The Mist (Black & White) (2007) directed by Frank Darabont I was skeptical of the idea, which is why I watched the color version first, but I now agree with the director that the black & white version is better. In his intro, Darabont kept mentioning how it reminded him of the B&W '60s horror movies he saw as a kid. I'd go back further than that; I kept think of the '30s and '40s Universal horror movies. The starkness of the image gives it that classic feel. It could just as easily be the wolfman emerging from the fog as an interdimensional monster. The mist itself looks really good in grayscale, as well. Now it seem as though its swallow the color and life out of everything. B&W also helps to hide the fakeness of the CGI, which is a nice bonus. (8/10)
Tooth & Nail (2007) directed by Mark Young I really wanted to like this one. Post-apocalyptic stories are among my favorite. Sadly, the movie kept failing at everything it tried. The cause of the post-apocalypse was unique -- as far as I know -- for these types of movies: our oil ran out. However, this has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the film. The cause could've been a virus, a nuclear war, a meteor or global warming and nothing would've been different. I suspect the director/writer just wanted to be the first to make a film with this particular apocalyptic idea as the back drop.
The movie's really about a gang of cannibals who snatch people one by one from the hospital they're holed up in. That's all fine. Unfortunately, we never get to really know most of the characters who are killed, making their deaths lack any impact at all. Similarly, two of the cannibals are played by the awesome Michael Madsen and Vinnie Jones, but they're used far too little. Madsen is killed very early on. Jones runs around the halls chasing a little girl until she locks him in a closet. It's disappointing. The rest of the cannibals are just generic big-guy scary-dudes.
Worst, the movie is really just a re-skinned Aliens. The cannibals are the xenomorphs, chasing people through dark hallways in a hospital that replaces the colony on LV-426. Lead, female cannibal Neon is the queen xenomorph. Mute, teenaged Nova is clearly Newt's clone. Rescuing Nova/Newt from the cannibals/aliens is Dakota, standing in for Ripley. Dakota starts off weak but eventually toughens up to battle the monsters at the end, including spouting a pithy line at Neon/the queen that has the word "bitch" in it. One minor difference here is that Viper/Hicks dies, but the character performs the same function at the end of the film. If you're gonna rip off one of the best sci-fi flicks of all time, you're gonna have to do better than this. (5/10)
Nightmare Man (2006) directed by Rolfe Kanefsky Afterward, I was not at all surprised to discover that the director had lots of experience directing soft core. Though there isn't a lot of nudity in this slasher flick, it just has that skinemax feel to it. The bad acting and the amateurish way it was shot has a lot to do with this feeling. The movie doesn't take itself too seriously, but it's not wacky enough to be a fun-bad B-movie. Rather, it's mostly Troma vet Tiffany Shepis making wisecracks whilst chewing scenery. Admittedly it's pretty damned funny to behold the Nightmare Man when he takes possession of a girl wearing only a bra and panties. Something about a demon face on an otherwise normal lingerie-wearing woman is hard to look away from. (6/10)
I finished Eternal Darkness. It took me about 12 hours, according to the in-game clock, which seems to be reasonable for this sort of game. Speaking as someone who just finished reading every scrap of fiction he wrote, this is the best H.P. Lovecraft-inspired game I've ever played.
What makes it so, more than any other bit, is the oft-praised insanity meter. Every time you see a monster, a little bit of you sanity goes away. Once it gets low enough, the game attempts to damage the player's sanity. Suddenly, the screen will go black with just the word "VIDEO" in the corner, as if the video signal was lost. In the soundtrack, you hear the sounds of your character being attacked and killed... only for everything to snap back to normal. Or, you'll enter room and realize you seem to be walking on the ceiling. Or, you'll go to save you progress only to have the game pretend to delete your save file. The insanity effects are very fun and there's a surprising number of them. I saw some new ones on this, my second time through. Nintendo even patented the idea.
