Would you like some fries with your face?

So within the first five minutes of Drive Thru, we get to watch a jumpsuit wearing clown butcher two urban talking white boys that spew out every possible stereotype of ghetto speak (holmes, dog, busta cap in yo ass, etc.) before dying wonderfully exciting painful deaths (face fries and all). Naturally, I’m instantly convinced Drive Thru is the best piece of cinema ever to include a cameo by Morgan Spurlock and Sean "Aawon Buhh" Whalen. Screw that, the best piece of cinema ever made by mankind.

Quick Plot: In the quiet, wonderfully named town Blanca Carne, a hip hopping van of weed smoking teens orders some artery clogging dinner from Hella Burger, a greasy fast food chain best known for its popular Horny the Clown mascot. I never understood how such an ambitious venture like McDonald’s could succeed despite 30% of the greater population being absolutely terrified by the face that graces every Happy Meal, but apparently, I’m just not that smart.

Anyway, our stoners don’t make it to their milkshakes because Horny, accompanied by some intensely annoying metal music, slices or fries them up while making excruciatingly awesome puns. Meanwhile, high school senior McKenzie (Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester) is partying with her friends (including another Gossip Girl actor, Penn Badgley, in a glorious curly afro) and playing with a Ouja board in the hopes of contacting Marilyn Manson. Instead, they receive a mysterious bunch of letters and numbers that later proves itself to be the license plate of the ill-fated diners.

Before you can say ‘xoxo,’ McKenzie is receiving all sorts of ominous warnings through her retro toys, including a Magic 8 ball and Etch-a-Sketch. Like a straighter haired Nancy Thompson wearing eye liner that would give Blair Waldorf hives, McKenzie pieces together a mystery involving her former hippie mom (Jan from The Office) and a typical prank gone wrong from many years ago.

If there’s a fatal flaw to Drive Thru, it’s that the film overplays its hand during its incredibly American cheesy opening. The ridiculous joy shown in those first five minutes just can't quite be matched once the (sigh) story kicks in, even if it means we get Blair Waldorf singing rock ‘n roll and calling the preppy Bush supporters Banana Republicans. In fact, Drive-Thru kind of has an insane case of identity crisis all the way through, selling itself as urban horror but primarily focusing on rich white people. Even Horny himself makes the Leprechaun look like the little guy belongs in the hood. It's strange.

But also, simply great. Great. Great. And kind of okay. 

   

And great.

High Points

Kudos to a movie that finds a more realistic way to show a microwaved head than Last House On the Left, providing one could poke a hole in the bottom of a microwave, stick someone's head through it, and make it explode. That's how it works right?

Low Points

Obviously, the soundtrack wasn’t going to go on my iPod, but that doesn’t mean it has to be played at 10 decibels louder than the rest of the film

Buddhist Question of the Month

Does the pope shit in the woods?

No seriously, does he? When using this expression, is it rhetorical in the affirmative or negative? I. Don't. Know.

Lessons Learned

It takes about 10 seconds to realize that your body has been severed in two

Taking a secret to the grave is a great way to guarantee your presence in a horror movie

Psycho killers usually keep shit in the garage

All you can really hope to get out of fancy college is a designer drug addiction or stalker

Today’s youth are quite retro, using dark rooms to develop photographs and making hip references to Greg Brady and Captain Kangaroo 

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, some of us really love these kinds of movies, and God clearly loves such people because Neflix/God puts them on Instant Watch. If logic follows, those of us that adored Drive Thru will enjoy watching such films on fluffy cotton candy clouds up in heaven. I kind of can’t wait for that, even if it means I have to be sliced up by a 7’ tall clown making bad puns in order to get there.

In other words, add to queue, queue up, watch, rate 5 stars, and move on. Your afterlife will be better for it.

Ho Ho Homicidal Breakdown

Whenever I make a list of famous living people I’d want to have dinner with, few rank higher than John Waters. Aside from the fact that he’s witty, impressively mustache’d, and adorable, he and I also seem to share similar taste in campy (intentional or otherwise) films that tend to polarize audiences. Witness his cameo in Seed of Chucky or his inclusion of Baxter on his 2006 series, John Waters Presents Movies That Will Corrupt You.

