Oct
30
“Night of the Creeps” Review
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Fred Dekker’s “Night of the Creeps” finally hit DVD earlier this week. I’d heard that VHS rental copies of the film had at one time commanded princely sums on eBay, and not unlike Dekker’s other ’80s horror-comedy, “The Monster Squad,” DVD bootlegs have been making the rounds for years. I held out for the rights holders to put together a legitimate DVD release of the film, complete with shittily Photoshopped cover art and a decent amount of special features I’ll never get around to watching. Well, my patience has been rewarded.
“Night of the Creeps” blends the sci-fi/horror tropes of 1950s films with the then-contemporary conventions of “Revenge of the Nerds”-style sex comedies and adds some slasher movie shocks to satisfy the investors. I think the film’s partially successful, but never quite feels fully-formed. There’s simply too much going on. It begins with dwarfish aliens chasing around a starship — ray guns blazing — as one of their crew members inexplicably jettisons a canister of some bio-weapon into Earth’s atmosphere. The canister lands in Small Town, USA where it’s promptly discovered by a ’50s teenybopper. A slug leaps out of the canister and into his mouth. His girlfriend, meanwhile, falls victim to an escaped lunatic with an axe. Then we flash forward to the mid-’80s and two geeky college students on their endless quest to score with feather-haired coeds. When they pledge at a fraternity in hopes of boosting their rep, they’re asked to carry out a campus prank that has them accidentally unfreezing the ’50s teenybopper, who’s now a zombie, from the film’s extended prologue.
And that’s just the first 30 minutes or so.
The zombified teenybopper shambles around the campus before his head explodes and unleashes a bunch of fast-moving slugs that turn other people into zombies. Hard-bitten detective Ray “Thrill me!” Cameron (Tom Atkins) is put on the case. And the film races towards a climax where a sorority sister straps on a flamethrower and incinerates a group of zombified fraternity brothers.
“Night of the Creeps” might be uneven, but it’s never boring. Unfortunately, it’s not terribly scary, either. And yet, I don’t think that was what Dekker’s going for. He’s bringing the films of his youth, movies like the original “Blob,” into the 1980s. Once you get past the overly expository first third, I think the film finds its footing. It’s not as tight as his next film, “The Monster Squad,” whereupon Dekker really shines.
Then he went on to make “RoboCop 3,” the movie that landed him in director’s jail for twenty years to life.
’80s horror is a mixed bag. The slasher craze pretty much owned the decade, so films with a sci-fi bent like “Night of the Creeps” were few and far between. It’s not without its moments. Maybe it isn’t the best cult favorite, but it’s one of the more lovingly-made. That in and of itself makes for an enjoyable viewing experience. Thrill me indeed.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
29
What to Watch on Halloween
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Weren’t invited to any Halloween parties? Too old to go trick-or-treating? A total germaphobe who’s afraid to venture outside for fear of catching H1N1? There are numerous reasons not to bother with socially-acceptable, albeit patently stupid, Halloween traditions that actual grown-ups take part in this time of year. As I’ve gradually come to realize, most people I know seem to think I have Asperger’s Syndrome and don’t invite me to any of their social functions, which is fine by me. More often than not, I’d rather just watch a movie at home.
But what to watch?
Folks often heavy-up on horror movies this time of year. However, people who are unfamiliar with films of the genre might go for titles that aren’t exactly right for their sensibilities. There are numerous sub-genres within horror and something for just about everyone, even wussies. That being said, here’s a list of recommendations for even the most fickle viewers. I’m programming these in double-bills. Watching one movie on Halloween is hardly an event. You’ve got to make an evening of it and watch at least two flicks back-to-back.
For the Non-Fan: Ghostbusters and Shaun of the Dead
These two horror/comedies place a strong emphasis on the laughs than on the scares. Of course, everyone’s seen “Ghostbusters” a hundred times, but it’s amazing how well the film holds up on that 101st viewing. I caught it again on the big screen last summer and still loved every genius moment of it. “Shaun” is a cult favorite that really deserves more love Stateside. The film is just crazy-brilliant, much tighter and funnier than its American cousin, “Zombieland.” Pairing the two of these films should make for a non-scary but nonetheless festive Halloween.
For a Slasher Fan: Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
Because of the loose continuity of both franchises, you shouldn’t feel lost by skipping the first couple entries in both franchises. I think these two installments are the best sequels in their respective series and waste little time with the plodding exposition or retconning that hobbles the earlier chapters. The films also have a stunning amount of talent involved either behind or in front of the camera. Frank (“Shawshank Redemption”) Darabont co-wrote “Nightmare” and “Friday” stars Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover(!).
