OCTOBER 1, 2013

GENRE: CLASSIC, MAD SCIENTIST, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Is the 1994 version from Kenneth Branagh the only major adaptation of Frankenstein to include the Captain Walton bookending scenes? I can't recall, but I DO know that I sure miss it in the otherwise terrific 1931 version, as its own bookends stick out like sore thumbs - particularly the goofy happy ending where the Baron Frankenstein enjoys a drink with a bunch of giggly nurses. This scene was (rightfully) ignored for Bride of Frankenstein, where Henry is "dead" for a bit before being revived (here he just survives without question), and it's so clumsily inserted that I wish there was an option to just cut from the fire at the windmill to the credits.

Otherwise, man, what a great film. I actually had a chance to see it on 35mm two years ago at the New Bev, but I dozed off and missed like half of it, so this is actually the first time I've watched it since 2004 when the Legacy Collection set came out on DVD (and remained untouched until I began HMADing my way through it in 2007). It's a mere 70 minutes long, and no time is wasted - there's grave robbing almost right off the bat, and the famous "It's alive!" scene occurs at the 23 minute mark or so - even some of the sequels, where the Monster was already established, didn't hit the ground running like this. Popular opinion is that Bride is even better - I'll watch it later (again, only for the second time) and decide, but this one is pretty hard to top.

I do know this much - James Whale made the right call to bring Colin Clive back, as he is simply phenomenal in the role; even though I had seen a couple other versions first, it's clear that this is the standard by which all other Frankenstein portrayals should be judged. He strikes a perfect balance between hero and villain; charismatic enough that you want him to succeed (and clearly would be a good husband to his fiance if he could stop fiddling with his science experiments), but with that sense of madness that the character requires. I was saddened to learn of Clive's fate - I knew he died young thanks to his alcoholism, but apparently he was sort of abandoned after - his ashes went unclaimed for forty years! Huge bummer.

The real villain of the movie is Dwight Frye as Fritz (not Igor! This was a trick question at Horror Trivia a couple months back), since he not only takes the wrong brain but is also a real piece of shit to the Monster. It's possible he would have turned out OK if not for Fritz terrorizing the poor bastard at every turn, and while the other deaths in the movie are bummers, I cheered when Karloff strangles him. And kudos to ol' Boris for his portrayal - this time around I looked at some trivia during my viewing and discovered that his shoes weighed 13 lbs each and the appliances hurt his back, so it couldn't have been fun for the 41 year old man. Hell, I only had to suit up once to play a monster (while wearing fairly light boots) and I was a whiny bitch all night. Then again I won't get to be on a postage stamp, so there's not as much motivation for me to suck it up.

The disc has a commentary track by film historian Rudy Behlmer, and while it's not as enjoyable as one of Tom Weaver's track (he really sets the bar for such things, in my opinion), it's jam-packed with trivia and background info on the production and pretty much every single person involved with its making. You can tell they actually had to edit his lines together to cram it all in (it's not often he directly mentions the scene that's playing), and he's clearly reading from prepared notes, but you can practically walk away an expert on the film after listening, and it's funny to hear about things that had to be censored back in the day (a line about feeling like God was excised for years - and some areas refused to show it with the words intact!). The transfer is good too; perhaps a bit TOO good in spots (dig the wrinkles on the "sky" behind them) but that's even more impressive when you consider how old the movie is - not a lot of films (particularly horror ones) from that period have been so lucky with regards to being preserved/restored properly.

Last year (or maybe the one before) Uni put out a Blu-ray set with the originals of all their monster movies (plus Bride, and I THINK the Spanish Dracula, don't quote me); I never picked it up because I had all of these, but if you haven't yet experienced these movies, it's probably where you should start - watch em all, then pick your favorite (mine is Wolf Man, for the record) and get that movie's Legacy Collection release. This is the first of my "October must-see" entries for HMAD, which means more reviews as it'll be a lot of stuff I saw pre-HMAD and thus never reviewed, and you really can't ask for a better movie to start the month off and get you in the holiday spirit. It might not be SCARY in a traditional way, but it hits every note so perfectly in all other areas, you won't even notice.

What say you?

