Blood Shot (2013)

Directed by: Dietrich Johnston
Run Time: 96 minutes

All you had to do was be entertaining movie. One simple job that you were well equipped to carry out. You had explosions, guns, a stupid premise to use guns and explosions, and a vampire. Instead you pass off shit writing as comedy and any joy that could be found is beaten to death with horrible direction. Let's get through this trainwreck.

The story is centered around Detective Hellsing. A cop who has devoted his life to destroying evil by destroying his marriage, being a joke with other cops, and learning how to kill vampires from websites online. Why did he become the self appointed guardian against evil? That is never addressed as Detective Hellsing gets anonymous tip where the vampire will strike next. Across town an Islamic terrorist cell is getting ready to carry out a round of suicide bombing in various US cities. Before the cell can spread terror throughout America the vampire shows up and wipes out the terror cell.

Detective Hellsing enters the scene just as the last terrorist is killed. The detective enacts his mission of destroying evil by using a grab bag of vampire lore and seeing what will work. Silver bullets hurt the vampire, crucifixes can repel and injure, and a wooden stake to the heart and sunlight are lethal. After throwing the detective around for a bit, the vampire activates all the explosives in the building and flees the scene. Leaving Detective Hellsing to escape the as the building explodes.

The nameless vampire works for the C.I.A.'s vampire division. Which is a dark office set were Lance Henriksen is chain smoking. The current target that President Christopher Lambert wants eliminated is a terrorist master mind with a bad joke name that everyone just call him Bob. Bob, played by Brad Dourif, is assembling a super league of terrorists to destroy America and it's vampire assassin. Bob has acquired a powerful jinn/djinn and has smuggled his terrorist pals, his harem, and five little people who are expert miners with student visas.

Meanwhile Detective Hellsing's life has gotten worse. His vampire obsession has gotten him fired, his wife is ready to move from trial separation to full on divorce, and the league of super terrorist have kidnapped his soon to be ex wife. So Mr. Hellsing sets aside his war on evil and teams up with the vampire to rescue his soon to be ex wife and defeat the terrorists. However this plays right into the super terrorists plans as they need the vampire to be the host for the jinn. The jinn is used to steals some material to make a weapon of mass destruction and Mr Hellsing is forced to return the jinn to his prison.

It looks like the heroes are going to save the day when an explosion fatally wounds Mr. Hellsing and the vampire. The vampire bites Mr. Hellsing making him into a vampire and to reveal the plot twist of the movie. The vampire was the anonymous source as a means of training Mr. Hellsing as the vampire's replacement. With all the dumb exposition out of the way, the vampire dies and Mr. Hellsing becomes the big damn hero (TM) and saves the day.

 This was a dumb movie. The jokes were badly written, badly executed, and only there to pad out the run time. At some point in the creative process they was an interesting movie but the writer/director managed to screw it up. Christopher Lambert's scenes are shot in a limo and feels like it was filmed as he was on his way to airport to get the away from this movie. Lance Henriksen's scenes feel more like he just stopped giving a fuck and just wanted his day of filming to be over. Brad Dourif and the rest of the cast did their best with the shoddy plot but there is not enough polish in the world to make shit look like gold. If you find this movie please avoid it. It's joyless, flawed, and a mess of a movie.

MVT: Towards the end of the film there is some impressive practical effects. Yes I am reaching for something of value on this movie.

Make or Break: Three things broke this movie. A plot that brings up and forgets things in favour of making a dumb joke. The vampire who can't make up his mind if he's a bad ass assassin or Sam the Eagle from The Muppets. And using CGI as a crutch instead of a tool.

