The Prometheus Rant

(2012, Dir. by Ridley Scott.)

Gah.

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.

The Cabin in the Woods

(2011, Dir. by Drew Goddard.)

To many of us in the horror lovin' community, The Cabin in the Woods has been a real life version of the golden ticket from Willy Wonka for the last several years.  As you can see from the poster I've shared right over there (<-------------), the film was originally set to release in early 2010.  Despite the powerful name of writer/producer Joss Whedon, the film sat on a shelf for nearly three years after shooting finished, partially due to studio struggles and partially due to studio idiocy.  It's become so anticipated that I had nightmares last night about missing the screening I planned to attend tonight. It takes a lot of hype to make a horror nerd have nightmares about missing a movie, but Cabin pulled it off.

During the delay, the film's mysterious plot became a very contentious point, and a lot of anxious folks became very upset with other so-called "critics" who were very willing to spill details of the film for their own sake.  This makes me furious.  If someone wants to go to the movies so they can be an authority and tell others what to do, they're worthless to me.  That's not why I'm here.  I go to the movies to get my socks rocked off, and I share what I feel with you all because I want to help you have the same happen.  That's my job here, and it doesn't include spoiling things because I've passed some judgment on the material.

Tonight, after FINALLY seeing The Cabin in the Woods, I feel that it would be incredibly improper for me to even discuss the plot of the film.  It's a one-of-a-kind horror experience, and you will gain nothing from me explaining what it is.  That leaves me with very little I can say about the film, but I simply will not risk ruining the surprises for any interested parties.

There are some things you might want to know about The Cabin in the Woods before you go in.  For starters, you will be happy to hear that Whedon and co-writer/director Drew Goddard show an incredible understanding of what the horror genre is.  It has become common for filmmakers to mimic and call out the conventions of the horror film - Scream and Behind the Mask did similar things with their tones - but what impressed me most about The Cabin in the Woods was how well it used those conventions and then pushed through them to a much different place.

All audiences will probably appreciate the humor that is used throughout The Cabin in the Woods.  There were plenty of moments where I found myself sincerely laughing out loud, and not all of them come from the film's jabs at horror concepts.  Two elder characters do a lot for the film, explaining some of the gags and providing a neat perspective on what the audience expects.

As with most horror movies that are worth a darn, you will not expect the final act.  As the film reached the point that I thought was our end, I was nowhere near ready to see the film go to the places that it still planned to go.  I'm not so sure that all the moves made in the last 20 minutes really worked entirely - there seemed to be a bit of excess for the sake of excess going on - but everything stays true to the story that has been created and the world that the film exists in.

I feel like I'm just beating around the bush as I talk about the film here - and actually, I am beating around the bush - but I can not stress enough that this is imperative.  You need to know as little as you can about the film if you really want to experience the truly unpredictable things that occur in The Cabin in the Woods.  I'm not giving you a trailer, I'm not even using the poster created by the current studio that released the film.  I'd love to discuss what I think the film meant and how much the social commentary made sense, but instead I'm just telling you to go see The Cabin in the Woods as soon as possible. It's one of the most unique things to happen to horror in a long time, and it will make its own impressions on you.

Midnight Movie of the Week #111 - The Lost Boys

Sometimes in life, you have to grow up and be mature about things.  For me, tonight is one of those moments.  Because, despite all of the will in my body pushing me toward a certain topic, I've decided that I won't only talk about Tim Cappello, the oily sax man, while talking about The Lost Boys.  It's tough.  When you've got something as Earth-shattering, mind-numbingly-awesome, and omnipresently-powerful as the oily sax man in your movie, it's hard for people to not only talk about it.  Heck, sometimes I forget what The Lost Boys is actually about.  I just know it's the movie with the oily sax man. I mean, seriously, just look at him.

Now look at him again.

Do you see what I mean?  No? OK, let's go to the tape.  SEE???

OK, now that that's out of my system (Wait....I STILL BELIEVE!!!!!  OK, now it's out of my system), let's talk about the rest of The Lost Boys, which is probably the most treasured piece of '80s pop culture mixed with horror known to man.  The teen-based vampire tale - which does not, thankfully, feature sparkling or emo depressed girls - is one of those movies that my entire generation just knows.  Like, if The Lost Boys stopped over and said it needed to borrow a cup of sugar, every dude or dudette aged 25-35 would invite it in and shoot the breeze for hours before sending it home with a freshly baked batch of snickerdoodles AND a cup of sugar.

