by ·Comments Off on Family (2006, John Landis)

Okay, any show that opens with George Wendt dissolving his father in a bath of acid is gonna be good. Never quite lives up to its promise (or its predecessor, “Deer Woman”), but it gets 80-90% there, and that ain’t bad at all.

His coolest horror role since House:
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Young couple moves in next door to utter lunatic Wendt. Besides being a bit socially awkward, he’s also creating himself a lovely family of well-dressed skeletons in an upstairs room and imagining whole conversations (even fights) with them. Young couple is an investigative reporter and an ER doctor whose daughter is part of Wendt’s family. Turns out they have tracked him down in order to torture him to death, a perfectly horrible ending (and I mean that as a compliment). Some of the couple’s own fights, which we assume are about deciding to have a new baby, are actually about deciding to go through with the murder plot, a detail which makes the somewhat-slack middle of the episode come to life upon reflection. And the more lighthearted & comedic moments come from Wendt’s delusions and the care with which he assembles and dresses his skeleton family, so it’s probably a darker piece than “Deer Woman”.

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by ·Comments Off on The Damned Thing (2006, Tobe Hooper)

Time to trudge through the rest of MoH season 2, since season 3 (now called “Fear Itself” and moved to a network) isn’t due till summer (or later, thanks to the writer’s strike). Looks like Gordon, Carpenter and Anderson will be back along with Mary Harron and Ronny Yu, all very promising. But for now, there’s nothing better to half-watch while I pay bills and wrap ebay packages than a TV movie by Tobe Hooper.

It’s hard to say if this movie is worse than “Dance of the Dead”, but I think it might be. Inconsistent, blurry storytelling (patched over, but not enough, by character voiceover, even after that character has died) with that annoying overlapped visual effect used in “Dance”, and a story that leads nowhere and explains nothing, and not in a “increase suspense by withholding information” way. At least the inexplicably-acclaimed “Pelts” was a straightforward story, and at least “Dance” had that beautiful end-of-the-world rain-of-death moment. This has got none of that.

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Either this one dude or the whole town (or a neighboring town?) has a history of violence. Once every generation, they go berserk and kill each other. Or some of them do. And this is related to a demonic force or possession and/or oil in the ground and drips from the ceiling. Traces of the infectious family violence plot in “The Screwfly Solution” but to no purpose. Sometimes the damned thing is under the ground, external force, and sometimes it’s inside someone

One effective horror bit has a guy killing himself in the head with a hammer. It’s not clear why he turned on himself instead of the people around him. Ted Raimi is cast as a killer priest, but he can’t help much. A mess of a flick. That’s okay, I didn’t expect it to be very good.

Ted Raimi:
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by ·Comments Off on The Thing (1982, John Carpenter)

A remake (of the Hawks film which I liked very much) which is about to be remade, ha!

Little did I realize when I watched this right after “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” that it was written by Burt Lancaster’s son. Starred rugged Kurt Russell as an alcoholic helicopter pilot and a buncha people whose names I vaguely know like Wilford Brimley and MST3K fave Richard Dysart.

Ancient alien organisms are dug up by Swedes and escape (within a dog) to American Arctic base. Dog sprouts killer tentacles and wipes out the other dogs, then starts to assimilate the other men… but which men? Turns into a body-snatcher paranoia movie and a “cold” war (ha!) with totally badass makeup effects by Rob Bottin, Stan Winston and a huge team of fangoria-reading dudes. Nice widescreen, with unexceptional music by Ennio Morricone.

I was proud of Carpenter and young Lancaster that the black guy who plays his music too loud was NOT the first one to die, and in fact lived almost to the end. The other suspicious-acting black guy “lives” at the end, along with Kurt, both about to freeze to death having hopefully been successful in eliminating the creature in all of its forms.

Jimmy brought beer. Thanks, Jimmy.

by ·Comments Off on Sweeney Todd (2007, Tim Burton)

N.P. Thompson: “the most numbingly inert movie musical ever made”.

Watched it twice in a week, the second time with good sound.

