by ·2 Comments

Don’t know why I saved this one for last… guess being based on a Clive Barker story made it seem like a safe bet. Might be my least-favorite episode in the series, though. I mean, “dance of the dead” was awful, but it had its apocalyptic rain scene to recommend it, and Robert Englund I guess. This one’s got mediocre actors speaking awful period dialogue in service of an awful script, and McNaughton (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Wild Things) doesn’t seem to be trying too hard, treating this as the low-budget TV episode it is, instead of aiming for something better like nearly every other director did. At least he got Jon Polito.

Dude pesters old woman necromancer to raise his beloved wife from the dead, she tells him the horrible story of Ernst Haeckel, a science student who once pestered necromancer Jon Polito. Ernst spends the night at an old man’s house. The man discloses that he keeps his young, beautiful wife by paying off Polito to reanimate her dead lover some nights so she can have a graveyard orgy. Ernst fouls everything up, the old man dies, Polito gets the high hat, and back in the “present day” the old woman reveals herself to be that young woman and she’s learned the necromancy art herself and has undead sex with Haeckel, yuck!

A slog to get through, mostly because of the dialogue… if Clive is smart he’ll want nothing to do with this one. Ohhhh, I see that George Romero was supposed to direct, but dropped out due to scheduling problems. Probably either his upcoming Stephen King movie or his upcoming zombie mockumentary. Between those two and this MoH episode, it’s hard to say which is the worst idea for Romero.

The high hat, the fake mustache:
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The nudity:
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Another angle on that:
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The gang’s all here:
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So the final Masters Of Horror Season One evaluation:

GREAT:
Cigarette Burns (Carpenter)
Homecoming (Dante)

GOOD:
Incident On and Off a Mountain Road (Coscarelli)
Dreams in the Witch-House (Gordon)
Deer Woman (Landis)
Fair-Haired Child (Malone)
Sick Girl (McKee)
Pick Me Up (Cohen)
Imprint (Miike)

OKAY:
Jenifer (Argento)
Chocolate (Garris)

BAD:
Dance of the Dead (Hooper)
Haeckel’s Tale (McNaughton)

A nice ratio, better than most X-Files seasons. On to season 2!

by ·Comments Off on The Fair Haired Child (William Malone, 2006)

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Virgin Tara isn’t very popular at school or home, gets kidnapped by “warlock couple” (IMDB’s phrasing) Anton and Judith (Lori Petty from Tank Girl and Prey For Rock & Roll), and locked in basement with Johnny. Tries to get free with friendly Johnny’s help before whatever monster comes after her, till she realizes he’s the monster. See, he’s sorta dead and has gotta kill 12 girls to be resurrected by whatever dark powers, and she’s the twelfth. Well he finally gets her, but he makes his own deal: Tara’s life back in exchange for his parents. Gotcha!

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Fun, pretty good movie from director of Fear Dot Com, Haunted Hill remake and upcoming Parasomnia. Writer Matt Greenberg just did silly John Cusack hotel horror 1408. Neither, obviously, is a MASTER of horror, but it’s a good enough title for the series. That fast/slow-moving thing used to creepy effect in Haunted Hill gets used here when Johnny turns into the creature… I love that stuff. Must be the lowest body count of all the MoH episodes I’ve seen.

MoH trademarks: don’t remember any naked women, didn’t see any familiar-looking actors, but someone’s eyeball did pop out.

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by ·Comments Off on Sick Girl (2005, Lucky McKee)

Starting with the twist-ending back-story… Lesbian entomologist Ida (see, it’s already unique) can’t find a date because her bugs scare people, cute girl sits in her office lobby stalking her for years, cute girl is daughter of Ida’s ex-prof super bug guy who ships scary bug from brazil or someplace to infect brain of Ida and lay eggs in her so daughter won’t date her, but they start dating first, then bug gets daughter, and finally bug gets ’em both, kills Ida’s male friend, and they are happy and pregnant with 1000’s of bugs together. Sort of like that episode of Creepshow except instead of an unappealing dude there’s two girls kissing… a marked improvement.

Effects are silly, plastic bugs and full-body bug-suits, but all well used. Ida is May from the movie May, has a cool voice, and stalker girlfriend is softcore porn star Misty Mundae. Fun flick, not bad at all.

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by ·Comments Off on Deer Woman (2005, John Landis)

Yaaaay, a good funnyish movie starring the guy from Dream On (Brian Benben, who I haven’t seen in too long) as a burned-out detective. He accidentally killed his partner years before, got depressed, wife left him, now just handles cases involving animals. Gory deaths apparently caused by deer trampling in strange locations (inside a truck, a hotel room) lead Brian and his makeshift partner Anthony Griffith (Charlie’s Angels 2) stumped. Brian tries on many theories (funny bit where he imagines ridiculous scenarios then mutters “stupid”), meets a native in a casino who tells him about the Deer Woman, beautiful woman with hoofs who seduces then kills guys. Partner gets trampled, Brian finds he can’t kill her with his gun, so takes to the car and runs her down, with obvious in-the-headlights reference.

Landis was great in the 80’s, with Twilight Zone, Coming To America, Spies Like Us and American Werewolf In London (fat reference to that movie in this episode), didn’t realize how he has disappeared since then. Looking forward to his next MoH episode.

