Though it's obviously a sequel - some would argue that it's a remake - Evil Dead II holds a unique place in horror history. Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell followed up their beloved first film with a most excellent blend of horror and comedy that is still a crowd pleaser today. It might not top the splatter that we saw in The Evil Dead (SPOILER ALERT: Few films do.) but the addition of more blatant comic aspects - and the evolution of Campbell's iconic Ash character - have put this on the short-list of the greatest horror sequels out there.
The Moment That Changes Everything:
Ash goes through a lot through the Evil Dead series, but he might be at his low point during the darkly comic scene in which he joins most of the generally-inanimate objects in that cursed cabin in a bit of hysterical laughter. I think my favorite side character in the scene is the lamp that dances with Ash for a few moments, but that's not the point I'm looking for. The point is that Evil Dead II keeps finding new ways to surprise, and this is one of my favorites.
It Makes a Great Double Feature With:
One of the most interesting things about the Evil Dead films, at least to me, is that there really wasn't much like them released in the 1980s. This was the decade of the slasher, the sequel, and the teen horror film - and I'm pretty stumped to find something of its era that matches ED2. If there's anything I've seen that matches the crazy intensity of this film, it might be the recent horror hit and future cult classic The Cabin in the Woods, which not only refers to the Evil Dead 'verse but honors it wonderfully.
What It Means To Me:
It was once just an entertaining diversion, but Evil Dead II has kind of become a case study in horror to me over the years. There's so much in this film series that is without equal anywhere else in horror, and I always seem to find something new and unique about all three films. Evil Dead II has lost a little luster over the years - might be because I've seen it dozens of times and know the gags too well - but it's still a fascinating piece of horror that I can admire any day.
Seriously, just a disgruntled Gah is all I have right now.
I had such plans for Prometheus, and there were such sights that it was gonna show me. We were going to be good buddies, hang out sometimes on weekends, and maybe it was even gonna cheer me up when I was blue. Heck, I planned the celebration of my freakin' birthday with my friends around this movie. And now they all think I'm stupid, because they think the movie freakin' sucked.
And the sad thing is - the movie did kinda freakin' suck.
On the other hand, the movie was kinda freakin' amazing. You know that feeling when your eyes start to hurt and feel dry while you're playing video games because you're so intently involved that you forget to close them? I had that feeling while watching Prometheus. It looked so, so, SO freakin' good. It sounded amazing. The cast looked good and - with the exception of the terribly annoying Logan Marshall-Green - fit into their stereotypical roles well. These are the same kind of characters we've seen in the Alien universe before - led by Noomi Rapace's survivor girl, Charlize Theron's icy naysayer, and Idris Elba's incredibly fun turn as the "old-school" captain of the ship - with a few outliers and a few totally unnecessary characters that don't even play into the film. Heck, the crew of the ship totals SEVENTEEN...which is ridiculous. Alien got by on seven characters, and they were all ACTUAL characters. With personalities. And purposes. The folks in Prometheus? They just serve as filler to make the plot go. I suppose the heavily philosophical robot played by Michael Fassbender is interesting to an extent, but he wears out his welcome as the film goes on too.
The plot is something I'm not even going to talk about, because I really don't understand it. At all. There is so much random stuff going on in it that it's near impossible to really understand what leads to what and the whole thing gets lost in this mish-mash of science and religious themes and action. For about 90 minutes, the thing works - but then it get so convoluted and keeps making so many weird turns that I couldn't figure out which way was out. More importantly, I couldn't find much of a reason to care.
Alien worked because it was a contained film with a single purpose. Group of people finds monster, monster attacks, battle ensues. There are like six different monsters in Prometheus, ranging from human to alien and a few things inbetween. And all of the characters and all of the monsters (OK, six is an exaggeration - but not by much) have different agendas and tie in to different parts of the "plot". Ridley Scott, I know you know how to make a movie - you made Alien, after all - but you have to admit that your stuff was all mixed up on Prometheus, don't you? I mean, am I supposed to accept that your strangely theoretical movie doesn't make sense just because it's from one of the writers of that Lost show that didn't make sense either?
OK. I'm starting to put my calm pants on now. You guys know I'm not usually this way when I write this stuff, it's just that I expected SO much from Prometheus. I adore this franchise, top to bottom, and I was ready to usher in a new chapter that would take my understanding of xenomorphs and the humans and robots who encounter them to the next level.
Which, honestly, is what I got - a gorgeous film that is led by interesting actors and adds to the Alien storyline. The fact that the storyline kinda blows my mind in a bad way and the fact that the actors are basically playing cardboard cutouts hurts the film tremendously, but I know I'll be back to Prometheus later when I'm not expecting the next big thing. For now it definitely has a place on the low end of the new Alien quintilogy spectrum and it kinda makes me feel like Ridley Scott ruined my birthday, but I'll get over some of that.
I won't recommend that you go seek out Prometheus - if I'm struggling to justify coming back to it later, anyone who's not obsessed with all things Alien will certainly struggle with the film even more - and I'm mad as heck at the movie right now. Doesn't mean I can't make up with it later, but right now - I just wanna sit here and be mad at Ridley Scott and whoever the pitiful screenwriters were. This movie should have thrilled me to no end.
