It's Alive (1974)

JUNE 15, 2008

GENRE: KILLER KID (BABY!), MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I can’t recall when I bought It’s Alive. It’s one of those movies that I ‘discover’ when looking at my collection, coming across it and saying to myself (or out loud) “What the hell? When did I get this? Oh well, let’s watch it!”. Evidence points to it being purchased at Best Buy (the Best Buy price tag being the biggest clue), and it was recommended in February by an HMAD reader named Brian, but as for when I actually – HOLY FUCK I TALKED TO JOHN CARPENTER LAST NIGHT!!!

OK, I was going to include my bloggy thoughts about it in this review, but since they are so long I just made an actual blog entry on my Bloody Disgusting page. Check it out HERE and then come back for the usual movie ramble.

Anyone who knows me, and no one does, knows that I love killer kid movies. Bloody Birthday, Cathy’s Curse... hell even Good Son is pretty awesome, even though he doesn’t kill anyone. So a killer BABY is even more enticing, because, well, it’s a baby.

However, despite being made by Larry Cohen, it’s actually a pretty serious movie. I mean, yeah, it’s a silly concept, but it’s played very straight. As my good friend Matt pointed out, it’s a horror movie for adults, not teens (indeed, other than the baby and the main character’s son, no one in the film is younger than 35 or so), and it’s true. It would have been easy to simply have the baby go on a rampage and kill necking teens and the occasional drunk/homeless guy in the woods, a la most monster movies, but instead we actually get a lot of stuff with the parents, who are clearly (and understandably) disturbed about birthing an actual monster. Mom goes a bit nuts and wants to raise the child, Dad wants to get rid of it (some shades of abortion here, but nothing too obtrusive), feeling responsible for the deaths it has caused.

But that’s not to say it’s all frowns and melodrama. I got quite a few laughs out of it, mainly because everyone in the movie is so blunt. At one point, the dad’s boss tells him “Hey you know Ted in accounting? He’s got a retarded kid!” in an attempt to cheer him up. There’s also some nice black humor – a (non monstrous) baby is at one point surrounded by gun-toting cops who are hunting the monster baby. Cohen is brilliant here, as you fully believe that these cops will actually shoot the tyke (aided by a sudden cut to black that lasts 10 seconds – as if we might just hear the shot). Great stuff.

My only real issue was a strangely coincidental one. The baby is making its way back to its family’s home, and thus I assumed the climax would be entirely housebound. It certainly seems that way, but then the thing escapes and a chase ensues. The monster is chased to the sewers, and that is where the final battle really occurs. I had this same problem with the movie Them (Ils) – they leave the house (scary) to the sewers (not). But here’s the weird thing – the sewers in question here are in fact the ones connected to the giant LA river dam thing that you’ve seen in many movies, like Grease, Escape From New York, and... Them!, the giant ant movie from the 50s. Cohen, being a guy who knows his sci-fi/horror, probably did this intentionally as an homage to that film, but the idea that It’s Alive has elements from two entirely different movies with the same title, in a single sequence, is pretty odd. At least to me.

The DVD has a commentary by Cohen. Like The Stuff, it’s not the best track, but there’s some nice info here and there (and a few too many silent gaps), including some funny stories about the film’s composer, Bernard Herrmann. Cohen also manages to take credit for the POV shots in Jaws, which I’d be more inclined to believe if I didn’t know that this film was released in the fall of 1974, after Jaws had finished principal photography. But hey, who’s to know for sure?

Well, probably lots of people. But so what, it’s a good movie. Watch it, you might have it in your collection as well!

What say you?

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Cohen, Killer Kid, Monster,

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Godsend (2004)

MAY 2, 2008

GENRE: KILLER KID, MAD SCIENTIST, THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Some movies, you watch and just wonder how they got made. There’s nothing particularly awful about Godsend, but at the same time, nothing very good either. They take an interesting concept (clones become crazy once they get older than their original counterparts) and do absolutely nothing with it, resulting in a movie that feels like the first act stretched out for 100 minutes. Certainly you can make an interesting religion vs. science debate type movie on the cloning issue, but these ideas are barely even mentioned, let alone explored; it's like the local public access version of presenting two sides of an important issue. Fucking Clonus Horror had more to say. And the ending is as half-assed as it gets; the movie doesn’t conclude so much as it just sort of stops. This is the type of shit I expect from a straight to DVD movie, but not one starring one of the greatest actors of all time, not to mention Robert De Niro.