Produced by Richard Donner and directed by Joel Schumacher - who is probably the most unfairly hated director of all-time, but that's a different story for another day (HINT: Burton's Batman movies sucked too!) - The Lost Boys takes us into the awesome world of Santa Carla, California, which local graffiti-ists have dubbed "The Murder Capitol of the World".  When we arrive, we learn that the town is full of Oceanside fun that includes carnivals, wicked neon video stores, and - of course - a rocking saxophone man.  But, as we learn immediately, there's also something awful in town.

Enter "The Frog Brothers", played by Jamison Newlander and the great Corey Feldman, who warn young Sam - played by the other Corey, Corey Haim - about the vampires that plague the town.  It's kind of a weird idea - especially when you realize that the Frogs don't seem to know anything about the identity of the vampires, who flaunt themselves pretty blatantly to my eyes - but I'm willing to give these pre-teen vampire hunters the benefit of the doubt.  After all, one might just think the group of vamps - led by future TV super-icon Keifer Sutherland - is a bunch of kids dressed in ridiculous clothes.

Thankfully we have Sam's older brother, Michael (Jason Patric, son of The Exorcist's Jason Miller!), a moody teenager who is drawn to a girl (Jami Gertz, who was what we call "80s hot") who is drawn to the four ridiculously clothed dudes, who happen to be vampires.  The result is a battle between those who want to hold on to their humanity and those who do not; a battle that plays off of vampire lore well throughout the film.

It's not entirely a young person's movie, however, with a budding romance between the local video store owner played by Edward Herrmann and Sam & Mike's mother played by Dianne Wiest.  There's also the boys' grandpa, played by Barnard Hughes, who is perhaps my favorite thing about the film.  Grandpa's final line in the film is one of the greatest things ever said in a horror film, a final line that I won't dare spoil for the ignorant or deaf fools who haven't yet truly experienced The Lost Boys.

Then again, if you haven't experienced The Lost Boys yet, you may be completely hopeless.  I had a video store employee tell me recently that he hates any movie made before 1990, which probably means he has no soul.  And if you're old enough to know The Lost Boys and haven't experienced it yet....well, I apologize for the abuse you've endured.

I don't need to sit here and talk about The Lost Boys.  As hair rockers Extreme would say, The Lost Boys is worth more than words.  But I couldn't keep this series of movies I love going on and on and on and not end up talking about just how cool The Lost Boys is.  Not was, IS. Those poor teenagers today have no idea what they're missing when they look at the neutered vampire films of this generation.  There truly is nothing - no film, no television show, no kids playing in their backyards - that is quite like The Lost Boys, a one-of-a-kind piece of horror history that should never be ignored by anyone.  Ever.

I have to add one serious thing, since I didn't say anything serious (or maybe I did?) during this whole rant about how awesome The Lost Boys is.  I badly...and I mean BADLY...want to visit the video store Ed Herrmann runs in this flick.  Seriously, it's beautiful.  Those big box Warner Brothers VHS tapes all over the walls, the wall of TVs, the weird neon TV shapes hanging all over, even the fact that the classics and adult films are randomly on the same wall....I just love all of it.  If I had a time machine, I would be in this store first.  Then maybe I'd hit up The Ice Bowl and after that meet Kim Novak on the set of Vertigo.  But first: the video store from The Lost Boys.  Yup.

Drive

(2011, Dir. by Nicolas Winding Refn.)

After more than 25 years, our questions finally have some answers.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, allow me to do some enlightening for y'all.

The year was 1984, and The Cars - a groovy bunch of rockers by any standard - released a song that asked a lot of questions and provided no answers.  The song was titled Drive, and it left most of the world's population confused.  Who's gonna drive you home tonight?  Who's gonna pick you up when you fall?  Who's gonna pay attention to YOUR dreams?  Heck, all they told us is that we couldn't go on thinking nothing's wrong...and that's a great message, isn't it?  What kind of sick band leaves us hanging for so long?

Now it's 2011, and Nicolas Winding Refn - a new challenger to the throne of "Director with the most confusing to pronounce name ever" (NAME ONE OTHER TIME YOU'VE SEEN AN F AND AN N BACK TO BACK IN A WORD!  JUST ONE!) - has directed a film that answers those questions.  I'm not sure why Ric Ocasek isn't in the credits - Refn even goes out of his way to claim that this film is based on one of those "books" written by a guy named James Sallis - but it's clear that the introspective tone of The Cars' haunting single are at the core of the film version of Drive.