Barber is imprisoned and wife-snatched by judge, returns years later (with young sailor) for revenge, kills blackmailing rival barber, finds then loses interest in own daughter, starts meat pie business with neighbor, mistreats and tries to kill young assistant, kills judge, neighbor, and (accidentally) own wife, is killed by assistant while young sailor rides off with barber’s daughter.

Loving the songs, especially “not while I’m around,” “pretty women,” “I’ll steal you joanna,” and “these are my friends”. The actors all do wonderfully, and the ol’ Burton goth murk is back with a vengeance. Katy disliked the horror aspects and wished that any character besides the two kids in love was a likeable protagonist, someone she could root for, and not a horrible corrupt monster. I thought the two kids were plenty enough brightness in the black, black. I wouldn’t call it numbingly inert, but for a musical it doesn’t exactly pop off the screen. Maybe Thompson will dig the 3-D re-release.

by ·Comments Off on Pro-Life (2006, John Carpenter)

Movie starts and I am happy. Remote women’s clinic picks up a girl in trouble, then her father, a possibly dangerous anti-abortion religious nut with three gun-happy sons, drives up. Window rolls down… it’s Ron Perlman! You do not mess with Ron Perlman!

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Turns into a precinct/assault movie, which I have no problem with, but uh oh, where’s the horror? Oh, the girl was raped by demons, and her demon baby is about to be born (spoiler: it’s a flesh-colored spider with a doll head) and nothing can stop that and its demon father will rise up from the ground to claim the baby!

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So, pretty stupid. I could at least forgive it that, but that twice, twice!, a character (perlman, one son) comes up against the demon in a hallway of the clinic during the assault, gives an uh-oh look, camera cuts to demon looking all demony… then nothing. Did that low-rent demon suit not offer enough freedom of movement to take a swipe at a guy’s head? Anything? Anyway, girl shoots her baby and demon wanders off. Movie manages not to be an adequate comment on abortion, religion, clinics, fanatics, motherhood or demons.

Percussive score written by Carpenter’s son is the worst movie music I’ve heard since Goblin was in business.

Movie still gets points for having Ron Perlman in it.

by ·Comments Off on Night of the Creeps (1986, Fred Dekker)

1988: I was eleven, and all sorts of wonderful horror movies would play on TV… Deadly Friend, Chopping Mall, House, Prom Night, TerrorVision… and one of my favorites was Night of the Creeps. At the time I didn’t know it was a retro/parody/tribute sort of thing… didn’t realize the comedy in horror films (Freddy’s puns aside) was sometimes intentional, and didn’t catch the references to Night of the Living Dead, the tribute to cop-on-the-edge stories, or the smooth sci-fi/horror/comedy blend (which I enjoyed in such klassics as “Killer Klowns From Outer Space”) because I was too busy being actually scared by “Night of the Creeps”. The jokester kid who figures out how to stop the brain-slugs (fire/heat), then gets infected himself and crawls away to the boiler room to do himself in? One of the most terrifying things I’d ever seen on TV.

Unbelievably, when I rewatched it today, the movie was still good. Not as scary as it used to be, but clever and high quality. There wasn’t a better killer-alien-slug movie made before or since.

Things I’d forgotten: the b/w 50’s flashback intro and the whole detective character, but not much else. Either it’s very memorable or I watched it more times than I probably should’ve in the 80’s.

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Lead characters are named Romero, Hooper, Cronenberg, Carpenter, Cameron (James? for Aliens?), Landis and Raimi – cute. He casts John Carpenter alum Tom Atkins as the troubled detective, and Joe Dante fave Dick Miller as the police armorer (even giving him Joe Dante/Roger Corman stock character name Walter). I did not notice George Clooney, rumored to have a bit part as a janitor.

Funny, Fred Dekker also wrote “House”. I’ve always thought the poster for “Creeps” (zombie hand opening a door) evoked the “ding dong, you’re dead” poster for “House”. And of course, Dekker wrote/directed another TV fave of my youth, “Monster Squad”, before killing his career with “Robocop 3”.