Score: 0.5 out of 10

Death Machine (1994)

Stephen Norrington’s (he of the inaugural Blade film) Death Machine opens in the “Near Future.”  The camera dollies past smoking wreckage and dead bodies.  Inside a diner, several armored soldiers led by John Carpenter (William Hootkins) come upon a crazed cyborg (Stuart St. Paul), part of the “Hardman” project, punching a bathroom wall repeatedly and terrorizing a waitress (Jackie Sawiris) until he overloads and shuts down (a known design flaw).  Back at the Chaank Corporation, new CEO Hayden Cale (Ely Pouget) finds out the hard way that the public doesn’t like weapons manufacturers, and she hasn’t got many friends inside management either, with slimeballs like Scott Ridley (Richard Brake) actively working against her.  But down in his workshop, weirdo wunderkind Jack Dante (Brad Dourif) is working on something that will surprise them all (but really, probably shouldn’t).  Oh, and there are domestic terrorists Sam Raimi, Weyland, and Yutani (John Sharian, Andreas Wisniewski, and Martin MacDougall, respectively, and I hope you’re noticing the trend here), to boot.

In case you missed it, this film is as much homage as it is blatant ripoff.  You have the cyborg elements of the Robocop and Universal Soldier films.  You have the unstoppable, maniac robot elements of Chopping Mall, Terminator, and Hardware.  The Warbeast’s (our titular machine) head closely resembles that of the Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise with bigger teeth.  The rest of the movie’s generic facets are as expected.  The settings are appropriately industrialized and dystopian.  The Chaank Corporation is evil, its officers self-serving and power-hungry.  The mad scientist is unhinged in the sort of way you honestly have to wonder who the hell thought it was a good idea to hire this guy no matter how smart he is.  On the other hand, the naming of characters shows a clear adoration for Norrington’s (who is also credited as screenwriter) idols that doesn’t feel simply like name dropping.  For as many influences and components thrown in here, though, that’s also the amount of directions in which the film tries to pull.  Rather smartly, it doles these sections out in small enough bites that, even though it doesn’t completely cohere, the film is entertaining and fast paced enough that each piece satisfies like a handful of “fun size” Snickers bars (or insert your favorite candy bar here).  By the time the credits roll, I could think of worse ways to have spent my time.

One of the more interesting aspects of this film is in its depiction of the future.  Yes, it is dystopian, as all cinematic futures seemingly are.  But everyone and everything in this one is unhinged in some way or another, and not in the sort of satiric way we saw in the world of the Robocop films.  You get the feeling that this world and its occupants are very much on the cusp of falling over the edge.  Violent demonstrators flock around the corporate headquarters (but they conveniently disband after normal business hours), and one even socks the unsuspecting Cale right in the nose.  Every character, with the exception of Cale, screams many of their lines in bug-eyed histrionics, including a police officer (Alex Brooks), who flies off the handle so fast, you have to wonder if he’s been smoking bath salts.  The terrorists toke huge, odd-shaped joints, and they all behave like sleazy villains from an Eighties Action film, sneering and leering at everything.  

Which brings us to Dante.  He dresses like a member of a Nineties grunge band (jeans with multiple slits down the legs, black shirt, black leather jacket, long lanky hair, finger rings, including several I assume are knives, though I can’t say I noticed any plaid flannel).  His workshop is littered with technological bits and pieces, pages torn from porn mags, and toys.  The fact that the filmmakers cast everybody’s favorite onscreen nutjob Dourif is evidence enough of what the filmmakers were envisioning.  Mission accomplished.  Dante is pure id, his main drives being aggression and sex.  Meanwhile, he’s developmentally arrested, a child entertaining childish wish fulfillment fantasies, though he has the resources to make his nightmares reality.  He lives in a sub-basement of the company, locked in a world (read: vault) of his own creation.  The only input he gets from the outside world, aside from the computer hacking in which he specializes, is endless scenes of violence and porn on his monitors.  The real world is nothing to him but base stimuli, so he interacts with it in that way.  There is the strong indication that he was this way to begin with, and his isolation from reality only helped widen the gap in his twisted brain.  That said, Norrington also decided to give Dante a sense of humor, I suppose with the intention of either taking some of the edge off him or enhancing his menace through his morbid world view (or a combination of both in the vein of Freddy Krueger, Chucky, et cetera).  Unfortunately, the jokes largely fall flat, and our villain winds up just looking foolish.  I think, had they cast someone much younger than the then-forty-four-year-old Dourif, the character may have worked better as the petulant man-child he is supposed to be.  As it is, though, it feels off, and not in a good way (though Dourif, as always, is certainly one of the standouts of the film).

