Post Christmas Blues Get Better With Action (& Cop Dog)

Sure, decorations may be half priced and Santa still nursing that milk hangover, but just because it's December 28th is no reason to believe Christmas is over! To keep that yule log crackling--and to postpone the inevitable impossible decision I face in crowning a winner or two for the Infinite Giveaway Contest Extraordinaire, allow me to direct you to an audio stocking stuffer. Over at the Action Attraction Podcast, host with the most Metal Mikey has been hard at work throwing Skype parties with such main courses as Masters of the Universe and Die Harder for his guests to ravage like a bag of chestnuts. I saved my ravaging for the best:

You know it. On the latest episode, you can hear Mikey, Silva & Gold's one and only Doctor Zom, and myself discuss the 1996 Christmas classic, Santa With Muscles, a forgotten cubic zirconium starring after-his-heyday Hulk Hogan, before-her-Black-Swanning Mila Kunis, post-Chocolate-Chip-Charlie Garrett Morris, The Most Annoying Child Actress of All Time Who Eventually Had a Line In The Muppets, and When Is He NOT In His Prime? Clint Howard, all directed by Jim "Cop Dog" Murlowski. The movie is fairly--SPOILER ALERT--awful, but our 2+ hour conversation does cover rarely touched topics including:

-Hidden head cheese secrets of Hair Club For Men

-Kuma the God, aka star of Cop Dog

-Lasers

-What pumpkin ice cream and Clint Howard's semen have in common

And believe me, all are far more horrifying than you can possibly imagine. Head to iTunes or visit this link for a very merry Christmas indeed!

Or just go watch Cop Dog.

Your choice.

Be Careful What You Shop For...

Everybody is abuzz with the news about Apple’s newest creation, a pretty techno do-wappy that does stuff (I didn’t watch the press conference, but people are really excited so I’m going to assume it’s a flat screen cheese griller). Clearly, the world hasn’t been watching enough horror movies or they’d know the torture and torment that come with every warranty. A few examples with a cost benefit analysis:


Evilspeak

Gadget: Satanic verse translating computer
It’s Babblefish for the Video Nasty generation when Clint Howard’s orphaned military academy cadet discovers a devil worshipping handbook in the oddly located basement computer lab. Before you can say google, the awkward teen--yes, imagine a time when Clint Howard was awkward!--uses his 1981 desktop to translate ancient rituals as written by an evil-eyed Richard Moll. Why bother? Well, how else is a 98 lb. weakling to get vengeance on the Hitler youth bullies who mess with his uniform, unplug his alarm clock, and slaughter his insanely adorable puppy?
Minuses: Impaling priests and sicking man-eating pigs on your classmates has a few sour effects, such as catatonia and a stay in the familiarly named Sunnydale Asylum. Also, your chances of scoring at the next kegger are next to nil now that you’ve killed the entire graduating class.
Worth the Price? There is no more noble cause than avenging one’s puppy. So yes. 


Hardware

Gadget:The disembodied head of M.A.R.K.-13, a cyborg originally designed as a government killing machine.
Leaping in time to land in the depressingly barren future, Richard Stanley’s 1990 sci-fi horror details a finders/keepers society where the unhealthy civilians choose a life of scavenging in a nuclear hued desert or a closed up existence in dimly lit apartment complexes. Technology is moving slowly. Video doorbells are a mainstay and running water remains usefully in abundance, but the life expectancy has seemingly plummeted, a course of actions in any society where people leave their killer robots laying around where any old Dylan McDermott can pick it up. And naturally, give it to his artist girlfriend as a Christmas gift.
Downside Believe it or now, secret government projects abandoned due to their unpredictability are, much like mogwais, not necessarily made for the holidays. Sometimes, they do what homicidal cyborgs do and regenerate with the aide of household appliances. To kill you and any perverted neighbors/good-intentioned boyfriends that might stop by.
Worth the Price? Technically, anything free is an automatic purchase and if one were to pick up M.A.R.K.-13 quickly enough, it could indeed fetch a fair price at the local trading post. And who knows? Maybe the only reason it went Terminator was due to a paint allergy. Perhaps there’s a WALL-E buried somewhere underneath that cold killer exterior. 