For a Gore-Hound: Evil Dead II and Dead/Alive
Here are another pair of horror/comedies, but these two are absolutely blood-drenched. Directors Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson have gone on to enjoy respectable careers as A-list filmmakers, but I count these films as their essential masterworks. The former is a remake/sequel of its predecessor, so worry not about continuity. The latter is a more visceral spiritual prequel to the aforementioned “Shawn.”
For a Fan of the Old School: Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula
These two unofficial remakes of Universal Horror films are a couple of Hammer Studios’ best. They’re not terribly scary or violent, but they have atmosphere to spare and surprisingly strong performances. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee play the hell out of their roles, chewing scenery like it’s Halloween candy.
For Someone Who Likes a Slow Build: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Halloween
Forget the remakes, the sequels and the rebootquels. The original versions of both of these films are horror classics. They also take their time, so don’t expect all hell to break loose at the ten-minute mark. No, these two movies rely more on building an overall feeling of dread, the former way the hell out in the middle of nowhere and the latter right in small town suburbia. The ultraviolence comes in fits and starts, but still shocks. Even better, the films have creepy open endings, making them stick with you long after the credits have rolled.
I could undoubtly continue, naming alternate titles for you to mix and match, but I think this is a solid list of films, so you can do it up right on Halloween night.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
28
The Ghostbusters, Blade, Ash — these guys are household names when it comes to gents who bust the heads of boogeymen. But what about those other guys, the ones who fly under the radar? What about Tommy Jarvis? This young man survived three encounters with Jason Voorhees. Well, technically, the second encounter was with the late, lamented “fake Jason.” Nonetheless, it takes a certain kind of mensch to make it through one “Friday the 13th” movie in one piece. And Tommy somehow manages to survive a trio of ‘em.
It’s unusual for a male character to live through a horror film. Typically, it’s the Suvivor Girl who vanquishes the slasher in the final reel, not some dumb bohunk. Horror films have come under fire for being misogynistic since time immemorial, but it’s fairly often that the male villain will ultimately be usurped by a female heroine. This is even true of the Academy Award-winning film, “The Silence of the Lambs.”
“Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter,” “Friday the 13th: A New Beginning” and “Friday the 13th: Jason Lives” buck the tradition of pitting a seemingly unstoppable killing machine against a shrieking, leggy blonde during the final showdown. Oh, there are still shrieking, leggy blondes that live through each of these movies. However, it’s Tommy who delivers the coup de grace to the hockey masked killer in all three.
So who is this Tommy kid anyway? Well, when we first meet him in “The Final Chapter” (misnomer!), he’s a bespectacled boy of 12, played by none other than child star Corey Feldman. He likes playing video games on a computer the size of a dorm fridge and making highly-sophisticated monster masks. He’s also on vacation with his mother and super-hot older sister Trish at their cabin on Crystal Lake, which seems to be quite the tourist attraction in spite of all the butchery that takes place there.
Jason’s checked himself out of the hospital after having been mistakenly pronounced dead and put in a meat locker. He follows a group of horny teens back to Crystal Lake and begins killing people willy-nilly until Tommy works a little armchair psychology on the slasher. Tommy uses his knowledge of horror movie makeup to transform himself into the spitting image of Jason’s younger self. This distracts Jason long enough for Trish to bury a machete in Jason’s face. That doesn’t quite do the trick, though. Tommy sees Jason’s fingers twitching, so he grabs the machete and makes sushi out of Mr. Voorhees.
The success of “The Final Chapter” resulted in the bizarro follow-up, “A New Beginning.” This one starts out with Tommy (once again essayed by Corey Feldman) shortly after the events of the previous film. He’s looking for Jason’s grave during a torrential downpour. He finds it but not before two pranksters show up and exhume Jason. Jason inexplicably reawakens, kills the pair of jokers and advances towards Tommy… Then Tommy wakes up from the horrible dream. It’s a few years later, and Tommy’s morphed into an actor who looks nothing like Corey Feldman.
The new Tommy is borderline catatonic from his last encounter with Jason. He’s now staying in a minimum security booby hatch for other disturbed teenagers who seem pretty much like normal teenagers to me. Well, they do until one chops up another with an axe. Shortly after that, a series of Jason-style killings begin taking place on the grounds. We learn that Jason has been cremated, so it must be a copycat. Is it Tommy? No, it’s the estranged father of the kid who was chopped up with an axe. Derp!