I'm not gonna be that guy who comes on the internet the day after a celebrity dies and says he's their biggest fan. In the case of Ray Bradbury, I'd be insulting all the people out there who actually READ. But I do intend to pay tribute to a wonderful author - one who changed my view of science fiction when I read Fahrenheit 451, and one whose name I couldn't help finding on plenty of movies and TV shows that shook my genre-lovin' mind. Outside of Fahrenheit 451, a younger Mike occasionally got Bradbury confused with Richard Matheson - an honest mistake, I assure you - but it was an adaptation of one of his novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes, that cemented why I love the stories of Mr. Bradbury.
My generation may have lost some of the Bradbury's themes in the works of Stephen King - The Dead Zone refers to it directly and Needful Things is almost a remake of the thing - but we should do our best to look more carefully at this 1983 film. Directed by veteran filmmaker Jack Clayton - who made the jaw-dropping horror thriller The Innocents 22 years earlier - the Disney produced film is exceedingly macabre for the family-friendly studio's tastes. Bradbury's story, originally published in 1962, didn't require the blood, babes, and beasts that were common in early '80s horror films - though there is a wickedly implied decapitation - but still packs a lot of dark intrigue.
The story revolves around the fictitious Green Town - setting of several of Bradbury's works - and a mysterious carnival - Dark's Pandemonium - that rolls in to town deep into October. Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway, two young adventurers who seem to stick their noses in all of the town's business, find the timing very peculiar and begin snooping - which confirms dangers beyond the fears of their imagination. But it's Will's father - a man who feels much too old to keep up with his young son - that is the character who has the most fear to deal with.
Charles Halloway - played to perfection by Jason Robards, Jr. - is a good man. It's just that he's a man that is afraid of death. Robards was over 60 at the time of filming, and his performance seems to very naturally represent a man who is struggling to deal with what is left in his life. Early scenes in the film make it evident that he can sense that something isn't right about this carnival, but the physical strain of having to deal with this and the sinister implications of what he must face slow his desire to face this evil. He's kind of like me when I realize I need food to survive, but have to pay for and or cook it....it's a real buzzkill to have to put effort in to it, I'd rather just ignore it.
Charles soon comes face to face with the man behind the dark (no pun intended) magic - a sneering and well bearded Jonathan Pryce (Bradbury tried to convince the studio to get Peter O'Toole or Christopher Lee, the studio stood firm on "Hey, let's save money.") - and a battle between good and evil (or perhaps between eternity and frailty) follows. The film hits its highest point when Pryce's Mr. Dark calls out all of Halloway's fears and threatens to literally rip years from the aging librarian's life, a showdown in the dark halls of the town library that is very tense and even a bit heartbreaking. The film also gets some good mileage out of a mostly silent Pam Grier as Dark's seductive cohort, though some special effects that haven't aged well halt her effectiveness at times - especially compared to the grandstanding of Pryce and his wonderful hat.
As the adaptation of Bradbury's tale of seasonal madness rolls through its final scenes, there are more than a few hiccups. I hate that I haven't read the book before now - I've seen the movie a dozen times, there's really no excuse except that I'm lazy - and I know the author wasn't entirely pleased with the movie in its final format. (The author did say in later interviews that it was one of the "better" adaptations of his work.) But through all the minor problems, the merging of human and supernatural horrors and the all-encompassing ability to produce dread shine through. Those aspects of the film seem to come directly from the author, hearkening back to his willingness to let characters confront inner fears in Fahrenheit 451 or his mastery of the balance between life and death in The Creatures That Time Forgot.
This movie certainly can't replace the powerful prose of Fahrenheit 451 - which has to be one of my favorite stories out there - and I'm sure there's more to be found in the novel. But when the topic is Bradbury on film, I'm generally going to lean toward Something Wicked This Way Comes. I can see the work of a great mind behind it, and that mind inspires me to be look for better horror and sci-fi tales on a daily basis. The man may be gone, but I'm going to be grateful to have his works for a long time to come.
Man, I really don't want to go write about Piranha 3DD. This is the kind of movie that does not ask the viewer to access any part of their brain that involves intelligence, and I'd like to think that anything I write about the movie will be more thoughtful than the movie itself. Like, that sentence I just wrote. I over-wrote that sentence. I could have said, Piranha 3DD is a dumb movie. And that's all I needed to say.
Then again, the movie - which is a sequel to the less-than-two year old horror remake (that featured the all too lovely and amazing and beautiful Elisabeth Shue - HEY ELISABETH SHUE, I LOVE YOU!) - doesn't aim to be anything but dumb. The plot revolves around an "adult" water park, (run by the always brash David Koechner of Anchorman), the returning chompy-faced-fishes, and (naturally) a bunch of college kids who can bare their breasts (although, truthfully, all the actual characters keep their stuff under wraps throughout the film) and party and eventually become chum. They are led by two very good looking young actresses with horror under their belts, the Friday the 13th remake's Danielle Panabaker and Tucker & Dale vs. Evil's Katrina Bowden - but neither actress is given anything to do other than be a standard horror victim. Bowden's performance stands out a little bit, but primarily because of the predictable, yet entertaining, discomfort that her character is forced to endure.
