen on film, and will surely be a talking point for many viewers who go into the film not expecting to see such graphic events on screen.

The thing is, Lisabeth Salander is pretty much the spirit of vengeance. I'm not sure if that nickname's been trademarked yet; it sounds like something they'd say about a superhero. But hey, Lisabeth Salander IS pretty much a superhero for abused women out there, and the story's willingness to show off the character's worst moments along with her great ones really makes the character one of the most triumphant strong young women to ever carry a film. Thanks to the material she's given, Mara proves my earlier claims about how awful she is quite wrong - her performance is nothing short of fantastic throughout the film. It's the kind of dynamic performance that can lift a film above its material, and Mara should be credited with a very large part of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo's success.

The rest of the film is interesting too, focusing primarily on Craig's exiled journalist who investigates a 40 year old murder for a rich old man (Christopher Plummer) on a secluded, snowy island in Sweden. The setting is one of the stars of the film, and Craig's interactions with the people on and around the island build a strong mystery throughout the film. Craig doesn't do a lot of great things in the film - he's certainly here to be the "straight man" opposite Salander's loose cannon persona - but he's more than capable of carrying the film when she's not around.

I'm sure the people behind this story - from original author Stieg Larsson to Fincher to adapting screenwriter Steven Zaillian - won't be offended when I say that the film would lose most of its intrigue without the title character. While the case in its backstory that surrounds Craig and Plummer and the island is worth consideration, Mara's Salander is what makes the movie notable. I don't mean to slight the film's production values - it's full of beautiful imagery and the sound effects and music are pitch perfect - but the presentation of Salander's mental state and how it ties in to the loss and pain she's experienced throughout her young life is what really makes The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo fascinating.

In a manner that's completely un-PC (and not just because she uses Apple products), Lisabeth Salander is a larger-than-life hero for young women who have dealt with abuse and are struggling to stay on track in their lives. The film's final few scenes - which seem to run a little long once the main conflict is tied up neatly - do their part to cement the ongoing issues that will motivate the character going forward, and I don't doubt we'll be seeing more of Mara as Salander in upcoming years.

If the American versions of her story can keep the same edge that Fincher brought to this film, Mara could be set up for a good run as one of the most well-developed characters in Hollywood's recent history. On its own, Fincher's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is an endlessly watchable film with a technical mastery that cements the filmmaker's reputation as one of the top filmmakers working today. This adaptation isn't going to be for everyone - I can hear the backlash from the conservative filmgoer sect starting as I type this - but I think it'll sit alongside the likes of Seven and Zodiac as evidence of Fincher's skill for molding a dark crime thriller. It's probably the most enthralling film I've seen this year.

Midnight Movie of the Week #103 - Die Hard 2

2011-12-23T00:29:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, when it's Christmas time, I like to watch movies that are, y'know, Christmas movies. Some of them are movies like It's a Wonderful Life (seriously, if you can't love that flick you might be EVIL), some of them are movies like Christmas Vacation (which I kinda think is really awful when compared to the original Vacation and pretty annoying), and some of them are movies like the first two Die Hard movies.

At this point, you probably think I should be talking about the original Die Hard. After all, isn't Die Hard the best? YES. Yes, Die Hard is the best. And I'm not even adding a qualifier to that statement, because I don't even think I need to clarify what Die Hard is the best of. It simply is the best.

Yet I'm here today to say that Die Hard 2 is pretty awesome too. While its precursor is certainly one of the coolest movies of all time, the sequel - directed by Finnish awesomemaker Renny Harlin - takes the heroic John McClane in a deliciously pulpy direction. Harlin's film follows the "rules" of the sequel - you've gotta think this is one of the main culprits that was spoofed by Last Action Hero three years later - by amping up almost everything people loved about Die Hard. Of course, that all makes the film a bit cheesier than John McTiernan's 1988 flick....but isn't that something we love about most midnight movies anyway?

The fantastic hero John McClane, a modern day cowboy that would make even rock band Tesla proud, is now in Washington D.C. a year after his exploits in Los Angeles, and Harlin takes steps to remind us that it is Christmas early and often. That type of excess quickly spills over into other parts of the film, but Harlin and his screenwriters - the returning Steven E. de Souza and newcomer Doug Richardson - are quite aware of this problem. At one point McClane is allowed to quip about how unlikely it is that he's dealing with the same plot devices on the same night once again, which is one of those great not-so-sly winks at the camera that I just love.

Along with his ability to crack wise about his situation that is carried over from the first film, McClane's powers of persuasion are increased in this film as well. This is most evident when you suddenly realize that all the women he comes across - most blatantly the really turn-of-the-'90s-cute Budget Rental Car lady who teaches him how to fax the Twinkie guy - suddenly get all turned on when John McClane's around. Another example of this comes from the on-scene female reporter (who is not Patricia Clarkson despite how much I want her to be Patricia Clarkson) who offers to carry McClane's children in exchange for a story. However, this is a John McClane movie, not a Shaft movie, and thus our hero quips his way away from their advances and stays loyal to his wife, even though she's stuck on a plane for the entire movie.

Oh, that whole stuck on a plane thing comes into play thanks to a new bunch of terrorists who cover all races and creeds, led by the always cool William Sadler. Sadler's turncoat Colonel is not necessarily as interesting as Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber was in the first film, but he's an imposing and smart adversary for McClane and his large army of henchmen provide a varied set of opponents for McClane. Sadler is just one of the great additions to the supporting cast, which includes Coming to America's John Amos, the often sleazy Dennis Franz, Fright Night's Art Evans, future U.S. senator Fred Dalton Thompson and - last but never least - Django himself, Franco Nero. Nero plays the General who has something to do with the Colombian drug trade and is a prisoner who sets the rather convoluted plot in motion. It's never easy to understand all the details of the film's plot and why these soldiers-turned-terrorists are doing what they're doing, but it's also never dull to watch thanks to the fine cast.

While the first film confined McClane to a couple of floors in an office building, Die Hard 2 gives John full range over a large airport, which allows the character to get into plenty of trouble. Some of the adventures seem a little too silly - like when McClane ejects from a plane that's about to explode and walks away unscathed - but others are full of excitement. An attack on the small church where Sadler and crew are holed up, complete with racing snowmobiles, is one of the action highlights of the film, and the scenes on the snowy runway that end the film are sufficiently grand in scale.

Harlin doesn't skimp on the gore either, and there are a few scenes in Die Hard 2 that would make most horror fans proud. There are several moments of "shock" violence - like close range bullets to the forehead or icicles being used as weapons - throughout the film, and McClane's battles with the henchmen often seem like boss battles from a video game. (On a side note, rewatching the film tonight reminded me of the excellent Die Hard Trilogy video game that I had for Playstation One back when I was in high school, which turned DH2 into a first person shooter and was a heckuva fun time.) Another great moment in gore comes in a late film scene where a throat is slit, and the special effects allow blood to gush and tissue to be exposed as the character gasps his last breaths. Once again, this is an area where Die Hard 2 plays a little cheesier than the first film, but it still works for the most part.

While Die Hard seemed like it could almost be a real story of a cop who holed up in a hostage filled tower, it's pretty obvious throughout that Harlin's sequel is more interested in sensationalizing John McClane's Christmas Eve path of mayhem. This isn't a knock against the movie, it simply means that Harlin has created an action film that's designed for the popcorn crowd. It might not be a great movie - and I think the first film is a great movie - but it is a ton of fun to watch, and I dig when a director manages that while bringing a character back for a sequel. After all, we all need to follow Dennis Franz' lead and lighten up sometimes. It's Christmas time!

The Deadly Tower

2011-12-22T00:04:00.000-06:00

(1975, Dir. by Jerry Jameson.)

It's 1966, and there's a sniper atop the university tower in Austin, Texas. It sounds like a pitch for a high-concept thriller - and, since 1966, it has been a few times - but it's actually the true story of Charles Whitman, a former Marine turned sniper who killed thirteen people on August 1st that year. His tale would be the partial inspiration for one of my favorite movies - Targets - in 1968, but it's tackled headfirst in the 1975 TV movie The Deadly Tower.

I've had a passing interest in the Whitman case since I first saw Targets, and when I saw that this "true crime" adaptation of the massacre and its bloody end starred the coolest actor to ever live (aka, Kurt Russell), I pretty much had to become good friends with The Deadly Tower. And now I have, and now you're gonna read about it.

There isn't a lot known about Whitman prior to his actions - which became violent and criminal when he murdered his mother and wife in the early hours of the day of the shooting - so The Deadly Tower takes a rather simple approach to the character. Russell makes Whitman an intense character who speaks very rarely...in fact, he pretty much spends the last hour of the movie squinting, pulling a trigger, ducking, and repeating. He gets in a good primal scream at one point, too. Presence is what the movie needs from Russell, and he delivers that. The end result is a performance that isn't as jaw-dropping as I hoped it would be, but is memorable and efficient within the film.

Since a mostly-silent sniper isn't much of a story, The Deadly Tower also focuses on one of the police officers that would play a major role in the story, Ramon Martinez (played by Richard Yniguez). The first half of the film attempts to create a parallel between the cop and the killer, both who have frustrations with their lives, but the film loses steam when it tries to play Martinez's issues against Whitman's. Part of this might be due to some falsities in the film's production, as the real life Martinez sued the producers for misrepresenting his wife in the film (and won a settlement out of court).

Though the police investigation - primarily a couple of scenes with a Lieutenant and a Priest - does provide some background into the Whitman character, the police side of the story left me cold. The Deadly Tower is most interesting when it merely lets us experience the gunner's horrific actions, which are handled well by director Jerry Jameson at most times. The moment when Whitman takes his first shot at a random gentleman in a grassy courtyard is handled perfectly, and the film really seems to nail that "WHAT THE HECK DID THAT REALLY JUST HAPPEN" style of shock that you'd expect to come over you if you were trapped in the same situation. (Or at least the style of shock you'd expect if you expected to see the same situation in a movie.) But then the film just kind of stays at that point of "Yep, he's shooting peeps and stuff" for a while, and the shock turns into boredom at times.

I am really glad I finally saw The Deadly Tower, because it has that raw TV movie of the '70s vibe that we seem to have lost as time moved past, and because I got to see Russell be an emotionless sniper in a clocktower for 90 minutes. But I don't know if The Deadly Tower really did as much for me as I wanted it too, primarily because I wasn't interested in the cop side of the story and because the film grew repetitive with time. I'm sure The Deadly Tower shocked audiences in 1975 - especially when you consider Russell's earlier fame via Disney - but it's pretty ho-hum by today's standards thanks to these problems. I could see a Tarantino-esque non-linear version of the story working for today's audiences, but for now I'll probably just watch Targets again the next time I start thinking about the Charles Whitman case.

Or, I'll just watch news coverage from '66 on YouTube.

Katherine Heigl Looks Kinda Like a C.H.U.D.

2011-12-19T22:25:00.000-06:00

Yes, it's mean. But I swear to Gosh I see a resemblance.

Wake Wood

2011-12-16T22:31:00.000-06:00

(2011, Dir. by David Keating.)

There's something that's just not right about Wake Wood.

I mean, we can certainly see that this is a production of the legendary Hammer Films studio - which has long been one of my favorite things in the world - and there are moments throughout the film that meet our expectations about Hammer horror completely. And yet, as I watched Wake Wood unfold in front of me, I couldn't help getting this feeling in my gut that what I was seeing just....wasn't right.

That feeling becomes a bit of a contradiction when you consider that the film's plot - in which a couple makes a devilish deal to restore their deceased daughter to life - focuses heavily on its characters having that same gut feeling. As we watch the couple - played by The Wire's Aidan GIllen and The Children's Eva Birthistle - struggle with their emotions as they spend time with their formerly dead daughter (Ella Connolly), we probably shouldn't be struggling with our own emotions about the film's tone.