Dante posits himself as an agent of chaos, a bringer of entropy.  To his eyes, the breakdown of order into chaos is “the way of the world.”  Like the Joker both before and after him, he is presumably anarchist by design.  Inside a building full of precise, industrial environments and governed by strict corporate structure, he sits inside a cave with no seeming rhyme or reason to where anything is.  The outside of his workshop is covered in bright, messy graffiti, marking it off from the rest of the building as a danger zone portending the unexpected.  Nevertheless, for as “organic” as Dante’s world and character is put forth, he is merely the flip side of the assumedly cold business people above him.  Neither care about the value of human life.  They are both, in fact, in the business of ending them as efficiently as possible.  Cale is the only person associated with Chaank who actually cares about the ethical and moral implications of her job (which really doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, considering where she works).  Yet for all his crowing about the ineffable decline of societal systems, Dante’s machinations require planning, and thus negate their intended outcome (or at least his core philosophy).  His Warbeast required planning to design and build.  The technology he relies on so heavily for his ends is borne of order, not chaos.  Dante is the one controlling the Warbeast, his finger on the trigger.  If he actually believed in the randomness of chaos, he would make of himself a target equal to those he hates.  Although, the film is enjoyable as it stands, I think this would have been a nice little twist and would have added an interesting layer to Death Machine.  But backseat driving doesn’t get you to your destination any faster, does it?

MVT:  The Warbeast is a wonderfully designed piece of machinery.  Norrington and company also did a solid job shooting and editing around it, so you get a concrete feel for the size and power of the thing and what it’s capable of without having to show it all onscreen.  Low Budget Filmmaking 101: Leave as much to the viewer’s imagination as possible, and show just enough to leave them wanting more.

Make Or Break:  The Make is the scene inside the elevator.  It’s tense and gory, and it serves a purpose in the plot.  Nuff said.

Score:  6.75/10          

Body Parts (1991)

Cinematic violence is big (for our purposes here I’m talking about scope, not popularity).  Usually.  It’s supposed to be.  It’s cinematic.  Audiences love watching people slug it out, every hit telegraphed from a mile back, and every strike exploding on the soundtrack like cannon fire (which, incidentally, is what was used to create the sounds of guns firing in the classic Western Shane).  It’s not enough that someone gets shot.  They have to be all but cut in half by a fusillade of ammunition, viscera splattering thither and yon.   And often, we accept that not only do the onscreen protagonists make it through such punishment, but can then go on to kick even more ass and win the day (witness: Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, and so on, ad nauseum).  But by that same token, audiences do not generally have a personal reaction to these acts, mainly because they rarely have any basis for empathy with them.  Which is why when you see John McClane pulling a shard of glass out of the bottom of his bare foot in the aforementioned John McTiernan film, you cringe a little bit.  You probably have not been shot at and pummeled by international criminals, but it’s almost guaranteed you’ve stepped on something sharp with your bare feet.  We can watch a man be cut in twain with a samurai sword and not bat an eye, but if that same guy burns his hand on a hot pan, we react with him.  It’s this empathic bond which exemplifies, I think, the true power of cinema, its ideal potential.  So, when I see the raw stitching on Bill’s (Jeff Fahey) arm in Eric Red’s Body Parts, yeah, I wince a little.  But it also helps draw me into and tether me to a world that’s going to get pretty crazy pretty fast.

Bill is a criminal psychologist whose focus is the roots of violence in mankind.  Despite his misgivings about his purpose, he has a happy home life with his wife Karen (Kim Delaney) and his two kids.  A horrific traffic accident sends Bill to the hospital, and Karen is told by Dr. Webb (Lindsay Duncan) that Bill will lose his right arm unless they do an immediate transplant, which of course happens.  Though the recovery goes well, Bill’s life is about to take a decided downturn, since the new arm used to belong to the recently executed multiple murderer Charles Fletcher (John Walsh).  

