White Noise 2 (2007)

FEBRUARY 16, 2008

GENRE: GHOST, TECHNOLOGY
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Assuming I ever got off my ass and finished writing/uploading all of the reviews from February of 2007 (this blog began in April or May of 2007), there would still be a missing entry for February 16th. I was traveling, and being new to the whole thing, I had yet to make seeing a daily movie an almost effortless occurrence. But anyway, that means that the second White Noise 2 reached its nonsensical conclusion, I had officially gone 365 days in a row of horror movie watching. Yay me!

White Noise 2 was surprisingly watchable, no worse (or better) than the original, so I’m not sure why they didn’t at least give it a chance in theaters. Then again, between One Missed Call and The Eye, everything WN2 covered was already bombing in theaters, so shipping it off to Blockbuster was probably a wise move. The film’s two stars are more known for their small screen efforts anyway. Strangely, they both have a lot in common – quick, which one is known for starring in a cult sci-fi show, having a brief villainous role on a revival TV show about a tough female fighter, and being in a really bad Dimension movie: Nathan Fillion or Katee Sackhoff?* And I must admit, it was nice to see a scene where a character uses the internet and he uses Yahoo!, not GenericWebSearch.com. Seems to me that it would make a lot more sense to just ask Yahoo or whoever to use their image in the film (possibly get a few bucks for the use while they are at it) rather than design a distracting and ridiculous fake one.

Unlike Boogeyman 2 and some other DTV sequels of late, this one doesn’t even try to tie itself to the original; they don’t even have the requisite newspaper article with a file photo of the original’s star accompanied by some helpful exposition (“this guy had the same problem as you. Now he’s dead!”) that is synonymous with these type of sequels. But I guess it sort of makes sense, since this movie doesn’t really follow the same themes as the original. Fillion sees EVP on living people and tries to prevent their deaths, instead of Keaton watching static for ghosts and solving mysteries. So, yeah, this movie doesn’t really feature a lot of “white noise”. But I guess “Goofy Light Ray Filters Surrounding People That Only Our Hero Can See 2” would be a really stupid title.

The one thing it DOES share in common with the original is the presence of an actor who can almost make anything interesting. I’ve long claimed that Fillion could be the next Harrison Ford, but the problem is no one is going to give him a Star Wars (well, they tried to) or an Indiana Jones to put him on that level. It’s a shame to see him more or less wasted on nonsense like this and in thankless guest starring roles on Desperate Housewives and Lost (where the lucky sod played Kate’s husband – and even that wasn’t enough for me to even slightly dislike the guy). Sackhoff, on the other hand, should stick to Battlestar, because between this and Halloween: Resurrection I think it’s safe to say that whenever she plays a perky girly girl, she simultaneously plays the most annoying person on the face of the planet.

Two hundred paragraphs or so I mentioned The Eye: a film that also featured someone with the ability to prevent death. They also share a director, one Patrick Lussier, who reshot half the fhe other film after Lionsgate had problems with the original cut. And watching this film makes his contributions to The Eye all the more apparent; the guy has a serious hardon for symmetric tracking shots like this:

There are probably a dozen others, and there are just as many in The Eye. Maybe it's just some sort of Kubrickian homage, but the problem is he uses them so often they become a distraction, and the bulk of the movie is otherwise pretty standard (no fancy camera tricks and such), so they stick out even more than they should. And, much like his film Dracula 2000 (which featured Fillion in a small role – see how this all comes full circle?), WN2 has a lot of ridiculous religious ties. Granted, nothing in this film (or any other film, really) could ever hope to be as gloriously stupid as the idea that Dracula was in fact Judas Iscariot, but Lussier’s peculiar obsession grinds this movie to a halt when Fillion begins reading the Bible (out loud to himself, of course) and making numerology connections to Latin phrases involving Lucifer. Apparently, in addition to being the root of all evil, the Devil really enjoys coded logic puzzles. And, like any movie that features spiritual deadlines (everyone dies on the 3rd day of their being saved), the process is far too exact – I would think both God AND the Devil have better things to do than ensure that someone dies exactly 72 hrs to the minute after they were saved. It’s not quite as ridiculous as the Devil’s need to impregnate a woman by midnight in End of Days (“is that Eastern time?”), but it's still pretty silly.

