Sep
20
“Fright Night” at the Nuart
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It’d been something like 15 years since I’d originally seen “Fright Night.” I was just getting into horror, and the USA Network was my one-stop shop for all manner of things that go bump. I did a lot of catching up on mid-’80s scare-flicks in my early adolescence, not that I can remember much of what I saw all that well on late-night basic cable. That said, “Fright Night” was a movie that I remember having seen, and not much else.
So last night when the Nuart screened the film, I sort of was going in blind. There was a buzz in the audience, as several members of the cast and crew were there. Tim Sullivan — director of “2001 Maniacs,” one of the worst movies I’ve seen at the Nuart to date — did a brief introduction before the film, calling out all the actors and filmmakers who were in attendance. I think the editor probably got the most tepid applause. Vampire villain Chris Sarandon unfortunately couldn’t make it to the screening but had sent a video message that played before the film; they had to run it twice since there was no audio the first time. There was even a camera crew at the screening. They went all out for this one.
The film itself is pretty okay. I think it has a great first act but limps along for much of the middle section. The climax is a little long-ish for a movie like this, too. It’s definitely enjoyable with a packed house, but if it’s a movie you haven’t grown up on and can easily overlook its flaws — like I can with “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter” — you might be a little puzzled as to why some people are so nuts over the film.
It has a great concept: a teenage horror movie buff (William Ragsdale) thinks his next-door neighbor (Sarandon) is a vampire and teams up with a late-night spookshow host (Roddy McDowall) to stop him. And I liked how the film actually follows all the “rules” of vampire lore instead of subverting them like the Bush Administration does with the Constitution. Too many vampire movies — even my beloved “Blade” films — try a more “realistic” approach to the material rather than just resigning themselves to the fact that, yes, everything pop culture has taught you about vampires’ strengths and weaknesses is true.
It certainly saves you gobs of exposition.
After the film, there was a Q&A. The movie had started late, and William Ragsdale pointed out that it was almost 3:30 in the morning, and we were all still there — 23 years after the movie had been released — talking about it. Some people might say that’s pretty frightening.
-Brad Lohan
Sep
14
“Child’s Play” DVD Review
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Happy 20th birthday, Chucky! It seems like only yesterday I was too much of a sissy to watch the first “Child’s Play.” It’s pretty amazing that a possessed Good Guy doll is almost old enough to drink. That the first film still holds up, probably better than the latter two sequels, is even more amazing.
I think I’d seen the first “Child’s Play” only once before when I was about 12 or 13. It’s a fairly straightforward horror film, not like the sequels which are basically send-ups of the killer doll horror subgenre. But the original “Child’s Play” actually taps into every parent’s fear that they’re son or daughter is really a budding psychopath.
In the film, Catherine Hicks — most famous for being in the “Star Trek” movie that non-fans describe as “the one with the whales” — plays a single mother who buys her son Andy (Alex Vincent) a Good Guy doll for his birthday. Unfortunately, the doll, who calls himself Chucky, is actually possessed with the spirit of a serial killer (Academy Award winner Brad Dourif) named Charles Lee Ray. Ray, it seems, knows a thing or two about voodoo and when he became mortally wounded during a toy store shootout with grizzled cop Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon), he passed his soul into a doll until a more suitable host body can be found.
I love this kind of stuff.
It should be pointed out that the magic spell Ray casts on the doll for soul transference doesn’t work in real life. I tried it on my cat, and we did not swap bodies.
At any rate, “Child’s Play” is one of those rare gems of the slasher genre, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Audiences were tired of the endless “Friday the 13th” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Halloween” sequels by the late-’80s. But “Child’s Play” brought something new to the table. What if your favorite childhood toy was also a mass murderer? It’s like recasting E.T. with the Xenomorph from “Alien.” I think it’s a brilliant approach. Four sequels have since been made, and the inevitable remake has recently been announced.
It seems like you can’t keep a Good Guy down.
-Brad Lohan
Sep
7
“Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter” Review
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After three successful “Friday the 13th” films, Paramount decided to end the franchise on a high note. Movie four, “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter,” was originally intended to lower the curtain on Jason Voorhees’ stalk-and-slash career. That being said, seven more “Friday the 13th” movies have since been made with an eighth — produced by Meat Loaf video wunderkind Michael Bay — set for release early next year.