Perhaps the film's tagline - which proclaims that 'The Dead Should Never Be Woken" - should have been something the filmmakers thought about the studio backing their film. Wake Wood certainly feels like the most Hammer of Hammer's new breed of films, since it's rooted more in horror traditions than the remake Let Me In or the modern thriller The Resident. But calling the film a Hammer production and making the film seem kind of like a Hammer production is a recipe for trouble to dedicated horror fans, as the similarities seem to enhance the differences. It's kind of like meeting another horror fan and being really excited to hear they like zombie movies too, until you find out that their favorite is House of the Dead and they just can't stand George Romero's first three zombie flicks. And then you're like "Oh, yeah, we do both love zombie flicks...but we don't really love the same things about zombie flicks at all."

And though Wake Wood walks and talks like a classic horror tale from the Hammer studios, the manner in which the film is presented created a distance between it and myself. I liked ideas the film had - like Connolly's uneasy performance as the reborn daughter and the images of the residents of Wake Wood gathering to keep their community (and its supernatural forces) strong - but the presentation of the events didn't meet what I'd expect to see from a Hammer film. I was probably too judgmental of the film to be truly fair, as I was judging everything from the camera angle to the lighting to the actors (who, aside from the great Timothy Spall, were just to shiny and new to be Hammer stars), but when I hear Hammer and gothic horror in the same sentence my mind fills with images of times gone by and old fashioned sound effects and wonderful music. And the people that made Wake Wood had an entirely different vision of what their film was going to be than what I expected.

So, when the film pulls up to a dramatic climax, I was left annoyed by an intrusive wind turbine and the fact that I didn't think there were enough rustling leaves and was just nor sure that the heroine's hair was thick enough to blow perfectly in the wind that fills this wooded setting. (Which is ridiculous, I know.) And then when the film negated that climax with two more twists that were both handled with absolute silliness, I was ready to rant and roll like I am now.

I'm guessing I'm gonna have to watch Wake Wood again someday when I know that it's not REALLY a throwback to what Hammer used to be. There were a lot of things I liked about the movie, like Spall and Connolly and some surprising scenes in which the undead youngster is involved in bloodshed, but I couldn't get past that feeling in my gut that the story of Wake Wood was wasted in a modern setting that didn't allow the Hammer magic that I love to really shine through. I know that I hold Hammer to a higher standard than most, but I still feel like the film could have been a little bit more than what it was.

I might be way off base. There was a scene shortly after the couple had their daughter returned to them that took my breath away, as some slick editing showed how the parents' exaltation evolved into romantic fervor once they put their daughter to bed for the first time in nearly 12 months. I can't deny that the story within Wake Wood doesn't have its perks, but I think the film got stuck in a cinematic dead zone between modern horror and gothic horror. Wake Wood would have been better off sliding one direction or the other, because it's the dual nature of the film that distracted me from really finding my way to the heart of Wake Wood.

Midnight Movie of the Week #102 - Soylent Green

2011-12-15T23:16:00.000-06:00

Go ahead. Just say it. I know you want to.

Feel better? Good.

If you don't know the infamous spoiler from the end of Soylent Green, you might have looked at the above command with a puzzled eye. But I'm willing to bet that most everyone out there who would stumble upon this little rambling about the film knows how it ends. In fact, I'm willing to bet it's the most spoiled film that the least amount of people have seen in the history of Hollywood. That's not to say Soylent Green hasn't been seen - over 19,000 IMDB voters give it an average score of 7/10 - but it's always been known more for its final reveal than the film that leads up to it. Which is pretty sad, really.

I've wanted to feature Soylent Green here since the early days of this site. Now that I'm taking the time to look at it, I find myself increasingly focused on just how heavy the film is on the viewer. I'm sure the tone of Richard Fleischer's film is partially responsible (along with the film's dated visuals) for Soylent Green remaining a cult phenomenon that's not widely regarded as a mainstream sci-fi classic, and perhaps those who ignore the film for these reasons have a good point.

Unlike many science fiction films of its era, Soylent Green tells the story of a darker, dirtier, and more depressing future. The streets of our cities - particularly New York - have been overcrowded by a steadily rising population, which has also forced more and more people in to poverty. The film's hero - Richard Thorn (played by Charlton Heston) - is a police detective. Those of us in the real world of 2011 would assume he makes a large amount of money and can live comfortably based on that job. But in the Soylent Green world of 2022 - just 11 years from now - he lives in a small apartment with few furnishings and a live-in old man named Sol (the great Edward G. Robinson in his final film) who pedals an exercise bike to keep the power going.

There are only two things in Soylent Green that don't like dirty and drab, the first of which is the proverbial "other side of the tracks" where Thorn must investigate the mysterious murder of an executive from the Soylent Corporation (a cameo by the also-great Joseph Cotten). His investigation mostly consists of stealing precious items - in his world, that means apples, soap, and pillowcases - from the rich & deceased fellow's apartment, and getting to know the "furniture" that comes with the apartment - a gorgeous, but detached, woman named Shirl played by Leigh Taylor-Young. This setting is presented as a different world than the one Thorn and Sol live in, and there's some real joy to be had in seeing Thorn take his confiscated items back to the overcrowded apartment building so Sol can tell him how much these simple items used to matter.

Meanwhile, everyone in the side of town that doesn't get a prostitute with their roof seems dirty and scared and sad and kind of just devoid of feelings. The film hammers this home very simply when Thorn finds a dead woman on the steps of a shelter, her still crying toddler tied to her corpse. There are entire movies that could be made or books that could be written about this kind of scene, but Thorn handles the whole thing matter-of-factly by untying the child, tucking it under his arm, and handing it off to a worker in the already bursting shelter. And that's it. There's no time for connection with the orphaned child or the dozens of men, women, and children who sleep on the steps outside his apartment. There are 40 million people in Thorn's town, but none of them seem to actually look at each other very often.

The one time you will see emotion from these filthy masses? Tuesday, which is Soylent Green day. When faced with the prospect of not getting the mass produced foodstuff, these beaten souls quickly become the aggressors, taking on Heston and a whole squad of police officers in riot gear (in the SG world, riot gear - football helmets with little bills screwed onto them) until they are quickly wiped out by the riot control units "Scoops" - which are dump trucks with buckets to throw the masses into their bins. If it wasn't so silly looking to see people being scooped up and dumped in the back of a truck this might have been one of the most horrifying scenes in sci-fi history, because it shows just how little human life is worth in this jaded future.

While Thorn deals with rioters and cavorts with Shirl, Sol investigates the documents that were found in the murdered man's apartment, and comes into contact with the sad truth that leads to the final reveal. To me, the film becomes Sol's journey in its middle act, as the old man's memories of the past combine with the horrible things he's learning about the present to wear on his mental state. In one scene he travels to the one place that doesn't seem to be overcrowded - the library - to get answers, and the expressions on Robinson's face as he learns more and more about the Soylent Corporation set the tone for what happens next.

Once Sol knows the truth we see the second thing in Soylent Green that's not dirty or drab - the suicide clinic. In a dark way, I kind of think Soylent Green's suicide clinic is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen on film. We don't know what Sol knows when he enters this sterile structure, but it's hard to really blame him for his choice based on what we've seen him go through. This is a man who knew society when it was working - or at least when it wasn't crumbling - and seeing him burdened by the realities of the Soylent Green world is a tough sight. When he is ushered into the buidling by a smiling young woman and offered music and his favorite color (don't forget how few colors there seem to be in this ugly world), it's easy to empathize with his character's desire to escape this sepia-toned world.

In fact, Sol's biggest concern as he enters his final resting place is simply wanting to be sure that he gets "the full 20 minutes", implying that his life matters less than the chance to experience a third of an hour of beauty. The scene which follows is nothing short of remarkable, with classical music and nature photography washing over the walls as the old man cries for the last time and shares his knowledge with Thorn one last time. Robinson, who died of cancer weeks after finishing the film, told Heston that he was afflicted with the disease just before filming this scene, and the results are obvious through both actors on screen. And when the beauty of the scene does fade, and the viewer is left with simply a vision of an old man who died with his eyes wide and his mouth agape, it's hard to not be affected as a viewer too.

At this point - whence I have covered most of the film's plot EXCEPT the final quote that has permeated pop culture - you might wonder just why anyone would want to watch such a depressing movie. To be honest, I'm kind of struggling with that too as I put it all in words. But it's that dark vision of the future, one that is relatively unmatched in the sci-fi pantheon, that always keeps me fascinated and going back to the film. There's a lot more to Soylent Green than what Heston shouts at the end of the film, and I think it's a unique sci-fi tale that speaks volumes about humanity.

I think I believe in people enough to say that I don't expect Soylent Green to happen to us. But, given the political climate and the economic unease that seems to be driving so many people in the United States crazy, I'm not certain that we're strong enough to avoid a future in which we ignore the people who are stuck on our streets fighting for a cracker they think is made from plankton. That's where I find the greatest intrigue in Soylent Green, which seems intent on warning us just how badly things can go if we lose humanity as we fight through the crowds of our daily lives.

But hey, if you're worried about the future, I've got good news for you. You can start stocking up on Soylent Green immediately, because The Soylent Corporation is selling it RIGHT NOW.

Midnight Movies For Your Midnight Movie Lover's Christmas Stocking

2011-12-13T23:22:00.000-06:00

(These also can be used for any other holidays or celebrations of equal or lesser value.)

If you're like me, you realize that the holidays are a time of joy, of happiness, and of rapture. But they're also a time of boosting your movie collection. And that's what I'm here to talk about today. Here's a bunch of goodies - which were chosen from either my own collection or my own Christmas wish list - of stuff I might recommend as movie gifts for the nice (not naughty, because those fools done got themselves in trouble with the big man) horror and genre lovin' folks on your shopping list.

The 10th Victim - Blu-ray by Blue Underground

I dig this goofy Italian sci-fi/action/romance flick quite a bit, from its wacky reality TV prophecies to the exotic '60s fashions that Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress wear. I hadn't planned to upgrade to the blu when it was announced, but reviews I read - including some with jaw dropping screencaps from the blu - pushed it to the top of my Christmas want list.

The Baby - DVD by Severin Films

I had the unique pleasure of finally meeting this movie in 2011, and anyone who loves bizarre cult classics should jump all over Severin's DVD release of the film. As far as sleazy flicks about man-babies go, you can't get much better.

Battle Beyond the Stars - DVD/Blu-Ray by Shout! Factory

I haven't actually seen this one yet, but it's on my Christmas list for many good reasons. First of all, it's from Shout!'s Roger Corman Cult Classics collection, which has turned out nothing but gold on blu thus far. Second, it seems to have that Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon early-'80s sci-fi feel that I love. Plus, Sybil Danning. CAN'T MISS.

Kingdom of the Spiders - DVD by Shout! Factory

This one's got it all, folks. William Shatner as a hero. Tiffany Bolling as a babe/scientist. A BUNCH OF EVIL SPIDERS. Long available only on bargain bin DVDs with less than thrilling picture and sound quality, Shout! appears to have restored the shine of this Kingdom with their release. (Apparently this came out back in early 2010...oops. It still looks awesome.)

The Phantom Carriage - DVD/Blu-Ray by The Criterion Collection

For the more high-falutin' crowd, we've got a bit of silent ghost action in The Phantom Carriage, which takes us to Sweden where legends can be deadly. Criterion's always loved by film lovers, and this is their second biggest horror release of the year (behind their also-recommended restoration of The Island of Lost Souls).

The Devil Within Her - DVD by Scorpion Releasing

Nevermind the fact that this Rosemary's Baby inspired film starts with the "Devil" getting born, and thus NOT being "within her". Do mind the fact that this cheesy bit of goodness features a hysterical Joan Collins, Donald Pleasence, and my beloved Caroline Munro. Scorpion Releasing has put out some interesting titles this year with hostess Katarina Leigh Waters (who does resemble Munro slightly), but this might be the most fun of their lot. (Then again, The Carpenter might be too.)

Don't Open Till Christmas - DVD by Mondo Macabro

I just found out this one had been updated by the folks over at Mondo, and it got me drooling. A sleazy slasher to a fault, but it's certainly a unique flick about a killer who kills folks that dress up as Santa. And it's got a bit of Caroline Munro too. <3

Horror Express - DVD/Blu-Ray Combo by Severin Films

I've tried to watch cruddy copies of this public domain horror a few times - it is, after all, touted as one of the best collaborations between Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing - but they've always been unwatchable transfers. From what I hear, Severin has brought Horror Express back from the dead with their version - and I can't wait to see it.

