Don't Look Now (1973)

JANUARY 6, 2008

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL

SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Yet another example of why you gotta watch movies in order... there weren’t a lot of “horror” scenes in Don’t Look Now to begin with, but they were rendered a bit boring to me due to the fact that most of them were “homaged” in Alice, Sweet Alice, which I watched a few months ago. Goddammit. If you’ll excuse me, I am going to put my entire queue in chronological order, to prevent this sort of thing from happening ever again (of course, had I watched the film at the time HMAD reader Damian recommended it, I could have avoided this issue).

Needless to say I wasn’t as freaked out by the film’s climax as many others were. In fact, the only time I was truly terrified in the film was early on, when we are continually given the sight of Sutherland’s ass and pubic region. There’s an unspoken agreement that this film breaks – that a film should never show more of a man’s bush than his female co-star’s. This film offers far more Sutherland nudity than Julie Christie, and that is just not acceptable (this law is broken to an even more upsetting degree in the upcoming Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which we see Jason Segel’s manhood 3 times in the film and yet neither Mila Kunis or Kristen Bell offer so much as an ass shot). I guess the female audience probably appreciates such things though, so oh well.

Speaking of that scene, I had more fun reading the trivia about the film afterwards than I did watching it. For starters, that sex scene was filmed shortly after the two met for the first time, and was also the first thing to be shot. Must have been fun. Also, I was relieved to discover a sort of answer to a long puzzling problem I suffer from: an unnatural fear of Dusty Springfield’s "You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me". I don’t know why, but the song sort of creeps me out. I suspect it may have been used in a horror or thriller movie I saw as a kid that I can otherwise no longer recall. But in the wiki entry for this film, it was noted that Pino Donaggio, the film’s composer, actually composed that song as well. Since Donaggio’s music is easily the highlight of the film (assuming you've also seen Alice, Sweet Alice already), it provides a bit of closure to know that the guy who makes creepy horror movie music also wrote a normal song that creeps me out for no other reason.

Sutherland's job in the film (church restoration... guy) is the least interesting I've ever seen for a main character in a film. Even Peter in Office Space was more interesting to watch as he did his work. There's a scene of Sutherland putting a statue back, and the fact that it's off-center provides the tension for the scene. For real.

The sound on the DVD is terrible as well, leaving several lines of dialogue to my imagination. Thus, I imagine all of those lines were about the serial killer, since otherwise, the whole subplot of the killer is pretty much the most half-assed subplot in cinematic history. Seriously, they just sort of off-hand mention the killer once or twice, and then the film’s final 5 minutes rely entirely on the killer’s “significance.” It’s like a Macguffin in reverse.

Nice Venice scenery though.

What say you?

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Psychological,

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One Missed Call (2008)

JANUARY 5, 2008

GENRE: GHOST, SUPERNATURAL, TECHNOLOGY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Somewhere in the world, possibly even reading this review (Hi there!), there exists a human being who thought One Missed Call might actually be pretty good. This person ignored all of the tell-tale signs (the PG-13 rating (meant to be R during filming); the early January release; the fact that it's the umpteenth remake of a J-horror film; the lead actress who can't actually act paired with the lead actor who simply chooses NOT to....) and said to themselves: "Yes, I want to be in the One Missed Call business."

Well that person's a dope. Everyone else in the world, even some of the teenagers who the damn thing was made for, knew this wouldn't be any damn good (my screening was like 90% empty, and the 15 year old girl in front of me was shaking her head as she left). And guess what? It isn't. It's not HORRIBLE, like Ring Two or Pulse were, but it's just so painfully by-the-numbers that you can almost see the script template on the screen.

Yes, once again, we have a vengeful ghost using technology to get back on people who had nothing to do with her (it's always a girl) unfortunate demise, with a ticking clock on our hero and/or heroine's life to maintain the suspense. There's a corpse who needs a proper burial, a lot of "you're going to think I'm crazy BUT...." conversations, a strange calling card that lets the heroes know the deaths are related (here, not only is it the phone call, but also a piece of hard candy in the victim's mouth). If FearDotCom and The Ring gang-raped The Grudge and got it pregnant, the result would be this movie.