Still, it’s hard to top “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.” The Nuart screened the film last Friday as well as a mind-blowingly bad short film called “In the Wall” about a guy who accidentally kills his pregnant wife and tries hiding her body, well, in the wall. I’ve had no luck with short films of late.
The less said about “In the Wall,” the better. Rather, this is a review of “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter,” one of my favorite entires in the franchise. It parts from the conventions of the earlier films, introducing a young, Robert Urich lookalike named Rob (E. Erich Anderson), the brother of one of Jason’s previous victims. Where most characters in these movies are quick to assume Jason is long dead, Rob knows Jason’s still out there and comes equipped to kill him. I like the idea of some grieving family member coming after Jason. I also like how Rob isn’t the guy who takes him out. Rather, Rob’s cut down with some gardening tools, and probably the only character in the series who narrates his own demise: “He’s killing me! He’s killing me!”
A quick note to horror screenwriters: show, don’t tell.
Another way the film departs from previous installments is the inclusion of the Jarvis family. Tommy Jarvis, played by a young Corey Feldman in this film, is a super-sophisticated makeup effects guru, a character bit that’s paid off in a very unusual way at the film’s climax. His sister Trish is about ten years too old to still be playing a teenager, but she’s nice to look at nonetheless. Their mother disappears from the film after all hell starts to break loose. It’s implied that Jason gets the jump on her, but her body doesn’t become part of the corpse menagerie that Jason creates in the final reel.
Of course there are your typical dumb teenagers in this film — among them is George McFly himself, Crispin Glover. My favorite is the sleazy Samantha, played by Judie Aronson. Her comeuppance, getting stabbed through an inflatable raft while out for a swim, was apparently a right bastard to shoot with temperatures near freezing and her being completely naked. I applaud Ms. Aronson’s commitment to her craft.
There are some clever kills in this one. A guy gets stabbed in the back of the head through a projector screen; another guy gets a harpoon to the man-parts and hoisted into the air; Crispin Glover gets a corkscrew through the hand and a butcher knife to the face; we see a girl get impaled in silhouette during a flash of lightning (an arty kill, that one); and Jason himself takes a machete to the side of his head, falls on top of it, then slides down the blade. Oh, I almost left out the guy who gets a hacksaw to the throat and his head twisted 180 degrees.
Makeup artist Tom Savini went all out for “The Final Chapter.” He was also on the first film, so it seemed fitting for him to do the effects for what was thought to be the last. It’s no coincidence the young hero’s name is Tommy, in a none too subtle nod to the makeup effects wizard.
Speaking of Tommy Jarvis, “The Final Chapter” is the first of three films that feature the character, though played by a different actor in each one. Trish is written out of parts five and six, but it is interesting to see Tommy’s evolution in a franchise not known for character development. Movie four ends with a chilling shot of young Tommy, sort of leaving the door open for a sequel in which he takes up Jason’s mantle. But after the uneven fifth film, “A New Beginning” — the one with a vengeful paramedic(!) donning the familiar hockey mask and carving people up — the filmmakers decided audiences were only on board with these films so long as Jason’s the one stacking up the bodies.
The series began experiencing diminishing returns at the box office after “The Final Chapter.” Each subsequent film has some gimmick, from the imposter in the fifth to Jason’s brief visit to the Big Apple in the eighth. I can manage to wring some entertainment value out of even the weaker entries. But “The Final Chapter” is really where the franchise reached its apex, thanks in no small part to Crispin Glover’s moves on the dance floor.
-Brad Lohan
Sep
4
“Starship Troopers 3: Marauder” Review
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This review is about a month late. “Starship Troopers 3: Marauder” — a DTV effort, like movie two in the franchise — hit DVD the first week of August. I came this close to buying it, being a ginormous fan of the original “Starship Troopers” and all. But “Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation” is so unrepentantly awful, rumor has it that John McCain considered it as his running mate. At any rate, I instead added it to my Netflix queue. Last night, it finally came in the mail.
Well…”Marauder” isn’t as bad as “Starship Troopers 2.” It’s still pretty cheap-looking, plodding and heavy-handed. Casper Van Dien, the vacant square-jawed star of the original “Starship Troopers,” returns as Johnny Rico, now a Colonel in the Mobile Infantry — the boots on the ground in a seemingly endless, propaganda-fueled war against giant bugs in the far-flung, fascistic future.
