I had the privilege of watching "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" this past weekend. It was epic, as was director Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
To start off this review, I'll say right now that the movie takes huge liberties with Tolkien's literary masterpiece, yet manages to be enjoyable despite the many departures and despite having been shot on digital movie cameras (in this case, the Red Epic). I don't care for digital movie cameras because very often the image isn't as rich or deep as film, and it lacks the graininess of the classic cinematic medium. With Jackson's movie, however, I was able to overlook it.
"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" opens with Bilbo Baggins at the age of 111, played by Ian Holm, reprising the role from LotR. Returning as Frodo is Elijah Wood. Bilbo relates the tale of his adventures, beginning with the backstory of how the dragon Smaug conquered the Lonely Mountain and drove out its Dwarf inhabitants, who were forced into exile. None of this is in the original book, of course, except later on as an explanation of events by the Dwarves, and I wouldn't have forgiven it if Jackson hadn't made it so damned well.
Some characters from the novel who were only given a passing mention, such as Radagast the Brown (a nature wizard and friend of Gandalf, played by Sylvester McCoy of Doctor Who fame) and the Orc chieftain Azog, enjoy much larger roles in the movie. McCoy plays the part of the eccentric wizard with aplomb, and it provided some of the more lighthearted moments in Jackson's story. (Radagast hides an occupied birds' nest under his cap, and a perpetual trail of droppings decorates one side of his head.) It's Radagast who warns of the danger posed by the Necromancer, and draws off a hunting party of Orcs, though none of this takes place in the novel.
Perhaps the character to be changed the most from the novel is Thorin Oakenshield. In Tolkien's original tale, the Dwarf king is old, though still a formidable warrior, while Jackson has him much younger. Whereas Tolkien's Thorin is cantankerous and grouchy, Jackson's version is more noble and honorable, and at times rather stoic.
I can't write more without giving away the whole movie, so I'll stop here and suggest you go watch it yourself while it's still in movie theaters. Suffice to say, if you're looking for a larger-than-life tale this winter, Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" is a must-see.
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Monday, January 7, 2013
Monday, November 21, 2011
Take Shelter
This review is probably biased since it was filmed in my home state of Ohio, but what the hell, here goes. "Take Shelter", in my opinion, is one hell of a trip that leaves you guessing until the very end. Granted, the ending is kind of predictable considering the two-hour build-up, but it's still a great film.
Written and directed by Jeff Nichols, the story centers around (oil? natural gas? worker) Curtis LaForche, played by Michael Shannon. Curtis is plagued by apocalyptic nightmares that feature tornado-like storms and hid nearest and dearest attacking him or his small daughter Hannah (the adorable Tova Stewart). Curtis is under a tremendous deal of stress stemming from his daughter's upcoming hearing implant surgery, and is worried sick that he is becoming schizophrenic like his mother (Kathy Baker). All his wife, Samantha (Jessica Chastain), brother, Kyle (Ray McKinnon), and friend and co-worker Dewart (Shea Whigham) can do is watch as he descends into paranoia.
Curtis eventually seeks help in the form of visits to a counselor, after turning down the recommendation of a highly qualified psychiatrist from his family doctor. It's not that he necessarily fears being committed like his mother, although that is hischief fear. It's that he can't bring himself to spend money that is otherwise needed for his deaf daughter's hearing implant, and he also needs to save money for expanding his tornado shelter out back — which he takes out a loan for behind Samantha's back.
Needless to say, once people start finding out what Curtis is up to, things get progressively worse. Samantha is none too pleased about his storm shelter project, and his boss certainly isn't pleased. His friend Dewart, angry at him for reasons that seem a little murky and hypocritical given his own role in events, lashes out publicly. And Curtis' own inability to face his fears or confide in those closest to him leads to a very public meltdown.
Writer-director Nichols' storytelling is mostly tight, though there are some flaws. I was a bit confused as to why Shannon's character, despite suffering nightmares that leave him physically injured at one point, nevertheless manages to look exactly the same in every scene — no dark circles under the eyes, no pale complexion, just the same stone-faced guy. I chalk this up to the film's relatively limited budget and Michael Shannon's robotic acting. And I found it somewhat baffling that a guy whose marriage is allegedly a happy one would refuse for so long to confide in his own wife about what he's going through. But this, as the story reveals, is a byproduct of Curtis' pride; he simply cannot bring himself to tell his loved ones what he's going through — it's a macho thing, which is understandable considering the rural, working class upbringing he's had.
The story is ultimately less about Curtis' dreams and the fears he has about what they may mean for him, and more about how the crisis is weathered by this small family. I give "Take Shelter" an 'A-'.
Written and directed by Jeff Nichols, the story centers around (oil? natural gas? worker) Curtis LaForche, played by Michael Shannon. Curtis is plagued by apocalyptic nightmares that feature tornado-like storms and hid nearest and dearest attacking him or his small daughter Hannah (the adorable Tova Stewart). Curtis is under a tremendous deal of stress stemming from his daughter's upcoming hearing implant surgery, and is worried sick that he is becoming schizophrenic like his mother (Kathy Baker). All his wife, Samantha (Jessica Chastain), brother, Kyle (Ray McKinnon), and friend and co-worker Dewart (Shea Whigham) can do is watch as he descends into paranoia.
Curtis eventually seeks help in the form of visits to a counselor, after turning down the recommendation of a highly qualified psychiatrist from his family doctor. It's not that he necessarily fears being committed like his mother, although that is hischief fear. It's that he can't bring himself to spend money that is otherwise needed for his deaf daughter's hearing implant, and he also needs to save money for expanding his tornado shelter out back — which he takes out a loan for behind Samantha's back.
Needless to say, once people start finding out what Curtis is up to, things get progressively worse. Samantha is none too pleased about his storm shelter project, and his boss certainly isn't pleased. His friend Dewart, angry at him for reasons that seem a little murky and hypocritical given his own role in events, lashes out publicly. And Curtis' own inability to face his fears or confide in those closest to him leads to a very public meltdown.
Writer-director Nichols' storytelling is mostly tight, though there are some flaws. I was a bit confused as to why Shannon's character, despite suffering nightmares that leave him physically injured at one point, nevertheless manages to look exactly the same in every scene — no dark circles under the eyes, no pale complexion, just the same stone-faced guy. I chalk this up to the film's relatively limited budget and Michael Shannon's robotic acting. And I found it somewhat baffling that a guy whose marriage is allegedly a happy one would refuse for so long to confide in his own wife about what he's going through. But this, as the story reveals, is a byproduct of Curtis' pride; he simply cannot bring himself to tell his loved ones what he's going through — it's a macho thing, which is understandable considering the rural, working class upbringing he's had.
The story is ultimately less about Curtis' dreams and the fears he has about what they may mean for him, and more about how the crisis is weathered by this small family. I give "Take Shelter" an 'A-'.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Four More for the Remake Don't List
I just want to add my own expansion of this list of four "don't" items for horror movie remakes.
You left out numbers five and six from your otherwise excellent column. In the spirit of film criticism and ensuring that future "remakes", "reboots", and "re-imaginings" are not so awful, here are my two contributions to your "don't" list.
5.) WATCH THE ORIGINAL UNTIL YOU KNOW IT BY HEART. The problem with most remakes today is that it's painfully obvious that the film-makers never bothered to watch the original movie or television series, except maybe a token episode or viewing to get a general idea of what is being sold during the pitch.
What's always missing from most remakes? The story and character elements that allow the audience to be pulled in, to care about the characters and what happens to them. In the original "Halloween", we identify with the character of Laurie Strode because she is written more realistically than conventional stereotypes. She isn't some one-dimensional character obsessed with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, although it is quite clear that she does think about them and that she does want to try them — she is just really, really shy, too much so to act on her desires. What's more, whereas Laurie's friends are thoughtless and careless, she is responsible. She cares deeply for her charges, having a clear mothering instinct, and always puts their safety ahead of her own. These character traits made audiences fall in love with Laurie Strode, and Jamie Lee Curtis' portrayal was a perfect fit.
Compare that to the second, "remake" half of Rob Zombie's otherwise entertaining update. (I actually liked the movie, though I acknowledge its flaws.) All the elements that originally made the character of Laurie Strode identifiable with audiences, and therefore worthy of our sympathies, are gone. She's shallow, obsessed with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and she'd rather be doing anything than babysitting her annoying charges. Had the director-writer had time enough to devote to an adequate remake, he could have corrected this crucial mistake by devoting more time to character development for Laurie Strode, fleshing her out so we can care what happens to her. But he focused on fleshing out the origins of Michael Myers, so we were treated to a surprisingly nuanced story in the first half that, while typically over-the-top — it is a Rob Zombie film, after all — nevertheless portrayed attention to detail and gave us characters we can actually care about, such as Debra Myers, who was played by a very talented Sherri Moon Zombie. Still, for all the development of the characters in the first two acts, those in the third act were typical slasher fare we couldn't wait to see killed off.
And that's just from someone who was really and truly a fan of the original "Halloween". It's obvious that J.J. Abrams and Michael Bay never saw "Star Trek" or "Transformers", perhaps not even a token viewing. Likewise the awful writers, who decided it wasn't necessary to bother getting things right so that fans of the original series — without whom there would be no $100 million reboots — would be able to enjoy re-acquainting themselves with their childhood favorites.
If you're going to remake of a television series or of another movie, first be a fan who knows the original material inside and out. Make the film with the intention of using it to reintroduce the originals to a whole new generation of fans. Make the story plausible, solidly written, with characters that aren't reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes we love to hate. And that brings me to...
6.) WRITE A GOOD STORY. The flaws in the rebooted "Star Trek" are too numerous to name them all, but I'll name a few. First, no self-respecting science enthusiast believes that a nova, or even a supernova, can destroy an entire galaxy. For that to happen, we'd need a chain reaction the likes of which could be generated by the center of our galaxy exploding. Instead, we are subjected to horrendously bad science that does nothing but insult our intelligence. A mysterious red liquid, a drop of which can implode a planet or a supernova, thus creating a black hole? There is no known substance or natural phenomenon capable of doing that. It is one thing to take a concept and ask the audience to suspend its disbelief so we can get into the story. But these plot devices were beyond insulting, especially to science geeks.
Then, of course, there is the reduction of beloved characters to one-dimensional brats who whining, arrogance, and caricatures of the originals really make one wish for Gene Roddenberry to rise from the grave to start writing again — because it's painfully obvious that few people today know the first thing about writing characters and stories into which audiences can invest emotional attachment. So we have a Hikaru Sulu who looks and acts more like a martial arts nerd than starship navigator, a Leonard McCoy who is all grouch and no compassion, a Spock who is uncharacteristically emotional (even before the destruction of Vulcan), and a James Kirk who is all arrogance and none of the charisma William Shatner brought to the role.
No story can succeed without good character development — who is your protagonist? What make him tick? What does he do for a living? What drives him? A pretty face only takes a movie so far, and then the actor or actress has to get by on talent. And all the talent in the world can't compensate for a cruddy story with weak characters. Which brings me to #7.
7.) CGI DOES NOT AND WILL NEVER MAKE A MOVIE GOOD. CGI can, when done properly, add to conventional special effects to create a truly wonderful and enjoyable movie-going experience. But rely too much on it, especially from people who haven't got the talent to make the CGI effects look realistic, and you're asking for trouble. Conventional effects are better in the long run because they give something tangible for actors to react to, and interact with. CGI can and has been used to augment conventional techniques, such as animatronics and makeup. See "Jurassic Park" for an example of when the combination works really, really well. But CGI can't carry an entire film, a lesson George Lucas should have learned when he made his prequel trilogy. Another example of bad CGI is the Ang Lee-directed "Hulk". The character's green giant alter ego was too cartoonish and too bright for the evironment it was placed in. Learning from that SFX disappointment, the makers of the Ed Norton vehicle "The Incredible Hulk" went with a more subdued, more realistic monster, and although still a bit too cartoonish, nevertheless remained more realistic than its predecessor.
8.) NEVER THINK YOU KNOW BETTER THAN THE AUDIENCE. YOU CAN'T TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU THINK ARE THE 'GOOD' PARTS AND LEAVE OUT WHAT YOU THINK IS IRRELEVANT. The reason Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin can't make a watchable film to save their lives is because they think all that's needed to make a good movie is a hundred million dollars and a cast of all-stars. Not so. You actually need a story, and it has to have a premise that is believable enough for the audience to suspend its disbelief. The characters, as mentioned, have to be well developed so they are not caricatures nobody can invest sympathy in. Reliance on CGI effects and big name actors alone makes for a movie that will be forgotten within a couple of years, whereas the original is more likely to endure in the minds of the public. The originals had things modern films don't, and it's because of those that they have succeeded so well in being remembered decades after their making. You can't simply cherry-pick what you think are the 'good' parts, that is, the BAM-WOW! action, and leave the meatier aspects of storytelling behind as junk. We like the original "Halloween" so much because of the story and the characters, and because the writers knew what went into making for good stories and good characters. Michael Myers is more than simply a man in a repainted William Shatner mask and overalls. He is evil on two legs, and his primary victim is three-dimensional. Freddy Krueger is scary because he is a monster before his death whose resurrection in the dreams of his current victims only unleashes the full brunt of his evil. His victims are, like Laurie Strode, believable enough that audiences can invest their sympathy. Wes Craven, taking a page from Alfred Hitchcock, created a perfect storytelling setup that started us off with a main character to invest emotional attachment only to kill her off half way through, forcing us to identify with another. It's that kind of storytelling, and that kind of unsettling of audiences, that make for good, enjoyable movies. The SFX are like icing on the cake, but if the icing only covers so much feces, audiences will reject it. The sad part in today's "remake" mania is that Hollywood thinks so little of its audiences that it can keep doing this and get away with it forever.
You left out numbers five and six from your otherwise excellent column. In the spirit of film criticism and ensuring that future "remakes", "reboots", and "re-imaginings" are not so awful, here are my two contributions to your "don't" list.
5.) WATCH THE ORIGINAL UNTIL YOU KNOW IT BY HEART. The problem with most remakes today is that it's painfully obvious that the film-makers never bothered to watch the original movie or television series, except maybe a token episode or viewing to get a general idea of what is being sold during the pitch.
What's always missing from most remakes? The story and character elements that allow the audience to be pulled in, to care about the characters and what happens to them. In the original "Halloween", we identify with the character of Laurie Strode because she is written more realistically than conventional stereotypes. She isn't some one-dimensional character obsessed with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, although it is quite clear that she does think about them and that she does want to try them — she is just really, really shy, too much so to act on her desires. What's more, whereas Laurie's friends are thoughtless and careless, she is responsible. She cares deeply for her charges, having a clear mothering instinct, and always puts their safety ahead of her own. These character traits made audiences fall in love with Laurie Strode, and Jamie Lee Curtis' portrayal was a perfect fit.