If we're working through the song, we quickly learn that Bernie Rose - an old-school crime lord played by veteran awesome person Albert Brooks - is here to tell the driver played by Ryan Gosling (or, as I like to call him, Ryan Baby Goose!) when things are too late.  The crime lord is a ruthless fellow, assisted by a Jewish pizza shop owner/thug played by the great Ron Perlman, and he seems intent on telling this young driver that things aren't so great.  In a mid film scene, he tells the lead character about the misfortune that befell his lone friend - a mechanic played by Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston - when he crossed the vicious duo, and sends a simple message to the driver.  In one of the final confrontations between the two, he points out bluntly that the rest of the driver's life will be trouble and that it's too late for that to change....basically saying that the driver would be wise to stop thinking nothing's wrong.

In the midst of the driver's confusion, a young woman who lives down the hallway (Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan) seems to pick him up when he falls.  Or perhaps it's the driver that does the same for her, since he also seems to pay attention to the dreams of the woman and her young son, who are missing their incarcerated husband/father (Sucker Punch's Oscar Isaac).  The driver is not much of a talker - the viewer should be prepared for countless awkward pauses - but he always seems to here what's going on around him and seems to have a keen understanding of what's going on around him.  He can block out the distractions around him, and at one point it even seems that he plugs his ears when an associate played by Christina Hendricks screams.  Again, this is all in the song, and it can't be denied.

You'd expect a movie about a driver for hire involved with the mob to be a high octane action movie, just like you'd expect a hit song by The Cars to be uptempo and powerful.  In both cases, Drive is not what you'd expect. I wouldn't call Drive a film noir type story - it's not dark enough visually - but the themes of betrayal, mistrust and impending doom that fill those old L.A. based crime tales are prevalent in Refn's film.  It's one of those movies that reminds me of movies I love dearly - like Vanishing Point and Shane - but creates its own identity as it goes on.

Unlike the song, there's a nasty side to this film.  Most of the violence is teased and only shown in brief flashes, but what we do see includes exploding skulls and stomped faces. But the film doesn't linger on the violence. It doesn't make the scene about the violence.  It wants us to know the violence is out there, and wants to show us that this "kid" who seems like a good guy despite his criminal activity still has an animalistic side. But it would rather have us be afraid of the emotions and the actions than the images of that violence.

Maybe I'm way off on Drive.  Maybe The Cars didn't have anything to do with it.  It's one of those movies that's one of a kind and makes you think too much.  I probably haven't done the film justice with this half-cocked ramble, but that's the beauty of it all.  Drive is something you don't expect - just like a review that compares a art-house action flick to a 27 year old ballad.  And I think I'm for that.

(Oh, and the soundtrack is AWESOME.  And doesn't feature The Cars.)

C.H.U.D. II: Bud The Chud

(1989, Dir. by David Irving.)

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS.  Repressed memories are a real thing after all.  How do I know this, you ask?  Well, I know this because tonight, in a random bit of spontaneous ridiculousness, I decided that it had been far too long since I'd seen C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud.  So, I dug up my VHS copy of the film - I have like 20 VHS tapes left...and this is one of them? - kickstarted the ol' TV/VCR combo which only gets used when I feel like I need to record Packers games, and let C.H.U.D. II happen to me for the first time in like ten years.  And it wasn't long before I realized just how much I - in some sick and wrong way - was influenced by this ridiculous pseudo-sequel to one of my favorite '80s horrors.  Like, I had blocked out almost all of the silly plot points, almost all of the awful dialogue that I used to joke about and...well, almost everything about the movie.  It was all lost, somewhere in my mind, because the DVD era happened and no one ever saw fit to release C.H.U.D. II on DVD in America.  But, as I watched the film unfold....well, let's just let my main man Meat Loaf explain how I felt about meeting C.H.U.D. II again.....

Yeah, I'm throwing the Loaf at C.H.U.D. II, because I can't help feeling that this film was more important to young nerd Mike than I remembered it being.  But before you think I'm absolutely crazy, let me explain myself.  Please.  If nothing else, I've earned this much with the Loaf. (Unless you don't like Loaf, in which case you can go read some crappier blog right the heck now.  There's no choice involved here, FMWL is a 100% Pro-Loaf blog.)

C.H.U.D. II connects to its predecessor only through its name and a few mentions of the Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers that filled that film's subterranean landscapes.  After a military opening in which an officer played by Robert Vaughn - who in my mind is playing the same character he did in the last season of The A-Team - discusses the end of the government's experiments in Chudism (that's a real word used in the movie, folks), we meet the last Chud, who bears little resemblance to his green skinned, yellow-eyed forefathers.