But at least those three films offered SOMETHING to make it worth your while (Fear had gore and Udo Kier, Ring is actually good, and Grudge had... well, Sarah Michelle Gellar looked pretty good in it). What does this offer? Well I guess if you're one of those folks who think Shannyn Sossamon is the hottest woman in the world, you might get some enjoyment out of watching her do the bare minimum amount of acting in order to collect her heroin check. Ed Burns, the poor sod, doesn't even do that much; in several scenes he looks like he's one blink away from nodding off entirely (it's ironic, for once I actually stayed awake through one of these damn movies while everyone on screen looked like they'd rather be napping). Ray Wise is kind of amusing in his 35 seconds of screen time, and Margaret Cho (of all people) gets in a good line that sort of makes fun of the hard candy subplot. But all of these people have done better work in better films (though it's better than Sossamon's The Order, I'll give it that much).

There's also a nice little mean-spirited "p.s." in the first kill scene that made me laugh out loud. And Sossamon's friend gets hilariously nailed by a train. More stuff like this and the movie could have been a minor gem, but sadly after these none of the death scenes have any levity or black humor. Which is a major problem for the film - it takes itself too seriously. The concept is ridiculous (even moreso when we learn the back-story), and had the characters followed suit and just had some fun, again, this could have been something. But no, apart from a brief scene where Burns and Sossamon try to break into an apartment, there's absolutely nothing even remotely amusing (intentionally so anyway) in the film.

Although, Massachusetts residents might get a kick out of the area code in the film. Even though they never say where they are (that I can recall anyway), at one point the number being dialed has area code 508, which is a Mass code (or at least, it WAS - it was my area code for a while growing up, but a few years ago it was changed to 978, so maybe 508 got retired).

So there you have it: a film in which the highlights are an area code and a cameo by Leland Palmer. Enticing, no? No. I have yet to see the original (attempts to see it beforehand were thwarted by the "Long Wait" kiss of death on my queue) but from what I understand it was nothing special in the first place.

(I was going to make a joke about how the film wasn't screened for critics and screening phone calls, but why put more effort into wrapping up my review than they did writing their movie?)

What say you?

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Ghost, Remake, Supernatural, Technology,

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Revolt Of The Zombies

JANUARY 4, 2008

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

I can remember the running time of every Halloween sequel, the number of kills in each Friday the 13th movie, and the phone number of my friend from grade school who I haven’t called since, well, grade school. And yet for the life of me, I can never remember that any “zombie” movie made prior to Night of the Living Dead will have absolutely nothing to do with flesh eaters. This is why I get so easily bored with a film like Revolt Of The Zombies, though by any account (that I have found on the IMDb anyway) this one’s a dud with or without expectations of cannibalism.

In 61 minutes, I was only occasionally amused, usually by odd lines delivered by bad actors, such as “Gentlemen, the Priest was murdered. Murdered by someone who did not want the Allies to benefit by his power to create robot soldiers.” There’s also a hilarious scene where someone checks an injured person’s pulse. This is standard movie behavior; checking the pulse to see if the guy is unconscious or dead. All well and good, except the injured party is TALKING throughout the scene, rendering the pulse checking a bit pointless. Besides that, the only highlight is Bela Lugosi, or at least his eyes, which are super-imposed over about 40% of the film (it’s an image taken from the superior White Zombie, which this film is a sort-of sequel to, but has no actual connection except for the damn eyes):

In fact, the “Revolt” doesn’t even occur until the film’s final two minutes, and making matters stupider, they aren’t even in their zombie state at the time! Talk about a misleading title.

No, seriously, go talk about misleading titles. Beats watching this movie.

So what DOES happen in the film? Well, most of it is comprised of boring, talky scenes where the characters constantly “mock” one another. I use mock in quotes because their jokes seem quite funny to the other characters, but don’t seem particularly funny to me, the viewer, who doesn’t know and thus far doesn’t care about any of these assholes. They all sound like the jokes your girlfriend’s lame but well-meaning uncle might make at dinner the first time you meet him, and you’re just sort of “what the FUCK does that mean?” while smiling politely and eating your stuffing.

Oh well, it’s good to know that even in the golden age of horror cinema, there was still a few turkeys to balance things out and forever ensure that the horror genre would be more miss than hit. Thanks, guys.

What say you?

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Horror Classics, Zombie,

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Solstice (2007)

JANUARY 3, 2008

GENRE: GHOST, SUPERNATURAL, TEEN
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I sort of felt lame during Solstice when, early on, a character mocks another character’s Ipod, which has (presumably) been the source of the pop rock stuff we have been hearing. He claimed it was terrible music, whereas I sort of enjoyed it. Clearly, me and “Christian” aren’t on the same wavelength (also, I should not that the song during the end credits is top notch, if you like that sort of thing... think The Fray, Keane, etc., but not QUITE as weepy).

