Bubba Ho-Tep

NOVEMBER 22, 2007

GENRE: COMEDIC, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: CABLE (HDNET)

I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to seeing Bubba Ho-Tep. I love Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm films, I love odd comic/horror blends, and I love movies that feature old people stealing other old people’s glasses. Bubba has all of these and more! Yet, I was kind of left “meh” afterwards. Not that it was bad, but it wasn’t as funny as I was expecting.

Part of the problem is the odd pace. The mummy thing goes absent for a long stretch while we learn how Elvis came to be in the old folk’s home. This is something that should have been used in like, a comic book prequel or something, not on screen. I want mummy action, not lengthy “So I met him at a gig and we switched clothes and hoped no one noticed the different sideburns” sequences. In fact, if anything, the movie would have worked better if they never explained whether or not it really WAS Elvis, or maybe saved it for a quick visual reference at the end that proved it was him.

The score, however, is fucking fantastic. That’s not something you can usually say about a limited/DTV release, but damn, I loved it. Very western-y. I dunno if it’s on CD but if so, I will be buying it next time I remember to look for it.

I also enjoyed how much of a relative downer the ending was. I won’t give it away, but suffice to say I didn’t expect it to end as it did. It’s interesting how it both goes against and yet totally fits the film’s vibe, which is goofy but yet oddly touching at times (love the scene where Elvis retrieves his former roommate’s purple heart). And it makes it even odder that everyone I have talked to about this movie for the past 5 years have marveled at how funny it was. I giggled a few times, but for the most part, the movie worked more as a really odd drama than a comedy. But maybe (obviously) that’s just me. I also think Caddyshack II is funny, so whatever.

I wish I had seen it on DVD so I could enjoy the extras (Coscarelli is always interesting to listen to), but oh well. If anyone out there has seen the DVD and thinks the extras are worth my time, let me know!

What say you?

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Based On Novel, Comedic, Supernatural,

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The Corpse Vanishes

NOVEMBER 21, 2007

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

Like quite a few of the movies on the Horror Classics set, The Corpse Vanishes is probably best known as an episode of MST3k than anything else. But I haven’t seen that episode, since it wasn’t on Sci-Fi (I never had Comedy Central until the show made the switch). And it must be a “short” episode, since the movie’s only an hour long.

Well it starts off promisingly, with a bride dying just before saying “I do”, which momentarily had me thinking the film was a fantasy and not a horror movie. But then Bela Lugosi showed up, so my fears were abated. He plays a guy who poisons brides and uses their blood to restore beauty to his own wife. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t think they ever explain why he had to go to such lengths to get only brides at the altar. I say again, do these cities not have homeless people?

There’s a few highlights, particularly a “chase” scene in which the bad guy follows the heroine, all the while gnawing at a giant chicken drumstick. How fucking awesome would it be if, in the middle of chasing some bimbo through the woods, Jason Voorhees suddenly took a huge bite out of a hamburger? Amazing.

Speaking of the heroine, she is the most resilient woman I have ever seen. So driven in her quest to get a good story (she’s a reporter), she never seems fazed by any of the bad things that happen to her; often going right back into reporter mode as soon as she wakes up from being drugged or knocked out. It’s pretty admirable. Or badly written.

The ending of the film is pretty hilarious. Like many an old tyme movie, there is little to no epilogue or wrapup. Instead, after the villains are dispatched, we fade to the heroine getting married, while her boss announces that she is retiring from the paper. Then her photographer smells the poison orchid that all the brides died from, and presumably dies. The end. What the?

So far the Horror Classics set has underwhelmed me (and, bad news for HMAD readers, I have already seen a lot of the good ones, like White Zombie, Carnival of Souls, and Nosferatu, not to mention public domain horror collection staple Night of the Living Dead). Granted I don’t expect much from these things, but I’d like a couple on par with the inanity and lovably terrible nature of your Scream Bloody Murders and Devil Times Fives. I might have to jump onto Decrepit Crypt sooner than planned.

What say you?

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Horror Classics, Serial Killer,

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Alex Scarrow's "A Thousand Suns"

Alex Scarrow is the author of the thrillers A Thousand Suns and Last Light.

About A Thousand Suns:

Off the coast of New England, a trawler tangles its nets on wreckage from sixty years ago - a B17 'flying fortress' , perfectly preserved and containing the final and most terrifying secret of WWII. When freelance photographer, Chris Roland, enters the sunken plane , what he discovers in the dark, tomb-like interior changes everything he knows about the end of the war and how desperately close it came to being the end of everything.