There are a bunch of extras, including the most spoiler-filled “Making of” featurette I’ve ever seen on a DVD. Usually these things are promotional, not informative, so it’s strange to see one that shows a major character’s demise from the end of the film alongside all of the usual “fun” fluffy bullshit. There are also 30 minutes of extended/deleted scenes (most of them are worthless extensions, and on two or three of them I couldn’t even tell the difference) and a goofy piece about Fillion and some super cute PA chick walking around the allegedly haunted hospital where part of the movie was filmed. Finally, there’s a 20 minute segment on “real life” near death victims, all of whom apparently live in Seattle (the movie was shot in Canada, so your guess is as good as mine).

Oh and then there’s this guy, the fake Zach Braff:

Well, whatever. No one rents White Noise 2 expecting to be blown away. Fillion’s inherent charm is enough to keep the film watchable, and it’s nice to see him play “dark” for a change, but beyond that it’s nothing that will change your mind about the White Noise franchise.. Someone get the guy a good script, please?

What say you?

*Fillion was in Firefly, Buffy (the show, not the movie), and Dimension's Dracula 2000, Sackhoff is in Battlestar Galactica, the short lived Bionic Woman revamp, and Dimension's Halloween: Resurrection. Reaching? Maybe. But I like to demonstrate my worthless ability to make such connections.

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Ghost, Technology,

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Dead Men Walk (1943)

FEBRUARY 15, 2008

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

One thing I love about old movies, besides the length (I’m a busy man, I don’t have time for these two hour Argento opuses every day!), is how uncomplicated they are. Dead Men Walk is about a guy who kills his brother, but the brother was into black magic so he comes back as a vampire, and then seeks revenge. That’s it. Nowadays, there’d be a third brother, a real estate scam, some double crosses, a talking sandwich, a few dancing girls, a space shuttle...

This is actually one of the better old-school vampire movies. As expected, you don’t get a lot of violence, but the atmosphere makes up for it, and it also has what had to be one of the first “twin” effects (via a split screen). George Zucco doesn’t fight himself, Van Damme style, but the effect works beautifully and that’s all that matters. There’s also a great deal of fire in the movie; in addition to the standard fiery finale (which contains the longest “thing falls over that starts the fire” shot in cinematic history I think), there’s also 2-3 scenes of book burning in the first 15 minutes.

And also this guy, who resembles a redneck Robert Englund impersonating a chicken when he moves:

Dwight Frye also appears in the film as... the bad guy’s servant! Wow! But to be fair, his role of Zolarr is nothing at all like his Renfield or Igor roles, since this movie wasn’t based on a book. This was a wholly original character, one who just happens to do the same sort of shit that his other ones do. Poor guy. I looked him up on Wikipedia today and found that he died on a bus. A terrible way to go for anyone, but he was about to begin filming a role in a big budget drama about Woodrow Wilson, which must have been pretty exciting for him, since the role probably wouldn’t require him to yell out MASTER! or something to that effect.

Anyway, good stuff. The story might not be groundbreaking, but for 62 minutes you can’t really complain. You CAN complain about the transfer though - it's possibly the worst on this budget pack yet, with lots of that weird shifting effect (where small objects in slow moving shots seem to drift around). Apparently when Turner Classic aired the film a while back, their transfer sucked too. That's one really awesome thing about the digital format - treasures like The Attic will be preserved for hundreds of years to come.

What say you?

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Horror Classics, Vampire,

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Hatchetman (2003)

FEBRUARY 14, 2008

GENRE: CRAP, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

When you rent a film from Blockbuster, you have the option of keeping it after a week or two. The price is on the receipt, it’s usually like 19.99 or 24.99. Well, keeping Hatchetman would have set me back a whole 3.99, which was a pretty good indicator of its worth. What I mean to say is: this movie is fucking worthless.

Unlike yesterday’s goofy Backlot Murders, this movie appears to take itself seriously. This is a problem when it’s completely fucking stupid. The problems are evident from the start: a girl gives her boyfriend a tie as a one year anniversary gift, we see the most matter of fact, half-assed mugging in cinematic history (“Give me money!”, the mugger yells. “OK, fine”, the girl replies, as if he was just a rather pushy Salvation Army Santa), and the one kill scene in the first 20 minutes has no buildup or anything associated with decent filmmaking.