Paul Verhoeven’s “Starship Troopers” was about 5 years ahead of its time. Were it to have been released in ‘02 or ‘03 rather than 1997, its impact would’ve been like that of an atomic bomb. It’s a two-hour propaganda film, a full-throated endorsement of arachnid genocide. When it was released, people just didn’t get it. I loved it, being a gorehound and all. But the satire was sort of lost on me at the time. America in the late-’90s wasn’t quite the jingoistic war machine we are today.
I’m not sure that’s what Robert Heinlein was getting at when he wrote the book in the ’50s. I read it a few months after the first film came out. It’s very pro-military, if a little listless. Rico’s in training for the bulk of the story. Then he gets bonked on the head at the climax on Planet P and wakes up and the war’s been won. I prefer the film.
All that being said, I’ve spent the previous two paragraphs not talking about “Starship Troopers 3: Marauder,” giving you some idea of how much I enjoyed this movie. This film is set some seven or so years after the first. Rico’s stationed on some rock in outer space that’s besieged by bugs. A former flame, Capt. Lola Beck (Jolene Blalock, a poor woman’s Angelina Jolie) and her new beau Gen. Dix Hauser (Boris Kodjoe, who’s approximately 12 feet tall) set down on the planet for gobs of exposition. Rico punches out Hauser for some reason and is court-martialed and sentenced to hang. But Beck’s transport ship crashes on another bug planet, OM-1, while en route to a Star Trek convention or something. Hauser grants Rico a very last minute reprieve and sends him to rescue Beck with the help of a half-dozen interchangeable troopers. They all inexplicably get naked before piling into exo-suits called “Marauders.” The Marauder exo-suits don’t really do a whole helluva lot. Sigourney Weaver’s mash-up with the Queen Xenomorph at the climax of “Aliens” is way more thrilling than watching these shambling garbage heaps fight creepy crawlies. Oh, and OM-1 has an extremely Freudian bug living in it that the all-singing, all-dancing Sky Marshall in Beck’s group thinks is God.
It’s clunky, this film. Boris Kodjoe is a remarkably tall man. Casper Van Dien is not. The filmmakers apparently blew most of the budget on the effects, not apple boxes. Over-the-shoulder shots are unintentional comedy, as our Hobbit of a hero cranes his neck to make eye-contact with a guy who dwarfs Voltron. I’d forgive the dodgy production values if the movie had some of the wit and the gusto of the first film. It needs someone like Michael Ironside’s Lt. Rasczak in the original. Everyone in the movie is just too soft, considering that they live in a era that defines itself by war. Also, why is it that every television show now looks like a movie, but every DTV movie still looks like a DTV movie?
I’m disappointed that this film was just another half-assed bit of junk like all of Sony’s sequels that go straight-to-DVD. The filmmakers could’ve made a very suberversive Iraq War metaphor here. In the decade since the first film came and went, the world changed in such a way that “Starship Troopers” is now more relevant than ever. Unfortunately, the two follow-ups just bug me.
-Brad Lohan
Aug
24
“The Gate” Review
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I’d never seen “The Gate.” It was one of the few horror movies a childhood friend of mine had seen, so he talked about it all the time. But it was never on my radar. I mean, it’s PG-13. We all know how I feel about horror movies rated PG-13.
But last night the New Beverly Cinema in Hollywood had a midnight showing of the film. I decided at the very last minute to go. I hadn’t been to that theater in 5 years. Back in ‘03, I’d gone to see a god-awful double bill of “I Drink Your Blood” and something probably equally wretched. I’d only made it through the first third of “I Drink Your Blood” before walking out due to its overwhelming badness. At any rate, for years I was leery of the programming at the New Beverly. I kept reading about these great screenings there, but I remained gunshy about going back.
Finally, I decided to man-up and revisit the theater. “The Gate” seemed like as good a movie as any to see there.
I’d done very little recon before arriving at the theater. It wasn’t until I got there and saw the poster that I realized that Stephen Dorff — Deacon Frost from the first “Blade” movie! — is in it. Then noticed Tibor Takacs had directed the film. Yes, the Tibor Takacs! I’m actually familiar with another film of his, “Mega Snake,” as a former co-worker of mine was a writer on that gem.