But the music was about the only thing I ended up really enjoying in this dull movie. In 91 minutes, there are maybe 7 of anything resembling action, mostly in the film’s finale. The rest of the time, it’s just some kids hanging out in a cabin in the woods, yakking away about whatever and spending far too much time dwelling on the death of one of them the previous year. Way to have a “weekend of fun” guys.

Of course, I never would have even considered such a film (it’s PG-13 too. Bonus!) if not for its director, Dan Myrick, who was one-half of the team that made Blair Witch Project; one of my all time favorite movies. It’s a damn shame that it’s taken him (and Eduardo Sanchez, who made last year’s interesting but far from great Altered) this long to make a film, even if it lived up to his first effort, but it’s downright depressing that after almost a decade, this is the best he could come up with (I assume The Believers, which he must have made back to back with this film, is better, if only for the presence of Johnny Messner).

To be fair, Solstice is a remake of a Swedish film called Midsommer (which I read somewhere has a scene of kids in the woods with a video camera; if that's true, the scene has not carried over to this version, for obvious reasons), so the thin story, overused locale, etc. cannot be attributed to Myrick or the other new writers. But it remains unclear why they chose not to make the concept more interesting, or at least add an element of danger to the film (at no point, even during the ‘suspense’ scenes, do you get the impression anyone will be killed or even harmed).

The cast is decent enough, acting-wise, but they are all bred from the same bland WB stock you have come to expect from these sort of movies (indeed, many of them are known primarily for One Tree Hill, 7th Heaven, etc). And whoever cast it should have been laughed out of the room for suggesting that these two could pass for the same age:

The guy playing the main girl’s (who looks like the offspring of Michelle Trachtenberg and Rachel Nichols. Mmm.) boyfriend is either Jimmy Olson from Smallville or Iceman from the X-men movies, not sure. Don’t care either. The only actor of real note is R. Lee Ermey, who looks almost angry to be there in his 5 minutes of screentime (at least they were honest enough not to make a big deal about his appearance on the cover).

The main problem with the film is that there are scarcely any horror elements in it. It’s one thing to build character and flesh out the back-story, but it’s another for the film to go so long without any sort of suspense or scares that you forget what kind of movie you were watching. I swear to God, at one point I thought to myself “I hope I have time to watch a horror movie today” during my viewing of this film. The only reason I remembered that I WASN’T just watching a teen soap was because the film was, for some reason, shot in scope widescreen.

The commentary is slightly more entertaining, mainly because Myrick is an intelligent adult, so I felt less dumb listening to him than the characters in the film (one of whom claims to have once wiped his ass with a potato chip, which doesn’t even seem possible). But there’s a lot of silence, and Myrick frequently simply narrates the on-screen action, leaving little worth to the track as a whole. And sadly, Blair isn’t even mentioned, nor does he provide any information why the director of one of the most successful horror movies of all time took like 8 years off and is now directing this sort of teen crap. He also seems to be confused as to how long his film is, claiming it’s over 100 minutes when it is only 91.

The swamp locale and half-assed voodoo elements reminded me of Venom at times. Sad to say, since that movie was hardly good, but you’d be much better off watching that instead. Come on Myrick, get back with Sanchez and give us the followup we deserve.

What say you?

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Ghost, Supernatural, Teen,

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Spontaneous Combustion

JANUARY 2, 2008

GENRE: HERO KILLER, MAD SCIENTIST
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Leave it to Tobe Hooper to make a movie about people suddenly bursting into flames boring, but that’s exactly what he did with Spontaneous Combustion, a film which STARS Brad Dourif (there’s a very VERY small number of films that can bear that claim) and yet doesn’t give him anything fun to do until the film’s finale, during which he’s covered in makeup anyway.

I think this movie features the longest prologue in cinema history. It’s a full 22 minutes long, for a 95 minute movie. It also features Brian Bremer, who has to be the worst actor I have ever seen in a theatrically released film. No wonder the only other thing I remember him being in was Silent Night Deadly Night 5, where he played the Pinocchio thing. A block of wood is about the best this guy can hope for. The chick playing his Jackie O-ish wife is a bit better, and a quick check of IMDb confirmed that she was indeed Evan’s mom in Superbad. That thankless role, which largely revolved around her glorious rack, is still probably more appealing to her ego than this goddamn thing.

Jackie's Strength, indeed.