Kairo

Gadget: The Internet
If Strangeland and FeardotCom taught us to be careful with the path we take in the virtual world, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 horror demonstrated a far more valuable lesson: the world wide web could actually inspire a good film. It all begins as some college students/penthouse gardeners slowly drift into lonely and isolated states of empty depression only to find that phishing and pop-up ads are the least of the Internet’s evils.
DownsideGhostly apparitions driving you to suicide, and/or your body disappearing into a moldy clump of ash that will never come out of that wallpaper. 
Worth the Price? If you’re reading this column in a pulsified world of interwebbery, there’s a 99% chance that you’re already dead or worse, trapped in some sort of empty limbo due to an unforeseen run on red masking tape. So how’s that working out for you?


Flatliners

Gadget: Defibrillator
Joel Schumacher’s star-studded sci-fi is less about a new product than old technology given a new spin, but it still illustrates a theme shared by many of the films in this list. When several insanely attractive med students (Julia Roberts, Keifer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, pre-pastries William Baldwin and who-invited-that-guy Oliver Platt) decide to toy with the afterlife by stopping their heartbeats then bringing each other back with a few chest pumps, the results are not surprisingly not good. 
Downside: Being taunted by the ghosts of your past and...you know...dying.
Worth the Price?: The final solution turns out to be fairly easy and conveniently karma cleansing, but the whole teasing death thing seems hardly worth the time and stress involved. Why not just go bungee jumping or start a fight club?


The Fly

GadgetHuman teleport
Whether you watched Star Trek or used to beat up its fans with your model Millennium Falcon, it’s a sure bet that you once dreamed of going to the dollar store without climbing into your recalled Toyota. Teleportation is something I wishfully think of just about every day that I find myself scrunched underneath the armpit of a fellow commuter. It’s a pipe dream and perhaps I should be thankful for George Langelaan’s 1957 short story “The Fly.” This Playboy published science fiction yarn follows a brilliant but slightly careless-where-it-counts scientist taking a maiden voyage in his own innovative invention with a fellow pest of a passenger. You’re probably more familiar with the two fine film adaptations that showed, in all its insecticide glory, the true effects of picking up hitchhikers in the new wave of transportation.
Downside: Depends. If you’re spending too much time with David Cronenberg, you might find yourself slowly shedding your skin as your body morphs into gooey, brown, and limb-burning acid shooting tongued superfly with some Electric Boogaloo-esque wall-crawling abilities and the minor problem of leprocy. If you’re living in the ‘50s, you get the honor of simultaneously embodying a high-pitched housefly from the neck down and a seriously uncomfortable insect-headed man harnessing ill-will towards your lovely (if a bit daft) young wife. Both are not fun (and the Kurt Neumann’s original doubles the pain) and offer very little in the way of benefits. Although I still hope someone perfects the teleport by the time I die. Deodorant doesn’t seem to be advancing. 


The Lawnmower Man

Gadget Who doesn’t want to spin on an American Gladiators-meets-Event Horizon style high tech wheelie thing, particularly when the ride ends with bonus points added to your IQ (and, it should be noted, yours is currently hovering near Forrest Gump levels)? 
Downside Being the smartest one in the room can be lonely. So then you invite your girlfriend into your virtual reality existence for some simulated loving and she ends up a total drag. And brain dead. Plus, you get pre-Bond Pierce Bronsnan hunting you down and Stephen King suing your creator to remove his name from the mediocre film you head.
Worth the Price? Totally. Your body may not last, but your cyber energy proceeds to haunt all the telephones of the universe AND star in a straight-to-video sequel now led by Matt “Trashcanman” Frewer. Still not sold? How about using your prowess as the title role to springboard into a guest arc on Lost? Jeff Fahey, you’ve made a fine purchase.


So what kind of wacky adventures will the new iPad bring to a generation hopefully well-versed in these kinds of horrors? Let’s hope for the best and save our library cards. Unless it has computers. Or teleports. Or Clint Howard...

Play Clinty For Me

There are some phrases that just aren’t used enough in this day and age. Buy one get one free. Huzzah. Off with their heads. You can’t fire me, I quit. These are all well and good, but you know what three words I really want to hear more? 

Starring. Clint. Howard.