The William Castle Collection - 8 Film DVD Set by Sony Pictures

This one's been around for a while, but the price seems to be in a horror fan's range this holiday season. While much of the set is old favorites, I'm really excited that it has Castle's remake of The Old Dark House, and that it also comes with a documentary about the man himself as a bonus 9th feature!

Friday the 13th Uncut (& Friday the 13th Part 2) - Blu-Ray by Paramount Pictures

Know a horror fan who's new to blu? Considering the price and the shockingly great picture quality, the first few F13 films that are available on blu-ray are a perfect stocking stuffer. The first three are available (though I can only vouch for the first two's picture quality) and run under $10 each at Best Buy stores.

Dawning - DVD/Blu-Ray by Breaking Glass Pictures

I've talked about this movie a bit - I'm even on one of the DVD commentaries for it - but I must reiterate that the intelligent horror fan needs a copy of Dawning this holiday season. And not just because I'm on the DVD, but that is an added bonus for all the Midnight Warriors out there.

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That's probably about enough for today, I'm drooling on the keyboard over here. I meant to mention a couple of releases from the folks at Media Blasters - which earlier this year promised my beloved Godzilla vs. Megalon and the Tiffany Bolling flick The Candy Snatchers - but Amazon shows both titles as on hold. So boo to them for trying to ruin Christmas, but I've got a feeling that y'all can find something else for the genre nut who's on your Christmas list too.

So, Midnight Warriors...what flicks are on your holiday want list?

8 Things I Love About... Pieces

2011-12-11T15:26:00.000-06:00

You could say these are pieces of Pieces, couldn't you?


Because what's a slasher film without Mommy issues?

Anatomy professor with the oh-so-convenient 'Stache of Impending Doom.

The Blob of blood that comes from a co-ed decap.

It doubles as an exercise video!

The groundskeeper/potential killer status of Paul Smith's character, keeping the film in Scooby-Doo territory.

The chainsaw-to-skin effects are one of the few things in this movie that is actually impressive.

Every campus needs its own ninja.

If I have to explain this one, you need to see Pieces. NOW.

Midnight Movie of the Week #101 - The Centerfold Girls

2011-12-08T23:02:00.000-06:00

I'm pretty sure I didn't get enough of Tiffany Bolling last week. So, consider this a case of her being "held over" in the MMOTW spotlight for a second week. I can't promise there won't be a third...

Unlike last week's Bolling feature - Bonnie's Kids - which borrowed heavily from pulp novels and film noir, The Centerfold Girls (obviously) borrows inspiration from the pages of "gentleman's" magazines. It's a segmented film - I'm not ready to call it an anthology, but it's pretty clearly divided into three unique tales - that is tied together by one cold and calculated killer, a seemingly proper gentleman in a suit and sneakers named Clement Dunne, played by veteran character actor Andrew Prine.

Clement seems to be a man of strong moral fiber, if you think wanting to systematically kill off young women who pose as nude centerfolds represents "strong moral fiber". His quest places the film in the vicinity of the blooming slasher genre of film, but the 1974 production has more in common with exploitation fare of the early '70s like The Last House on the Left - and probably a bit in common with the pornography of the era too.

The film's first segment sets the tone for us all, with the kind of sleaze you'd expect from the decade's top sexploitation titles and brutality on par with the controversial Wes Craven film listed above. After the film introduces Clement - while he dumps a naked model's body on a beach - we follow him as he tracks a model-turned-nurse named Jackie (played by Jamie Lyn Bauer, a former swimsuit pageant winner), who has about the worst luck I've ever seen on film.

After breaking down due to harassing phone calls from Clement, Jackie picks up a seemingly innocent hitchhiker and heads away to a secluded cabin for the weekend. Trouble follows her there, but it's not Clement she has to worry about - yet. Jackie's story takes some wacky turns - most notably the one involving her helpful neighbors, a husband and wife played by veteran character actor Aldo Ray and Paula Shaw (who would go on to play Pamela Voorhees in Freddy vs. Jason) - and by the time Clement gets to it's almost a relief to the viewer. Jackie certainly gets abused worse than anyone else in the film, and she's a contender on the all-time abuse list too.

Clement's second pursuit is the least interesting segment of the film, but does provide some intrigue by putting his victim - this time it's a pin-up played by Jennifer Ashley who happens to be away on a shoot with more potential victims/models - on an island setting with the kind of old home we'd expect to see in a Mario Bava film. This story has some great visuals, but the characters don't have much to offer us - aside from their exposed breasts. (Just so we're clear, I'm relatively sure at least a dozen different girls show off their "talents" in the film. The title isn't just a metaphor.)

The final sequence brings Clement face to face with Ms. Bolling, who plays a centerfold turned stewardess (it was the '70s, I don't have to say flight attendant!) that is tracked across the coastline by our determined killer. She spends the most time with Clement of the multiple centerfolds, and her interactions with him pick the film back up after the brief lull in the middle sequence. It's not a strong role like she was given in Bonnie's Kids (whose writer/director Arthur Marks also produced and help write this film) for most of her time on screen, but the final conflict between her and Clement is an exciting conclusion to the film.

Despite how much I enjoy Ms. Bolling's charms and the several interesting side characters who are spread throughout the film, make no mistake about the fact that Andrew Prine's performance as Clement is the reason to see The Centerfold Girls. With the voice of a TV host from the 1950s and his bible salesman appearance, Prine creates one of the most unique killers in the annals of exploitation cinema. We know he's the killer from frame one, but every time we see him step into a phone booth, dial up one of the girls, and tell them that he's "only trying to help them" it adds a bit more intrigue to the film. Prine has stated that he wanted to make his character a man who only sees things in black-and-white, and the performance that he gives clearly meets that goal.

Random horror connection - Yes, that is a copy of The Exorcist on Tiffany Bolling's bedside table. Rowr.

Like other great killers in cinema, Clement Dunne represents a force of nature. His actions are based on beliefs instead of emotions, and he moves through the film with a confidence that never wavers. The film plays his unwavering confidence against the victims' own problems perfectly - is it a coincidence that the two sequences that really work feature a former beauty queen and a former Playboy playmate? I think not. - and creates discomfort that would make any exploitation filmmaker proud along the way.

The Centerfold Girls is certainly not a fun movie and I'm not even sure it's a good movie - the lull in the middle is really kind of sad - but it's got some really fantastic moments. There are moments of incredible unease and a performance by Prine that lifts his killer above the material. It sounds like a sensationalized film that wants to capitalize on the male love of naked bodies - and it is to an extent - but The Centerfold Girls has a pretty shrewd dose of exploitation psychology in store for a viewer, and it's that edge to the film that has me heartily recommending it to any fan of bloody '70s sleaze.

Best killer shoes ever? Maybe.

Midnight Top Five - The "Random List Based On a Quote About Fear" Edition

2011-12-06T00:13:00.000-06:00

I'm draggin', you guys. If I was a horror movie villain I might take that comma out and be ACTUALLY draggin' you guys, but that's certainly not the case. The case, as sad as it may be, is that I'm at one of those "I'm too busy and worn out to actually think and write stuff" moments in life. You've probably seen them here before, they go around.

If y'all don't know already, I take this blog thing pretty seriously. It's my baby. And the fact that I only fed it 14 posts last month is borderline child abuse. Some tell me that's still a respectable number, and they're probably right. But 20's always been my goal, and falling that far short for the first time since 2009 TERRIFIES me.

I was reading the Twitter earlier, and someone said that Alfred Hitchcock (who, for the sake of argument, was all kinds of awesome) once said "The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them." I don't make films - don't have the eye for it (or the camera) - but I do write a mean blog post once in a while. And hey, I can write the poo out of a list. So....here's a list.

Midnight Top Five - "The Only Way To Get Rid of The Mike's Fears is To Write a Mean Blog Post About Them" Edition.

And when I say mean, I don't "mean" mean like King Kong Bundy smashing Hulk Hogan's ribs, I mean "mean" like a bowl of Chili that's so good it's gonna rip your intestines up and make them make it a sandwich. The good kind of "mean".

Death

Let's face it. As much as some of us try to deny it, death is the scariest mofo out there. I've never been too scared of my own death - I got a feeling that there's more out there for me someday - but In the past week I've known three people that have died. And that sucks. Heck, only one of them was related to me, one of them I knew for three days, and one of them I'd only known in passing. But it still bugs me, because I fall in to that trap of not wanting to believe that it can actually happen.

And that's where horror movies come in to play. In real life we fight to believe that death can't really happen. In horror movies? We look for it. We expect it. WE BEG FOR IT. You know how many times I've seen people complain about a horror movie because there's not enough death in it? A lot of times. That's how many times.

I'm going to my Great Uncle's funeral in the morning, and I'm not happy about that. But tonight, I'm watching Friday the 13th Part 2. I don't even think that's a good movie, but it takes me away from the world where death is a scary thing. And that's just how I roll sometimes.

Needles

On the movie screen, my biggest fear has always been needles. I blame my father for this, as he did an excellent job of making noises that sound like sow in heat trapped in a burlap sack with a rabid coyote whenever he saw someone get poked with a needle in a movie while I was growing up. Y'know how they say behaviors are learned? Well, so are fears.

But, on the other side of the picture, there's a strange allure to seeing the needles on screen and being terrified of them to the point where I have my own slightly-less-animal-sounding-and-more-gasping-for-breath reaction to them. The other day I was in the store and I saw a DVD cover for this movie called Needle. I swear to Gosh, it thoroughly excited me.

So, while I'm afraid of needles, I'm at the same time kind of excited to face them. I don't know what that means, but I know that every year, when the folks at work push that awful flu shot upon me, I do what I gotta do - and cowboy the heck up. So I guess I owe the movies a debt of gratitude - because the needles I see in the real are never as scary as the ones I see on screen.

(BTW, it would be awful for me to not mention that one time when my favoritest female named Andre over at The Horror Digest once tackled my fear of needles for me. Y'all should go give her blog hugs on my behalf.)

Someone Taking Paul Rhoads From Me

OK, this probably shouldn't be one of my five biggest fears. But right now, it's out there man.

As I posted about a couple of weeks ago, I am a relatively proud graduate of Iowa State University and a bit of a Cyclone fanatic. But I add the words relatively and a bit here, because sometimes it's really terrifying to believe in the good going on at ISU. I grew up in an era where we (I went to school there, I can totally say "we"!) lost 15 straight games to our rivals on the other side of the state and didn't make a bowl game until I was a sophomore in college. Our best season ever was that 9-3 season, and we've struggled to stay relevant ever since.

So, the fact that we currently have a head coach who's from here and loves our school and seems to be doing a really good job is awesome. But do good things really last? Sometimes I feel like being an ISU fan is like being a survivor of a horror movie who's always waiting for the killer to jump back at 'em. It's like us fans are Sue Snell, and ISU's past is Carrie White's ghost and if we're not careful the same kind of people who took Gene Chizik away after he went 5-19 over two years will come take Coach Rhoads from us. And that bugs me. (BTW, Chizik's an asshole.)

I think this was supposed to have something to do with horror movies. But hey, I at least made the Carrie analogy. And I think any devoted sports fan out there can probably relate with times they've felt like their team is a horror movie waiting to happen. We buy in, we care too much. That's what us fans do, whether it's sports or horror. Don't hate us because we dream.

Being Trapped In A Loop of Pain

As much as I hate to say it, the Saw movies have this fear down.

Of course, in the real, the loop of pain doesn't usually have elaborate plans and a cancer patient turned evil mastermind with Shawnee Smith shaped henchwoman. Instead it's usually a monotonous daily grind or a demanding boss or trouble in our relationships with others that wears us down. Lately it's been ridiculous expectations at work that have me feeling trapped and exhausted and pretty much beaten (so much so that I think I've already said that). It's another thing that seems kind of petty to fear, but we all dream of things being easier. Maybe the movies got it wrong on this one, because usually it's them and that TV that are telling us things should be easier.

But in horror movies? There's no easy way out. There's no shortcut home. Everything's a struggle. Sort of like recent indie hit Grave Encounters, in which a haunted asylum becomes an uberdeathmaze. Or like any haunted house flick, really. So yeah, maybe horror movies are the one set of movies that really do prepare us for life's traps - and hopefully with much more machete than real life.