Compare that to the second, "remake" half of Rob Zombie's otherwise entertaining update. (I actually liked the movie, though I acknowledge its flaws.) All the elements that originally made the character of Laurie Strode identifiable with audiences, and therefore worthy of our sympathies, are gone. She's shallow, obsessed with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and she'd rather be doing anything than babysitting her annoying charges. Had the director-writer had time enough to devote to an adequate remake, he could have corrected this crucial mistake by devoting more time to character development for Laurie Strode, fleshing her out so we can care what happens to her. But he focused on fleshing out the origins of Michael Myers, so we were treated to a surprisingly nuanced story in the first half that, while typically over-the-top — it is a Rob Zombie film, after all — nevertheless portrayed attention to detail and gave us characters we can actually care about, such as Debra Myers, who was played by a very talented Sherri Moon Zombie. Still, for all the development of the characters in the first two acts, those in the third act were typical slasher fare we couldn't wait to see killed off.
And that's just from someone who was really and truly a fan of the original "Halloween". It's obvious that J.J. Abrams and Michael Bay never saw "Star Trek" or "Transformers", perhaps not even a token viewing. Likewise the awful writers, who decided it wasn't necessary to bother getting things right so that fans of the original series — without whom there would be no $100 million reboots — would be able to enjoy re-acquainting themselves with their childhood favorites.
If you're going to remake of a television series or of another movie, first be a fan who knows the original material inside and out. Make the film with the intention of using it to reintroduce the originals to a whole new generation of fans. Make the story plausible, solidly written, with characters that aren't reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes we love to hate. And that brings me to...
6.) WRITE A GOOD STORY. The flaws in the rebooted "Star Trek" are too numerous to name them all, but I'll name a few. First, no self-respecting science enthusiast believes that a nova, or even a supernova, can destroy an entire galaxy. For that to happen, we'd need a chain reaction the likes of which could be generated by the center of our galaxy exploding. Instead, we are subjected to horrendously bad science that does nothing but insult our intelligence. A mysterious red liquid, a drop of which can implode a planet or a supernova, thus creating a black hole? There is no known substance or natural phenomenon capable of doing that. It is one thing to take a concept and ask the audience to suspend its disbelief so we can get into the story. But these plot devices were beyond insulting, especially to science geeks.
Then, of course, there is the reduction of beloved characters to one-dimensional brats who whining, arrogance, and caricatures of the originals really make one wish for Gene Roddenberry to rise from the grave to start writing again — because it's painfully obvious that few people today know the first thing about writing characters and stories into which audiences can invest emotional attachment. So we have a Hikaru Sulu who looks and acts more like a martial arts nerd than starship navigator, a Leonard McCoy who is all grouch and no compassion, a Spock who is uncharacteristically emotional (even before the destruction of Vulcan), and a James Kirk who is all arrogance and none of the charisma William Shatner brought to the role.
No story can succeed without good character development — who is your protagonist? What make him tick? What does he do for a living? What drives him? A pretty face only takes a movie so far, and then the actor or actress has to get by on talent. And all the talent in the world can't compensate for a cruddy story with weak characters. Which brings me to #7.
7.) CGI DOES NOT AND WILL NEVER MAKE A MOVIE GOOD. CGI can, when done properly, add to conventional special effects to create a truly wonderful and enjoyable movie-going experience. But rely too much on it, especially from people who haven't got the talent to make the CGI effects look realistic, and you're asking for trouble. Conventional effects are better in the long run because they give something tangible for actors to react to, and interact with. CGI can and has been used to augment conventional techniques, such as animatronics and makeup. See "Jurassic Park" for an example of when the combination works really, really well. But CGI can't carry an entire film, a lesson George Lucas should have learned when he made his prequel trilogy. Another example of bad CGI is the Ang Lee-directed "Hulk". The character's green giant alter ego was too cartoonish and too bright for the evironment it was placed in. Learning from that SFX disappointment, the makers of the Ed Norton vehicle "The Incredible Hulk" went with a more subdued, more realistic monster, and although still a bit too cartoonish, nevertheless remained more realistic than its predecessor.
8.) NEVER THINK YOU KNOW BETTER THAN THE AUDIENCE. YOU CAN'T TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU THINK ARE THE 'GOOD' PARTS AND LEAVE OUT WHAT YOU THINK IS IRRELEVANT. The reason Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin can't make a watchable film to save their lives is because they think all that's needed to make a good movie is a hundred million dollars and a cast of all-stars. Not so. You actually need a story, and it has to have a premise that is believable enough for the audience to suspend its disbelief. The characters, as mentioned, have to be well developed so they are not caricatures nobody can invest sympathy in. Reliance on CGI effects and big name actors alone makes for a movie that will be forgotten within a couple of years, whereas the original is more likely to endure in the minds of the public. The originals had things modern films don't, and it's because of those that they have succeeded so well in being remembered decades after their making. You can't simply cherry-pick what you think are the 'good' parts, that is, the BAM-WOW! action, and leave the meatier aspects of storytelling behind as junk. We like the original "Halloween" so much because of the story and the characters, and because the writers knew what went into making for good stories and good characters. Michael Myers is more than simply a man in a repainted William Shatner mask and overalls. He is evil on two legs, and his primary victim is three-dimensional. Freddy Krueger is scary because he is a monster before his death whose resurrection in the dreams of his current victims only unleashes the full brunt of his evil. His victims are, like Laurie Strode, believable enough that audiences can invest their sympathy. Wes Craven, taking a page from Alfred Hitchcock, created a perfect storytelling setup that started us off with a main character to invest emotional attachment only to kill her off half way through, forcing us to identify with another. It's that kind of storytelling, and that kind of unsettling of audiences, that make for good, enjoyable movies. The SFX are like icing on the cake, but if the icing only covers so much feces, audiences will reject it. The sad part in today's "remake" mania is that Hollywood thinks so little of its audiences that it can keep doing this and get away with it forever.
Monday, October 18, 2010
The Dead Matter
I saw "The Dead Matter" over the weekend at Cleveland's Capitol Theater as part of the Twelve Hours of Terror horror movie marathon. WARNING: This does contain some spoilers.
"The Dead Matter" is co-written and directed by Midnight Syndicate's Edward Douglas, and produced here in Ohio. Locations in Mansfield, Cleveland, and other locations within the Buckeye State make this a truly homemade project, and that proved to be a real treat. The film mixes a cast of screen veterans including Tom Savini, "Babylon 5's" Jason Carter, and "Lost's" Andrew Divoff with newcomers to decent enough effect, and local television personality "Big Chuck" Schodowski makes a cameo appearance as the CEO of a genetics research lab that makes diet pills, among other things.
The film opens in a German town plagued by zombies, which are apparently controlled by a vampire called Vellich, who does this with a scarab-shaped amulet comprised of a glowing purple crystal. Vampire hunter McCallister (Carter) and his sidekick, Mark (Brian Van Camp), get the amulet away from him, but are unable to kill their quarry. Vellich kills Mark, who manages to hide the amulet before the vampire can reclaim it.
Later, four friends come to the spot where Mark was killed — which, not-so-coincidentally, is the exact same place the amulet must be destroyed at — to perform a seance. Aspiring witch Gretchen, played by actress Sean Serino, wants to make contact with the spirit of her dead brother, and she has enlisted her boyfriend Mike (Tom Nagel), fellow witch Jill (C.B. Spencer), and doubting scientist Frank (Christopher Robichaud) to help her do it. They find the amulet, and inadvertently reanimate the murdered Mark, who follows Gretchen around like a puppy and becomes the object of her obsession — she thinks Mark can help her talk to the spirit of her brother, and gives her hope that he, too, can be brought back.
Before long, Vellich comes into conflict with local vampire lord Sebed (Savini), who is running a vampiric drug cartel and addicting the undead to some kind of narcotic. Both want the amulet for different reasons that really aren't made clear in the story. And eventually, McCallister returns to finish the job he started back in Germany.
The movie falls apart in several places, most notably in its choice of casting. Actress Sean Serino simply is not convincing as a bereaved sister, acting more like a happy new-age-hippy than someone consumed with guilt and grief. For someone who is supposed to be motivated by sorrow, I'm sure not feeling it from Ms. Serino. Her interactions with Zombie Mark play off like a girl and her new pet, with the running joke of zombie-stench as the reanimated body decays being worn a little thin.
The other weak point is in the story. There is no backstory given to the scarab amulet, which acts as the film's MacGuffin (the thing that drives the plot but which the audience doesn't generally care about, as it can be anything from a lighter, as in Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train", to documents, to lost childhood innocence, as was the case in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane"). It obviously controls zombies, something Serino's Gretchen discovers to her delight and the dismay of Spencer's Jill. But besides that, why is it so important? Why do the vampires want to control zombies in the first place that they're willing to kill each other to have it? Who made it and why? It's something of a minor plot point, and perhaps doesn't matter so much, but I would have liked to know, especially since the bloody thing eventually fuses itself to Gretchen's chest and possesses her with the spirit of, well, something. We're not given the luxury of knowing exactly what. And why is a tiny circle of rune-covered stones in Ohio the only location that an Egyptian-style amulet can be destroyed? I got the impression, both from watching the movie and from talking with co-writer Tony Demci (who was in attendance), that the film's creators neither knew or cared; so why should we? But *I* still cared, and I felt slightly insulted by that attitude.
Still, if you look past the glaring plot holes and regard "The Dead Matter" as the escapist fare it is, it turns out to be a fairly decent effort on the part of Douglas and Demci. That they were able to get Savini, Carter, and Divoff to be in it left me rather impressed. (Demci joked to people who asked that they held the actors' families hostage.) The production quality is also quite high for such a small-budgeted, locally produced film. It has the look and feel of something you'd see on the Sci-Fi Channel, which isn't necessarily a compliment, but in this case it is. CGI is used sparingly enough so as not to detract from the movie, and conventional makeup and simulated gore thankfully carries the bulk of the SFX load. Midnight Syndicate's music provides a soundtrack that really fits the movie, which shouldn't be surprising considering that the production was obviously to promote the band itself.
Overall, I give "The Dead Matter" a C+.
"The Dead Matter" is co-written and directed by Midnight Syndicate's Edward Douglas, and produced here in Ohio. Locations in Mansfield, Cleveland, and other locations within the Buckeye State make this a truly homemade project, and that proved to be a real treat. The film mixes a cast of screen veterans including Tom Savini, "Babylon 5's" Jason Carter, and "Lost's" Andrew Divoff with newcomers to decent enough effect, and local television personality "Big Chuck" Schodowski makes a cameo appearance as the CEO of a genetics research lab that makes diet pills, among other things.
The film opens in a German town plagued by zombies, which are apparently controlled by a vampire called Vellich, who does this with a scarab-shaped amulet comprised of a glowing purple crystal. Vampire hunter McCallister (Carter) and his sidekick, Mark (Brian Van Camp), get the amulet away from him, but are unable to kill their quarry. Vellich kills Mark, who manages to hide the amulet before the vampire can reclaim it.
Later, four friends come to the spot where Mark was killed — which, not-so-coincidentally, is the exact same place the amulet must be destroyed at — to perform a seance. Aspiring witch Gretchen, played by actress Sean Serino, wants to make contact with the spirit of her dead brother, and she has enlisted her boyfriend Mike (Tom Nagel), fellow witch Jill (C.B. Spencer), and doubting scientist Frank (Christopher Robichaud) to help her do it. They find the amulet, and inadvertently reanimate the murdered Mark, who follows Gretchen around like a puppy and becomes the object of her obsession — she thinks Mark can help her talk to the spirit of her brother, and gives her hope that he, too, can be brought back.
Before long, Vellich comes into conflict with local vampire lord Sebed (Savini), who is running a vampiric drug cartel and addicting the undead to some kind of narcotic. Both want the amulet for different reasons that really aren't made clear in the story. And eventually, McCallister returns to finish the job he started back in Germany.
The movie falls apart in several places, most notably in its choice of casting. Actress Sean Serino simply is not convincing as a bereaved sister, acting more like a happy new-age-hippy than someone consumed with guilt and grief. For someone who is supposed to be motivated by sorrow, I'm sure not feeling it from Ms. Serino. Her interactions with Zombie Mark play off like a girl and her new pet, with the running joke of zombie-stench as the reanimated body decays being worn a little thin.
The other weak point is in the story. There is no backstory given to the scarab amulet, which acts as the film's MacGuffin (the thing that drives the plot but which the audience doesn't generally care about, as it can be anything from a lighter, as in Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train", to documents, to lost childhood innocence, as was the case in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane"). It obviously controls zombies, something Serino's Gretchen discovers to her delight and the dismay of Spencer's Jill. But besides that, why is it so important? Why do the vampires want to control zombies in the first place that they're willing to kill each other to have it? Who made it and why? It's something of a minor plot point, and perhaps doesn't matter so much, but I would have liked to know, especially since the bloody thing eventually fuses itself to Gretchen's chest and possesses her with the spirit of, well, something. We're not given the luxury of knowing exactly what. And why is a tiny circle of rune-covered stones in Ohio the only location that an Egyptian-style amulet can be destroyed? I got the impression, both from watching the movie and from talking with co-writer Tony Demci (who was in attendance), that the film's creators neither knew or cared; so why should we? But *I* still cared, and I felt slightly insulted by that attitude.
Still, if you look past the glaring plot holes and regard "The Dead Matter" as the escapist fare it is, it turns out to be a fairly decent effort on the part of Douglas and Demci. That they were able to get Savini, Carter, and Divoff to be in it left me rather impressed. (Demci joked to people who asked that they held the actors' families hostage.) The production quality is also quite high for such a small-budgeted, locally produced film. It has the look and feel of something you'd see on the Sci-Fi Channel, which isn't necessarily a compliment, but in this case it is. CGI is used sparingly enough so as not to detract from the movie, and conventional makeup and simulated gore thankfully carries the bulk of the SFX load. Midnight Syndicate's music provides a soundtrack that really fits the movie, which shouldn't be surprising considering that the production was obviously to promote the band itself.
Overall, I give "The Dead Matter" a C+.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (DVD Review)
I ordered "Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet" from amazon.com, and upon its arrival I slid it into my DVD player for my first showing. I agree with most of the critiques on the review portion of the amazon.com page for the reasons given out, so this is my take on the opening scenes, why they don't work, and how they could have been improved upon. Perhaps some aspiring film-maker will read this and get some ideas for what not to do in making a slasher/horror movie.
The opening sequences are frightening enough, but they don't make much sense. The villain of the film, twelve-year-old Mary, appears at the very beginning of the movie to be incredibly disturbed and it is difficult to believe that her mother, who comes into her daughter's room to brush her hair, doesn't notice Mary's spooky catatonic behavior. If I were a parent and I found my kid acting like that, you'd better believe I'd see that something was wrong.
The next thing that happens is Mary's mother waking up to the sound of breaking glass and going to investigate, finding a trail of blood leading to the bathroom, which is streaked all over with the stuff. Mary's mom is understandably frightened and she immediately goes to check on her daughter, who for reasons never explained stabs her mother in the eye with a large kitchen knife. Then Mary proceeds to murder her father with a hatchet to the face, giving him a much wider smile than he probably would have liked for family photographs. Inexplicably, despite having had a huge knife embedded in her eye, Mary's mother is somehow still alive and has crawled down the stairs, reached the phone, and is dialing 911 to get out one last scream before Mary comes down to finish her off. Did I mention that some time between being stabbed in the eye and managing to crawl down the stairs, the knife came out?
