Last Woman On Earth

MARCH 6, 2008

GENRE: POST-APOCALYPTIC
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

If there’s one thing Roger Corman doesn’t usually skip on, it’s the horror. Plot, acting, sets, all that stuff is usually an after-thought, but there will ALWAYS be a monster, some gore, a few kills... except for Last Woman On Earth. The horror stems from there being only two men and one woman left in the world (note – the other way around could be the plot of a very different and vastly more exciting type of movie), but that’s it. I was expecting maybe an insane monkey man or maybe a fish monster would also survive the apocalypse, but nope.

So what happens in the movie? Uh... nothing. Our survivors have lived because they were underwater at the time the whole world lost oxygen (must have been a pretty slow day for the scuba diving industry). As the title reminds you, there’s only one woman left, but also two guys, so naturally they both fuck her, and then whale on each other (which results in the film’s only bloodshed – a cut on the loser’s face). Granted, this IS Corman, so I wasn’t expecting scenes like the one in The Stand when they go through the tunnel (the after effects of the end of the world are shown via one guy on the ground next to his car, and another car with a dead driver crashing gently into a curb some 5-6 hours after he should have died).

And again, even for Corman, this feels entirely too cheap. Other than those two guys I mentioned, and another random corpse later on, there is literally zero evidence that anything has occurred. The editing is also choppy as hell, and the three survivors barely ever seem really concerned that they are the only ones left. If the recent I Am Legend got anything right, it was this type of stuff – the isolation and just general creepiness associated with an empty world (and based on the vampire effects, I can only assume that film had as big a budget as Corman’s). This movie is more about the “let’s sit around and yell at each other” situations of an apocalypse.

That said, it’s not without its occasional charm. Robert Towne (from the other Corman quickie that this film was filmed back to back with, the similarly 'The'-less Creature From The Haunted Sea) demonstrates an utterly bizarre way of rinsing his eyes – dipping his fingers into a freshly poured glass of Scotch and rubbing his pupils with them. He also fights the other guy over, of all things, oxygen. “Leaves need oxygen!” he shouts, as he grabs the other guy’s shirt and shakes him violently back and forth. Man loves 3rd grade science. Towne’s script also contains a precious few moments of wit – love the bit about “1/3 of the human race.”

Also the broad’s pretty hot, so it’s perfectly understandable that both guys want to nail her, what with all the other women not only dead but totally vanished from the world.

At 71 minutes, it’s a harmless enough timekiller, but the utter lack of, well, HORROR, makes it pretty disappointing. Luckily, per my own made up rule #4 (“Any film classified as horror by the IMDb is eligible”), it’s enough to get me through another day. And since it’s been out for 48 years, I imagine Mill Creek won’t make me take down the review to exert their authority.

What say you?

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Horror Classics, Post-Apocalyptic,

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The Monster Maker (1944)

MARCH 5, 2008

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

Well after the insanity of Repo, anything would probably seem boring today (I should watch my beloved Armageddon and see if I find it “too slow” now). But The Mad Monster is especially slow, with less action than normal for a film of the era and not a lot going on otherwise.

Here’s another one for “someone remake THIS!” list. The plot is actually kind of awesome: a mad scientist turns a guy into an Elephant man, holding the cure ransom. The desired reward? The guy’s daughter, who the scientist thinks is a spitting image of his late wife (who he accidentally killed when he tried to make her ugly so that no one else would want her). Someone like Cronenberg could make an AMAZING movie out of this. But director Sam Newfield (who did the much better Dead Men Walk) and writers Pierre Gendron and Martin Mooney don’t really do much with the concept, or a giant ape that the scientist keeps in a cage. When your movie has a giant ape, he damn well better kill lots of people OR play hero at the end. In this movie, the damn thing disappears with another 20 minutes to go.