Being Misunderstood

Sigh. OK, this post has gone on way too long. But look, sometimes that's the point of the internet. We kick and we scream and we suggest ever so delicately, just because we want people to understand who we are and why we are those people. Especially us horror fans.

Some of us are here for cheap thrills and violence and sex and crap like The Human Centipede that's all about sensationalization. Some of us are here to think about what we're watching because we love the idea of horror movies. And if y'all can't tell which group of horror fans I fall into, then I'm afraid that it doesn't matter how many posts I make a month. Because if you don't know, I've failed miserably at my only goal here.

There. Five big fears. How they relate to horror. One rambling post. I sleep now. Be well, Midnight Warriors. Face your fears, even if only through movies.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

2011-12-04T23:06:00.000-06:00

(2010, Dir. by Eli Craig.)

From the outside, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is one of those projects that is conceived in sink or swim territory. I went into the film rather blind, avoiding trailers and reviews, so I went into the film knowing that a) it was one of those buddy horror comedies that have become so popular since Shaun of the Dead and b) it was pretty much loved by everyone who saw it. Still, I found myself a little worried about Tucker and Dale the film. Was there really any gas left in the horror comedy tank?

From the looks of things, it appears there is. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is packed to the brim with comedic charms and manic action, and the end result is a film that's about as fun as a movie can be.

As you can guess from the title, the film follows Tucker and Dale, two "hillbillies" who are heading into the woods to fix up a cabin that Tucker (the smarter of the duo, played by Alan Tudyk) has purchased as a vacation home. Dale (Tyler Labine) is his good-hearted and somewhat juvenile companion on this adventure (and yes, the film comes complete with awkward homosexual implications); a large, bearded fellow who has a steel trap memory and an awkward relationship with the ladies.

Speaking of ladies, the opposite side of the film features a group of "college kids" who are heading to the same lake to party. They encounter Tucker and Dale along the way, and do what most people who hold stereotypes about the mountainfolk of West Virginia would do: assume the worst. And, in this case, the worst is assuming that the simpleton fisherman and cottage enthusiasts are psycho mass murderers who are out to get them.

The characters aren't much more than those hillbilly and college kid stereotypes, but the actors' work helps freshen the material considerably. Tudyk is certainly going to be most recognizable to audiences after his work on Firefly/Serenity and his appearances in other mainstream films, and he does a good job playing the straight man to Labine's dale for most of the film. But Labine is the real star of the proceedings, with his childlike performance making him one of the most endearing horror heroes in a long time. His interactions with both Tudyk and Katrina Bowden, the sexpot blonde who plays the innocent college girl that falls into Tucker and Dale's laps, do a fantastic job of building him up as a hero, which makes the final act even more rewarding when it rolls around.

The acting from the younger members of the cast is about par for this type of film, though Jesse Moss - a veteran of Ginger Snaps and Final Destination 3 - is a welcome aggressor as the frat boy who turns violent when he thinks the title characters are up to no good. It's another simple, cliched character, but Moss provides a sinister smirk and is about as unlikable as Labine is likable.

The biggest surprise to me was the film's portrayal of its third title character: Evil. As a horror fan, I think I expected Tucker and Dale to face off against Kandarian Demons or mutant inbreds or something. Thus, the conflict between the two friends and the group of kids who are prone to flights of fancy is a welcome change of pace, especially because director Craig and co-writer Morgan Jurgenson present it with their tongues firmly in cheek. I was kind of surprised to see the plot play out the way it did, as the unlikely twists and turns definitely feel like a fresh addition to the horror comedy genre.

I've been beating this point into the ground, but there's simply no avoiding it: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is ridiculously fun. The lead characters are fantastically realized, the college kids play their stereotype roles perfectly, and it all looks and sounds great. I suppose I could nitpick about some bad CGI, but its effect on the film is negligible. Tucker and Dale rock, their film rocks, and anyone who watches them come together is probably going to have a rocking good time. That's just all there is to say about Eli Craig's film: It's enjoyable and funny and kinda sweet and just plain awesome.

Midnight Movie of the Week #100 - Bonnie's Kids

2011-12-01T23:08:00.000-06:00

From the obscure corners of the 1970s comes Bonnie's Kids, an exploitation drama that has been ignored by most people who aren't named Quentin Tarantino. Directed by Arthur Marks, who's probably most known for blaxploitation flicks Friday Foster and Detroit 9000, the film follows the adventures and misfortunes of Myra and Ellie, the daughters of the now deceased Bonnie who are left to face the world together.

The opening scenes make it perfectly clear that the girls' strength lies primarily in their attitude and their appearance. The elder sister, Ellie, is a waitress who does her best to fend off the advances of every male in town despite her skimpy work outfit. Myra, who struggles with the condition known as "being a teenager", seems too innocent to even notice her physical gifts as the film opens. As she dries herself off after a bath with the window wide open, one of her stepfather's friends remarks with redneck sincerity that "there oughta be a law against that". In his words, a body like that can be a deadly weapon.

Which makes it really dangerous when a "body like that" possesses a shotgun.

Immediately after that astute observation by a character we'll never see again, drunken step-father Charley decides that Myra's sexuality means that he can throw himself upon her. Ellie returns home just in time, unloading both barrels of her stepfather's shotgun into his chest. Since "justifiable homicide" wasn't a term that exists in this case, Ellie and Myra dump the body and quickly head out of town (as shown in the title screen above), escaping to the big city where they can stay with their rich Uncle Ben (who's not related to Spider-Man....I think).

Myra literally has them eating out her hands.

The differences between Myra and Ellie are established pretty easily. Ellie is very comfortable flaunting her body, taking a modeling position in Uncle Ben's agency, while Myra seems content to hang out on her Uncle's ranch where she can hang out with his young trophy wife (a gorgeous redhead who leads Myra into one of the film's sleazier twists) and have a romping relationship with a young man. At the same time, Ellie agrees to help her Uncle out by delivering a package, which sets the film's noirish plot spiraling into plenty of conflicts. Double Indemnity, which is considered by many to be the Alpha noir, is referenced by one of the film's more blunt characters; a not-so-sly nod to the pulpy tales that inspired writer/director Marks.

Cardboard Ex Machina.

Speaking of pulp, Uncle Ben is in business with two well-dressed and brutally efficient criminals, whose purpose is clearly to intercept the package and stop anyone who tries to get in its way. The deadly duo is played by The Godfather's Alex Rocco and former Green Bay Packer running back Timothy Brown, and this pair of white-and-black "business associates" who are searching for a suitcase should clue most viewers in on why I mentioned Quentin Tarantino in the opening paragraph.

We didn't discuss foot massages in the '70s.

Though its effect on Pulp Fiction may draw some viewers (I only learned of the film while reading about films that influenced Tarantino), viewers of the film will find much more to respect about Marks' film, primarily due to the actresses who play Ellie and Myra. Seventeen year-old Robin Mattson - who went on to a long career in soap opera television - is perfectly cast as Myra, and the ease with which she wavers between innocence and rage should connect with any viewer who's ever had to deal with an angry teenage girl. When Mattson is allowed to let her anger out she shouts and shakes and grits her teeth, all effectively, which leads to some memorable outbursts. Most notable is definitely the final confrontation between her and her "kinda Aunt" played by Lenore Stevens, a vicious scene that ends with a bang and helps cement how dangerous Myra can be.

I really don't understand the purpose of the fluffy bikini.

And then there is Ellie. Oh my. Ellie is played by one of my favorite beauties of the '70s - Tiffany Bolling. A graduate of Playboy magazine, Bolling would go on to assist William Shatner in the all-too-awesome Kingdom of the Spiders and to stare down the maniacal killer of The Centerfold Girls. But her turn as Ellie puts most B-movie roles to shame, allowing her to heat up the screen with her blonde hair and long legs while she manipulates the men with ease. Unlike her younger sister, Ellie understands the weapon of a body that she possesses and tries to use it wisely - which settles her firmly into the classic role of the femme fatale. The men that surround her - primarily the ones played by Steve Sandor and Max "Grandpa Fred from Sixteen Candles" Showalter - quickly follow the lead of whatever she says, and it's easy to understand why when we see how she acts around men.

Here are Bolling and Showalter, more than 10 years before Long Duk Dong.

One of the most telling scenes in the film comes early on, when Uncle Ben discusses Ellie's modeling career - while looking at very nude photos of his niece - and a smirking Ellie replies to repeated suggestions from him with a monotone "I'll do anything that you say". The distracted male doesn't quite know what he's up against, and the smirk on Bolling's face quietly tells the viewer that she's got more control over he situation than her Uncle thinks. Other males in the film are more vocally caught up in Ellie's charms, with my favorite moment possible coming when Sandor's character proclaims that Ellie has "the bitchinest legs I've ever seen".

They definitely aren't bad legs.

Bonnie's Kids sounds kind of sleazy - and it is kind of sleazy, to be fair - but there's something about this drive-in version of a pulp noir novel that elevates the material above simple exploitation fare. As far as dramas go, It's a movie that exists somewhere in the area between The Maltese Falcon and Showgirls. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I like the balance that Marks' film strikes between classic crime story and sleazy sex movie. Plus, there's really not much sex in it at all. You don't need the sex when you imply as much sex as Tiffany Bolling does.

This is not Tiffany Bolling, but it is implied sex.

Bonnie's Kids probably wasn't the best thing to play at a grindhouse in the '70s, but I feel like it's criminally underrepresented in the discussion of cult cinema. This is an artistic movie with some great visuals, some terrific performances, and a nice little stamp on pop culture of the future. And it's got Tiffany Bolling, and if she can't melt your defenses then I'm not sure there's hope for you. Bonnie's Kids has everything from calculated hitmen to lesbian accusations to pet rats to the Grandpa from Sixteen Candles (pretty sure I mentioned him already, but it needs repeated), and when you add that all to everything else I love about it, it leaves me proclaiming it to be a total blast.

8 Things I Love About... The Devil Rides Out

2011-11-29T13:00:00.001-06:00

It seems like ages ago that this was the first Midnight Movie of the Week. Now, on the eve of the 100th MMOTW(!), it deserves some more love.

Christopher Lee not being amused.

Christopher Lee being inventive.

An observatory with interesting flooring.

Folks putting their hands in the air like they just don't care.

The incredibly possessable Sarah Lawson.

The child-eating spider of Satan.

Taking a stand - with the help of chalk, candles, and throw pillows.

Christopher Lee getting a chance to say "I'm the good guy this time, suckas!"

FMWL Indie Spotlight - SUPER HAPPY DVD RELEASE DATE EDITION

2011-11-28T23:06:00.000-06:00

I normally shy away from posting "news" stories. There are about 1,473,984 blogs/websites that can bring you that stuff. But I caught wind of some news - or at least news to me - about a couple of my favorite movies of the last two years today, and I could not hide my excitement from y'all. And if the title of this post doesn't show you how happy I am, wait till you hear what I've got to say below.

First up is the most infamous title in the history of FMWL - Dead Hooker in a Trunk. I don't have to tell you much about the film, because it's exactly what you'd expect from a film called Dead Hooker in a Trunk. But it's more than you'd expect from a film called Dead Hooker in a Trunk at the same time. It's gory and violent and crude, but it's also funny and even kind of sweet. I've pimped it more than enough here at the site, so when I saw a tweet from those devilishly Twisted Twins (BTW, if you don't already know about Jen and Sylvia Soska, don't worry - there's still time to save you!) this morning that stated that IFC Midnight (who are generally awesome) would be releasing the DVD of Dead Hooker in a Trunk on January 31, 2012....I got really excited.

Seriously, does that look like a bundle of awesome or what? (Spoiler alert: IT DOES LOOK LIKE A BUNDLE OF AWESOME.) And best of all, pre-order links are already up at CD Universe and good ol' Amazon.com. So if you've really been craving a movie about a perished prostitute in a portmanteau (OK, that's a different kind of trunk, but when you have a chance to type portmanteau you type portmanteau) that's one of the most deliriously fun movies you'll see next year - you need to check this one out ASAP (Which, again, is January 31, 2012.)

