It's Magickally Delicious

Although it feels like it came out about ten thousand years ago the horror film The Vigil only came out in February -- a good reminder that time has lost all meaning! -- and so it makes sense that it's only this week hitting blu-ray, I guess. Which it has! You can buy it here! I reviewed it in "February" apparently and I said very nice, very true things about it, that review is right here. That photo of The Vigil's star Dave Davis up above is not from the film, although I sure wish it was -- the movie would've been even better with some of that! That photo is off Dave's IMDb page and says it's from the set of Leprechaun's Revenge... so I gotta watch Leprechaun's Revenge then? Okay I don't know why I have fallen down this hole (yes I do) but Leprechaun's Revenge is a 2012 TV movie that actually got retitled, and is now known as Red Clover -- blah, much more boring title. And it stars Billy Zane???

I don't know what is even happening anymore. The Vigil is such a good solid serious horror film, and I'm posting photos of a wonky mud puppet molesting Billy Zane's lapel -- where did it all go wrong, Jason, where did it all go wrong... ahem. I know what you're thinking. HOW DO I SEE RED CLOVER AKA LEPRECHAUN'S REVENGE???? You can rent it on Amazon! Amazing! What a world, et cetera! I know how we're all spending our weekends. In summation here is a video of Dave Davis singing on his Instagram, the end:

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A post shared by Dave Davis (@randomayhem)

13 Rats of Halloween #2

Today's second chapter of our festive "13 Rats of Halloween" series (see yesterday's introduction here) is not from a Horror Film -- these aren't all going to be from Horror Films, since Rats are creepy enough on their own, whenever and where ever they show. This post this morning though will definitely be of the less antagonistic sort, because we're taking a look at the poor drowning rats on the great ship Titanic. James Cameron's Titanic, that is. As the ship is going down and our heroes Jack Dawson (Leonardo Dicaprio) and Rose Dewitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) are trying to, you know, survive that shit, what do they realize? Follow the rats! The rats will lead them to safety. And they do. (Well, you know... mostly. RIP Jack.)

Cameron actually aligns Jack with rats on a couple of occasions over the film -- when he's having his fancy tuxedo dinner with the rich people up top Rose's mom (the gloriously terrifying Frances Fisher) cuts him down in front of everybody, asking how steerage is treating people, and he replies, "Hardly any rats." And later on as Rose is fighting with her hideous fiancé Cal (Billy Zane in full twirling mustache mode) Cal asks her where she's going, "To be a whore to a gutter rat?" And Kate gets to reply with this rightfully beloved line:

Oh my god you guys, Rose Dewitt Bukater is such an icon. And much like the gutter rats Jack is a survivor, and he turns Rose into one -- we all need a little more rat in us, I'd say. Anyway if you'd like a little etymological history lesson today I recommend checking out this history of the idiom "rats fleeing a sinking ship" -- it's interesting! It goes back over four hundred years, although it's early uses weren't in reference to ships, but rather houses -- apparently rats will leave a house early when they sense that the structure isn't sound. They have a preternatural sense of it. Who knew?

10 Off My Head: Siri Says 1989

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Well it's Tuesday so you know what that means - there's about a 20-25% chance that I won't be lazy and I will actually do one of our "Siri Says" series posts, wherein I ask the robot lady inside my telephone to give me a random number between one and one hundred and then, once she has, I take that number and I turn it into a year and then I pick my five (well usually five) favorite movies from that year. For example today my phone gave me the number 89, and so we're going to list out favorite movies from The Movies of 1989.

On first glance through 1989's movies I thought this was going to be a small sad strange bunch, since the year was mostly populated with junk like Weekend at Bernie's or Born on the Fourth of July or (horror of horrors) Driving Miss Daisy. Blecch no thank you - I am with Spike Lee; Morgan Freeman should have driven Miss Daisy right off the cliff. But then I started digging deeper and there are a bunch of buried gems that came out this year, and what follows is probably one of the strangest most erratic batch of movies I've ever listed for one of these.

