Humanoids From The Deep (1980)

JUNE 29, 2008

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

I have seen the trailer for Humanoids From The Deep about a dozen times (including once or twice at the New Beverly itself), and always thought it looked amazing. Rapist fishmen attacking bad actresses on the beach? Sign me up! But I had a sneaking suspicion that the film would not live up to the trailer, and now that I’ve finally seen it, I know I was right. Before the film, we were told (by the film’s editor and co-producer) that the film was made, and then Roger Corman (bless him) decided it needed more exploitation type elements, i.e. nude girls being killed. Another director went back and added these scenes, the bulk of which were the ones used in the trailer, and the result is a film with MPD.

In reality, the movie is almost Crichton-like in its execution: we have a few assorted science and doctor and everyman types banding together to study/fight a common enemy, in this case, rapist fishmen. There’s also (sigh) a real estate subplot that adds to the fairly serious tone of the film. Hell, even the actors are pretty respectable – Vic Morrow, Doug McClure, etc.

But the film’s real draw is, of course, the kills. And those scenes are great in that sleazy, Grindhouse-y way. But they are so few in number, and jarringly edited into the narrative, that they only remind you how dull the rest of the movie is in comparison. It’s not that the original movie elements were BAD; they just aren’t as amusing as the newer stuff. You almost wish that Corman pulled a Warner Bros and had Renny Harlin (or whoever this particular new director was) reshoot the entire film.

That said... it’s still worth a look. Rob Bottin’s rapist fishmen makeup is fantastic, and the score is by none other than James Horner, long before he began winning awards and composing nearly identical scores for every big epic movie that Hans Zimmer or John Williams are too busy to do themselves. And even though there’s not a lot of rapist fishmen action, there’s plenty of other stuff, like a great bar fight and a ridiculous explosion.

It’s also curious how straight it is. It’s almost like they were trying to make a serious movie, which is not uncommon for Corman, but you still gotta wonder why he didn’t order more nudity/violence right from the start. No one goes to a Corman movie for the intellectual benefits, and by this time (1980) he should have known that. Had the whole movie reflected the ridiculous and exploitative nature of the reshoot scenes, this movie could be a masterpiece. But the insistence on being, you know, a real movie at times, ultimately weighs it down. A shame, really.

Also: the end sets up a sequel, which we never got. Curses!

What say you?

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Monster,

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From Beyond (1986)

JUNE 18, 2008

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I have an odd affliction that keeps me from watching a film if I get an inkling that the film has been edited (note – this doesn’t apply to films I’ve already seen before I knew better, such as the Friday the 13th films). For example, one of my favorite movies of all time is Sling Blade, and yet I have yet to see Billy Bob Thornton’s followup, All The Pretty Horses, because I know Miramax cut it in half. The same thing kept me from ever seeing From Beyond until now, as I read, years ago, that the MPAA cut out pretty much everything considered gory (might have been when Stuart Gordon was discussing Castle Freak). Anyway, once the DVD became available, I bought it, and finally got around to watching it today, thanks in part to a recommendation by HMAD reader JJ Fancybears.

I didn’t dislike the film by any means, but I wasn’t particularly engaged by it either. I didn’t even take notes, because nothing stuck out as particularly amazing (other than the effects/makeup work by John Buechler and some others – but that’s like pointing out that the shower scene in Psycho is pretty good), or bad. It was just there, being pretty good, and I nodded along in general approval.

I do think that maybe they just didn’t have the money to film everything they wanted to. For a movie in which sexual depravity plays such a large role, there is actually quite little of it on display. Whether characters or sequences were dropped, I dunno, but it all feels like it’s sort of over before it has really begun. That said, any movie in which the villain is revealed to be impotent during the big climactic battle is automatically at least a B.

I should admit that I’m not a big fan of Lovecraft, who wrote the short story that serves as the prologue to the film. I read a few of his stories and they all seemed the same to me, and, like this film itself, the design (description) of the creatures was all I really got excited about; not really caring about the human characters (one exception – "The Outsider". That story fucking rules). Then again, it didn’t stop me from really enjoying Dagon, so I dunno.

The extras on the DVD, however, got me all excited about the movie. In addition to a great commentary track (with Gordon, Brian Yuzna, Barbara Crampton, and Jeffrey Combs), there’s a nice, if short, piece on the restoration of the film, as well as a general retrospective. Gordon is the only one seen in new interviews (other than the restoration guys) for some reason, but that’s OK. Plus, he’s filmed inside Dark Delicacies, a store any Los Angeles horror fan should know (and shop at). And the stuff revealed on the commentary is pretty interesting, such as the fact that they shot Dolls before this film, even though Dolls was released second. Indeed, other than my annoyance with MGM putting their logo before every extra feature (do we need a full logo for a piece that lasts 72 seconds?) I actually had more fun watching the bonus material than the movie. I dunno, maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.

It’s also another horror movie to deal with the Pineal gland, but it’s pronounced differently than I am used to (and as usual, has a different function than it did in other horror movies). I’d like to see a horror movie in which a group of scientists get together to debate what exactly the Pineal gland does, only to discover that it’s not even an actual thing. Then they are murdered by a wizard who happens by.

Note – I was actually going to watch another Gordon film today, one I had rented titled King of the Ants, only to discover that it wasn’t a horror movie. Score another one for Blockbuster’s half assed genre tagging!

What say you?

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Mad Scientist, Monster,

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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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Non Canon Review: The Thing (1982)

JUNE 13, 2008

GENRE: ALIEN, MONSTER

SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

OK I could have sworn that I wrote a “Non Canon” review for The Thing back when I last saw it, on a double bill with Invasion of the Body Snatchers last year, but I guess not. What a jerk I am.

Then again, it’s hard to review a film as close to perfect as this, especially for someone as cynical and sarcastic as me. I dunno about you guys, but the reviews for films I downright love tend to be boring as hell, and reek of cocksuckery. But, I’ll try.

