Month: October 2007

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, Selick/Burton)

October 27, 2007 by Brandon·Comments Off

Watched many times before, but never in dolby disney digital 3-D with cool polarized-lens non-headache-inducing glasses! The 3D effect was great, adding layers of depth (not pop-out-of-the-screen gimmicks) to an already gorgeous movie. Of course seeing the movie on a big screen again gives new appreciation to the intricate visual details, but why were some of the camera-panning motion scenes so blurry? Did the 3D effect do that, or have they always been that way?

fun fact: Chris Sarandon, lead actor in master-of-horror Tom Holland’s “Child’s Play” and “Fright Night”, voices the non-singing Jack Skellington.

Katy sorta likes it. Maria did not. Kids today… sigh.

FEB 2017: Watched at The Ross, followed by a Q&A with the great Danny Elfman.
I think Katy likes it more than she used to.

DEC 2024: Watched at home in nice HD. Katy is now fully obsessed.

Rabid (1977, David Cronenberg)

October 27, 2007 by Brandon·2 Comments

Interesting movie, pretty good. Funny how I can rent a movie looking for an entertaining horror one night, and it’s not scary or entertaining so it’s crap. Eight years later I can rent the same movie as an auteurist curiosity and it becomes “interesting movie, pretty good”. Was I right before, or am I right now? Fortunately it’s all opinion and nobody cares, so I can change my mind and justify things all I like.

Clearly one of Cronie’s body-horror origin stories. Porn star Marilyn Chambers was cast for financial reasons (not political/commentary as often supposed) because producer Ivan “Ghostbustin’-ass” Reitman thought she’d be a bigger funding draw than the unknown Sissy Spacek. Then as shooting was beginning, Spacek’s other movie came out (see shot above). Oopsie.

Chambers capably plays a car accident victim who has a medical procedure (see two quotes below) that somehow lead her to grow a very sexual-looking little bloodsucking rabies-zombie-virus-transmitting armpit-mounted appendage. It’s nuts, but still not nuttier than the ice cream man movie I just watched.

Nice looking movie, grimy and low-budget but well composed. When the characters have believable behavior, it always helps a horror movie… of course it’s one of the rarest things in the genre.

Chambers stays with a friend, goes out at night finding people to kill/infect. Is finally caught killing the friend (above) and gives herself up to one of her zombie victims in remorse, ending with the “night of the living dead” reminiscent close, an army cleanup crew tossing her body into a garbage truck.

Senses of Cinema’s A. Allinson, in his barely-decipherable Cronenberg piece, says “Coinciding with the AIDS outbreak, Chambers, walking virus, is an apologetic martyr of “very experimental surgery” going wrong”.

Film Freak interviews Cronenberg:

FF: “Rabid is home to your first major statement about body-modification–plastic surgery.”
DC: “Yes, and ironically enough what I invented in that movie has recently come to pass in stem cell research. Not that I think of prophecy as my métier, but we invented this neutral tissue that would become whatever tissue it came in contact with and that’s the basis of stem cell research, sort of the universal organic loam–so I have to take a little credit. (laughs) I suppose that there were some intimations even in my earliest work, Stereo and Crimes of the Future, about technology altering the body and there’s some of that in Shivers too. The plague in that film is an artificial one, of course, the result of an experiment gone wrong, and it occurs to me now that it was also meant to replace damaged organs. I hadn’t thought of that in years.”

Reminded me of the Dafoe scene in Existenz:

No interesting cast/crew stories besides Cronie and Ivan Reitman. The murdered friend turned to cartoon voice acting, and one of the cops tracking Marilyn co-starred in Shivers.

Watched this the same week we went out to Nightmare Before Christmas. Neither movie is kind to Santa.

We All Scream For Ice Cream (2007, Tom Holland)

October 27, 2007 by Brandon·Comments Off

From the non-auteur behind the classic horror hits “Fright Night” and “Child’s Play” and the less classic S. King adaptations “Thinner” and “The Langoliers” (also writer of Psycho 2). This is from the writer of “The Fury”, which makes me a little less excited to see that one.

Holland must not have been allowed to adapt King’s “It”. Here we’ve got a story about grown men being hunted down by a killer klown, with flashbacks of these guys as young kids doing bad things together. Sounds like “It” to me. But this one adds exciting story elements that “It” never had, such as that the young kids once conspired to kill a retarded ice cream man, and that the ice cream man comes back as an evil klown and if the now-grown-men’s KIDS fall under the klown’s spell and eat a special ice cream bar, the men will turn into ice cream and melt and die.

Ridiculous story, reasonably well acted/directed, not a bad thing to half-watch while I’m doing something else, like writing these entries.

Pelts (2006, Dario Argento)

October 26, 2007 by Brandon·Comments Off

“A lot of bad shit’s been happening around here ever since we started working on this coat. It’s like it’s cursed or something.”

Yes, this movie is about a cursed coat made from the cursed pelts of cursed raccoons, trapped and killed by (an obviously cursed) John Saxon on some cursed land near some cursed ruins behind a cursed old witch’s house.