It also features Cameron Bright as... a creepy kid! Seriously, what the hell is with his agent? Can’t he ever just play a regular kid? No, he’s gotta be the key to all human mystery or whatever the fuck (twice – X3 and Ultraviolet), or a weird son of a Russian who almost gets molested by Juliet from Lost (Running Scared) or simply being lusted after by Nicole Kidman (Birth). Get this poor little bastard into a talking dog movie or something normal like that.

At least he DOES something in the movie (kills another kid and dumps him in the river). Everyone else is content with simply sitting around talking about how strange he is. Hell, the bad guy (De Niro) is never even really confronted or fought – when Greg Kinnear finally threatens to tell the cops about his illegal clone factory, De Niro hits him over the head and knocks him out. Kinnear escapes somehow (the building in which he’s laying unconscious is also on fire), De Niro simply... moves to another town. Then Kinnear moves the family to a new town, where we see an additional 5 minutes of nothing continuing to happen. The DVD has 4 other endings (almost an hour’s investment), all of which are slightly better but still incredibly underwhelming. Was Godsend supposed to be a franchise or something? Why don’t they bother fucking CONCLUDING any of the film’s storylines? Our bad guy is neither stopped or victorious, our killer kid is neither cured or killed (or locked up), etc. The entire movie is just sort of there.

Considering that the director and writer both contribute to the disc's extras, one must imagine that the film wasn’t re-edited without their consent or anything of that nature (the only problems they allude to is not having enough money to film the ending they originally wanted, but with 5 different endings ordered by the studio, they ended up filming it anyway). So why is the film so incomplete? At the beginning, we see the kid having a party with all of his friends. He seems a bit more interested in talking to De Niro than playing with them, but still, he is obviously a sort of normal kid (until he passes the aforementioned threshold) . But when he begins getting weird, all of his friends disappear from the movie. We know his parents don’t care for his new behavior, but how is he acting with the other kids? The only interaction he has after that is with a new bully in school (played by the absolute worst child actor this side of Return of Swamp Thing), and of course, the one kid he kills. He's obviously the most interesting character in the film, and yet they ignore him as much as possible. Another example – it’s hinted that De Niro has interest in Kinnear’s wife (Rebecca Romijn), but again, this is never explored beyond him buying up a bunch of her crappy photos.

And for the love of Christ, how can you take a movie seriously when they try to make those metallic stress ball things scary? They literally try to evoke scares by playing the sound of the two balls scraping together REALLY LOUDLY. Ooooh, spooky.

No deleted scenes help explain any of this crap. Other than the alternate endings, the only other extra is a commentary by the pretentious Brit director, a track that is merely dull until the point where he suddenly invites his DP to join him, at which point they begin discussing lenses and film stock, rather than why their movie is so fucking pointless.

What say you?

- LOL @ BEST PRICE!!!

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Killer Kid, Mad Scientist, Thriller,

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The Pit (1981)

APRIL 25, 2008

GENRE: KILLER KID, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

As I’ve said ones of times, the nice thing about Horror Movie A Day is that my complete lack of discernible criteria for choosing what I watch results in my finding not only a film I never would have watched otherwise, but possibly had never heard of at all (will one of the grammar police make sure that’s verbally correct? It looks wrong.). Such is the case with The Pit, a film that was recommended by Charmuh but I had forgotten about until a few weeks ago when I was rummaging through the cheap DVDs at Amoeba Music in Hollywood. There’s a zombie movie with Horshack on the flip-side of the disc – if that’s half as good as this movie, then it will be among the finest purchases I have ever made. And keep in mind, just last week I bought a chocolate pie.

A few months back I reviewed a film called Freaky Farley, a lovable, if uneven, independent oddity that featured a guy claiming that monsters lived in the woods. The funniest part of the movie was the reveal that the monsters were in fact, real. There’s a similar aspect to this film – our creepy killer kid claims that something called Trollogs live in a giant pit in the woods. About 20 or so minutes into the film, he goes to talk to them, and sure enough, there are four or five hairy goblin things in there. It’s fucking hilarious. Another, sadly unexplored odd aspect to the plot is that his teddy bear is alive as well. At one point, we see the bear’s head move, but this idea is never addressed again. According to the IMDb, the monsters were always intended to be a figment of the kid’s imagination, but this was changed during production. I think it’s all for the better – the movie wouldn’t be nearly as charmingly insane if the kid was just, well, insane.