Even stupider, the film is about a killer that seems to be specifically stalking the dancers from a sleazy strip club in LA. Nothing wrong with that, but they all seem to live together too! And seemingly all of the other people who live in the apartment complex frequent the joint. Even this would be fine if the two places were next door to one another (nothing beats proximity!) but they appear to be not even within walking distance of each other, as getting rides to and from work/home make up more than a couple conversations. But at least those conversations have something resembling a point, at one point the resident bitchy character enters Final Girl’s apartment for no reason other than to announce she’s going to work. Let’s ignore the fact that they don’t even like each other, but who the fuck walks into someone’s home just to tell them what they are doing without them?

Also, strangely, one of the most annoying things about the movie is the amount of nudity. For the first hour, every other scene is of the women stripping and “dancing”. But the film doesn’t seem sleazy, in fact they actually go out of their way to make the film seem a bit dramatic (after all, our Final Girl is trying to get into law school, of course, and there’s many scenes revolving around whether or not her relationship with Tie Guy is going anywhere). If any of this was presented as tongue in cheek, it would be fine, but since everyone’s so serious, it just becomes dull and pointless, and fast. You hate to think gratuitous nudity actually slows a movie down, but Hatchetman manages to do just that.

And take a look at this guy. Get a good look.

If you’re ever unfortunate enough to watch this film, at least now you are prepared for the sight of the single most annoying character in horror movie history. I’m not joking. It’s rare I loathe anyone so much in a movie, but this guy made me want to literally go back in time to when the film was being shot and convince the writer to brutally kill the guy in the film’s opening scene. Naturally, he’s the very last victim in the film. Thanks a lot, assholes.

The police are the most inept in cinema history too, at one point or another they manage to accuse, arrest, or just kill every single guy in the movie EXCEPT for the one who’s the actual killer. Worse, when the killer is revealed, not only does he keep his mask on for another 10 minutes even though we know who it is, he also reveals a motive that doesn’t make any fucking sense. Apparently his mother was a stripper and he hates her and every other stripper too. Fine, but why did he go to the strip club early in the movie without any problem whatsoever? You’d think if the simple idea of it upset him to the point of murder, he’d at least be frowning when actually watching it and paying 7 bucks a beer to boot. In fact, his identity is actually revealed a bit sooner, once we learn he lives near the woods, since the film’s poster and DVD menu feature a killer standing in the middle of a forest, despite the fact that the entire film up until that point takes place in either a strip club, an apartment complex, or a standard office building subbing for the LAPD precinct.

The film also contains the worst digital blood in movie history:

It’s fucking blue for Christ’s sake!

The only thing I liked about this movie was a scene where a guy explains a cable splitter to another. As a fan of all types of AV components and adapters, I am pretty sure it was the first time I have seen an RF coaxial splitter used in a film. Nice. I also appreciate that there were no trailers for even worse films at the head of the DVD, something that’s almost standard with this type of DTV crap. Hilariously, the disc’s one extra feature is listed as “Trailers” (plural) on the main menu, and if you click on it, you just get a link for one trailer (for a movie about Boris Yeltsin, of all people). Nice work guys.

Fuck this stupid movie. 3.99? It’s still overpriced.

What say you?

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Crap, Slasher,

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The Backlot Murders (2002)

FEBRUARY 13, 2008

GENRE: COMEDIC, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Let’s be honest, The Backlot Murders is a pretty bad movie. But there’s JUST enough good natured fun in it to warrant a pass (or at least, keep it from a Crap tagging). While there were more than enough groan-inducing moments, on more than one occasion I found myself pretty entertained and even somewhat charmed by the film’s bizarre blending of comedy and horror (heavy emphasis on the comedy). In short, any movie with the line “Pumpkin needs to poop” can’t be altogether bad.

(Pumpkin is a dog.)

I have never seen David DeFalco’s infamous film Chaos, and that is due to the fact that I hear it’s fucking terrible from pretty much everyone who’s ever seen it (including members of its own cast), and the guy says that it’s not a remake of Last House on the Left, when it so clearly is (even the damn poster is a copy). A little honesty goes a long way with me. As I learned on the extra features, DeFalco is a bit of a tool in fact, referring to this goofy, ridiculous movie as a “thinking man’s horror movie”. Maybe he means “a horror movie for the thinking man who is tired of thinking and just wants to be mindlessly entertained”, but I don’t think so. Anyway, when I saw his name in the credits, I feared the worst, and then an establishing shot of a movie studio with the superimposed title “Empire Studios” when we can clearly see that the studio is actually called Metro Studios didn’t help much.