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SEPTEMBER 8, 2013

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MUTANT
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

When I watched the original Scanners for this site a few years back, I was kind of disappointed with it - take out the headsplosion (which I had already seen) and maybe 1-2 other little bits, it was a fairly boring film, with Cronenberg's usual insistence of not having any fun weighing down a pretty goofy concept. Thus, it probably won't surprise anyone to discover I found Scanners II: The New Order and Scanners III: The Takeover to be more to my liking; neither of them are particularly GOOD movies, but they rarely bored, and director Christian Duguay dove headfirst into all the different ways a Scanner might use his or her powers, giving them an energy that satisfied me to a certain extent.

Scanners II focuses on a Scanner named David who is recruited into an organization where his kind are sent to the dirty work of various crooked politicians. Of course, it doesn't take long for him to realize this is a bad use of one's time and tries to free himself of their control, only to be chased endlessly. It's actually a lot like the first Universal Soldier, with the main evil guy from the organization constantly in pursuit - there's even a scene where our hero goes to his family home and gets some answers only for his adoptive parents to be put into danger. It's here that we find out how this connects to the original (spoiler): David is the son of the 1981 film's heroes, and has a sister to boot - though this a bit of a botched reveal, as he should only be about 10 years old instead of 30 or so (or the movie should be set roughly in 2013). I like movies that tie together, sure, but this connective tissue is flimsy and unnecessary, since it's not like the ones in the first film were the parents of ALL the scanners in this movie (or the next one), and thus we don't need to know why HE has the power. And the way the first film's heroes are killed is pretty weak - they apparently forgot about their powers since they just get taken out by a regular (non-Scanner) guy.

Once David goes on the run it improves; the first half hour is basically a remake of the original as we're introduced to the world of Scanners all over again, complete with a headsplosion that will end up on a highlight reel or one of those 100 best kills compilations on Youtube. I don't know what the budget of these things were, but it feels like a cable movie of that era; not overly cheap, but just BLAND, making it hard to get too involved as it just seems like everyone's going through the motions. Drak (this movie's Revok) is a fun wild card, but it's not until him and David are truly pitted against each other that the movie really takes off. There's some new stuff with the Scanners too (and thankfully no "body switching"), like when David and his sister team up to use their powers to mind-control a guy past some security checks in order to infiltrate a compound, and there's a goofy bit where Drak uses his abilities to kick ass at Operation: Wolf, an old arcade game. And no matter what issues I may have had with the film, they're all rectified by the end credits theme song, which is a ballad on par with Bonfire's "Sword and Stone" from my beloved Shocker.

Scanners III is even more action packed, to the point where it's barely even horror anymore. Sure, there's still a few headsplosions (including one under water!), but it's purely an action thriller, even cribbing parts from Rambo III. This time it has no relation to the others at all beyond the core concept (and someone even specifically says it's the 90s, so it's possibly a prequel to part 2, assuming anyone was putting any thought into it), but it offers the most intriguing good vs evil pairing yet - a man named Alex vs his sister Helena, with the former returning from Thailand to stop the latter when she goes nuts and begins decimating everyone involved with the study/creation of Scanners, including their father. The Thailand stuff is where it feels like a Rambo ripoff; he goes there to become a monk and live in seclusion after he accidentally kills someone at a party while being encouraged to show off his powers (so it can't be a prequel since the end of 2 set up the idea that Scanners aren't dangerous and just want to be left alone). There's some martial arts fighting and even an older mentor type a la Richard Crenna who comes to see him and encourage him to help take up the fight - the deja vu was laid on pretty thick, in other words.

Needless to say he eventually rejoins the world to take on his sister, though not before hooking up with his ex girlfriend and getting a haircut. Again, it's all a bit blandly shot (there's a reason Christian Duguay's filmography is mostly DTV/television work), but there's more action than even Scanners II, including a rooftop shootout and even a car chase, plus more scanner villains than usual (Helena gives them all these little discs that they can put on their necks and intensify their powers, and they form a little mob tasked with finding Alex). Plus they finally figure out that they can blow up something besides heads - one guy gets his finger "scanned" off, and Helena takes care of a pigeon that pooped on her as any Scanner should (and I love the bewildered expression on a character's face a few minutes later when he keeps finding feathers on the table). There's even a dance routine, for some reason - Helena gets pissed at her douchey boyfriend and scans him into gyrating around like an asshole at some fancy restaurant. Again, it's a completely goofy concept at its core, so the idea that Duguay and his writers aren't taking it very seriously and using it as a vessel for what amounts to typical B-movie action fare, to me, is better than being all dry and stuffy about it.