Outside of the sanity stuff, it's a solid adventure / horror game. The combat is far better than anything in a Silent Hill or Resident Evil. You can target specific body parts if you choose, making it simply to chop zombie heads off. One complaint might be that the game is too easy, though some of the puzzles had me stumped for a while. On to Resident Evil 4 next!
Shaun of the Dead (2004) directed by Edgar Wright The second zombie movie I got my wife to watch this season... with slow zombies, even! I hadn't seen this one since it was in theaters. Then, I thought it was OK, but wasn't laughing up a storm as others seemed to be. The second time around, it was much funnier. I gotta say, I was also impressed with the amount of realistic crying Simon Pegg does in this one. There's some real heart in the film amongst the dry British humor. (8/10)
Le pacte des loups: Director's Cut (2001) directed by Christophe Gans Brotherhood of the Wolf probably doesn't qualify as a horror movie, but a film about a "beast" terrorizing a village in pre-revolutionary France gets pretty close. It's a beautiful movie, with mist-covered French countryside, a castle and elaborate period costumes. I found it easy to fall into to film, which was helpful given the 2.5 hour runtime.
Mulberry Street (2007) directed by Jim Mickle It's about rat people attacking Manhattan, but I liked it. I think because the characters in the film are so well-drawn, it elevates what could've been a lame 28 Days Later clone. They all feel authentic, with real histories behind them. One small example: as the chaos starts to envelop the apartment building, some yuppie tenants are seen fleeing with bags. "Go back to Connecticut," shouts one of the characters in a thick NY accent. Heh.
I absolutely loved, when Clutch went out to rescue Kay, that he decided just to punch out the rat people he encountered. He's a former boxer. His fists are the weapons he's most comfortable with. Why not? It's a fresh idea. We've seen zombies/the infected being shot, burned, beaten and run over by cars over and over. Punched out: not so much.
Actually, if they'd just dropped the rat people thing, this could've been an even better horror movie. People being bit by rats and turning into rabid, rat-like people... it's hard to take seriously. It's actually such a goofy idea, it kicks you right out of the movie. Just drop the rat part of it entirely: one day, people in Manhattan started to go batshit and no one knew why. That's all you need to get the horror going. (7/10)
Fear Itself: "Community" (2008) directed by Mary Harron Sort of in the same universe as The Stepford Wives and "The Lottery," "Community" is about a HOA from hell. Superman and his wife move into a gated community in the hopes of raising a family there. Not having really read the contact they signed for their house (?), they quickly discover the community has a rather puritan morality code. Rather than pack up and leave, Superman hatches an irrational plan involving sneaking his wife away to a cabin and having a friend's wife pretend to be her to fool the cameras hidden in their house. Of course, they all get caught. Somehow the wife is magically brainwashed to accept the situation, and Superman's legs are cut off as punishment. I dunno. Not much makes sense in this one, but HOA are indeed scary... (6/10)
Fear Itself: "Sacrifice" (2008) directed by Breck Eisner The best one of these so far, which isn't saying much. Criminals take refuge in a very cool 18th century-style fort. Three sisters and their father live there, who've never ventured outside of the fort's walls. Seems their family's been keeping a vampire fed and contained in there for centuries for the good of the rest of the world. Needless to say, the vampires eat some of the criminals and some shit hits the fan with the sisters. There's some nice moments and good acting to help make this an enjoyable episode. (7/10)
Tales from the Crypt: "Death of Some Salesmen" (1993) directed by Gilbert Adler Did you ever want to see Ed Begley Jr. have sex with Tim Curry? Me neither, but it was amusing anyway. Curry plays three roles in this episode: an entire redneck family who hate salesmen. That, by itself, is enough for a good time. Throw in a cameo by Lily Munster and a classic "scumbag gets what's coming to him" EC comics plot to make a for fun season five opener. (7/10)
C.H.U.D. (1984) directed by Douglas Cheek Somehow, this is one '80s horror flick I'd never seen before. I really wasn't missing much. For being about underground cannibals (who are also humanoid dwellers), the critters don't do any on-screen eating that I remember. They actually don't do much of anything for the majority of the movie. Most of the film follows a preacher, a police captain and a photographer as they slowly unravel the mystery of the disappearing underground homeless people. It's kinda slow, but not the good kind of horror movie slow where the tension is built. I did dig the gritty NYC setting, though. (6/10)
Intercessor: Another Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare (2005) directed by Benn McGuire & Jacob Windatt Ah Thor, I love you, buddy, but this wasn't the sequel I was hoping for. The movie is jam-packed with bad acting, crappy special F/X, non-existent sound F/X, inept editing, lame ideas... but we expect that based on the original movie. No, those aren't really the problem with this flick. It's more fundamental than those things. The main fault of the film is that Thor just doesn't kick enough ass.