On one level, the film deals with male feelings of ineffectuality.  Bill is first confronted with this in the character of Ray (Paul Ben-Victor), a convict on death row who knows that he does bad things, but he can’t stop himself.  He pleads with Bill to “rewire” him, something both men know is a physical and medical impossibility (though the fantasy of overcoming this obstacle is part of what the film is about in this regard).  The seeds of self-doubt are planted in Bill, and when he talks to his wife about it, she consoles him and gives him a kiss.  After Bill is given Charley’s arm, things change a bit.  Where he and Karen are only shown kissing in bed pre-accident, Bill uses his new arm (the only arm he uses actively in the scene) to pleasure his wife, and after the two have what we can handily infer was phenomenal sex, their romantic relationship is magically reinvigorated.  Remo Lacey (Brad Dourif) is a painter who, until he received Charley’s other arm, could only paint quaint landscapes and “starving artist” material, fit only for bank and hotel room walls.  After, his paintings are nightmarish depictions of Charley’s murder memories and wild moneymakers for Lacey.  Mark (Peter Murnik) lost his legs and his ability to play basketball, but after the grafts, he plays (so we’re led to believe) better than he ever did before and at a nigh superhuman level.   Before their surgeries these men were mediocre, at best.  Following their replacement surgeries, each man’s life reaches new, if only transient heights.  These men need the influence of a primal, alpha male like Charley to bring out their true potential, to overcome the inadequacies bred into them and, by extension, all modern men.  That this potential has the dark side effect of awakening the more violent aspects of a person is telling.  It’s the struggle between the poet and the warrior in man without being able to find a balance.  Peace can only come once both sides have been totally conquered.

The film does posit, at least on a surface level, that the visions Bill sees and the changes in his behavior are possibly stemming from something flagitious which was always inside him.  Of course, this would also have to extend to Remo and Mark, and though that is a possibility, it strains the suspension of disbelief in the film.  Odd, isn’t it, that a viewer who has difficulty accepting that three unrelated men share a psychosis will completely swallow that the evil of a homicidal maniac lives on in his transplanted flesh?  Perhaps this is because the former is too coincidental for believability, while the latter is fantastic enough that it piques much more interest.  This relates back to the influence which the multiple cinematic variations on Maurice Renaud’s Les Mains d’Orlac (aka The Hands Of Orlac), as well as films like Oliver Stone’s The Hand, and even Doris Wishman’s The Amazing Transplant have on this film.  Naturally to rational people, the idea that a personality not only lives inside the cells of a body but can also achieve self-awareness and manipulate another one is scatterbrained.  Still, if you think about it long enough, you can throw around some fairly interesting possibilities with the topic, and so long as you entertain any of them for a at least a few moments, they do gain some sort of credibility (at least in those few moments they do).  So, you can believe in something like the transmigration of the human soul or the existence of the human soul at all.  You can ponder whether a person’s anima does, indeed, dwell within one’s mind or if the mind is an encompassment of the body in total, a gestalt made physical much like the aliens in John Carpenter’s The Thing.  See?  And when you do any of this, you have to admit that the notion of a serial killer’s transplanted limbs influencing the behavior of their recipients is not nearly as goofy as it might be at first blush.  It’s part of what makes this film work so well for me, and why I happily take the plunge once the film takes that third act turn into crazy town.  You should take the trip sometime, too.

MVT:  The screenplay is a classically smooth build up to a marvelously gonzo payoff, and each piece slots nicely into place along the way.  It does threaten to go off the rails at several points, but it never actually does (for me, at any rate).  In fact, I think it achieves a very tight balancing act.

Make Or Break:  Without giving away too much, the Make is the scene where Bill is cuffed while riding with (I love this name) Officer Sawchuck (Zakes Mokae) and taken on a super tense hellride.  It’s fantastic low budget Action filmmaking, while it also delivers surprises and moves the story into its next phase.  

