Hard to love but easy to appreciate. Those colors! Delicious acting, fun camerawork and corny wipe transitions. Will notes that it “feels about a million years long” – maybe cutting into episodes of about a half hour long would’ve helped. Anyway it’s time to rewatch Lords of Salem.
Campy from the opening scene, a police evidence locker with Freddy/Jason/Michael artifacts in view. Humor isn’t always what we want from horror sequels, but this murderer-possessed-doll franchise had worn itself thin by part three. Creator Don Mancini didn’t even bring on new writers (not credited ones, anyway), just a director (Ronny of The Bride with White Hair) and actor (Jenny Tilly of Bound) who could bring this thing over the edge. There’s more visual interest over the opening credits than in entire Branagh movie (good music, too).
Tilly is the pre-doll Chucky’s badass girl, who is friends with fake-goth Alexis Arquette (a Patricia/Rosanna sibling) and neighbors with a young dude named Jesse, who is dating Katherine Heigl (whose cop dad is John Ritter), also friends with Nickelodeon kid David. This provides a steady stream of dupes and victims as the central story progresses: Tilly and Chucky’s reunion, betrayal, her death by electrocution watching Bride of Frankenstein in the tub (yes this is the third in my Frankenstein triple feature) and ensuing dollification.
Further references to Hellraiser (arguably, when John Ritter catches a car airbag full o’ nails) and Natural Born Killers. A couple of swingers die via the shattered ceiling mirror trick from A Very Long Engagement (but six years earlier and on a waterbed). One of the Hocus Pocus witches plays a hotel maid. “Kiss my shiny plastic butt” a year before Futurama premiered. The dolls die as usual: “We belong dead… goodbye darling, I’ll see you in hell.”
Unexpectedly this starts the same way as The Terror, with a ship becoming icebound and seeing mysterious things on the ice, but this takes five minutes to get where Terror got in a couple hours. Dr. Kenneth Branagh Frankenstein is traveling to the ends of the earth to escape his creation, or something. Clearly this movie was an answer to Coppola’s Dracula, but Branagh turns in a faithful literary adaptation, one of those prestige pics where none of the actors are strictly bad in it, but the overall effect is weak. It’s nice when the camera whirls slowly through the middle of rooms during long conversations, anyway.
Also the monster can fly in this version
More than anything else, I liked this staircase:
After the framing story with Captain Aidan Quinn (In Dreams, the bad Handmaid’s Tale), Young Dr. Frank meets Helena Bonham Carter via family friend Ian Holm, then Frank’s mom passes away. “No one need ever die. I will stop this.” At school, Frank pals around with foolish Tom Hulce (Amadeus himself), challenges intolerant professor Robert Hardy (he starred in Demons of the Mind), and learns creepy secrets from John Cleese as Professor Snape, before the professor is murdered by anti-vaxxer Robert De Niro (no shit).
The classroom pet: a cursed monkey’s paw
The part where Frank floods the creature with amniotic fluid then releases electric eels into the chamber is the first thing worthy of Unbound, but Ken quickly goes too far into kookiness when the floor becomes slippy with fluid and nobody can stand up for a long minute, then Frank accidentally kills the monster through clumsiness and bad placement of ropes. But of course the monster survives, wanders off and bonds with a blind grandpa (Shakespeare specialist Richard Briers, also in Spice World). No orderly trial for Justine like in the previous movie, just mob violence. Helena B.C. is angry when Frank gets to work making a lady monster instead of planning their wedding, and even angrier when she’s murdered then wakes up as the lady monster.
John Hurt in the future year of 2031 creates an atomic weapon that disappears things into a time vortex, and as a side effect, causes time-storms. Hurt gets sucked into the past along with his silver Knight Rider-ass car (a 1988 Italdesign/Audi Aztec) ending up in 1817 Switzerland, running into Dr. Frankenstein and Mary Shelley and telling them he loves their yet-unpublished work.
Tooling around the 1810’s countryside in a futurecar:
Hurt wanders into court where Corman’s daughter is being unjustly accused of witchcraft, and tries to intervene. When writing letters doesn’t work, he grabs an axe and storm the gallows. This doesn’t work either, and the girl hangs, but it establishes Hurt as a good guy, so Mary has sex with him. Yes, Hurt is full of empathy and passion, the moral center of the movie, but wasn’t he just creating energy weapons that destabilized the universe?
Bridget Fonda and her pretty boys:
Finally the monster creates good mayhem, ripping some people apart and murdering Victor’s fiancee, looking like the DJ cenobite from Hellraiser III with the disc-shaped electrodes on sides of his head. Hurt zaps the castle, transporting them all to his own lab in a post-apocalyptic future, where he uses his hand-signal-operated lasers to burn up the monster.