The reason the film works as well as it does is that we get to know the guys in the middle of a panic. The "Thing" invades their base pretty much in the first scene, and it’s not too long after that that we have our first big effects scene. It would be more traditional to have a half hour or so of “getting to know you” type shit, but that would just be dull (indeed, some TV broadcasts have a sort of intro to each character, and it throws the pace of the film way off). We don’t need to know too much about their backstory, because it’s not relevant to the film’s story. We just need to know how they act in times of stress/danger, and that is revealed as the film goes. The Poseidon remake attempted this very same thing (with the same star!), and failed for the most part – because it was used to cover plot holes. Sure, it was great to have the wave hit 10 minutes into the film, but it got downright laughable to see Kurt Russell or Josh Lucas endlessly reveal old jobs that they had that would allow them to know how to do whatever the plot required. “I used to be a fireman.” “I used to be a plumber.” “I was the mayor of New York.” “I was a professional swimmer.” Etc.

And, as everyone already knows, Rob Bottin’s effects are fucking brilliant, and STILL look good, even better than the stuff we see today. There is literally only one effect in the entire film that looks a bit fake (a stop motion tentacle near the very end), and I am still downright flabbergasted as to how some of them were achieved. Whatever won the Oscar instead in 1982 (ET?) did not deserve it – they shouldn’t have even had nominees, and just given it to Rob right off the bat.

One thing I never noticed before was that Carpenter clearly did a few bits of the score himself. I’m sure I picked up on it on a subconscious level, but there are at least two scenes where the music is clearly not Ennio Morricone’s. Carpenter even admitted it, sort of, in the post film Q&A.

Watching it alongside Carpenter’s other films from the period just makes something stick out all the more, though – the cast. Other than Russell, who was making his third film with Carpenter, none of the usual character actors such as Tom Atkins or Charles Cyphers are in the film (Donald Pleasence was supposed to play Blair, but there was a scheduling conflict). I am not sure why he didn’t use his regular guys – if the film has one flaw, it’s that a few of the lesser known actors are clearly fodder. Populating the entire cast with faces (if not necessarily “names”) would have made the “Who is the thing?” sequences even more suspenseful. It’s also worth noting that Escape From New York, Carpenter’s previous film, was cast almost entirely with his regulars, and after that, none of them (Atkins, Cyphers, Jamie Lee, Nancy Loomis, Adrienne Barbeau, John Strobel, Nancy Stephens) worked with him again*. Weird.

As for the remake business, I'm happy to use it as an example when I explain that a remake is a valid idea for a film. But in all honesty, since the original was based on a story, and not very faithful to it, and this film is an adaptation of that same story with no real connection to The Thing From Another World (the title logo is about the only thing carried over), I would argue that it's not a remake at all. What do you guys think?

Remake or not, it’s simply an effective movie. I’ve seen it probably 8 or 9 times now, and I still jump at two points, and often forget which ones are “things” during certain sequences. It’s Carpenter and Cundey’s finest LOOKING film, for sure, even better than Halloween (those snowy landscapes and pitch black backgrounds sell the isolation effortlessly). The fact that it tanked (and was trashed mercilessly by the critics) upon its initial release still boggles the mind; even though I understand the whole “After ET people wanted to LIKE aliens” idea, it’s still just amazing that critics didn’t appreciate it, especially now when its often considered his best film (2nd best IMO – Halloween is and will always remain my personal favorite).

On a side note, the fact that I never finished the PC game is really gnawing at me lately, even though I didn’t really love it all that much (due to the strangely inconsistent manner in which the game presented itself as a sequel – they were supposed to be isolated, but now there’s like 200 buildings in the area and about 500 corpses lying around?). Anyone know if the Xbox version is compatible with the 360? I hate playing on my PC nowadays.

What say you?

*Unless you count Atkins and Loomis in Halloween III, which Carpenter produced.

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Alien, Carpenter, Monster, Non Canon,

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Monster From A Prehistoric Planet (1967)

JUNE 12, 2008

GENRE: ASIAN, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

I have never seen any of the old Godzilla movies, or Gamera, or Gorgo, ... I dunno, Googleo. But thanks to my Horror Classics set, I HAVE seen Gappa, or as it’s sadly known instead, Monster From A Prehistoric Planet (aka Daikyojû Gappa - close enough!), which I assume is pretty much the same: A guy in a suit destroying models, lots of pleasant Asian guys coming up with plans to stop them, a life lesson about mankind’s often false sense of superiority... all that good stuff is here.

It’s also, as far as I can recall, the only color film in the entire Horror Classics set, which is nice. It’s been so long since I have watched anything from the (mostly color) Chilling Classics set that I had forgotten what old, scratched, poorly transferred VHS color looked like. However, there is one thing I don’t miss, and this blatantly obvious cropped imagery:

However, Iwao Yamaz’s reenplay is an entertaining one, with a good amount of destruction, and thus many a model knocked over. I wish he had come up with the idea of having the two monsters (who are seeking their stolen baby monster) maybe split up to cover more ground, rather than constantly staying side by side and destroying the same buildings at the same time (must have inspired the game Rampage), but that’s OK. I also wish he had explained the monster’s power, which is some sort of blue light that emanates from their mouth, which causes toy airplanes to explode into 4 or 5 pieces.

(Note – I love that rather than risk continuity errors, the filmmakers use toys whether the monsters are in the shot or not).

And come on, how can you not be entertained by a monster that looks like this:

Now, as I am not familiar with the others – when there are multiple monsters, they kill off at least one of them, right? We have 3 here, I was assuming that at least one would take a nuke up the ass or something, but no, the happy ending sees the monster family taking off together, all but cheered on by the human beings the monsters were stepping on just moments earlier.

Also, the monsters sound like jets for some reason. Just wanted to point that out.

What say you?

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Asian, Horror Classics, Monster,

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Organizm (2008)

JUNE 11, 2008

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

You cannot imagine my surprise when, after viewing and enjoying the film Organizm (despite the stupid new title - it aired as Living Hell, which isn't much better but is at least spelled correctly), I looked at its IMDb page and discovered that it was a Sci-Fi original (or at least aired as a premiere – Anonymous, if you’re out there and want to correct me again on my ignorant knowledge of what films are Sci-Fi’s own and which are just picked up by then, please feel free). The effects weren’t all that great, but it was well written/acted/directed, and had a refreshing lack of idiotic teens going skinny dipping.