On the other side of the indie DVD release news spectrum, I was equally joyed to find the official Facebook page of Absentia - which is a strong contender for the top spot on my Best of 2011 list that should appear near the end of the year - mentioning today that Phase 4 Films would be releasing their film on March 13, 2012.

You might be dissuaded by that DVD cover - I'm a bigger fan of the simpler poster art that accompanies my review of the film RIGHT HERE - but let me assure you that Absentia is one of the most intelligent and well-acted thrillers out there right now. Great performances by Katie Parker and Courtney Bell are a major part of the film's success, but director Mike Flanagan also frames some of the best scares I've seen in ages. It's a really remarkable little film, and I challenge anyone out there to check it out and see for themselves. I'm not much for guarantees on the internet - they're generally not worth the pixels they're printed on - but I will flat out guarantee that Absentia will get you to jump out of your seat at least once. Probably more than that. Seriously.

As a fan of all things awesome, it absolutely thrills me to see these movies getting their chance to hit video and make their mark in the horror scene. If you're looking for something fantastic and original during the first few months of 2012, I don't think you can do much better than these two films. As different as they may be, Dead Hooker in a Trunk and Absentia are two great horror films - and y'all need to be ready for them.

If you're like me, you might find out that they are two films that will make you proud to be a horror fan.

FMWL Indie Spotlight - The Hagstone Demon

2011-11-26T22:52:00.000-06:00

(2011, Dir. by Jon Springer.)

It's The Sentinel by way of Wes Anderson in The Hagstone Demon, another one of those shockingly interesting indie features to come out of Minnesota over the past few years. I'm not entirely sure what's in the water up there - I certainly know that it's not helping their football team - but guys like Gregg Holtgrewe, Matt Osterman, Dan Schneidkraut, Todd Cobery, and now Jon Springer should be teaching a course for indie horror filmmakers. If I were them, I'd call that course "No More Boring Horror Movies 101", because each of the films I've seen from this group stays interesting by bucking the norms we've come to expect from horror films in this day and age.

Springer's feature, The Hagstone Demon, holds form alongside the films of his indie brethren by balancing oh-so-delicately on the ledge between looking like a studio release and retaining its independent charms. Shot mostly in black-and-white (with a few color sequences peppered in to make key points more obvious), the film follows the custodian of a condemned property as he deals with strange occurrences like the reappearance of his dead wife, hairless cats, and a string of murders around and/or in the building he presides over. That building - The Hagstone - appears to have a long and storied history (thanks for that info, random character in the first act!), but the caretaker is an ex-reporter who's more interested in escaping his own demons and keeping his distance from the tenants of the building that's about to expire.

The caretaker is played by Wisconsin born actor Mark Borchardt, who gained some exposure around the turn of the century as the star of hit documentary American Movie. I haven't seen that film, and thus had little knowledge of Borchardt before the film, but it became easy to see why the former indie filmmaker was a perfect choice for this role. Borchardt makes the caretaker a realistic hero simply by being the kind of unmotivated young man that we have probably met once or twice in our lives. But while the character is presented as unkempt and awkward, the film's focus on helping us understand the events that led him to The Hagstone really help flesh out the character well.

The characters and events that surround the caretaker need to be seen to be believed. I mentioned the wife and the murders already, but The Hagstone is also home to acts of prostitution, naked Satan cults, exhumed corpses, and possibly - as you might have guessed - a demon. The caretaker does his best to focus on his own issues despite the events around him - at one point he even turns away his attractive and innocent single-mother neighbor because he wants to avoid her problems while dealing with his own - but the film brings things together in unique ways as it moves toward the final act and all the conflicts within it.

The events of the film's final third seem to borrow a lot from Satanist cinema of the past - we even get a young priest, played by Ghost from the Machine star Sasha Andreev - but everything from the cast to the camerawork is unique enough to make it feel fresh. A sequence with the building's last remaining resident is full of manic energy that lifts the plot to a new level, and the events that follow are full of appropriate weirdness. It took me a while to figure out what to expect from the film - which is full of awkward comedy early on and struggles to balance the dark side of its plot at times - but the final turns set a lot of things right.

I really dug The Hagstone Demon, primarily because of how unique it feels in the library of Satan cult films. It doesn't bring a lot of chills or scares, but there's something to be said for a thoughtful tale of horror that ends with a haunting final image. Anchored by fine acting from Borchardt and the female leads (I haven't mentioned Nadine Gross or Cyndi Kurtz here, which is a shame considering how much they bring to the film) and an inventive visual presentation, The Hagstone Demon should at least hold the interest of anyone who thought The House of the Devil was a great throwback to horror films gone by.

The Hagstone Demon is now on DVD and Blu-Ray, and I certainly recommend it as a unique tale. There are story takes some confusing turns as it unfolds, but I think the payoff is worth investigating. For more information on the film, including purchasing info, make sure to head over to the official site and learn more!

Midnight Movie of the Week #99 - The Fog

2011-11-25T00:21:00.000-06:00

John Carpenter and I have always been pretty much best buds when it comes to genre cinema. Halloween opened my mind, Assault on Precinct 13 thrilled me, Prince of Darkness made me realize critics could be the wrongest people ever....I could go on and on. Heck, dude's previously had 5 movies named Midnight Movie of the Week here - with The Fog presently becoming number 6 - and this is about the 25th of my 500+ posts that will get tagged with Carpenter's name. But what some might find hard to believe is that The Fog - which many horror fans regard as one of Carpenter's best films - and I didn't get along extremely well for a long, long time. There's a story that explains my resistance to Carpenter's seaside ghost story - which, to be fair, I've always LIKED, just haven't always LOVED - and, since this is my blog, I'm gonna tell you that story now.

From the start, Carpenter's tale of the supernatural has the feel of something special. The opening, in which an old man played by veteran actor John Houseman (who I've always thought was kind of another version of the great Donald Pleasence) tells a group of kids a scary story around a campfire at five til' midnight just reeks of awesomeness. And when you combine this ominous scene with the Edgar Allan Poe quote that opens the film - "Is all that we see or seem just a dream with in a dream?" - and the strange paranormal events that occur throughout the fascinating seaside villa of Antonio Bay while the film's opening credits are rolling, you have to think there's something deeply supernatural that's gonna happen in this movie.

I was probably 15 or 16 years old when I first met The Fog - which had been strongly recommended by my mother while I begged for horror movies in our country home - and I was still a long way from becoming The Mike that I am today. But these setting events seemed to represent everything I wanted to love about horror movies - particularly tales of hauntings - and my mind started racing pretty quickly as the film went on. And that's when I became hyperfocused on a detail that derailed my enjoyment of the movie for more than a decade.

If you don't know, The Fog settles in around the story of the Elizabeth Dane after its opening. In the film, a priest (played by one of my favorite dudes, Hal Holbrook) discovers that the church he presides over and much of Antonio Bay itself was founded after his ancestors deceived the crew of the Elizabeth Dane - a ship full of rich leper colonists - into crashing into nearby rocks, allowing the "conspirators" to pillage the gold from the ship and bolster their own leper-less community. And that these events just happened to occur 100 years ago that day.

Father Malone's revelation comes shortly after midnight on that anniversary - which is precisely the same time that several other events in the film occur. Inanimate objects all over town, mostly electrical devices, malfunction or act out for no good reason; leaving the town confused by the likes of repetitive car horns or self-moving armchairs. More relevant to the title, a fog bank appears and dooms a ship that's out to sea, setting up the connection to the foggy night when the lepers were sacrificed in the name of fear and greed. But there's also a third event that occurs at that time, and that's the one that I became convinced meant more than the film thought it meant.

At the same time the town was freaking out and three seamen were doomed by what have been mistakenly called "pirate ghosts", a simple man played by Tom Atkins picks up a young hitchhiker named Elizabeth played by Jamie Lee Curtis. And that's where my imagination began to get the best of me and makes me mad at John Carpenter (and co-writer Debra Hill). They introduce a character named Elizabeth at the same time as the fate of a ship named the Elizabeth Dane was discovered, and then had her jump right into bed with Tom Atkins, who didn't seem to have his Night of the Creeps charm yet. Seriously?

So, to sum up, we've got a character named Elizabeth showing up in a town exactly 100 years after a ship named Elizabeth was doomed by the founders of said town. And I was absolutely positively convinced that that coincidence meant something. (SPOILER ALERT: It did not mean something.) So, for the rest of the film, I kept expecting this nice young girl who seems like an average Jamie Lee Curtis character and is squeamish around corpses and whose only sin is jumping into bed with Tom Atkins within minutes of meeting him to turn into an undead leper. In the end, I actually convinced myself that she did turn in to undead leper for several years. It took many viewings of the film before I looked at myself and went "Hey, The Mike, that girl didn't turn into Fog and come out from under a door, you made that up because of her name." And when I did call myself out, and really realized that the film didn't intend to have Elizabeth as part of the evil....well, then I got mad at Carpenter and his movie.

This seems like a random enough moment for me to say that I love that Assault on Precinct 13 star Darwin Joston appears in The Fog as a coroner named Dr. Phibes. LOVE IT.

I convinced myself that I liked my ending of the film better than Carpenter and Hill's, because who wouldn't want to see Jamie Lee Curtis turn heel at the end of a movie? Heck, she was already in full scream queen/good girl mode at this point, it would have been amazing to look back and see her as a nicer version of the bathtub ghost from The Shining or something like that. Alas, my ending to The Fog was completely created by my overactive mind, and after probably a dozen viewings of Carpenter's film I can finally feel safe saying that I was a fool to condemn Elizabeth as a leper ghost just because her name was Elizabeth.

Besides always being mad at the movie for not perfecting a plot twist that I invented in my stupid teenage brain, there's not much else I don't love about The Fog. I think it might be Carpenter's most well shot film - props to cinematographer Dean Cundey, who went on to get some Oscar nominations and work on hits like Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, and Apollo 13 - and it's incredibly interesting. So interesting that it made a teenager create his own ghost story, actually. That has to mean something.

Now that I've grown out of my overactive teenage mindset - at least in some ways - The Fog gets better and better each time I see it. And the more I see it, the more I remember that I should have never doubted John Carpenter while he was on his perfect run from 1976-1988. I've occasionally criticized filmgoers who have - in my mind again - misread Carpenter films that I consider classics, and I have to admit my own mistake in once misreading The Fog. It's an effective and well-done horror tale that deserves better than I once gave it.

(One more random note - The 2005 remake of the film, which is truly horrible, actually used a plot twist similar to the one my teenage mind invented which tied its Elizabeth to the events of 100 years ago. I honestly yelled at the screen and start blabbering like Kevin McCarthy at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers when I saw it unfold. And yes, I was in a public theater. I regret nothing.)

8 Things I Love About... Night of the Creeps

2011-11-21T13:00:00.002-06:00

This cute little fella and his trusty canister.

Corman University 1959, in glorious black & white.

Unibrow Jock Dude.

Everything about Tom Atkins, naturally.

Rooms with dark lighting and shiny buttons always rule.

The thing from Detective Cameron's past.

JC's ominous final message.

But, mostly, Jill Whitlow with a flamethrower. SWOON.

In fact, everything Jill Whitlow does in this movie is gorgeous. What happened to her? THE MIKE MUST KNOW!

Midnight Top Five - The "All-Time Horror Underdogs" Edition

2011-11-20T17:51:00.000-06:00

It's been a slow month for FMWL, because The Mike's being beaten severely on a regular basis by his place of work these days. I thought about coming home and hanging out with FMWL Friday night after a long day at said place of work, but I went against what I thought were my smarter thoughts and decided I'd spend an evening sitting outside in the cold to see my alma mater play a football game against the second best team in the nation. What followed looked a lot like this....

If you squint really hard you might see The Mike in there...

In nothing less than stunning fashion, my beloved Iowa State Cyclones defeated the previously undefeated Cowboys of Oklahoma State, a team loaded with professional prospects that was projected to play for the National Championship. It sounds big when you put it that way, but believe me when I say that it's so much bigger than you think to us lifelong Iowa Staters. We, as a collective fan base, have been raised to never expect such a historic victory, have always known that our resources and recruits don't match up with our conference opponents, and sometimes can slip into a bit of disgust - that some of my friends would call "being a hater" - about our fortunes as a football program. So for us to be the kings of the world for one night is pretty much the best thing that could ever happen to any of us as fans of such a historically mediocre program.