Takacs and the writer of “The Gate,” Michael Nankin, were in attendance last night and did a Q&A before the film began. Indeed, people in the audience had some softball questions about the film’s production. We all found it quite humorous that the film had opened opposite the notorious Warren Beatty/Dustin Hoffman bomb “Ishtar” and trounced it at the box office.
That being said, “The Gate” isn’t a great film, either. I think it works as a nightmare generator for its target audience — adolescents — but the story doesn’t really make a whole hell of a lot of sense. Still, I didn’t walk out, partly because I just wanted to see how much more bizarre it would get.
In the film, a dead tree is removed from the backyard of a young boy named Glen (Dorff). He and his friend Terry (Louis Tripp) begin digging around in the hole left by the tree stump and find jewels or something. A whole bunch of moths fly out of the hole. Glen’s sister, Alexandra, throws a party after their parents go out of town for a long weekend. The drunken high school kids make Glen levitate and he breaks a lamp. Terry has a dream that his late mother comes back to life, but she turns out to be Glen’s dog, who’s dead for some reason. Glen gets over the loss of his beloved pet in a record amount of time (”He was old.”), so he, Terry and Alexandra can fight little demons who’ve crawled out of the hole and have something to do with the lyrics in a heavy metal song Terry likes.
It gets weirder.
I guess I sort of liked the idea that none of the characters in the movie ever fully understood what was going on. Movies such as these usually have some resident expert who can provide gobs of exposition and clear up the confusion to some degree. “The Gate” doesn’t bother. In their desperation, the kids simply throw a bible in the hole, hoping that’ll do the trick. It doesn’t, unfortunately.
The movie does have that creepy vibe of a bad dream you had when you were a kid. It’s best to approach the film from that perspective. Or you could be cynical and say the filmmakers are hacks who had no business making a movie in the first place. Still, it outgrossed “Ishtar.” There’s something to be said for that.
-Brad Lohan
Aug
21
Jason Would Like to Axe You a Question
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Serial killers and momma’s boys — two great tastes that taste great together. Jason Voorhees is perhaps my favorite mother-lovin’ slasher. Had she not been decapitated in the final reel of “Friday the 13th,” I think Mrs. Voorhees would be proud of her boy. But Jason’s carried on her tradition of showing kids the dangers of drug abuse, premarital sex and plunging an axe into one’s skull. In less than six months, Mrs. Voorhees’ only child — forgetting all that needless retconning of the Voorhees family tree in “Jason Goes to Hell” — will stalk and slash on the big screen again.
I’m actually starting to get excited about this one.
I lamented a couple months back that Michael Bay’s soulless remake machine, Platinum Dunes, was giving Jason the “Batman Begins”/”Casino Royale” treatment. That they felt the mythology of the “Friday the 13th” saga needed to be rebooted sort of misses the point, considering how each film is basically a remake in and of itself. Teens arrive in woods; Jason destroys them. The end.
Still, the articles I’ve been reading about this film, particularly the casting of Nana Visitor as Mama Voorhees (long before “Star Trek: DS9,” she was on “MacGyver” twice, as two different characters!), has given me a modicum of faith that this film might be a worthy entry in the series. Yes, director Marcus Nispel is going to stylize the hell out of it. That’s all these music video vets know how to do. What they don’t realize is the absence of showy cinematography in the earlier films was how they achieved their grittiness. Nowadays, hacks just think bleach bypass is all you need for instant atmosphere ’cause Spielberg does it sometimes.
CHUD.com, the Internet’s preeminent apologist for the upcoming “Friday the 13th” film, has a new image up of Jason chopping wood, or humans, or perhaps both. I hope the radioactive cloud behind him doesn’t turn Jason into The Amazing Colossal Slasher. And with that being said, I’ve given myself a fabulous idea for another screenplay. Maybe someday it’ll be made into a film…then further down the road, remade by Michael Bay!
-Brad Lohan
Aug
7
“Toxic Avenger V”
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Five is the new four. With franchises like “Die Hard” and “Indiana Jones” recently being padded out with fourth installments, Troma has proven once again that they’re ahead of the curve with the announcement of a fifth “Toxic Avenger” film, according to Fangoria. Or, maybe Troma co-founder Lloyd Kaufman is pulling a Shane Black and going back to the well. At any rate, I get a new Toxie movie out of it.