The first 45-50 minutes of the film are great. It’s like a long X-Files episode, only instead of Mulder and Scully investigating the shenanigans and goings on, the people who unleashed the monster in the first place are the ones dealing with it. We have the government base, the locals, some military hardasses (none too cartoonish though), all the ingredients one requires to deliver an effective monster movie.

Like I said, the effects aren’t that great at times, but they are minimal until the final 15 minutes anyway. Our monster is an ever-growing plant-like thing with tendrils that infect/devour our protagonists (think The Ruins, if you were smart enough to go see it), and director Richard Jeffries (no stranger to horror, having co-wrote the terrifying Chevy Chase film Man of the House) was wise to keep the close up tendril action shots to a minimum. There’s an awful explosion and a few badly composited helicopters* as well, but overall it’s not too bad compared to say, Lake Placid 2, in which not a single effects shot worked. I’d also like to defend the ridiculous blood splatter in the film’s opening flashback sequence – it’s a dream and thus the fake looking blood is probably intentional.

But no matter, it’s a very professional and fairly exciting monster movie, with a well-paced structure a la The Blob (remake). The outbreak is fast, and thus the film has more scope than I was expecting. I thought the whole movie would be set on the army base, but we go to a church, a school, parts of the town, etc., with the tendrils constantly catching up and devouring folks (once the outbreak occurs I don’t think we ever go more than 5 minutes without some sort of attack or “chase”).

However, the finale felt a bit weak compared to the rest. It involves our two heroes (including Erika Leerhsen, which is why I watched it in the first place) heading to the source of the monster outbreak and infecting it with poisonous blood. It’s not that it’s bad, but it felt like I had seen this type of scenario before, so combined with the weak effects, I began to lose interest. However, I was amused that the plot actually found a reason for Leerhsen to get covered in blood (it protects her), since she’s usually caked in the shit by the end of any horror movie she appears in anyway. Nice work.

I also discovered that I am way too determined to find all of the goddamn pigeons in GTAIV. One scene had a pigeon in the background, and I instinctively reached for my Liberty City map as soon as I heard the damn thing (I mark each one I kill on the map, so when I get to the point where I can’t find them on my own, I can go online and find the locations of the ones I missed without having to look in areas I already cleared). Damn you, sound effects editor Jonathan Coomes!!!

It’s also a beautiful transfer. I don’t know who did it, but they should be commended. It honestly looked like a Blu-Ray at times, with tiny details like Jonathan Schaech’s stubble looking crystal clear even in darker scenes. One of the best I have seen for a non-theatrical release.

Sadly there are no extras other than a bland commentary. It’s amusing to hear Schaech pointing out other movies that this one reminds him of (“Did you see The Mist?” “Did you see Cloverfield?”), to the point where the director gets mildly annoyed, but otherwise it’s the same old “Remember this day?” “Oh man, this day was bad, I was really sick.” “No you did great though” type of actor/director back and forth. There are a few interesting tidbits here and there, but unless you loved the movie you can probably do without it (especially when, again, the director wonders if anyone watches a commentary before they watch the movie. For the love of Christ, NO! STOP PONDERING IT!!!)

I can’t vouch for the Sci-Fi version that aired, but in a sea of DTV garbage, it definitely sticks out (that’s two in a row for Leerhsen after Wrong Turn 2). It’s reasonably intelligent, it’s professionally acted and directed, and has a woman carving letters into her terrified 8-year-old kid’s hands in the first two minutes. Not too shabby.

What say you?

*Oddly, earlier this morning I watched Escape From LA again, to prepare me for my upcoming Carpenter Q&A. That film has bar none the absolute worst computer effects, particularly the helicopters, in a theatrically released film, EVER.

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Mad Scientist, Monster,

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Crocodile (1981)

JUNE 10, 2008

GENRE: ASIAN, MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

Longtime readers (or new readers who went back and read all the old reviews) know how much I love the New Beverly Cinema, particularly the “grindhouse” nights (now twice a month!) hosted by Eric Caidin and Brian Quinn. For those uninitiated among you, this is simply a pair of older films (usually 70s or early 80s) that have a ‘drive-in’ appeal, are often cheaply made, terribly written/acted, etc. Of course, some actual classy productions are snuck in as well (they are the ones behind the annual screening of Black Christmas, for example), but the real joy comes from movies like Crocodile (aka Chorake), which are so inept and hilariously cheap that nearly even minute of the film provides at least one laugh out loud moment.

The other day I slammed a movie called Sight for its poor editing – well I take it back (somewhat), because THIS movie should win some sort of award for its baffling editing style. Scenes often include cutaways to things which are seemingly not part of the scene (my favorite: they suddenly cut to a drink on a table on some sort of patio, zoom out to reveal several tables, and then the scene - which takes place inside - resumes), scenes that are noticeably out of place in the narrative, ridiculous attempts to cut real footage of a croc with their animatronic/rubber/whatever the hell it was creation. Of course, this may be largely due to the fact that the film was a re-edit of another film called Agowa Gongpo, from 1978. I cannot find enough information to discern what was different/added. And I'm not sure I want to know, because I think that would ruin the sheer joy of the incomprehensible editing.

And the attack scenes are even worse (and thus, better). There are a few, and they are all pretty much the same (the fact that some shots are obviously recycled doesn’t help hide this fact): the real croc walks through a hilariously off-scale model of a village, dozens of Thai extras begin to scream, we see footage of a thunderstorm and what looks like those “whirlpools” you make with two Pepsi bottles, the croc blinks, then the extras fall into the water as red juice flows around them. Occasionally the croc’s tail will set off an explosion and knock out a few more buildings, which cause the instant diving into the water and subsequent eating of a few more villagers, and then we cut to Thailand’s sole hospital (and their sole paramedic team) bringing a body to the hospital. So it's like half Jaws, half Godzilla (the croc's always inconsistent size is another source of hilarity).

