My Creature Feature Friday list is pretty dismal this year and after spending about an hour trying to find something better, I just ended up choosing this one.
A woman moves to a cabin in the woods (first sign of an often used horror movie cliche). It also had the typical creepy old guy warning her, foreshadowing events to come, "it's not tourist season anymore. It's the mean season. Get out while you still can." Our main character finds herself alone in her cabin (well with her two fish and cat) but something is eating her and her cat's food. She purchases some rat poison and traps to kill off whatever is invading her quaint little abode. A gentleman enters the town's general store and identifies himself as a biologist studying the ecosystem in the area. He tells her it is strange that there are a bunch of species disappearing. Upon leaving the store, her car has exhausted its last... exhaust and he offers to take her home. On the way he shows her some odd slime(?)/hair(?)/something he found on the pond near her cabin. Then, at the cabin they discover what has been eating her food, and sadly her cat (trust me, it doesn't ruin it for you. We all saw it coming.). They are... the aberration. Mutated creatures that are so horrible, so adaptable, so hokey. Seriously, even for a low-budget film the creature effects are so very bad.
Cabin in the woods, oooh. Cabin in the woods, yeah.
Killer lizard
It's so scary, I can't even look!
It was probably the worst choice I could have made for this evening. However, on nights when Joey goes to bed early for work and I am left alone watching a movie, I can't have it too loud so I usually end up watching it with subtitles. So for something super schlocky, it's not that bad since I don't really hear the bad acting or cheesy music cues. I was definitely thankful for that with this one since the acting really was very bad. The biologist character is not believable, although more so than the one in Prometheus, but that's a whole different discussion. Our heroine is also whiny and dumb. Not to mention the highly evolved killer geckos. That's right, a tropical or desert species in a temperate climate. Totally makes sense right? With the sudden winter storm, they've holed up in the cabin, and inside the neighbor (remember the old man? Mean season indeed.), because they are a TROPIC species and need warmth. I mean, our biologist points the peculiarity out, yet doesn't try to make anything of it. I could go on, but it really isn't worth trying to analyze who thought it was a good idea to have mutated geckos outside of their natural habitat as killer creatures in a horror film.
I spy, with my little eye. A terrible movie!
Someone, please save me from my bad acting.
It's not often that I watch something so bad that I can't even give it an "ok" rating of two skulls.
There is nothing I like more than a good Sci-Fi horror movie. To this day, the Aliens series is by far one of my favorites. But it could be said that many horror films have some element of science fiction, zombies created by a virus, futuristic and apocalyptic worlds where cannibals run rampant are a few examples. But often many don't actually take place in space or on another planet. Event Horizon is one of those that I haven't seen in a long time, but I can recall almost every little detail. It is a sign of a good film, especially for a horror film. One of Paul W.S. Anderson's (Resident Evil franchise) first feature length films (aside from Mortal Kombat), and it doesn't let you down on suspense or gore.
The "core" or engine of the ship
The Event Horizon is revealed to be a ship capable of folding space, like creating a wormhole, to travel to worlds yet unexplored. On its first test, it disappeared without a trace and after being lost for seven years it has reappeared. A team is unknowingly sent, with the scientist who created the Event Horizon, to recover it and its crew. When they arrive at the ship and go aboard they quickly find that there are no survivors among the crew. In fact one of the crew members is found to be a "corpsicle" as one of the characters calls it. Corpsicle. Ha. Anyway, stuff goes down when the core is reactivated and our team find themselves trapped on a terrifying ship. There is a solid cast in the film as well, with Laurence Fishburne as the captain and Sam Neill as the scientist. The effects are hauntingly disturbing and pretty well done and the set is very aesthetically appealing as well.
Inside the ship
A few notes about some scenes. Originally the doctor, played by Jason Isaacs, identified the transmission they had received as "liberate me" or save me in Latin. However, when s*** starts going down he reexamines it and realizes it is actually "Liberate tutame ex inferis," save yourself from Hell. I'm not a Latin expert and looking at discussions online, it is apparently incorrect. But for setting the mood of the movie, it works. Did the Event Horizon travel beyond into a sort of Hell for those seven years? Or did the ship itself become something else?
A scene of Hellish gore
Another one I somehow convinced Joey to watch with me, and he had this to say about it, "Not quite as good as I remember it, but it's got a nice slow build." He gives it 3.5 skulls and I give it 4.5. Maybe I am rating it so highly because I have such a fondness for it as a part of the formative years in my life for horror movies, but I don't care! It is still a solid horror film in my book, but the transition to the electronic music at the credits is a little laughable.