And so, upon a reader recommendation and Netflix availability, I present to you Evilspeak, a 1980 Video Nasty-listed horror starring some everybody’s favorite Ice Cream Man. 

Quick Plot: Stanley Coopersmith (or Cooperdick, as his not-very-clever schoolmates like to call him) is an orphan and outcast attending a Catholic military academy. Teased by his peers, misunderstood by his teachers, and set up for some type of major injury by his soccer coach, Stanley’s only salvation comes via a sympathetic but ineffective friend and the fun he has designing a virtual catapult on the school’s sole computer.

All those hours typing come in handy when Stanley, sentenced to clean the school’s creepily dank basement, stumbles upon a collection of Satanic skulls, bobbling jarred fetuses, and most excitingly, a leather bound book of evil invocations. Although the hardcover gets swiped by a sadistic and apparently undervalued secretary, Stanley has enough time to type in a few spells and call upon the spirit of Esteban (Nightcourt’s Richard Moll, refreshingly taking on evil following his Mormon hero in Savage Journey). 

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to summon a minion of the devil. You need blood, mandrake, consecrated host, and most inexplicable, unholy water (which I guess is like urine from a sinner?). Stanley has a few failed tries, some of which succeed in temporarily calling upon some kind of force to break a man’s neck and rile up some hogs. In the meantime, he adopts an adorably underweight puppy from the friendly and unsanitarily shirtless mess hall chef and sets the audience up for a major moment of shouting “nooooooooo!” in true Anakin Skywalker fashion.

I won’t spoil the finale, but it is vital to know that the ten minute climax of Evilspeak is pretty well worth the ride. The film is surprisingly well-paced, giving us plenty of time to follow Howard’s Stanley through his tormented days in a place he just doesn’t belong. The final act that causes the bloody ending is horrendous and makes any viewer cheer on Satanically possessed carnivorous hog chewing, while there’s also enough random camp to please a bad movie fan, like having a heavily faked German accented actor teach Latin. On the other hand, there are random plot holes that go unfilled, such as how not a single faculty member questions the disappearance of the caretaker or the inevitably discovered entrails of the devoured secretary. Still, it’s refreshing to see a geek played as an actual outcast (today, I imagine someone like Zack Efron would simply don a pair of glasses and part his hair on a less flattering side) and characters that deserve gutting and being set on fire getting gutted, set on fire, and, for a bonus, eaten alive by pigs from hell.

High Points

The opening prologue set in medieval times is less than impressive, but transition featuring a severed head turning into a soccer ball is pretty genius

A roller rink scene is included, which naturally earns the film about fifty bonus points

The start of the film’s ending involves a rather well done Jesus-on-the-cross statue coming to life and (SPOILER) shooting its nail into the head of a rather daft priest. Awesome? The word doesn’t do the death justice

Low Points

While Stanley’s build up of bullied anger is fairly well done, it would have been a far more interesting finale had we gotten a little more development of the individual tormentors so that each gruesome death had more measurable weight

Although I was fairly let down by the text epilogue, it did put a smile on my face to see a reference to “Sunnydale Asyulum,” whether Joss Whedon took any inspiration from it or not

For the most part, the score of Evilspeak is adequate and at times, haunting in a choral style. There’s one moment during the finale as Bubba (an oddly named character if ever there was one) tries to escape and is followed by an inappropriately sweet violin melody

Lessons Learned

The purpose of sports is to make us all well-rounded

The good lord prefers his young men in uniform

Computers of the 1980s were far more grammatically considerate than today’s Babblefish and freetranslation.com

Placing a satanic handbook nearby a piggy bank will connect evil forces to wild hogs

Catholic military academies have an impressive stash of Wicker Man-esque masks for its student body to play with

For an extra scoop of mashed potatoes, always inform the lunch guy that you’re an orphan

Winning Line

“I have to go...to study hall.”

