Just Like Chat Rooms, But With More Demon Voices

I’m probably one of the few people who hear “director of Pinochio’s Revenge” and immediately think “must bump movie up to top spot of queue.” But see, Pinnochio’s Revenge is so much better than any film called Pinochio’s Revenge has any right to be. Factor in that Carol J. Clover devotes a full chapter to Witchboard in Men, Women & Chainsaws and you have an eager little me happily diving in.

Quick Plot: Jim and Linda are an attractive young couple living together with Patrick Swayze Ghost syndrome, i.e., he can’t say those three words rather important in a romantic relationship. That’s the least of their problems. 

At a party held in their apartment, Linda’s ex-boyfriend/Jim’s ex-best friend Brandon (Patch from the supercouple era of Days of Our Lives, no less) breaks out his Ouija board to contact David, a 10-year-old spirit who takes an immediate dislike to Jim and crush on Linda. Like most ghostly beings, David is less Casper and more poltergeist, although he does a fancy bait ‘n switch by starting off quite friendly. 

Apparently, that’s how some evil ghosts lure the ladies into full-scale possession. Even a super punky nerd psychic can’t seem to fully exorcise Linda’s little demon, although the side benefit is that hunting the evil helps to reunite former pals Brandon and Jim.

It’s that relationship that Clover focused mostly on in her 1989 study, and it truly does make Witchboard a better-than-average watch. The film doesn’t exactly terrify or lock you in awe, but there’s such solid characterization going on that elevates the material to something worth caring about. Linda comes off like a good, decent person, and the fact that Jim and Brandon have such a personal history lends plenty of substance to how they proceed. It’s a simple story of demon-possesses-girl, but in writer/directory Tenney’s hands, we actually care.

High Points

Though the finale doesn’t quite hold up, Witchboard still has a few surprisingly effective and simple jump scares

See how much better a standard horror movie is when the writer actually takes a few minutes to flesh out the characters?

Also, when it gives them awesome '80s hair

Low Points

Demon voice. Never. Do. Demon voice.

Lessons Learned

Just like Korean cell phones, some Ouija boards also make adequate breathalyzers

Internet-speak abbreviations were actually popularized by punkette mediums that dress like k.d. lang

IMDB Goodtimes

The Internet Movie Database is often filled with a little fun. Witness, upon searching for Witchboard, the fourth suggested match was none other than Mrs. Ashboro’s Cat, better known to Animals Doing Human Stuff Month fans as Ghost Cat

Rent/Bury/Buy

Witchboard isn’t the funnest or scariest horror film to come out of the ‘80s, but it’s refreshingly well-written in a way that makes the time flow by quite easily. The film went on to spawn two sequels (the first one also directed by Tenney), although I have no idea how they measure up. This isn’t an immediate drop-everything-and-rent, but it’s a genuinely good little genre movie that makes character count.

Astoundingly Horrible Non-Horror! The Nutcracker In 3D

It's rare that I find myself speechless about a film's complete lack of quality, because when you’ve seen both Feeders 1 AND 2, few aberrations of cinema can ever seem worse.

Which calls to mind what might happen if a ballet company knocked on Uwe Boll’s door for donations just after he drank too much Heineken while watching Julie Taymor’s Titus and finding $90 million under his sofa cushion, then went to his fridge to get another bottle, caught a glance of the wacky Albert Einstein magnet that he keeps on the door to hold up a calendar, realized it was December, and said “Hey! I can use my NINETY MILLION DOLLARS to make a live action, 3D, CGI-heavy interpretation of The Nutcracker starring John Turturro as a Nazi rat!”

Substitute Tango & Cash director (!!!) Andrey Konchalovskiy in the Boll role and huzzah! You have The Nutcracker: The Untold Story (cue Lifetime logo) or as it was dismally sold to theaters last Christmas, The Nutcracker In 3D.

Quick Plot:  Mary (Elle Fanning in the kind of role that will eventually be referenced in the ‘bombs before the Oscar’ magazine writeups of the future) is an imaginative child growing up in 1920s Vienna with distant parents and a toy-breaking brother. When Uncle Albert Einstein arrives to—

What? Why are you looking at me like that? You’ve never listened to The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies while wrapping presents and thought to yourself, “You know what this song is REALLY about? The Theory of Relativity, THAT’S it. If only the guy who wrote Jesus Christ Superstar would think up lyrics to that ubiquitous Christmas tune that better explained Einstein’s science. And if only Nathan Lane would don a powdered wig and invoke the kind of European accent slaughtered by high school seniors performing Tevye in a community theater production of Fiddler On the Roof. Only then would we really hear Tchaikovsky’s genius.”

Then boy oh boy dear readers, are you in luck! Perhaps because Lane didn’t want to soil his Broadway success by having The Producers be the worst film on his resume, he does his best impression of the Microsoft Word Einstein help avatar, occasionally addressing the camera because…well, nobody else seemed to be listening?

Getting back to the Nutcracker story you think you know, Uncle Albert Einstein gives Mary the gift of a magical dollhouse, chimpanzee doll, Jamaican drummer, and a clown I have to assume inspired the look of The Last Circus. 