That C.H.U.D. is of course Bud, the title character who is played by notorious awesome dude Gerrit Graham.  Graham is probably most known for playing the hysterical rock opera diva Beef in Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (at least in my world he is), but he also made a decent career of appearing in ridiculous and/or awesome films, including - but not limited to - Chopping Mall, Demon Seed, Used Cars (opposite Kurt Russell!), The Man With One Red Shoe, and Child's Play 2.  Oh, and last but not least, Graham also showed up - in a gorilla suit - in another infamous sequel to a Mike favorite: BEWARE! THE BLOB.  So yeah...he's pretty awesome.

Graham is quite literally the heart of C.H.U.D. II - if you could even accuse the film of having one - as his physical presence as the Frankenstein-ish zombie (whose appearance also borrows a bit from Day of the Dead's Bub the Zombie) is basically the film's only effective punchline.  Seeing the actor ramble about while peeking in windows at women doing aerobics or picking up trick or treaters to determine whether or not they'd make a good snack is good for a few chuckles - mostly out of embarrassment for him being stuck in this film - and he also adds a little bit of drama at the end of the film with a gesture that reminds of ill-fated monsters like Frankenstein's creation.  Graham certainly is one part of the film I don't want to fault - even if his performance is at times overly silly, because he seems to be having a lot of fun despite the film he's in.

The rest of the film is, to be honest, kind of pitiful.  All the major plot points seem derivative of better films from the era like The Return of the Living Dead and Night of the Creeps, and the film does little to make the viewer think there's anything worth caring about in its simple, derivative plot.  The characters, led by a trio of teens and supported by small town stereotypes and the normal scientists/military folk you'd expect, have no depth, and almost all of the dialogue in the movie consists of one-liners or off-hand jokes.  I'm not exaggerating here - literally every scene features two to four intended bits of silly humor, ranging from references to beer commercials (two CHUDs chirping "Tastes Great! Less Filling" before heading into a bar) to random arguments that no real humans would have.  This is perhaps most evident from the conversations between our teen characters' parents, who seem to have been the inspiration for the awful comedy relief parents in Michael Bay's Transformers films. (To be fair, I did actually laugh when the father told his wife that his mother never used beauty products and the mother retorted "Your mother looked like Humphrey Bogart!")

So, with awful humor stinking up the film, no connection to the serious but fun original, and no interesting characters, you'd assume that the film at least has violence and gore to offer horror fans, right?  WRONG.  Next to no gore occurs on screen, little blood is shed, and most of the CHUDs look like they walked out of the Thriller music video.

And yet, all of C.H.U.D. II's missteps - which I'm quite aware are horrible missteps - kind of thrilled me again tonight.  I often claim that I don't believe in guilty pleasures, but in the case of this film...I'm not so sure anymore.  There's so much wrong with it - really, sooooo much wrong - but I can't help feeling charmed by its attempts to recreate everything the teen horrors of the '80s represented, even as it fails miserably.  From the opening hospital hijinks to the end credits and their '80s style theme song, I kinda get suckered in to C.H.U.D. II.  I know its bad - Heck, I think I know it's terrible - but I'm ridiculously glad I decided to watch it again. 

So, if you're feeling frisky - This Chud's for you! (Yes, that's an actual line from the film.)  I can't recommend it - because it's an awful, awful movie - but I kind of want to anyway.  Just go to You Tube, look up Bud The Chud, and you will see what I mean.

Or, maybe you won't.  But at least we'll still have The Loaf.

Fear No Evil

(1981, Dir. by Frank LaLoggia.)

It's not often that I'm truly at a loss for words about a movie I see.  I know it reads like I am sometimes, but that's just my scatterbrain/potential dyslexia kicking in - I actually do have coherent thoughts about these movies, it's just that I don't know how to transfer them to my fingertips like a normal human does.  But today, as I sit here and think about Fear No Evil - well, I'm struggling mightily to come up with something to talk about.  Not because there aren't thoughts going on in my head, because there's too damn many of 'em and almost all of them make less sense than an astronaut wearing Crocs and dancing with Eva Marie Saint on a fishing boat.  I do know, however, that we all owe a large debt of thanks to Emily over at The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense, because her love for this movie is what propelled me to check it out.