Flash forward from 1978, when the initial murders take place, to 1989, when Mary is grown. She is confined to a mental hospital, and for reasons still not given she is huddled in her room at night stark naked. A guard, stereotypically fat and creepy, comes into her room and brutally rapes her, leaving Mary pregnant. She gives birth, and the child is "revealed" to have died. Then, again inexplicably, Mary manages to get out of her room and with her bare hands proceeds to slaughter the entire staff. She is gunned down outside by a pair of police officers who arrive on scene to find her naked and holding the torn off head of her rapist. They shoot her after she throws the head at the squad car's windshield, breaking it.
The rest of the film I won't give away, but the other reviews reveal enough about the plot without giving too much away that they are very helpful. Suffice to say that if you enjoy slasher films with huge amounts of blood and boobs, this is the one for you. The setup scenes for the film's homicidal ghost, all of which takes place before the opening credits even roll, kind of drag out but the remaining setups in which the rest of the characters are introduced make up for it by being better paced. Not too much time or information is given about these disposables, rather, just enough is given to make you give your sympathy or your dislike. Then the killing begins. Other reviews complained about the second round of character setups dragging on, but I found they weren't any slower than the opening one.
What I want to focus on are the story flaws that are rampant throughout the opening scenes. The first and most glaring I have pointed out: Mary's strangely unnoticed odd behavior. It's never really explained why her mother doesn't notice it, although it is implied by this failure to see what's going on that perhaps it is nothing new; Mary seems already to be very disturbed, and one gets the impression that her mothers already knows this. But if that's so, then why is her subsequent violent behavior such a shock?
Then we have all that blood in the bathroom. Someone who has bled that much simply isn't going to have the strength to murder two grown people no matter how unawares they are taken, especially if she's only twelve. It's suggested that Mary's menstrual cycle is somehow involved, that it has gone into overdrive making her incredibly homicidal and -- again without explanation -- giving her superhuman strength. Special effects allow the viewer the implication that it may be the result of demonic or some other form of supernatural possession, but again we are given no other hints that this is what's behind the movie's gruesome events.
Then we're supposed to believe that a woman who has had a large knife driven through her eye and into her skull, with all that damage shown, was able to survive long enough to get down the stairs (albeit half crawling, half slipping), pick up the telephone, dial 911, and manage any kind of coherent words before Daughter Dearest comes down to finish her off? I realize that in slasher films a certain amount of disbelief must be suspended, but this is a bit much.
Now, here is where things get really bizarre. It's eleven years later, and Mary is next shown huddling naked in the middle of her room in the mental hospital. A fat, ugly, creep of a guard walks by during his rounds, leers at her through the window making really creepy baby-talk, then enters the room and proceeds to rape her. If Mary is possessed of supernatural strength, as is suggested in the opening murder sequences and in the scenes following, why doesn't she have it to fight off her attacker? Between her rape and her childbirthing, Mary's doctors observe her behavior, and after she has the baby, she is informed rather coldly that her child is dead. Now, I admit that I don't know how real-life mental hospitals are staffed or how the personnel behave toward patients, but one would think that they'd show a bit more compassion toward someone who was brutally raped while in their care -- especially when the following murder scenes suggest that he was never caught much less punished.
Which leads us to the next logical question: how does Mary get out of her room? That is never shown — again, supernatural forces are implied as she pops up out of nowhere and literally twists the neck of a nurse with her bare hands before going on to kill everyone else in the building, all completely unarmed. Would that she'd been able to demonstrate that strength when her guard came into her room and raped her, otherwise we'd have been spared that bit of nonsense. Someone must have gotten a phone call to the police before being killed, but the authorities must not have taken it very seriously because only one squad car arrives on the scene. By that time Mary is already walking outside, stark naked, carrying the head of her rapist in her hands (in a crotch-covering position). The officers draw their guns on her and order her down on the ground or they'll open fire, but it's clear that isn't going to happen. She throws the head at the car's windshield, crunching it, then screams like a banshee before the two cops shoot her down. Now, this scene being in 1989 or 1990, tasers weren't in wide circulation, but one would think that when faced with an obviously unarmed naked suspect, guns would be the second thing drawn. (Nightsticks would be the first.) No attempt to take Mary alive is made. If the cops realized how violent she was that they felt the need to use lethal force as the first resort, why weren't more called out? Yes, the film is low-budget and had to make do with what it had, but still...
And this is all before the film's credits even start rolling. Flashes of newspaper headlines as those play reveal Mary's young age at the time she murdered her parents, which render the crimes all the more implausible considering her hyper-menstrual cycle is supposed to have caused profuse bleeding that would likely drop someone fully grown.
Shots of doctors' reports during the opening credits reveal that the driving force given as explanation for Mary's homicidal tendencies is Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder, which is supposed to cause violent mood swings and intense bleeding. Mary is prone to violent fits of rage during her period, which makes the apparent lack of security both before and after her rape and subsequent childbirthing so much more puzzling. Either the reports were exaggerated or we're looking at one of the most incompetent mental hospital staff in cinematic history. At least in John Carpenter's original fright fest, "Halloween," it's explained that the killer was catatonic for fifteen years and lulled the staff into complacency.
Once this setup is out of the way, the rest of the movie unfolds as typical 80s-style slasher fare, with a lot of blood, gore, and bare breast shots to titillate viewers. When the murders begin happening, it's suggested that Mary's demonic spirit manifests from time to time to murder the unwary travelers upon whom she comes across. The revelation as to the killer's identity is disappointingly not as surprising as the writers would have had us believe, and it's a bit insulting considering what was established earlier in the film. As I have written, supernatural forces are implied to be at work, which would explain a lot more if it were presented in a better fashion than was ultimately done.
If it were me writing the screenplay, I'd settle on supernatural forces as the driving force behind Mary's actions and not use the misogynistic excuse of Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder at all. It's really pointless and adds nothing to the story, merely using a natural part of female biology as a way of saying that women are psychos when Aunt Flow comes calling. I'd also not go the route of linking the killer to one of the main characters since it's been done so many times before. And I would make sure to write the "escape" scene so it's plausible.
Having said all this, I did find the movie enjoyable once I buried my 'what-the-hell' impulses. The special effects were actually good, being a combination of old school makeup and latex complemented with CGI that seems to have been done by professionals. Most CGI these days is done by sloppy amateurs who don't care much about making it look realistic, but here the emphasis was on CGI as simply an enhancing component of traditional SFX media. Clearly, the film-makers cared enough about their audiences to at least make their FX look realistic even if the story itself was lacking. The humor was done in all the right places, giving pause between moments of tension without going over the top or coming across as pretentious. And the acting was superb; horror icons Bill Moseley and Danielle Harris lend additional power to an already talented cast of lesser-known actors and actresses.
For what is stated as a first time effort, "Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet" isn't nearly as bad as it could have been, though it does fail to reach the level to which it aspired. If director Frank Sabatella, who is given writing credit with Elke Blasi, can use this as a learning experience and tighten up his storytelling, I think he'll go far in the genre. Only time will tell.
The opening sequences are frightening enough, but they don't make much sense. The villain of the film, twelve-year-old Mary, appears at the very beginning of the movie to be incredibly disturbed and it is difficult to believe that her mother, who comes into her daughter's room to brush her hair, doesn't notice Mary's spooky catatonic behavior. If I were a parent and I found my kid acting like that, you'd better believe I'd see that something was wrong.
The next thing that happens is Mary's mother waking up to the sound of breaking glass and going to investigate, finding a trail of blood leading to the bathroom, which is streaked all over with the stuff. Mary's mom is understandably frightened and she immediately goes to check on her daughter, who for reasons never explained stabs her mother in the eye with a large kitchen knife. Then Mary proceeds to murder her father with a hatchet to the face, giving him a much wider smile than he probably would have liked for family photographs. Inexplicably, despite having had a huge knife embedded in her eye, Mary's mother is somehow still alive and has crawled down the stairs, reached the phone, and is dialing 911 to get out one last scream before Mary comes down to finish her off. Did I mention that some time between being stabbed in the eye and managing to crawl down the stairs, the knife came out?
Flash forward from 1978, when the initial murders take place, to 1989, when Mary is grown. She is confined to a mental hospital, and for reasons still not given she is huddled in her room at night stark naked. A guard, stereotypically fat and creepy, comes into her room and brutally rapes her, leaving Mary pregnant. She gives birth, and the child is "revealed" to have died. Then, again inexplicably, Mary manages to get out of her room and with her bare hands proceeds to slaughter the entire staff. She is gunned down outside by a pair of police officers who arrive on scene to find her naked and holding the torn off head of her rapist. They shoot her after she throws the head at the squad car's windshield, breaking it.
The rest of the film I won't give away, but the other reviews reveal enough about the plot without giving too much away that they are very helpful. Suffice to say that if you enjoy slasher films with huge amounts of blood and boobs, this is the one for you. The setup scenes for the film's homicidal ghost, all of which takes place before the opening credits even roll, kind of drag out but the remaining setups in which the rest of the characters are introduced make up for it by being better paced. Not too much time or information is given about these disposables, rather, just enough is given to make you give your sympathy or your dislike. Then the killing begins. Other reviews complained about the second round of character setups dragging on, but I found they weren't any slower than the opening one.
What I want to focus on are the story flaws that are rampant throughout the opening scenes. The first and most glaring I have pointed out: Mary's strangely unnoticed odd behavior. It's never really explained why her mother doesn't notice it, although it is implied by this failure to see what's going on that perhaps it is nothing new; Mary seems already to be very disturbed, and one gets the impression that her mothers already knows this. But if that's so, then why is her subsequent violent behavior such a shock?
Then we have all that blood in the bathroom. Someone who has bled that much simply isn't going to have the strength to murder two grown people no matter how unawares they are taken, especially if she's only twelve. It's suggested that Mary's menstrual cycle is somehow involved, that it has gone into overdrive making her incredibly homicidal and -- again without explanation -- giving her superhuman strength. Special effects allow the viewer the implication that it may be the result of demonic or some other form of supernatural possession, but again we are given no other hints that this is what's behind the movie's gruesome events.
Then we're supposed to believe that a woman who has had a large knife driven through her eye and into her skull, with all that damage shown, was able to survive long enough to get down the stairs (albeit half crawling, half slipping), pick up the telephone, dial 911, and manage any kind of coherent words before Daughter Dearest comes down to finish her off? I realize that in slasher films a certain amount of disbelief must be suspended, but this is a bit much.
Now, here is where things get really bizarre. It's eleven years later, and Mary is next shown huddling naked in the middle of her room in the mental hospital. A fat, ugly, creep of a guard walks by during his rounds, leers at her through the window making really creepy baby-talk, then enters the room and proceeds to rape her. If Mary is possessed of supernatural strength, as is suggested in the opening murder sequences and in the scenes following, why doesn't she have it to fight off her attacker? Between her rape and her childbirthing, Mary's doctors observe her behavior, and after she has the baby, she is informed rather coldly that her child is dead. Now, I admit that I don't know how real-life mental hospitals are staffed or how the personnel behave toward patients, but one would think that they'd show a bit more compassion toward someone who was brutally raped while in their care -- especially when the following murder scenes suggest that he was never caught much less punished.
Which leads us to the next logical question: how does Mary get out of her room? That is never shown — again, supernatural forces are implied as she pops up out of nowhere and literally twists the neck of a nurse with her bare hands before going on to kill everyone else in the building, all completely unarmed. Would that she'd been able to demonstrate that strength when her guard came into her room and raped her, otherwise we'd have been spared that bit of nonsense. Someone must have gotten a phone call to the police before being killed, but the authorities must not have taken it very seriously because only one squad car arrives on the scene. By that time Mary is already walking outside, stark naked, carrying the head of her rapist in her hands (in a crotch-covering position). The officers draw their guns on her and order her down on the ground or they'll open fire, but it's clear that isn't going to happen. She throws the head at the car's windshield, crunching it, then screams like a banshee before the two cops shoot her down. Now, this scene being in 1989 or 1990, tasers weren't in wide circulation, but one would think that when faced with an obviously unarmed naked suspect, guns would be the second thing drawn. (Nightsticks would be the first.) No attempt to take Mary alive is made. If the cops realized how violent she was that they felt the need to use lethal force as the first resort, why weren't more called out? Yes, the film is low-budget and had to make do with what it had, but still...
And this is all before the film's credits even start rolling. Flashes of newspaper headlines as those play reveal Mary's young age at the time she murdered her parents, which render the crimes all the more implausible considering her hyper-menstrual cycle is supposed to have caused profuse bleeding that would likely drop someone fully grown.
Shots of doctors' reports during the opening credits reveal that the driving force given as explanation for Mary's homicidal tendencies is Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder, which is supposed to cause violent mood swings and intense bleeding. Mary is prone to violent fits of rage during her period, which makes the apparent lack of security both before and after her rape and subsequent childbirthing so much more puzzling. Either the reports were exaggerated or we're looking at one of the most incompetent mental hospital staff in cinematic history. At least in John Carpenter's original fright fest, "Halloween," it's explained that the killer was catatonic for fifteen years and lulled the staff into complacency.
Once this setup is out of the way, the rest of the movie unfolds as typical 80s-style slasher fare, with a lot of blood, gore, and bare breast shots to titillate viewers. When the murders begin happening, it's suggested that Mary's demonic spirit manifests from time to time to murder the unwary travelers upon whom she comes across. The revelation as to the killer's identity is disappointingly not as surprising as the writers would have had us believe, and it's a bit insulting considering what was established earlier in the film. As I have written, supernatural forces are implied to be at work, which would explain a lot more if it were presented in a better fashion than was ultimately done.
If it were me writing the screenplay, I'd settle on supernatural forces as the driving force behind Mary's actions and not use the misogynistic excuse of Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder at all. It's really pointless and adds nothing to the story, merely using a natural part of female biology as a way of saying that women are psychos when Aunt Flow comes calling. I'd also not go the route of linking the killer to one of the main characters since it's been done so many times before. And I would make sure to write the "escape" scene so it's plausible.
Having said all this, I did find the movie enjoyable once I buried my 'what-the-hell' impulses. The special effects were actually good, being a combination of old school makeup and latex complemented with CGI that seems to have been done by professionals. Most CGI these days is done by sloppy amateurs who don't care much about making it look realistic, but here the emphasis was on CGI as simply an enhancing component of traditional SFX media. Clearly, the film-makers cared enough about their audiences to at least make their FX look realistic even if the story itself was lacking. The humor was done in all the right places, giving pause between moments of tension without going over the top or coming across as pretentious. And the acting was superb; horror icons Bill Moseley and Danielle Harris lend additional power to an already talented cast of lesser-known actors and actresses.