Another hilarious thing about the movie is that you can’t really blame Jamie for tossing folks into a pit. As the film begins, he simply goes to talk to an older kid, and the dude punches him right in the face. A neighbor girl is so mean to him it makes Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown look sort of sweet and kind, and an old lady calls him a freak for no reason whatsoever. Sure, the kid is a bit off, but these people are downright vicious. Kick their ass, Jamie! Also, it has a really odd sense of what women can or can’t do. The babysitter picks up a knife after Jamie offers to get it. When he gets mad, she explains “Women are capable of a lot more these days.” Later, when someone claims that they can’t spell very well, she replies “Who can?” I can, you dumb broad!

It’s also a genuinely creepy movie at times. Jamie falls in love with his babysitter, which leads to a scene where he convinces her to bathe him. In addition to the fact that she washes his back for like 10 minutes straight (it’s fucking clean, woman!), at one point during this lengthy wash Jamie alludes to his mother molesting him while she bathes him. Also, he just watches her sleep at one point, and she’s barely concerned. This creepiness carries over to the production itself – again, according to the IMDb, the director’s wife didn’t allow him to film any of the nude scenes, except for the ones with his own daughter. Uh....

And this is the first thing we see in the film. Not even a production logo flashes by before we are subjected to a terrifying clown cake.

The only thing I didn’t like about the movie is that Jamie disappears for like 20 minutes straight during the film’s 3rd act. He’s the best part of the movie (the not-exactly Oscar caliber acting of Sammy Snyders helps immensely), so to have him MIA for so long definitely blunts the film’s impact. He re-surfaces in time for a delightfully mean-spirited ending though, so not all is lost.

Granted, the film is rather obscure (the fact that almost everyone involved never made another film again doesn’t help), but even with that, I was amazed to discover how little known it was even among horror nerds. I kept asking folks about it at the Fangoria convention today, and the only guy I spoke to who knew what I was talking about was an Anchor Bay rep – and they are the ones who distributed the damn thing! I believe it’s still in print (my copy was new, not used), so it shouldn’t be that hard to find. For the love of talking Teddy Bears and clown cakes, I urge you to seek it out and watch it. Christ, just look at the poster (in the Amazon link)! How can you NOT love this movie already???

What say you?

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Killer Kid, Weird,

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Satan's Skin (1971)

APRIL 20, 2008

GENRE: BRITISH, CULT, KILLER KID, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

Oh, bless you, Joe Dante. I had never even HEARD of Satan’s Skin (aka Blood on Satan’s Claw) until you added it into your festival, and honestly, if it wasn’t paired with Horror Express (yay!) I probably would have skipped it. Not a big fan of devil type horror movies, and I had never heard of anyone in the cast or crew, so I figured it would just be some dull oddity. Well it’s certainly an oddity, but it’s VERY far from dull.

The storytelling is very loose, something that was a bit strange but eventually won me over. For example, the film begins with a dude visiting his uncle to introduce him to his fiancée. The film follows the young couple for the first 15 minutes or so, and then once we have met a few other folks, they have seemingly served their purpose. The girl is never heard from again, and the guy just sort of gets phased out, to the point where the last time we see him he’s basically an extra in a scene. Later, five of the townsfolk are chasing one of the suspected cult members, a scene that comes out of nowhere. You might occasionally get a bit confused, but in the end it all more or less makes sense (at least in an interior logic sort of way – we ARE talking about a movie in which people begin growing parts of the devil on their person).

I should also point out that the film has a rather unpleasant “teen on teen” rape scene. By that point I was having a grand old time with the loony movie, but that sort of sucked the fun out of it for a while. It gets back on track, however, when the film’s actual hero suddenly realizes he has a goat leg.

The finale has some of the strangest editing I’ve ever seen. The town judge is swinging a sickle, and it suddenly freeze frames. Is it over? Nope, it cuts to the intended victims, who begin to run... and then it freeze frames. What the hell? It’s not like they are using a clever edit to hide the violence (none of them are killed), it’s just there for the hell of it. Very strange. It also contains Yvonne Paul, one of the hottest women I've ever seen, dancing nude and brandishing a knife.

Anchor Bay released this one (under the Blood on Satan’s Claw title) but only in Region 2, so it should be relatively easy to find if you're not in America. It's also been released on VHS, whatever that is. If you can watch it though, I highly recommend it – it’s like Children of the Corn meets Wicker Man, something I mean in the most positive way possible. Hopefully a stateside release will be coming along promptly. Like tomorrow.

Like I said earlier, it screened with Horror Express, a film that I really enjoyed when I watched it, despite being a god-awful transfer. Unfortunately, the print they showed wasn’t much better – it was scratched to hell, and each reel had a different color timing to it (one was too red, the next one looked right, then the next one was too yellow...). Still, a damn fine film that is also largely overlooked. Support strange 70s horror!

What say you?