Scream Factory is putting these two out on Region 1 disc for the first time, I believe - there was a European release of the "trilogy" but that's about it, and this is definitely their debut on Blu-ray. As you might expect they're hardly reference worthy transfers - there's only so much a high def release can do with a cheap film - but they're quite good all the same, with fine audio (2.0) and no DNR tinkering. Sadly they lack any extras whatsoever - both films are on the same disc (there's a DVD packaged inside as well) and the menu only offers the choice between them - no scene selection menus are available, just chapter breaks. The Euro release had some interviews with Alan Jones, it's a shame that they haven't been brought over. But, for those of you who are like me and don't import discs, it's great to finally have them on disc instead of junky, inferior VHS tapes.

There are also a pair of spinoff movies under the Scanner Cop title; no idea how those are or if they're worth seeking out (no disc release for those either, far as I know), but as the only true franchise to be spun off from a David Cronenberg idea (can't really count Dead Zone or The Fly as those were other people's stories to begin with), it demands some attention. All of his peers (Carpenter, Craven, etc) saw at least one of their creations turned into total junk, so it's sort of like a rite of passage in a weird way. Maybe someday I'll give the original another chance - I doubt these will get put back in the player all too often, but I currently consider them better, and I'm not too comfortable with saying I'd rather watch a Christian Duguay movie than a David Cronenberg one.

What say you?

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JULY 31, 2013

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MOCKUMENTARY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I talked to one of the FX guys behind Frankenstein's Army at last year's Comic Con, and got positively giddy about the movie's premise - a group of soldiers discover a bunker overrun with Nazi "Zombots" created by none other than Frankenstein himself. He showed me a few of the creatures, talked about a few others, gushed over Karel Roden as Frankenstein... but never once mentioned that the film, set in WWII, was a goddamn found footage movie. Even then, in 2012, I would have rolled my eyes a bit at the thought of yet another mock doc, but over a year later, having finally seen the film, it just really made me sad.

Obviously director (and a zillion other credits, including both "idea by" and "story by", which has to be a first) Richard Raaphorst couldn't have known how badly overrun the sub-genre would be by the time his movie saw release (it was shot in early 2012), but it WAS his responsibility to justify the approach within his narrative, and that is where he misses the mark. Even if you ignore the myriad anachronisms (sync sound on a color film camera that shoots 16:9 footage?) and laughable mistakes (the camera guy says he just loaded his last roll of film with 25 minutes of the movie left to go - and he also somehow loaded it while covered in blood and frightened out of his mind), there is never a point in the movie where I understood why it HAD to be presented in the first person format. Paranormal Activity, Blair Witch, Cloverfield... all of these films provided the excuse and maintained the necessary "meet me halfway" balance with the audience - ALL of em have their "Why are they filming?" parts and some suspension of disbelief with regards to battery power and tape, but this has NOTHING. Our guy mentions needing to document the trip in case their target isn't able to be captured alive, but why film so many of his fellow soldiers' conversations that he doesn't take part in, or stand in the middle of a battlefield (!) to film a shootout with an enemy troop? Why does he always helpfully pan back and forth between a monster and his comrades that are shooting at it (again, sometimes standing directly between them)?

And that's the biggest problem - the single camera (well, sort of - they also frequently cut to a different angle with no lapse in time) keeps the action at bay, and thus reduces the time we get to spend with the movie's incredible creatures. I didn't care much for the film, but I almost hope it's a huge hit just so they can justify an action figure line, as each creature is something I'd love to have on a shelf. As I described them in that Comic Con piece, they look like Bioshock's monsters mixed with something Clive Barker might come up with, and I was impressed at how they all had their own unique look, even though we didn't get to see them all that much. There are a couple of extended fight scenes (such as the one with Propeller-Head), but for the most part our camera guy will stumble across one of them while running around the bunker's hallways, focus on him for a second or two, and then turn and run the other way before we could even really tell what their "power" was. It started to feel more like a maze at Universal Horror Nights or something, where you'll find a room/monster that you wanted to just soak in and enjoy the design, but couldn't because you were being ushered through as quickly as possible. It's a good thing our sociopathic protagonist is a savant at running backwards through dark, unfamiliar areas, or else we would see them even less than we do. And they're all practical creations, best as I can tell, so it's not like they had to hide bad CGI or limit their rendering time or something - film the movie normally and show em off!