If you’re trying to get out of an uncomfortable situation, at least use a more pressing engagement like “math class”, “soccer practice”, or “date with satanically enhanced Richard Moll”

Proof of Cred

According to that far too trusted Wikipedia, Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan (and consultant on a little classic called The Devil’s Rain ) considered Evilspeak to be “very Satanic”

Rent/Bury/Buy

This was a pleasant surprise and fairly un-discussed remnant of that bridge between 70s and 80s horror. It’s well worth a watch, although a tad too unpleasant to pop on so many more times to warrant a buy. The DVD includes a jovial commentary by Howard, writer/director Eric Weston (now directing the Costas Mandylor sure-to-be classic, Hyenas), and production roustabout Warren Lewis is filled with some useful film trivia and random tidbits about everybody’s favorite B-movie character actor (like how he loves horror conventions and often bids for his own memorabilia on ebay). Certainly worth a rental, and not just because it stars the first human recipient of MTV Movie Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award.

Christmas With the Combustible Covens

After the debacle that was Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 (from a non cheese lover’s point of view, of course) and the bore that was Part III: You Better Watch O ut,  along came the ‘90s and with it, a new take on the yuletide slaughter series determined to start fresh. Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation, takes the Halloween III approach by having absolutely nothing to do with its forebearers (although a fantasy sequence from the previous film does get a Clint Howard approved cameo). Directed by genre B+ student Brian Yuzna (The ReAnimator sequels, Return of the Living Dead III), this is an interesting and imperfect little movie that embraces all the fun trappings of the lesser decade it was made in.

Quick Plot: Homeless Clint Howard shambles his way down a dark LA alleyway as a woman falls to her death before his eyes, her lower half spontaneously combusting with no human explanation. We’re then introduced to our lead Kim (Neith Hunter), a wannabe journalist doing everything she can to move up from editing the classifieds. Surprisingly enough, she’s learning the hard way that publicly sleeping with a head reporter one month after being hired is not earning her the respect she so craves. That glass ceiling sure is hard to crack, sister.

Frustrated that her snazzily dressed boyfriend won’t pester the boss for her promotion, Kim decides to take matters into her own hands by investigating the mysterious death and writing its story. Research begins at the scene of the crime, where Kim meets an Asian American butcher speaking like an idiot, even though he clearly has perfectly apt English pronunciation skills. Next stop is a New Age shop where the ill-mannered Kim acts like an ignorant snob while somehow charming Fima, the owner, into getting invited to a picnic. Who knew that the way into a hippie shopkeeper’s heart was by accepting her candy, then spitting it out and handing the inside back?


The next day, Kim meets up with Fima and friends for a midday picnic where within 45 seconds, she becomes the center of a toast and gets tipsy off of half a glass of wine. Something is clearly off, since no way would someone with the bad attitude of Kim make friends so quickly. 

To quote another female centered horror film with “Christmas” in the IMDB keywords, all of them witches. It’s not spoiling anything to hint at Fima’s intentions towards Kim, none of which involve girl talk over cosmos. The actual direction of their relationship is interesting, if rather underdeveloped in an extremely brisk film. Strange things begin to happen when Kim hangs out with her new gang: cockroaches invade her apartment, her head spins with flashes of the film’s previous scenes, spaghetti swirls itself into symbolic spirals, and Clint Howard dons a Kubrickian Pinnocchio nose to romance the baffled redhead and get his bare chest oiled up by senior citizenettes.

It's even more disturbing than it sounds.

High Points

A major character’s death is quite well executed, with a few nasty stabs that feel drawn out and mean

Director Yuzna earns a few extra points simply for naming his son (who plays a key character in the film) Conan


Not surprisingly, the practical effects are quite impressive in a richly gooey way. There's a touch of Cronenberg in some of the semen-ish fluids sprawled throughout Kim's after hours adventures, as well as plenty of good old fashioned ickiness

Low Points

Much like myself, Neith Hunter has apparently never been touch to develop an indoor voice, making a good deal of her passionate arguing in the early scenes make us wonder how we’ll be able to survive another 90 minutes when it always feels like our lead is just yelling at us

We never really learn the nature of Fima’s spells, or religion, or hobby or whatever. The imagery and basic atmosphere is interesting enough to follow, but it’s an odd choice to leave so much of the film’s villainess a mystery

Lessons Learned

Upon discovering a body engulfed in flames, feel free to touch it

To make your multi-zipper leather jacket really pop, pair it with a tight black turtleneck. Especially if you’re a man.