Co-written with Landis’s 21-year-old son, awesome.

Who you callin’ Martin Tupper?
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Your nudity:
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Your fantasy sequence:
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Your gag ending:
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by ·Comments Off on Saw III (2006, Darren Lynn Bousman)

So Amanda, the worst actor in the movie, is Jigsaw’s apprentice here, but she’s a cutter and a killer and an ex druggie and can’t be trusted despite her having once survived a beartrap and pledged her life to his games. And Jigsaw’s deathly sick with brain cancer.

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Now Jeff is Angus Macfayden, better known as Orson Welles in Cradle Will Rock. Retaining his hammy pained expressions from that movie, here he’s the dad of a living daughter and dead son on a revenge quest to kill the killer, judge and witness from the son’s car accident. His estranged wife (twist ending spoiler alert) is doctor lady Lynn, kidnapped and forced to take care of Jigsaw and operate on his brain or else he’ll blow her head up.

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Saw’s rounded up the witness, judge and killer and strapped ’em into terrible devices, and Orson/Angus saves some of ’em sort of but pretty much ends up getting them all killed, then stumbles into a mess of a time in the operating dungeon and everyone dies but him. No more sequels then, hooray (just kidding, part 4’s out this halloween).

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Not too good a movie, obviously, with too many flash cuts and flashbacks. Lots of nudity and gore (obviously), neither of them worth a damn, and nothing to make it all worthwhile unless you care about Amanda’s character development or whether Jigsaw lives or dies. Looking forward to part 4, obviously.

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by ·Comments Off on The Host (2006, Joon-ho Bong)

Nice monster movie, funny most of the time, a few good scares, good effects and everything. Full of death and serious situations, but never feels heavy or grim.

GUY is a dim slacker with a young daughter, a drunk college-grad brother, a champion archer sister, and a dad who owns a food stand on the beach, where guy and his daughter also live. One day a legged, tail-swinging fish monster attacks the beach and steals the daughter. After they find out she’s still alive via a cellphone call, they set out to rescue her. Of course the archery will play a part in this, along with a homeless man with a tank of gasoline. The girl actually dies at the end (so does grandpa), but she helps an even younger homeless boy, who ends up living with our guy after the almost-successful rescue attempt.

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Americans are implicated everywhere! First a belligerent US lab guy orders his assistant to dump a whole lot of used formaldehyde down the drains into the river. Then the US forces (which have laughably low security throughout the movie) take charge of hunting down the monster and quarantining the area. Then they apparently lie about the monster being “the host” of a crazy killer virus that never really exists, capturing our guy and extracting tissue samples from his brain! Finally they try to destroy the monster with “agent yellow”, a gas that causes all the cops and student protesters and our family members to cough and bleed from their mouths and ears, but of course doesn’t hurt the monster one bit. One particular American military doctor just looks so ludicrous in close-up that the whole theater was laughing at him. Not such a pro-US film, then… but they take us down in entertaining ways.

A good movie, worth waiting to see in theaters (video has been out for a while). A dysfunctional family teams up to fight a giant monster… sort of Little Miss Sunshine vs. Godzilla.

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The lead guy and his sister starred in Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, and the men of the family were all in Memories of Murder, Joon-ho Bong’s popular 2003 movie.

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by ·Comments Off on Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990, Joe Dante)

One of the very best movies of the eighties (forget that it missed the 80’s by six months). A slightly-too-slow buildup places the action in a state-of-the-art technological office building, brings back Billy and Kate, brings back the Futtermans, closes down the shop where the Gremlins came from and puts Gizmo in the hands of corporate scientist Christopher Lee. Then all fucking hell breaks loose and it’s a hilarious, gonzo 45 minutes of action and comedy and movie references. I love it.

Don & Dan Stanton from Terminator 2 with Christopher Lee:
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Zack and Phoebe Cates, who has gotten cuter since part 1:
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My favorite gag, again:
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Hulk out:
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The electric-gremlin death of Christopher Lee:
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“I guess they pushed him too far”:
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by ·Comments Off on Gremlins (1984, Joe Dante)

A great movie that does not get enough credit. Completely successful as a comedy, a horror, an action/effects popcorn flick, even a kids movie. I’ve loved it since I was 7.

The dog (“mushroom”) is amazing. In the commentary, Joe Dante says he loved the dog and little Corey Feldman, ’cause they were the only two actors that believed the gremlins were real. Apparently the whole production was a puppeteering nightmare, compounded when Spielberg decided (correctly, you’d think) to NOT kill off Gizmo halfway through the movie… hence little cheats in the second half, like carrying him in Billy’s backpack, and having him ride the toy car.

The black man’s the first one to die, of course. Dante fave Dick Miller plays xenophobic Mr. Futterman, who coins the term gremlins for our beasties. Dante wanted to play the old warner WWII cartoon short about gremlins before the feature, but they wouldn’t let him… too bad. Judge Reinhold has a small part, Chuck Jones has a cameo, Spielberg & Goldsmith & Robbie the Robot get cameos, and Howie Mandel is the voice of Gizmo.

Zach, Corey Feldman, and a lotta mogwai:
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When mogwai go bad:
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My favorite gag:
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