For what is stated as a first time effort, "Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet" isn't nearly as bad as it could have been, though it does fail to reach the level to which it aspired. If director Frank Sabatella, who is given writing credit with Elke Blasi, can use this as a learning experience and tighten up his storytelling, I think he'll go far in the genre. Only time will tell.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Rob Zombie's Halloween - Director's Cut DVD
I purchased a copy of the director's cut of Rob Zombie's Halloween, and was able to finally sit down and watch it (I reviewed the theatrical release here). I have to say that while I enjoyed the version released to movie theaters, I am a little less pleased with the extended DVD edition. For the most part, the additions are simply little bits of footage focusing on young Michael Myers' continuing mental deterioration—viewed from the lens of Doctor Loomis (played by McDowell) as he records his patient. These snippets I could take or leave, because they really don't add anything to the film.
The most significant difference is the scene in which Michael Myers escapes from Smith's Grove Sanitarium. In the theatrical release, the killer is being transferred to some undisclosed location—at night—whereupon he suddenly breaks his chains and murders the guards. Zombie apparently filmed this scene because of the graphic nature of the original escape sequence, in which a couple of orderlies remove a female patient from her cell, take her to Myers' room, and proceed to rape her, thus allowing the movie's primary antagonist the opening he needs to walk out of his cell. The scene makes a bit more sense, in terms of storytelling, than the inexplicable nighttime transfer, but it's easy to see why the producers wanted it changed. Rob Zombie's rape scenes are gruesome, and very hard to watch.
In my opinion the extended version of Halloween isn't much of an improvement over the theatrical release, if at all. I think if there were any additions to be made, it should have been to the second half, where character development suffered the most. As I pointed out in my initial review, the characters of Annie, Linda, and most especially Laurie Strode, are reduced from their original and more fleshed out personalities in John Carpenter's horror masterpiece to stereotypical, throwaway slasher film dummies with whom the audience cannot empathize. Granted, Zombie does give a little bit more likability to the character of Linda, who in Carpenter's classic was no more than a sex-obsessed bimbo. But all the qualities that made Laurie a character audiences could make an emotional investment in are lost.
The extras, which are contained on a second disc, provide deleted scenes as well as the obligatory featurettes. It's interesting to see what footage failed to make the final cut, and easy to see why it did. One deleted scene shows Michael Myers' parole hearing, which doesn't even include McDowell's character, making it unnecessary. Given the killer's obviously violent history in this movie, as opposed to the original in which it is suggested that Myers just sat in a room and did nothing (thus lulling the guards at Smith's Grove into a false sense of security), there's no reason to think that even after fifteen years this homicidal maniac could be trusted to be released to a minimum security facility.
Other extras include an alternate ending, which again Zombie was wise not to place in the final cut, an alternate scene of Linda's boyfriend meeting his end at Myers' hands. It's interesting to see just how different a film from the original the director of House of 1,000 Corpses might have made, had these scenes been used.
It's a real shame that the longer cut of Halloween turned out to be so mediocre, because I actually thought the theatrical release was very decent despite other fans' mixed opinions before and after it hit theaters. I give this DVD a 'C+'.
The most significant difference is the scene in which Michael Myers escapes from Smith's Grove Sanitarium. In the theatrical release, the killer is being transferred to some undisclosed location—at night—whereupon he suddenly breaks his chains and murders the guards. Zombie apparently filmed this scene because of the graphic nature of the original escape sequence, in which a couple of orderlies remove a female patient from her cell, take her to Myers' room, and proceed to rape her, thus allowing the movie's primary antagonist the opening he needs to walk out of his cell. The scene makes a bit more sense, in terms of storytelling, than the inexplicable nighttime transfer, but it's easy to see why the producers wanted it changed. Rob Zombie's rape scenes are gruesome, and very hard to watch.
In my opinion the extended version of Halloween isn't much of an improvement over the theatrical release, if at all. I think if there were any additions to be made, it should have been to the second half, where character development suffered the most. As I pointed out in my initial review, the characters of Annie, Linda, and most especially Laurie Strode, are reduced from their original and more fleshed out personalities in John Carpenter's horror masterpiece to stereotypical, throwaway slasher film dummies with whom the audience cannot empathize. Granted, Zombie does give a little bit more likability to the character of Linda, who in Carpenter's classic was no more than a sex-obsessed bimbo. But all the qualities that made Laurie a character audiences could make an emotional investment in are lost.The extras, which are contained on a second disc, provide deleted scenes as well as the obligatory featurettes. It's interesting to see what footage failed to make the final cut, and easy to see why it did. One deleted scene shows Michael Myers' parole hearing, which doesn't even include McDowell's character, making it unnecessary. Given the killer's obviously violent history in this movie, as opposed to the original in which it is suggested that Myers just sat in a room and did nothing (thus lulling the guards at Smith's Grove into a false sense of security), there's no reason to think that even after fifteen years this homicidal maniac could be trusted to be released to a minimum security facility.
Other extras include an alternate ending, which again Zombie was wise not to place in the final cut, an alternate scene of Linda's boyfriend meeting his end at Myers' hands. It's interesting to see just how different a film from the original the director of House of 1,000 Corpses might have made, had these scenes been used.
It's a real shame that the longer cut of Halloween turned out to be so mediocre, because I actually thought the theatrical release was very decent despite other fans' mixed opinions before and after it hit theaters. I give this DVD a 'C+'.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Corridors of Blood
Year of Release: 1958
Director: Robert Day
Stars: Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Betta St, John, Finlay Currie, Adrienne Corri, Francis De Wolff
I had the opportunity to sit down and watch the American release of this gem of a film on DVD New year's Eve, and I have to say the title is very misleading. It implies that the film is a horror movie, and it's really a thriller and drama rolled into one. Boris Karloff plays Doctor Thomas Bolton, a doctor in the early 1840s looking for a way to anesthetize patients so that they may avoid feeling the pain of 19th Century surgery.
After failing to produce a working anesthetic in the form of nitrous oxide (laughing) gas, he turns to an opium-based vapor he thinks will do the trick. The only problem is, he insists on testing his formula out on himself, resulting in his inevitable addiction. As he deteriorates further into the hell of opium dependence, his ordinarily steady hands begin to falter, and he ends up suspended from practice.
Bolton finds himself roped into becoming the dupe of a gang of murderers who suffocate their drunken victims at the local tavern, and then sell the bodies to the local medical university. But they need a doctor's signature to confirm that the victims died of other, mundane causes. This is where Bolton's addiction comes in handy, because they realize he will now willingly go along with their plans so he can obtain the chemical components he requires to continue his experiments.
I have to say that this film surprised me. Karloff evokes sympathy as a doctor driven by empathy for his suffering patients to find a way to ease the pain of surgery. In the 1840s, anesthesia was not yet in common use, and patients had to be strapped down and held in place as the doctors cut into their bodies. When Bolton meets a man whose infected leg he'd had to cut off, sitting in shock at the tavern, his horror at realizing that the poor fellow had been unceremoniously dumped out onto the street in that state of shock can almost be felt through the screen. It is no surprise, then, that Bolton chooses to experiment on himself rather than put one of his patients through any risk of injury or death through his experimentations. It is this very empathy, however, that leads to Bolton's opium addiction. Wandering the streets in a stupor is how he comes to find his way to the tavern, to be taken advantage of by the gang of murderers.
Christopher Lee gives a creepy supporting performance as murdering cutthroat Resurrection Joe, who does the dirty work of killing for his co-conspirators: the tavern owner and his wife. His high-born accent doesn't quite convince us that his character is a low-born cockney thug, however, but Lee being who he is manages to make it work -- evoking a seedy-looking killer who is clearly very intelligent despite his appearance.
Another aspect of the movie cannot help but be viewed as political commentary on 19th Century health care, for Bolton's horror at finding the amputee's catatonic form at the tavern is driven as much by the realization that the hospital dumped the poor wretch on the street after sawing off his leg, as it is by the failure to properly medicate him. Considering the year in which this film was released, and given Michael Moore's excellent documentary revelations in his movie SiCKO, I got the distinct feeling that the story was meant on some level to help promote the then-young National Health Service in some fashion. Maybe I'm just reading more into the movie than is really there, but that's my theory and I'm sticking with it.
All in all, Corridors of Blood works because of its tight direction and solid storytelling. Not that there aren't some flaws; the romance between Bolton's son and his niece -- who works as the elder doctor's house maid, doesn't seem to be all that necessary to the plot given that it isn't developed. And a running subplot involving Joe's attempt to force himself upon a tavern girl is similarly included to strip all possible sympathy for Lee's character when he finally gets his, but is ultimately dropped without further development. One wonders why the writers bothered with these subplots at all. Nevertheless, the final product is an enjoyable thriller worth watching.
Finishing up, I should note that the American DVD version contains omitted extended scenes deemed too violent for Hollywood's censors at the time, along with scans of letters from the board explaining the cuts. The sequences' exclusion really doesn't hurt the film, but it's nice to see what was left out (only a couple of minutes' worth) as well as the thinking that went into the censors' decision.
Director: Robert Day
Stars: Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Betta St, John, Finlay Currie, Adrienne Corri, Francis De Wolff
I had the opportunity to sit down and watch the American release of this gem of a film on DVD New year's Eve, and I have to say the title is very misleading. It implies that the film is a horror movie, and it's really a thriller and drama rolled into one. Boris Karloff plays Doctor Thomas Bolton, a doctor in the early 1840s looking for a way to anesthetize patients so that they may avoid feeling the pain of 19th Century surgery.
After failing to produce a working anesthetic in the form of nitrous oxide (laughing) gas, he turns to an opium-based vapor he thinks will do the trick. The only problem is, he insists on testing his formula out on himself, resulting in his inevitable addiction. As he deteriorates further into the hell of opium dependence, his ordinarily steady hands begin to falter, and he ends up suspended from practice.
Bolton finds himself roped into becoming the dupe of a gang of murderers who suffocate their drunken victims at the local tavern, and then sell the bodies to the local medical university. But they need a doctor's signature to confirm that the victims died of other, mundane causes. This is where Bolton's addiction comes in handy, because they realize he will now willingly go along with their plans so he can obtain the chemical components he requires to continue his experiments.
I have to say that this film surprised me. Karloff evokes sympathy as a doctor driven by empathy for his suffering patients to find a way to ease the pain of surgery. In the 1840s, anesthesia was not yet in common use, and patients had to be strapped down and held in place as the doctors cut into their bodies. When Bolton meets a man whose infected leg he'd had to cut off, sitting in shock at the tavern, his horror at realizing that the poor fellow had been unceremoniously dumped out onto the street in that state of shock can almost be felt through the screen. It is no surprise, then, that Bolton chooses to experiment on himself rather than put one of his patients through any risk of injury or death through his experimentations. It is this very empathy, however, that leads to Bolton's opium addiction. Wandering the streets in a stupor is how he comes to find his way to the tavern, to be taken advantage of by the gang of murderers.
Christopher Lee gives a creepy supporting performance as murdering cutthroat Resurrection Joe, who does the dirty work of killing for his co-conspirators: the tavern owner and his wife. His high-born accent doesn't quite convince us that his character is a low-born cockney thug, however, but Lee being who he is manages to make it work -- evoking a seedy-looking killer who is clearly very intelligent despite his appearance.
Another aspect of the movie cannot help but be viewed as political commentary on 19th Century health care, for Bolton's horror at finding the amputee's catatonic form at the tavern is driven as much by the realization that the hospital dumped the poor wretch on the street after sawing off his leg, as it is by the failure to properly medicate him. Considering the year in which this film was released, and given Michael Moore's excellent documentary revelations in his movie SiCKO, I got the distinct feeling that the story was meant on some level to help promote the then-young National Health Service in some fashion. Maybe I'm just reading more into the movie than is really there, but that's my theory and I'm sticking with it.
All in all, Corridors of Blood works because of its tight direction and solid storytelling. Not that there aren't some flaws; the romance between Bolton's son and his niece -- who works as the elder doctor's house maid, doesn't seem to be all that necessary to the plot given that it isn't developed. And a running subplot involving Joe's attempt to force himself upon a tavern girl is similarly included to strip all possible sympathy for Lee's character when he finally gets his, but is ultimately dropped without further development. One wonders why the writers bothered with these subplots at all. Nevertheless, the final product is an enjoyable thriller worth watching.
Finishing up, I should note that the American DVD version contains omitted extended scenes deemed too violent for Hollywood's censors at the time, along with scans of letters from the board explaining the cuts. The sequences' exclusion really doesn't hurt the film, but it's nice to see what was left out (only a couple of minutes' worth) as well as the thinking that went into the censors' decision.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Lady Killer
Year: 1933
Stars: James Cagney, Mae Clark, Margaret Lindsay, Douglas Dumbrille
Director: Roy Del Ruth
I had occasion to view this movie early in the month, and I have to say it was a nice bit of Depression-era cinematic fare. James Cagney plays the part of a small time hustler fired from his job as a movie theater usher who finds himself rising to the top of a ring of burglars, only to be betrayed and thrown into a movie career. Trouble brews when his old crew shows up looking for a piece of the pie.
Cagney was obviously channeling his character from Public Enemy, but his comedic abilities also shine through. In one scene with Margaret Lindsay, after the encounter at Quigley's apartment with Mae Clark, Cagney delights in tormenting his leading lady by getting a little too far into character via the consuming of copious amounts of garlic. Needless to say, Lindsay makes sure her co-star knows his games are all wet. The movie works best for the chemistry shared between James Cagney and Margaret Lindsey, even if some of the finer story details are somewhat dated and lacking.
And the story does, admittedly, lack in some areas -- in particular with the development of Dan Quigley. He's quick, and luck seems to be kind to him, but it's obvious he isn't bright enough to avoid getting into trouble in the first place. He's hardly sophisticated enough to charm a famous actress like Lois Underwood, but he manages to do it anyway. We seem to know why Myra Gale falls for him; she's using him on Spade Maddock's orders, and her love doesn't hold up very well since she allows Maddock to convince her to abandon the hero. But Underwood's attraction to the unsophisticated Quigley makes less sense. Then again, considering how easily he fools his director into giving him bigger roles by penning fan letters en masse, maybe it does. One also might wonder why the police are able to link Quigley to Maddock's gang of hustlers-turned-burglars-turned-murderers, but not have enough to prosecute him for his involvement.
But these are things not meant to be dwelt upon, since the movie is clearly more comedy than gangster film. I recommend this film for Cagney fans looking for something light-hearted.
Stars: James Cagney, Mae Clark, Margaret Lindsay, Douglas Dumbrille
Director: Roy Del Ruth
I had occasion to view this movie early in the month, and I have to say it was a nice bit of Depression-era cinematic fare. James Cagney plays the part of a small time hustler fired from his job as a movie theater usher who finds himself rising to the top of a ring of burglars, only to be betrayed and thrown into a movie career. Trouble brews when his old crew shows up looking for a piece of the pie.