Christmas Evil (aka You Better Watch Out), a 1980 low budget production by Lewis Jackson, is, not surprisingly, a favorite of Baltimore’s best loved auteur. He even did a commentary on the special edition DVD (which, naturally, Netflix didn’t mail me...because I’ve been naughty). While this sad and unusual slasher (of sorts) doesn’t quite battle Faye Dunaway covered in Comet, it is a memorable little gem I’m glad to have finally found.

Quick Plot: 

As a young boy, Harry Stadling witnesses Mommy kissing Santa Claus which somehow plants a poisonous poinsettia seed of mixed love & hate for all things xmas. Fastfoward to the present, where the now middle-aged Harry (Brandon Maggart) works in a toy factory churning out subpar action figures. This is the low point of his day, as the other 18 hours are devoted to December 25th. Sleeping in Santa pjs, calisthenics to carols, and, most charmingly, keeping pristine records of which actions qualify a neighborhood child for placement on the Naughty and Nice list keep Harry smiling. And twinkling, which he seems to do every time he winks in the mirror. It’s quite adorable.

Sadly for Harry, nobody in New Jersey shares his unadulterated enthusiasm and finally, following a painfully drab office party, Harry decides to spruce up the season by delivering a few sleigh (or van)-fulls of toys to needy hospitalized children and performing impressive dance steps at strangers’ VFW parties. All is well and good until Harry decides to loiter in front of church just as the rowdy midnight mass crowd exits. Unable to take the snooty insults from strangely British Christians, Harry finally snaps in a gloriously homicidal fashion.

Christmas Evil predates Silent Night, Deadly Night by several years, but though it may seem, on the surface, as though the latter ripped off this thriller, the films are hardly on the same page. Where SN,DN is more mean-spirited ‘80s slasher, Christmas Evil is a thoughtfully sad, truly unique little delving into an unbalanced man’s mind. Think Taxi Driver, set during the holiday season and deep fried in gingerbread. If that doesn’t sound appealing, then you’re the biggest grinch of them all.

High Points

A kids-protecting-Santa scene took me back to a much loved, if not very good Christmas movie of the past, The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t, wherein the children of a small town save the big guy by paying his rent

Boy is Harry a dedicated role player! Not only does he try his darnest to squeeze down a chimney, he also restricts most of his weaponry to objects of the season, such as tree ornaments and sacks of toys. His attention to detail is more than admirable.

It’s an easy sight gag that can’t help but put a smile on your face: several rounds of police lineups with Santa Clauses. The Usual Suspects, you’ve been served (eggnog).

Maggart is surprisingly sympathetic in what could easily have been an Eric Freeman SN/DN2  caliber role. While he seems to have had a successful career guesting on TV shows (including the Snapple Lady starring sitcom Babes!), it’s disappointing that Braggart didn’t find more work in genre films

Low Points

Some might quibble with the grainy and stained transfer, but the poor quality of the images actually worked for the film, lending a rescued-from-the-garbage heap feel that felt appropriate

So aside from being mentally unbalanced, what actually made Harry so pre-inclined to murderous rampages? Watching Santa Claus run his hands over Mom’s garters?

SPOILER

SPOILER

SPOILER

At first viewing, I found the final image wonderfully magical and charmingly surreal. Then I read some discussion about the film describing how many people don’t realize that the “flying” is preceded by the clear sound of a car crash and thus, the sleigh transformation is actually symbolic of Harry dying. I’ve decided to completely ignore that “sound effect” or assume that’s just the noise his brother would make when rolling down a hill because you know what? I want to believe in miracles.

END OF SPOILER

Lessons Learned

If you give your son a name as stupid as Moss, you will be punished with raising a brat. And later marrying Tim the Tool Man Taylor.