But if you do your best to ignore the found footage aspect, it's not too bad. Even in their limited screentime, the monsters still help make it one of the more visually interesting horror films in quite a while, and it's nice to see a WWII set horror film about a discovered bunker that wasn't based around psychological trauma or a supernatural presence. The cast is compact enough to keep everyone straight even with their limited character development (having trouble telling the soldiers apart is almost always a problem for me with these things), and it's certainly one of the faster paced entries in the war/horror genre (again, so many of them are based on psychologically-tinged elements, which translates to a slow burn affair). And Roden IS indeed a delight as Frankenstein, clearly having a ball spouting mad scientist nonsense and digging into brains and what not as he worked on new creations.

I also appreciated, on an admittedly weird level, that they didn't shy away from making our protagonists into assholes. One soldier kills a bunny for no reason, another orders a child to be used as bait (doesn't end well), and they laugh when a captured enemy soldier is killed. Usually I detest this sort of thing, but in a found footage movie (especially one where I'm basically only watching for the production design) I know everyone's gonna die anyway, so they might as well go for broke. And one guy who had a bit of a Michael Fassbender thing going on largely refrained from doing anything too dickish, so there's still someone to root for, sort of. It's not much of a surprise that there's a traitor among them, though then we're treated to yet another giant "guess we gotta go with it" moment, where the traitor explains why he needs to be kept alive, even protected by the others, or else the movie would end.

Look, I've certainly seen worse, is what I'm saying. I was constantly at odds with wanting to love the movie for its creatures and aesthetic, and getting angrier that it was yet another found footage movie where the filmmakers clearly had no interest in even trying to follow the "rules" of the format. Much like 3D, it's a tool that can be used very effectively, and its unfortunately fallen into the hands of those who just want to cash in on a trend without realizing that they're the ones that will ultimately kill it (again). Kind of a shame, but unlike the Amber Alerts or Absences of the world, at least this won't make you want to swear off the format forever.

What say you?

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JUNE 10, 2013

GENRE: ANIMATED, MAD SCIENTIST, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

If I was a guy who called the shots on anything, I'd have a weekly animated series based on The Amazing Adventures of the Living Corpse on the air ASAP. The concept is fun, I loved the animation style, and lord knows there needs to be more animated genre fare... but the movie ultimately disappoints, because it seems Justin Paul Ritter (whose name appears in the credits more times than I can count, so let's just sum up and say he's behind it all) tried to cram far too much material from the source comic into his 88 minute feature. With room to breathe and time to flesh out the world created by Ken Haeser and Buz Hasson in their comic, this could be kind of awesome.

Instead, it's just something I'd throw on in the background for a Halloween party; it's frenetic and colorful enough to draw the eye, but never engaging enough to actually distract someone away from conversation (though if they were talking to me, I'd probably just be talking about underwhelming horror movies I saw, natch). The jumps in the narrative are incredibly jarring - at one point (the end of the second act, basically) they just skip ahead 15 years as if it was only an hour or so, and even individual sequences suffer from the same "and now we're over here!" issue. Our hero zombie and villain are seemingly trapped in a lab, but suddenly they're in what appears to be a church. A seemingly important character named Asteroth disappears for the last 20 minutes or so, and even the end is obnoxiously abrupt, as if they were supposed to put in an epilogue but forgot. Having not read the comic, I can only assume that they were trying to adapt an arc that lasted several issues and highlighted their favorite parts?

Another way to look at it would be the cut-scenes from a video game strung together without the gameplay (and "codex" style entries) that would actually give it some context and structure. It's hard not to think about games - some of Ritter's angles seem to be specifically recalling the over the shoulder approach of your Mass Effects and Dead Spaces, while more than once there's a long zoom into a character's back that reminded me of any big open world type game where the first big cutscene transitions to gameplay. The music frequently has that repetitive "boss battle" looping feel to it, and even some of the plot and art style was reminiscent of the Splatterhouse reboot from a few years back. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad approach - I certainly love games and, as with the animated format, feel that there aren't enough of them that appeal to horror fans - but with the disjointed approach to the narrative, it doesn't work as well as it could.