And what’s with all the horror movies that use the pituitary gland as a means for crazy scientific nonsense? In this movie it has something to do with turning folks into Elephant men. In Leech Woman, she used it to keep young. And other movies have come up with different uses for this largely un-cared about part of the human body. My theory is, since no one other than doctors and scientists really know what it does (as opposed to say, the uvula, which you gotta be fucking stupid not to know about!), screenwriters have the creative license to use it for whatever nonsense they come up with for their silly horror movies.

My favorite part of the movie came at the very beginning. A guy walks into the room and tells our eventual victim, “A man is here to see you, he says his name is Doctor Igor Markoff.” He then hands over the guy’s card, and we are treated to a closeup:

LOL. Well at least he wasn’t lying. There’s also an odd credit at the end for the dog in the film: “Ace.... By Himself”. I am not familiar with mid century lingo – is saying BY himself instead of AS himself something folks just did? Or was the creditor just a bit confused on his adverb prepositions? Well, whatever. Other than the wonderfully evil J. Carroll Naish as Markoff, there’s not much here to recommend unless you are a fellow budget pack obsessive.

What say you?

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Horror Classics, Mad Scientist,

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Repo: The Genetic Opera (2008)

MARCH 4, 2008

GENRE: MUSICAL, WEIRD
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (TEST SCREENING)

NOTE – As this is a test screening, the following review may not 100% reflect the final product. Furthermore, as a lazy man who is often broke, I can’t guarantee that I’ll see the film during its theatrical release and/or update the review to include any changes. - UPDATE! - there were a few minor changes, all for the better.)

I first became intrigued by Darren Bousman’s Repo: The Genetic Opera a year or so ago, when he mentioned Shock Treatment as a sort of influence. While I’m not a die hard fan of the Rocky Horror “series”, I do quite enjoy both films, and particularly liked how utterly batshit Shock was (I still don’t have a goddamn clue what is going on during large chunks of the film), and how it managed to “outweird” the original film. Well, Repo makes both of them look sane. And I mean that in the goodliest way possible.

The movie is based on a play (which Bousman directed a version of a few years ago, before he entered the world of Jigsaw), but since I haven’t seen it I don’t know how close the film follows it. There is no real “main plot”, but instead a series of interconnecting stories about a group of folks with ties to a futuristic organ donor/replacement company called Geneco. The film’s central character is Shiloh, played by Alexa Vega, aka the chick from Spy Kids (she’s like 20 now, so it’s OK to think she’s hot, right? Hope so.). She is suffering from some blood disorder and kept largely confined to her bedroom by her dad, played by Anthony Head (Giles!). Unknown to her, he works as a Repo Man for Geneco; killing and “taking back” organs from patients who failed to keep up with their payments. Geneco is run by Paul Sorvino, who is dying, and his kids (Paris Hilton, Bill Moseley, and Ogre from the band Skinny Puppy) are fighting one another over who gets to run the company once he passes. Sorvino also holds a grudge against Head, and there’s also an opera singer (who is also Shiloh’s godmother) and a grave robber who is over-medicating the surgery obsessed Hilton. While some plots are justifiably given more screen-time than others, it’s to Bousman’s credit (as well as the screenwriters, Terrance Zdunich and Darren Smith, who also appear in the film) that the film weaves so many different story threads while never once really pausing to let the audience take a breath, yet maintains coherency and a pace that builds and builds at a steady rate.

Also, this isn’t Rocky Horror or Nightmare Before Christmas, where the best musical numbers come in the first half and then the film sort of treads water for a while – here the best numbers come near the end. In fact, the one concern I had with the film was that it took 15 minutes to get to the first song that would make for enjoyable “stand-alone” listening (many of the “songs” are just a verse explaining story details). The opening of the film is a graphic novel style prologue explaining what has happened to the world in the future and how Geneco came to be – I’d rather they had a big number with these plot elements explained in the lyric. But the way the film just builds and builds up more energy as it unfolds is pretty astonishing, so in a way the “slow” feel of the first few scenes makes total sense – think of it as a roller coaster with a 10 foot climb rewarded by a 100 foot drop.