I guess if you’re gonna adapt Frankenstein for the hundredth time, have some fun with it – this is the rare movie that would make a good double-feature with Gothic. The author also wrote the source book for A.I. Corman’s first credited directing gig in 20 years, and his last to date.
Myriam Cyr says “remember me from Gothic?”
Part one was the masterpiece that I remembered, and part two… well, it’s a sequel, it’s fine. Maybe losing Stuart Gordon (who was filming Robot Jox instead) was a real problem, or maybe it’s just sequelitis, or I should relax, since this is still quite good.
Dan has no self-respect, is still palling around with the clearly mad Herbert, who is doing gruesome experiments in an unsupervised warzone before returning to the hospital of part one, where he claims he’s doing important work but mostly fucks around reanimating whimsically-joined body parts.
Curious Dr. Graves (Mel Stewart of Shirley Clarke’s Cool World) awakens the evil psychic head of Dr. Hill. As before, emotionally fragile Dan tries to have a love life (Fabiana Udenio of the second Austin Powers) and West accidentally kills someone (this time a cop!) whom he has to resurrect to get out of trouble. And sure as shit, they go the full Frankenstein, making a Bride out of stolen body parts, causing a love-triangle problem for Dan, who chooses life, so the new creature tears her own heart out.
Twenty-three SHOCKtober movies this year… I would’ve guessed the worst would’ve been Cannibal Holocaust, or another Italian horror, or the late Ken Russell, or one of the 1980’s movies… but it ended up being this made-for-TV horror-comedy stop-motion feature. The very words “stop-motion feature” make for a must-see movie, and this month’s The Wolf House was an insane masterpiece, but this thing felt like a celebrity Scooby Doo episode.
Outside of the stop-motion (especially anything involving water), Bride of Frankenstein Phyllis Diller’s laugh is the main source of enjoyment – otherwise it’s all horrible jokes and slow, pointless plot and voice impressions. All the world’s monsters, plus a sap (Jimmy-Stewart-sounding Felix Flankin) convene at Dr. Frankenstein’s castle for something or other, then fight over the doctor’s inheritance and his “formula for destroying matter.” I think we turned it off after red-haired Francesca falls in love with Felix for hitting her, or maybe it was during the endless song she sings right afterward. The monsters are all hoping IT doesn’t show up, so I watched the end of the movie the next day, but IT was just King Kong minus his trademarked name.
Most voices were by Allen Swift – his career ranged from Howdy Doody to Courage the Cowardly Dog. In the late 1950’s he was on WPIX channel 11 NYC as “Captain Allen,” ensuring his eternal legacy via the Arcwelder song. Karloff played the Doctor, at the end of his career, the year after voicing The Grinch. Francesca was Gale Garnett, who beat Bob Dylan at the Grammys a few years prior, and also appears in future Shocktober classic The Children. Diller was in her celebrity prime, the year before Tashlin’s Private Navy of Sgt. O’Farrell. Rankin/Bass made this between their Rudolph and their Frosty, long before their Hobbit and Last Unicorn, and the cowriter was Mad Magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman, whose jokes work better in print.
More consistently great than part one, with higher high points (Robert Morgan!). I’m tempted to make a playlist of ABCs highlights and edit myself a super-anthology but I’ll wait until part three comes out next year.
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Amateur
Imagined scenario of cool, efficient sniper in the air vents taking out his target, then reality of tight insect-infested ducts full of nails. Great ending. Director EL Katz also made Cheap Thrills.
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Badger
Directed by and starring Julian “Howard Moon” Barratt. Asshole nature-doc spokesman (Barratt) is abusive to his crew, gets eaten by badgers.
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Capital Punishment
Local gang of vigilantes take a dude suspected of killing a girl out to the woods and clumsily behead him. Meanwhile the girl turns out to have run away, is fine. Director Julian Gilbey made A Lonely Place To Die, which is probably better than Wingard’s A Horrible Way To Die.
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Deloused
I probably would’ve skipped ABCs of Death 2 had I not heard that Robert Morgan was involved. This was… inexplicable… and amazing, and ultimately makes the entire anthology worthwhile. Involves insects and beheadings and knife-arms.
Equilibrium
Funny and well put-together, with single long takes simulating time passing. Couple of idiots stranded on a beach are unexpectedly joined by a pretty girl. Jealousy ensues, then they return to bliss by killing the girl. Alejandro Brugués made the Cuban Juan of the Dead.