Oh oh oh, and dare I forget the titular nutcracker, who proceeds to come to life and take on a hybrid marionette/CGI persona voiced by a British munchkin/Moaning Myrtle and baring a more than passing resemblance to the titular foe of Pinocchio’s Revenge and/or a Canadian South Park character.

But dig this! Albie has a nickname for the nutcracker and it’s—you know it—N.C.

NOT M.C.

Yo.

As Mary sleeps, she dreams of a magical CGI universe where NC comes to life while rat bat thingies watch and fly away on jet packs (go with it) to report their findings to the ruler of this alternate world, The Rat King, played by John Turturo as what might happen if Adolph Hitler impregnated a J-pop star while watching Labyrinth. He’s also afraid of the sun and thus insists on burning children’s toys all day long so that its rays are blocked by the smoke of the innocent.

But…but…didn’t the toys come to life? Aren’t a lot of them actually people? Or chimpanzees? Or Jamaican drummer boys?

Yeah, ‘bout that…

So this is an image from the Rat Kingdom:

Yup.  Because in case you didn’t know, not only is The Nutcracker actually about the theory of relativity, but it’s also a metaphor for the Holocaust.

The Rat King decorates his austere palace with blown-up photos of interracial children screaming. I’m just going to let that thought sit there for a moment.

Got it?

Because emulating Hitler isn’t enough for a villain, The Rat King gets a toe-tapping performance set to music not from The Nutcracker. According to the 60 minute long making-of extra on the DVD, this was actually composed by Tchaikovsky, but used for something that had nothing to do with The Nutcracker. According to Tim Rice, Tchaikovsky was the best collaborator he’s ever worked with because he’s dead, and could therefore not complain.

Somewhere in Russia, a zombie is rising, and it ain’t waxified Lenin.

Did I mention how this showstopping number ends? I’ll give you three guesses:

A) Fireworks and synchronized Esther Williams-esque pool choreography

B) A beheading of the Jamaican drummer doll, followed by a head toss

C) The reveal of the Rat King keeping a pet shark in a tank, and then the reveal of why he does: so that he can drop a giant light fixture in said tank and electrocute his pet shark to death.

If you guessed A, then I assume you hit on something in a deleted scene. B happens, just not at that moment. But as you probably knew, the answer is C. I just want to remind you that option C meant that John Turturro has a pet shark in a Nutcracker movie and seemingly the only reason for his pet shark is so that he can kill it in song.

I know you think I’m lying or at the very least, embellishing what occurred in the 108 minutes of Nutcracker  In 3D, but I would never do that to you (especially during Santa season). This was apparently a 20+ year passion project for director Konchalovskiy and it kind of shows…just not in a good way. In 20 years, a man can amass a lot of ideas. He doesn’t have to then use all of them with no restraint whatsoever, save for the one decision made to NOT give the SS uniform clad rats German accents. Sure, their Brooklynese was probably more demanded by the speech limitations of prosthetic mouthguards, but still…it’s something.

Lessons Learned

Albert Einstein has a theory about everything. Ya, and iz called RELATIVITY (cue cymbal clap)

All dolls are alive. Right, that’s not a scary thought at all…

Chimpanzees get FURIOUS if you call them monkeys

The Awkward Shimmy rivaled The Charleston for popular dances of the 1920s

Stray Observation

Anyone remember Brown-Eyed Jenkin’s creepy human face-on-CGI rat in Stuart Gordon’s first Masters of Horror episode? I think that was reused here. In a children’s film.

Court Ruling

A judge found Nutcracker 3D guilty on the following counts:

Wasting the charms of Richard E. Grant

Assigning inane lyrics to classical music that never required lyrics, then having a Tony-award winning performer sing the lyrics with an accent so thick that the DVD requires subtitles to understand just how nonsensical the lyrics actually are

Soiling the names Mary and Max, which belong to a far better and magical little film called Mary and Max

Rent/Bury/Buy

Remember how having a substitute teacher was one of the most awesome things that could happen on a weekday? Perhaps you played jokes on the poor job hunter, but if you were REALLY lucky, your real teacher had already assigned empty busywork, sometimes in the form of a video.

Maybe schoolteachers got tired of not being appreciated and commissioned Andrey Konchalovskiy to make this film, because the only appropriate situation in which it should be shown is when Mrs. 5^th Grade Teacher, jealous of the adoration received by substitutes, wants to make her class long for the days of algebra problems and Civil War battles. Kids will not like this film. As giddy as its badness made me (and remember, I’m a bad movie addict who can’t help but secretly love this), The Nutcracker In 3D is also weirdly dull, working from the same overly artificial, whimsy-lacking landscape also misused in Stephen Spielberg’s Hook. If a substitute teacher showed it to a classroom, she'd be lucky to make it to the parking lot alive.

In other words, if there are children in your life whom you hate, wrap up this DVD (complete with the sadly earnest documentary special feature) in sandpaper and stick it under the tree, after (of course) you’ve had your dog pee on it. Every little bit helps when you’re recouping a budget that could have been spent rewarding 90 Survivor champions or buying one of the Virgin Islands. Perhaps the production team should have considered that before making a KIDS film featuring this:

At this point, I hope your appetite is sufficiently whetted because in no way can I restrict this movie to this site. Coming up on December 20^th, my good pal T.L. Bugg will be forced to watch and review The Nutcracker 3D for our monthly swap over at The Lightning Bug's Lair. So while I’ll be drinking up Liam Neeson’s sexy widower in Love Actually, Zach will be humming about relativity for the remainder of the month. Apparently, the poor dear made the naughty list.

Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide

A single mom brings home a doll for her lonely child’s birthday, only to then watch the babysitter and a few strangers die in suspicious accidents. Sound familiar?

Sometimes a cash-in on a popular horror franchise takes a few years. Such is the case for 1996’s Pinocchio’s Revenge, a Child’s Play wannabe with a surprising amount of mid-90s heart.

Quick Plot: Divorcee Jennifer is under a little stress, partially from being a public defender of death row inmates and more so from being mom to a bright, annoying, and possibly psychotic little girl named Zoe. Bitter about her father’s absence, Zoe raises the eyebrows of her child psychologist and gets into schoolyard brawls with some of the other second graders. The kid needs a friend.

Conveniently enough, Mom is just closing out a depressing appeal case where she unsuccessfully defended a man accused of murdering his son. Though he admitted his crime, Jennifer always suspected he was innocent and the only bit of evidence she has to go on is the titular wooden doll found with the deceased’s body. Through an assortment of chess moves, Pinocchio ends up home in bed with Zoe as her new brother/best friend that seems to cause an awful lot of accidents.

I will tell no lies here: I’ve been wanting to watch Pinocchio’s Revenge for a good 10+ years, ever since its VHS cover piqued my interest in the waning days of my rental habit. Now on Instant Watch, I’m one step closer to having completed everything I needed to in life and hence, one step closer to having my brains bashed in by a wooden marionette.

But on a lighter note, how’s the movie? Ridiculous, a tad slow, and somewhere in between, magnificent.

Directed by cult dude Kevin Tenney (Night of the Demons, Witchboard), Pinocchio’s Revenge seemed to have based itself on an IMDB bit of trivia on the Child’s Play page, a note that claimed writer Don Mancini’s original intention was to tease out the mystery of whether it was Chucky or his boy keeper Andy that was actually responsible for the killings. In Pinocchio’s Revenge, we’re never quite sure of the same question. It’s a good hour into the film before we hear the little fella speak, and some of the action afterwards still points towards Zoe’s own instability. 

For a straight to VHS killer doll film, it’s actually somewhat impressive. Granted Pinnochio himself ain’t no Talking Tina. Sure, his design is mildly unsettling (and his E.T.  waddle adorable), but Tenney seems to prefer fancy camera tricks to solid doll action, constantly following dramatic shots like closeups of sharp knives with CLOSEUPS OF BUTTER KNIVES SLICING BANANAS! Or a heavily music cued shot of a dead cricket (Pinocchio’s slaughtered conscience) immediately underscored by A SLOW MOTION SHOT OF A GLASS OF ORANGE JUICE SMASHING INTO PIECES! 

You get the point. There’s some genuine ambition at making a ‘psychological thriller’ out of what essentially boils down to a good old fashioned killer doll movie, which is interesting, if occasionally dull. Considering Pinocchio’s Revenge is already combating a low budget and mid-90s fashion crisis, the actual scares don’t really hold up (although I’ll concede the fact that the 6-year-old doll-o-phobe I once was would probably have been incredibly creeped out had this debuted during my youth). But still...look at this guy:

High Points

You have to admire the restraint of a movie called Pinocchio’s Revenge that refuses to give us any actual evil doll action until more than an hour into its running time

Though Brittany Alyse Smith is a tad annoying as Zoe, lead actress Rosalind Allen does manage to create a genuine person as the harried single mom

Low Points

There might be something neat in ending on a mystery, but having sat through Pinocchio’s Revenge, it also feels like we deserve to know exactly WHAT happened

Lessons Learned

Episcopalian=Catholic lite, and believing in evil is one of its job requirements

Always read up on whatever hospital you’re admitted to. It’d be a shame if you end up in one where no nurses ever stop by to check your life support system’s status

If your child is possibly demonstrating homicidal tendencies, it might be a good idea to warn the friendly Italian au pair when leaving the kid in her care

The Winning Line

"Spoon me!"

Hey, we all enjoy that, but not when our partners are so darn aggressive about it

Rent/Bury/Buy

Granted this is a film made for the type of viewer that I am, but I thoroughly enjoyed Pinoochio’s Revenge as a much smarter little horror film that it had any right to be. Coming off an age of Rumplestilstskin and Dolly Dearest, this easily could have gone the tiny killer route but for whatever reason, Pinocchio’s Revenge decided to try something new. You probably won’t be frightened and hey, there are definitely more entertaining evil little things films out there, but for a 90 minute surprise, you might be satisfied. 

If nothing else, it’s funner than A.I.!