The cast is about as random as one could get (Paris Hilton and Bill Moseley as brother and sister? Giles playing a murderous boogeyman?), but there isn’t a single weak link in the cast. In fact, I must admit that Hilton is QUITE good in her role, both acting and singing (all of the primary characters sing their own songs). I usually can’t stand her in anything, but she won me over here. Moseley also has some great moments as the most violent character in the film, and it’s nice to see Head finally play the “Ripper” he never got a chance to be on Buffy. However, the godmother character, played by Sarah Brightman, doesn’t get to work with the other characters as much, so her scenes have a slight disconnect, and she is sort of MIA (other than TV screens) for the first half of the film – I would have liked to have her given something earlier on that would make her importance to the second half of the film have a bit more resonance.

The movie’s also just damn hilarious. Moseley singing “I’ll shoot you in the face!” to a guy offering him decaf is possibly the best moment in movie musical history. There’s also a rocking number called (I think) “I’m 17!” by Vega, who rocks around her room while two of her stuffed animals headbang along and Joan Jett shows up out of nowhere to provide the guitar riffs – I was laughing my ass off the entire time.

As for the violence/gore, it’s pretty over the top, but also sparsely displayed throughout the film. I would say it’s about as violent as Sweeney Todd (but also about 20 min shorter), and it doesn’t stick out as much as it did in Todd, since the over the top slashing and “repossessing” is just as nutty as everything else in the film.

I’m sure that Lionsgate will market the film as “Saw meets Rocky Horror” or something to that effect, but that would be selling it short. While it’s certainly an easy way to describe it, the real hook for me was just the sheer originality and insanity of it all. You know how Sweeney Todd was almost all songs, but would occasionally “stop” and just have dialogue? No such thing here. There were a few songs that I really dug and wanted to applaud after, as is sort of customary for musical films, but the problem was: I couldn’t. My applause would be interrupting the next musical segment. I just hope people give the movie a chance and appreciate, if nothing else, the sheer originality on display. Anyone reading this site knows how many horror movies I endure, so when I see one that never ONCE reminds me of other movies (even the obvious comparisons – Todd, Rocky Horror, etc, only came to mind in generalized thoughts), and is able to totally suck me in and keep me entertained almost nonstop for 90 minutes, I get pretty thankful and happy. Sure, I love my formulaic slashers and action movies about guys taking over some sort of vehicle only to be thwarted by a rogue cop, but I secretly crave for more movies like Repo; where I am almost at a loss as to how I can review it or recommend it to others. It truly does need to be seen to be believed, and I hope you fine folks not only do just that, but enjoy it as well.

What say you?

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Musical, Weird,

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Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943)

MARCH 3, 2008

GENRE: CLASSIC, MONSTER, WEREWOLF
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Man, I sure do take a long time to get through my own DVDs, huh? It was the first Monday in March of LAST YEAR (and I swear I didn't do it on purpose - I had to look up the date) that I last took in a movie from my Wolf Man collection, despite my “I should blow through all three of these Universal sets in a month or so” thinking at the time. I’m not even halfway through the three sets (the others being Dracula and Frankenstein), and adding insult to injury - I bought the damn things in in 2004!

Anyway, Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man is pretty damn good, despite the wrongest title ever. It’s more like “The Guy Inside Of The Wolf Man Meets Frankenstein’s Monster And Then His Daughter”, but oh well. When it comes to Frankenstein movies, the title is always of debatable merit (see Bride Of Frankenstein, which contains less than 2 min of actual Bride).

After what I think may have been the first animated credits in movie history (I expect to be called out for being wrong here), the film begins with two guys trying to rob the Wolf Man’s grave and unintentionally resurrecting him, an obvious allusion to Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives. Which is the nice thing about sequels, because a lot of these old movies take a while before there’s any monster action, for obvious reasons (they weren’t created yet), so it’s nice to have a little bit of action right at the start before all the yakkity yak.