The folks behind Piranha 3DD are director John Gulager - son of cult hero Clu Gulager, who appears briefly here - and screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, the same trio who won some filmmaking reality show and got to make the Feast trilogy, three films that I truly love for their increasing ridiculousness and utter disregard for traditional expectations and/or sanity. But, like a lot of sequels that are given to promising folks, it's hard to see their stamp on this film. Don't get me wrong - there's plenty of gore and violence and a few decent shockers - but the whole thing is a bit standard for the guys who made a trilogy with the most ridiculous ending this side of The Matrix.
If there's a positive note about Piranha 3DD - as mean as I'm sounding, I really think there is a positive side to this film - it's the crude and hilarious humor that fills the script. Things particularly pick up in the final act of the film, when cameos by a bunch of famous folks take over parts of the film. The humorous additions include three returning characters from the first film - played by Paul Scheer, Ving Rhames, and Christopher Lloyd - who reprise their roles with tongues firmly in cheek. Lloyd gets to spout sciencey nonsense while dealing with his character's YouTube fame - there's a couple of hilarious lines of dialogue involved there - while Rhames and Scheer deal with the former's injuries from the first film in goofy ways. An exchange late in the film is punctuated by a comment from Rhames that had me laughing loudly and deeply, and I would have loved to see more from them in the film.
The most entertaining thing about the film, however, is the cameo by television icon and walking punchline David Hasselhoff. (SPOILER ALERT: Germans love David Hasselhoff.) The Hoff plays himself, lampooning his infamous Baywatch role - and throwing in a rare reference to his work in Anaconda 3, which made me laugh out loud too. We've seen Hoff being Hoff a lot over the last decade or more - heck, he did this same shtick in Spongebob's movie, which is a weird parallel to make - but I'm not above laughing at his foul mouth and self-deprecating sense of humor again. Hoff is easily the film's biggest star, and I can't tell a lie: I'd love it if they found away to focus another Piranha flick on The Hoff.
And there's the real rub of it all. Piranha 3DD is stupid, dumb, inappropriate, inept, and even - dare I say - pointless. And despite all that, I'm here admitting that I have a place in my heart for a movie like it. I'm not gonna say guilty pleasure, because I believe in guilty pleasures like I believe in the dramatic appeal of Pauly Shore, but I'm just saying that I'm not above enjoying something this ridiculous. I had fun watching Piranha 3DD, even though I know it's pretty worthless and a bit of a let down from the folks behind Feast. (Y'all should really just go rent the first Feast film instead.) There's nothing wrong with this film that wasn't already wrong with Piranha 3D, so I guess if you liked that film enough you'll like this film enough. Like one famously bad horror film once said - It's exactly what you think it is.
I'm not a guy who throws high praise on newer movies too often. Well, I generally do praise the ones I truly dig, but it's very rarely that I will throw them ahead of lifelong favorites when I'm doing things like list-making. So I'm still kind of telling myself to slow down and not go so fast when it comes to The House of the Devil. But, the thing is, I've already seen this movie like six times in three years and every time I'm more convinced that it's the best thing to happen to horror in a long time. Ti West's meticulous chiller is endlessly fascinating to me, primarily because of the fantastic restraint shown by the director and his cast.
The Moment That Changes Everything:
Sometimes, the moments in horror that really work are the moments that don't have anything to do with the horror. One such example comes near the middle of this film, where Jocelin Donahue's lead character provides a break to the unending unease by dancing around the old, ominous house to The Fixx's One Thing Leads To Another. In a film that's packed with silence, this interlude actually adds to the tension by making us wonder what impact her carefree nature will have on her once the fearful stuff kicks back in.
It Makes an Excellent Double Feature With:
They really don't make 'em like this too often, which makes me feel like I should think back to past horrors when considering a partner for the film. Beautiful young woman meets slow and satanic terrors worked similarly well in 1977's The Sentinel, and - if nothing else - you can compare and contrast how city and country cults differ in methodology.
What It Means To Me:
I talk down to modern horror all the time, and really shouldn't. There's a ton of good stuff out there, it's just hard to find it sometimes. The House of the Devil doesn't help its contemporaries out, because it's such a fantastic reminder of how good a horror film can be if it focuses its energy on the right things. I'll take extreme tension over extreme gore every day of the week, which is just one of the reasons I give The House of the Devil such a big edge over most recent horror films.
I had to look up the name of those little clicky clacky musical things that you put on your fingers to make noise in musical settings to write this post. I used to play with those little things when I was in the high school band - I don't think I ever used them for real musical purposes, but I did use them like a boss - but I never knew their name. Anyway, they're called castanets (here's what Wikipedia says about them), and they play a crucial role in Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton's wicked little film The Leopard Man.