The thing that sometimes gets lost in the shuffle when juggernauts go down in sports is that the survivors who just fought for their lives despite their deficits are usually normal teams who no one expects anything from. And sometimes, the same thing happens in horror movies. Thus, I present to you a new Midnight Top Five, in which I'm gonna look at five of my favorite underdogs in horror history. Let's do this!

Deputy/Sheriff Dewey Riley - The Scream Series

Dewey Riley was the most immediate thing that came to my mind when I tried to think of horror characters who remind me of my alma mater's football team. Everyone underestimates Dewey, and most of the time he proves them right. He's often in the wrong place at the wrong time - sort of like his whole relationship with that awful Gale Weathers, but that's a different story - he doesn't carry himself like a winner, and he is left for dead pretty much all the time.

Dewey's the forgotten man in the first two Scream films (most have said that he only survived the original because test audiences wanted him to), and his rise to power as Sheriff in the latest installment of the series had me fist pumping in joy. He's still awkward - he's got the theme from Beverly Hills Cop as his ringtone in 2011! - and puts himself in some bad spots, but we love him anyway. And he's shown that he's gonna keep surviving, and he makes me think that one of these days he could even pull the big upset and do something really right.

Something like winning the WCW Championship!

Suzy Bannion - Suspiria

You get the feeling that, in her homeland of America, Suzy Bannion is really good at what she does. But when we get to see her dance in the Germanic setting of Suspiria, we realize pretty quickly that she's out of her element and up against forces that are a lot bigger than she is. She doesn't fit in with the other dancers, she doesn't know what she's up against. Like some of the biggest underdogs you'll find in sports, she's away from home and on the ropes.

Despite her surroundings, Suzy does her best to keep her head on straight. Like any underdog who wants to survive the game, she sets out to first understand her opponent. Her physical limitations are a secondary concern to her, because she needs information on how to defeat the evil forces around her before she can even compete with the dark forces of her academy. And sometimes a smart opponent that's somewhat capable can take down something that's bigger and badder than them. It's what a lot of great upsets are made of.

Benjamin Franklin Fischer - The Legend of Hell House

A lot of times, people talk about college sports like they exist solely to make money. According to some - mostly the advertisers who own the Bowl system and the administrators who get all the money from tens to hundreds of thousands flocking to their campuses - that's kind of true. Here at ISU, we recently were terrified beyond belief that we were going to be without a conference in the near future - which would mean no money to pay for all the upgrades to our facilities that we'd already started to build. Then again, there's another point that some of us argued - that our program would have a better chance of surviving if we weren't in this big money conference.

Enter Benjamin Fischer, played by Roddy McDowall, in The Legend of Hell House. A meek and kind of terrified fellow, Benjamin is spending time in the titular house mostly because a) he survived it once before and b) he's being paid. As such, you don't really expect him to give a strong showing, and when he does open himself up to the house he is abused badly. But as the game between investigators and spirits continues through this haunted house classic, McDowall starts to reveal a chip on Fischer's shoulder. That makes him a dangerous man in the final act, and places the ghosts of Hell House on upset alert.

The Dream Warriors - A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

If we were making a list of people who are underestimated, both "teenagers" and "folks in loony bins" would probably show up on that list. So when you put a bunch of teenagers in a loony bin (Is that not the PC term for it? OOPS.) up against a bully (who also kills people with knifey glove in their dreams), the oddsmakers are gonna be in favor of the bully.

Speaking of, it's worth noting how often us fans of underdogs feel like the favorites are bullies that are pushing us around. In some cases it's true - any time Nebraska ever came to town I felt like I was being whipped with towels after gym class again - and that's a time when it's pretty hard for the underdogs to really feel like they can do anything right. But when you can stand up and fend off that bully - whether it's shaped like Cornhuskers or Fred Kreuger - that's a time when you should be proud. And that's why us horror fans should be proud of the Dream Warriors, because they at least fought back. They might not have all survived, but it's a win that some of them did.

Valentine McKee & Earl Bassett - Tremors

Like most good underdogs, we know from the start that no one expects much out of Val and Earl, two handymen whose handiness might be overshadowed by their carefree behavior and....well, for lack of a better term....redneck tendencies. But it's quickly established that these two dudes are smarter than most people think, even if they don't present themselves as winners in that department.

And if you're wondering what the number one thing that can push an underdog to an upset over a dominating team or a trio of graboids, I have one word for you: teamwork. It sounds like a cliche, and sometimes it is, but being on the same mental wavelength as the person you are forced to trust in a crisis situation is a recipe for unexpected success. When something freaky happens and people think they have to adapt, it's often the people who can communicate effortlessly and who know each others' limitations that get the breaks that most observers would call "lucky". Val and Earl win mega bonus points for how well they understand each other, which makes their heroism - which seems improbable to most onlookers - easy to understand.

As you can see, the traits that can make an underdog a winner - things like perseverance, intelligence, determination, and communication - can work just as well in horror films as they do in athletics. Maybe there's not thousands of people storming to congratulate the characters who survive against all odds...but I think there should be.

Got your own favorite underdogs in horror? Join the comments section below and give them the respect they deserve! Like my beloved Cyclones' coach after their upset victory, I am so proud of all the great horror underdogs out there.

(Yeah, I'm posting that just because I'm still geeking out over this all. Deal with it.)

Midnight Movie of the Week #98 - Son of Godzilla

2011-11-17T23:11:00.000-06:00

I'm going with a bit of cinematic comfort food once more with this week's Midnight Movie of the Week. Last week I was worn out and took the apathetic route to comfort via Escape from New York, but this week I felt the need to watch something a little more happy-go-lucky. And while fans of a certain monster who's occasionally known as "Big G" might think I'm crazy, I can't stop myself from admitting that I take crazy amounts of comfort in the adventures of Minilla/Minya, the Son of Godzilla.

Like many American kids, the 'Zilla I grew up with isn't the Godzilla that was intended for audiences in his native Japan. Dubbed versions of the giant monster's films were readily available, but it was only in recent years that I learned all about just how badly mutilated these films were. Though my later travels into kaiju cinema showed me just how good the original Japanese versions of some of these films were compared to their American counterparts - Gojira vs. Godzilla! King of the Monsters is like Ice Cream vs. Herpes - I gotta admit that I still get a BIG kick out of a badly dubbed G-film from the '60s and '70s. You can blame the fact that the first Godzilla film in my house was Godzilla vs. Megalon (which would have been a MMOTW pick long ago if it just woulda been on DVD EVER!) for that.

The eighth Godzilla film - in a series that is now a whopping 28 films long (not counting Roland Emmerich's American "remake") - is generally recognized as one of the signs that the originally dark series had adapted to child audiences, an argument that is hard to dispute. Though many would argue that the film series would hold much more intrigue if it had maintained a serious tone and its focus on the dangers of radiation, I'm willing to bet there are a lot of folks out there who were darn happy to fund these light-hearted monster adventures when they were kids. I know that I count myself among that lot, because I didn't care one bit that Jet Jaguar was a stupid robot or that Megalon was a tree with pincers when I was a kid. I was in awe of the big monster battles, and Toho's decision to adapt these films to young audiences clearly attributed to my ability to suspend disbelief in the name of giant monsters.

Son of Godzilla occasionally feels like something between King Kong and Gilligan's Island, with a crew of scientists and an intrepid newspaperman (is there any other kind of newspaperman?) studying strange developments on a small island. These developments primarily involve a bunch of oversized preying mantises - known in the Toho 'verse as Kamacuras and a mysterious bathing beauty, until the 30 minute mark of the film when the angry uberbugs unearth a egg that produces the title character. The onlooking scientists immediately proclaim that "It looks like a baby Godzilla!", even though the flat faced and pudgy little character doesn't really resemble that iconic monster at all. Thankfully, Godzilla shows up and fights off two out of three Kamacuras (which ain't bad!), then adopts the little tyke as his own. I'm not really sure who the real father of the character - now known as Minilla to G-Scholars - is, but if you're a monster and get to call Godzilla your dad, it doesn't matter who your real father is.

Which brings me to the real reason to talk about Son of Godzilla. Minilla makes me laugh constantly. He's like the kaiju version of John Belushi. And the scenes where his papa tries to teach him how to be a big meanie and growl and breathe radioactive fire are about the cutest things ever filmed. And the film ends with a battle in the snow, which makes it a lot like Kill Bill Vol. 1 - except for the fact that the battle is between a giant lizard and his adopted mini lizard and a giant spider named Kumonga.

OK, I don't have a lot of intelligent or useful things to say about Son of Godzilla right now. But again, I feel like I have to point out just how ridiculously enjoyable the silly little guy is. I think it might be genetic. I still have surprised memories of the time I loaned my dad my copy of Godzilla: Final Wars - which, for now, is the last film in the series - and he called me out of the blue, laughing hysterically, all because Minilla was riding in a truck and wearing a seatbelt. We love Minilla that much in this family.

This post needs more Asian dudes in peril.

So yeah, maybe I'm not the best G-Fan. I know that this version of Godzilla looks like a bad puppet version of the original with creepy wonky eyes, and I know that the battles in this film lack a lot of the swagger of other kaiju films. But this G-rated introduction to the softer side of Godzilla remains something that makes me smile constantly, and I stand proud of my unwavering enjoyment of Minilla's adventures in catching weird fruits that are thrown up to 100 yards in the air by an island lady. Son of Godzilla rocks my socks, and I'm OK with that.

FMWL Indie Spotlight - Jenny Ringo and The Monkey's Paw

2011-11-15T23:13:00.000-06:00

(2011, Dir. by Chris Regan.)

The Monkey's Paw is one of those stories that just warms a horror lover's heart. It's become more of an ideal than a story and - despite my vivid memories of reading/discussing the story in a 5th grade English class - I had to look up the fact that it was originally a short story by W.W. Jacobs. The basic theme behind the story - which warns us that wishes can't always overpower fate - has been molded into plenty of horror tales throughout the years. The adaptation/homage that jumps to the forefront of my mind is a segment from Freddie Francis' 1972 Tales From the Crypt film - but the story has also been spoofed plenty of times by folks like The Simpsons and The Monkees. To me the story has always been one of the great horror mysteries, because you can go almost anywhere from a "what if you had three wishes but couldn't control the results?" set-up.

So when Chris Regan, a blogger and reader of FMWL, contacted me regarding a comedy-horror short film that he'd just completed - Jenny Ringo and The Monkey's Paw - I noticed the words "The Monkey's Paw" in the title...and I got real curious real quick. I didn't know who Jenny Ringo was at the time, but I'm darn glad I watched this short and met her.

Jenny Ringo and The Monkey's Paw - a blatantly British production, FYI - seems to have taken a bit of inspiration from the work of Edgar Wright on Shaun of the Dead and Spaced. The story focuses on two best buds - Jenny and Gavin - who share a flat and try to coexist through Gavin's slothful attitude and Jenny's attempts to grow-up and pay the bills. When Jenny tries to escape the apartment for a couple of weeks, Gavin is forced to leave the flat, which allows him to come across a magician who possesses a magical monkey's paw.

I think it's safe to say that Gavin is about as bad at coming up with three wishes as anyone in the history of Monkey's Paw tales, but he still manages to do sufficient damage to the lives of himself and his flatmate. When Jenny returns and finds the results of his actions, she has to take action to make things right.

The first thing that anyone will probably take away from this film is Rosie Duncan's turn as the title character, because she instantly makes Jenny Ringo a heroine that we're ready to love. She brings fantastic energy to the lead, from her initial pleas that what she's telling us might save our lives to her dominating direction to the lifeless Gavin when things rough. The character could be taken over the top - and one segment of the film shows us what it would look like if Jenny was too happy-go-lucky - but Duncan manages to keep Jenny realistic and entertaining throughout. It was less than 10 minutes before I was ready for a whole slew of Jenny Ringo adventures.