But back to the main problem with the film: it’s fucking boring as hell. Dourif gets mad at someone and he goes “NRRRRR!” and badly animated flames fly out of whatever’s nearby and the person dies. OR he has a mild disagreement with someone and they die later on. For a “hero”, he kills a lot of people who doesn’t deserve to die, including a couple of cops. At one point he kills John Landis (what the hell is HE doing in this?) simply for not connecting his phone call. So we don’t root for him, should we root for his girlfriend? She seems nice. Oh wait, she’s involved in the conspiracy too. As is his ex-wife (doesn’t this guy date outside the whole nuclear government program circle?). So a bunch of not very interesting people are also all evil. Great.

It's also bafflingly written, and not in an amusing way. At one point, Dourif calls a psychic, and becomes amazed when he himself reveals his mother's name (rendering the psychic rather inconsequential). "How would I know that?" Dourif exclaims. Maybe because it's your mother, asshole, and at some point in the 35 years prior, you took the time to learn it??? There's also another scene where we can clearly hear a heated argument in the background, much more interesting than the main scene, but the film never elaborates on it. Also, the finale features THREE people shooting flames at each other, before one of them dies, one of them loses her powers, and another falls into a blue circle that appears in the ground. Whatever, movie.

The thing is, reading all that you might think that the movie was awesome. But it’s not, at all. It’s repetitive, needlessly overplotted, and ultimately pointless. Even Hooper’s The Mangler offered some ridiculous thrills and decent gore... this has nothing other than Dourif impersonating Bill Paxton at the end of Near Dark:

Now I know why this movie (one of NINE films released in 1990 in which Dourif appeared) was only released in 50 theaters. In fact I’m amazed it didn’t just go direct to video; Hooper’s Toolbox Murders remake was far superior in every way and that didn’t play theatrically. I can’t imagine watching this in a theater, since it’s of the same quality (in both technical and creative terms) as a Sci-Fi original. Even Firestarter 2, which WAS a Sci-Fi original (or at least, premiered as one) was more worthy of a theatrical run.

What say you?

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Hero Killer, Mad Scientist,

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Bill Cameron's "Lost Dog"

Bill Cameron is the author of Lost Dog and stories and poems.

Here he develops some ideas for actors should Lost Dog be adapted for the big screen:

Way back when I first started writing Lost Dog, I was already visualizing the movie version. As each new character materialized on the page, the casting director in my mind was on the job. The brooding, yet smart-assed form of John Cusack would be Peter. Dennis Farina as crusty Skin Kadash. Gillian Anderson as perky Ruby Jane (yes, I confess to a deep and abiding Scully crush). Jake was a tricky one, and while I never settled on a specific choice, any of the boy toys from Beverly Hills 90210 had the inside track.

Those are the main folks, and I confess to never having cast the support roles, though secretly I dreamed of being Jake’s first male victim, a fellow who dies before the start of the action and only appears in a photograph late in the novel. Yeah, a bit part, but then I can’t act my way out of a speeding ticket.

The nature of publishing being what it is, so much time passed between my initial concepts and the actual appearance of Lost Dog as a book that my thoughts have had to change as a matter of necessity. Let’s face it, actors age even if characters on the page don’t. Much as I still adore Cusack and Anderson, I fear they’ve aged past Peter and Ruby Jane. Alas. If I could still have them in the mid-90s, ... But no.

So I’m looking now to fresh fish. After much rumination, I realized that the perfect choice already had practice as an on-screen couple: John Krasinski and Mandy Moore. Okay, so it didn’t go so well for them with License to Wed, but I’m a man who believes in second chances. John, Mandy? What do you say? You in?

Dennis Farina could still do Skin, though I’ve recently found myself taken with John C. Reilly. He’s got a quirky presence on screen, plus amazing range. And for Detective Mulvaney I’ve settled on Emma Thompson. I don’t even care if she loses the English accent for the role; she’s Mulvaney.

And for Jake now that the 90210 Boy Toys are getting their first face lifts? Haley Joel Osment, of course. Not only is he the perfect age and more than capable of projecting darkly creepy, but he sees dead people. In Lost Dog he’ll get to make some of his own.

Read an excerpt from Lost Dog and visit Bill Cameron's website where you can view a video trailer for the novel.

The Page 69 Test: Lost Dog.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Kill House (2006)

JANUARY 1, 2008

GENRE: COMEDIC, INDEPENDENT, SLASHER, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Happy New Year... nothing has changed at all. You need a new desk calendar (assuming you keep up with it; mine is currently on November 18th) and you’ll probably write the wrong year on your rent check today. That’s about all that’s different, yet most of you probably went out last night and drank; spending your hard earned money in order to honor a clock.