Imagine yourself at one of those slightly sleazy, slightly exotic, completely captivating naturally beautiful places of the 1940s. There's a not-quite-Rita-Hayworth dancer named Clo-Clo performing, but she's interrupted by a rival named Kiki who walks onto the show floor with a friggin' leopard. Clo-Clo, not one to be upstaged, takes her vicious little castanets - which can definitely deserve a place among the most grating musical instruments under the wrong circumstances - and snaps them in the face of the leopard, who promptly dashes from the premises and escapes into the small New Mexico town.
If you've seen The Leopard Man, you don't need to imagine the setting event that I just described. If you haven't, you might think it's a pretty ridiculous set up for a horror tale. Two showgirls are feuding and bring castanets and a leopard into the fray? Even Elizabeth Berkley wouldn't stoop that low! But, if you know anything about Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur, you know that this type of event isn't played with even a tongue in cheek. This leopard is serious business, and they don't offer any hint that we should think otherwise. The whole incident is played as a straight forward shock to all characters involved - including the waiter who flashes a freshly clawed hand to the camera - which means we aren't surprised the first time we see a character's blood spill as their life is ended. Oh, you didn't think blood spilled in films of 1943? Don't tell Lewton that.
Like many horror films that would follow - even in slasher films released more than 40-50 years later - the first victim in the film is a young woman who we barely get the chance to meet. We know her name is Teresa, and later investigation shows that she's portrayed by a 20 year old actress named Margaret Landry who must have just been trying to make a name for herself. She gets to walk alone, she gets to gasp in fear, and she gets to scream and beg and plead for her life...and that's it. She has to be one of the first actresses to achieve this "honor" in a horror film. Looking back, her work stands up to all the screaming first blood victims we'd meet in horror's bloody age.
With plenty of moments that would later become slasher traditions - from an opening voyeuristic camera outside the showgirls' dressing rooms to a police officer discussing traits of a "man who kills for pleasure" - The Leopard Man has an interesting place in the mind of the horror historian. There are no more than three kills in the film and a few lulls in the proceedings, but Tourneur shows his skill for building tension repeatedly. This was the third film the director made for Lewton - following the far more famous Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie - but Tourneur's skill for storytelling might be at its best here.
It's easy to miss some of the effortless cuts between characters and storylines at work in The Leopard Man. This is a film that runs a mere 66 minutes, and a part of me wants to argue that the plot really doesn't take off until around the 50 minute mark. But a closer inspection shows just how well Tourneur bounces from character to character and involves us in their everyday lives. For example, Clo-Clo seems like our main character in the opening 10 minutes, but the camera simply moves off of her to Teresa as they pass on the street and goes on with her story from there, bouncing back to other characters when necessary. Director William Friedkin does a commentary of the film on its DVD, and hypothesizes that Quentin Tarantino may have been influenced by Tourneur's skill for intertwining character paths when he made Pulp Fiction. Friedkin's assessment seems to be a reach at face value, but I can see his point if I really pay close attention to the story's twists.
The Leopard Man is a fascinating piece of horror history when it's dissected, as there are clear parallels to be drawn to modern cinema favorites. But it's also a great example of the early Hollywood murder mystery and a dark shocker with a surprisingly morbid ending. There are plenty of ways a viewer can absorb The Leopard Man - maybe you just want to admire the "acting" of Dynamite, the actor/leopard who also starred in Cat People - which should make it a fun viewing for any lover of classic horror cinema.
Pretty Dead came to me as a new entry in both the "found footage" and "kinda zombie" subgenres of horror, and I have to admit I approached the film with some caution. Is there anything new and/or interesting to be said by filmmakers who use these methods? Well, of course there is. And Pretty Dead does a good job of showing that.
Regina Stevens is a young woman who seems to have the world in front of her. She's an aspiring doctor and has a fiance who loves her, and all of that would be excellent except for the fact that she's dying. Not in the "we're all dying as we age" way, in the "I did some experimentation with cocaine and passed out and now I don't really have a pulse and have strange and bloody cravings" way. Since her and her fiance are both medically knowledgeable folks, Regina initially sees this as an opportunity for research - even if she is the guinea pig in the experiment.
As the film takes on a scientific tone, an Animal Planet-style plot twist piqued my interest in the film's vision of infection. I don't have the scientific mind to explain what the film tells us about the infection Regina is dealing with - the flick's website can give you better information on that than I could, though I think that's a bit spoilery for my tastes - but each of the ideas the film presents feel fresh to the horror scene. I (obviously) watch a lot of movies that introduce a lot of monsters/infected/killers in a lot of ways, and it's fantastic to find a film that doesn't slip into old standards. Pretty Dead's biggest strength lies in the ideas behind its plot, which surprised me by offering a new twist on what "zombies" could be.
(I'm of course using the quotation marks on "zombies" because that age old debate on what constitutes zombiedom - Do you have to be dead and buried? Do infecteds count? - is a touchier subject than politics or religion to many I know. Not touching it with a ten foot pole here.)
With an interesting twist to the formula, Pretty Dead is left to its stars and its filmmakers, and they don't disappoint. Carly Oates stars as Regina, and does a fantastic job during the character's transformation from successful young woman to potentially undead monster. She controls and partially narrates the film - which raises a few small concerns with the found footage format when the film slips into non-found-footage-movie mode - which is very well constructed by director Benjamin Wilkins and co-writer/producer Joe Cook. There's no Hollywood gloss to the film, which means everything feels pretty natural as it reveals what's going on in Regina's world.