But then, like the voice of an angel, I hear (and then see, obviously) none other than Ken Sagoes. Ken, of course, is Kincaide from "Dream"s Warrior and Master, and his dialogue from those two films was commonly repeated by my friends and I in high school (I don’t think a day went by without someone saying “Yeah, I do it so I don’t have to look at yo’ ugly face all the time!”). Sadly, Sagoes dies about 2 minutes after being introduced, but the work had been done – he had blessed the film with his presence, and from then on, the film was more or less a delight of bad slasher movie clichés combined with hit or miss comedy.

And props to the film for being I think the first slasher movie to take place on movie sets that actually exist in the real world. When someone says “It’s the Psycho house!”, it is indeed the actual Pyscho house (the whole movie was filmed on the Universal backlot) They don’t make up random titles meant to evoke the real films, they just use the real ones. It’s refreshing. Also, using Psycho allows the film to quickly characterize one girl as a total idiot, because she’s more familiar with the bullshit 1998 version than the real one.

Also, the director of the video being shot within the movie is a total hoot. He’s played by Charles Fleischer, better known as Roger Rabbit, and while some of his lines are lame and obvious, he has enough gems to make up for it (there’s a line about Chatsworth, a town I loathe for no real reason, that had me nearly pissing my pants). He also survives most of the film, which is nice since he’s the oldest character, usually a kiss of death.

Speaking of which, it’s actually somewhat difficult to pin down who the survivors will be. Since everyone seems to be a bit stupid (save for an AD who is written out of the film 20 minutes in, presumably to be a suspect), there’s no obvious Final Girl. In fact, one of the few times the movie really got on my nerves is when they kept putting the same two kids in standard slasher movie danger, only to end the scene with them perfectly alive. I think it’s finally on the fourth go-around that they are finally killed (and even then, one of them escapes and gets killed a few scenes later). Come on movie, when two kids go off to fool around, they are to be killed within 7 minutes, not 7 scenes.

I hate to spoil the film, but it’s too admirable not to mention. Not only is the killer the most obvious choice (though he has a slightly less obvious partner), but he actually appears to dress AS HIMSELF. Seriously, the killer’s getup is some human mask that just looks like the bobblehead version of the guy who’s actually the killer. It’s fucking hilarious. Imagine if Michael Myers wore a Sabretooth mask in the Halloween remake? I loved it.

So with all that love, why don’t I give this movie a wholly positive review? Well, the acting is abysmal (part of the point, but it doesn’t seem that many of the actors are in on the joke), the gore is pretty minimal considering how over the top the rest of the film is, and even though they are on an actual movie studio, everything still feels pretty cheap (they also seem to be able to film a music video with only a director and 2 special effects technicians?). The finale also drags a bit; the movie could be 10 minutes shorter for sure. And while I am certainly not one to talk, the profanity is a bit too rampant, and sounds forced to boot. It’s distracting, to say the least. So while I may have been somewhat impressed with the comedic angle, the film is an utter failure when it comes to the horror, which is a big problem when you have a “thinking man’s horror movie” such as this.

Still, not the worst movie I’ve ever seen by any stretch, and the 4 or 5 laugh out loud lines, plus a small role by none other than Corey Haim, are enough to make it worth your time, especially if your other options are Lionsgate scarecrow movies.

What say you?

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Comedic, Slasher,

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Non Canon Review: My Bloody Valentine (1981)

FEBRUARY 13, 2008

GENRE: HOLIDAY, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Fuck you, Paramount. Fuck you in your mountain’s ass! The atrocity that is the Friday the 13th boxed set is nothing compared to the criminally weak treatment that My Bloody Valentine was given for its DVD release. I hope whoever decided “they don’t even need the trailer on this disc” was promptly fired and then shot for good measure. At least some of the F13 movies had commentaries and such. Christ.

See, unlike most of the other slasher films from 1981, My Bloody Valentine is actually quite good even without all of the gore. Something like The Burning or even Halloween II pretty much rely on their gore setpieces to keep viewer interest. But MBV is great fun even with almost zero splatter (with one minor exception, the only blood you see in the film is on already killed folks), all of which was removed by the MPAA (rumored to be around 9 minutes of footage!) for theatrical release, and never restored. Some of the kill scenes are rendered wholly incomprehensible, particularly the death of Howard (which is that one exception to the splatter I mentioned). Instead of, you know, what is happening, you just see a few drops hit the face of one of the heroines and then Howard’s body fall down a shaft. Huh? After about a dozen viewings now I am pretty sure that his body was hung from his neck and then thrown from above, and the impact caused his head to be severed, but when you’re talking about a genre that more or less exists primarily to showcase effects work, cutting it to the point of confusion seems a bit counterproductive.