Terrible music and bad acting in a silly story. What, did Friday the 13th: The Series use up all the cool stuff that could possibly be cursed, so now we’re down to raccoon pelts? At least Master Argento didn’t write it – guy who wrote the novel behind Michael Mann’s The Keep did.

Meat Loaf makes coats and likes strippers (one in particular). Saxon traps a buncha raccoons and raves over how perfect they are, phones Meat Loaf who picks them up and makes a coat to woo his favorite stripper. Oh, and since the pelts are cursed, everyone who touches them kills themselves and/or someone else in a bloody, horrible way.

Should’ve hired the makeup guy from Hellraiser 2, because in the climactic scene when Meat Loaf walks around skinless, it looks very much like he’s just wearing a gory black shirt.

Contains all three of the big MoH signature elements: naked breasts (boy, a lot of them), recognizable actors doing ridulous stuff (meat loaf, duh) and something nasty happening to an eye (lady in coat factory sews hers shut).

Why do the credits use a goofy comic font?

Meat “Loaf” Aday being creepy:

Scary raccoon:

John Saxon (of Tenebre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Mitchell) about to be beaten to death:

Of course, writing this led me to look up Friday the 13th: The Series on IMDB. Who knew that Atom Egoyan and actor David Morse directed episodes and the writer of Mystic River and The Postman wrote a couple? For that matter, who know that the writer of Mystic River worked on The Postman?!

The Black Cat (2007, Stuart Gordon)

October 26, 2007 by Brandon·Comments Off

Late into SHOCKtober (Oct. 18th), I have finally unpacked my office enough to uncover the disc holding season two of “Masters of Horror”. Katy’s little brother is joining me for the celebratory kickoff screening, so I choose episode eleven, Stuart Gordon’s entry. It’s been a Gordon-filled month and his stuff is always either effective (“Dagon”) or entertaining (“Dolls”) or more usually both (“From Beyond”). Disappointingly, what we’ve got here is a slow-moving period piece that failed to impress or entertain.

The movie is supposedly based on Poe’s “The Black Cat”, but it’s actually an “Edgar Allen Poe In Love”, where we watch Poe’s visions and dreams that inspire him to write “The Black Cat”. Poe fans on the IMDB comment board enthusiastically rave about all the references to Poe’s life and stories scattered throughout the movie. Sort of a condensed look at Poe, implying that Gordon and usual co-writer Dennis Paoli will not be exploring each Poe work in-depth (this is the second after “Pit and the Pendulum”) as they have been doing for HP Lovecraft (seven films and counting).

Never heard of most of these actors and the only thing that turns up on IMDB is that half of them have been in the “Highlander” series for some reason. MoH trademark eye-gouging is here, but no nudity and I suppose an enthusiastic Jeffrey Combs will have to be our token celebrity casting.

Lord of War (2005, Andrew Niccol)

October 26, 2007 by Brandon·Comments Off

“Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names – Liberation this, Patriotic that, Democratic Republic of something-or-other… I guess they can’t own up to what they usually are: a federation of worse oppressors than the last bunch of oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves freedom-fighters.”

Funny, a riot of a movie, and the most I’ve enjoyed watching Nic Cage since “The Rock” (though I hear he was awesome in Wicker Man remake).

Nic has no morals and neither does the film. Rather than preaching all Hotel Rwanda and Last King Of Scotland on us, the movie takes Nic’s side, making its violence funny and nihilistic, just an unfortunate side effect of business as usual. The downfall comes as expected… Nic loses his uncle (blown to bits), then his brother (shot down trying to destroy some weapons) and his wife (leaves him, takes the kid) and finally gets arrested for illegal arms dealing. But the movie subverts expectation one last time by having a powerful general (based on Ollie North) set Nic free, because the U.S. armed forces need people like him to do things that they can’t be caught doing themselves.

Funny I was thinking how it’s an all-male movie with a token part for the wife when she comes out with this dialogue: “I feel like all I’ve done my whole life is be pretty. I mean, all I’ve done is be born! I’m a failed actress, a failed artist… I’m not much good as a mother. Come to think of it, I’m not even that pretty anymore.”

Pretty stylin’ movie, nice CG-assisted intro following a bullet from factory to a shocking war-zone head-shot. The movie is amoral to make its point, but it doesn’t expect its viewers to be.

Climates (2006, Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

October 26, 2007 by Brandon·Comments Off

Katy & I really hit the art-film jackpot with this one, since we saw three professors we know at the screening. That’s not gonna happen at “Resident Evil: Extinction” at the mall on a sunday night.

Gorgeous movie, as advertised. Slow-moving enough that the guy behind us kept yawning/sighing loudly and the guy in front of us apologized to his friends afterwards and said that they can pick the movie next time.

Our professors, all pros at picking out symbolism and meaning, talked about the artistry of the shots and the symbolism behind the seasonal changes and architecture.