Ironically enough, the title of The Lady Killer does not involve killing any ladies, instead using the term to describe Cagney's success in wooing the ladies. Small timer Dan Quigley (Cagney) is introduced to the audience as a movie house usher who is continually being chewed out by the boss for gambling on the job and other assorted displays of slacking off. When he insults a particularly rude moviegoer who refuses to leave her dog outside the theater, he finds himself unemployed and hustling the local club scene.This movie was a nice little treat. This was relatively early in James Cagney's movie career. It's also not the first pairing of Cagney and Mae Clark; starring together in 1931's Public Enemy, Cagney turned heads in a scene in which he shoved a grapefruit in his co-star's face. It was quite shocking for its time, particularly for the character's cold disrespect for a lady. Capitalizing on the hype that generated, the duo's director in Lady Killer decided to up the ante by having Cagney drag Clark by her hair. (For screen captures, see here.) The film manages to balance light-hearted comedy with a bit of suspense, which under another cast and crew might not have worked. The story succeeds because it knows when and when not to take itself seriously.
But Quigley isn't quite as bright as he likes to think he is, because he falls victim to a scam perpetuated by Myra Gale (Mae Clark) and her band of poker hustlers; she pretends to leave her purse behind, he follows her back to her place to return it -- and perhaps gain a reward, be it monetary or romantic. But then a man (Douglas Dumbrille) comes out from behind a sliding door to introduce himself as Myra's brother-in-law Spade Maddock. He's been playing poker with his friends, and Quigley is invited to join in. Naturally, as this is actually a hustle, he loses his shirt. Maddock and Gale are really lovers, though the former has no qualms about using the latter as romantic bait to keep our hero on a short leash, so the strength of their relationship doesn't go beyond mere convenience.
But you can't put one over on Dan Quigley and get away with it! because as he leaves he is greeted by another would-be victim, and after that it's no more Mr. Nice Guy. Threatening to expose the gang, he offers to join them with the promise that he'll take them far. They agree, and Quigley makes good on his promise. He leads his gang to proprietorship in a swinging club, and before long they get the idea of insinuating themselves into the burglary racket by staging a car accident to get him into the home of a wealthy patron. Scoping the place as he waits for his gang to pick him up (in the guise of an ambulance crew), it isn't long before the dough is rolling in. But Quigley isn't happy with this arrangement; it's only a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt or killed, and he won't go down for the crime once that happens. His concerns prove well founded, when a heist goes wrong and results in murder.
The chase is on. The club is raided, and the gang is forced to go on the run. Quigley and Gale make it as far as California, but the hero is nabbed by the police on a charge of larceny. Maddock convinces Gale to run away with the bail money Quigley asks his girlfriend to put up, and they leave him to the mercy of the justice system. But luck is ever kind to Dan Quigley; the larceny charge doesn't stick and the cops allow him to stay in town -- provided he gets a job and keeps his nose clean. The latter proves a lot easier than the former, and Quigley almost misses out on an opportunity when he is spotted by a pair of movie scouts. Given a job playing tough guy bit roles in movies, our hero slowly but surely begins to adjust to his new lifestyle. But as always, it isn't enough. Work is grueling, and the pay isn't much. But fortune, as I said, is ever smiling upon him. Plopping down on a random couch to rest his sore body, Quigley meets the star of the latest picture he's working on, and the sparks start to fly. This is where the lovely Margaret Lindsay enters the show, as actress Lois Underwood who falls for the dubious hero.
Quigley seizes upon an idea to make his star rise by sending himself increasingly numerous fan letters, and it isn't long before he's at the top of the cinematic heap. He's got it all now: money, fame, and the love of a beautiful woman. What can go wrong? Um, probably Myra Gale turning up in his bedroom, leading to a misunderstanding on Lois Underwood's part that results in her storming out of the apartment and -- presumably -- out of Dan Quigley's romantic life. Furious, he immediately proceeds to drag his former girlfriend out of the apartment by her hair. This has her fuming, and Gale isn't alone, either; she has Maddock and the rest of the gang with her and they've been keeping tabs on their old patsy. Jealous of his success and angry with being cut out of the loop, they demand money. Quigley is in no mood to fight them, or risk his new life of happiness, so he cuts them a check for ten thousand dollars on the condition that they leave town for good. Oh, if only it could end thusly!
Gale, Maddock and the gang resume their robbery of the rich, this time in Hollywood, posing as tourists to get into their victims' homes. They also decide to throw a monkey wrench into Quigley's life. When the gang burgles Lois's house, he goes to get the jewelry back but ends up being framed for the theft when the police arrive at the wrong moment. That's the last straw for our hero, and he agrees to turn state's evidence in return for leniency. It doesn't hurt that despite the studio distancing itself from its discredited star, Underwood stands by her man. This is where the action really begins to pick up, because upon learning that Quigley is ready to snitch Maddock decides it's time to get rid of his old patsy for good. Posting the hero's bail from the money Quigley had given the gang, they intend to use Myra as bait to lure him out to the countryside, where Dan Quigley is to give his final performance.
But Myra hasn't forgotten her feelings for her old, real flame, and she warns Quigley about the hit during the drive out. Our hero then reveals his own plan; before leaving the station, he warned the police what was happening, and the cops are following the bad guys. The movie ends in a shoot out, with Myra helping Dan catch the bad guys. Our boy Quigley gets his name cleared, a new wife in the arms of Lois Underwood, and Myra gets a reduced sentenced for helping foil her former comrades.
Cagney was obviously channeling his character from Public Enemy, but his comedic abilities also shine through. In one scene with Margaret Lindsay, after the encounter at Quigley's apartment with Mae Clark, Cagney delights in tormenting his leading lady by getting a little too far into character via the consuming of copious amounts of garlic. Needless to say, Lindsay makes sure her co-star knows his games are all wet. The movie works best for the chemistry shared between James Cagney and Margaret Lindsey, even if some of the finer story details are somewhat dated and lacking.
And the story does, admittedly, lack in some areas -- in particular with the development of Dan Quigley. He's quick, and luck seems to be kind to him, but it's obvious he isn't bright enough to avoid getting into trouble in the first place. He's hardly sophisticated enough to charm a famous actress like Lois Underwood, but he manages to do it anyway. We seem to know why Myra Gale falls for him; she's using him on Spade Maddock's orders, and her love doesn't hold up very well since she allows Maddock to convince her to abandon the hero. But Underwood's attraction to the unsophisticated Quigley makes less sense. Then again, considering how easily he fools his director into giving him bigger roles by penning fan letters en masse, maybe it does. One also might wonder why the police are able to link Quigley to Maddock's gang of hustlers-turned-burglars-turned-murderers, but not have enough to prosecute him for his involvement.
But these are things not meant to be dwelt upon, since the movie is clearly more comedy than gangster film. I recommend this film for Cagney fans looking for something light-hearted.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Godzilla vs King Ghidorah
It sucks. 'Nuff said.
Oh, wait, you want more than that? Okay, it really sucks. What's that? You want more? Dammit, since you insist...
I had the opportunity to see this stinker again this past weekend, during a Kaiju marathon at a friend's house that lasted from about 9:00 Friday evening to around 3:00 Sunday morning (with a couple of hours' break to let the projector's bulb cool down). I was reminded why this one was one of the worst Gojira films ever shat out by Toho Studios.
Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of the Godzilla movies and as far as I'm concerned Toho has produced the best Japanese Kaiju (big battle) films. But the studio has produced some real bombs in its time, and 1992's Godzilla vs King Ghidorah was one of them.
To recap: in 1989's Godzilla vs Biollante, the king of the monsters fought a creature that had been genetically engineered from DNA derived from a rose bush, a human girl, and cells from Godzilla. In the film, Big G was infected with specially-created bacteria that break down nuclear radiation -- an attempt to generate a safe way to quickly dispose of nuclear waste and clean up accident sites from radioactive contamination. As that film closes, Godzilla lumbers into the sea to hibernate so his body can recover from the bacterial infection.
Godzilla vs King Ghidorah opens with a submarine closing in on a very battered and submerged Ghidorah, which has apparently been lying at the bottom of the ocean for centuries following its last battle with Godzilla. In 1992, Big G is still slumbering at the bottom of the Pacific; the bacteria have rendered him unable to leave the relatively cool depths, because if he leaves any rise in his body temperature will reactivate the germs and continue to drain the nuclear energy that helps sustain him. Terasawa, a science fiction writer, wants to write non-fiction stories and decides to research a dinosaur that was allegedly observed during WWII on an island in the Pacific. It is his theory that this dinosaur was bombarded with radiation ten years later and as a result became one of the Godzillas that went on to attack Japan in 1954 and 1955. (The creature from 1954 was destroyed by Dr. Serizawa's oxygen destroyer and the beast in 1955's Godzilla Raids Again and all sequels until Godzilla 1984 is presented as a separate monster of the same species, though most films from the 1980s onward ignore all but the original '54 movie. Don't you just "love" Japanese writers' devotion to continuity?)
Meanwhile a spaceship has been spotted flying around the skies of Japan, eventually landing in Tokyo. Soon thereafter a hologram of the three human crew members -- Wilson, Grenchiko and a Japanese woman, Emmy -- appears. Introducing themselves as having come from the early 23rd Century, they bring a dire warning: because of Japan's reckless use of nuclear energy, Godzilla will soon appear and ultimately destroy the country. Emmy shows the book that Terasawa will go on to write as evidence that the writer's theory was correct. The trio from the future propose traveling back in time to remove the dinosaur that would become Godzilla from history by relocating it out of the path of the atomic bomb test that destroyed its island habitat. Teraswa, his friend and Godzilla-research collaborator Professor Mazaki, and psychic Miki Saegusa (Odaka Megumi, reprising her role from Godzilla vs Biollante, is the first actress in a G-series to play the same role throughout multiple films) are recruited to assist the "Futurians" in their mission.
Using a smaller time craft, four humans -- Emmy, Terasawa, Miki and Mazaki, along with an android named M-11 -- travel back to 1944 to Lagos Island, where the atomic bomb that created Godzilla was tested in 1954. As they try to avoid meeting the Japanese soldiers who also feature in the 1992 portion of the movie (not even bothering to avoid being seen by American forces), the Godzillasaurus attacks G.I.s who have a much smaller Japanese garrison at their mercy. They manage to seriously wound the animal, which is huge even for whatever species the future Godzilla is supposed to be, but not before it decimates the entire land contingent of American soldiers. The naval forces depart, figuring that the beast is sure to finish off any remaining humans on the island and that no one would believe them if they go back with stories of a massive dinosaur. Yeah, I know, it's ridiculous -- but then, so is the "story" in this piece of cinematic refuse.
Anyway, the Futurians teleport the wounded dinosaur to the ocean floor once the remaining Japanese soldiers have departed. Before leaving for 1992, Emmy shoos three bat-like "Dorats" out of the time ship, leaving the tiny creatures stranded in 1944. Why she does this is never explained, though the clearly too-drunk-to-care scriptwriters obviously used this as the set up for introducing "King" Ghidorah once the humans and M-11 have returned to the present.
And this is where the continuity problems really begin. Returning to 1992, Godzilla appears to have been erased from history. I say appears, because he really hasn't; Terasawa's publisher is still excited about this "non-fiction" piece the writer has proposed, which is odd because if there were no Godzilla to appear in 1954 there would be no reason for him to pen a book exploring the monster's origins, would there? That's what we who speculate about time travel's effects call a paradox, and it's a pretty huge one for the alleged story in Godzilla vs King Ghidorah. Logically, there should be no proposal for Terasawa to pitch. Yet it remains in the film anyway.
But that's not the worst of the movie's problems, and or the "story's". Those three adorable little Dorats got hit with the atomic blast meant for Godzilla, merging them into an enormous monster -- Ghidorah, who between his last appearance in a Toho film and this one somehow managed to get himself declared king. King of what, we never find out. But considering the major league ass-whupping he receives later in the film we know it sure as hell isn't of any monsters.
But I digress. Realizing they've been tricked by the Futurians into replacing Godzilla with an even bigger threat, Terasawa, Miki and Mazaki are horrified to discover that the dinosaur never had posed a threat to Japan, and that their country in the original time line would have gone on to become the world's sole superpower of the 23rd Century. The Futurians, who admitted earlier to having stolen the time ship and its smaller shuttle, came back to make sure Japan wouldn't come to dominate the globe. Why Emmy, who joins up with the three 20th Century comrades, ever agreed to such a thing is never explained, but she clearly regrets it and now decides to help straighten things out.
Meanwhile, the Japanese government has decided that King Ghidorah is too powerful a monster to handle and their plan is to send a nuclear submarine from Shindo Heavy Industry (a corporation headed by the commander of the Japanese forces from the Lagos battle in 1944, who went on to found his financial empire on dino-driven wealth in the original time line) to the site where the dinosaur was transported to recreate Godzilla. Which is an odd thing, because how can you "re"-create something that was never created in the first place? Again, continuity and logic cannot restrain this movie. But when the submarine arrives, it is destroyed by a massive Godzilla, which had apparently already received a huge dose of radiation from an earlier nuclear sub wreckage. Absorbing the energy from the second vehicle, Godzilla has grown into a beast more than twice the size and mass of the original creature -- it has gained its powers from modern and more powerful nuclear weapons, and therefore is larger and stronger than ever before. From this movie until 1994's Godzilla vs Destroyah, the real King of the Monsters would stand at 100 meters tall as opposed to the 50 meters of the 1954 beast and 80 meters of the '80s version.
Wilson and Grenchiko send Ghidorah to battle Godzilla, but it isn't long before Big G bitchslaps the three-headed dragon into the ocean, blowing off its middle head and severely damaging its wing in the process. The fight is in Ghidorah's favor at first, but when Emmy and a reprogrammed M-11 destroy the computer controlling the monster it loses its senses. And, because Wilson and Grenchiko were such bad little boys, Emmy teleports them and the mothership into Godzilla's path, where he blasts them into oblivion. But now Godzilla is out of control, because unlike(?) his unaltered self is aggressive and unfriendly (like he wasn't before?!? What the fuck kind of idiots do the writers take us for!?). The monster goes on his usual rampage through Tokyo, pausing for an inexplicable farewell stare between himself and Shindo before annihilating the corporate CEO's building with him inside.
Emmy decides to return to the future to revive Ghidorah, figuring that the monster is now the only thing capable of halting Godzilla's rampage. Why she thinks this, we don't know, because that big ol' dragon wasn't exactly friendly to Japan before and one presumes that the government wouldn't be too keen on the idea. But as I've said before, logic isn't something that can hinder this sorry excuse for a story. The movie comes full circle at this point, returning to the scene at the opening to recover the miraculously still-living (but just barely) Ghidorah. Emmy returns to 1992 piloting Mecha-King Ghidorah! With M-11 now reduced to a CD-holder sharing the cockpit with her. Emmy manages to get her cyborg monster destroyed again, but not before she drops her opponent into the ocean; as the mighty beast falls, it gives one final blast of nuclear fire, leading to Ghidorah's second destruction.