Catatonic Tommy, who has fewer lines in this movie than Arnold Schwarzenegger in “The Terminator,” sits most of this movie out, but he does confront his fears at the film’s climax, hacking off fake Jason’s arm and dropping the pretender onto a bed of spikes. In the final scene, Tommy is in the hospital, where he keeps a hockey mask and butcher knife in one of the beside table drawers(!?). He slips on the mask and attacks the Survivor Girl with the knife before the movie fades out.
But we haven’t seen the last of Tommy yet! No, after “A New Beginning,” he returns once more in “Jason Lives.” This time around, he looks like neither Corey Feldman, nor the guy who played him in the last film. He seems to have his head together to some extent. He hasn’t become a masked killer after all and is instead driven to destroying what remains of Jason’s body. So Tommy and his friend dig up Jason’s corpse. The plan is to cremate him, although we’re told in the previous film he’s been cremated already. At any rate, Tommy has a bit of a freakout and plunges a spire into Jason’s chest. Lightning suddenly hits the spire, resurrecting Jason — whoop!
Jason goes on another killing spree, which is entirely Tommy’s fault for not leaving well enough alone. But Tommy hatches another genius plan to finish off Jason once and for all. He puts a giant friggin’ rock with a chain wrapped around it in a canoe, paddles out to the middle of Crystal Lake and lures Jason into the water. Tommy then chains his mortal foe to the rock. The canoe breaks in half, and the rock sinks to the bottom of the lake, dragging Jason down with it. Jason’s a tenacious bugger and grabs ahold of Tommy before he can swim away. Survivor Girl lends a hand by plunging a spinning boat rotor in Jason’s neck. And that’s a picture wrap on Jason Voorhees.
Tommy barely manages to survive this movie, and believing he’s rid the world of Jason’s brand of evil, he doesn’t reappear in any subsequent film. This could either be seen as a good or bad thing. He has sort of a spotty record in keeping Jason and Jason wannabes from going on rampages before he beats them back. But he has lived through more Friday films than any other character, save Jason himself. As such, Tommy deserves to join the pantheon of monster smashers for being just as unstoppable as his sworn enemy.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
26
According to “Making a Good Script Great,” the most mediocre book on screenwriting I’ve read to date, the movie “Witness” has a great script. Every chapter name-drops “Witness” like it’s the best script ever written — even better than “Chinatown” and “Dude, Where’s My Car.” I had only seen the film once as an undergrad and remembered little about it. So I finally bounced over to Cinefile last night to rent this masterpiece of filmic writing. I needed to witness (zing!) just how it’s done.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t think it’s a very good example of how to write a screenplay.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s a good film, but it’s not a good script. You’re probably saying, “Wait, whaaa…?” Let me elaborate. It’s not a good script inasmuch as it’s a lousy teaching tool for novice screenwriters. Movies are actually written a minimum of three times: on the page, on the set and in the editing room. I think director Peter Weir took an okay-ish script and improved upon it with his personal bag of tricks. Harrison Ford even got an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his performance as Philadelphia police detective John Book, although I think “Witness” is one of the early examples of Ford on auto-pilot. But again, Weir took a middle-of-the-road project and classed up the proceedings. The script and the acting come across as above-par because of the direction.
So what’s wrong with the most brilliant screenplay ever put on paper? Well, for one thing, it’s slooow. There’s no way in hell a screenwriter with zero credits to his name could knock out a spec as draggy as “Witness” and expect some 23-year-old script reader to make it through the first ten pages, let alone the entire thing. Opening on wheat fields and Amish funerals and horse-drawn buggies holding up traffic isn’t enough to hook your intended audience: a smarmy graduate from the University of Spoiled Children, who’s now an assistant to the mega-producer you submitted your script to. You’ve got to start out with a bang, or the little dipshit reading your script is going to recommend to his boss that he pass on it.
This isn’t to say the way the film begins is problematic from a visual and thematic standpoint. Weir is setting up the Amish community and contrasting it with the modern world of 1984 Pennsylvania.
The script also doesn’t introduce the hero, John Book, until the 15-minute mark. Heroes need to appear much, much earlier in a screenplay. And don’t give me this nonsense about Luke Skywalker showing up late in “Star Wars.” Part of why “Witness” gets off to a sluggish start is the fact that Book’s off eating donuts somewhere and not driving the story. Something else that’s problematic about Book’s character, though, is we don’t get a great idea of what kind of man he is before he reluctantly joins the Amish community. We’re told in this really dopey scene with all this expository dialogue that he doesn’t have a family and thinks he’s right all the time. But that can be said for a lot of hero cops. John Book is nowhere near as compelling as, say, Harry Callahan from “Dirty Harry” or Axel Foley from “Beverly Hills Cop” or Martin Riggs from “Lethal Weapon.” I’d've loved to see one of them in this flick.
So…we have a story that takes too long to get moving and a protagonist that’s not terribly interesting. Well, what else is wrong with the film? I’d have to say the subplot about the corrupt cops who shoot Book and send him into self-imposed exile among the Amish is pretty weak, too. Now, some people might disagree with me about this, but I think the whole cliched dirty cop stuff is actually the film’s b-story. Had the movie been directed by Tony Scott, yes, it’d be the central problem. Weir treats all that business as secondary. No, the main story is about Book’s romance with Rachel (Kelly McGillis), an Amish MILF whose son witnessed a murder. Most of the film’s running time is devoted to that, not the bad dudes with guns.
That being said, the film has the most bizarre climax I’ve seen in some time. After burying a henchman alive in grain and blasting Danny Glover with a shotgun, John Book disarms the big bad by…yelling at him. I’d like to see John McClane try that in “Live Free or Die Harder With a Vengeance.” But apparently screaming, “Enough is enough!” to a villain is all that it takes to get him to put his gun down. I understand that this ending should work thematically. Book is supposed to learn from his experiences with the Amish that violence is not the way. He doesn’t, though. He just killed two other guys! It’s when he’s disarmed that suddenly he tries reasoning with someone.
If I’d written the script, I’d have had Rachel plug the big bad, get shunned from the Amish community and live happily ever after with Book. It seems like the obligatory ending. The conclusion to the actual film feels weak. The romance between Book and Rachel is unrequited, and it’s implied that the seemingly unkillable dude from “Die Hard” is now going to sweep Rachel off her feet. As I mentioned earlier, we’re told in a rather heavy-handed way at the beginning of the film that Book doesn’t have a family, setting up his character’s need. So when he doesn’t get with Rachel and become a surrogate father to her saucer-eyed son, the audience gets the sense that Book’s not really changed all that much.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Linda Seger, author of “Making a Good Script Great.” I just spent a bunch of paragraphs dissecting the script to “Witness” and putting its flaws under the microscope. The movie works in spite of its script, not because of it.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
24
“Saw VI” Review
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When a horror franchise reaches its sixth film, it usually takes things a completely different direction. “Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives” is a broad comedy. “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare” kills off the titular villain [temporarily]. “Saw VI” goes unexpected places, too. It brings the whole health insurance debate into the realm of torture porn. Where better can there be a discussion about this particular hot-button issue than in a film where people require all sorts of health care if they manage to survive an encounter with Jigsaw?
Evidently, Jigsaw is the world’s angriest liberal. At the top of the film, he puts two predatory lenders in a trap where they have to carve themselves up to escape. I found myself howling with laughter at the very concept. Maybe in movie seven, he’ll go after vomitous right wing talk show hosts and stick their fat asses into contraptions that’ll rip out their tongues or something equally heinous. But I digress.
The main focus of the film is on a soulless health insurance company executive, one of those oily bastards who denies claims for people with catastrophic illnesses. Well, it turns out he denied Jigsaw coverage (big whoops!), and now he’s got to make it through all sorts of limb-splitting tests that literally put other people’s lives in his hands.
Meanwhile, Jigsaw’s accomplice, Det. Hoffman, is trying to pin the more recent Jigsaw killings on the late Agent Stromm, who was smooshed at the end of movie five, and divert the investigation away from himself. The police procedural scenes take place in the most dimly-lit office buildings in North America. It’s like all the cops are Gremlins.
I found the sixth film to be a little on the slow side. It takes awhile to get going and then it never really finds its stride. The movie spends way too much of its running time, as the past couple entries have, flashing back to the events of previous films or piling on more backstory to tie everything together. I liked the payoff that the insurance exec and Jigsaw have some history together, but everything else is expository and boring. I can’t imagine that if someone did a fan edit of all six films and cut the films together in sequence, it’d fit together like the pieces in a [jigsaw] puzzle. The franchise has been retconned to hell. Who cares? I didn’t come for the story and characters.