Most of what the characters are talking about for the next 40 minutes or so is the Wolf, and whether poor Larry Talbot (still billed as just “The Wolf Man”) is crazy or not. Though the writer occasionally takes time out of this to take a few cheap shots at Gypsies, with exchanges such as this:

Guy: Do you know Maleva, she’s a Gypsy.”
Guy 2: “Ah, a vagrant!”

Now come on! A Gypsy could very well have had his or own home. There’s also another line where a guy scoffs at the idea that a Gypsy would be telling the truth. Why all the hatred?

Although there’s not a lot of monster action (Frank’s monster doesn’t show up until halfway through or so), the only time the movie feels slow is around the 45 minute mark, when we are ‘treated’ to a lengthy musical number. It ends with a typical “Lon Chaney needs anger management” scene, and then Frankie comes barreling through on a rampage before hitching a ride on a runaway wagon, which livens things up considerably and more or less makes up for the lengthy song, but still: cut out a verse or two next time!

The finale is pretty rousing. In a hilarious bit, Frankie begins carrying the damsel off into the night, which pisses off Wolf Man. Wolf Man attacks Frankie while he’s still holding the woman, and as a result he drops her hard onto the stone floor a few feet below. Nice work, Larry, you probably fractured her spine in your “rescue” attempt. But then they begin whaling on each other, and despite the fact that the fight is incredibly short, it’s pretty sweet to see them go at it, since they are a more even match than many of the other movie monster fights we’ve seen since. Wolf Man could use a bit more originality in his fighting style though – his entire strategy seems to be climbing onto tables and the like, then jumping onto Frankie while howling. Then a surge of water from a dam explosion knocks over a model of a castle, which somehow results in their assumed drowning. And unlike the first Frankenstein film, the filmmakers had the good sense to end it right there, rather than have a wholly useless epilogue with some doctor talking about drinking while a few dames fawn over him.

Looking at the collection, I now see that Wolf Man never really got a legit sequel (the other monster sets have more movies too). This was half a Frankenstein movie, and the other two films on the set seem entirely unrelated (one of them actually came out 6 years before the original Wolf Man did). Bride of Wolf Man is an untapped treasure! Think of all the Gypsy jokes the film could have!!!

What say you?

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Classic, Monster, Werewolf,

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Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986)

MARCH 2, 2008

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

“Otis... plug it in.”

And that was all that I remembered about Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, a film I had watched a few times when I was 14 and obsessed with “ultra-violent” films like Natural Born Killers and whatever other Tarantino movies I was able to rent. But I sort of grew out of that phase and never revisited the film until now.

I had forgotten how somewhat fragmented and matter-of-fact the film was presented. There is also almost zero buildup to any of the kill scenes - they come (and go) out of nowhere. It's a great idea - why draw suspense when the movie is ABOUT a serial killer? No one is going to survive.The passage of time is entirely unclear (Henry says he doesn’t like to stay in one place for too long, but since he kills like a dozen people in the film, all in Chicago and suburbs, I would guess it would HAVE to take place over a year, or else the police would be suspicious, even if he was using different implements), and the first five minutes are just a series of shots showing the aftermath of Henry’s crimes edited with scenes of him driving around Chicago.

It is in this opening sequence that John McNaughton displays his fondness for cutting to a close-up of something, and then slowly pulling out for a look at the bigger picture. There’s some 568569 of these shots in the film, and it gets kind of annoying, to be honest. It’s effective at first, but there are only so many times you can use the trick. But it’s his first movie, so I guess it’s forgivable. In my first movie I didn’t even have a cameraman to pull off such shots.

For a low budget movie, the acting is surprisingly good. Michael Rooker is, of course, top notch in the role of Henry, and Tom Towles has what remains his largest role to date as Otis (now he’s just sort of relegated to brief appearances in Rob Zombie movies, though he also did a damn good job as Cooper in the underrated Night of the Living Dead remake). The girl playing Becky is also good as the film’s only non-despicable character, though the fact that she looks like Ed Harris is a bit upsetting.