Falling
Israel/Palestine, woman whose parachute is stuck in a tree convinces a rifle-toting kid to cut her down, he accidentally shoots himself in the head. Nicely shot, anyway. Directors Keshales and Papushado made Israeli horrors Rabies and Big Bad Wolves (a Tarantino fave).
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Grandad
Grandad is tired of his disrespectful grandson living with him. Jim Hosking is working on something called The Greasy Strangler next. Grandad Nicholas Amer has been around, worked with Peter Greenaway, Jacques Demy and Terence Davies.
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Head Games
During a makeout session, a couple’s facial features go to war with each other in classic Plympton style. One of two Bill Plympton anthology segments from this year – we missed The Prophet.
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Invincible
Old woman will not die, siblings want her inheritance and try everything to kill her. Stylishly shot (as are most of these, so it’s maybe not worth writing that anymore). Erik Matti (Philippines) got awards for crime flick On The Job last year.
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Jesus
I think it’s supposed to be payback on a couple of dudes who torture and murder homosexuals, but when the kidnapped gay guy displays his demonic powers I’m not sure what’s going on anymore. Dennison Ramalho wrote latter-day Coffin Joe sequel Embodiment of Evil and actor Francisco Barreiro is showing up everywhere this month.
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Knell
Initial scene where girl witnesses supernatural globe over the building across the street followed by people in every apartment turning violent was like Rear Window meets The Screwfly Solution, then it continues in the direction of total doom. Directors Buozyte and Samper are apparently Lithuanian, also made a surreal sci-fi thing called Vanishing Waves.
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Legacy
Guy to be sacrificed is being set free and is arguing with this decision, and I lose the plot after that, but there are groovy, cheap Metalocalypse-looking gore effects. Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen is Nigerian, has made a million movies so far since 2003.
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Masticate
Drugged-out flesh-eating fat man goes on rampage before he’s killed by cop, all in slow-motion and set to a jangly pop song. Robert Boocheck made a short that apparently played in an anthology called Seven Hells.
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Nexus
Cleverly timed and editing, goes for tension instead of twist ending since we figure out early on that the distracted cabbie is gonna hit the guy dressed as Frankenstein. Larry Fessenden made Habit and Wendigo and The Last Winter, all of which have been on my to-watch list forever and just came out on blu-ray.
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Ohlocracy (mob rule)
After the cure for zombiesm is found, human zombie-killers are sentenced to death by a kangaroo court. Hajime Ohata made the non-Kafka movie called Metamorphosis.
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P-P-P-P Scary!
Poppy, Kirby and Bart look like escaped convicts, have big noses, meet a face-morphing guy who does a jig, blows out their candles and murders them inexplicably. Todd Rohal made The Catechism Cataclysm, and I might’ve guessed this was him.
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Questionnaire
While a guy correctly answers questions on an intelligence test, we see flash-forwards to the “career opportunities” the interviewer has in mind for him (brain transplant with gorilla). I watched Rodney Ascher’s The Nightmare just last week.
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Roulette
German game of Russian Roulette ends with the sixth-chamber guy shooting his beloved instead of himself, as some unknown evil approaches. Marvin Kren made Rammbock and Blood Glacier.
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Split
Like a remake of Suspense but with more baby murdering. Hammer-wielding intruder destroys family of cheating husband(s) during a phone call.
Juan Martinez Moreno made horror-comedy Game of Werewolves.
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Torture Porn
Girl in porn audition turns out to be Cthulhu, I guess. Jen and Sylvia Soska are identical twins who made American Mary and Dead Hooker in a Trunk.
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Utopia
Self-driving incineration machines deal with non-beautiful people. Vincenzo Natali made Cube and Splice.
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Vacation
Dude is on phone with girlfriend when dude’s friend reveals they’ve been doing drugs and prostitutes while on vacation. The friend is disrespectful, and one prostitute stabs him many times with a screwdriver. Jerome Sable made last year’s Meat Loaf-starring Stage Fright.
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Wish
Kids go inside their off-brand Masters of the Universe playset, discover it’s horrible in there. Steven Kostanski made Manborg, which looks similarly wonderful.
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Xylophone
Kid won’t stop playing her damned toy xylophone while babysitter Beatrice Dalle (of Inside, the first actor I’ve recognized since Julian Barratt in letter B) is trying to listen to opera records. Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo made Inside, of course. Credits say Beatrice is the grandmother not the babysitter, which makes sense since babysitters should leave antique record players alone.
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Youth
Miyuki hates her mom and stepdad, imagines them dying in tremendous ways. Soichi Umezawa is a longtime makeup artist who worked on Bright Future and Dr. Akagi.