Luckily, as mentioned, the film works without it. There is quite a lot of character development, but the film never feels slow (there are 3-4 kills by the 40 minute mark). And it’s still one of the only slasher movies with a cast of folks in their late 20s or early 30s (whether they are SUPPOSED to be teens is unknown, everyone refers to them as “kids” but maybe that’s just Canadian slang). I also consider Chief Newby, despite his stupid name, one of the best slasher movie cops ever, up there with Sheriff Garris in F13 part 6 and of course, the patron saint of the horror police force: Sheriff Leigh Brackett.

Also I am forever in love with Cynthia Dale, aka Patty, the hottest slasher victim ever (sorry, Vicky from F13 2):

It also works on a suspense/scare level, which is again, ironically not a strong point of any of these early 80s slashers. The scene of the Miner smashing all of the lights as he heads toward our heroines continues to impress, and the vicious attack on the poor old lady at the Laundromat (and who the hell is Jake, by the way?) is a great setpiece. I also think the mystery holds up, even on repeat viewings there aren’t a lot of “oh why didn’t I notice THAT!” moments, something that cripples Scream on a 2nd viewing (check out how many times Stu and Billy give each other weird looks).

So besides the abhorrent editing, is there anything I don’t like? Well, not really, though a couple things sort of bug me. One is the driving in this movie. Every scene of someone driving involves a car nearly swerving out of control. What the hell is up with these Canadians? I wouldn’t want to drive anywhere near a single character. Also, the accents are distracting, because they are thicker than any other Canada-lensed movie I can remember. I don’t think they ever specify that the film takes place in America or Canada (the town of Valentine Bluffs is fictional, so that’s no help), but still, hearing Axl say “We didn’t knooo waarrr you were!” sort of lessens the impact of the scene. Since they don’t say it’s Canada, I have to assume they are supposed to be Americans (don’t forget, 90% of all movies filmed in Toronto try to pass themselves off as being New York, Boston, etc). I also never got why TJ was so delighted to be climbing that ladder after finding some of his friends dead:

But those are mere distractions (and it's in my contract that I nitpick at least SOMETHING for every review). There’s nothing actually bad about the film other than the editing, and that’s the MPAA’s fault. The recent announcement of a remake is actually good news – maybe Paramount will finally get off their ass and release an uncut special edition DVD of the filjavascript:void(0)m. It’s widely considered one of the better of the genre (Tarantino himself counts it as his favorite slasher, and Entertainment Weekly called it “criminally under-appreciated”).

You may wonder why I haven’t mentioned the theme song. For 14 years now (literally half of my life!) I have been trying to find out who sang the damn thing. No one knows, and the internet doesn’t help, because if you Google “My Bloody Valentine song” all that comes up is either the Irish band or people asking about who sang it. I’ve just about had it. SOMEONE HAS TO FUCKING KNOW!!!

(*Robert Stack voice* UPDATE! Paul Zaza, the film's composer, confirmed via Email that he is both the composer and artist behind the theme song, which is titled "The Ballad of Valentine." I consider the matter closed.)

Speaking of my long association with this film, yes, I first saw it when I was 13 or 14 and have watched it every year since, on my illegal dupe, then on a VHS, and now DVD (maybe next year will be a Blu Ray?). I even wrote a treatment for a sequel when I was like 15, which would involve the staff of the mental hospital where the killer was locked up having a party and then, shockingly enough, being killed when he got out of his room (OR DID HE?). It was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Anyway, I hope you celebrate tonight or tomorrow with a viewing of this classic. Butchering aside, it remains the all time best non-franchise slasher movie and serves as a reminder that you don’t need to have a lot of splatter (or any, in fact) to make an effective one.

What say you?

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Holiday, Non Canon, Slasher,

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Roman (2006)

FEBRUARY 12, 2008

GENRE: HERO KILLER, INDEPENDENT
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Instead of reading this review, you should go see Spiral, or pre-order the DVD here (it’s only playing in a few cities). You see, Roman is a very similar movie in concept, but on the polar opposite end of the spectrum in execution. Because, while both films are “slow”, Spiral is pretty damn good, and this movie bored the shit out of me, and didn’t look very good either. And it didn’t have Chuck.