Sometimes I complain that the slasher craze of the '80s killed off the intelligent supernatural/spiritual horror craze of the '70s, because the latter group of films is the one I'm generally more fond of.  But it's not exactly like '80s filmmakers that were making supernatural horror movies were actually all making good movies.  If nothing else, I guess Fear No Evil kind of represents the fact that there was clearly a changing of the guard somewhere around 1980, because I have to think the religio-horror movement reached its breaking point somewhere late in the '70s.  Heck, maybe it was earlier than that.  I'm not really sure, but my point is that I shouldn't blame slashers so much when I find that the movie I pick specifically because it's not a slasher turns out to be one of the most baffling movies I've ever seen.

Fear No Evil basically follows a weird teenage boy who is also Lucifer, the Son of Satan.  At the beginning of the film we see him being chased around a castle a generation ago, evading a priest, showing off his yellow eyes and sideburns, apparently humping a tree, turning into a young girl, and then sacrificing himself via impalement so he can come back in another generation.  Then he comes back, turns 18, goes to a high school with a lot of punk music, and starts to realize his Antichrist powers.

There's more going on, particularly a gigantic amount of homoerotic weirdness, man ass, and pent up high school aggression.  Most of the characters do that typical "I'm in high-school and I don't understand people so I harass them in and after gym class" thing that we always see in high school movies (and real life, it's not like we all never got abused in a locker room, right?), but the catch is that awkward Andrew - who is also Lucifer - is the wrong kid to target.  Y'know, because he's Lucifer - and thus can target his bullies back.

The pinnacle of Andrew/Lucifer's powers are shown off in one of the most frantically ridiculous yet enthralling scenes I've ever seen - which involves a gym class and the masochistic game of dodgeball.  I don't think I can do the scene justice in words - and you're better off not watching the full movie - so here's the YouTube version.  Prepare yourselves.

Why exactly did the short kid try to tackle his teammate in the midst of the action?  And why is this more frantic than the opening of Saving Private Ryan?  Haven't these kids played dodgeball before?  My high school football coach would say that these kids look like a bunch of monkeys humping a football...and he'd be right.

Later in the movie, Andrew gets a chance to get revenge on a kid who tried to tell him that smoking pot makes you grow boobs.  And yeah....I'm just gonna tell you that there's boob growing involved.  It's another one of those weird moments that the film is full of where our Antichrist turns the whole plot strange and sexual, and it just kinda creeps the hell out of me.  Not in a good way, in a "Who thought up this movie and what the hell were they on?" way.

I'm sure it's hard to believe the things I'm telling you about Fear No Evil, but I can assure you that this odd, inept, punk version of The Omen does indeed exist.  It's a movie that must be experienced to be understood...but then again I kind of never want to experience it again after having experienced it.  Is it better to have seen death by dodgeball and grown manboobs and lost, or to have never seen death by dodgeball and grown manboobs at all.  I can't make the choice for you, but I'm pretty sure that - if nothing else - Fear No Evil is gonna go down as the most awkward thing I watch during '80s horror month.  

And the scariest thing is that something tells me the filmmakers were taking this seriously.  I fear their evil.

Hatchet II

(2010, Dir. by Adam Green.)

Hatchet II and I were never destined to be friends.  I don't usually see slasher films as more than just background noise in the first place; to me they're slightly below the mall food court on the horror film food pyramid.  And then I was annoyed and even a bit offended by the film's marketing campaign, which was all about how Hatchet II could only exist if it weren't given a rating by the MPAA.  But, like I said...those slashers make great background noise, so I also knew I was destined to eventually check out Hatchet II.

The film picks up at the conclusion of Hatchet, with the last standing survivor, Marybeth (now played by horror heroine Danielle Harris), eluding Victor Crowley and reaching safety, where a swamp fella tells her the seen-in-flashback story behind Victor Crowley, starting with his father - the returning Kane Hodder - who has an affair with his dying wife's nurse that produces the cursed child that would grow up to be a murdering swamp demon.  From there, the shaken Marybeth - still searching for her own father - is sent toward another return character, Reverend Zombie, the swamp tour entrepreneur who sent the fated voyage into the swamp during the first film.  Zombie is played by the man who may have played horror's last truly iconic villain, Candyman star Tony Todd.

(In an attempted comic twist, Zombie is assisted by Parry Shen, who returns from the first film as the twin of the tour guide who led the doomed expedition the night before.  Can we please, somehow, get filmmakers who think they're being cool to stop using the "let's bring back the dead character as a twin" gimmick?  Please? It's so sad.  Look, I know Shen was one of the only interesting performers in the first film - and he's one of the most interesting performers here, too.  But hey, Mr. Filmmaker - if you liked him so much, YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE KILLED HIM!)