Here’s an embarrassing story – when I first saw the film, I was so unfamiliar with the cinematic “language” of sex scenes that I didn’t even realize Otis was actually raping Becky at the end of the film. Since all of my exposure to sex scenes in movies at that point had been either in slashers or Basic Instinct (where taking ones' clothes off was pretty much the first priority), I thought he was just an aggressive kisser. Oh well. I also didn’t understand what Becky meant when she talked about her father coming into her room and “doing whatever he wanted”. This is the result of putting a movie nerd like myself in Catholic school – I missed out on key discussions of such matters in study hall, which is something we didn’t even have.

Despite being billed as a 20th anniversary special edition, the DVD is a bit of a letdown. The only extra of note is a badly recorded commentary with McNaughton and some British dude. Whenever the Naught raises his voice above a certain level, the sound on the recording cuts out, sometimes completely muffling what he was saying for the next few seconds. He does offer a lot of good info, however, so overall it’s worth a listen. Just don’t be fooled by the claim that the film runs 130 minutes on the back of the DVD – it’s the same 85 minute uncut version (cut versions run about 78 minutes). I am guessing that whoever designed the art didn’t know the difference between an hour and thirty minutes and a hundred and thirty minutes. What a jerk, huh?

What say you?

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Serial Killer,

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Deanna Raybourn's Lady Julia Grey series

Deanna Raybourn is the author of the Lady Julia Grey series, including Silent in the Grave and Silent in the Sanctuary.

Here she shares a few thoughts about the cast and director of a potential film adaptation of the books:

The funny thing about imagining the late Victorian Julia Grey series as a movie is that nobody ever picks anybody to play Lady Julia Grey, the aristocratic amateur sleuth. I blame Nicholas Brisbane. He’s Julia’s partner in detection and more, a mysterious private inquiry agent, tall, dark, handsome, and enigmatic — a devastating combination. Women like to cast his role endlessly, and they have very strong opinions on the matter. Just this week I got an e-mail from an Australian reader who included a picture of “local boy Hugh Jackman” as her pick. (Not that I would have any say whatsoever in casting, but it was nice to have a little eye candy at my desk.) The top choices to play Nicholas are — in no particular order because otherwise there would be a serious catfight — Hugh Jackman, Gerard Butler, Clive Owen, James Purefoy, and most recently, Javier Bardem.

When I really, really press women for an answer on who should play Julia, I get a half-hearted, “Oh, I suppose Scarlett Johansson would do,” and then they go back to debating how many times Nicholas should take his shirt off in the movie. (I always pictured her looking a little more like Eva Green myself, although the voice is totally wrong.)

I’m not sure that any author, having seen what Joe Wright did for Atonement, wouldn’t happily make some small human sacrifices to get him on board as director. (And if I’m going to ask for the moon, I’d pretty much take anybody who ever touched Atonement, but that’s just greedy isn’t it?)

But if I’m completely honest, I don’t actually care all that much about the particulars of casting because once I turn loose the film rights, the story is no longer mine to tell. I would love to see what a different kind of storyteller, working in a different medium, would do with these characters. If you’re a producer and you’re reading this, it means I am the LAST girl to take an ad out in Variety telling you you’re doing it wrong. All I ask is a visit to the set, and maybe a little one-on-one time with Gerard Butler.

Learn more about Silent in the Grave and Silent in the Sanctuary at the publisher's website.

Visit Deanna Raybourn's website, Blog A Go-Go.

--Marshal Zeringue

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The Sickhouse (2007)

MARCH 1, 2008

GENRE: GHOST
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I am pleased to report that The Sickhouse is the first screener sent to Horror Movie A Day from a major studio! The irony, of course, is that that studio is in fact New Line, who more or less folded the day before I watched the film. Oh well, close enough.

Given the fact that it was direct to DVD and starring Gina Phillips, who is 0-2 in the non-existent HMAD sweepstakes (thanks to Dead & Breakfast and the truly awful Ring Around The Rosie), I wasn’t expecting much from the film. But I was pleased to find that it wasn’t all that bad – a fast paced ghost movie that resembles House On Haunted Hill in a number of ways but at the same time feels a bit original.