Anyway, since I didn’t party, I am not hungover and thus in a happy mood, which has to be why I found The Kill House so engaging. As I consult my notes and actually THINK about the movie, there is absolutely nothing good about any of it (almost every one of my notes ends in a question mark, in other words, my reaction to the scene/event in question was simply “huh?”), but I was thoroughly entertained and even sort of charmed by this bizarre little movie.

For starters, the film’s opening credits spend at least two straight minutes establishing that they are in San Francisco. Which is fine, but only that and the following scene take place there. The rest of the film is, I assume, set in Los Angeles. It’s quite obviously LA just from the scenery (West Hollywood hills, best as I can tell), and while they never actually reveal the intended setting, the main character goes to Beverly Hills seemingly every other day, and the hospital that incoherently factors into the film quite a few times is clearly labeled “Hollywood Medical Center”. San Fran is never seen again. Whatever.

As for the hospital, you got me. At one point the Final Girl’s brother suddenly complains of chest pains (he also suffers from Lupus for some reason) and goes to the hospital, then just gets up and leaves while still wearing his gown. At another point, the lead detective goes there to kiss someone goodnight (who this person is is none of our business). And the film’s nonsensical epilogue features the killer wearing a wig and breaking into a patient’s room to steal his money (he’s also limbless, for the hell of it).

Speaking of wigs, in one of the film’s stranger plot developments (which speaks volumes, if you’ve read the above paragraph), our wannabe Janet Leigh character who gets killed a half an hour in is clearly wearing a red wig. This is sort of explained when she gets a phone call from her doctor, and she says “the results are in? Is it cancer?” And the doctor says that she can’t tell her that over the phone. So the wig is to cover her bald head from chemo, right? Wrong. A. We still see her real hair under it, and B. if she didn’t even definitely HAVE cancer yet, why would she already be taking chemotherapy? Doesn’t matter, she gets killed moments later, and thus we never know if she has cancer or not.

The film is also significant for having what may be a record amount of full frontal female nudity in a film that has not one sex scene. Our lead (another oddity – how often do you see the Final Girl in a slasher movie even go topless, let alone completely nude) is constantly baring all in an attempt to entice the family’s groundskeeper, a man who was convicted of murder and now has to pee in a cup as part of his probation (....? Hey at this point, anything goes in this movie). And at one point I thought she was flirting with her brother (hey-o!), but at any rate there is no bedroom action whatsoever in the film.

As for the killer (who also appears briefly nude, who is also like 50 years old and not very attractive, and is also the film’s director), I can’t even begin to understand her motive behind most of her kills. Killing the rival real estate agent makes sense, as does the owner of a property she wants to sell, and to a lesser extent, the Lupus brother, who sort of stumbles on her devious plans. But why does she kill a couple who plans on buying one of the houses? And even dumber, why does she kill the guy she had just, two scenes earlier, set up to take the blame for the killings???

The questions don’t end there. Why does the groundskeeper guy have a black eye in some scenes but not others? Where did he get it to begin with? Why did they cast an overweight (but cute) girl to play a character whose biggest character trait is that she rides horses? Why the extended scene of the killer kidnapping some schoolgirls to pass them off as her own (a scene that involves terrorism and several threats to cut off the girls’ parents heads) to someone she is about to kill anyway? Why name a character Mark Harmon? Why all the transsexual jokes and references in the film’s first half hour? Why the lesbian cop partnered with the effeminate male cop? Why ANYTHING in this movie?

The deleted scenes are no help. Not only is it impossible to tell where any of them would occur in the film (they’re not even in order, since the final two in the collection feature a character who was killed a half an hour in), but few last more than a couple seconds. And I can’t tell why they were considered any less relevant or worthy than the ones left in the film, such as the one titled “The Secret Life of Lettie” (the detective), which consists of nothing but the woman happily buying an ice cream from a truck.

But, I swear, it’s awesome. As you can tell, there’s nothing good I can say about it (though the DV looks pretty good). Even the back of the DVD is confusing (there’s an asterisk next to “special features”, but it doesn’t have any sort of connecting footnote; the ratio is listed as a “4x3 1.77:1 letterbox presentation”, which doesn’t even make any goddamn sense). But yet, I wholeheartedly recommend it. It’s just so goddamn weird in a very lazy way.

Also, I should note that the only reason I watched this movie in the first place is because the cover, which makes it look like a Saw film (same font and color scheme), has the tagline “Escrow Just Closed”. Not only is that the least foreboding tagline in horror movie history, but it also led me to believe that the film might possibly be the pinnacle of real estate horror, something faithful HMAD readers know is a “favorite” of mine. And in a non-sort of way, it truly is.

What say you?

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Comedic, Independent, Slasher, Weird,

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