A Thousand Suns is a tale that cuts breathlessly between the present, as a long dormant and sinister agency stirs once more, readying to preserve the secret at any cost - and the past, as a young crew of German airmen, the very last of Hitler's Luftwaffe, fight impossible odds to save their country. As both plots race towards a conclusion, this most horrifying wartime revelation hangs in the balance.

Scarrow shares some casting ideas for a potential film adaptation:

The book started out as a screenplay anyway, so writing it as a novel, it already had the movie pace, and chapters that were effectively scenes. As I wrote the book, from page one I already had the cast in my head - something screenwriters do, more than novel writers I think. Anyway then, let's get on with casting...

Chris Roland, a wildlife photographer who explores the submerged ruins of a B-17 bomber off the coast of America. That role was always going to be played by Paul Bettany (Wimbledon, Da Vinci Code, Master and Commander). He's very English and self-effacing.

Max Kleinman, pilot and leader of a Luftwaffe crew, tasked with flying a captured B-17 bomber to America to drop the Nazis' one and only atom bomb on New York in the last few days of the war. I saw this character being played by a Kiefer Sutherland ten years younger. But obviously since we can't rewind the clock, I'd look at someone like Clive Owen.

Major Rall, a major in the Luftwaffe who puts together the audacious mission plan. Well now, I kept seeing Robert Duvall in The Eagle Has Landed. He'd be too old to play this similar role, so in his place I'd look at someone like Gary Oldman.

Hauser, an anti-semitic scientist who develops the Nazi bomb. A nasty, slimey, self-serving piece of work, this chap. I could only think of one bloke to play him, Doug Hutchison (the really nasty little prison guard in The Green Mile).

Wallace, an old man in the present who's spent a life working for the SOE, the CIA, comes out of the woodwork to reveal to Chris Roland the events that happened in the dying days of WWII. Obviously someone in their 80's, to be plausible. However, I think Anthony Hopkins could be aged ten years to look frail enough for the role.

As it happens, there are a couple film 'suits' sniffing around the movie rights, so it's always a possibility. Maybe one day. Whilst I'm still alive would be nice.

Visit the Scarrow Brothers' website, Alex Scarrow's blog, and read reviews of A Thousand Suns.

The Page 69 Test: A Thousand Suns.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Tormented

NOVEMBER 20, 2007

GENRE: GHOST, PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

“It’s bad enough to accept a musician in this family, but a jazz musician is just asking too damn much!”

You gotta hand it to George Yates, writing a film around his desire to slam jazz musicians. That has to be the film’s reason for existing, because otherwise Tormented is pretty pointless, and even at 75 minutes, feels padded and repetitive.

Much like Hands of a Stranger, we have a musician who has murderous intent toward a little kid. Except at least in that movie, he totally killed the kid. We’re not so lucky here. That said, the finale is still pretty grand, but it’s a chore to get that far, since the rest of the movie is just a never ending cycle of the guy thinking he sees the ghost of his mistress (who doesn’t want him to marry some other bland n’ blond woman), only to discover that it’s just a plant or something. I expect more from Bert Gordon, who also bestowed upon us Amazing Colossal Man.

The film also offers us one of the most puzzlingly useless lines ever uttered: “There’s a light in the lighthouse!” They seem pretty excited and surprised by it, whereas I tend to get pretty blasé about things doing the one thing they exist to actually do. Maybe I should rethink my position on the matter, and start walking around exclaiming things like “That clock is telling the time!” and “That Mr. Coffee made coffee!”

I’d also like to point out that the film print itself seems to be haunted, as quite a few times during the film we see a gray shadow moving across the image, as if someone was walking in front of the projector in a theater. Spooky. Or lazy.

To be fair it’s not a total waste. The ghost effects are pretty impressive given the time period and obvious low budget, and as said, the finale is pretty awesome (I don’t want to spoil it, but let’s just say that it’s probably the only ‘happy’ ending in history that involves some folks drowning). Sort of a mixed bag I guess.

What say you?

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Ghost, Horror Classics, Psychological,

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He Knows You're Alone

NOVEMBER 19, 2007

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

How’s this for weird: As I go to put in the He Knows You’re Alone DVD, I see that the Al Pacino movie Scent of a Woman is on. I watch it for a few minutes, and I see an actor who is one of those guys that’s in every movie ever, but you don’t know his name and probably would have trouble actually NAMING one of the movies if you saw him on the street. His most memorable turn is probably in ID4, as the Secretary of Defense who constantly wants to nuke everything and confesses to the President that Area 51 is real. Anyway, not thinking much of it, I begin Alone, and not 20 minutes into the damn thing, the very same guy shows up as a professor who is fucking one of the main girl’s friends! Now his name shall never be forgotten: James Rebhorn.