As a Halloween tradition, I always enjoy checking out the latest “Saw” entry. Movie six wasn’t a cinematic triumph, but it was diverting enough. I think the series is winding down. From what I’ve read, the seventh film will be in 3D, so that ought to be something else. I wonder what topical issue they’ll address as well.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
23
A Half-Remembered “Saw” Retrospective
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There are two camps within the horror community: those who like the “Saw” movies and those who hate, hate, hate them. Put me down as one of the former. I’ve seen the first five movies and plan on catching movie six tomorrow afternoon. “Saw” is virtually the only horror franchise going strong today that isn’t some boring old remake of a long-dead slasher series. The films are artless cash-ins; there’s no doubt about that at all. The continuity is loose at best, and the twists more and more forced with each subsequent entry. And yes, they’re mean-spirited, gratuitously violent and over-stylized. But that’s what I like about them. Plus: puppets.
Before I see the sixth film, I think I should reacquaint myself with the previous installments. I could do this by renting all the movies and watching them in a marathon session. I don’t have time for that, though. Instead, I think I’m just going to see what I remember about parts 1-5 and how it all fits together. I’m not going to visit IMDb and use it as a cheat sheet. No, what follows is my hazy recollection of “Saw” I-V.
Saw
This one I remember the best because I own it on DVD and have seen it probably a half-dozen times. Done for $1.2 million, the movie looks like it cost at least 1.5 times that. It’s a cheapjack production, but I think that’s part of its charm. Somehow the filmmakers were nonetheless able to convince Cary Elwes, Danny Glover and Dizzy from “Starship Troopers” to star in the low-budget film. At any rate, the movie’s about a wealthy doctor and a creepy photog who wake up in a bathroom. Their feet are shackled to pipes, and there’s a dead guy on the floor. A tape recording brings them up to speed on their situation. They have a predetermined amount of time to man-up and saw off their feet and try to kill each other or else someone else will kill both of them. This will make them appreciate their lives more. It’s all part of serial killer Jigsaw’s twisted plot!
Jigsaw, as we come to find out during the film, isn’t technically a serial killer. He’s a sociopathic former engineer who’s dying of cancer and tries to make people happy to be alive by sticking their heads in reverse-bear traps and whatnot. There’s always a way out of the traps he puts people in, and it’s pretty torturous, like chopping off your own foot. Jigsaw’s got some dicey logic, but to be fair, Jason Voorhees has spent over a dozen movies avenging the death of his mother by killing dumb teenagers who had nothing to do with it.
Saw II
In movie two, burned-out cop Donnie Wahlberg — brother of Mark, the guy who killed Bruce Willis in “The Sixth Sense” AND a former New Kid on the Block! — arrests Jigsaw but soon finds out that Jigsaw’s set a trap for him. He’s kidnapped Donnie Wahlberg’s son and stuck him in a hotel with a half-dozen obnoxious assholes, including Amanda (Shawnee Smith) from the first film; having her head in a reverse-bear trap apparently didn’t help her to get off the junk! The hotel is booby-trapped up the wazoo, so the assholes begin dying off pretty rapidly. Now Donnie Wahlberg has to find out where the hotel is before the remaining assholes realize that what they all have in common — apart from making the audience happy when they die horribly — is that Donnie Wahlberg arrested each of them! Dun-dun-dun!
The second film also has the infamous “needle pit” sequence, in which junkie Amanda is tossed into a pit that has a bunch of used hypodermic needles at the bottom — yowch! That oughtta get her off the horse!
Saw III
Jigsaw has managed to escape from police custody with the help of Amanda, who as it turns out, has become his accomplice!!! The cancer’s really eating away at him now, so he and Amanda kidnap a sexy female brain surgeon; to clarify, she doesn’t perform brain surgery only on sexy females, she’s a brain surgeon who also happens to be a sexy female. Amanda puts a collar around the brain surgeon’s neck that’ll literally blow her head off if she tries to remove it; there are like a dozen shotgun shells in the thing. Jigsaw wants the surgeon to remove the cancer from his brain using power tools. I love movies with DIY surgery in them, so this was definitely a high point in the series for me. All the while, some alcoholic d-bag is making his way through a series of traps in a B-story I didn’t find terribly interesting.
Oh, and Donnie Wahlberg finds Jigsaw’s hideout, but someone gets the drop on him. Later, he wakes up shacked to a pipe in the same dingy bathroom from the first movie with the body of the photog to keep him company.
Saw IV
Uh, this one I don’t remember terribly well. I think Donnie Wahlberg smashes his foot to oblivion with the heavy porcelain lid to a toilet tank and tries to escape from the bathroom where he’s been trapped. A coroner performs an autopsy on Jigsaw’s body. Dizzy from “Starship Troopers” has her ribcage removed, which looks even more painful than it sounds. Um…Donnie Wahlberg and some other dude are put on a teeter-totter sort of thing, and Donnie Wahlberg’s head gets his head crushed by two giant blocks of ice. I seem to remember the kills more than the plot.
Anyway, with both Amanda and Jigsaw now dead, we’re left with the impression that there was another accomplice. I think. I have no idea how this movie actually ends.
Saw V
Watching this installment, I felt like I had “Saw” amnesia and was completely lost. There are two cops in the fifth film. Or, one’s a cop and one’s a Fed. I don’t remember. Hell, for part of the movie, I thought they were the same guy, even though one is about thirty pounds overweight. The heavier of the two cops looks kind of like Michael Madsen, which I guess is better than looking like Mads Mikkelsen. This film kind of runs together with movie four. Wait, it’s coming back to me now. In this one, there are another half-dozen assholes, including the super-hot Julie Benz, that have to go through a series of rooms. In each room they have to do something awful to themselves before they’re blown to pieces by homemade claymore mines. My favorite bit of gruesomeness is when two of them have to stick their hands into the spinning blades of circular saws to fill a jar with blood and trigger a door to open. It occurs to neither of them that they can just pee in the jar to get the same result.
(On a side note, the same weekend I saw this movie, a female friend of mine called me from out of the blue to tell me that her contractor father had accidentally severed all the fingers on his right hand with a table saw. I thought the timing on that was weird as all get out. That girl’s married now, but not to me.)
Anyway, the movie ends with the big reveal that the Michael Madsen stand-in was Jigsaw’s other, fatter accomplice and has been doing all the killing after Jigsaw’s timely death. Meawhile, the skinny cop is smooshed in one of those rooms that you see in movies where the walls slowly close in.
Well, that was a fun little look back at the “Saw” franchise. I can definitely understand why people don’t like these movies, but I think they have their moments. What’s great is how deadly serious they are. B-grade horror movies are only terrific if the actors bring their A-game to the material. And of course the type of actors who’ll be in a “Saw” movie bring a very special A-game to the proceedings.
I’ll throw up my review of “Saw VI” this weekend.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
22
“Superman/Batman: Public Enemies” Review
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I’m of the opinion that Warner Premiere will accidentally put out an animated movie based on DC Comics characters that doesn’t blow. As such, I’ve seen all the crummy DTV releases by the shingle (“Superman: Doomsday,” “Batman: Gotham Knight,” “Justice League: New Frontier,” “Wonder Woman,” “Green Lantern: First Flight”). I’ve finally wizened up and stopped blind buying these turds. Maybe the day will come when I stop watching them altogether. WP’s latest effort, “Superman/Batman: Public Enemies,” is certainly no improvement upon their previous releases. It serves as a great reminder as to why I quit buying weekly comics, though.
Based on the first storyarc in the ongoing comic book series “Superman/Batman,” the film is about the titular heroes beating back every second-stringer in the DC stable. President Lex Luthor has framed Supes for killing the villain Metallo and dispatches a team of government-approved C-listers like Captain Atom, Black Lightning and Power Girl to capture or kill the Man of Steel. Batman teams up with Superman to help him clear his name. And there’s a Kryptonite asteroid hurtling towards Earth. The film is a fairly straightforward adaptation of the poorly-plotted first six issues of the comic by writer Jeph Loeb and artist Ed McGuinness.
And so, everything I hated on the page — Loeb’s bloated storytelling and McGuinness’ roided-up pencilling — has been brought to life on the screen. None of it works. The plot is so stupid and scatterbrained, that only a small child could overlook how much of a boring flat line the second act is. At one point, Superman’s shot in the chest with a Kryptonite bullet and treats the injury like a flesh wound. Dramatic beats have zero impact. Things just simply happen for the sake of giving the characters something to do. Dozens of heroes and villains gang up on Superman and Batman and promptly get the snot beaten out of them. The fights aren’t even staged very well, nor do they show the full range of Superman’s powers or all of the gadgets in Batman’s utility belt. It’s the weakest sort of fan service.
What’s even more disappointing about the film is the level of voice talent that’s completely wasted. Kevin Conroy (“Batman: The Animated Series”) and Tim Daly (“Superman: The Animated Series”) have been brought back to play the titular heroes, but their voices don’t fit the goofy-looking character redesigns.
It took me a very, very long time to convince myself that I had no good reason to continue reading comic books. It was more of a habit than a hobby. I kept thinking that the occasional satisfying read was worth all the money I pissed away on fanwank for man-children. Now I’m pretty much convinced that I should quit checking out these abysmal DC Comics animated films, too. I’d probably get more out of bashing some action figures together for seventy minutes than sitting through another one of these flicks.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
20
By the End of the First Month, I Didn’t Miss TV
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I don’t watch television. I have a TV, which I use to watch DVDs and the occasional VHS tape. What I mean is that I don’t watch any current programming on television. Name any show that’s on right now, and chances are very good that I’ve never seen it. I just don’t care. I think TV is about the lowest form of entertainment available. It’s become one of those culturally acceptable addictions, like drinking coffee or compulsively updating your Facebook status with some bit of bullshit every hour. TV watching is so prevalent, so much of a part of our societal fabric, it’s actually weird not to do it.
All that being said, I’ve been thinking about getting cable. I did have cable once — for a whole month! — when I first moved out to L.A. in 2002. I even remember watching the pilot episode of “girls club,” the extremely short-lived David E. Kelley legal drama starring Gretchen Mol. But I’d signed up for the cheapest subscription that Comcast had to offer, and it showed. The picture was full of grain and I only got a couple dozen channels. I didn’t have Comedy Central or MTV or Cartoon Network, but I did get some janky channel that showed foreign-language cooking shows all day. I couldn’t afford to upgrade to a more expensive package. So I said the hell with it and ultimately canceled my subscription altogether.
I’ve flirted with the idea of getting cable over the years. But I can always talk myself out of it. I’m working full-time and going to school; my free time is eaten up by homework and exercise and trips to the movies; I can better spend my money on exotic dancers. I also hear that cable providers suck. From what I understand, Time Warner Cable has about the shoddiest customer service this side of a gypsy encampment. I don’t think my apartment complex allows for me to get a satellite dish, and I wouldn’t want one anyway. Satellites should be used for monitoring the weather, taking spy photographs and being doomsday weapons. They’re not for bouncing UFC into the homes of Pabst-drinking rednecks.
I also heard about that retarded business not too long ago where our fascistic government ordered all Americans to upgrade to hi-def or be forced to — gasp — go without TV!!! I thought that was the biggest pile of hooey in the history of this country. When Hollywood and our lawmakers climb into bed together, no good can come of it. Anyway, my television is analog, so I’m basically Fred friggin’ Flintstone. And I ain’t going to upconvert to some $1000 flatscreen monstrosity to watch “Dancing With the Stars” or “Glee” or any other cacamamie show. There are better things a person can spend his money on, like a Russian mail-order bride named Svetlana.
So you can see, I’m conflicted about cable. Well, I’m not all that conflicted. I simply can’t seem to justify the hassle. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone even bothers anymore. Once you get beyond the sting of missing your favorite shows, you realize there are other things to do with your time, better things. Then you stop having favorite shows and start wondering why you ever liked watching TV in the first place.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
19
Movies I’ve Walked Out of
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Last Saturday, I went to a midnight screening of Dario Argento’s “Inferno.” There was a sold out crowd at the New Bev. The line for concessions stretched all the way into the auditorium. They ended up not starting the film until 1 am.
And I bailed around 2-ish.
I probably sound like a sociopath in many of my blogs about horror films. Take my piece on “Graduation Day.” But even I have my limits. I can’t sit through animal cruelty, and there’s a scene in “Inferno” where it was abundantly clear that the cats in the scene were being severely mistreated. They weren’t using puppets or stuffed animals, like in “Re-Animator” or “Pet Sematery.” These were actual cats. So I got out of my seat and made the lonely walk up the aisle to the exit long before the film would be over.
What I saw of “Inferno” sucked, by the way. I’d been checking my watch periodically throughout the film, wondering just when in the hell it was going to get interesting. I don’t think Argento’s a terribly good filmmaker. I liked “Susperia,” but not because it’s a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. It simply doesn’t commit the sin of being goddamn boring or abusing cats for shock value.
I’ve walked out of a handful of movies in my life. The others didn’t have animal cruelty in them, mind you. They were just cruel to me. Within the past year, I can list a few flicks I probably should’ve bailed on (“Friday the 13th,” “Crank: High Voltage,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” “Deadgirl,” “No Impact Man”) but sat through anyway.
Oddly enough, even when a movie is horrendous, your first instinct is to stick with it. You plunked down your hard-earned cash to see it. You’re going to get your money’s worth out of this piece of shit if it’s the last thing you do. But why torture yourself? If the flick sucks, leave. Chalk up the ticket price to an idiot tax and go home.