The most dangerous member of an angry mob is the Cruella DeVille lookalike with the holly pin

New Jersey is home to unruly mobs itching to vengefully roam the streets with torches

How to Earn a Place on the Naughty List: 

Be a braggart

Tell fibs

Think impure thoughts

Have bad breath

How to Earn a Place on the Nice List:

Be just darling

Winning Line

“I have very superlative taste,” says Harry’s first victim while exiting church. I had to rewind this moment several times to confirm it, then giggle for a few minutes, and finally, try to figure out if it made grammatical sense and why a man would utter it while meeting a dirty St. Nick.

Rent/Bury/Buy

I fell in love with the oddness of this film, but it's certainly not a universal stocking stuffer. The first hour or so is more a tragic portrait of a man somewhere between Pee-Wee Herman and The Office's Kevin Malone, while the turning point sends Christmas Evil into early slasher territory with ornamental implements of messy destruction. Fans of holiday horror or bizarrely unusual genre-crossing cinema may do well to ask for the Special Edition to find its way under their tree, but those who prefer standard and slick cut-'em-ups may be left as baffled as a white person at Kwanza.

We Interrupt This Broadcast to Bring You The Crazy

The Signal is a minor gem of a film, a tri-directed 2007 horror/comedy/thriller that hints at greatness, revels in dark humor, and ultimately slides into a romantic snooze. Frightening, funny, and frustratingly uneven, this is a fine--if flawed-- foray into low budget independent cinema by the mighty (and low profile) triumvirate of David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry. No, I don't know much about them--including who directed which segment--but they're definitely on my radar for future films.


Quick Plot: After a night romp with a mixed tape-making lover, unhappily married Maya (Anessa Ramsey) returns home to discover her bearish husband (AJ Bowen, channeling the Pam-spurned Roy from The Office) wielding a baseball bat at his sports buddies while the big screen TV ominously plays a psychedelic glow of rainbow sherbet. Anyone who’s read Stephen King’s Cell can guess that technology is a little angry with us (or maybe just bored) and is looking to arouse a good ol’ round of mass insanity and violence in its human consumers.

Evil machinery is nothing new, but The Signal’s freshness lies in its construction: the film is told in three parts, with three directors using three distinct styles to follow a handful of characters through a night and day in a small city gone mad. The approach is similar to another recent indie horror, The Zombie Diaries, with both benefiting from using standard monster setups that enter new and darker directions.


Part I is raging horror, as Maya attempts to escape the city of Terminus with the help of a possibly crazy, possibly just well-equipped with survival skills Sahr Ngaujah. The intensity recalls the opening of Dawn of the Dead 04, as the spread of violent chaos spreads through the hallways of a modern apartment complex and into an empty street at dawn. The fear is real, the action is unpredictable, and we're caught in an intensely believable and terrifying world on the edge.

The second segment abruptly switches moods to capture the blackest of comedy, as Maya’s weirdly cheerful neighbors prepare for a sunny and balloon-filled New Year’s party, unaware that their guests may be delayed (or dismembered or dead). The performances are very deliberate and a tad one dimensional (although Scott Poythress does make a refreshingly unconventional leading man) but once you accept the new direction, the laughs are as hearty as they are bloody. There is still plenty of horror to be found--Bowen's exterminator by way of Abu Ghraib is a sight I won't forget anytime soon--but the comedy is perfectly pitched in a very dark hue.

It may be a matter of personal taste, but I got lost in the third segment, which moves the perspective to Maya’s boyfriend (Justin Welborn, who probably spends an average of eight minutes a day convincing people on the street that he's not Simon Pegg) as he makes his heroic way to the city’s edge. The contrast in tone from the offbeat macabre silliness of the previous segment to the quiet drama of this part feels too jarring and dull. Although we do care for this unlucky couple, the flashbacks, musical cues, and general heaviness of their conclusion feels much longer than its thirty minute run time .