YOU!

Anyway, that is just one of the many, many things I would like to mention in this review (it’s gonna be a long one folks. Might want to grab a magazine. Oh wait, no, never mind.). I’d also like to point out that this makes two films in a row that ripped off the Halloween score.

For starters (not counting what I already said at least), I find it kind of odd that the film is relatively unknown. It gets mentioned a lot due to the appearance of a future star, but otherwise it’s been totally overshadowed by the other films of the era, and I am really not sure why. It’s definitely pretty unique. While I have trouble telling some of the eras lesser known slasher movies apart, this one sticks out right from the start, with a slasher movie within a slasher movie sequence that was later copied in Scream 2. Then Paul Gleason shows up as, yes, a cop, who abruptly disappears from the film (in mid-sentence no less!) a few scenes later.

Plus, the movie has a record number of “Worsts” for a horror movie.

Worst greenscreen ever:

Worst dummy head ever:

Worst killer’s mask ever:

And, I guess this would apply to all movies; worst advice from a cop ever:

Our targets are brides to be, which is pretty sweet (in one of the film’s many odd moments, all the horny guys are sent off to a bachelor party in the first 10 minutes, and apart from a quick cutaway to one of them making a phone call, are never heard from again), putting the film in the same jilted lover slasher subgenre that is comprised of pretty much just Valentine and My Bloody Valentine. And speaking of MBV, this film has a song that’s almost as amazing: a ditty called “It’s The Night Again” that plays over one of the kill scenes. It sounds like a lost Air Supply number, but sadly I can find no copies or even basic info about the song online (the first Google match for the artist’s name is just another HKYA review that bemoans the lack of info about the artist). Someone needs to put out a compilation CD of slasher movie ballads. It’d be the greatest CD ever compiled by someone who wasn’t me (I make killer mix CDs, at least as far as I am concerned).

Off-kilter seems to be the order of the day for this movie. Granted, any movie that casts Don Scardino (“God I love antiques!!!”) as a romantic hero/lead is pretty odd, but they go to extremes, especially with the editing. I already mentioned Gleason’s non-final final scene, but there’s also a jump cut in the middle of an establishing shot, and another abrupt edit when Scardino is presumably about to use some slang for a homosexual man, leaving us with only “He’s a closet!” OK, movie.

But there’s also a lot of originality, considering the time period. For example, the killer’s motive is literally revealed as the end credits roll. Granted it’s not exactly mind-bending, and you can probably figure it out long before, but there’s something sort of charming about literally waiting till the last second to give the audience a bit of explanation for why the guy was killing everyone.

And yes, of course, as I mentioned, the film is famous nowadays primarily for being the first appearance of a future star. I speak of course of Dana Barron, who went on to be the first Audrey Griswold (and the only one to play her twice, as she appeared in the otherwise worthless TV movie Christmas Vacation 2). She plays Final Girl’s little sister, and it’s good casting, as they DO look alike. Her biggest scene takes place at a carnival with her sister, her sister’s friend, and an average looking guy who is given, in keeping with the rest of the movie, the oddest pick up line in history (he trips the girl as she jogs so he could guarantee she would stop). For some reason he doesn’t get killed, but maybe he will pop up in something else someday.

There’s a commentary track on the DVD, but that aforementioned review said it was boring and filled with gaps. And I’m not in the mood for that. I’m sure it will never get a better release, but if you can find it cheap (perhaps via a small ad a few lines below? :) ), it’s definitely worth a purchase. Putting it in its proper context, writer Scott Parker and director Armand Mastroianni should be commended for being as different as they could while strictly adhering to the standard slasher formula of the time.

What say you?

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Slasher,

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Rise Of The Dead

NOVEMBER 18, 2007

GENRE: POSSESSION, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

OK, let’s get something out of the way. Rise Of The Dead, despite its very zombie sounding title, not to mention rotten zombie guy on the cover, OR the fact that it’s called a “Frightening Zombie Thriller!” on the back, is NOT A FUCKING ZOMBIE MOVIE. A ghost possesses some folks, and when they are possessed they drool and get that dazed look on their face you might expect from a zombie, but once the possession is over they go back to normal. The people who are killed never come back either.

That said, this movie is an unparalleled, amazing piece of “what the FUCK?”ity. I’m gonna have to spoil the ending in a bit, but I hope you all go check this out. It’s only 72 minutes long, and the ending redeems every bad thing about the movie and then some. Spoilers begin now.