Before flying off back to the future in the small time craft, which she somehow managed to hide in Ghidorah's body and which she uses to escape Ghidorah's explosion, she reveals that she is a descendant of Terasawa, who puts his arms around his female publisher in a hint that the two will go on to marry.
If I've given away the movie for you, that's intentional; I don't want you to waste your money renting this crap, much less buying a copy. The "story" is rife with continuity problems (as you'll come to learn, I am incredibly attentive to continuity in movies), and then there are the rip-offs, which are unbelievably irritating. In the 1944 portion of the film the smaller time ship flies over an American cruiser, which inexplicably doesn't bother to alert anyone or fire on it thinking it might be a Japanese craft. The sailor who spots it? His name is Spielberg. Like we couldn't see that coming a mile away, and as if we really needed that. And M-11 does the worst knock-off of the Terminator you'll ever see.
Now me, if I'd been writing the screenplay for this film I would have just decided to let the cooler waters of the Pacific allow Godzilla's established rapid-healing to factor slow and finally subdue the bacterial infection in him. And then, once that infection was eradicated, throw in the powerful nuclear submarine that both revives and enlarges the monster. If I had to add Ghidorah to the mix, I'd have used a helluva lot better excuse for bringing him in than time travelers from the future. Or if I had to introduce time travelers, I'd have made it so their attempt to alter history failed and have them leave the Dorats behind by accident. But that's just me.
And then there's the flagrant disregard for history and logic in this stinker. OK, I get that the time travelers wanted to alter their present by changing the past. But why not simply avoid going to 1992 and directly to 1944 in order to carry out their mission? What was the purpose? The closest guess I can make is that Toho obviously meant to revive the Godzilla series for the 1990s, while offering a somewhat plausible explanation for the monster's overcoming the anti-nuclear energy bacteria that crippled him in the previous film. Toho also must have wanted an excuse to make the Godzilla suit much larger in scale to the models the Kaiju actors would demolish from then on, for bigger and better-scale battle sequences. I suppose time travel might have worked as a plot device, if it had been used by competent writers who knew theories on the subject and about things like paradoxes. But Toho wasn't about to spend money better used for monster effects on writers who could actually write a half-way plausible time travel story, so we ended up with this tedious exercise in ridiculousness. That still doesn't answer the fundamental question, though: why go to 1992 at all? Apparently, Wilson and Grenchiko want to control Japan's development from the 1990s onward. But this sorry excuse for an explanation doesn't make sense, because they could just as easily have done that in the 1940s following post-war reconstruction.
But here's what really bothers me about Godzilla vs King Ghidorah: aside from the continuity errors and bad acting, there's the obvious failure on the part of the writers to create even a token plausible story -- and there's no character development whatsoever. We never really get to know why Emmy does what she does. I've only ever seen the American dubbed version, so I can only hope that some explanation was omitted in the editing and translating process. But we clearly see her deliberately shooing the little bat-like creatures from the shuttle before it departs for 1992, so she must have been in on at least part of her comrades' plan. So why is Emmy surprised to learn what became of the Dorats upon her arrival in 1992, or the motivation behind her comrades' actions? Did they lie to her about what they had intended for the Dorats? Did she think they would use Ghidorah more or less benignly, that they would somehow keep the damage and casualties to a minimum? And why did she even do any of this in the first place? Was Emmy a patriot who felt Japan had gone too far in its imperial ambitions and needed to be taken down a notch? We are never allowed inside her head to see what motivates her to help first her comrades, and then the Japanese of 1992. And the only explanation we are given is by way of a plot twist so predictable and unnecessary that I wonder why the writers even tried to surprise us by withholding this information until the end. Then again, the writers had developed some chemistry between here and Terasawa over the course of the film so maybe they figured it wouldn't do to have that as Emmy by film's end would have to return to her own time. Another thing that really bothers me is this: inexplicably, Emmy's former comrades have her repair a battle-damaged M-11 without any supervision whatsoever, apparently trusting a turncoat to fix their most powerful weapon against the humans. What the hell were these buffoons thinking? One just has to wonder how they managed to trick the Japanese of 1992 so easily, being so unbelievably dim themselves.
If you want to see the Godzilla films of the 1990s, you really ought to avoid this insipidly stupid vehicle and go with the more imaginative and plausible suggestion I offered for why Godzilla was able to return. It'll hurt your brain less.
Oh, wait, you want more than that? Okay, it really sucks. What's that? You want more? Dammit, since you insist...
I had the opportunity to see this stinker again this past weekend, during a Kaiju marathon at a friend's house that lasted from about 9:00 Friday evening to around 3:00 Sunday morning (with a couple of hours' break to let the projector's bulb cool down). I was reminded why this one was one of the worst Gojira films ever shat out by Toho Studios.
Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of the Godzilla movies and as far as I'm concerned Toho has produced the best Japanese Kaiju (big battle) films. But the studio has produced some real bombs in its time, and 1992's Godzilla vs King Ghidorah was one of them.
To recap: in 1989's Godzilla vs Biollante, the king of the monsters fought a creature that had been genetically engineered from DNA derived from a rose bush, a human girl, and cells from Godzilla. In the film, Big G was infected with specially-created bacteria that break down nuclear radiation -- an attempt to generate a safe way to quickly dispose of nuclear waste and clean up accident sites from radioactive contamination. As that film closes, Godzilla lumbers into the sea to hibernate so his body can recover from the bacterial infection.
Godzilla vs King Ghidorah opens with a submarine closing in on a very battered and submerged Ghidorah, which has apparently been lying at the bottom of the ocean for centuries following its last battle with Godzilla. In 1992, Big G is still slumbering at the bottom of the Pacific; the bacteria have rendered him unable to leave the relatively cool depths, because if he leaves any rise in his body temperature will reactivate the germs and continue to drain the nuclear energy that helps sustain him. Terasawa, a science fiction writer, wants to write non-fiction stories and decides to research a dinosaur that was allegedly observed during WWII on an island in the Pacific. It is his theory that this dinosaur was bombarded with radiation ten years later and as a result became one of the Godzillas that went on to attack Japan in 1954 and 1955. (The creature from 1954 was destroyed by Dr. Serizawa's oxygen destroyer and the beast in 1955's Godzilla Raids Again and all sequels until Godzilla 1984 is presented as a separate monster of the same species, though most films from the 1980s onward ignore all but the original '54 movie. Don't you just "love" Japanese writers' devotion to continuity?)
Meanwhile a spaceship has been spotted flying around the skies of Japan, eventually landing in Tokyo. Soon thereafter a hologram of the three human crew members -- Wilson, Grenchiko and a Japanese woman, Emmy -- appears. Introducing themselves as having come from the early 23rd Century, they bring a dire warning: because of Japan's reckless use of nuclear energy, Godzilla will soon appear and ultimately destroy the country. Emmy shows the book that Terasawa will go on to write as evidence that the writer's theory was correct. The trio from the future propose traveling back in time to remove the dinosaur that would become Godzilla from history by relocating it out of the path of the atomic bomb test that destroyed its island habitat. Teraswa, his friend and Godzilla-research collaborator Professor Mazaki, and psychic Miki Saegusa (Odaka Megumi, reprising her role from Godzilla vs Biollante, is the first actress in a G-series to play the same role throughout multiple films) are recruited to assist the "Futurians" in their mission.
Using a smaller time craft, four humans -- Emmy, Terasawa, Miki and Mazaki, along with an android named M-11 -- travel back to 1944 to Lagos Island, where the atomic bomb that created Godzilla was tested in 1954. As they try to avoid meeting the Japanese soldiers who also feature in the 1992 portion of the movie (not even bothering to avoid being seen by American forces), the Godzillasaurus attacks G.I.s who have a much smaller Japanese garrison at their mercy. They manage to seriously wound the animal, which is huge even for whatever species the future Godzilla is supposed to be, but not before it decimates the entire land contingent of American soldiers. The naval forces depart, figuring that the beast is sure to finish off any remaining humans on the island and that no one would believe them if they go back with stories of a massive dinosaur. Yeah, I know, it's ridiculous -- but then, so is the "story" in this piece of cinematic refuse.
Anyway, the Futurians teleport the wounded dinosaur to the ocean floor once the remaining Japanese soldiers have departed. Before leaving for 1992, Emmy shoos three bat-like "Dorats" out of the time ship, leaving the tiny creatures stranded in 1944. Why she does this is never explained, though the clearly too-drunk-to-care scriptwriters obviously used this as the set up for introducing "King" Ghidorah once the humans and M-11 have returned to the present.
And this is where the continuity problems really begin. Returning to 1992, Godzilla appears to have been erased from history. I say appears, because he really hasn't; Terasawa's publisher is still excited about this "non-fiction" piece the writer has proposed, which is odd because if there were no Godzilla to appear in 1954 there would be no reason for him to pen a book exploring the monster's origins, would there? That's what we who speculate about time travel's effects call a paradox, and it's a pretty huge one for the alleged story in Godzilla vs King Ghidorah. Logically, there should be no proposal for Terasawa to pitch. Yet it remains in the film anyway.
But that's not the worst of the movie's problems, and or the "story's". Those three adorable little Dorats got hit with the atomic blast meant for Godzilla, merging them into an enormous monster -- Ghidorah, who between his last appearance in a Toho film and this one somehow managed to get himself declared king. King of what, we never find out. But considering the major league ass-whupping he receives later in the film we know it sure as hell isn't of any monsters.
But I digress. Realizing they've been tricked by the Futurians into replacing Godzilla with an even bigger threat, Terasawa, Miki and Mazaki are horrified to discover that the dinosaur never had posed a threat to Japan, and that their country in the original time line would have gone on to become the world's sole superpower of the 23rd Century. The Futurians, who admitted earlier to having stolen the time ship and its smaller shuttle, came back to make sure Japan wouldn't come to dominate the globe. Why Emmy, who joins up with the three 20th Century comrades, ever agreed to such a thing is never explained, but she clearly regrets it and now decides to help straighten things out.
Meanwhile, the Japanese government has decided that King Ghidorah is too powerful a monster to handle and their plan is to send a nuclear submarine from Shindo Heavy Industry (a corporation headed by the commander of the Japanese forces from the Lagos battle in 1944, who went on to found his financial empire on dino-driven wealth in the original time line) to the site where the dinosaur was transported to recreate Godzilla. Which is an odd thing, because how can you "re"-create something that was never created in the first place? Again, continuity and logic cannot restrain this movie. But when the submarine arrives, it is destroyed by a massive Godzilla, which had apparently already received a huge dose of radiation from an earlier nuclear sub wreckage. Absorbing the energy from the second vehicle, Godzilla has grown into a beast more than twice the size and mass of the original creature -- it has gained its powers from modern and more powerful nuclear weapons, and therefore is larger and stronger than ever before. From this movie until 1994's Godzilla vs Destroyah, the real King of the Monsters would stand at 100 meters tall as opposed to the 50 meters of the 1954 beast and 80 meters of the '80s version.
Wilson and Grenchiko send Ghidorah to battle Godzilla, but it isn't long before Big G bitchslaps the three-headed dragon into the ocean, blowing off its middle head and severely damaging its wing in the process. The fight is in Ghidorah's favor at first, but when Emmy and a reprogrammed M-11 destroy the computer controlling the monster it loses its senses. And, because Wilson and Grenchiko were such bad little boys, Emmy teleports them and the mothership into Godzilla's path, where he blasts them into oblivion. But now Godzilla is out of control, because unlike(?) his unaltered self is aggressive and unfriendly (like he wasn't before?!? What the fuck kind of idiots do the writers take us for!?). The monster goes on his usual rampage through Tokyo, pausing for an inexplicable farewell stare between himself and Shindo before annihilating the corporate CEO's building with him inside.
Emmy decides to return to the future to revive Ghidorah, figuring that the monster is now the only thing capable of halting Godzilla's rampage. Why she thinks this, we don't know, because that big ol' dragon wasn't exactly friendly to Japan before and one presumes that the government wouldn't be too keen on the idea. But as I've said before, logic isn't something that can hinder this sorry excuse for a story. The movie comes full circle at this point, returning to the scene at the opening to recover the miraculously still-living (but just barely) Ghidorah. Emmy returns to 1992 piloting Mecha-King Ghidorah! With M-11 now reduced to a CD-holder sharing the cockpit with her. Emmy manages to get her cyborg monster destroyed again, but not before she drops her opponent into the ocean; as the mighty beast falls, it gives one final blast of nuclear fire, leading to Ghidorah's second destruction.
Before flying off back to the future in the small time craft, which she somehow managed to hide in Ghidorah's body and which she uses to escape Ghidorah's explosion, she reveals that she is a descendant of Terasawa, who puts his arms around his female publisher in a hint that the two will go on to marry.
If I've given away the movie for you, that's intentional; I don't want you to waste your money renting this crap, much less buying a copy. The "story" is rife with continuity problems (as you'll come to learn, I am incredibly attentive to continuity in movies), and then there are the rip-offs, which are unbelievably irritating. In the 1944 portion of the film the smaller time ship flies over an American cruiser, which inexplicably doesn't bother to alert anyone or fire on it thinking it might be a Japanese craft. The sailor who spots it? His name is Spielberg. Like we couldn't see that coming a mile away, and as if we really needed that. And M-11 does the worst knock-off of the Terminator you'll ever see.
Now me, if I'd been writing the screenplay for this film I would have just decided to let the cooler waters of the Pacific allow Godzilla's established rapid-healing to factor slow and finally subdue the bacterial infection in him. And then, once that infection was eradicated, throw in the powerful nuclear submarine that both revives and enlarges the monster. If I had to add Ghidorah to the mix, I'd have used a helluva lot better excuse for bringing him in than time travelers from the future. Or if I had to introduce time travelers, I'd have made it so their attempt to alter history failed and have them leave the Dorats behind by accident. But that's just me.
And then there's the flagrant disregard for history and logic in this stinker. OK, I get that the time travelers wanted to alter their present by changing the past. But why not simply avoid going to 1992 and directly to 1944 in order to carry out their mission? What was the purpose? The closest guess I can make is that Toho obviously meant to revive the Godzilla series for the 1990s, while offering a somewhat plausible explanation for the monster's overcoming the anti-nuclear energy bacteria that crippled him in the previous film. Toho also must have wanted an excuse to make the Godzilla suit much larger in scale to the models the Kaiju actors would demolish from then on, for bigger and better-scale battle sequences. I suppose time travel might have worked as a plot device, if it had been used by competent writers who knew theories on the subject and about things like paradoxes. But Toho wasn't about to spend money better used for monster effects on writers who could actually write a half-way plausible time travel story, so we ended up with this tedious exercise in ridiculousness. That still doesn't answer the fundamental question, though: why go to 1992 at all? Apparently, Wilson and Grenchiko want to control Japan's development from the 1990s onward. But this sorry excuse for an explanation doesn't make sense, because they could just as easily have done that in the 1940s following post-war reconstruction.