The story doesn't wrap up perfectly - stay through the end credits for not one, but TWO(!) brief scenes that add to the film's narrative - and it telegraphs a few of its final twists early on. But Pretty Dead still left me very impressed with what Wilkins, Cook, Oates and the rest of the cast and crew pulled off. This is a fascinating, unique, and intelligent film that makes the most of its resources. It's exciting to see a movie that feels as new to the horror genre as Pretty Dead does, and that makes Pretty Dead a horror hit that's just waiting to happen.
Pretty Dead is currently on the festival circuit and awaiting wide release, but keep your eyes peeled for more news on this one. In the meantime, more information can be found on the official site, which is right about HERE. Or, you can find the flick on Facebook and/or Twitter. Do it!
Age hasn't been incredibly kind to most silent films. Most of the blame for this must fall on modern viewers, who have been spoiled by bright colors and loud noises. But if you were to give me the choice between most modern Hollywood horror films and the works of the silent icon Lon Chaney, I know exactly what I'd pick almost every time. Which brings us to The Phantom of the Opera, which tells the ageless tale on a grand (especially for its time) scale, and Chaney's turn as the title "monster". Technology has progressed, yet Chaney's performance works just as well today as it did almost 90 years ago.
The Moment That Changes Everything:
This is an easy one, because everything I love about horror stems from the unmasking sequence and Chaney's contorted face that is revealed to us. It sends chills straight up my spine.
It Makes a Great Double Feature With:
If you want to see Chaney get real crazy and less made-up, check out his 1927 flick The Unknown - in which Chaney plays an increasingly deranged circus star who is obsessed with wooing a peer played by a young Joan Crawford. The man shows of at least a couple dozen of his "thousand faces", and the finale is silent cinema gold.
What It Means To Me:
This is a sentimental pick for the list in a lot of ways, because The Phantom of the Opera was my introduction to horror as a child. It opened my imagination to the possible horrors of the world, and I haven't looked back since. Though it would be easy to shun it in honor of newer and flashier films, that vision of Chaney as the Phantom still pops into my head and reminds me why I love horror all the time. I respect the heck out of that.
Vincent Price and I are certainly homeboys. And I don't think he's ever been in a more unique, interesting, and all-out FUN film than The Abominable Dr. Phibes. As a mute and disfigured doctor who is out to avenge the death of his wife (CAROLINE MUNRO!!!!), Price moves through the film like a silent movie star. He haunts most every scene with his visage - which has been assisted by some fantastic special effects - and unleashes the fury of the 10 Biblical plagues on the doctors and nurses he blames for her death. The concept alone is worth a place on this list.
The Moment That Changes Everything:
Gosh, I really struggle to break Phibes down to one moment. The most effective moment in the film might be the sequence that involves locusts, but the film goes off the rails into Awesometown long before that scene. From the first time the Doc's robot band kicks out a tune, it is ON.
It Makes a Great Double Feature With:
Price + Price is always a recipe for success. The sequel, Dr. Phibes Rides Again, is surprisingly good - some prefer it to the original - but I'm not going that route. Instead, I'll toss you another late Price gem, Theatre of Blood. It's almost the same movie in some ways - this time the murders are based on Shakespeare plays and the crimes being avenged are poor reviews - but it's got Price and the lovely Diana Rigg and lots of great stuff.
What It Means To Me:
The Phibes movies and Theatre of Blood always seem like Price's last great stand as a leading horror star to me. But, really, I'm also pretty sure that this is my favorite Price film by a good margin. I don't mean to discredit anything else the man did - I love his work in the '50s and '60s a bunch too - but Phibes just sticks out as something that is really a special film.
After Popatopolis, I felt like I needed a reminder about why Jim Wynorski belongs in the heart of the midnight movie lover, despite his more recent SKINematic adventures. Enter Chopping Mall, the only slasher movie whose killers are robots that look like souped up and angry at the world versions of Johnny Five. Wynorski's 1986 flick - the second of the 90 films he's directed - might be the greatest thing he ever did. That might sound sad to some, but I'm determined to make this a tribute to Wynorski's fine early work, not a reflection on his tit-flicks.
If you need a synopsis, here it is. A bunch of couples - offset by nerdy guy Fredy (Tony O'Dell) and sweet girl Alison (Night of the Comet's Kelli Maroney) decide to have sex and/or petting (gotta keep one virgin in the game, right?) in a shopping mall department store after hours on a Friday night (apparently the store won't be open again till Monday...which seems kind of ridiculous). The problem, as evidenced by the film's alternate title (Killbots), are three security robots, once known as "Protectors" who are malfunctioning due to a good old fashioned lightning strike. When Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity, he was clearly looking forward to this moment in history.
With that synopsis and a script that includes lines like "I guess I'm just not used to being chased around the mall in the middle of the night by killer robots", Chopping Mall pretty much sells itself to the viewer. This is the part where I'm supposed to pull a magic rabbit out of my film observing hat, and tell you how there's a deeper, underlying issue in the film that really makes me love it. But, if I were to pull that trick right now...it would be a crock of crap.