High Points
A conversation with a smoking head-in-a-vice is as wonderful as it sounds


Something that always scares me about raging human horror is the manual factor; being shot is probably painful, but being killed by hand tools seems far worse

Call me nerdy, but Lewis and Clark jokes never fail to succeed


Chad McKnight's performance as a lazily oversexed and generally unwanted (even if the world didn't have The Crazy) guest is, for a brief time, the ahem, life of the party

Low Points
Clark's frantic-yet-somehow-exposition-rich explanation of what the signal may be drags down the center


The montageness of Part III never feels earned


Lessons Learned
When everyone in your neighborhood has turned into a raging homicidal maniac, it’s probably unwise to walk around with head phone at full blast


Despite previous evidence to the contrary, duct tape does not solve every problem

Always wear your seatbelt


Rent/Bury/Buy
This modest sleeper was well discussed through 2008, even garnering an Independent Spirit Award nomination. It's a highly imperfect film, but certainly worth a viewing, if only to form your own opinion on what worked and didn't. There's a part of me that wished the entire film had been done in the brutal style of the first third and another part that wanted a full-length comedy with all the violent cruelty of the second segment. Ultimately, the triple action made this a unique experiment that has its low points, but succeeds at creating atypical scares and laughs. The DVD comes with a commentary and several extras, so it's an investment worth making if you enjoy violent horror and/or black and bloody comedy with a modern twist.

You Can't Fire Me. I'm Dead!

Your co-workers are generally not your friends. Nor are they family or even the people you might share half priced appetizers with over happy hour. Still, what a show like The Office knows is that the men and women you see every day occupy a definite place in your life. There is unwritten protocol for dealing with your manager, who in turn has his or her own understanding in agreeing or disagreeing with the big boss. Temp a bit in any work setting and chances are good that you’ll meet the token kissup, the hotshot who somehow avoids termination despite a bad attitude towards superiors, and the good-looking worker who amasses a batch of unrequited crushes around the cubicles.


Severance, a 2006 horror comedy from the UK, starts with a deliciously ripe premise. Employees from Palisade Defense (the kind of company funded by both the American and British government, hence, in one character’s words, “They’re not going to do anything immoral”) are being rewarded/tortured with a “team building” getaway in the forests of what seems to be Hungary. When their bus encounters a block in the road and the driver refuses to go any farther, the mid-level manager forces his underlings onward to an abandoned home he takes to be the luxury lodge they were promised. Before long, strategically placed bear traps, land mines, and flame throwers force staff cooperation that no paintball game could ever muster.

Having gone on two “management training” weekends (once to a ski resort, once to an abandoned country house not unlike the setting of this film), I identified quickly with the poor chaps in Severance. While my experiences were not quite as bloody, they did include “teamwork” exercises like building egg parachutes and making crayon murals of what our jobs meant to us. The idea was nice, but spending those precious days of the week normally reserved for avoiding all semblances of the workplace with co-workers in their pajamas does nothing to endear your occupation to your heart. Severance gets that.

Also, it’s pretty much hysterical. The actors--mostly British with a token Canadian Faculty alum Laura Harris--have excellent comic timing and genuinely feel like an unhappy office family. Toby Stephens stands out as the snarkiest of the bunch, but every performance rings true. Director/co-writer Christopher Smith consistently balances humor with horror in a way that made me chuckle and wince throughout the running time. There’s gore a’plenty, and since you actually like the characters, the deaths come with added weight.

High Points
A conversation about decapitation gets a payoff that’s kept a smile on my face for two days and counting


Removable shelves should be standard on compact refrigerators; you never know what large object you might need to stick inside

It’s refreshing to see multiple female characters making smart and ballsy decisions throughout the film


Low Points
Perhaps the early talking scenes go on a tad too long for bloodthirsty horror hounds, but it’s all entertaining


No trust exercises?


Lessons Learned
Do not attempt to pry open a bear trap unless you have the strength to keep it opened long enough to dislodge what’s stuck inside

Hold music is crappy in any language


Always read the instructions before firing a rocket launcher


The standard baking time for a found meat pie is one hour


Rent/Bury/Buy
This one belongs on your shelf, preferably next to Shawn of the Dead for a match made in British Horror Heaven (where Peter Cushing guards the gates, of course). Imagine throwing the characters of The Office into the hostel in Hostel, and you’ll get a good idea of what to expect. The gore is high and the laughs are hearty. Pour some tea and enjoy with a scone.