This is unique: referencing your NEXT film rather than your previous one
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Fake though it looks, it used to scare me:
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Your stars, Rusty Griswold from “European Vacation” and an extra from “Porky’s”:
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Below: David Paymer as “young scientist”. This film was released the same month Paymer blew minds as “Larry, scientist” in George Lucas’s acclaimed “Star Wars” trilogy follow-up “Howard the Duck”
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Dick Miller doesn’t want no trouble:
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by ·Comments Off on Dream Cruise (2007, Norio Tsuruta)

“Washingtonians” may still be the stupidest episode of this “Masters of Horror” season so far, but this one is outright the worst. The others have been falling over themselves trying to find a new twist (“I know! george washington was a cannibal! oooh, killer ice cream man and if you eat his ice cream you TURN INTO ICE CREAM!”), but this one gives us no reason to watch, recycling three tired old horror concepts and adding no new style or twist or excellence:

1. guy is afraid of a thing [water] and must confront that thing [go on a boat ride with his boss and boss’s wife whom guy is secretly sleeping with].

2. guy and boss have killed people in the past [guy’s brother drowned, boss killed his ex-wife] who come back as ghosts to haunt them.

3. things keep happening that were just a dream… or were they???!???!??????!!!?

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Guy’s dead brother wasn’t killed on purpose so in the end he helps take care of the malicious dead ex-wife. Still, guy and boss’s wife are left floating out in the ocean at night, and guy is bleeding from the leg, so I hope sharks eat them before morning.

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I only half paid attention. Writer of Ring/Dark Water (who is starting to seem obsessive about drowning) and director of Scarecrow and Ring 0. The boss played the lead in “Audition” and the not-as-good white guy starred in “Captivity”.

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by ·Comments Off on The Screwfly Solution (2006, Joe Dante)

Made me more upset/queasy than any episode since “Cigarette Burns”, and includes possibly the worst stabbing scene I’ve ever watched. No sense of humor here, it’s a dark, pure horror, sort of unexpected from the usually jolly Joe Dante. Definitely the most successful movie from this season so far (still got 5 episodes to go), more so than the relatively lighthearted “Right To Die”.

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Elliott Gould (of American History X and the Oceans movies) and Jason Priestly 90210 are scientists called in by the military to explain/study a spreading phenomenon of mass murders by men against women, seemingly tied to a hormonal virus similar to that manufactured to exterminate the screwfly. The disease spreads, seen through the eyes of Priestly’s wife Anne, until she’s one of the only surviving women, catching a glimpse in northern Canada of the “angels” that started it all.

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Really a dreadful and well-made little apocalyptic movie, a mini masterpiece up there with “Homecoming” and “Cigarette Burns”.

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by ·Comments Off on Shorts round-up

Hellraiser Prophecy
Holy crap this was bad. I’ve avoided fan films for this long, so why did I watch this one? Oh yeah – I’ll watch anything in the Hellraiser series. I’m sure this guy was proud of his fan script, trying to tie the Leviathan thing from Hellraiser 2 together with the lead character who I don’t remember from Hellraiser 4 and introducing Lucifer himself into the Hellraiser world for a collision of different hells. That’s all fine and good – the mistake was to actually shoot the thing, with dismal actors who stumble over their lines and no sense of skill or vision behind the camera, just some series-aping tribute bits with the chains and some good makeup and costumes on the cenobites. Guess I’m not sorry I watched it (only 20 minutes long) but I won’t be checking out the hour of DVD bonus features.

Flowers and Trees
First technicolor cartoon AND first oscar-winner for best animated short (probably no coincidence) is a disney “silly symphonies” musical. Two trees (a nasty gnarled one and a strong young one) compete for a beautiful girl tree, and there’s a forest fire and singing and stuff. Like a popeye episode, but with plants.

Super Mario Movie
Clever: guy hacks a super mario bros. cartridge and turns it into a “movie” installation piece. It’s over-long at 15 minutes, but cute. The “plot” is that Mario is trapped inside an old game cart in a closet somewhere while the code is starting to break down. Like Rejected, but in 8-bit.

Hyas and Stenorhynchus & Love Life of the Octopus by Jean Painlevé
These are a lot cooler looking than I thought they’d be. The Yo La Tengo music works fine – I was going to try synching up the live versions, but I don’t suppose exact timing matters much in this case. Katy is grossed out by the idea of octopus sex.