Which is a shame, because again, the animation style is kind of awesome. No one will mistake the CGI for Pixar or whatever, but the character designs strike a great blend between being appropriately horrific and also "heroic" (it's the sort of thing where most of the good guys are monster and the bad guys are human), and even in the human world there's an appropriately colorful but dark look to everything that I quite liked - sort of Paranorman meets the art of Clayton Crain, I guess. The backgrounds can be sparse, but that's fine - this was an independently made production and quite an impressive one for the most part, so things like that are not unexpected. I was a little more disappointed with the vocal work; not sure if the mix wasn't great or what, but it felt very disconnected, and I had trouble distinguishing voices when I couldn't actually see who was talking.

And it got me interested in reading the comic, so on that level it's a success. The story involves a man who becomes a zombie and turns good when recognizing his son as a would-be victim (his wife and daughter - too late!), and how he lives with the curse (still needs to eat folks to live!) while hoping to protect his son from bullies and mad scientists alike. Not quite sure what the mad scientist villain was up to since it involves a bunch of gobbledygook, but I DO know that in the 3rd act he has an exposed brain in a glass bowl like Bill Moseley in Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, so there's something. Again, the story jumps around a lot, so I had trouble following it on more than one occasion, but assuming the comics make sense, it seems like a fun "good vs. evil" yarn where the sides are swapped - I mean, the movie's most endearing character is a little troll demon named Worthless Merk. I'd totally read an issue about him.

The Blu doesn't have a single goddamn bonus feature, which surprised me - they had a premiere at Comic Con, it's an indie production, and it's based on a comic book - surely there is a wealth of "built-in" supplements, and they don't even give us a trailer? What gives, Anchor Bay? They could at least show us some art from the comic and how it compares with the 3D animated version, or some animatics or whatever. So that plus the underwhelming narrative makes this a tough sell, but they have the elements - let's see about doing a web series or something! I'd even toss in a couple bucks on Kickstarter.

What say you?

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MARCH 27, 2013

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (BORROWED)

For a movie that replaced a director that I quite like (Stuart Gordon) with one I'm not too crazy about (Brian Yuzna), Bride Of Re-Animator could have been a lot worse, I guess. There's nothing particularly BAD about it (except the absence of Barbara Crampton, of course), but it lacks that spark that made the original so memorable. I used the word "perfunctory" when talking to a friend about it, and I haven't thought of a better one to describe it - lazy wouldn't be fair given the amount of pretty great practical FX work, but otherwise it just sort of does exactly what you'd expect it to once you read the plot description.

While Crampton is gone (and replaced by a different actress for a scene that was cut anyway), Yuzna was smart enough to bring back Bruce Abbott and Jeffrey Combs as Cain and West, the misguided young doctors who have continued to work together while West furthers his experiments in giving life back to dead tissue. The film begins in Peru of all places, with the two working as field medics during a civil war, but they are quickly back in Arkham, Massachusetts (read: Sherman Oaks and other Los Angeles suburbs) and up to their old tricks. I was a bit bummed that they didn't stay in Peru longer, as it would have given the film more of its own identity and thus allowed it to stand on its own, but luckily the script found a few new things to bring to the table.

First and foremost: a police presence! They didn't do much to attract suspicion beyond the hospital in the first one, but it would have been really dumb if they went back (it's only eight months later) and no one had any questions for them. The main antagonist is a cop who instantly takes an interest in the massacre at the morgue and the frequency of missing body parts, and it doesn't take long for us to find out why - his wife was one of the bodies that got re-animated during the first film's climax, and she's STILL up and about (albeit under observation at a hospital), so naturally he wants to know why. This leads to a lot of scenes where he watches West or Cain do something suspicious, or questions them (or Cain's new girlfriend), or snoops around, so it gets a bit repetitive, but I like how they handled his character. Being that he's a cop and investigating guys that are up to some immoral stuff, it'd be hard to actively root AGAINST him unless he had a skeleton in his closet, so when we find that out it makes it easier to cheer on West, who's as driven as ever.

Dan, on the other hand, is even less interested in these experiments than he was in the first film, and has clearly had it up to here with West, to the extent that he even decides to move out at one point. I wish they had explored their sorta-friendship a bit more - what do they do when NOT trying to bring the dead back to life? Are they actually friends or do they just want to keep an eye on the other? It's part of the problem with creating exciting/interesting characters in a horror movie - you can only do so much with them as the producers, who never care about such things, will cut all that "boring" stuff anyway so we can get back to the splatter. So the issue intensifies in a sequel; we've now spent three hours with these guys and still don't know much about them beyond how they feel about zombies and unfavorable scientific practices.