I digress.  The point is that Reverend Zombie and Marybeth have to go into the swamp - with a group of disposable characters - to try and hunt down Victor Crowley and/or save her father and/or Zombie's lost boat.  I was a little surprised to see that the set up featured so much human drama and conversation, as there's plenty of consideration of family ties and a relatively cute rekindled romance between indie horror dude AJ Bowen and the blonde Alexis Peters - in the daylight hours of the film.  All of this is lost once the sun goes down and Victor Crowley comes out to play, as things devolve into excessive gore and stupid behavior.

Speaking of Victor Crowley - I just don't see the appeal.  The guy is like the Bane-as-played-by-Jeep-Swenson-in-Batman & Robin of slasher movie killers.  Isn't a horror movie supposed to be about scares, not just a giant mongoloid popping out and grunting while killing?  Jason was an imposing presence too, especially once Hodder took over the mask, but there was still something dark about the character that was a bit mysterious.  Victor Crowley - now with not one but TWO tragic sad backstories! - just seems to pop up out of nowhere at times, ripping people limb to limb or dismantling them with that hatchet or a giant chainsaw. Would I be frightened if he were standing in front of me with an ax?  Probably.  But that's it.  We do fear him, but we don't fear the shadows and dark places that he might be lurking in.  There's no subtlety involved in the Hatchet films and how they portray Crowley.  To me, that's not "Old-School American Horror".  That's what the Hot Topic crowd thinks horror is.  That's what the people who grew up picking horror films based on VHS covers over plots or filmmakers thinks horror is.

To be fair, I had more fun watching Hatchet II than I expected to.  Green has shown he can create human terrors in his non-Hatchet films, and you can see some of that at work here before it becomes the exact same film as its predecessor once it hits the swamp.  If I hadn't seen the title card come up claiming that the "Hatchet Army" was "Here to Save Horror" at the end of the credits, I might have given Hatchet II a pass as mindless stupidity.  But Green's final touch was a reminder that I was very grateful for - a reminder that there's a lot of great horror out there that doesn't need to be saved by uninteresting nonsense like Hatchet films. 

Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe decapitations during intercourse or people being choked with their innards is what horror needs these days.  Gah.  At this point I don't even care.  Hatchet II and me - look, we can work together, we're just not gonna be friends.  I feel like Snake Plissken talking to Commissioner Hauk at this point - I don't agree with what the movie stands for, but I'm too tired to kill it.  I guess if you want crap with lots of blood and bad acting (I love ya Danielle Harris, but this was a bit off key), Hatchet II does that decently.  (However, I'll take a film it slyly referenced - Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon - over it every day of the week.  And while I'm at it, Spiral is still the best film Green's directed.) 

The bottom line, however, is that Hatchet II is not what I'd call good horror.  In fact, to me it's nothing more than a false idol trying to lead others astray from the truly great things horror films can offer.  If this is horror's salvation, I'll gladly be condemned with my copies of great horror films that came with stories and characters.

OH MY FREAKING HAUSU!

There's a scene in the middle of The 'Burbs, one of my very favorite movies, when Tom Hanks' Ray Peterson, in a moment of awe, tries to cope with what he's just witnessed.  With a blank expression, he manages to stammer out something like "I've never seen that. I've never seen anybody drive their garbage down to the street and bang the hell out of it with a stick. I've never seen that."

I only bring that up because it's the only way I can come close to describing the thing I've just witnessed - Nobuhiko Obayashi's House (aka Hausu).  I doubt I'm the only person to feel that way, and I imagine this film would give even my Film History professor a brain tumor.  I don't even know what to say right now - I'm relatively sure there are fragments of my brain currently strewn across the back of my recliner.

Obayashi's film might be the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life.  After a prolonged set up regarding a group of school girls going to a remote house for the summer, the film becomes a stream of random and odd supernatural events that...well, that are completely random and crazy and all over the place and kind of amazing to see.

I know that's not much of a description, but if I was to go too far I'd spoil the fun you could have discovering whatever freakish occurrence is coming up next.  Also...there's like no way I can describe what Hausu/House is.  But trust me you guys....IT'S SO GOOOD.  It's the weirdest, awesomest, craziest thing I've seen in ages.  So go find it and watch it and marvel in the wackiness.  Please.  Just do it.  You know you want to.  It's like imperative that you find this movie and watch it, like now.

Here's the trailer.  I'm gonna think about this movie for the next like five hours now.  It's the craziest.