Books about spontaneous combustion are classified in the occult section of your local  pagan bookstore

LA is a very windy city, but also safe enough for picnickers to leave their car windows wide open as they roam around public parks


When you put Reggie Bannister in a sweater, he has a striking resemblance to Lisa Simpson’s band conductor, Mr. Largo

Winning Line

“Kim’s Jewish.” 

“Oh Jesus!”

Familiar Face

Chipmunk voiced Allyce Beasley, once again taking on the best friend role she chirped her way through in Rumplestiltskin, and once again not receiving a death worthy of her cloying character

Rent/Bury/Buy

Much like some of Yuzna chum Stuart Gordon’s film, Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 is a pleasant ride during its run time, but quite forgettable when it’s done. The effects are neat and the actual premise is different enough to warrant a watch, but the overall product isn't quite smart enough to earn a place in body horror and not the joyous time that makes something like Jack Frost 2 an annual yuletide viewing. Completists considering the new boxed set should seek it out without worry, as it is a film that merits rewatching somewhere down the line. For others, a rental should suffice.

Hot Child In the Cinema

Sure, we know that Angela Baker and Jason Voorhees are eternally guarding the sleepaway camp gates, but what about all the other joys of summer? Here’s a roundup of other treats to be enjoyed between June and September, which the Farmer’s Almanac constantly rates as the peak time of year to slaughter young people in cinematic ways. 

Tanning

I’m the kind of pasty white woman who spends an extra $1.50 to raise my SPF to 50, so the very idea of laying encased in an electrified tomb simply to get a little brown is horrifying in itself. Hence, I'll always appreciate the most ingenious death scene of Final Destination 3, in which two sweetly bubblegum airheads meet their end via a poorly designed tanning salon. Plus, it incorporates another staple of July, Slurpee-ish drinks! Double death, double points. 

Carnivals

There’s something incredibly joyful about riding a temporary feris wheel operated by a toothless nomad trying desperately to flirt with underage locals.  Of course, it’s even more fun when such an evening involves homicide. Tobe Hooper’s 1981 The Funhouse is an excellent little slasher that utilizes its carnival setting to kill a few disrespectful teens. That’s right kids: no matter how tempting it may be, spending a night inside a temporary amusement park will run you the risk of being hanged, raped, or mocked by an animatronic fat lady. 

Lazy Days

In between camp and softball practice, my childhood summer was generally spent in a pool, in front of a VCR, or on a bike pretending to sniff out an exciting adventure that often involved Ewoks. Maybe that’s because I grew up in a kinder, simpler time where kids could be kids...as opposed to the sadistic era of poodle skirts, jukeboxes, and Jack Ketchum’s novel turned film, The Girl Next Door. Instead of playing stickball or hiking across town to view a corpse like normal kids, these young Americans of prefer kinky tag, drinking cheap beer with mom, and sexually violating the new girl in town. Sure, they occasionally celebrate hot weather with an ice pop or betting on red vs. black ant wars, but this is one neighborhood that needs to hall its delinquents to the teenage wasteland of  Sleepaway Camp III.

School’s Out

As Tiny Tim once said, the true meaning of summer is not having to go to school. Sadly this thrill wears away when you join the typical workforce, but thankfully, we’ll always have horror films that cast well-past-graduation aged actors as horny teenagers without a care in the world come June. The soon-to-finally-be-released-and-seen-by-every-American-horror-fan-complaining-about-the-lack-of-good-original-movies All the Boys Love Mandy Lane captures this hedonistic innocence by driving a group of pretty high school juniors to a sprawling ranch for a start-of-summer party. Once there, the boys plot to woo the titular beauty while the girls judge each others’ appearances and ...well, I’ll say no more for fear of spoilage. But lots of stuff happens, none of which involves friendship circles or marshmallows.

Ring Ring

What’s that sound? A mobile merry-go-round? A really loud music box? \nGoodness no! It’s the Good Humor Man! Or the creepy, inexplicably living creature with a head that somehow stays solid under the summer sun, Mr. Softee! Or--wait. This guy looks different. A little short. A tad ratty. Familiar in a character actor sort of way. \n\nBecause, of course, it’s none other than Clint Howard playing the world’s most evil purveyor of dairy delights. Sure, Masters of Horror’s We All Scream For Ice Cream gave this summer staple a nice follow up, but it’s the lesser Howard Brother’s star turn that truly made ice cream trucks vehicles to fear. Or find mildly revolting and extremely hilarious. Either way, this is the film that clinched Howard’s MTV Lifetime Achievement Award, so you know it has to be brilliant. And it is.