With apologies to the deep meaning lovin' crowd, Chopping Mall is exactly what you'd expect Chopping Mall to be - a tongue in cheek flick filled with carnage, poor attempts at comedy, a few nude scenes, and the horror cliches that anyone who grew up in the '80s was born to love. And it's that face value charm - the charm that comes out when you realize that Chopping Mall offers up EXACTLY what you'd expect from a film called Chopping Mall - that really makes this one a winner in my book.
Of course, expectations might run a little low for some - I'm ashamed to admit that I avoided this movie for years because I couldn't believe that it wouldn't find a way to mess up the premise - so perhaps I should point out a few high points of Wynorski's film. The cast of '80s actors doesn't include any glaringly awful performances that detract from the experience. (On the flip side, Maroney and O'Dell are actually very likable, and the gorgeous Ms. Crampton is never a bad thing to watch.) The camerawork and editing are professional, are accompanied by a synthetic musical score that fits the time period perfectly, and the whole flick clocks in well under 80 minutes - meaning it can't overstay its welcome. I know it sounds like I'm basically saying "the movie does everything OK", but don't tell me you haven't seen an otherwise exciting b-movie ruined by one or more of those things going terribly wrong before. The film also gets a boost in credibility - at least in my mind - because it's shot in the same Los Angeles mall that has hosted a ton of Hollywood productions, most notably - again in my mind - Commando.
The point? The point is that all of those things that you might expect would ruin a cheesefest like Chopping Mall are handled well by the director and his cast and crew, who were definitely having fun with such a sensational idea for a horror film. It's truly a rare occasion when such a blatant b-movie meets its potential perfectly - Remember how excited everyone was about Snakes on a Plane? I love that flick too, but it certainly missed a few marks and left a lot of bad impressions - and that's the kind of movie that I'll always throw my weight behind. If you're looking for something that you can write a term paper on for a film class, go elsewhere. If you want to see the prototype for after hours cable cinema of the late '80s, go hit up the Chopping Mall.
Gosh you guys, I've been supposed to tell you about this for like two weeks. And I'm stupid sometimes, so I forgot.
Anyway, I'm very honored to have been given a chance to be a guest on The Sinister Spotlight over at Mephisto's Castle, where good ol' Jose let me pick any movie in the world that I wanted to talk about. He hit me over the head with a hammer when I picked Take The Lead starring Antonio Banderas as a dance teacher, so then I changed my mind and picked They Live.
What follows is the YouTube link to said podcast. It features some good thoughts and an unconstitutional amount of "uh huhs", "yeahs", and "yeps". There's a reason I keep to using this keyboard, folks.
You know you're a b-movie nerd when you find yourself immensely fascinated by the chance to watch Jim Wynorski at work. I've never given much thought to what it's like on a Martin Scorsese set or pondered how much work gets done in a day by Quentin Tarantino. But when I heard about Popatopolis - a documentary that follows Jim Wynorski through the filming of a b-movie - I was instantly intrigued.
I've written a little bit about my experience with Wynorski in the past, but here's a recap. When I was a wee The Mike, Wynorski's The Return of Swamp Thing was one of my favorite things in the world. That was my first Wynorski experience, so imagine my surprise when a much older The Mike decided to give Cheerleader Massacre - which looked like a cheesy slasher from the outside - a chance based on Wynorski's name. The gap in both style and substance between the goofy and fun '80s flick and the poorly constructed, z-grade slasher with a softcore sex scene in the middle was gigantic as can be. (And that's considering how little style and substance something like The Return of Swamp Thing has.)
My studies of Wynorski moved backwards to campy '80s goodness like Not of this Earth and Chopping Mall - and I seriously had a conversation yesterday with someone about Chopping Mall being one of the 100 best movies ever - so it was another sharp contrast when I jumped into this documentary, which follows the director as he makes his 2005 opus The Witches of Breastwick - and does so in three days. The film follows Wynorski and his cast - which consists of a bunch of girls who are willing to "pop their tops" and one dude - while also interviewing some b-movie icons like Roger Corman, Julie Strain, and Andy Sidaris - about Wynorski's work. The disconnect that I felt is certainly present in this movie, too.
In fact, the most interesting thing about the documentary to me is when the people around Wynorski - primarily actress Julie K. Smith, who seems like that one person in a group of friends who is smart and likes everyone but just can't stop gossiping about stuff - start to question the director for "settling" into these softcore thrillers instead of making drive-in-style films like Chopping Mall or Swamp Thing anymore. Many of the actresses interviewed - like adult film star Stormy Daniels, who seems to have no understanding of where she's at while making her first "mainstream" movie (though she did go on to appear in both The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, which is probably proof that Judd Apatow likes porn - don't have a lot to add to Wynorski's story and are just in the film because they happen to be in this softcore film. But Smith and Wynorski alumnus Strain, have a lot of interesting things to say about where Wynorski is at this point in his career and how the man works.