I liked Troma’s recent film, “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead,” alright. But when you stack chicken zombies against “a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength,” I’ll take the latter any day of the week. Apparently, Troma’s financiers feel the same way.
“The Toxic Avenger” is to Troma what “Star Wars” is to George Lucas. It’s the studio’s biggest franchise — sorry, “Class of Nuke ‘em High” — and Troma’s only flirtation with mainstream Hollywood. Despite being a Hard-R film, “The Toxic Avenger” was adapted as a children’s cartoon show, “The Toxic Crusaders,” in the early-’90s. The series never caught on in the same way as the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” probably perceived by kids and parents as just another irradiated also-ran. Still, I’d love to have the 13-episode run on DVD.
I think “The Toxic Avenger” would be less interesting if it were to have become a major phenomenon. Some things just need to remain culty. I have enough ancillary “Toxic Avenger” items — a Toxie action figure, a novelization of the first film, a t-shirt that I’m wearing at this very moment — that I don’t feel too slighted by its relative obscurity. Another film, even a micro-budgeted affair, would keep the franchise alive beyond the studio simply reissuing the DVDs every so often to boost their bottom line.
What can I say? I love the monster hero.
-Brad Lohan
Jun
15
“Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” Review
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I first discovered Troma movies when I was about 13. I’d recorded all three “Toxic Avenger” films when they were shown on the USA Network — in reverse-order for whatever reason — and watched them in one marathon, commercial-heavy, edited-for-TV sitting. Without the overabundance of nudity and graphic violence, they’re not quite as entertaining as the versions I now own on DVD. But they had an impact on me nonetheless.
The cheapo effects and criminally bad acting and clunky camerawork are enough to challenge the average movie-goer’s suspension of disbelief. But that’s sort of the point. Troma movies are intentionally god-awful. That they can be so craptacular and still entertain is the magic behind Lloyd Kaufman’s ouerve.
But not all Troma movies are gems of the grindhouse circuit. The ones I have are almost all exclusively produced in-house. Their negative pickups — with the exception of “Cannibal: The Musical” (directed by Trey Parker!) and “Bloodsucking Freaks” — are movies that aren’t films you watch, but power through. You think you’ve seen some bad movies? Pfft. I’ve seen some bad movies.
At any rate, “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” is not a bad movie. It’s not a bad movie in the sense that I found a lot to like about it. Judging the film by its visual treatment, its performances, and its plot is what elitist film critics would do. They’d be missing the point. Director (and Troma co-founder) Lloyd Kaufman has a style all his own. He rejects the overly polished and focus group-approved conventions of today’s big-budget films. There’s a quick and dirty charm here, a true wit at play.
The film’s about a fast food restaurant called American Chicken Bunker that opens on an old Indian burial ground for deceased poultry. Protesters outside the establishment aren’t happy about this new fast food franchise desecrating the graves of dead chickens. High school grad Arbie (Jason Yachanin) decides to put in for a job at the establishment to get back at his ex-girlfriend Wendy (Kate Graham), a protester who went off to college and came back with a girlfriend of her own. Contaminated food begins to mutate the restaurant patrons and protesters alike. Arbie and Wendy quickly find themselves in the fight for their lives against man-eating, beak-mouthed chicken zombies.
And it’s a musical.
I’d always wanted to see a musical in which the actors can’t really sing, the choreography looks like it was made up as they went along and an entire number is done topless. Apparently so did Lloyd Kaufman. After watching the tired and unimaginative “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” last Christmas, I was happy to see a horror movie musical that actually had fun with the songs. They didn’t treat them like something they had to get through to move on to the next scene.
The movie also gives Kaufman 90 minutes to put as many sacred cows through a meat grinder as he can. Troma has never been easy on Corporate America, and “Poultrygeist” stays true to Tromatic form. Fast food franchises and the military industrial complex are the film’s biggest targets. But where Morgan Spurlock couldn’t shut down the McDonald’s, and Michael Moore couldn’t bring an end to the Bush Administration and by extension the Iraq War, Kaufman’s learned to stop worrying and love our screwed up society. It’s his muse. If we lived in a Utopia, there’d be no Troma films. And who’d want to live in one then? Well, most people, probably. But I wouldn’t be among you.
-Brad Lohan