I’m skipping the beach because a) I burn easily and b) I simply refuse to mention the most mentioned summer horror classic in this column. Oh fine: Jaws IV: The Revenge is by far the best film to ever unit sand, sharks, and Mario Von Peebles. Happy now?

Keep Those Fingers Out of That Mouth of Madness

John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness has somehow eluded both my VCR and DVD player for 14 years. I missed it in the theaters, possibly because my teenage friends were so battle scarred from being dragged to Species that they boycotted seeing horror movies with me throughout the seventh grade (plus my bringing Mothers Day to a slumber party, which seemed like a good idea at the time). Perhaps I felt that if I could only own film from 1995, it would have to be the special edition of Se7en (because I love few things more than replaying and re-acting "What's in the box???" in my perfect Brad Pitt impression) and if I could have two, I couldn’t NOT choose the Oscar snubbed Clint Howard in The Ice Cream Man. Third choice? What a no brainer: Showgirls (believe me, in the words of Nomi Malone, “It doesn’t suck!”). Hm. 1995 was apparently a far better year for cinema than anyone realized.


Back to the decent, if pastie-less horror of Carpenter, made just before what became a semi-tragic descent into Sci-Fi channel quality. In the Mouth of Madness stars Sam Neill as John Trent, an insurance investigator who proves that movie characters named Trent are always arrogant jerks. The head of a publishing company played by an unarmed Charlton Heston hires the dapper Aussie to investigate the mysterious disappearance of superstar horror novelist Sutter Cane, a man more celebrated than Stephen King and more disturbed than Jack Ketchum. In addition to vanishing before a deadline (a nice trick all writers have considered/tried), Cane is under a bit of hellfire for writing books that, when read by ‘less stable’ minds, are known to cause a mild case of axe-wielding homicide.

The search begins. Trent and Cane’s sassily named editor Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) take a road trip to Hobbs End, the kind of two worded New England town--always a sign of evil--where real estate is probably deceptively well-priced. While there, our leads visit a Russian cathedral, escape an angry gang of champion bred Dobermans, and meet a creepy but resilient bicyclist that looks oddly like John Carpenter himself (but without the signature cigarette) on the same road once driven on by Pee-Wee Herman and Large Marge. As Trent and Styles bicker over whether the eerie hamlet is a haunted piece of fiction come to life or a grand publicity stunt on a Joaquim-as-Rap-Star scale, the strangeness increases and Carpenter’s makeup department gets busy.

In the Mouth of Madness is a hard film to classify, which makes it slightly great and more than a little messy. Sure, Carpenter flexes his latex to fit squishy monsters, but the most interesting aspect is a story that raises some rather deep questions about the nature of faith. Can something or someone become God if enough people people believe in it? How much control do we give the men and women who create what we covet? Does anyone know Oprah’s favorite color?

 Unfortunately, there isn’t quite enough substance behind Carpenter’s execution to make any of the themes stick strongly enough. Most viewers will probably remember the film for Styles’ post-Excorcist, pre-Unborn spider walk instead.


High Points:
Hobbs End’s demonic children are sufficiently creepy and should have been rehired for Carpenter’s Village of the Damned over those terribly bland wig wearing tots


Yes, that’s Seinfeld’s Marble Rye victim and no, you do not want to mess with her

The relationship between Neill and Carmen doesn’t take the typical direction you’d expect, which is refreshing


Low Points:
As much as I want to use any opportunity possible to champion old school and insult CGI, the climactic demons guarding hell feel a tad too much like bottom shelf leftovers from The Thing.


It takes a little too long to actually develop audience concern for Neill’s off-putting Trent


Lessons Learned:
The best way to prove you’re sane in a mental institution is probably not to shout “I’m not insane” while headbutting the orderlies

A screwdriver is just as convenient as a backup set of car keys


Insurance investigators keep bike horns in glove compartments and are generally more annoying road companions than a family that insists on finishing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

Repeat Offender:
Like many a film, every character seems to punch with the same exact force (or at least the same sound effect button)


Winning Line:
Trent: I’m not a piece of fiction.
Cane: I think, therefore you are.