The HoHH comparisons stem from a few sources. One, this is the bluest fucking movie I have seen since, well, HoHH. In the rare moments that you see red (the blood looks more like black) it’s almost an eyesore. Lay off the filters, (director Curtis) Radclyffe! Strangely, the pics on the back of the DVD are shown in a brownish/yellow tint that resembles the Chain Saw remake. Well, whatever. Blue, orange, it’s all OK in Michael Bay’s world, and thus perfectly OK in mine.

Another similarity is that the backstory involves a rather confusing account of a doctor doing experiments, and now the ghosts of his victims are killing people. Or something. It’s all a bit baffling (and the ending suggests that the characters are stuck in a time loop?), but it’s still entertaining, which is really all I ask for anymore. Plus, the backstory is actually about the plague (“As in THE Plague?” a character asks), which is a topic I am quite interested in, and is also rather rarely used in horror films. Which is why the film feels more original than it probably actually is – there are bits and pieces taken from a variety of horror movies, but overall the concept is kind of unique.

Kudos to writer Romla Walker for doing something truly rare – making me care a bit about a criminal in a horror movie. For whatever reason, many horror movies have criminals (usually robbers) as our “heroes”, and I’m always cold to the concept. Fuck them, they are thieves! Kill em all! But in this I actually kind of liked the main guy, Nick (Alex Hassell), who is introduced by stealing a car and going joyriding with his friends. Of course, when someone in the car finds a video camera he almost immediately does a Blair Witch parody, so that helped immensely.

However, one thing about her script (I assume) that wasn’t so great was the rampant profanity. Now, obviously I have ZERO problem with the F-word and all its variations (I’ve even been known to make a few up), but sometimes a movie just has so many that it just sounds forced, and even worse, tiresome. Take for example, this exchange:

Nick: “Shut the fuck up you crazy fucking fuck!”
Gina: “Fuck you!”

Come on now. We can all do a lot fucking better. Had the film been a bit lighter, this could be construed as a joke, but the film is entirely dark and humorless other than the Blair Witch joke.

Another thing I was reminded of was the underrated Xbox game Condemned: Criminal Origins. In that game, there’s a sort of nonsensical sidequest that involves you finding the remains of dead birds around the city. This film also has dead birds, though it makes a bit more sense here, since... actually I have no idea what sense it makes. The ghost killer dresses like a bird. That’s about it. Hey, it works. That game also had an abandoned hospital as a level, if memory serves.

Like yesterday’s movie, this one has a rather disgusting birth scene, and damned if I didn’t applaud it. A girl suddenly squirts out not a child, but thousands of leeches. She then begins walking around, as more leeches and black fluid (which could be blood, though it seems thicker) pours out down her leg and all over the floor. Fuck yeah! Nasty bits like that are increasingly uncommon, so when you get a bit of it in a new movie, it’s a good sign that all hope is not lost for modern horror.

The surround mix is also quite good. Creepy kids' laughter and things of that nature will occasionally pop out of the rear speakers, and one time it even freaked me out a bit. I hope a lot of you have decent home theaters for these movies, I can’t imagine how different my opinion for some of these movies would be if I wasn’t being engulfed by the damn thing while I watched it (this may be why I tend to like stuff no one else does – maybe they’re just watching it on a stereo TV?).

You may wonder why I am a bit vague on story specifics. Well, that’s because I honestly can’t make heads or tails of the final 20 minutes of the movie, and need to watch it again (or have it explained to me via wiki entry). But I haven’t had time to do that yet, and no one else has seen it, best I can tell, so I guess I’ll have to wait. If this review is not updated by the time the DVD hits stores (March 18th I think?), feel free to explain the ending to me. Please include an explanation for the fox under the clock, why a guy who is flat out told he is going to die via hanging decides to wear a scarf anyway, and what the hell is going on with the cop at the end. Thanks!

What say you?

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Ghost,

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