Score:  7.5/10     

Grim Prairie Tales (1990)

I was suffering from a bad case of insomnia. I had a few hours left until my shift began, yet I couldn’t fall asleep. I was tossing and turning and counting sheep to no avail. As each minute passed, I kept thinking of how much time I’m wasting. If I’m not sleeping, I might as well be doing something. Therefore, I decided to pop in “Grim Prairie Tales”, which I had settled on being my next review.

If there’s one good thing to be said about “Grim Prairie Tales”, it’s that it cured my insomnia. After approximately forty-five minutes, I was out like a light. It didn’t give me a lot of sleep for work, but I at least got some. I can thank Wayne Coe’s anthology thriller for that. Which is about the only thing I’m thankful for about this movie.

The only reason it took me forty-five minutes to finally doze off was because of Brad Dourif and James Earl Jones. Both are clearly picking up paychecks, but are playfully chewing up the scenery. Their sets together are laughably overacted, though I’m pretty certain that was their intention. Both are fantastic actors who have churned out good performances in terrible movies. Them not putting forth a satisfactory performance in the traditional sense makes me believe they were rightfully phoning it in. If not, they’re gifted enough that they can badly chew up scenery, yet make it work.



They play Morrison (Jones) and Farley (Dourif), two travelers who happen upon one another at a campfire. Not being able to sleep, they tell one another scary stories. In between the tales, they bicker back and forth. Jones frightens the shit out of Dourif, while Brad comes back with weasely insults. These scenes are worthy of a Youtube collection, which is the only way I’d recommend watching them.

As for the stories themselves, they’re as frightening as an episode of “Sesame Street”. All of them revolve around the prairie lifestyle and they all suck. The first centers around a man who messes with an Indian burial ground and has a curse put upon him. The second is of a man’s newfound friendship with a pregnant woman who harnesses a deadly secret. The third is of a daughter who discovers her loving father is actually a cold-blooded murderer. The fourth and final one revolves around a gunslinger haunted by dreams of being killed by his sworn enemy.



Not a single one is built up well. Each drag by slowly, which would be fine if tension were built. The only thing built is boredom. Each has a twist ending, which most likely gave M. Night Shyamalan an erection. All of them seem to have been built around their endings, as if Coe thought of them first, then poorly built a story around it. The only tale closely resembling quality is the final installment. By then, I could barely bring myself to care to pay attention.

If I should give any pointers, it’s that I thought I had the ending figured out earlier on. I’m referring to the closing of the film that inevitably features Dourif and Jones. Coe caught me by surprise with a rather calm ending. Once the credits rolled, I began to wonder if the “predictable” ending would have been better. I didn’t think for too long. I wanted to get this film out of my memory fast.



MVT: Both Brad Dourif and James Earl Jones. If I had to pick one, I’d go with Jones. His loud, cantankerous demeanor was fun to watch, whether or not it was intentional. It’s hard to dismiss Dourif, though, as he constantly spoke for the audience by criticizing the lackluster stories. Flip a coin and choose who the real MVT is.

Make or Break: The first story. It may be unfair to single this one out, as it’s not the worst one. Granted, the first three run together in shoddiness, with the fourth barely striding forward. I’m choosing the first solely because it signified the type of stories these would be. Those being horrible ones.

Final Score 3/10

In Honor of Irvin: The Eyes of Laura Mars

So, giallo. Hey.

I know I’ve said some iffy things about you in the past, but maybe we just got off on the wrong red high heeled foot. Perhaps I’m simply a narrow-minded American who can’t handle dubbing or synth scoring. Maybe I can only savor my boobs, black gloves and blood when flavored by McDonald’s and Ruby Tuesdays.

And so, with a clock ticking on Instant Watch, I queued up Irvin “Empire Strikes Back” Kershner’s 1978 thriller, The Eyes of Laura Mars.