Stray Observations:
The door to hell was made by the same art department that did Labyrinth’s glittery ivy clad walls

Anybody else waiting for the Mormon funded remake centering around a thinly veiled Stephanie Meyer and axe happy 15 year olds? If so, are you as frightened as I am?


Rent/Buy/Bury
Buy at a discount. Intellectually, this is one of Carpenter’s more ambitious films that I believe will grow on repeat viewings. The lines between reality and hell are skewed in a fairly unique style and the finale is simultaneously thoughtful and manic. While it’s not the mind-blowing fearfest some fans claim, this is a unique and dense ride that’s sadly becoming harder and harder to come by in modern theaters.

Underwhelmed 3: The Rise of the Nighy

JCVD does his split.

Schwarzenegger has his accent.

The Rock raises an eyebrow.

But no man can pivot like Bill Nighy.

After spending $15 on My Bloody Valentine 3D (of which the awesomeness was simple and pure and everything it should have been so read about it elsewhere) the thought of an increased priced ticket to cover glasses that blatantly warn you not wear them in the sun seemed like the perfect reason to sneak into a vampire movie. While Frank Lang-acula WAS puffing his cheeks next door in Frost/Nixon and I wouldn’t have minded a shot at spotting a rare Clint Howard cameo, my lovely friend Erica and I decided to see that other Michael Sheen film. The one with the leather.

Quick Plot: Vampires are jerks. Snobby, blue-eyed jerks who perhaps are meant to represent American plantation owners of the antebellum period or the natural progression of goth kids if they were to somehow amass power and castles. Their chief duties appear to be holding councils, shaking down silver miners for booty to kill werewolves with, and abusing human slaves, some of whom (or perhaps all, I wasn't quite clear) are Lycans. Bill Nighy is Viktor, best-dressed and therefore leader of the vampires (although I think this particular clan should be called vamp-eYres, with an stress on the last syllable as pronounced by Andrew on Buffy), and father to the dark-haired Sonja, whom I, having never seen a Kate Beckinsdale film, assumed was actually Kate Beckinsdale (this is what movies get for putting cast credits at the end). Aside from looking good and pivoting in ridiculous grand style, Viktor's biggest hobby seems to be playing fetch with the fetchingly shirtless Sheen’s Lycan Lucien. 

There’s a forbidden interspecies romance, a valiant uprising, and several scenes of mild whipping that probably amuse some audience goers more than others. I've never seen an Underworld film and I don't really have a sunburning desire to see more, but that being said, this is good at what it does. Sheen gives a far better performance than you normally come to expect from a genre film. The man’s a good actor, but more importantly, he takes his work seriously, regardless of the content. NY Newsday recently ran an interview with him where writer and snob Frank Lovelace (relation to Linda: unknown) made some rather condescending remarks about the Underworld series, to which Sheen vigorously jumped to its defense with class.  

The guy has seriously earned my respect (plus he probably looks much better topless than Clint Howard).

High Points:

A neat little getaway scene that gets inconveniently halted by spears

As someone whose opinion of filmic werewolves generally ranges from ‘low utterance of meh’ to ‘higher pitched meh,’ the Lycans fell somewhere in the upper register of meh (until they devolved into CGI bass mehs. Meh is not a good rating system, is it?).

Low Points:

The heavy metal video editing makes Saw look like Casablanca.

A sex scene that involves a werewolf and vampire dangling over a cliff in the rain has no reason not be hot. But it’s not.

Lessons Learned:

Rhina Mitra looks an awful lot like Kate Beckinsdale. I guess. Wait, that’s really NOT Kate Beckinsdale?

Liberace’s costume designer comes from a long line of vampires

Never give Kevin Grevioux dialogue if you don’t want the audience to laugh at the inhuman depth of his voice.

Vampires suck (figuratively, and a little literally).

Full Price/Sneak In/Stay Home

Haughty Naughty Nighy is a 60 year-old British thespian and now a life-sized cardboard cutout on the poster for an action film about vampires. That should be reason enough to sneak in, plus, he wears spangles. In medieval Europe. And he pivots. A lot. You can live without this movie, but a little Nighy does make the world a better place.