That's all I really wanted from this movie. I wanted the end of the first movie, in which Thor turns into the Intercessor and beats the shit out of a rubber puppet of the devil while a kickin' Thor song plays in the background, repeated a bunch of times in this movie. That's all. Instead, they focus on some greasy-haired weenie for the first half of the movie. When Thor finally starts to carry the film, they give him a lame "mace" -- which appears to be a child's karaoke microphone -- which he uses to zap CGI lightening at the bad guys. Yep, instead of having the body-builder hero punch the bad guys, they have him point a plastic toy at them and the computer F/X team draws in some lightening. Weak. He does get into one real fight... but it's with the branches of a weeping willow tree. C'mon Thor -- you got better in you than this. (4/10)
High Tension: Director's Cut (2003) directed by Alexandre Aja I'd heard that this was a great movie except for the ending. For six years, I carefully kept myself spoiler-free, not wanting to ruin the movie should I get around the seeing it. Well, I got around to seeing it. It's just a slasher movie with the Fight Clubtwist, nothing more.
The slasher component is one horror movie cliche after another. The female protagonist hides from the killer in the bathroom. We think she's in the bathtub, but, nope, the killer flings the curtains open and she's not there. Whew. She tries to call the police, but the phoneline in the house is cut. She hides in a closet and sees the killer though the slats in the door. She asks a gas station attendant for help and he's promptly killed. Homage though it is, I found it a bit boring as a veteran slasher fan.
The Fight Club component wasn't constructed very carefully, I don't think. You'd expect, if you went back and watched the movie a second time, there'd be an explanation for every time the imaginary character does something. I don't think that's the case for the car accident scene near the end. Marie is in a car chasing herself driving an old truck. Fine: one of the vehicles is imaginary. The car crashes and she gets cut pretty badly. We know these cuts are real, because she has them in the institution at the end. However, she later pulls Alex out of the back of the truck she imagined she was chasing. So the truck is real for having Alex in it and the car is real for cutting Marie... how did she drive two vehicles at the same time? (6/10)
The Twilight Zone: "The Toys of Caliban" (1986) directed by Thomas J. Wright I've had strange memories of this episode stuck in my brain for 23 years. As a wee lad of nine, I watched it with my dad when it originally aired. I never knew what the title was or even which anthology series it was in. I finally googled a vague description and discovered I had the episode in the house. It's about an old couple with a retarded son. The son has the ability to teleport anything he sees a picture of. They allow him a picture book filled with toys, but keep every other photo in the house locked up. Part of the problem is that any living thing he "brings" arrives dead. He's also starting to figure out how to teleport things from memory. Things begin to unravel when he brings himself some food-poisoned donuts and his weary parents have to take him to the hospital.
As a kid, I think part of what disturbed me about this episode -- besides the obvious scare of when he brings his dead mother back, who appears as a gross corpse -- is the same reason Bizarro is Superman's scariest enemy. A mental incompetent with super powers is terrifying. You can at least understand why Lex Luthor does what he does. You can try to reason with him. If Toby from this episode sees you on the street and telelports you home with him, you're gonna die and he won't understand what's he done.