The rest of the film is at a disadvantage when pitted against such a front-and-center character, but there's still a lot that goes right. There are no obvious liabilities in the cast, and the film provides a lot of fun moments visually. A sequence in which Jenny and Gavin search for the magician who gave him the paw - a hammy character who is also pretty endearing in his own way - really gave me the impression that the cast and crew were having a lot of fun making this comedic tale. And a sequence with the magician and some characters that seem to have walked right out of a Herk Harvey film definitely had me smiling.

Regan's film isn't without flaws. The film sets Jenny up as a narrator and in-film director - kind of like Wayne in Wayne's World - early on, but I didn't feel they did enough to make this a part of the film in all scenes. And I was kind of left cold by the finale, partially because I was confused trying to put it back together with the opening of the film, and probably partially because I was selfishly wanting more Jenny Ringo adventures. (According to Regan, a sequel just might be in the works. My fingers are crossed for it!)

Though its tonal changes gave me brief pause, I found Jenny Ringo and The Monkey's Paw to be a fun example of the comedy that can come from classic horror tales. Regan has put together a neat little homage to the classic tale, and Duncan has created one heckuva memorable comic heroine. The resulting 25-minute film is well worth seeing, and I think that anyone who enjoys a tongue-in-cheek comedy should get a kick out of Jenny's brush with fate.

If you want to know more about Jenny Ringo and The Monkey's Paw - and I think you do - be sure to head over to the official site and sign up for the mailing list, which will keep you up to date on all of the film's adventures. You can also keep track of the film on Facebook, or follow Chris' blog - Writer by Night - to keep up with his views on film and notes on this film's future!

Who knows? God willing, we'll all meet again in Jenny Ringo 2 - The Search for More Monkey.

Supremely Cheesy Cinema, Vol. 9: The Carpenter

2011-11-13T18:22:00.000-06:00

If I were making a list of things I love far less than I should, the films of Wings Hauser would clearly be a contender. Aside from former MMOTW Vice Squad - in which the domineering actor plays the baddest of L.A's cowboy pimps - and this year's kooky indie hit Rubber, I've never had a lot of exposure to Hauser's work. Which, based on his roles in those two films, is clearly a bad thing. Thankfully, the folks over at Scorpion Releasing have just released a rare '80s treat on DVD - The Carpenter. (BTW, all images below are captured directly from that DVD, so anyone who's wondering about the transfer can get a decent sample here. Just click the pics to biggify.)

The Carpenter - as evidenced by the image of a growling Wings on that old VHS cover above - is partially a movie about an angry, power-tool abusing, carpenter played by Wings Hauser. But it's not exactly what that image advertises, and not just because Wings never wields a drill that large in the film. Though the image sells the film as a slasher/psychopath-with-tools flick, that's not quite a whole picture view of this story. There's a lot more quirks to The Carpenter than I expected.

The Carpenter is actually a film that's mostly about a crazy young woman named Alice, played by Lynn Adams. We know Alice is crazy partially because she is in a mental hospital for cutting up suits early in the film, but also because she has crazy person eyes. She's a frail woman with cat lady hair (surprisingly, no cats are involved in the film, a rarity for late '80s horror) who is living in a big 'old house that needs a lot of fixing up, with her husband, whose face appears to make him the boringest looking man of all-time.

He's like a boring French Saul Rubinek.

Alice's life is mostly craziness and awkwardness - check out her job interview, in which she admits to being in a loony bin and seeing things she knows can't be there - until she wakes up late one night and meets a carpenter who isn't one of the lazy bums that surround the house during the day that's just hammerin' away in the middle of the night. She seems to take an instant liking to him, even though he looks like a guy would make an awesome cowboy pimp and can no-scope a rat on the other side of the room with a nail gun.

But hey, at least he's not as '80s weird as THIS GUY.

While the lazy and stereotypically male carpenters get some work done during the day, mysterious carpenter played by Wings Hauser keeps showing up at night and getting plenty of work done. The daytime crew aren't extremely happy about this - they get paid by the day, after all - and start to get really confused as to why all this work is getting done in the middle of the night (The crew's foreman seems to think "students" have been coming after hours and getting the work done, which is one of the most "WTF?" ideas I've ever heard. They had carpentry students who did charity work in Canada in the '80s? Really?) Alice begins to take comfort in the visits from The Carpenter, partially because he teaches the groping daytime crew to keep their hands to themselves.

So begins the formula of The Carpenter. Alice feels crazy or faces danger, Carpenter shows up, someone gets a power tool to their person. Along the way, the bond between her and the Carpenter becomes stronger, and she seems to find inner peace when he's around and not dismembering dudes. A late film scene turns into a romantic dance scene between the two, which allows Wings to get dolled up in a nice white suit and Adams to do some googly eyes while still not keeping her hair in check.

The possibly supernatural romance between the two unhinged leads - I almost forgot the part where Alice is told about the man who built the house and was also a mass murderer before his death - slows the film's pace down pretty well, creating a distance between kills that might be too far for most slasher fans, but I found the film's attempts to be dream-like kind of charming. I don't necessarily agree with the advertising for the film that claims it is a hallucinogenic horror either - there's a little bit of medication involved in the plot and a couple of odd dream sequences, but nothing too trippy - and I'm not sure there's a good balance between the splattery side and the mental side of the film. But I like what writer Doug Taylor and director David Wellington were going for with Alice and the Carpenter's characters.

Pretty sure she gets her hair done the same place Selma Bouvier does.

It also should be noted that this film is Canadian, if only because there is more than one occasion when one of the characters says "aboot". For example, when the fact that Alice's husband's suits were destroyed is brought up, he says "I don't care aboot the suits", which I found unintentionally hilarious. And since I'm clearly trying to give you a thorough picture of The Carpenter, I'd be ashamed if I didn't mention it.

But with all this talk aboot crazy ladies and Canadian dialects and stuff, you're gonna wanna watch The Carpenter because of Wings Hauser. And you should watch The Carpenter because of Wings Hauser. He doesn't get a chance to be quite as frantic as he was in Vice Squad, but you can see the dual sides of his personality clearly throughout this film. He manages to turn on the charm when he needs to, but at the same time we know he's obviously someone who will murder people with the contents of his tool kit. There's not a lot to the nameless and ominous character, but it's a role that an actor like Hauser can have fun with.

And it's the swagger of Hauser - contrasted by the stiff character of Alice - that elevates The Carpenter for me. I had a lot of fun with this catchy little piece of Canuxploitation, and am excited to give it another go sometime in the future. The DVD presentation in its new form certainly presents a watchable transfer of the film - it's far from perfect, but is probably as good as this film could get at this point - which means that any fans of Hauser or power-tools-as-weapons shouldn't delay before checking this one out. Goofy tales of mental chicks and saw-carrying madmen don't get much better than this.

Midnight Movie of the Week #97 - Escape From New York

2011-11-10T23:54:00.002-06:00

I am tired.

Hell, I'm more than tired. I'm broken. I got this feeling that very little in the world I live in really matters right about now. My superiors have made my life difficult, the people I come across on a daily basis do little but make things more difficult, and the news reports I see on TV and the internet make me sick to my stomach. In fact, I seriously considered making this Midnight Movie of the Week post entirely about how much this Penn State child rape scandal that's fresh in society's eyes pisses me off (Seriously, it's the most sad and disgusting thing I've heard of in ages, and all the different sides of the story make me pretty sick to my stomach.), but that's not what y'all want to hear about at FMWL. And I don't want to dwell on shit either.

The thing is, I know that what I'm trying to do in this world really means something. I believe in the end result, which promises a better society and makes things better for everyone. I want to stand up for that, but I have no faith in the people and systems around me. Save a few kooky characters, I feel like I'm alone in my battle against apathy and two-facedness and, for lack of a better term, bullshit.

Though my body feels like it's about to explode and my mind is melted swiss cheese (is that even possible?), there are still things - much like my cause - that I do believe in. God, the music of Neko Case, the restorative power of apple juice, and the Green Bay Packers all sit firmly as things I believe in. But it's hard to find them when you're surrounded by rubble and chaos and your superiors bark at you from a tower telling you to fix everything or it's your ass. You get cut off from the rest of the world, and you start to think that you're friends and family may have heard that you're dead. And when you're surrounded by that stuff and as tired and broken down as I am - well, you start to feel a little like Snake Plissken.

Sure, I'm not as gruff or angry as the iconic anti-hero - I still don't get how he doesn't smile every time Ernest Borgnine's Cabbie is around, because I know I do - but I'm starting to feel a bit like a pawn in someone else's game of chess. Sort of like how Snake is used to play Police Commander Hauk - played with trademark devilish-stare by Lee Van Cleef - game of find the President. And I'm thankful that I don't end up in a ring with a giant fellow called Slag - played by Waterloo, Iowa's own, pro-wrestling superstar, Ox Baker - on a daily basis too. Yes, it's safe to say that Snake Plissken's no-good very-bad day is a bit worse than my usual one....but my body doesn't really seem to know the difference right now.

Luckily, my body knows how much I friggin' love Escape from New York. I swear, everything about this movie just makes me feel good. It doesn't make me smile or laugh, but it gives me this sly bit of satisfaction. Again, I lack better terms, because I want to describe this sense of satisfaction as a shit-eating grin or a desire to say "f*** the world". Snake is the most bad mofo this side of Hell, a one-man wrecking crew who does dirty work for "The Man" and then spits in his face. He doesn't compromise himself along the way, and at the end of the day he makes sure that everyone who thought they had control over him was sorely mistaken.

I know I can't be Snake Plissken today - I'm too tired, maybe later - but that doesn't mean I can't look to him in this time of need. And you should look to him too. When the man's got a virus in your neck and sends you out in a glider and threatens that you could be left with no way home, remember the man who stood up for everyone who's ever been fed up with the people who use them to get their way. Remember the man who showed us all that we can fight to maintain our morals even when we're up against the wall. Remember the man who stood up to people who were false and ignorant.

You should remember Snake Plissken. If you don't, you'll probably end up with your head on a stick.

Grave Encounters

2011-11-08T21:18:00.000-06:00

(2011, Dir. by The Vicious Brothers.)

Darkness and hallways. Why does it always have to be darkness and hallways? There are two things, even at his advanced age, that are guaranteed to send chills down The Mike's spine when combined. And darkness and hallways are certainly those two things.

I can handle darkness. Darkness is easy when you know where you are. In the comfort of my own home, I can maneuver most of my surroundings in total darkness. One time I woke up in the middle of the night, randomly thought it would be a good idea to watch Godzilla 2000 some time, got up, found the DVD on the shelf, and went back to bed - all without turning the lights on. I was really proud of myself in the morning, until I realized that I had thought watching Godzilla 2000 was a good idea.

Hallways, similarly, aren't a bad thing. Sure, I'd rather be frolicking about a field if I have to move from one place to another, but I still find hallways to be an acceptable structure for the passage of beings and items. But when you put me in a relatively small hallway - even a hallway I'm quite familiar with - and suddenly leave me without light, I'm gonna be freakin' out a little.

Grave Encounters - a relatively slick indie horror film that's a sly mixture of found footage and reality television - is ALL about darkness and hallways. It's got one of the smallest darkness-to-hallway ratios I've ever encountered, which makes it one of the creepier films I've encountered in a long time.

The premise of the film is a swell one, with a crew of real-life skeptics who play on-screen "ghost hunters" taking their television program - titled Grave Encounters, naturally - into an abandoned mental hospital that is alleged to be very haunted. The night starts out with the group following a pretty standard script that should make anyone who's watched actual reality haunting shows smile, led by the fearless host Lance Preston. Lance is kind of a tool, but we need that edge from him to sell what the movie has to offer. I thought the character (played by Sean Rogerson) did a great job of anchoring the film.

As Lance and his crew move through the evening, strange things start to happen in the dark and hallway filled building. It takes a while for these strange things to really develop - the film probably spends a good 40 minutes teasing that something terrible is around the corner - and I found the set-up very rewarding. One sequence has a character snapping photos down dark hallways, and cutting to the photos that were taken (which breaks the found footage script's illusion of reality, but whatever), each of which seems to show an unexplainable spectre. Again, this is just a tease of things to come - but it also proves that these hallways have some things we should be afraid of within them.