Ron Holloway on some random site: “Shot as intersecting episodes against the changing seasons of blistering summer, rainy autumn, and frosty winter, only spring is missing in Climates – although Bahar, the female lead, is the Turkish word for “spring.” A master at probing the loneliness of the soul, Ceylan blends powerful imagery with sparse dialogue in his personal tales of lost chances and fatal decisions.”

And that’s all there is… sparse dialogue, a minimal character study and seasonal symbolism. A beautiful picture, to be sure, but not enough to keep Katy happy or to make my top-ten.

Dolls (1987, Stuart Gordon)

October 25, 2007 by Brandon·Comments Off

Part three of my Stuart Gordon run during Shocktober 2007. Never thought I’d rent Dolls, but here I am. This movie predates Puppet Master by two years, Dollman and Demonic Toys by four and five years. Of course, stuff like Devil Doll has been around forever, but I used to see the box art for Dolls and assume it was a Puppet Master ripoff… guess not.

This is a gory horror movie for little kids. I’ll bet it didn’t do very well. A doll-loving little girl with an active imagination has a neglectful father and a wicked stepmother. Their car breaks down outside a huge house in the country owned by an elderly dollmaker couple. Coincidentally, a big doll-loving man-child and two brit-punk hitchhikers he picked up are in the same situation. Who will survive the night? Hint: only those who are pure of heart, treat children with respect, love dolls and don’t attempt to steal from the elderly.

Disturbingly, instead of (or in addition to?) outright killing people, the dolls capture them and turn them into new dolls, with awful little apple mummy heads behind their gentle ceramic faces. There are some doll-sized stabbings and shootings, but sadly no Puppet-Master blowtorches or drill-heads. Story really does play out like a children’s tale, which is just confusing. Kinda cool movie overall, cute and short.

The writer of this thing later co-wrote Honey I Shrunk The Kids with Gordon and Yuzna, and is now writing those badly-animated christian movies.

One britpunk girl starred in A-Ha’s “Take On Me” video. The manchild played the Big Bopper in La Bamba and costarred in Gordon’s Pit and the Pendulum. Gabriel the old man played Toulon in four of the Puppet Master films (heh, typecast as a murderous puppetmaker). The stepmother, awesome at being a completely horrible person, is the electroshock-giving evil doctor in From Beyond who gets her brain sucked out her eye socket by Jeffrey Combs. And the bad dad appeared in the Charles Band-written classic Terrorvision.

Movie starts the same way as Dagon… family vacation threatened by a suspiciously sudden thunderstorm.

Dagon (2001, Stuart Gordon)

October 16, 2007 by Brandon·Comments Off

Since I enjoyed From Beyond, here’s another Stuart Gordon / Brian Yuzna / HP Lovecraft movie, Dagon (pronounced “DAY-gun”) which was released straight to video in the U.S., for some shameful reason.

Whole new cast and crew for this one, which was set/filmed in Spain. Sadly no Jeffrey Combs, just a nerdy Ezra Godden (who later starred in Gordon’s first Masters of Horror entry) and a lot of Spanish actors, including Francisco Rabal: the film director in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down… the voice of Luis Bunuel in 100 Nights of Simon Cinema… a hit-man in Sorcerer… the guy monica vitti dumps at the start of L’Eclisse… the guy Viridiana ends up with… somebody (dom morel) in The Nun… Father Nazarin… and in his final role, a drunken old man, the only human survivor in a small Spanish town overtaken by the cult of DAGON.

More serious and faithfully Lovecraftian than From Beyond. Some unfortunate-looking digital effect shots of the boat, but all the makeup effects and sets are very good. It’s not exactly a tense, rapid-fire battle of wits and strength, but rather semi-competent Ezra (channeling Harold Lloyd) versus an army of slow-moving dull-witted fish creatures.

Oh yeah, so Ezra is sailing off the Spanish coast with his girl and another couple when a storm hits. He and the girl raft to a deserted town for help. Ezra returns to the boat to find his friends gone (he later turns up skinned to death, she turns up minus one leg and raped by fish-creatures), then returns to land to find his girlfriend gone. He hides at the hotel until the cult comes calling, hilariously escapes using his limited physical abilities and a pocketknife, then crashes with Francisco Rabal who fills him in on some back-story about the townsfolk’s demon-worshipping and eventual devolution into fish-beasties.

Ezra, of course, turns out to be the son of the high priest in this town, and his half-sister is the gorgeous mermaid he’s been dreaming of, who wants him to stay with her and have dirty incestual hot mermaid sex (which may actually be possible, since her legs are just sorta tentacles, it’s not the full-on fish fin). He fights this idea at first and tries to rescue his girl from being sacrificed. When his girl is raped by and then eaten by Dagon, Ezra is given another chance, but opts to set himself on fire instead. Fortunately (for those of us perverse enough to have hoped for such a thing), he’s extinguished and goes on to live eternally underwater with the half-human half-sister in the kingdom of DAGON.

Ezra (left) with girlfriend and evil priest: