Thoughts on Vincent Price, Midnight Meat Train, Rob Zombie and other assorted Ramblings

• When the hell is Midnight Meat Train being released? Is it limited or wide? Is it even still called Midnight Meat Train? Why so much hassle for this flick?

• I’m still mad Kane Hodder wasn’t in Freddy vs. Jason.

• Was I crazy not to hate The Happening?

• I know the Halloween remake was a bit of a step back (I didn’t hate it FYI) but I’m excited about Rob Zombie as a Director.

• I’ve enjoyed all of Christopher Nolan’s films. Check out the little seen Following.

• Why are the DVD’s I want each week never available in my city? I had cash in my hand to buy Simon King of the Witches the other day, but couldn’t find it any where! I had to waste my money on food and shelter instead.

• The Friday the 13th remake is rated “R” right?

SAW V Poster

I’m not sure how much further they can take the SAW franchise, but damn it they always have some pretty fine posters. Check out the SAW V one sheet:

http://www.joblo.com/arrow/index.php?id=12750

RIP Michael Turner

Well, this sucks beyond words:

 http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=16988

I was just reading the Identity Crisis Trade Paperback and thinking about how great a cover artist Michael Turner was. It seems he’s been battling cancer forever, and he sure did put up a good fight.

Amazing artist and by all accounts an amazing guy:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=16993

Scary Stuff

Some things that scare: 

• Session 9
• The Devil’s face in The Exorcist
• The opening sequence of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• Being captured by Cannibals in the jungle
• All my birthdays after my 29th
• Calling for my daughter and not hearing her call back
• My increasingly bad eyesight
• A Zombie attack
• What’s behind me at night
• Driving on the highway in a snow storm
• Computer viruses
• Human viruses
• The Far Right
• June Bugs
• My ever increasing debt
• Staring too long at faces in old photographs. I swear the eyes start to move…
• Finding out what my car needs done to pass inspection
• Going to Prison. More specifically, my cellmate.
• The end of Friday the 13th and Carrie. Those final scenes still make me jump.

What’s in a name or Naked Zombie Apokolips

Horror is a genre blessed with awesome Film Titles. The 70’s were an especially ripe time for creative movie monikers. Exploitation Filmmakers always had to have some sort of hook to overcome their low budgets. Other than the trailer, a good title was the best way to entice a potential audience. The name alone of a movie like The Tool Box Murders is enough to conjure up images of bloods and guts.Here are just a few of my favorite Horror Movie titles. These aren’t necessarily all great movies (some are, some definitely are not) but they all have groovy names:

Children shouldn’t Play with Dead Things – A bloodless zombie flick directed by Bob Clark. He’d make better movies, but none would have as good a title.

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie – Classic Italian Zombie flick. A great title that’s also great advice

Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter- ‘Nuff said

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – One of the greatest American movies ever made in any genre. A lot of Horror movies have “Massacre” in the title, but the best one still takes place in Texas

Die! Die! My Darling! - You gotta give it up for a title with three exclamation marks.

The Town that Dreaded Sundown – I have wanted to see this forever, although I hear the actual film isn’t all that good.

Two Thousand Maniacs – Slight exaggeration

Glen or Glenda – Not really horror, but features Bela Lugosi and directed by Ed Wood. Plus, how could I not include a movie about transvestites called Glen or Glenda?

I Dink your Blood – Classic tale of Hippies eating meat pies infested with rabies. Dirty hippies.

I Eat your Skin – Apparently there is little to no skin eating in this. Pity.

13 Reasons to Love Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter

Watching Friday the 13th Part IV a few weeks back, I was reminded of the The Final Chapter’s Total Awesomeness. Here, in no particular order, are 13 reasons why F-13 Part 4 rules:

I. Crazy Ralph flash back (“It’s got a death curse!!!!”)

II. Counting Freddy Vs Jason, there were 7 more Friday the 13th movies after the Final Chapter

III. The film’s tagline, “Three times before you have felt the terror, known the madness, lived the horror. But this is the one you’ve been screaming for.” Really rolls of the tongue.

IV. TWINS!!!

V. Being able to see a glimpse of The 20 Minute Workout

VI. Crispin Freakin’ Glover

VII. How darned excited Teddy gets when the gang decides to go skinny dipping (“ALRIGHT!!!”)

VIII. Death by hacksaw

IX. Two words: Gratuitous Nudity!

X. The exploding hockey mask during the opening credits.

XI. The comic stylings of Jimmy and Ted

XII. Tom Savini’s Make up effects. 

XIII. Tommy Jarvis. The character only lasted 3 films, but for awhile Jason had his own personal Dr. Loomis

 

Rob Zombie’s Tyrannosaurus Rex

My god in heaven I need to see this:

http://www.joblo.com/arrow/index.php?id=12681

Pseudo Review: Get Smart

Get Smart, the big screen remake of the popular 60’s TV spy comedy, can best be described by two words:

Pretty Funny.

It’s not “gut bustingly funny”, nor is it “I can’t believe I peed myself right here in the theatre” funny. It certainly isn’t “the stitches from my hernia operation ripped open and my guts spilled out all over the sticky theatre floor but I just can’t stop laughing, oh god it hurts so much, please kill me” funny. I smiled a lot and laughed out loud a few times, that was pretty much it. 

Get Smart isn’t an out and out spy spoof. It has some Austin Powers style zaniness but it’s grounded in the real world. We have your typical spy spoof elements, but it’s played straight enough that the impressive action sequences have a sense of drama and danger to them. It tries hard to have its cake and eat it too, and succeeds surprisingly well.

The fact that it stars the uber-talented Steve Carrel doesn’t hurt. I like that he doesn’t play Maxwell Smart as a complete moron. He screws up sometimes for sure, but he’s really just a regular guy thrust in to an amazing situation. He’s not incompetent, but he’s not quite James Bond either.

The rest of the cast is good as well. I usually don’t find Anne Hathaway all that hot, but she definitely did alright by my eyeballs here as the sexy Agent 99. The Actor formerly known as “The Rock” (Dwayne Johnson) was his normal charismatic self. Seriously, Johnson is a more handsome version of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but with better acting skills. Get this dude in a big budget action movie directed by a Ridley Scott type and I guarantee he’ll become a Mega Star.

Get Smart Isn’t the funniest movie in the history of cinema, and it’s not even as good a spy send-up as Austin Powers. It’s merely “pretty funny.” Still, considering we live in a world where “the guys that brought you Scary Movie” are still allowed to make comedy’s, “pretty funny” can’t be considered all that bad.

Pseudo Review: 5 Films By Dario Argento

I spent most of last week watching the recent Dario Argento DVD collection by Anchor Bay. Since your dying to know my opinion, read on:

Phenomena

This movie takes a while to get going, but its worth it for the last 20 minutes. If this isn’t Jennifer Connelly’s first big screen role, it’s got to be close. Donald Pleasence plays bug expert that’s a cross between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Professor X. Connelly plays a young a girl with the power to control bugs. This actually comes in handy when your using insect behavior to catch a killer. Again, the best parts don’t come until the end, but we do get some pretty good scares if you can wait for them.

Trauma

Wow, there’s some dark stuff going on here. This has to be one of the few horror films that deals with Anorexia.

Like most Argento movies, it runs about 10-15 minutes too long, and there’s a false ending that just seems to go on forever until we have the real climax. Still, if there was an award for most disturbing motive for a killer, this would win. Asia Argento is pretty good in this, and even has a sex scene that I have to assume was directed by her dad… ewwwww!

Tenebre

For some reason, I never consider Argento’s films to be overly gory, but Tenerebre actually has quite a bit of the red stuff. 

The tale of a killer copying murder scenes from a book has everything I want from Eurohorror: Blood, gratuitous nudity and bad dubbing. I must admit, the ending is ridiculously convoluted, but, did I mention gratuitous nudity?    

Do You Like Hitchcock

You know, I kinda enjoyed this. It probably would have been better served as a 60 minute Masters of Horror episode. Still, there was enough boobs and blood to keep me happy. Probably helps I actually am a Hitchcock fan

The Card Player

A killer forces the police to play video poker for the lives of kidnapped women.  Once the card playing stops, the killer resorts to some SAW like death traps.

One problem with The Card Player is video poker, even with lives at stake, is about as suspenseful as watching someone play Qbert. If Do You Like Hitchcock would have made a good Masters of Horror episode, then The Card Player would have been at home on the network friendly Fear Itself as there is little blood or nudity.  Not as bad as I’d heard, but definitly the weakest film of the set.

Pseudo Review: Inside (A’linterieur)

The plot alone of Inside (A’linterieur) is enough to make you cringe. A pregnant widow is terrorized by a mysterious woman known only as La femme (I think that means crazy bitch in French) who wants her unborn baby. Not cringing yet? Well, La femme isn’t waiting for natural childbirth so she’s brought along a big pair of medical scissors to speed things up.

To call Inside a dark film is an understatement. Obviously a story about someone trying to rip a baby from a woman’s womb isn’t going to be pleasant, but even before we get to that things are bleak. Sarah is alone and pregnant on Christmas Eve, still mourning the death of her husband. She’s clearly a shell of her former self, seemingly giving up on life. However, when faced with the possibility of loosing her child, Sara begins to fight and is given reason not to give up. In a strange way, La femme saves Sara’s life by trying to take it. She gives Sarah something to fight for, something to live for.

At its heart, Inside is a Slasher Flick. Granted, it’s a Slasher Flick with Art House flair, but a Slasher Flick nonetheless. La femme, wielding her medical scissors like Jason’s machete, racks up a body count Michael Myers would be proud of. To be honest, the film isn’t as gory as I thought, but the context of the gore is what’s so disturbing. If this were a US movie, you’d know the bad guy would be stopped before actually ripping an unborn baby from a mother’s womb. With Inside, you get the feeling anything could happen and you’re never sure until the end if you’ll see the unthinkable.

I’m glad Co-Directors Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury never forgot they were making a horror film, as there’s no doubt what genre this movie falls in to. There is, however, one horror movie cliché I could have done with out; stupid Cops. Inside features police officers so dumb I was waiting for them to start chasing the General Lee. I can typically forgive wonky logic if it’s needed to move the plot alo9ng, but some of the decisions the police make here are just horrendous. The movie would have been better served to have kept the cops out of the mix completely. I can buy phone lines being cut, therefore not being able to contact the police. I have a harder time buying a cop that tells an assaulted pregnant woman going in to labour that he’ll call for backup and an ambulance… after he goes to the basement to check the fuses.

Dumb cops aside, Inside did its job. Themes of loss and motherhood are evident, but the movie’s primary goal is to horrify, and that’s just what it does. Good gore, good acting, and a character whose plight I cared about all make for an effective little Horror movie for The Count. They’ve already perfected Fries and Ticklers, now the French are making some pretty wonderful Horror.