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Zygote
Dad abandons pregnant mom with a 13-year supply of a root that delays labor. Horribleness ensues. Chris Nash has made a bunch of shorts.
Men In Black 2 (2002, Barry Sonnenfeld)
Hey, I never saw this, always wanted to, but heard it was bad. Just the thing The Last Ten Minutes was invented for. The two mismatched partners are joined by Rosario Dawson with nuclear jewelry and pursued by Evil Lara Flynn Boyle till she’s eaten by a subway monster. Jones tells Dawson she’s the fifth element, Smith is attacked by shockingly subpar effects. Did you know there was a part 3? Neither did I.
[Rec] 3: Genesis (2012, Paco Plaza)
Previously watched [Rec] 1 and remake-sequel (remaquel?) Quarantine 2. Can’t find [Rec] 2 on netflix because their search is ridiculous, so let’s pick up here. Loving couple is trapped in kitchen by encroaching zombies until loudspeaker bible recitation stops them. Dude has a sword, which actually seems like a smart zombie weapon. Girl is bitten by an elderly fellow (bad hearing, immune to loudspeaker), guy cuts off her arm but he’s stupid and slow, and they both die. From one of the directors of the first one, but not shot first-person, so the title doesn’t make sense anymore. The girl was in Ramin Bahrani’s Man Push Cart.
[Rec] 4: Apocalypse (2014, Jaume Balagueró)
Oh, this is from the other director of the first one, and looks a lot worse. Stars Angela from parts 1 & 2. A guy with bad hair helps Angela kill zombie monkeys with a boat motor. Why does the bad guy have a snake-tongue? A boat explodes!
The Interview (2014, Goldberg & Rogen)
Those two guys are trying to escape N. Korea. Cue the loud action scenes. Katy Perry soundtracks the fiery death of President Randall Park (Danny Chung in Veep), then we get an anticlimactic escape from the country. One of the directors wrote for Da Ali G Show.
Horns (2013, Alexandre Aja)
The one where Harry Potter is a demon, from the director of the great Hills Have Eyes Remake. Dang, no horns, Harry must’ve had them cut off already (a la Hellboy?). His brother (Joe Anderson of Across the Universe) is sad, so Harry goes walkies with Max Minghella, and there are guns, and wow, Harry sprouts wings then turns into a full flaming demon and has homicidal maniac Max brutalized by snakes. I think Harry’s dead girlfriend is alive again but I stopped watching because my roomie locked his keys in his car. Is this Wolf Parade over the ending?
The Sacrament (2013, Ti West)
Sorry Ti, but after two-and-a-quarter disappointments you join Aja in Last Ten Minutes purgatory. Joe Swanberg in death cult compound is running from gunmen, everyone is dying, and it’s shot first-person a la [Rec] 1. Isn’t this the same plot as one of the V/H/S/2 segments from the same year, which West and Swanberg were also heavily involved with? Joe semi-rescues AJ Bowen (of every Adam Wingard movie) with the shakiest shaky-cam I’ve ever witnessed. Ends with unnecessary solemn title cards. Boo.
Maniac (2012, Franck Khalfoun)
Fuuuck, this is also shot first-person – and out-of-focus, no less. Co-written by Alexandre Aja. Khalfoun made P2 and acted in Aja’s Haute Tension – they’re as close as the West-Swanberg-Wingard crew. I think Elijah Wood kidnaps Nora Arnezeder then she stabs him with a mannequin arm and runs him over. Then she dies, so he marries a mannequin. Most of these movies are very bad, but this one looks unusually, especially, very very bad.
The Conspiracy (2012, Christopher MacBride)
Grainy first-person pinhole camera with blurred-out faces. Why do all these movies hate cinema? Dude wakes up in the ritual sacrifice room, then is chased through the dark woods while wearing an animal head. Finally a series of talking heads dismiss whatever conspiracy theory the hunted/murdered cameraman presumably uncovered. MacBride has made no other movies and hopefully it’ll stay that way.
Automata (2014, Gabe Ibáñez)
It’s balding trenchcoat dudes with shotguns vs. slow, clunky robots. The robots are talking wise, getting themselves shot, when a fully bald Antonio Banderas arrives. His plan of action is poor but he still kills two guys and the third is dispatched by a Short Circuit lizard. Weird/nice to see a robot-future movie where some of the robots (not the lizard) are actual props, not people or digital effects.