But here's what really bothers me about Godzilla vs King Ghidorah: aside from the continuity errors and bad acting, there's the obvious failure on the part of the writers to create even a token plausible story -- and there's no character development whatsoever. We never really get to know why Emmy does what she does. I've only ever seen the American dubbed version, so I can only hope that some explanation was omitted in the editing and translating process. But we clearly see her deliberately shooing the little bat-like creatures from the shuttle before it departs for 1992, so she must have been in on at least part of her comrades' plan. So why is Emmy surprised to learn what became of the Dorats upon her arrival in 1992, or the motivation behind her comrades' actions? Did they lie to her about what they had intended for the Dorats? Did she think they would use Ghidorah more or less benignly, that they would somehow keep the damage and casualties to a minimum? And why did she even do any of this in the first place? Was Emmy a patriot who felt Japan had gone too far in its imperial ambitions and needed to be taken down a notch? We are never allowed inside her head to see what motivates her to help first her comrades, and then the Japanese of 1992. And the only explanation we are given is by way of a plot twist so predictable and unnecessary that I wonder why the writers even tried to surprise us by withholding this information until the end. Then again, the writers had developed some chemistry between here and Terasawa over the course of the film so maybe they figured it wouldn't do to have that as Emmy by film's end would have to return to her own time. Another thing that really bothers me is this: inexplicably, Emmy's former comrades have her repair a battle-damaged M-11 without any supervision whatsoever, apparently trusting a turncoat to fix their most powerful weapon against the humans. What the hell were these buffoons thinking? One just has to wonder how they managed to trick the Japanese of 1992 so easily, being so unbelievably dim themselves.
If you want to see the Godzilla films of the 1990s, you really ought to avoid this insipidly stupid vehicle and go with the more imaginative and plausible suggestion I offered for why Godzilla was able to return. It'll hurt your brain less.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
My Dinner with Andre
Year of Release: 1981
Director: Louis Malle
Stars: Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn
Screenplay: Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn
If you haven't seen this little gem of a movie, I highly recommend that you go out and rent a copy (although, if you enjoy this movie as much as I did, you might do as I did and buy it). The film consists almost entirely of two friends, Andre and Wally, talking over dinner. Based on real-life conversations between the two actors, the subject matter ranges from the necessity of attentiveness in our every day lives to "experimental theater, the nature of theater, and the nature of reality." You may not find a movie featuring two guys talking to each other very exciting, but if you're looking for intellectual stimulus you could do a lot worse. As Roger Ebert wrote of it, "[i]t should be unwatchable, and yet those who love it return time and again, enchanted."
If you read the book form of the screenplay, the foreword sums up the genius of the idea behind this film: take conversations and events that happened to you in real life, condense them into a dialog, and then film it. It sounds pretty easy, though I'm sure actually trying to do this isn't. The genius lies in using real life to create a conversation on film that you, as a member of the audience, might very well have or have had yourself. For a couple of hours, you get to become almost a participant in the conversation between these two men -- or, at least, a fellow diner compelled to listen in.
The film opens with Wallace Shawn, playing a fictionalized version of himself, on his way to a restaurant to which he has been invited by old friend Andre Gregory (also playing a fictionalized self) -- whom he has not seen in years and dreads meeting because of rumors he's heard that make him worry about the other man's mental state. Shawn plays a guy struggling to pay his bills and just get through life, and the last thing he wants is to have an encounter with someone who may turn out to be unhinged from reality. Nevertheless, since this invitation to dinner presents a break from the humdrum of his existence, he has accepted.
Meeting Andre Gregory at the restaurant, the two sit down to dinner and the rest of the film until the closing scene is comprised of conversation. The more grounded Wally, who is mostly concerned with maintaining his cozy, oblivious existence, does most of the listening while Andre does most of the talking. The ideas put forth in this film ultimately leave one of the two friends with a transformed outlook on life. And what are these ideas? Watch the movie and find out, because if I go into any detail I won't be able to stop, and I'll have spoiled it for you. Suffice to say, however, that while there are moments of despair (Gregory laments that the 1960s were the "last burst of the human being before he was extinguished"), there are also moments of satire, humor, and a bit of the surreal.
Roger Ebert describes the film as exploiting "the well-known ability of the mind to picture a story as it is being told," and I heartily agree. Andre Gregory weaves his tales as only a master storyteller can, and I could very easily see in my mind the events as they are described. What I enjoyed most about the movie is the lessons it teaches about being aware of our surroundings and the people with whom we share our lives, and finding enjoyment in pursuing answers to life's questions even if the ones we find aren't the answers we start out looking for.
The late Louis Malle (1932 - 1995) greatly demonstrated with this movie why he was one of the 20th Century's best directors. My Dinner with Andre was filmed over the course of weeks, in an abandoned hotel. But Malle pulls off the illusion that the movie was shot in real time, in a bustling restaurant. Everything, from the camera angles and closeups of the two stars to reflections in mirrors designed to make the set appear more crowded than it is, was expertly calculated and choreographed.
If you don't want to sit through two hours of two men talking, you can buy the book version of the screenplay. It's as good a read, if not better, as it is a movie-watching experience. An affordable DVD is hard to track down (Amazon.com has copies starting at more than $100!), but if you still have a VCR you can buy the VHS format. Whichever route you take to becoming familiar with this gem, by all means take it. For truly, My Dinner with Andre is one of those rare feats in cinema: the perfect combination of story, character development, and directing, resulting in a remarkable and transforming film. How transforming? Watch this clip.
Director: Louis Malle
Stars: Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn
Screenplay: Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn
If you haven't seen this little gem of a movie, I highly recommend that you go out and rent a copy (although, if you enjoy this movie as much as I did, you might do as I did and buy it). The film consists almost entirely of two friends, Andre and Wally, talking over dinner. Based on real-life conversations between the two actors, the subject matter ranges from the necessity of attentiveness in our every day lives to "experimental theater, the nature of theater, and the nature of reality." You may not find a movie featuring two guys talking to each other very exciting, but if you're looking for intellectual stimulus you could do a lot worse. As Roger Ebert wrote of it, "[i]t should be unwatchable, and yet those who love it return time and again, enchanted."
If you read the book form of the screenplay, the foreword sums up the genius of the idea behind this film: take conversations and events that happened to you in real life, condense them into a dialog, and then film it. It sounds pretty easy, though I'm sure actually trying to do this isn't. The genius lies in using real life to create a conversation on film that you, as a member of the audience, might very well have or have had yourself. For a couple of hours, you get to become almost a participant in the conversation between these two men -- or, at least, a fellow diner compelled to listen in.
The film opens with Wallace Shawn, playing a fictionalized version of himself, on his way to a restaurant to which he has been invited by old friend Andre Gregory (also playing a fictionalized self) -- whom he has not seen in years and dreads meeting because of rumors he's heard that make him worry about the other man's mental state. Shawn plays a guy struggling to pay his bills and just get through life, and the last thing he wants is to have an encounter with someone who may turn out to be unhinged from reality. Nevertheless, since this invitation to dinner presents a break from the humdrum of his existence, he has accepted.
Meeting Andre Gregory at the restaurant, the two sit down to dinner and the rest of the film until the closing scene is comprised of conversation. The more grounded Wally, who is mostly concerned with maintaining his cozy, oblivious existence, does most of the listening while Andre does most of the talking. The ideas put forth in this film ultimately leave one of the two friends with a transformed outlook on life. And what are these ideas? Watch the movie and find out, because if I go into any detail I won't be able to stop, and I'll have spoiled it for you. Suffice to say, however, that while there are moments of despair (Gregory laments that the 1960s were the "last burst of the human being before he was extinguished"), there are also moments of satire, humor, and a bit of the surreal.
Roger Ebert describes the film as exploiting "the well-known ability of the mind to picture a story as it is being told," and I heartily agree. Andre Gregory weaves his tales as only a master storyteller can, and I could very easily see in my mind the events as they are described. What I enjoyed most about the movie is the lessons it teaches about being aware of our surroundings and the people with whom we share our lives, and finding enjoyment in pursuing answers to life's questions even if the ones we find aren't the answers we start out looking for.
The late Louis Malle (1932 - 1995) greatly demonstrated with this movie why he was one of the 20th Century's best directors. My Dinner with Andre was filmed over the course of weeks, in an abandoned hotel. But Malle pulls off the illusion that the movie was shot in real time, in a bustling restaurant. Everything, from the camera angles and closeups of the two stars to reflections in mirrors designed to make the set appear more crowded than it is, was expertly calculated and choreographed.
If you don't want to sit through two hours of two men talking, you can buy the book version of the screenplay. It's as good a read, if not better, as it is a movie-watching experience. An affordable DVD is hard to track down (Amazon.com has copies starting at more than $100!), but if you still have a VCR you can buy the VHS format. Whichever route you take to becoming familiar with this gem, by all means take it. For truly, My Dinner with Andre is one of those rare feats in cinema: the perfect combination of story, character development, and directing, resulting in a remarkable and transforming film. How transforming? Watch this clip.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Rob Zombie's Halloween
Welcome to Mike's Movie Review! Before I get started, allow me to introduce myself. I'm Mike, and I enjoy watching movies, and sharing my thoughts, ideas and interpretations with others. I do tend to write a lot, because I have a lot to share, so you should probably be prepared to receive a lot of information. Now that you know a little about me, I'll start off with my premiere movie review. The subject: Rob Zombie's Halloween.
John Carpenter's original 1978 horror vehicle, about a psychopath who stalks and murders babysitters on Halloween night, began an era in the genre that has for better or worse lasted to present day. It also helped launch horror's sub-genre: slasher films. There is an excellent review of Carpenter's Halloween at the web site And You Call Yourself A Scientist! and my own examination here of Rob Zombie's re-imagining, which I have seen twice, has been influenced in part by this analysis. There's another spot-on review at DevonLohan.com, which makes its points a helluva lot pithier than I do, but seeing as how this is my first review I hope you'll forgive me.
Zombie's interpretation of the Michael Myers story is formed around the killer's dark origins, exploring the forces that shaped him into the rampaging beast he ultimately becomes. In this, Zombie succeeds brilliantly. The story does not explain what the force is that compels Myers to kill, because it can no more be explained than that which drove serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, or John Wayne Gacy to murder. In this regard, Zombie's adaptation is very much like the original film. What exists in Michael Myers is a force too terrible to imagine, and which ultimately consumes his very soul. While killers such as Gein, Gacy, and in later years Ted Bundy and Dahmer, show that they at least retain enough of their humanity to be able to walk among people and interact with their prey on a human level, this is not present in Michael Myers. What's there is only pure killing instinct, animal-like mentality.
The movie opens with ten-year-old Michael Myers, already a twisted little psychopath with a penchant for mutilating small animals to death. Sheri Moon Zombie (Rob's wife and the star of his previous two movies, House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects as well as his music videos) delivers a very good performance as Michael's long-suffering mother, Deborah. She's the one who has to hold the entire household together, being the only member actually working -- which happens to be at the local strip club, setting up the school restroom conflict that leads to Michael's first human kill later in Act One. Her verbally abusive and physically useless second husband Ronnie, played here to slimy perfection by William Forsythe, has been reduced to a cripple following some event that is implied to be a major ass-kicking as a result of his mouthing off to the wrong person(s). All he can do to pass the time is drink, hurl insults, and make passes at his wife's teenage daughter Judith. Speaking of Judith, she really isn't much better. Treading down the same path of bad decisions her mother made, she takes her anger at her stepfather out on her little brother. Into this mix baby Laurie is thrown, and she can only react to the daily traumas surrounding her by crying very loudly.
Sheri Moon Zombie's portrayal of a woman who fell into a really bad life and is barely able to hold things together makes her the star of the movie's first half. As it becomes clear that her son has needs she cannot possibly see to, Michael's degeneration into a full blown murderer is completed as he makes one of the bullies who torments him toward the end of Act One his first human victim. But, with the adults all distracted this goes unnoticed. And that is the central theme of the first act: how this sick and evil monster managed to fall through the cracks. This is how most, if not all, serial killers end up doing what they do for as long as they do -- they fall through the cracks, with the people around them too wrapped up in their own troubles or distracted by other events to notice what's happening. And by the time they do in this film, it's too late; on Halloween night, Michael Myers goes on the killing spree that leads to his commitment for the next seventeen years.
Act Two takes place at Smith's Grove Sanitarium, where Michael is committed to the care of Doctor Sam Loomis. This is where we see the final degeneration of Michael Myers into the beast of prey he is destined to become. His mother, unable to deal with this after having lost everyone else dear to her, commits suicide. After that, there really isn't anything left to show of Michael Myers' development, so we cut forward to the scene where Doctor Loomis, having failed to make any progress with his patient, is finally forced to give up and move on with his own life. Malcolm McDowell turns in a competent performance here, making the character far less of the near-raving psychiatrist portrayed by the late, great Donald Pleasance and more a man compelled to warn others of the evil he has witnessed in the only way he can and still maintain credibility: a book followed by the lecture circuit. This results, ironically and tragically however, in Loomis's dismissal later in the film as an opportunist making money off of a terrible tragedy. I thought this a more realistic a depiction than that of Pleasance's Doctor Loomis; in the original, his ravings are brushed off as those of someone projecting his own imaginings onto a comatose patient who hasn't spoken, or moved of his own volition, in years. By contrast, the remake suggests that while the administrators at Smith's Grove take the threat Michael Myers poses seriously enough to keep him chained considering his violent tendencies, the perception of exploitation of the maniac's victims by an opportunistic psychiatrist perhaps exaggerating the danger leads many to do the precise opposite.
Then comes Michael's escape from Smith's Grove, which in Rob Zombie's story is even more savage than the killer's initial spree. Again the director takes care to treat the killings in a plausible light, though the final one borders somewhat on the absurd as Michael ends the life of the one person at Smith's Grove that was kind to him. There is no mercy, and the scene is clearly meant to demonstrate the complete lack of any redeeming qualities in the killer. After that, the full-blown re-make portion of Halloween begins. And this is where the movie's few flaws begin to come through.
Because the new film makes Michael Myers the chief focus, it is only natural that what made the original film so popular with audiences would be cut to pieces (no pun intended). In Carpenter's movie, the main character is Laurie Strode, and it is with her that our sympathies lie. As AYCYAS points out, one of the things that makes Jamie Lee Curtis's character stand out from most horror movie heroines is that she is intelligent, resourceful, responsible, and cares deeply about her charges -- in other words, responsible. Since she is too shy to chase after boys, as her friends do, she directs her energies toward her emerging maternal instincts. The result is that Curtis's Laurie Strode is smart enough to sense the danger coming, though because it is not yet fully apparent she cannot yet fully see it. In short, Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode is almost the complete antithesis of the slasher film heroines who come after her; rather than someone who is the "final girl" solely because of her virginity, Curtis's character is the last woman standing because of her perceptive abilities and her inherent responsibility and care for the children whose lives are entrusted to her. The relationship between Curtis's Laurie Strode and Tommy Doyle is like that of an aunt or mother, and so her fight is motivated along those lines. Newcomer Scout Taylor Compton's rendition of Laurie Strode, by contrast, is irritated with her young charges and acts like someone who'd rather be doing something else than babysitting these annoying little brats. The cuts in character development in the movie's second half makes Compton's Laurie Strode fundamentally no different than the slasher "heroines of the 1980s and 1990s. This is not to say that Compton, who made her starring debut in this film, does a bad job with the material she has to work with -- in fact, she does an incredible job. But the script's lack of development for her character doesn't leave her with much to work with, and it shows. I don't consider this the fault of the actress, or necessarily the fault of the script writer, for the reason stated above.