At least those scenes offer some on-camera carnage. The film’s alleged hero gets drawn into the plot when his family is presumably killed by the crocodile, but we don’t really see this. Without any sort of setup, his sister goes into the water and sees his kid’s floating tube, but no kid. She screams and then mimes being pulled under the water, at which point the guy’s wife runs into the water and the entire process repeats again. During this entire sequence we are never even given the usual shot of the crocodile’s eye blinking (or his suped up red eyes that appear in a few choice scenes) that is often used in place of any actual onscreen violence. It’s sort of like the opening scene of Jaws, except without even an underwater POV shot to help us out. Anyway, they’re all dead, and thus he does what any man would in that situation: reads some newspapers, looks at a map he drew himself, conducts some sort of experiment that involves brightly colored fluids being mixed together, and finally assembles a team that includes his buddy and a Quint wannabe with a penchant for taking off his shirt, and heads out to the open sea to exact revenge. They are inexplicably joined by a guy who just climbs on their boat and begins taking photos, and before long the croc is carrying out a personal vendetta against them.

And it succeeds! Evearyone dies. It’s fucking amazing. They take the croc with it, but it’s nothing short of awe-inspiring to watch the film’s final minute, which is a still shot of their wrecked boat sinking, a few pieces of debris, and the water returning to its usual flow after being disrupted by the explosion that took everything out. No Hooper and Brody-style swimming back to shore, no final one-liner, nothing. Just the ocean, silent and devoid of human survivors. Poetic, in a bad Thai Jaws knockoff sort of way.

I cannot recommend this movie enough.

What say you?

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Asian, Monster,

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Ghost Of Frankenstein (1942)

MAY 29, 2008

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I wish I was a torch salesman back in the times of Frankenstein and his never ending number of fellow mad scientist family members. I would have made a mint, since it seems every resident of the town lights one up the instant pretty much anything happens. Ghost Of Frankenstein (who, like Bride, only has about 2 minutes of screen time) offers no less than TWO angry mob scenes, complete with numerous torches that someone sold for a great premium and proceeded to eat well for the next month.

This one offers a lot of stuff we haven’t seen in other Frankenstein films, such as a courtroom scene with the Monster sitting there on the defendant’s chair. We also have dueling mad scientists, a very intelligible Monster (he gets a new brain), and, before he even gets the new brain, a scene where he gives a little girl back to her father, instead of tossing her ass into the lake.

The movie also contains what may be the first non-fake scare in horror movie history. Our heroine (who is strangely a non-factor in the finale, she just stands around outside the lab where everything is happening) sees a shadow on the wall. She looks, and sees a hand at the window. She gets scared, the hand’s owner comes into view, and it’s.... the Monster and Ygor (Lugosi, two in a row for the gent!). Nowadays, it would just be her friend or her dad or whatever, but back in the day, they didn’t have time for such tomfoolery – a scary hand belongs to a scary guy, and thus the movie is 20 minutes shorter than the usual generic horror film.

Story writer, and one hell of a Panther coach.

It’s not as good as Son of Frankenstein, or, well, any of the others, but it’s still good. Unlike the Dracula films, the recasting of the Monster didn’t hurt, and the series is overall simply more intelligent and interesting. Then again I prefer monsters to vampires, so that’s not really a surprise. I would like to see them do something at the end besides have Frankie go apeshit, cause a fire, and destroy a building that falls around him while the two heroes go off into the sunrise, but hey. There’s still another film to go! And we can all agree that the two series are far better than Universal’s Van Helsing franchise, which stalled after one film due to the fact that it’s an abysmal piece of shit.

What say you?

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Classic, Mad Scientist, Monster,

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The Cave (2005)

MAY 20, 2008

GENRE: CRAP, MONSTER, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

What the fuck is the point of a movie like The Cave going into theaters? It offers absolutely nothing that the weekly Sci-Fi original movies doesn’t provide for free (hell, I’d even argue that the SCOs are gorier – more on that later), unless you live in some sort of alternate universe where Eddie Cibrian and Cole Hauser are big stars, beyond what Sci-Fi can offer. But yet, shocking as it may seem, The Cave actually opened in theaters in August 2005, against films like Four Brothers and 40 Year Old Virgin. The fact that it even made 14 million is pretty surprising. I suspect it may have even been meant for TV, as there at least four fade to black moments in the movie after a big revelation or (lame) death of a character, the perfect place to stick ads for Battlestar’s next episode and maybe a car or two.

The only thing a theatrical release can offer that Sci-Fi cannot (at least, when it comes to generic “Monster in the water” movies like this) is R rated violence, profanity, and maybe even nudity. The PG-13 Cave offers none of these things. Gore? Half of the deaths are offscreen entirely, and the only blood is seen on minor wounds. Even SCOs offer one or two reasonably graphic kills per movie. Nudity? Well, I wasn’t really expecting any, but no. Profanity? Cole Hauser’s big final line to the monster is “Come on mother f.” Not “F-“, as if they cut away before he could finish. No, he actually just says “F.”, and the shot lingers on him for another second as if to reassure us that he’s not actually daring to swear.

Now, I’ve said more than once (twice) that PG-13 is not an automatic kiss of death for a horror film – Spiral, The Ring, Poltergeist, etc. all manage chills without resorting to these sort of things (and more importantly, never feel like they are MISSING them either). But for a movie like The Cave, which is about allegedly vicious sea monsters tearing people apart, who the fuck wants a PG-13 version of that? Go all out and offer the audience (who are likely just looking to escape from the heat for 97 minutes in August) the occasional visceral thrill.

See, without gore or anything, all the movie offers is the same old “team of folks run afoul of SOMETHING in the _____” (jungle, water, mountains, desert... take your pick!) monster movie. The closest it gets to doing anything original is instead of having a corporate team member who sells the team out to save his own ass, we have Cole Hauser slowly becoming one of the monsters (he gets stung by one early on). And thankfully, this doesn’t result in a finale in which Hauser stalks his own friends, but instead he uses his newfound insight into their world to help his friends escape (albeit with the occasional violent outburst).