I, Frankenstein (2014, Stuart Beattie)
From the trailer this looked like epic nonsense, but it’s actually more coherent than most of the others I just watched. Bill Nighy! The final battle: Frankenstein Eckhart vs. angels, gargoyles, a merman, lots of fire, men in suits, poor digital effects and Bill Nighy! Meanwhile there’s a bunch of computer progress bars and “access denied” messages. Progress bars are always a great source of tension in movies, eh? A massive Matrix-like chamber full of bodies begins to self-destruct. Eckhart (is he the monster or the doctor?) defeats demon-Nighy, saves some lady from a fiery apocalypse and collapsing castle. Beattie wrote the Pirates of the Carribean movies (and Collateral), his cowriter was an actor in Men In Black 2.
The Haunting In Connecticut (2009, Peter Cornwell)
Unhappy teen tears his walls apart with an axe, finds plentiful dead bodies and flashback shock cuts. Is formaldehyde flammable? Apparently so, and unhappy teen lights the place aflame, pausing to transform into a green ghoul for a few seconds. I hope Martin Donovan is still alive. Oh nice, here he is along with Elias Koteas. Mom rushes in as the house, which seems to have literally been built out of dead bodies with writing on their skin, burns around them, blowing away ghosts with her mighty prayers. Nothing dumber than a true-story ghost movie, but I liked the poster art for this one. The director made cool stop-motion horror short Ward 13, one writer did The Typewriter, the Rifle and the Movie Camera and the other created Revenge of the Nerds.
.com For Murder (2002, Nico Mastorakis)
Haven’t seen a thriller with VR glasses since The Lawnmower Man – or maybe these are the Silence of the Lambs night-goggles that this Tarantino-chinned quip-happy stalker is wearing. First she tries the Rear Window flash-photo trick, but he says “I’ve seen Rear Window too,” then gets blinded by lightning and falls down the stairs. Coda: Huey Lewis plays a cop! I don’t get where the dot-com part comes in. Mastorakis did other video nonsense like Ninja Academy and Death Street USA.
The Forgotten (2004, Joseph Ruben)
I really wanted to see this (and the similar-sounding Flightplan) when it came out but the bad, bad reviews finally led it here instead – shame. Julianne Moore just wants her son back, and Gary Sinise won’t help, but some boring guy admits that the son was kidnapped as an experiment to see if parents can forget their missing kids. Oh but the boring guy is an ineffective memory-erasing alien special-effect, and after she defeats him by endlessly repeating that she has a son, he’s sucked into the sky. Julianne gets her son back, and as a bonus, Dominic West. Director Ruben made Return to Paradise, which I liked, and writer Gerald Di Pego did Burt Reynolds flick Sharky’s Machine.
The Crazies Remake (2010, Breck Eisner)
Ah, the ol’ knife-scrape-against-the-wall tactic. Trying to steal a truck, Timothy “Dreamcatcher” Olyphant and Radha “Surrogates” Mitchell are laid low by gun-toting crazies. Movie has a good look to it, and not as schizophrenic as The Haunting In Connecticut. As the couple escapes, the town behind them is nuked (shout out to Return of the Living Dead, the original town-nuking Romero ripoff), but they survive inside the fridge, err truck, and aren’t blinded at all from looking directly into the blast. From the writers of Pulse Remake and Amityville Horror Remake.
Cabin Fever 2 (2009, Ti West)
Two heavy bleeders flee the school dance (I think) – the boy is detained and the girl is picked up by Mark Borchardt. Elsewhere a stripper spreads the Fever in various real gross ways. Now a poor cartoon with too much fake film-weathering effect shows the disease spreading throughout the world. No main characters, then? I continue to not share the internet’s love for Ti West.
Skyline (2010, Bros. Strause)
A sweet grey sparkly alien demon is threatening two tenacious teens (Eric Balfour of Texas Chainsaw Massacre Remake and Scottie Thompson), but fighter jets intervene. Nice 360 pan of the aliens winning, then the two kiss while being tractor-beam abducted. It’s all Matrix inside the ship, the muddy humans having their brains sucked out one by one. It’s gooey and neat looking, but the alien made from the apparently-pregnant girl’s dismembered boyfriend’s brain saves her. Seems super dark, with the end of humanity and all, despite the final teen-love-conquers-all message. The Strauses are renowned effects artists but unfortunately, so are the writers.
Frankenstein (2004, Marcus Nispel)
Michael Madsen as “Harker” (wrong novel) aims to kill a woman with a melon baller but shotgun-toting detective Parker Posey scares him off. Flashlight chase scene in an abandoned factory, booo-ring. Hulking hooded guy (Frankenstein? Vincent Perez of Time Regained) dispatches Madsen, later turns up at Posey’s house to set up a sequel that never came. From the director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre Remake, Friday The 13th Remake and Conan The Barbarian Remake.