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British, Cult, Killer Kid, Supernatural,

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Whisper (2007)

FEBRUARY 11, 2008

GENRE: KILLER KID, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I really hope that someday ABC buys the rights to Whisper and they just use some footage for it as a Sawyer flashback on Lost (in the movie, there's a back-story about his girlfriend cheating on him, maybe they can use it on Lost to explain why he refuses to get close to Kate). It will make Josh Holloway look better. Because honestly, he may call himself “Max” in the film, but he’s fucking Sawyer through and through. Same hairstyle, same mannerisms, and yes, same character (a two bit crook with shades of nobility). So either the guy is afraid to play outside of his comfort zone, or he simply just can’t act.

Luckily the movie isn’t too bad. Michael Rooker isn’t around as long as I’d like (and since when does a heart attack give you severe facial burn scars?), but any movie with a killer kid is always OK by me. And this kid’s a vicious fucking bastard, not only messing with his kidnappers, but also random folks who happen by. He also controls dogs, a la Damien, but he’s not the Antichrist. Instead, he claims to be a standard fallen angel, which is an interesting idea.

And even though the movie was shot entirely in Canada, I give the production team an A+ for really putting in the effort to sell it as Massachusetts and Maine. While I wasn’t entirely fooled (the roads are a dead giveaway – no highway in Massachusetts has more than ¼ mile without a sign for a Dunkins!), they have the right newspapers, police cars, license plates, even a nice local microbrewery (Wachusett Ale) that any native New Englander such as myself will appreciate. And since they don’t have anyone do the accent, it actually makes it even more believable, since it’s always exaggerated beyond any reasonable belief.

Sadly, Universal did not put as much effort into mastering the film. Even though it was at one point intended for theatrical release (they shot it in 2005), the film looks pretty washed out and thus TV movie-ish. The compression is also horrid – just take a close look at the Universal logo at the beginning and notice all of the blocking/smearing going on in the globe. It’s even more of a bummer when you know that the film was shot by none other than Dean Cundey, who shot a few movies you might enjoy such as Halloween, The Thing, and Jurassic Park. You can tell this would have been a nice looking film had they bothered to take the time to give it a decent transfer. Oh well.

Another bummer is some less than satisfying editing. Jumps in conversation are noticeable in more than a couple scenes (people will respond to questions in a very awkward manner, since they were actually responding to something else entirely). There’s mention of a scar on Sarah Wayne Callies’ eye that’s never elaborated on as well. Speaking of the dear departed Nurse Sara, I must take issue with a film that features no less than 3 scenes in which Callies has the perfect opportunity to flash at least some side boob and gives us nothing. She screwed us over by quitting Prison Break over salary bullshit, and she’s screwing us over here! It’s not fair, dammit!!!

Anyway, as far as direct to video movies about demonic children starring Lost characters go, it’s one of the better ones. I guess it’s airing on TNT already, if you catch it there, you should be satisfied (it’s rated R but only for language, the on-screen violence is pretty tame, so a TV edit will suffice and possibly even look better if it’s TNT HD).

What say you?

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Killer Kid, Supernatural,

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Joshua

JULY 8, 2007

GENRE: COMEDIC, KILLER KID, PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

One of my favorite movies is A Few Good Men. Story-wise, it’s a fairly standard courtroom drama, but it’s also a pretty damn funny movie. Kevin Pollak, Nicholson, hell even Tom Cruise pull off more naturally funny moments than you get in most ‘actual’ comedies. “You’re a fucking lousy softball player, Jack!” kills me every time. I was reminded of this movie when I watched Joshua in one of the 6 goddamn theaters that are actually playing it (I sure love living in LA, but still, what gives, FOX??), because I was laughing a lot at a movie that I thought was going to be a fairly standard killer kid movie. Can a movie be considered a comedy if you find yourself laughing more than just a few times? No, because it all goes back to tone. But still, it’s kind of sad to think that a movie about a murderous little kid would have more genuine humor than, I dunno, License to Wed. And in a strange coincidence, both Joshua and A Few Good Men feature small roles by Spinal Tap members (Michael McKean and Christopher Guest, respectively), both of them more or less playing the least amusing character in their respective films. Weird.

Most of the laughs come courtesy of Sam Rockwell and Dallas Roberts, playing his brother-in-law. I’ve never seen Roberts in a film before, but he was damn good. He floored me during an otherwise serious scene when he suddenly stops to ‘people watch’ a couple walking by and silently mock them (that the guy can convey that without saying a word is a pretty good testament to his abilities as an actor). The film is chock full of moments like that, and yet it’s never distracting; instead it fits the off-kilter feel the entire movie has. But unlike say, Family Guy, the laughs don’t work out of context, hence why I’m not repeating any lines here. It would take too long to explain why “The building must have a hundred rats” is laugh out loud funny, so just see the damn thing.