Everyone else is standard monster movie fodder, and the only suspense stems from the fact that whoever built the opening credits put them in a weird order that doesn’t reflect either the actor’s ‘starpower’ or their amount of screen time. For example, Daniel Dae Kim, who at this point was one of the stars of the biggest show on TV, is billed after a few no-name actors, even though his character survives longer than any of them anyway. In fact, the movie takes its sweet ass time killing folks off (again, the only reason we are watching), with more than half of them still alive with only 15 minutes to go.

The survival elements are rather weak too - I never once really felt they were trapped or in danger from anything but the monsters, despite a few attempts to make you feel otherwise. Granted, seeing The Descent sort of ruins whatever little a movie like this could achieve, but still. There's more claustrophobic feeling in any one second of Marshall's film than there is in the entirety of this (and, given the PG-13ity of it all, you'd think they'd try to play up the survival elements to earn the suspense/scares).

Botching things even more is director Bruce Hunt, DP Ross Emery, and editor Brian Berdan’s mutual insistence on making the action scenes as incomprehensible as possible. I am a defender of the three Bs of confusing camerawork (Bourne, Blair Witch, and Bay), and even I had no idea what the fuck was happening during certain scenes. At one point, Eddie Cibrian and Lena Headey are about to travel down a current. She gets stuck, and he cannot fight the current in order to help her. So he is whisked away while she screams “Noooo help!” and things of that nature. 300 closeup shots and 12 seconds later, Cibrian is at the end of the current, he sees a monster or something, and then viola! Headey is right next to him. What the fuck?

And while the image is fine (and to be fair, the special effects are generally quite good), the sound is also pretty lackluster. The surrounds have a lot of use, but the overall level of sound keeps dropping down at times (I checked my system with other movies and it seemed fine), and there is almost zero bass on the track (something other reviews have mentioned, though the level problem may be unique to my copy?). It’s really odd when a large rush of water is shown on screen and your subwoofer is barely making a whimper.

The extras are actually decent, strangely enough. One is about the technical advisors, who cave dive for a living. The two of them are far more interesting than anyone in the movie. The other is about Patrick Tatopoulos’ (part of why I wanted to see this movie is the inordinate number of crew who worked on Dark City, one of my all time favorite films) creature designs, which are pretty decent and wasted in this film. There are two commentary tracks as well, but I have a feeling that they won’t quite be worth my while.

What say you?

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Crap, Monster, Survival,

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Midnight Meat Train (2008)

MAY 1, 2008

GENRE: MONSTER, SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (SPECIAL SCREENING)

It’s not every day you have to tell Samuel L. Jackson to step aside so your buddy can get out of the row to go take a much-needed piss, but then again for a lot of folks, it’s not every day that you have to watch/review a horror movie you’ve never seen before. That’s what happened at Midnight Meat Train though, which capped off an evening spent with a much needed entry in modern horror – a new Clive Barker film (and a good one at that).

(I have no idea why Sam was there, as it was otherwise just press and people involved with the film. Maybe he just likes a good horror movie as much as the rest of us).

Despite being the most famous horror novelist next to Stephen King, very few films have been made from Barker’s work. Three of them he directed himself, and there have been about as many made by others (such as Candyman and Rawhead Rex). And to some extent I can understand why – apart from Candyman, as well as Hellraiser and its first sequel, none of these films made much at the box office. Barker’s themes (not to mention the borderline hardcore sex usually found within his tales) aren’t quite as easy to digest as your average horror movie, but his unique visions can’t usually be done for cheap. That’s a shame, but hopefully Midnight Meat Train will turn things around once released to theaters.

Ryuhei Kitamura makes his American debut (and his first legit horror film – his others are more fantasy/action based, including a Godzilla film), and fares far better than many of his peers. The film has a very unique look – it’s very grainy, but also has a lot of soft focus (it’s rare that anything but the main characters or object in the scene are in sharp focus, backgrounds are sometimes a total blur). Some of it may remind you of the Saw films (particularly when the blueish hues and lighting take over during the subway scenes), but it’s still visually striking from start to finish.

It’s also a well cast film. Bradley Cooper is a perfect choice to carry this type of film – he’s not a big star, but neither is his character (an aspiring photographer). Leslie Bibb plays his girlfriend, the most supermodel-y waitress in film history, and thus between this and Iron Man she’s become my de facto favorite actress of the year. Vinnie Jones plays the same mute bad guy he seems to always play, but he’s rarely as menacing. And Hostel II’s Roger Bart pops up in a few scenes, and he’s always a welcome presence.

Back to the menace though – what surprised me most about the film was how it managed to be equally as suspenseful as it was splatter-y. There are a couple stalk/chase sequences between Jones and Cooper that rival any modern horror films’ attempts at suspense (the fact that these sequences have zero dialogue is another bonus), giving the film a “classy” edge that many others lack (come on, are you really biting your nails when watching a Saw film?). At the same time, the kill sequences are impressively gory, to the point where it’s almost a surprise this got an R rating. They also carry a bit of an Argento feel; there’s a fantastic gag where a guy, hanging upside down on a meat hook, sees his reflection in a growing pool of his own blood. A+.

Ironically, this is also part of the only issue I had with the film. During the 2nd act, it begins to get a tad bit monotonous, as Cooper follows Jones around twice, with many near-misses, and we also see about 4 scenes of Jones killing random people on the train. It’s a short film (less than 90 minutes I think) but I wish something else could have been done to make the film feel a bit less like it was going nowhere for a small amount of time. Also, Cooper’s character becomes traditionally “obsessed” with his target, ignoring his girlfriend, plastering the entire apartment with photos, and even eating a steak (he’s a vegetarian who brings his own tofu to the diner where his girlfriend works). But this obsession comes rather suddenly, and is not fully explored (I wanted to see more with his newfound love of meat, for starters). Still, once the 3rd act (which is almost entirely train-set) begins, it’s no longer an issue, and the film barely lets up from there.