The episode's actually not made to scare, though. It's really about a parent's unwavering love for his kid, no matter what the kid can do. Though it ends on a depressing note, it's really quite touching. (7/10)
Are none of these people parents? What the hell is Terry Gilliam thinking? At least Lynch has the excuse that he's not exactly sane. John Landis obviously empathizes with escaping punishment for harming children, so I can see why he signed. But, why does the director of my favorite movie have the be there? The next time I watch Taxi Driver, am I to think Scorsese's really sympathizing with Sport? Goddammit.
Ghostbusters (1984) directed by Ivan Reitman Listen! Do you smell something? I think this is probably my favorite comedy of all time. I can't think of any other movie with as many quotable lines.
One aspect I've always appreciated about this film was that the supernatural stuff in the film was taken relatively seriously. The crazy architecture of Ivo Shandor and the return of an old god are very lovecraftian. Ghosts are kind of explained in scientific terms, with technobabble throwaways about P.K.E. readings, ectoplasm, laser confinement grids and proton packs. It all sounds plausible enough to buy into. The reaction of the public to the increase in ghostly activity is pretty true-to-life: religious people are freaking out, liberal magazine The Atlantic Monthly ponders on a cover "Do Ghosts Have Civil Rights?", a talk host hosts asks if the boys have seen Elvis. I'm sure Dan Aykroyd can be thanked for all of this, given his real-life beliefs. (9/10)
Hostel: Part II (2007) directed by Eli Roth It started out as a promising follow-up to the original. The lone survivor of the first film is killed of at the beginning of this one, as is proper in horror sequels. Instead of three male protagonists, we follow three females traveling to Slovakia. Since we already know the secret from the first film, we also follow two torturers from America as well. One of them seems as though he's not really into the idea of torturing and killing someone and is just going along with his psychotic friend. Good ideas for mixing things up.
But, I think Roth wussed out on this one. Instead of ratcheting up the horror, which is what a good horror sequel should do, I think the fact that his protagonists were female this time held him back. He might've been right. Even as it is, he was still accused of misogyny. Still, that doesn't excuse the extreme ridiculousness of Beth's escape from the torturers. She essentially turns into a super hero at the end of the movie, over-powering her captor, torturing him, and buying her way to freedom with her Bruce Wayne-ish inheritance. Worst, she paid no price at all; Paxton from part 1 had to give half of his hand in order to escape. Bah. (5/10)
Pit and the Pendulum (1961) directed by Roger Corman Knowing in-laws would be using my TV room as a bedroom later in the night, I watched this film on Hulu during the day. I was impressed that the movie was in its proper aspect ratio. Nice to see 2.35:1 films aren't being butchered for the "fill-my-screen" morons, even on a streaming service.
This is definitely one of Corman's best films, up there with Little Shop and X. Likely, the solid script from genre god Richard Matheson helped, but Corman's got himself some nice sets, great performances and stylized flashback scenes in here as well. It's a tale of adultery and revenge, but told in such a manner to keep your guessing until near the end.
It's interesting to see differing interpretations of classic stories. I'm a long-time fan of Stuart Gordon's adaption (called The Inquisitor on the title screen). Corman's film is more distant from the original story, which took place during the Spanish Inquisition. It also lacks -- perhaps the second-most memorable part of the story after the titular device -- the rats that free the man trapped under the pendulum. Gordon's film had both of these elements, though both have to make up a whole lot of other stuff in order to fill an hour and a half. The original story is essentially one man's experience in a dark room with a sharp blade. Strangely, the torture of women figures into both films. A reflection on the horror genre in general? (7/10)
Lake Dead (2007) directed by George Bessudo This is one of those movies in which it quickly becomes apparent you're about to lose ninety minutes of your life for no good reason. The protagonists are soap opera-pretty frat boys and sorority girls; just the kind of douchebags you hated in college. The antagonists are inbred (literally) rednecks ripped from every other horror movie ever made. I was hoping everyone might die by the end, perhaps in a thermonuclear explosion. Unluckily for me, they insisted on chasing each other around the same three buildings over and over again until the bad guys were taken care of. (4/10)
Tales from the Darkside: "The New Man" (1984) directed by Frank DePalma The premise is interesting: a boy goes to his father's workplace and the father doesn't recognize him at all. The man's a former alcoholic, so his family blames that for him not recognizing the boy, though he hasn't had a drink in years. This leads to the man's divorce and the loss of his job. The boy then shows up at the same workplace, claiming to be the son of a different ex-alcoholic. I suppose he's a sort of demon that really hates ex-alcoholics for no apparent reason? The story didn't make too much sense. Creepy smile by the kid in the freeze frame at the end, though. (6/10)
Session 9 (2001) directed by Brad Anderson I'm glad someone was able to film a movie at Danvers State Hospital. This was probably the creepiest place on the planet, until much of it was torn down a few years ago. We have a similar institution in my home state, which I was lucky enough to be able to walk around a little and film. It's hard to see how such an intense building design wouldn't make the patients even crazier.