There are movies in here that I loved as a 11-year-old kid and there are movies that I have come to appreciate with a more adult sensibility, but side by side these all seem a little bit bonkers. Anyway once I did get to digging I found plenty to adore - indeed too many, and this week's list is twice the standard. And I could've made it even longer and brought several of those runners-up up too - Indiana Jones and Batman should've made my top list probably, but I decided to just stay weirder.

And before you write an angry defense of Do the Right Thing (obviously the true masterpiece of the year) please remember these aren't the "best" movies of the year, they are the ones I personally get the most joy from. My "favorites." My "best" list would be pretty different. (There are also some real glaring oversights in the list of movies I haven't seen, for that matter.) I give you...

My 10 Favorite Movies of 1989

The Little Mermaid

(dir. Ron Clements & John Musker)

-- released on November 17th 1989 --

Road House

(dir. Rowdy Herrington)

-- released on May 19th 1989 --

Heathers

(dir. Michael Lehmann)

-- released on March 31st 1989 --

Dead Calm

(dir. Phillip Noyce)

-- released on April 7th 1989 --

Steel Magnolias

(dir. Herbert Ross)

-- released on November 22nd 1989 --

Meet the Feebles

(dir. Peter Jackson)

-- released on December 8th 1989 --

Apartment Zero

(dir. Martin Donovan)

-- released on October 18th 1989 --

The Seventh Continent

(dir. Michael Haneke)

-- released on May 19th 1989 --

The War of the Roses

(dir. Danny Devito)

-- released on 1989 --

Society

(dir. Brian Yuzna)

-- released on May 13th 1989 --

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Runners-up: Batman (dir. Tim Burton), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (dir. Spielberg), Do the Right Thing (dir. Spike Lee), Sante Sangre (dir. Jodorowsky), Back to the Future: Part II (dir. Zemeckis), Parenthood (dir. Ron Howard), Drugstore Cowboy (dir. Gus Van Sant), The Abyss (dir. James Cameron), Troop Beverly Hills (dir. Jeff Kanew)....

.... Ghostbusters II (dir. Ivan Reitman), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (dir. Gilliam), The Fabulous Baker Boys (dir. Steve Kloves), Akira (dir. Otomo), Crimes + Misdemeanors (dir. Woody Allen), Parents (dir. Bob Balaban), Major League (dir. Irby Smith), When Harry Met Sally (dir. Rob Reiner), Sex Lies and Videotape (dir. Steven Soderbergh), The Burbs (dir. Joe Dante)

Never seen: Casualties of War (dir. Brian De Palma), My Left Foot (dir. Jim Sheridan), Roger & Me (dir. Michael Moore), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (dir. Peter Greenaway), Dekalog (dir. Kieslowski)...

... Kiki's Delivery Service (dir. Miyazaki), The Killer (dir. John Woo), Last Exit to Brooklyn (dir. Uli Edel), New York Stories (dir. Various), The Rainbow (dir. Ken Russell), Sweetie (dir. Jane Campion), Valmont (dir. Milos Forman)

What are your favorite movies of 1989?

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Screw You & Your Little Dog Too

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With Zoolander 2 (aka "The movie I have not much desire to watch until the trailers show an image of Kristen Wiig in it and then I'm like, 'Oh yeah, I'll see that'") out this weekend I figured it was time to devote a "Beauty vs Beast" to the beautiful people of the original Zoolander movie, which I'll always get sucked into when it's always on TV. Head over to The Film Experience to vote and be like that cool dude Billy Zane.

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)

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The Collector: Poor Cordelia. Seems downright criminal to treat such a pretty girl that way... did I say pretty? I meant beautiful; 'cause you are, you are beautiful Cordelia, Inside and out. Maybe nobody here can see it, but I sure can. I understand you: I know what you want, I know what you need. Guys like Roach think just 'cause they're paying for it, that they can treat you like shit; and spend the same money on dinner and a movie so they can call you girlfriend instead of whore. Whore; what a horrible word that is to use on someone who's really just a sad girl who's looking for love. Tender, warm, unconditional Love. I can give you that love, as much as you take. All you have to do is let me in... let me in, let me in, let me in, let me in. 