Again, the loss of character development in the second half was a natural consequence of devoting so much of it to Michael Myers and his poor mother. I just thought it a shame that Zombie couldn't spend the extra time and money he was given to film extended scenes making the main victim more sympathetic. Another flaw is the inclusion of the revelation, which wasn't told until the sequel to the original Halloween, that Michael is after his baby sister. What made Carpenter's horror film so frightening is that there appeared to be no rhyme or reason to Michael's predations. Succumbing to the pressure in the early 1980s to make a sequel, by which time Friday the 13th and other slasher movies necessitated pandering to newly-established genre guidelines just to be able to compete at the box office, Carpenter wrote in the whole sister-Samhain business that future sequels ended up following until the eighth installment. But in the first movie, this is not yet revealed. So why did Rob Zombie need to include elements from the sequel in a re-imagining of the original Halloween?
The most obvious reason of course is in the exploration of Michael Myers' origins, but another reason is probably the director's stated desire to make it next to impossible to do a remake of Halloween II. After eight films, over the course of which Michael Myers degenerated into a caricature of himself (as also happened to Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger and Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees), Zombie obviously felt it was time to lay the franchise to rest despite his breathing new life into it. So he set the film's climax up so there would be little chance of a sequel -- at least, not one that he would be asked to helm. In so doing, however, Zombie played around with the franchise's continuity. And one of the worst mistakes any storyteller can make is to fail to maintain the integrity of a story's continuity (a very pet peeve of mine).
Another way in which Zombie's retelling makes the mistake of borrowing from Halloween II is in the amount of blood depicted. The gore and elaborateness of the killings in that installment was pumped up, whereas in the first movie Carpenter does far more with a simple knife, a minimum of blood, and jump-out sequences to scare the audience, than the gross-out factor of blood and complicated death scenes possibly can. In Halloween II, however, Carpenter and director Rick Rosenthal are compelled to indulge in gross-outs and elaborate killings. This, too, was done in order to pander to the guidelines established in the endless array of copycat slasher movies that followed the original Halloween. Because the new slasher sub-genre demanded copious amounts of cinematic blood, entrails, nudity and over-the-top murder scenes something got lost that few if any have been able to recapture. So I suppose Zombie can be forgiven for following the formula set down in what amounts to genre stone.
Despite these flaws in Rob Zombie's Halloween, the movie manages to work very well. What blew me away was how real the characters were. The dialog was superbly written, and delivered by an excellent cast of actors and actresses. Tyler Mane, a former professional wrestler who cut his acting teeth as Sabertooth in the X-Men movies, does a fine job taking the core elements of Nick Castle's portrayal of the Shape and pushing it to its logical extreme. Mane makes Michael Myers a rampaging beast, the proverbial bull in the china shop, but takes care to reign it in when circumstances dictate. (Mane does a splendid job playing around with his co-stars in the manner of a cat playing with its food before killing it.) The result is a depiction that truly brings to mind a very dangerous animal, a predator that can stalk its victims by hiding and biding its time until the moment to strike arrives. And once that moment comes, that's when things get brutal.
Then there is the outstanding performance by Halloween 4 and Halloween 5 veteran Danielle Harris, who as fans of the franchise know made her cinematic debut as the daughter of Laurie Strode. Her portrayal here of Annie Brackett is excellent, her youthful appearance (Danielle is now thirty, by the way) combining with her acting skills to make a very plausible performance. Sheri Moon Zombie, as I said, delivers an incredible performance. And Brad Dourif as sheriff Leigh Brackett far outdoes Charles Cyphers' portrayal. Whatever you might think of Rob Zombie's movies, you have to give him credit for knowing how to pick his cast members. There was not so much as a single bad actor in this movie, and even the minor roles were played as if they were major. Look for cameos by horror veterans, as well as other cast members from House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects (I bet you can't recognize Bill Moseley).
Overall, Rob Zombie's Halloween stands as an equal to John Carpenter's vision. It isn't perfect, but then no movie is. A lot of fans dreaded this movie, making negative judgments even before filming was completed. But for those of you who like Rob Zombie's films, and who are willing to approach this one with an open mind, I think you'll find yourself enjoying it.
John Carpenter's original 1978 horror vehicle, about a psychopath who stalks and murders babysitters on Halloween night, began an era in the genre that has for better or worse lasted to present day. It also helped launch horror's sub-genre: slasher films. There is an excellent review of Carpenter's Halloween at the web site And You Call Yourself A Scientist! and my own examination here of Rob Zombie's re-imagining, which I have seen twice, has been influenced in part by this analysis. There's another spot-on review at DevonLohan.com, which makes its points a helluva lot pithier than I do, but seeing as how this is my first review I hope you'll forgive me.
Zombie's interpretation of the Michael Myers story is formed around the killer's dark origins, exploring the forces that shaped him into the rampaging beast he ultimately becomes. In this, Zombie succeeds brilliantly. The story does not explain what the force is that compels Myers to kill, because it can no more be explained than that which drove serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, or John Wayne Gacy to murder. In this regard, Zombie's adaptation is very much like the original film. What exists in Michael Myers is a force too terrible to imagine, and which ultimately consumes his very soul. While killers such as Gein, Gacy, and in later years Ted Bundy and Dahmer, show that they at least retain enough of their humanity to be able to walk among people and interact with their prey on a human level, this is not present in Michael Myers. What's there is only pure killing instinct, animal-like mentality.
The movie opens with ten-year-old Michael Myers, already a twisted little psychopath with a penchant for mutilating small animals to death. Sheri Moon Zombie (Rob's wife and the star of his previous two movies, House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects as well as his music videos) delivers a very good performance as Michael's long-suffering mother, Deborah. She's the one who has to hold the entire household together, being the only member actually working -- which happens to be at the local strip club, setting up the school restroom conflict that leads to Michael's first human kill later in Act One. Her verbally abusive and physically useless second husband Ronnie, played here to slimy perfection by William Forsythe, has been reduced to a cripple following some event that is implied to be a major ass-kicking as a result of his mouthing off to the wrong person(s). All he can do to pass the time is drink, hurl insults, and make passes at his wife's teenage daughter Judith. Speaking of Judith, she really isn't much better. Treading down the same path of bad decisions her mother made, she takes her anger at her stepfather out on her little brother. Into this mix baby Laurie is thrown, and she can only react to the daily traumas surrounding her by crying very loudly.
Sheri Moon Zombie's portrayal of a woman who fell into a really bad life and is barely able to hold things together makes her the star of the movie's first half. As it becomes clear that her son has needs she cannot possibly see to, Michael's degeneration into a full blown murderer is completed as he makes one of the bullies who torments him toward the end of Act One his first human victim. But, with the adults all distracted this goes unnoticed. And that is the central theme of the first act: how this sick and evil monster managed to fall through the cracks. This is how most, if not all, serial killers end up doing what they do for as long as they do -- they fall through the cracks, with the people around them too wrapped up in their own troubles or distracted by other events to notice what's happening. And by the time they do in this film, it's too late; on Halloween night, Michael Myers goes on the killing spree that leads to his commitment for the next seventeen years.
Act Two takes place at Smith's Grove Sanitarium, where Michael is committed to the care of Doctor Sam Loomis. This is where we see the final degeneration of Michael Myers into the beast of prey he is destined to become. His mother, unable to deal with this after having lost everyone else dear to her, commits suicide. After that, there really isn't anything left to show of Michael Myers' development, so we cut forward to the scene where Doctor Loomis, having failed to make any progress with his patient, is finally forced to give up and move on with his own life. Malcolm McDowell turns in a competent performance here, making the character far less of the near-raving psychiatrist portrayed by the late, great Donald Pleasance and more a man compelled to warn others of the evil he has witnessed in the only way he can and still maintain credibility: a book followed by the lecture circuit. This results, ironically and tragically however, in Loomis's dismissal later in the film as an opportunist making money off of a terrible tragedy. I thought this a more realistic a depiction than that of Pleasance's Doctor Loomis; in the original, his ravings are brushed off as those of someone projecting his own imaginings onto a comatose patient who hasn't spoken, or moved of his own volition, in years. By contrast, the remake suggests that while the administrators at Smith's Grove take the threat Michael Myers poses seriously enough to keep him chained considering his violent tendencies, the perception of exploitation of the maniac's victims by an opportunistic psychiatrist perhaps exaggerating the danger leads many to do the precise opposite.
Then comes Michael's escape from Smith's Grove, which in Rob Zombie's story is even more savage than the killer's initial spree. Again the director takes care to treat the killings in a plausible light, though the final one borders somewhat on the absurd as Michael ends the life of the one person at Smith's Grove that was kind to him. There is no mercy, and the scene is clearly meant to demonstrate the complete lack of any redeeming qualities in the killer. After that, the full-blown re-make portion of Halloween begins. And this is where the movie's few flaws begin to come through.
Because the new film makes Michael Myers the chief focus, it is only natural that what made the original film so popular with audiences would be cut to pieces (no pun intended). In Carpenter's movie, the main character is Laurie Strode, and it is with her that our sympathies lie. As AYCYAS points out, one of the things that makes Jamie Lee Curtis's character stand out from most horror movie heroines is that she is intelligent, resourceful, responsible, and cares deeply about her charges -- in other words, responsible. Since she is too shy to chase after boys, as her friends do, she directs her energies toward her emerging maternal instincts. The result is that Curtis's Laurie Strode is smart enough to sense the danger coming, though because it is not yet fully apparent she cannot yet fully see it. In short, Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode is almost the complete antithesis of the slasher film heroines who come after her; rather than someone who is the "final girl" solely because of her virginity, Curtis's character is the last woman standing because of her perceptive abilities and her inherent responsibility and care for the children whose lives are entrusted to her. The relationship between Curtis's Laurie Strode and Tommy Doyle is like that of an aunt or mother, and so her fight is motivated along those lines. Newcomer Scout Taylor Compton's rendition of Laurie Strode, by contrast, is irritated with her young charges and acts like someone who'd rather be doing something else than babysitting these annoying little brats. The cuts in character development in the movie's second half makes Compton's Laurie Strode fundamentally no different than the slasher "heroines of the 1980s and 1990s. This is not to say that Compton, who made her starring debut in this film, does a bad job with the material she has to work with -- in fact, she does an incredible job. But the script's lack of development for her character doesn't leave her with much to work with, and it shows. I don't consider this the fault of the actress, or necessarily the fault of the script writer, for the reason stated above.
Again, the loss of character development in the second half was a natural consequence of devoting so much of it to Michael Myers and his poor mother. I just thought it a shame that Zombie couldn't spend the extra time and money he was given to film extended scenes making the main victim more sympathetic. Another flaw is the inclusion of the revelation, which wasn't told until the sequel to the original Halloween, that Michael is after his baby sister. What made Carpenter's horror film so frightening is that there appeared to be no rhyme or reason to Michael's predations. Succumbing to the pressure in the early 1980s to make a sequel, by which time Friday the 13th and other slasher movies necessitated pandering to newly-established genre guidelines just to be able to compete at the box office, Carpenter wrote in the whole sister-Samhain business that future sequels ended up following until the eighth installment. But in the first movie, this is not yet revealed. So why did Rob Zombie need to include elements from the sequel in a re-imagining of the original Halloween?
The most obvious reason of course is in the exploration of Michael Myers' origins, but another reason is probably the director's stated desire to make it next to impossible to do a remake of Halloween II. After eight films, over the course of which Michael Myers degenerated into a caricature of himself (as also happened to Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger and Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees), Zombie obviously felt it was time to lay the franchise to rest despite his breathing new life into it. So he set the film's climax up so there would be little chance of a sequel -- at least, not one that he would be asked to helm. In so doing, however, Zombie played around with the franchise's continuity. And one of the worst mistakes any storyteller can make is to fail to maintain the integrity of a story's continuity (a very pet peeve of mine).
Another way in which Zombie's retelling makes the mistake of borrowing from Halloween II is in the amount of blood depicted. The gore and elaborateness of the killings in that installment was pumped up, whereas in the first movie Carpenter does far more with a simple knife, a minimum of blood, and jump-out sequences to scare the audience, than the gross-out factor of blood and complicated death scenes possibly can. In Halloween II, however, Carpenter and director Rick Rosenthal are compelled to indulge in gross-outs and elaborate killings. This, too, was done in order to pander to the guidelines established in the endless array of copycat slasher movies that followed the original Halloween. Because the new slasher sub-genre demanded copious amounts of cinematic blood, entrails, nudity and over-the-top murder scenes something got lost that few if any have been able to recapture. So I suppose Zombie can be forgiven for following the formula set down in what amounts to genre stone.
Despite these flaws in Rob Zombie's Halloween, the movie manages to work very well. What blew me away was how real the characters were. The dialog was superbly written, and delivered by an excellent cast of actors and actresses. Tyler Mane, a former professional wrestler who cut his acting teeth as Sabertooth in the X-Men movies, does a fine job taking the core elements of Nick Castle's portrayal of the Shape and pushing it to its logical extreme. Mane makes Michael Myers a rampaging beast, the proverbial bull in the china shop, but takes care to reign it in when circumstances dictate. (Mane does a splendid job playing around with his co-stars in the manner of a cat playing with its food before killing it.) The result is a depiction that truly brings to mind a very dangerous animal, a predator that can stalk its victims by hiding and biding its time until the moment to strike arrives. And once that moment comes, that's when things get brutal.
Then there is the outstanding performance by Halloween 4 and Halloween 5 veteran Danielle Harris, who as fans of the franchise know made her cinematic debut as the daughter of Laurie Strode. Her portrayal here of Annie Brackett is excellent, her youthful appearance (Danielle is now thirty, by the way) combining with her acting skills to make a very plausible performance. Sheri Moon Zombie, as I said, delivers an incredible performance. And Brad Dourif as sheriff Leigh Brackett far outdoes Charles Cyphers' portrayal. Whatever you might think of Rob Zombie's movies, you have to give him credit for knowing how to pick his cast members. There was not so much as a single bad actor in this movie, and even the minor roles were played as if they were major. Look for cameos by horror veterans, as well as other cast members from House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects (I bet you can't recognize Bill Moseley).
Overall, Rob Zombie's Halloween stands as an equal to John Carpenter's vision. It isn't perfect, but then no movie is. A lot of fans dreaded this movie, making negative judgments even before filming was completed. But for those of you who like Rob Zombie's films, and who are willing to approach this one with an open mind, I think you'll find yourself enjoying it.
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