Like Spiral, Roman is about a creepy guy who inexplicably draws the attraction of a really hot, spunky girl who might have some mental issues. Unfortunately, the film never once feels like anything but a decent short film that someone decided should be stretched into a feature. So this means we get about 6 scenes of Roman being mocked by his co-workers, 15 scenes of him looking out the window, some 4569766 of him making pork n beans, etc. It’s one thing to draw tension and develop character, but when that character is doing the same thing over and over, it’s not really progressing anything except the audience’s boredom.

Plus, unlike Spiral, there is no mystery as to whether or not Roman is a killer. So I don’t really like him right from the start. Kind of a problem when he’s pretty much the only character in the movie they bother to develop. After he kills a girl (Kristen Bell) early on, another one comes along. She is also annoying, because she’s a hippie who puts twigs and leaves in her hair and makes Roman take her to performance art. Bell wasn’t too bad, but this broad I actually wanted him to kill, so naturally he doesn’t do that. Thanks, movie.

This movie was also shot on DV, so it’s far from enjoyable from an aesthetic point of view either. And what’s with DV filmmakers always having people look into camera and/or shooting entire scenes from one angle? You have unlimited and cheap stock in which to make your film – why not experiment a bit with different angles and such? Director Angela Bettis could have shot this the exact same way on film on a low budget for sure. The commentary doesn’t explain why they used DV, or at least, it didn’t in the time I spent listening to it, which admittedly wasn’t long since it was generally boring “trivia” like “That’s Eddie Steeples, you might know him from the Staples commercial.”

So there’s really not a lot to recommend here. The acting is good, and the end has a nice little twist involving the hippie character’s “art installation”, but that’s not really enough to make up for the snail’s pace, excessive padding, and generally lazy videomaking. I really dug May (which was also written by Lucky McKee), so I was hoping this one would be at least almost as good, but no such luck. If nothing else, it proves that Bettis should star and Lucky should direct (as they did in May), not the other way around.

What say you?

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Hero Killer, Independent,

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Simon Wood's "Accidents Waiting to Happen"

Simon Wood is the Anthony Award winning author of four books as well as over 150 published stories and articles.

Last year he applied the Page 69 Test to Accidents Waiting to Happen. Here he speculates on the casting of a film adaptation of the novel:

The weird thing is that when I’m reading someone else’s book, I always imagine who I would like to see play the parts in the movie, but when it comes to my own books, I don’t really have a visual of who would appear in the movie. I think the reason for this is that I’m too close to the material. Also when I’m writing all these characters, I tend to be playing all these characters in my head. So if the book became a movie, I’m not sure the world is ready to see me do a one-man production.

That said, I do visualize certain people for several of the roles in Accidents Waiting to Happen. The main role of Josh Michaels requires an actor who comes over as a vulnerable everyman and not someone who is an indestructible superhero. For that I think Matthew Fox (Jack from Lost) would be perfect. I think the moviegoers would get behind him. They could forgive him for the mistakes Josh had made in the story and they would root for him to survive the onslaught coming his way.

Josh has a femme fatale in the form of Belinda “Bell” Wong in his life and there’s no contest to who I want for that role. I wrote the book with Lucy Liu in mind. Lucy would be able to pull off the cruel demented streak Bell possesses. Bell is a character you love to hate and I think Lucy would do the character justice.

The Professional is the story’s anonymous hit man. He’s a tough character to cast, as the killer goes out of his way to make himself transparent to the world around him. But I think Kevin Spacey could pull it off. The Professional is an anonymous but engaging person. For all his milquetoast outer appearance, he possesses the ability to manipulate people. He also possesses a ruthless side. The man is a killer after all. So I think Kevin would be able to give an understated performance that people won’t forget. If we couldn’t get Kevin, I would go with Hugh Laurie. He’s one of those guys who would be able to play all the facets the Professional has to offer.

The last key character in the story is Josh’s best friend, Bob Deuce. Twenty years ago, this would have been a role for John Goodman, but I need someone more contemporary and I would go with Philip Seymour Hoffman. He’s the right age and shape for Bob. And whereas PSH has become known for these serious roles, I think the lightheartedness and comic relief that Bob brings to the story would make a nice break for him and a role he could have a lot of fun with. Well, that’s how I’d sell it to him.

Well that’s the cast, now I just need to sell the movie rights…

Read an excerpt from Accidents Waiting to Happen.

Visit Simon Wood's website, his MySpace page, and his blog.

The Page 69 Test: Accidents Waiting to Happen.

--Marshal Zeringue

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