Luckily, said splatter is terrific, as are the new creations (by Screamin Mad George, KNB, and others). West's new plan is to replace dead body parts, as opposed to bringing entire bodies back to life - someone loses a hand or a foot, and he can rejuvenate one and replace it, presumably much quicker than a regular transplant. But he can't help but test his ideas in unusual ways, so he makes things like a little critter that's just four fingers and an eyeball, or an arm attached to a leg, and the FX wizards have these things running around and interacting with the actors in believable ways, all for a budget that I'm sure wasn't very big. Amazing, isn't it? If only today's horror movies had such dedication and creativity. Not all of them look great (another returning character's head is put on a bat - it's clunky at best), but they all show a hell of a lot more effort than whatever swirling mass of pixels we get in the latest studio horror flick (I'm still sore about Mama - singlehandedly kept me from loving the movie).

As for the Bride, like its namesake it barely appears, but the story leading up to her is a good one - Dan has become deeply focused on a female patient at the hospital, and West has managed to get a hold of Meg's heart, convincing Dan that that is what he misses about his now deceased lover. The outcome isn't as tragic as it was for Frankenstein and his monster, but it's a solid concept that is deserving of the name (unlike, say, Bride of Chucky). And her (spoiler) destruction is awesome - she basically just falls apart, with parts of her back just sliding off and limbs plopping to the floor. Plus she gets to fight Dan's (totally human/not undead in any way) girlfriend for a few minutes, which is hilarious. Actually the climax as a whole is pretty nutty (and less abrupt than the original's), as the original zombies come back, West's creatures get loose, Bat-head causes more problems, etc. There's even a dog with a human hand somewhere in there.

Unsurprisingly, the bulk of the bonus features focus on the FX. There's a 22 minute piece that shows a clip of each one followed by some behind the scenes video of its creation, with very little in the way of direct interviews or voiceover from Yuzna or any of the various makeup teams, and a quick look (WITH voiceover) at a deleted concept featuring the Bat-head thing. Even the commentary by Yuzna and a bunch of other folks focuses mainly on FX as opposed to the actual production, story, etc. In short, if you love FX and their creation, this is a great disc to have, but otherwise there isn't much that will interest you. There's a look at the deleted Meg scene (most of it devoted to showing it being filmed, curiously) and some other promotional stuff, but otherwise the only other bonus that I'd recommend is the (curiously unlisted) commentary from Combs and Abbott, who offer occasional (and brief) shooting anecdotes and such but mostly just goof on each other's acting and dialogue. The two have a great rapport and clearly aren't pretentious about their work in it, making for a very enjoyable track as long as YOU don't take the movie too seriously, either.

All of this stuff is spread across both sides of this particular release of the disc, which offers the theatrical version on one side and the unrated (one minute longer) on the other. It also offers something I don't think I've ever seen on a disc before - the option to matte the film for theatrical sized viewing. Apparently it was shot full frame but if you want you can crop out some of the top and bottom to give it a 1.85:1 frame, but it's not anamorphic so you'll have to zoom in on your TV for it to look right, which of course just makes it blurrier. In other words, just turn the matting off and enjoy the legs and 20% more headroom for the actors. Hopefully Lionsgate (or whoever owns Artisan releases now) will re-release on Blu-ray someday, with a better transfer (it looks like shit no matter what form you watch it in) and all the bonus features together on one side of the disc - I'm not even sure I found everything since the menu layouts are so confusing (and the commentary tracks are only available on the theatrical side, so pity the person that watches the unrated version and assumes there's no other difference between the two sides!).

Someday I'll get around to seeing the 3rd film, Beyond Re-Animator, which I've never heard a good thing about (I got mixed word on this one, which is appropriate). It lacks Bruce Abbott but adds the stunning Elsa Pataky, so I might end up enjoying it to some degree, and maybe mixing things up a bit more can be a good thing. As I was saying in my review of Futureworld (for BadassDigest), too many horror sequels are basically just remakes, and this one can almost be accused of that at times (the structure is almost identical) - if Beyond is at least TRYING something new, I can at least appreciate the effort. Still: give Gordon the money he needs to do House of Re-Animator, dammit!

What say you?