Another interesting, if not sad, twist occurs when the filmmakers interview the 55 year old Wynorski's mother, who talks about how little she knows about his films and how she saw Chopping Mall and doesn't understand why there had to be a naked scene in it. The filmmaker seems to be making another comment about Wynorski's choice of genres at this stage in his career. I haven't done all the research, but I'm willing to bet that the majority of Wynorski's 90 films have some female breasts in them, but titles like The Bare Wench Project, The Witches of Breastwick and the more recent Cleavagefield (you get bonus points for that pun, Jim) leave little doubt about what the director's intentions are. And yet, here we are, talking to his 75-80 year old mother, about what kind of sweet boy he was and how he warns her not to watch his movies because she won't like them. It's more than a bit awkward.
Popatopolis almost makes a joke out of Wynorski - Smith probably gets the biggest positive rub from the film, even though I get the feeling that the actress tries really hard to come off as a pair of tits with a heart of gold - but as we see him at work we get the feeling that there's more to the director than his half-hearted boob films. The Jim Wynorski we see on set of this throwaway film is a passionate director who cares about what he's making and seems determined to overcome terrible odds to get his film done. In a way, Wynorski reminds me of every day challenges where we have to buckle up, admit that we can't make everything perfect, and just fight to get the best out of the resources we have.
I've made a bunch of assumptions about a bunch of real people in this review, and I mean none of them as disrespect. The corner of b-moviedom that hosts Jim Wynorski is just as valid to me as any other, and I'll gladly sit down with more from the director (probably from his early years, but I'm not too discriminatory) any time. It's just that Popatopolis pulls back the curtain that I was already wondering about (Curse you, Cheerleader Massacre! You didn't even have cheerleader outfits in that movie!) and got me in that same kind of loving gossiper mode that Smith seemed to enjoy. For better or worse, Jim Wynorski has done some cool stuff for b-movies, and Popatopolis helped my clear up my perspective on the director in plenty of ways.
If you wanna check out Popatopolis, I encourage you to use that Instant Netflix thingy and check it out. It'll take 75 minutes of your life and - if nothing else - remind you of a few cool '80s flicks and show you some chests. If you're like me, you might get even more out of it too.
You guys, I'm just gonna say it. I'm really bad at video games. I try, because they're so darn fun some times, but I struggle mightily whenever they require things like more than four buttons or hand-eye coordination. (Seriously, why can't they all be Tecmo Super Bowl?) Anyway, I think I'm even worse at horror video games than real video games. I like to observe horror, I don't like to participate in it. (Yeah, that's my excuse for being a pansy.)
So, you can see why it took me far too long to get into Alan Wake, despite my gamer friends; insistence that it was "a The Mike game" and "right up my alley." I finally went ahead and got the game sometime last November, but it still took me forever to actually get into the darn thing. When I did, I kept thinking more pansy thoughts, like "Man, this would be great if I didn't have to PLAY it."
But I was dumb and wrong when I thought that. As I finished Alan Wake this weekend, I became terribly mad at me. OK, so the game play is a chore and it's wicked hard sometimes, but dangit...I kind of loved the horror story it told. Why's that, you ask? Well, here's a few reasons why.
I suppose backstory is important - the backstory of the game, not the boring exposition into my boring life that I already gave you - so here's Alan Wake in a nutshell. Famous writer Stephen King Alan Wake heads to a small town called Bright Springs, where he and his wife, Alice plan to spend some time in a cabin on Cauldron Lake so he can write and not have nightmares and she can not be afraid of the dark. Those things don't happen, Alice disappears into the darkness, and Alan - armed only with a flashlight and whatever guns, bullets, and batteries that he can find along the way - must make it through a series of crazy and supernatural nights in which ominous shadow people known as "the taken" try to off him while grunting weird one-liners from their past lives. There's a dangerous woman in black, a weird diving suit guy who might transcend time, an angry/irrational FBI agent and a whole host of "poltergeist" objects out to stop Alan too, and plenty of twists and turns along the way.
Here's the thing: Alan Wake shouldn't work. It's repetitive, it doesn't always make sense, there's not really any "boss" battles that lead to fist-pumpingly triumphant moments, and most of the "scares" are telegraphed and or given away by the formula. But for every one of those annoyances and flaws, there's something that makes me really love what Alan Wake has to offer as a horror narrative.
First off, there's the most obvious thing I love about Alan Wake, which goes against a lot of thinking in both the horror genre and the video game world: There's pretty much ZERO blood in Alan Wake. I don't know about you guys, but I rarely have nightmares that are as gory as a Fulci film or a crappy modern horror remake or anything in between. I have nightmares that don't make any kind of sense but creep me the heck out and seem like endless struggles against whatever evil is out there. That's what Alan Wake feels like.
Alan Wake doesn't have to sensationalize things, it doesn't have to gore things up, it just goes kinda crazy and keeps doing the same thing until it wears you down. It was several episodes into the game - oh, we gotta talk about the episodes in a few - when I realized that the fatigue I felt while playing the game wasn't as much because it was tedious as it was because the game was intentionally trying to wear both Alan Wake and I down. It's like the Billy Zabka in Karate Kid of video games. It annoys you and that's exactly what it's supposed to do. You can't blame it for that.