The movie, unfortunately, did nothing for me. I had no emotional reaction to the goings on in the film. I really wanted to like it, just for the setting alone. Alas, the film is very slow and spends quite a bit of time with the men simply working on their job. I began to find myself absurdly worried that the men weren't working fast enough to get their bonus, rather than feeling any tension from how the building was affecting the men's minds.
In the end, it turns out one of the men is insane. Everything in the movie has a human explanation. Would I have liked the film better if the supernatural had been involved? I'm not sure. I can see the argument for making it a realistic commentary on mental illness. I can see that the building didn't need any ghostly help in being scary by itself. Still, there was something kind of disappointing that it was just a run-of-the-mill crazy guy responsible for the horror. (6/10)
After twenty years, I finally did it. Dracula has died by my hand at the end of the original Castlevania. I have no idea how anyone ever did this in the era before save states. My controller would've been through a window long before I got to the second-to-last screen in which a flock of huge bats knock you into bottomless pits over and over. As a kid renting the game, I only ever made it to Frankenstein, where I was promptly killed by that damned jumping Igor bastard. I can't imagine the gallons of tears this game must have generated from '80s children who had parents mean enough to buy it for them. As an adult, I had to make a save state after every successful hit on Dracula. Even then, it took me 30-40 minutes of work. Yeash. Well, on to playing Vampire Killer for the MSX2.
The Deaths of Ian Stone (2007) directed by Dario Piana It started out interesting. Every day Ian Stone is killed by spooky black ghosts, only to be resurrected in a different life immediately afterward. It's kind of the horror version of Groundhog Day. Unfortunately, once the movie has to start explaining the reasons behind all of this, it gets a bit Saturday morning cartoonish. Turns out Ian is actually one of the black ghosts himself. He's actually the most powerful one ever. The other ghosts are killing him in his human form to ensure he doesn't remember that he knows how to permanently kill them, which is supposedly impossible. The ghosts also feed on fear, and are particularly addicted to the fear a human emits before dying. Ian's a friendly ghost, however, and eats the love coming out of his human girlfriend, instead. Ah, the power of love... By the time one of the bad ghosts utters "but it has only just begun" in response to Ian's "it ends here," I'd just about checked out. A disappointing waste of a promising idea. (6/10)
Fear Itself: "Spooked" (2008) directed by Brad Anderson I like Eric Roberts, and he does a stand-up job in this episode, but everything else wasn't terribly good. There's lot of armchair psychoanalyzing going on, courtesy of a haunted house that makes you see your greatest regret in life. Eric Roberts' character had a tragedy in his childhood and that's why he was an abusive cop, etc. It's bit like an out-of-tune Tales from the Crypt story. It just never works. (5/10)
Chronocinethon. That's my made-up name for watching the films of a favorite director, or movie personality, in chronological order. This gives me a sense of where they came from, where they went, how much or little they grew, and whether it was worth buying their worst film (I own Intolerable Cruelty?). Guest reviews and other movie-related posts will also show up here.