In case you're not quite sure what that second shot is of, it is indeed a shot of Billy Zane shooting fire out of his dick onto Jada Pinkett Smith. And you never knew what your life was missing until right now, right? Right.

I've never actually seen Demon Knight, which is turning 20 years old today - have you? Looking around at its online presence though it appears to have a bit of a cult following, perhaps because it's so bad it's good, perhaps because Billy Zane was still hella sexy 20 years ago (this was two years before Titanic!), perhaps just because of the fire-dick thing. I don't know.

It seems as if there might be a lot of reasons to see this movie!

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Good Morning, World

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The internet is a magical place where the most random things that you've never heard of can suddenly knock at your door, stride right in and then make themselves comfy inside your brain for a lifetime - some times that's bad (a lot of the time it's bad - oh the things I wish I could un-see) but a lot of times it's good, like here, finding out of nowhere this scene of Henry Rollins, Billy Zane and Johnny Galecki taking a big communal bath together in something called Morgan's Ferry from 2001. Hells yeah.

I guess they're supposed to be three convicts who are hiding out in the home of Kelly McGillis while waiting to catch a ferry to freedom - so hey, this randomness is even timely, since it's just like Labor Day! Do you think that Henry Rollins and Kelly McGillis are going to bake some pies together? Sexy pies?

He's coming Kelly! Get your pie pan ready! (Eww I think I just used "pie pan" as a euphemism for vagina.") Alright anyway on that note go ahead and hit the jump for more pics, plus the video...

Which is Hotter?

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Billy Zane in Dead Calm, or

Alain Delon in Purple Noon?

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poll by twiigs.com

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A happy 46th birthday to Billy today. I have posted a zillion pictures of him in Dead Calm before - see here and here. Likewise see what I've posted of Delon's Purple performance here and here. My guess is this will be an easy choice for most of you since Delon's beauty in Noon is a legendary thing and DC owes a very large debt of gratitude to Noon for even existing, much less how they use (read: exploit) Zane in it. But I actually find this decision akin to Sophie's - how could I choose? This is cruel, and impossible.

Good Morning, World

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And a happy 44th birthday to Billy Zane, who has fallen right off of the face of the Earth. He was in the previous biggest movie of all time! With all this Titanic talk lately he's barely gotten a smidge. Besides the usual derisive sneer, of course. I think he was a delightful ham therein, and knew what he was doing, but whatever, I cannot fight the tide. Still Titanic is not his finest moment. (And no, neither is The Phantom.) That would be where the shot above is from - Dead Calm, the 1989 Aussie thriller with Nic Kidman and Sam Neill. I documented a bunch of him in that film before, but let's have a look see some more because it really is worth gawking at whenever one finds an excuse. Perfection.

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Anatomy of IN a Scene

I could've focused pretty much on every moment of screen-time that Billy Zane has in Dead Calm in order to highlight his hotness within - he spends about 95% of the film shirtless, bronzed, and glistening like a slab of well-oiled mouth-watering beef. But in the totally self-serving interest of not spending hours grabbing shots from the entire two hours of film - I love y'all, but not quite that much - here you'll find the scene in which he bares the most skin. Cuz... again, why not?

That last pair of frames make me uncomfortable - like, if the camera shifted over an inch or two we'd be witnessing Billy Zane's colonoscopy.

Anyway, I have to say - with no blasphemy intended, although it might certainly be blasphemous indeed - that Zane reminds me of nothing less than the sea-borne beauty of Alain Delon in Purple Noon here (and I wonder if someone's ever looked at these two boat-bound psychopaths together?). A shame Zane turned out to be such a ham; he really was something to behold early on. But we'll always have these stills to enjoy!

Oh, and what the heck - here are some random grabs from the rest of the film, since the internet seems to have, from what I've seen, a real lack of Zane-documentation from this film:

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