There's also that big elephant in the room about Alan Wake that it really took me a while to "get". Alan Wake, the character - or, to put it more simply, the guy we're forced to spend 8-10 hours controlling - is kind of an annoying dude. He's all emotional, he's totally monotone sometimes, and he spends a lot of time sounding like he really isn't capable of dealing with his predicament. He's not exactly a whiner, but he's not a hero. Basically, I didn't want to like Alan Wake. So, I'm running around, being to Alan Wake what Cusack was to Malkovich, and I'm not really caring. But again, it's one of those things that just kind of happened as the game went on. Alan Wake works as an anti-hero, even if we don't like him personally, because we care about his plight. We get so invested in the journey, and the film reveals more and more about what Alan's up against, and we start to "get" Alan Wake - both the game and the character.
(By the way, I simply can not understate what Alan's agent/friend, Barry, brings to the game. He's one of the most fun side characters in a video game I've played, and he's a great comic relief while also being a sympathetic character too. There's a sweet moment between Barry and Alan that was a total fist pump moment for me, and that was another moment where I really realized that I was falling for Alan Wake's methods.)
Now here's what I'm hear to really say. I think, as bad as video game adaptations usually are, that Alan Wake might actually work better as a TV series. As I mentioned earlier, the game is specifically designed to look like a TV series, segmented out into six episodes, each of which have their own story arc and each of which tie back into the bigger plot. I'm not gonna go all the way and say that the thing wraps up everything by the end of Episode Six - there are two more DLC Episodes and a stand-alone Arcade game that I hear add to the Alan Wake universe - but the way things tie back together shows that the folks who put together Alan Wake had a greater vision than they sometimes let on. It's absolutely fascinating to me when I realize that I've seen very few video games with a better narrative tale than Alan Wake - because I can't believe that someone allowed a video game to tell that much story while being a horror tale.
I was so wrong about Alan Wake in the early chapters of the game, and when I got to the end I was shocked by how satisfied I felt. But my thirst for this universe of horror was not quenched, and I doubt some short DLC and an Arcade game will do the trick. When Alan Wake utters his final line of the game, it's the game's way of admitting that there is a world of possibilities out there for what could happen next in this universe. There's no reason we couldn't have an HBO or AMC series with that guy from True Blood (the Skarsgaard kid, not v-neck shirt guy) that's produced by someone like David Cronenberg, is there? Because that's really what Alan Wake is - a mind-bending introduction to a horror world that exists somewhere between In the Mouth of Madness and Videodrome. There are stories to be told about Alan Wake and his world, and the ones runnin' through my head remind me of horror titans like King, Carpenter, and Cronenberg.
I know that comparison of a video game to three of the best voices in modern horror sounds cray-cray, but I honestly kind of believe it. Despite my efforts to the contrary, it turns out that Alan Wake is exactly the breath of fresh air (OK, it's a two year old breath of air now, I TOLD YOU I WAS SLOW) that I needed in the horror scene.
When I talked about "classic" haunted house movies in that last post about The Legend of Hell House, I was talking old-fashioned stuffy stone foundation haunted houses. I was not talking about them "Oh hey, it's a modern house that's got some haunting going on!" situations, like the one in Poltergeist. The collaboration of Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg - if that's what it was....we may never know - brings haunting to a new generation. And it does so in pretty darn fun ways.
The Moment That Changes Everything:
There are a lot of great moments I could mention here....the swimming pool (YOU TOOK THE HEADSTONES BUT YOU DIDN'T MOVE THE BODIES!), the good ol' "They're here.", or even the wacky sliding across the kitchen floor in a football helmet gag that reminds us that this is the happy '80s and that even hauntings have their happier moments. But the clown doll and the old gnarly tree are really what get me.
It Makes a Great Double Feature With:
Considering how successful Poltergeist was, you'd figure there would be some decent imitators that followed it. But, you'd pretty much be wrong. Seriously, there just aren't a lot of movies quite like Poltergeist out there. I guess it'd play pretty well with A Nightmare on Elm Street, the other darling of the early '80s that sets its horror in a very '80s neighborhood with very '80s people and dads with receding hairlines.
What It Means To Me:
I never really quite know what to make of Poltergeist. Part of me's all like "Hey man, nobody gives Poltergeist much credit, probably because it's all commercial and stuff". Then part of me's like "Dude, you're only putting Poltergeist at 34? What's wrong with you? It's iconic and everyone's gonna laugh at you!" Such is the conundrum of Poltergeist. I'm not wildly in love with it, I'm not gonna be some pervert who goes around websites trolling and talking about how much I love Heather O'Rourke's dead corpse, but I'm also not gonna dismiss it and usually when it's on I'm not gonna change the channel. It's a paradox of horror goodness, but when you get down to it it's basically just a darn good horror movie.
If you have questions or suggestions not regarding a specific review, or would like to recommend a movie to The Mike, feel free to email him at frommidnightwithlove(at)gmail(dot)com!
Also, please leave feedback at the bottom of reviews by checking one of the boxes, or by leaving a comment! Any feedback that can help improve the site or reviews is much appreciated!
Posts