That said, here are some flicks I’ve walked out of:
The Island of Dr. Moreau
I blogged about how I wish I could’ve worked on this film. But watching it is pure punishment. I’d brought two of my friends with me, and we’d ridden our bikes all the way to the theater. But during the scene where Brando starts playing piano with his living, breathing garden gnome of a sidekick, I realized that I had better things to do with my life, and since I wanted to keep my friends, I suggested we split.
Heaven’s Prisoners
The Cinema 12 dollar theater in Lynwood, Washington, was the best place in the universe to theater hop. Let’s say you’re 16 and want to see an R-rated flick, one where Teri Hatcher’s naked. Well, simply wait for that three-hour turkey to land at the dollar theater, buy a ticket to “Babe” and simply duck into the wrong auditorium. The ushers tear your ticket at the front door. They’re practically inviting theater-goers to spend the whole day there. Well, I spent about 20 minutes watching “Heaven’s Prisoners.” I saw Ms. Hatcher in the altogether and promptly headed for the exit.
Ready to Rumble
I don’t even like professional wrestling, and yet for whatever reason, I bullshitted my girlfriend at the time into coming to see this with me. I went through an odd phase during my teens and early-20s where I had to see almost anything that looked even remotely watchable. “Ready to Rumble,” however, is a crushing bore, one of those comedies that plugs all of its jokes into the film’s 30-second TV spots. And I don’t think those gags were even that funny. Anyway, I suggested to my girlfriend that we leave at about the thirty-minute mark. She happily obliged and dumped me a couple months later. I’m pretty sure it’s because I took her to see this turd.
I Drink Your Blood
Here’s where I bring it back around. I went to see this hippie horror flick at the New Bev way back in 2003. Yes, it’s a horror movie about bloodsucking hippies or something. I couldn’t find anything remotely redeeming about it and took off about a third of the way in. Incidentally, it was another five years before I went back to the New Bev to catch a flick. I’ve seen some great stuff there since I lifted my weird little moratorium. And then I saw “Inferno.”
I don’t think I’m going to avoid the New Bev for another half-decade because I disliked another movie I saw there. I’ve seen a few bad movies at the Nuart, and I still go to that theater as often as possible. It’s just a matter of being discriminating, of making sure that a movie will more than likely work for me. I think my experience with “Inferno” was just an aberration. I just need to make sure that no animals were harmed during the making of the next film I see there.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
16
“Hardware” Review
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I’d been planning on reviewing Richard Stanley’s “Hardware” as part of my sporadic Not on DVD column, but then it was announced that the film was going to be released on DVD. So I waited and waited. Finally the disc came out last Tuesday. It doesn’t disappoint.
I hadn’t watched the film in awhile, so rediscovering “Hardware” on DVD was a treat. “Hardware” was originally described as “‘Terminator’ for the ’90s.” This was of course before “T2″ dropped the following year. The film is a post-nuclear haunted house movie about a young woman who comes under attack by a killer robot in her apartment. It’s a fantastic thriller, a movie that should’ve launched director Stanley into the stratosphere.
“Hardware” was one of the last films to receive an X rating from the MPAA. This was in 1990 before the insipid NC-17 rating came into being. When stacked against “Saw” and “Hostel” and other torture porn entries that are currently all the rage, “Hardware” seems tame by 2009 standards. It’s blood-soaked and uncompromising to be sure. But it’s got style to spare and more on its mind than all six braindead “Saw” installments put together.
The film stars Dylan McDermott as Mo Baxter, a bionic-handed badass who’s doing some last-minute Christmas shopping. He buys his wife Jill (Stacey Travis) a severed MARK-13 robot head, which is the gift that keeps on giving. Jill’s a sculptor and a bit of a shut-in. But when the president calls upon all Americans to “make a clean break with procreation,” it’s probably best to stay inside until the whole end of the world thing blows over. At any rate, the robot head becomes the finishing touch on Jill’s latest piece. It also wakes up and starts to rebuild itself and remembers its deep-seated hatred of mankind.
If that doesn’t sell you on the film, Jill’s voyeuristic neighbor gets killed by the robot’s power drill dinkus. Now how much would you pay?!
I rarely watch the special features on DVDs nowadays, but the 54-minute “No Flesh Will Be Spared” documentary is a pretty fascinating lookback. Richard Stanley gives of a shifty, creepy vibe that’s endlessly entertaining. His eyes are always darting around, like he’s afraid his parents might walk in at any minute and catch him showing you pictures of a robot’s schlong.
It’s a shame that Stanley never broke through. He’s a unique talent who probably has some great films in him. At least we got “Hardware.”
-Brad Lohan