It's around the midpoint of the film - about the point where one cameraman has an encounter in a dark stairwell at the end of a dark hallway - that the film really puts on its paranormal shoes and starts dancing. And it dances well. We've seen a lot of its moves before, and some of the special effects are a little obvious for my taste, but there are also plenty of fresh chills to be found in these dark corridors. The film takes an especially interesting twist when it starts to play with the characters' perceptions of time and location, which serves as the moment when we really start to understand that these folks are up against something far bigger than they ever imagined.

But most of the second half of the film is focused on good ol' horror movie tricks, and the filmmakers use them well. One of my favorite moments reminded me of a Silent Hill-type video game, as the host wanders off with his flashlight, finds a strange clue, and is immediately surprised by something much worse before running for his life. Again, I don't know if I'd say that Grave Encounters breaks much new ground with its horror tricks. But I think it presents enough of the right tricks to make it a rewarding viewing.

It's easy to see why Grave Encounters didn't make a bigger splash in the mainstream horror scene with all the other found footage flicks - from Paranormal Activity to The Last Exorcism to Apollo 18 - that have been picked up for major releases in recent years. It's a little raw and a little repetitive. But I was still impressed by much of what The Vicious Brothers and their cast and crew achieved here, because Grave Encounters at least had more than a little creeped out for most of its duration. They hold the key to my goosebumps - which resides in darkness and hallways, naturally - and they used it well.

If you're looking for a straight forward bit of horror that might give you the same kind of shivers, I definitely recommend Grave Encounters.

8 Things I Love About...Ghostbusters

2011-11-06T09:24:00.000-06:00

Venkman's Experiment/Introduction

The Library Ghost

We're ready to believe you. (Also, this is right around the moment when you realize how fab Dana's apartment is.)

Everything Dan Aykroyd does

Zeddmore, Egon, and the Twinkie

Dana's Arm-chair

Zuul's hairdo

Stay Puft's Godzilla-y introduction

(Note from The Mike: I told myself I could stay away from FMWL for the weekend. I LIED.)

Midnight Movie of the Week #96 - Fathom

2011-11-03T23:26:00.001-05:00

After an October that was basically all horror, all the time (except for that time we won't mention when I went to see Real Steel, because robots fighting robots can't be bad, right?) I figured we'd start November with a lighter and fluffier kind of Midnight Movie of the Week. The kind of movie that's got spies and comedy and cheeky '60s pastel colors and mysterious statues that are nukes. The kind of movie that's got skydiving and bullfighting and comes from the dudes who created the infamous '60s version of Batman, shark-repellent bat spray and all.

Oh, and the kind of movie that's pretty much all about Raquel Welch's breasts.

If you can't fathom such a film, you clearly never met Fathom Harvill, the title character of Fathom. (Geez, Mike, could you say fathom one more time? FATHOM.) She's played by the woman Ellis Boyd Redding once described as "the lovely Raquel"; the same she who aided in the escape of Andrew Dufresne from Shawshank Prison. It's not one of Ms. Welch's most dramatic roles - it certainly pales in comparison to the fantastic roller derby drama of Kansas City Bomber - but it doesn't need to be. The comic adventure puts Raquel in all of the tricky situations listed above, and is about one shark and one dude in gorilla suit away from being the perfect cheesy adventure of goodness. It's kind of a tragedy that dudes in gorilla suits went out of style by the time the film was released in 1967, because who wouldn't want to see Raquel try to evade one? I know I would.

In the interest of fairness, I should add that the movie's occasionally about her legs and thighs too.

Aside from the obvious reasons for a red blooded dude like The Mike to love a film that's primarily about Raquel's stunning figure, Fathom is one of those good old fashioned '60s comedies that's dripping with hip. It's this kind of spy flick - a second cousin to James Coburn's Our Man/In Like Flint spy spoofs, also made by Fox during that decade - that was pillaged when Austin Powers became a hit in the late '90s, but Fathom works by setting up the improbably spy formula for a female lead. However, any other comparisons to the Powers films would be misguided, because Fathom intends to point out how intelligent and resourceful our hero is. Fathom probably has more in common with North by Northwest's leading man Roger Thornhill than Powers, especially when she falls for that old "get photographed with a murder weapon whilst hovering over a murderee" trick.

The film's plot - yes, there actually is one, even if The Mike sometimes gets distracted by Raquel in saucy outfits - revolves around a bunch of dudes who are hunting for a quasi-nuclear statue called "The Firedragon" (which is clearly not a euphemism for the redheaded starlet). Leading the charge (and top-billed above Welch!) is Acadamy Award Nominee Tony Franciosa as a charming fella with ties to the Chinese Secret Service and the KGB, who is the obvious favorite in the game to become Fathom's love interest, but he's not alone. There's a veritable quadrangle-of-love going on here, as Fathom encounters a cold-blooded eccentric fella (basically this film's version of Batman's The Penguin) played by future Legend of Hell House star Clive Revill and a trustworthy "handler" of sorts played by Ronald Fraser. Each of the men play in to the chase for The Firedragon in different ways, accompanying Fathom by land, sea, and air as she moves from one crisis to the next.

I like to think this is when Fathom chose her outfit to rep' my alma mater, Iowa State University.

Despite the obvious appeal of Welch, Fathom does a good job of building her up as a credible female character as the film proceeds. Unlike director Leslie H. Martinson's version of Batman, the hero here is not a tongue-in-cheek kind of girl. The film lets its female lead control the men around her with her beauty and brains, though it also takes care not to stray too far into "she is woman, hear her roar" territory. There's a delicate balance between the Fathom character and the smart male characters, particularly Franciosa's that surround her, which builds to a twisty finale that tries its best to trick the viewer. Neither side is presented as inferior or ignorant, making it a rare sexified '60s flick that doesn't fall into genre stereotyping or sexism.

Screenwriter Lorenzo Semple, Jr. - who would write former MMOTW Pretty Poison a year later and would eventually scribe the all-time classic Flash Gordon - was also a graduate of the Batman series and film - does a good job of keeping everything balanced in Fathom. There are very few actual jokes in the comic adventure, but the lighthearted nature of the film keeps a smile on the viewer's face even when Fathom is facing an angry bull or a loaded gun. There's little suspense to the mysterious plot - the minor twists lead to the expected Hollywood ending - but the story lets Welch, Franciosa, and the rest of the gang loose in exotic European locations, leaving us with a light-hearted mixture of Bond movie tricks and Hitchcock movie traps. With boobs.

Yessir, I'm for that.

The Lists Are In! 42 True Heroes of Horror Later....

2011-11-01T22:41:00.000-05:00

I never like to have an idea without getting input from others. And when I decided to share my True Heroes of Horror throughout the month of October, I knew I couldn't possibly honor everyone. Thankfully, there are always Midnight Warriors out there to join the FMWL party. A half dozen of my favorite folks on the interwebs offered up their own lists of their Top 10 Heroes of Horror...and the resulting mega list has me doing my patented fistpumpdance of joy.

First, let's recognize the awesome Midnight Warriors who added to this megalist....

Morgan from the tubular The Kid in the Hall
Marvin the Macabre from The Montana Mancave Massacre
Christine M. from Paracinema Magazine
Nicki from Hey! Look Behind You (See her full list here!)
Christine H. from Fascination with Fear (See her full list here!)
Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr

I gotta say, these fine folks brought their best to the table, and are a testament to horror fans everywhere. The names listed vary across hundreds of years, cover both genders, and are varied from authors to actors to TV hosts to directors. Heck, they even named some folks I'd never even heard of. Really. I feel like a proper tool.

Between the six of them and the one of me, we listed 42 names. And I'm going to share them all with you now. Names will be listed in alphabetical order, and the name of each voter will be shared in parentheses.

The following True Heroes of Horror received one vote each....

Clockwise from Top: Atkins, Lewton, Wood, Peterson, Pitt, Perkins.

Tom Atkins (Morgan), Clive Barker (Marvin), Joe Bob Briggs (The Mike), Poppy Z. Brite (Nicki), Lon Chaney Sr. (The Mike), Roger Corman (Andreas) (Note from The Mike: Corman was officially the last cut from my list; my #11. Kills me to have left him off!), David Cronenberg (Andreas), Fred Dekker (Morgan), Guillermo del Toro (Marvin), Johnny Depp (Christine H.), Robert Englund (Morgan), Adam Green (Nicki), Herschell Gordon Lewis (Nicki), Val Lewton (Andreas), Takashi Miike (Nicki), Morgus the Magnificent (Nicki), Kim Newman (Andreas), Anthony Perkins (Christine H.), Cassandra Peterson (Nicki), Ingrid Pitt (Marvin), Roman Polanski (Andreas), Anne Rice (Christine H.), Susan Hill (Christine H.), Mary Shelley (Christine M.), Bram Stoker (Christine M.), James Whale (Andreas), Edward D. Wood, Jr. (Christine M.), Mary Woronov (Andreas).

That's 28 of our 42 right there, which means 14 folks received more than one vote. Also, the fact that Mary Woronov got on to this list MAKES MY DAY. I <3 Mary Woronov.

The following True Heroes of Horror received two votes each....

From Left to Right: Lugosi, Craven, Hitchcock, Argento

Dario Argento (Morgan, Christine H.), Bruce Campbell (The Mike, Morgan), Wes Craven (Morgan, Christine M.), Jamie Lee Curtis (The Mike, Morgan), Alfred Hitchcock (Christine H., Nicki), Boris Karloff (The Mike, Marvin), Christopher Lee (The Mike, Marvin), Bela Lugosi (Christine M., Andreas).

There go 8 more, leaving us with only 6 folks who received votes from three or more of our 7 voters. A lot of my favorites are in here, and I expected many to do better. The Hitchcock thing makes me think too, because I argued with myself for days about whether he should be on my list. Love the guy more than any filmmaker ever, but in the end I didn't feel his impact was specifically "horror". Semantics can trip me up. Anyway, glad to see others voting for him!

The following True Heroes of Horror received three votes each....

H.P. Lovecraft (Marvin, Christine M., Andreas), Tom Savini (Morgan, Marvin, Nicki.)

An interesting combination if I've ever seen one. And I didn't vote for either of these guys, which makes them the top folks on the list who didn't make my ten. And now, we've got just Four of our 42 folks left to name!

The following True Hero of Horror received 4 votes....

Vincent Price (The Mike, Marvin, Christine M., Christine H.)

I don't know why, but sometimes I get the feeling horror fans don't like Vincent Price any more. Clearly that was not the case among our small sample of voters, as he gets the fourth most mentions of anyone. I'm quite OK with that.

The following True Heroes of Horror received five votes each....

Stephen King (The Mike, Morgan, Marvin, Christine M., Christine H.), George A. Romero (The Mike, Morgan, Christine M., Christine H., Nicki)

For a while, it looked like Stephen King was gonna run away with this thing. The first four lists I received had him on them, as did mine. Then he dropped off to land in this tie for second. It's also worth noting that it's me and the ladies of the internet who love Romero. Why's that worth noting? Because if you read the word "ladies" like Isaac Hayes would say it, then it makes The Mike sound cool.

And then....there was a True Hero of Horror who received six of a possible seven votes....

John Carpenter (The Mike, Marvin, Christine M., Christine H., Nicki, Andreas).

Like I said at the beginning...these results make me FISTPUMPDANCE. John Carpenter might not have been #1 on my list (he might have been too, I was too scaredy-pants to pick a #1) but I have no problem with him winning the vote here. It brings me happy.

As do all the Midnight Warriors out there! I want to thank these fine folks for joining in the October fun, and I sincerely want to thank everyone who's watched the True Heroes of Horror train pass through FMWL this month! I've been truly humbled by all the comments and kind words about the posts, even if I haven't always been the best host and responded to them. Y'all have helped remind me what I love about horror this month, and that's exactly why I keep writing this stuff. Seriously, thank you all so much.

With that, the True Heroes of Horror experiment at FMWL has passed. But for how long? I've had a blast putting my posts together, and it's quite possible I'll bring them back in the future for all the people I left off my list. Ten is such a small number anyway, isn't it?

Until next time, I'm The Mike, and you're all awesome. Don't forget it, because Halloween is only 364 days away!