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MARCH 22, 2013

GENRE: COMEDIC, MAD SCIENTIST
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

If you notice, "Zombie" is not one of the genre taggings for Zombie High, and yet that's not even the only thing wrong with the two word title. It's also set on a college campus, so they're even more off than they were with "Zombie". I mean, I guess it could be an advanced prep school, but with the average age of the actors being around 24, I'd rather accuse the title of being wrong since they already proved they weren't very good at their job. Hell at one point when everything is being explained and thus they have a perfect opportunity to say "Zombie", Virginia Madsen's character refers to their antagonists as "Vampires". I guess "Vampire Prep School" just didn't have the same ring to it.

If it had just a little more actual horror in it, it'd probably be a pretty decent little 80s movie, especially when you consider that it's a glorified student film. The producer/writer was a guy named Aziz Ghazal who ran USC's camera department and was by all accounts a pain in the ass who ran the place like a drill sergeant, and would have students work on his films for course credit (though the director was 47 years old and never made anything of note before or since, and passed away in 1999). Ghazal would go on to kill his wife and daughter, and then himself, after bungling his attempts to get the book "The Brave" turned into a movie (something Johnny Depp eventually did), a story you can read about here - it's far more terrifying and upsetting than anything in this movie, I assure you.

But I'm pretty sure this was supposed to be a comedy. If not for the fact that Ghazal produced and was involved throughout (the IMDb has a post from the guy who wrote the ridiculous Beastie Boys ripoff song that accompanies the end credits, claiming the lyrics of the song are actually a "fuck you" to Ghazal), I'd suspect it was one of those deals where a comedy was written and the director shot it straight, or vice versa. It SEEMS like a parody of Stepford Wives (with more than a touch of Strange Behavior), and one could see it as a satire of how college fraternities tend to strip members of their individuality, but it's never actually funny or even that amusing. Only the overly 80s feel of it (neon clocks! awful hair! Pin Pressions!) provides the laughter, and that wouldn't have been the case in 1987 when the film was released.

So let's just chalk it up to no one really knowing what they were doing, hence the not-shockingly thin resumes of the bulk of the primary crew members (only co-writer Tim Doyle and a couple of the producers seem to have done all right for themselves). However the cast has kept busy - obviously star Virginia Madsen has gone on to bigger and better things (and also Firewall), but her roommate is none other than a young Sherilyn Fenn, and even odder - the casting person was Fenn's Twin Peaks co-star Eric "Leo" DaRe. But the real shocker is the guy playing Madsen's annoying platonic buddy Emerson - future Freaks & Geeks creator/Bridesmaids director Paul Feig! I thought it was actually a different one when I saw his name in the credits, but sure enough it's him, playing a guy that reminded me a lot of Spitz from Halloween 5. He's just as clueless as Madsen when it comes to noticing that something is not right at their school, but it's not until he too disappears and becomes one of the brainwashed students that she springs into action and something actually HAPPENS in the movie, so thank you for your sacrifice, Mr. Feig.

Another problem is that it takes too long to really bring in the villains of the movie, a sort of Mason-like group of old dudes who are the ones benefiting from the students' brainwashing. If I'm understanding correctly, they remove part of the brain and replace it with a crystal that puts them in their drone-like state, with the excised part of the brain being used to helping them stave off the aging process. The main guy (who sounds like Christopher Lloyd when he's agitated) appears quite a bit, but the others are just anonymous schmoes we only really see in the 3rd act, where the "zombies" aren't posing much of a threat. More often than not, when we see them they're just acting like robots; there's a funny bit where they all dance in slow unison at a school dance, and a long tracking shot of them mindlessly pulling books off the shelf at the library - our villains! So it's a clunkily paced plot with a near total lack of tension - the only thing that really provides any excitement is the arc of a teacher who is part of the group (he looks 30 but he's 102) and is starting to regret it. Will he help Madsen? (Yes) Will he pay for his crimes? (Also yes).

It also seemed like Ghazal watched Re-Animator; the main old guy is similar to Dr. Hill, and the locations are pretty much the same - nondescript college basements and off-campus housing. And both films are called zombie movies but are really about mad scientists trying to beat death in some way or other, with disastrous consequences. But I doubt there will be a Zombie High stage musical anytime soon. We DO have Disturbing Behavior, which also had this sort of idea (though closer to Strange Behavior) and did it better AND gave us "Flagpole Sitta".