So OK, the people in the film are possessed by the ghost of a little baby who accidentally put a gun in its mouth and pulled the trigger (pretty impressive for a kid, I can see one or the other, but doing both? If he wasn’t dead, that kid would be ready for advanced Lego sets by the time he was 3). We learn that he was adopted, because the birth mother was only like 17 and didn’t have the means to take care of him. So throughout the movie, people involved (the adopted parents, the father, the doctor who delivered him, etc) with his birth keep dying or killing other folks. She figures out that it’s her son’s ghost like 40 min into the movie (but due to the length, that’s also with only 30 to go) and tries to warn everyone, but they don’t believe her. Fine.

Here’s where it gets weird. She realizes that the ghost is simply trying to be with his mother again. So to solve this problem, when her boyfriend (not the father) is possessed, she almost knocks him out, then pulls his pants off, says “come to mommy”, and proceeds to more or less rape him.

Now, for those of you following: yes, via possession, she essentially fucks her own son in order to get pregnant again so he can be reborn with the “right” family. Holy fucking shit. You think Shock or Ghost Son got a little weird??? Found it odd when the girl in Big Bad Wolf blew her boyfriend’s dad to get his DNA? This eclipses all of them, easily.

It’s almost like writers Joshua and Jeffrey Crook and Kris Scotto wanted to make a film that served as a metaphor for living up to your responsibilities as a parent, but somehow got forced to make it into a horror movie. The horror elements seem fairly shoehorned in (and the music is just a straight up ripoff of the Halloween score, for good measure), and hell, the movie doesn’t even end on a “scary” note, which makes the DVD’s excessive attempts to sell it as a zombie movie all the more puzzling. Granted, I have no idea how you can sell such a concept otherwise, but still. I wish they provided the commentary instead of the director and star doing typical “this is my friend, we shot this in blah blah” boring crap (however, they do point out a co-star who is now dead. A quick Google revealed she had like 3 DUIs and died of “suffocation”, which probably means “choked on her own vomit”.).

So yeah, I urge you to check this out, if only for the fact that 65 minutes of not very interesting stuff results in a scene that would make Freud himself go “What the FUCK?”

The film also features a supercute naked chick walking out into the cold and axing a guy.

What say you?

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Possession, Weird,

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Jack Getze's "Big Numbers"

Jack Getze, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and the Los Angeles Times, covered financial and economic issues for more than 15 years; then he switched professions and later sold stocks and bonds for a regional securities firm on the New Jersey Shore.

Big Numbers, his first published novel, is based on his experiences as a retail broker, sales manager, and financial executive.

Here Getze shares some ideas about the casting for a film adaptation of Big Numbers:

I can't remember who I had in mind as Austin Carr twenty years ago when I started Big Numbers. But I rewrote Austin's first-person account two years ago with several pictures of Vince Vaughn pinned above my computer. I even have a shot of Vince posted on my Austin Carr's Crime Diary blog. The headline -- Only a Rumor Vince Wants the Part.

In fact, since Big Numbers is the first in a series, and I'm working on number three right now, the pictures of Vince Vaughn are still up. He's obviously my choice to play Austin in any movie. Vince's ability to crack wise with a straight face, the natural way he wears a business suit, and his ability to charm the ladies make him perfect for the part.

For the part of Kelly Burns, the pretty redhead who lures Austin astray, I've always had in mind Molly Ringwald. Molly starred in the John Hughes movies Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, but the thing a lot of people remember about her is that she turned down the leading role of Julia Roberts' part in the 1990 smash Pretty Woman, and also Demi Moore's leading role in the film Ghost.

Molly's aged very well and now sports a mature sexiness that was missing in those teenage roles. I think she'd make a perfect seductress for the screen.

Austin's sidekick, bartender Luis Guererro, is tough to cast. He was based on a real bartender I knew twenty-five years ago in Red Bank, New Jersey, so I have a picture in my mind that's impossible to duplicate. But twenty years ago, Edward James Olmos came awfully darn close. Tough and intimidating with just a look, but soft-spoken and wise, I thought Olmos would -- like Luis -- would make Austin feel safe sitting at Luis's bar. Olmos is too old now, I suppose, but it's still his picture I have pinned on the board next to Vince Vaughn's.

As for Psycho Sam Attica, the former professional wrestler enraged by Austin's disastrous investment advice, I saw him on television last night as I was channel surfing. It's Hulk Hogan, who now has his own reality show.

Learn more about Jack Getze, Big Numbers, and Big Money -- the second Austin Carr Mystery due out in February 2008 -- at Getze's website and The Crimes of Austin Carr blog.

The Page 69 Test: Big Numbers.

--Marshal Zeringue

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