There is also a random, hilarious reference to an (unjustifiably) Oscar winning movie that had me laughing so hard I apparently annoyed others in the theater. Sorry!

Another great thing about the film is that screenwriter Jeff Buhlerwill didn’t slow the film down with needless exposition and explanation for everything. Not only does it leave available story for the (hopeful) sequel, but it keeps the film focused on its real point(s). In fact, without spoiling much, you can almost look at the film as an “origin” film once the final scenes play out, and like any origin story, it sets the stage for bigger and possibly better things to come.

Between this and The Ruins (and, God willing, the release of Repo), it looks like 2008 will be a great year for original, top notch (and R RATED!) horror films. Hopefully the box office will be good enough to inspire more Barker stories making their way to the screen.

What say you?

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Based On Novel, Monster, Serial Killer,

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Son Of Frankenstein (1939)

APRIL 28, 2008

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

In the still-underrated Gods and Monsters, Ian McKellan, playing Bride of Frankenstein director James Whale, refers to the directors of the Frankenstein films that followed Bride as “hacks”. It’s a funny line and all, but I would hope no one else would, like me, assume for the next 9 years that the next film, Son Of Frankenstein, wasn’t as worthy a piece as a result. Because, in reality, Son is a damn good movie, if a bit slow.

The reason it feels slow is probably because the movie is like a half hour longer than most of the other films of the era (indeed – the only longer Universal monster movie is the Spanish version of Dracula). But it’s also a bit lacking in action during the middle, and could definitely have used another scene or two of Frankie just going apeshit. This one clearly had a big budget and good effects guys – the scene where he destroys a lab is top notch, probably the biggest action spectacle seen in a horror movie at the time it was released.

Otherwise it’s one of the best I’ve seen from the period. Adding Lugosi was a nice touch, and it worked beautifully. I didn’t even know he was in the film until the other day, when a buddy of mine was expressing his amusement over a song that used audio samples from the film, particularly of Lugosi saying “....so they say!” over and over. This random anecdote was enough to put aside my increasingly dull Horror Classics set for the day and dig into my Universal Monster collections, so you KNOW it was funny.

Lugosi also plays the film’s score in a few scenes. It’s hilarious – you hear music, and think it’s the score, but then they cut to Lugosi, sitting in a window, playing a horn/flute/whatever.

It’s also a fare more suspenseful film than the others, in my opinion. The last third of the film deals with everyone coming at Frankenstein’s son from every angle – the cop who thinks he’s a murderer, the townsfolk who think he created a murderer, and the Monster, of course, who is seeking revenge against him. Add in a kid in peril and lots of Expressionistic-lite elements (the staircase, for example) and you got yourself a highly engaging movie.

Lionel Atwill also appears in the film, which isn’t really a big surprise. He appears to be in just about every horror movie made during the 30s. Sort of the Bill Moseley of his day.

I should also note, because someone will bitch if I don’t, that this is the last time Karloff played the Monster in this particular Frankenstein series. Bummer.

What say you?

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Classic, Monster,

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Loch Ness Terror (2007)

APRIL 23, 2008

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

"Sci-Fi Original Movie" isn’t a television show, is it? Like, I understand why House is the exact same thing every week (albeit awesome), but I can’t quite understand why all of these Sci-Fi original monster movies follow such an exact template, especially considering it’s a story outline no one likes anyway. Sharing more than just a few plot elements with the abysmal Lake Placid 2, Loch Ness Terror (it aired as Beyond Loch Ness, as if that makes any goddamn difference at all) is not much better; inching above LP2 due to two whole good effects and a hotter girl.

And I want to make sure I am assigning blame correctly – was Emmerich’s Godzilla the first monster movie to introduce the concept of a bunch of baby (title character)s to terrorize our group while the big baddie just sort of took a smoke break or something? Like, I know in Jaws they didn’t have to fight baby sharks, and the truck in Duel didn’t pull over for a bit and let a Corsica chase Dennis Weaver for a bit. Because it’s really an awful concept, and never used for even the slightest good. Cloverfield is a minor exception – because they were wise to use baby Slushos in a scene in which the real monster could not have appeared, and then more or less forget about them. Needless to explain – when the baby “Nessies” show up in this movie, I more or less checked out.

It’s even more of a problem in these movies than in Emmerich’s, because at least his LOOKED good (ish). The VFX guys once again blow their wad in the first scene or two, so by the time the babies show up, the budget is clearly gone, and they look like shit, on top of not being particularly threatening to begin with due to their size in relation to their mother (who also looks fake). Like I said, there are a few good effects (a step up from the “good effect free” LP2), but none of them are in shots of the monster attacking (save for a few close-ups in which rubber monsters were clearly used).

A big part of why the effects look so bad is that no one bothers to have the fake things interact with the real world. The monster’s head comes up or goes back into the water, and no water is displaced. It walks around on loose soil and leaves no footprints. The design itself isn’t too bad, and the compositing is above average for the most part, but this giant goof renders their efforts more or less moot. Effects Without Effect – sounds like a bad emo band, no? On that note, the color timing is also terrible – the opening scene has about four different color temperatures. Whenever I go to a test screening, the crowd is reminded that the film isn’t finished and thus the color timing might be off – I have never once seen it as bad in an unfinished film as it is in this allegedly complete movie.

There’s also a problem of putting the monster in places where he couldn’t logically fit. In that same opening setpiece, he apparently swims up to a foot or so off the shore in order to retrieve an egg, but not as much as a scale on his back breaks the surface of the water. Later, he walks around the dense forest without knocking over any trees (or making any noise at all, for that matter – he’s a borderline slasher in these scenes). Come on now.

And back to LP2 – some of the plot similarities are a bit too close for comfort. Quick, which movie am I talking about – some kids, including a foreign girl, go camping in the woods, and two of them are killed almost immediately. The others, one of whom is the son of the sheriff and pines after a girl who’s with another guy (who is eventually killed without any real concern), narrowly escape a few times before finding refuge in a tree. Christ. Again, they should have just combined the best parts (script, cast, crew, effects) and made one decent (if generic) monster movie with a bigger than usual budget, rather than spread the already lacking funds across two movies that both suck.