What say you?

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MARCH 11, 2013

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, THRILLER
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

OK I'm two days past the "weekly" deadline but as promised, Jean Rollin's Night Of The Hunted (French: La nuit des traquées)! It's one of the more commonly requested titles whenever Rollin comes up, so I hope you can all sleep easier now. And it's more proof that some of you guys are trying to fuck with me, because like Gozu and Battle Royale (two other highly requested movies) it's not really horror, at least compared to his other movies. Compared to The Remains of the Day, sure, it's horror, but most of the body count is courtesy of random shootouts, and is closer to Memento than anything else.

But don't let that scare you off - it's a sequentially told story! I suspect Jean Rollin attempting a reverse chronology would be the most batshit confusing movie ever made, since his storylines can be a bit puzzling even in order. No, it's just that our heroine Elizabeth (Brigitte Lahaie) seemingly suffers from a Shelby-esque memory loss where she forgets what she's doing while doing it, can't remember someone moments after meeting them, etc. But she's also got regular amnesia, which makes things even worse (but doesn't stop her from bedding down with the guy who found her wandering in the road) until she is discovered by the people who she was escaping from - a mysterious team who oversees her and several other patients with similar memory issues. They're all in a dark tower in the middle of the city, and the movie is basically about her trying to figure out who they are and why she's there.

Spoiler: she never does. In a puzzling move, the male lead disappears for a good chunk of the movie, only to come back later when she finds a phone and calls him from the tower. And he's the one that the bad guy scientists explain things to, so he's sort of the audience surrogate while also being a random guy we don't care much about. If we stayed with him after she was recaptured and he investigated, maybe it would work, but since we're with her for almost the entire movie, on a narrative level it doesn't quite satisfy that she's pretty much in the same boat (actually a bit worse) at the end as she was when we met her.

However, if you look at it as a tragic love story, it's quite successful in an odd way - the last shot of the two of them actually made me sad, and at the same time I was kind of charmed by oddly sweet it was. I won't spoil the particulars, however - words would fail to describe it accurately anyway. Still, I wish the guy had a little more presence throughout the movie; when she returns to the tower she is reunited with another amnesiac who was apparently very important to her, but after a while that character is written out and replaced with another woman - it's just hard to really get a grasp on anything or get a sense of what's going on, which is fine for a mystery as it does sort of put you in the mindset of someone with memory loss (which Memento did beautifully), as you're constantly seeing new people while others disappear, but there's nothing to "solve" here. We're just kind of hanging out until the sinister doctors decide to tell someone what's going on.

And by hanging out I mean: watching sex scenes. There's a hint of lesbian attraction, but nothing explicit this time - all of the lovemaking we see is "straight", and thus we get a shot or two of a guy's junk to (sort of) balance out all the naked female bodies we see during the film (at least four, and more than once for most). At times it seems like Rollin is suggesting that sex can help slow down the memory loss in some way, but if so that never really comes to fruition (it'd be a hell of an idea, though). And like the end, some of these scenes are kind of sad; Elizabeth is tormented with the notion that she won't be able to remember something that is currently giving her so much joy.

So how is it horror? Well there's certainly a sense of unease and some dread throughout the film, and the really far gone patients act like zombies, but once a few of the pieces start falling into place it's pretty obvious that they're not having their memories wiped to create an army of drone killers or anything genre-specific like that, so it loses a lot of that feel. However there's an extended sequence that seems lifted from a different movie entirely - one of the guards decides to have his way with one of the women (she barely fights him off, and after a minute is seemingly OK with it), when suddenly a guy who looks like Roman Polanski walks over and begins beating him with a hammer, covering the poor girl with his red paint blood.

But that's pretty much it for the full blown genre stuff - I think it's better to approach the movie as a sad drama with some minor thriller elements, and let the occasional bits of horror act as a bonus - if you want a regular horror movie from Rollin, Living Dead Girl or the lesser Zombie Lake would be your best bet. I'd also recommend watching it if you need a Cronenberg fix, since he doesn't do horror anymore. It's not "body horror", but I got a Scanners/Rabid/The Brood vibe at times all the same, which reminded me that I still need to see Shivers! But until then - what Rollin should I watch next, out of the ones that are on Instant (which is most of them, thankfully)? Less than 3 weeks left!

What say you?

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