The acting is good across the board, even the little kid (too bad they didn’t find him in time for the Omen remake). Of course, Rockwell is always great (even in Clownhouse), and he's probably one of the few actors who can pull off locking his kid out of the bedroom (for starters) and remain sympathetic (plus get a laugh out of folks in the process).

Despite the unexpected humor, the movie is still pretty creepy. I still wonder if it was only toys inside Joshua’s giant bag of stuff for good will. And the scene of him pretending to mourn the loss of the family dog is definitely one of the most unsettling scenes in a horror movie all year. Hell, even the normally upbeat Dave Matthews contributes a depressing and, again, creepy song for the end credits. Come on man, eat drink and be merry!

The only problem I had with the film was that it strangely fell apart once Joshua finally goes all out and kills someone. The creepy tone was gone, and rather than at least build to an exciting climax, the film more or less just sort of fades out from there. Then it suddenly ends, not on a big showdown, but instead on a somewhat bizarre notion, hinting that Joshua’s behavior may be a result of his possible homosexuality. I don’t know if this was the intent, but it sure seemed that way to me. But since the movie also takes a wholly NOT vague stance against (gay-hating) Christianity, one must wonder why George Ratliff would seemingly choose to condemn both sides. Maybe he’s just a jerk.

Also the movie co-stars Vera Farmiga, which automatically gives the film no less than a B. Besides being incredibly beautiful, she is one of the most ‘natural’ actresses I have seen in ages. In this, Departed, and Running Scared, she plays entirely different characters (well, they’re all hot women, but that’s about the only link) and never comes off as forced, or worse, ACTING! the way several of her peers do (I’m looking at you, Jolie and Theron). Plus she stars in genuinely good movies (unlike, again, Jolie and Theron), which is always nice. I tend to find that the more visually appealing an actress is, the less appealing the rest of the movie will be. Come on, name a good Halle Berry movie (X-men doesn’t count). Rachel McAdams is another exception, though I won’t cite examples. I don’t have enough readers as it is without risking turning some away by saying I liked The Notebook.

Shit!

Oh well, what say you?

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Comedic, Killer Kid, Psychological,

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The Omen (1976)

JUNE 6, 2007
GENRE: KILLER KID, RELIGIOUS
SOURCE: CABLE (FOX MOVIE CHANNEL)

I SWEAR TO GOD I had no real awareness of the date last night when I decided to watch The Omen. My only reason was it had been a while, and my Tivo had gotten Omen II (which I have never seen) a few days before and I wanted to refresh my memory before I watched it. My wife was like "ooh, 666" and I was like "What the fuck are you rambling about, woman?" and she reminded me of the date. Even weirder, that means it was exactly one year since I saw the remake. THE DEVIL LIVES IN ME!!!! Or, my remote.

I didn't hate the remake. It had been so long since I had seen the original at that point, that it was sort of like watching a new movie. The acting was solid (even Julia Stiles was less slapworthy than usual), and it had John Morghen (that's Giovanni Lombardo Radice to you) in a small role. Nothing wrong with that. Like all remakes, you can always say "It's not as bad as the Psycho remake!", if nothing else.

Watching the original again, it becomes clear that the two films are actually a fascinating example as to just how much direction, casting, etc can totally change a film. Unlike Gus Van Sant's shot for shot, horribly miscast monstrosity, the Omen films differ wildly at times while not really changing a single word, but both work (though I think the remake works better if you hadn't seen the original) in their own way. Both films used the same script (the remake added some nonsense about 9/11 and Katrina but that's about it), so the 'differences' lie totally in how Richard Donner and John Moore staged their respective scenes and cast their actors. Whereas in the original, Damien was a cute little kid who appeared totally innocent throughout the film, the remake had some creepy looking bastard who looked evil right from the start, thus totally changing the dynamic of his scenes. And, I am sure I'll get flamed for this (by... someone, I guess), Moore's direction of the dog attack in the graveyard was superior to Donner's. Moore's scene actually got a scare out of me, Donner's did not. There are other subtle and minor little things throughout the film that, again, on paper are probably identical, but the execution was different, resulting in an entirely different perspective on how the film plays out. Pretty interesting, I definitely recommend watching the two films back to back if you are in film school and in that "No one can ruin my script!" phase.

And dammit, we need more David Warner in films!!!

What say you?

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Killer Kid, Religious,

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