This tickled me – it’s odd to see credits with abbreviations anyway in a feature film (way to rise above your television roots!), but why is this one girl given a bonus “E”?

The badass in the movie is kind of unique. He plays a rogue cryptozoologist who dresses like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western, but he’s also incredibly nice. He expresses genuine interest in our Jake Gylenhaal-y lead (he’s the sheriff’s son), what his plans are, what his family is like, etc. Also, he has a penchant for reminding people that he is a cryptozoologist – I think the word pops up more than most of the character’s names. Furthermore, he’s played by the guy from Sleepwalkers, which means he is the speaker of one of my favorite lines in all of movie history: “Stop looking at me... stop looking at me you FUCKING CAT!”

If you’ve never seen a Sci-Fi original “Monster in the water” movie, you could do worse, but not much better. The only benefit to seeing it on DVD (the making of featurette is abnormally dull) instead of on the network is the lack of commercials. Otherwise, if you missed it on Sci-Fi, just wait for the next one to air.

What say you?

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Monster,

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The Beast Of Yucca Flats (1961)

APRIL 22, 2008

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

Really, what else do you need to know?

My favorite all time episode of MST3k is Red Zone Cuba, an incomprehensible action movie about robbers, treasure, Castro, prisoners, hobos... I’ve seen it probably a dozen times and still don’t have the slightest clue as to what the hell is going on at any given time. It’s also hilarious, with many of my favorite sayings coming directly from Mike and the ‘bots comments (if you’ve never heard me randomly sing “Drink Night Train, go to the basketball game; throw up under the bleachers...” – you just don’t know me, man). So I had immediately checked out the episode The Skydivers, which was another film by the same guys – Coleman Francis and Anthony Cordoza. The episode sucked. Disheartened, I opted not to watch their treatment of the 3rd Francis/Cordoza masterpiece; The Beast Of Yucca Flats, until I had seen the movie itself, figuring I could tell whether or not it would make for a good episode based on how funny it was without them.

And let me tell you – this movie doesn’t even need the guys on the Satellite of Love. I was laughing my ass off almost nonstop. It’s also gotta be a ridiculously short episode – the movie only runs 54 minutes! Was this acceptable back in the 60s? I feel gypped if I see a movie under 80 minutes, let alone one under 60. Christ, some episodes of Star Trek run longer than that!

And yet, it’s a padded film. There’s an opening scene that has absolute zero connection to the film (it’s a woman being killed by a guy who’s allegedly Tor Johnson, but she’s in a house and he spends the entire film in the empty desert), a lengthy North by Northwest wannabe sequence that results in the death of a guy looking for his two kids, etc. There is also an attempt to make the plot look more complicated than it is, with the narrator rambling on and on about things that ultimately have no real bearing on the film itself.

Speaking of the narrator, he doesn’t narrate so much as he just sort of says things that sound interesting. Everything he says would begin and end with ellipsis if his dialogue was written. My favorite is early on, when he says “Yucca Flats... the A bomb... secret data... the first rocket to the moon....” in succession, as we see guys in a car drive around and shoot (pfft, I mean, wave guns) at some other guys. It’s beautiful. Even his dialogue is padded, as he offers no-shitteries such as “Vacation time... people travel east, west, north, or south...” for no reason whatsoever. And in what may be the most useless line of dialogue ever recorded until Vampires came along, Francis tells us that it’s “110 in the shade... and no shade.” How profound.

At least the narrator has a reason for being a disembodied voice. Francis shot the film without sound, and rather than try to sync stuff, he just had everyone talk off camera. I don’t think there’s a single shot in the film of someone talking where you can see their mouth. Some scenes include speakers that are never actually seen, which results in more than one occasion where you might be tempted to think that the characters are all insane, talking to non-existent people.

Hilariously, the transfer is one of the best I’ve seen yet on the Horror Classics set. Picture quality is crisp, the sound detail isn’t muddled, etc. And the end credits, seen at the beginning of the film (they scroll up! Opening credits don’t do that!) are all perfectly legible. Then again, since it’s not even a full length film, I guess they had more disk space to work with on the DVD. Sucks to be you, filmmakers who put effort into their stories and came up with 75 minutes or so of material! Enjoy your blocky, washed out image! Coleman and I will be up in a biplane, firing at random people in the desert and laughing all the way to the bank!

What say you?

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Horror Classics, Monster,

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Frankenfish (2004)

APRIL 17, 2008

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Ah, expectations. With a title like Frankenfish, I was expected a Sci-Fi original, and a lot of corny one-liners, bad effects, military guys... the standard SFO package. And with “FROM THE DIRECTOR OF SPAWN!” proudly displayed on the cover, I was expecting unwatchable crap. So I was surprised to find that the movie was pretty decent, with the good ultimately outweighing the bad. Hurrah!

First the bad. No one set out to re-invent the wheel here, which is fine, but still, the structure is a bit too basic. I would have liked a plot complication or two somewhere in there. Also, the would-be lead actress is terrible. None of them are going to win any Saturn Awards, but the rest were believable and reasonably personable. This broad belongs in the “Tara Reid as a Scientist” casting hall of fame; she looks like a stripper but she’s supposed to be a Fish and Wildlife Expert. Sure. Also, they hired the great Mark Boone Junior to play one of the resident “bad guys”, but failed to do anything with him (he doesn’t even get a good death scene!). On the plus side, the creepy Asian dude from Prison Break (season 2) was in it as well.

Otherwise, not too shabby at all. The effects are pretty impressive, and seem to be mainly practical. There are a few blunders in the CG heavy finale (that “blood” is ridiculous) but by then I was already more than impressed by the level of care and actual effort put into what should be the movie’s strong suit, unlike say Lake Placid 2, which didn’t have a single good effect in the entire goddamn movie (other than John Schneider’s hair, which had to have been achieved through digital means). The kills are also great: beheadings, legs torn off, etc.