Several months ago. And then he, maker of one of the most universally loved films of all time, passed away at the age of 87. So even though I (spoiler alert!) didn't love this movie, I hereby dedicate this post (at least, the good stuff in it) to the late Mr. Kershner.

Quick Plot: 

Faye “Forever Mommie Dearest” Dunway plays Laura Mars, a controversial photographer known for staging macabre spreads to highlight high fashion (recall the Jaslene-winning Cycle of America's Next Top Model wherein the girls had to pose as brutally murdered corpses. I imagine most of you Gents are familiar with said shoot).

On the night of her huge NYC gallery opening, Laura learns that one of her models has been murdered in a similar style to a featured picture. Later, her agent suffers a similar fate as Laura sees it from own head simultaneously.

So what’s the deal, you might ask. Is Laura psychically connected to the killer? Is she breeding violence with her own aesthetics? And of course, who exactly is running around Manhattan, gouging out the eyeballs of lesbian models that bare eerie resemblances to Nomi Malone?

Here may I present the suspects, in spoiler free fashion (plus their astoundingly awesome ‘70s hair):

Limo driver Brad Dourif, who can always be counted on to do any and all of the following:

1-give the best performance in a film

2-burn holes through viewer’s heads with the power of his crazy eyes

3-lapse momentarily into a gleefully cuss-filled Chucky trill that inspires audience members to immediately queue up Child’s Play following whatever lesser movie he’s currently in

and 4-always, as a character, be responsible for something bad.

Hair: Curly, springable, sensational

Rene Auberjonois as Donald, Laura’s blah and unlikable assistant.

Hair: Ready to wear Farrah

Raul M. Bison Julia as Laura’s alcoholic ex.

Hair: Slick and on its way to Gomez Adams

Tommy Lee Jones as Lt. Neville, a policeman assigned to the case and of course, Laura’s bear-fur covered bed. He sports typical Texas charm and a farmer’s tan.

Hair: Flowy and fabulous, with sideburns to boot

Laura Mars herself

Hair: Chic...ish

One of the problems I’m learning I have with the giallo subgenre (and I know: Laura Mars is American and therefore not giallo, but c’mon: everything else is there) is the tease ‘n cheat game it tends to play with its audience. Sure, plenty of viewers will probably finger the killer within his or her first five minutes of screentime, but not for any other reason than “Well, could be that person.” The resolutions, at least from what I’ve seen, are shocking but arbitrary. This would be fine if the films didn’t seem to devote so much energy to dropping clues or red herrings, only to then in the last scene, substitute a usually ridiculous explanation to justify the previous 90 minutes.

And yes, The Eyes of Laura Mars is as guilty as Tenebrae of opening a jack-in-the-box of an answer that ignores lots of details and fails to come near addressing the basic mystery of the film. For all its fascination with point of view and fabricated violence, The Eyes of Laura Mars ultimately just wants to make you say “It was THAT person?”

MVT

Faye Dunway is not just a great actress; she’s also a genuinely interesting film presence that instantly makes Laura Mars a woman worth following. That the film never really does anything with her place as a female artist staging violence against women is its own shame, but Dunway remains in control throughout. And truly, her legs are spectacular

Stray High Point

I was raised to salute a film any time it features an AMC Pacer, so The Eyes of Laura Mars, cheers

Make Or Break

See: rant about mysterious and unspoiled ending

Lessons Learned

Unless you’re in a movie about a talking baby, it’s fairly safe to assume that most NYC cab drivers are jerks

Conducting gackground checks on personal staff is never a bad idea

In the late 1970s, everybody’s hair was awesome

Score: 6.75

The Eyes of Laura Mars is a well-constructed films aided immensely by fine performances and made a little more interesting by some serious ‘70s style (did I mention the Streisand sung song that opens and closes the credits?). I’m personally annoyed by its plotting, which is overly tangled and unresolved. It’s like a woman with a knotted mane who just gives up and gets a pixie cut. Not. Fair. But hey, it has plenty to hold your attention and ponder some time later. Just don’t expect the film to give you any real closure.