Which leads me to another “plus” – this movie kills almost everyone! I mentioned the would-be lead female (the one on the cover); she gets half her head blown off halfway through! Also, the kindly New Orleans voodoo woman gets it a few minutes later. Wooo! Kill em all! Again, since I was expecting a Sci-Fi movie, I sure as hell wasn’t expecting such nasty kills (or the occasional boob shot, or profanity, both of which the film also happily contained).

It’s also, quite simply, a well made film. I hate to sound like a broken record*, but it’s worth re-mentioning: when the crew puts effort into the movie, it pays off, resulting in a movie that is considerably better than one might expect from the umpteenth “Terror in the Water” movie. When everyone goes through the motions, doing the bare minimum to achieve a usable piece of film footage, the movie turns out even worse. In Frankenfish’s case, it’s definitely a case of the former – pacing, production value, (most of) the effects, etc. are all solid, and thus the film’s weak spots are easily overlooked.

The DVD package is worth mentioning too. In addition to basically spoiling the “sort of” surprise in the movie (that there’s more than one Frankenfish), the menus are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. From the main menu, when you select scene selection, it scrolls through the trailers/setup menus as well, sort of like the Windows Vista “choose your window” screen. And this came out 2 years before that godawful OS!

All in all, worth a watch. The fact that the trailer before the movie begins is for Anacondas was a good sign (another movie much better than I expected it to be). It’s not as goofy as the title is, but in the end, that’s probably for the better (since the occasional “funny” lines from the stripper expert are pretty bad).

What say you?

*I used to play, and sing, the Refreshments' song "Broken Record" over and over in my car, and my good friend Jeff claimed that the song alone gave him a headache. He's a fool, it's a great song/album. Just thought I'd mention that.

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Monster,

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Slugs (1988)

MARCH 24, 2008

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (BORROWED)

A friend practically forced me to watch Slugs, on the grounds that it was directed by the same guy who directed Pieces, a film apparently no one besides me owns on DVD (Eli Roth kept claiming it was never even made available. I bought it at Best Buy for Christ’s sake!). Needless to say, I was curious to see what else this guy had up his pseudonymous sleeve (his name is Juan Piquer Simón, credited as the more American sounding JP Simon).

While not as batshit insane (and thus awesome) as Pieces, Slugs is still a lot of fun. It’s structured like The Blob or any other old 50s movie, in which a monster is loose and cutting a very random path through a town (of course, starting with a derelict dog owner) while a rogue scientist or two try to figure out a way to stop it and prevent further death/destruction. But being a Simón film, when the monster (thousands of slugs) attacks someone, it is gory as hell and sometimes accompanied by gratuitous nudity. It’s also impressive how much damage the things inadvertently cause. My favorite bit is when just a few slugs inside a guy’s work glove results in the guy chopping off his own hand, knocking over every plant inside his greenhouse, and eventually blowing himself and his wife to smithereens. The entire sequence is like a precursor to the Rube Goldberg-y death scenes in the Final Destination films. Just squish the damn things in your fist, dude!

There is also a hefty dose of what I assume is a Simón tradition: hilariously odd dialogue! After the aforementioned couple is killed, our hero shouts “They were nice people... and I liked them A LOT!” His delivery is beyond the necessary level of anger, to the point where he seems to blame the slugs, the people, his wife, and everyone else in the world for their deaths. I didn’t think anything would top that, but I was so delightfully wrong. In the third act, he tells the zoning commissioner that he is declaring a state of emergency, to which the commissioner guy shouts “You ain’t got the authority to declare happy birthday!” Holy shit, what? And someone else scoffs at the idea of killer slugs by wondering “What’s next? Demented crickets?” (goldmine plot for a film if there ever was one).

Speaking of the commissioner, this movie tops your average real estate horror movie in terms of the boring jobs everyone has. Our lead characters are public health inspectors, sewer management officials, zoning commissioners, real estate barons, land developers... it’s like the cast of a public access town meeting putting a gory, hilarious spin on things.

The movie also has a peculiar hatred of alcohol. Early on, a woman asks her husband if he thought another woman was attractive, and his reply is simply “She DRINKS too much!” The same woman later discusses her growing dependence on the drink after her boyfriend berates her for drinking a bit of wine. And then our resident horny teens have a fight over the guy’s desire to dip into her dad’s scotch. “Why do you have to drink!” she yells. It seems very out of place in a movie that will likely be watched with alcohol 99% of the time. Hell, the only reason I WASN’T drinking was because I watched it at 11 am and had to go to work after (more the latter than the former).

Slugs also has one of my favorite all time screen continuity errors. Our hero and the chief are riding in the chief’s car, and the hero lights a smoke. He then asks if it’s OK to smoke, and the chief says “No”. So the guy throws his cigarette out the window. Then he gets the chief back by claiming that the hard candy he was eating was made from insects. The chief in turn spits the candy out of HIS window. Both occasions are followed by comments about a fine for littering.

...and both windows are completely shut.

I also lost my shit at the film’s climax, in which our heroes unload some sort of chemical into the sewer that will explode when it comes in contact with moisture, such as the slime on the slugs. This is done to save the town, right? Look at the results:

Couldn’t they have just given everyone a big bag of salt?

They also hint at a sequel by showing one of the slugs surviving the explosion. But this is sort of obvious – despite how big the explosion was, you gotta figure a few slugs weren’t even in the sewer at all (all of the people they kill are killed above ground). It’s not like a regular monster movie where the monster dies and that’s that – there are like 20 million of the goddamn things around town! Surely more than just the one survived.

Doesn’t matter. Fun movie. Hopefully it will show at the New Beverly someday so I can raise my beer and salute all of the anti-alcohol characters in an appropriate manner.

Oh, and supposedly it’s based on a book. Why would anyone want to read a book about killer slugs when you can’t see the surprisingly gory aftermath of their unprovoked, random attacks on bit players?

What say you?

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Based On Novel, Monster,

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