It has been a full week now, and we are back to Wacky Wednesday. Funny that it is technically the third zombie movie so far this year, but oh well.
This one came under my radar when I saw it being featured for Wolf Choir's monthly B-Movie Bingo program at Hollywood Theater. Unfortunately I missed it when it was there, but no reason I couldn't feature it myself for this year's festivities. B-Movie Bingo is the first Tuesday of every month and is more about the experience than the quality of the movie. You play bingo with a card that has a plethora of action movie cliches like, "long boring scene," "male ponytail," "teamed up with a rookie or animal," "uzi," "white suit," and "shooting while dying." There are prizes and you get to scream the different squares out if the hosts miss something. Plus, there is a special definition for the "blank square." It is not a free space, no, it is much better. It is something completely bizarre, a scene, a line, a woman putting a birthday cake with a lit candle into a drawer; it's basically something that is so strange, you would likely never see it in any other movie. I think that is actually my favorite part of B-Movie Bingo and I'll mention the scene in Dead Heat I think was probably called out as the "blank square" when they showed it.
I love campy films, but I especially love those that just go all out because they know what they are doing is ridiculous and don't give a s***. That is exactly why I found myself enjoying this one more than I think I should have. Detectives Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) and Doug Bigelow (Joe Piscopo) find themselves on a strange case when they thwart a robbery at a jewelry store but discover the crooks were already once pronounced dead. They investigate Dante Laboratories, suspecting they have some way to resurrect the dead. Doug finds a suspicious room with a mysterious machine and the reanimated corpse of a biker. Roger tries to help fight it off but is killed in the line of duty, but becomes one of the undead to fight the zombie crooks and the madman behind the machine. It's a zombie buddy cop movie! A ridiculous premise executed in an off-the-wall and ridiculous way all true to the era of '80s camp horror. Of course it wouldn't have been as good without Vincent Price's cameo as the "deceased" owner of Dante Laboratories, Arthur P. Laudermilk. Really anything that man is in makes it worth a watch.
WHITE SUIT
You're not looking so good there Rog
It is super campy, with cringe-worthy one-liners and cheesy effects, but that is what makes it so much fun. I believe the "blank square" would have been the scene in which our heroes are interrogating a suspect at a restaurant and he turns on a small resurrection machine, reanimating all of the meat in the restaurant. All of the meat. A, what I assume is a liver, jumps onto Roger's face while Doug wrestles with a pig carcass. The best though, is when a whole cow carcass, head not included, breaks out of the freezer. Doug's cheesy one-liners throughout the film, but particularly in this scene will force a laugh and make you roll your eyes, but it is still amusing. The examples, when he was fighting the resurrected pig, "Alright, this little piggy's going to market," and when Roger asks how they are supposed to kill the cow carcass he replies, "Maybe we can drown it in A-1 sauce."
I literally can't even
You know it is a true 80's comedy when it has its own movie-title ending credit song.
Don't watch unless you don't wanna watch the movie. Or do and watch it anyway!
It has been a long time for me to bring myself to watch this one, but is the first fort this year's Transcontinental Tuesdays.
Since I have recently been to Japan I wanted to kick-off this year's foreign films with a Japanese horror I have put off watching for some time. I also wanted to share this one since it was my first experience using hoopla. Hoopla is a free media streaming site through participating public libraries. You can find movies, music and audiobooks to watch and listen to for free with your library membership. They have a lot available that I have not been able to find elsewhere and you are allowed to stream eight items each month. Movies and television episodes can be borrowed for 72 hours, music for 7 days and audiobooks for 21 days. Of course, they also support apps for apple, android and the Kindle Fire so you can have access to your rentals wherever you are. It's a pretty nice program and although it doesn't have as much as Netlfix streaming or its kin, I am sure you'd be able to find something you'd enjoy. Alright, my plug for hoopla is done so back to the review.
For this, you are way cool in my book hoopla
Known as "Kairo" in Japan Pulse is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and based on his novel of the same title. Sometimes the subtitles blend with the film making them unreadable, which is somewhat annoying. After a group of friends lose a friend to suicide, they discover a disc he had with pictures of him and a ghostly face in his computer monitor. Shortly after, they begin seeing strange things around Japan, there are doors marked with red tape and people are killing themselves after witnessing something terrible. The parallel story-line in the film is of a young man that attempts to connect to the internet, only to be brought to a strange site where people are observed behaving strangely. When he turns the computer off, it turns back on in the middle of the night on a video of a man with a bag over his head and writing on the wall behind him. He goes to the university to ask computer science students about it and makes a friend that tells him ghosts are invading the human world through computers and the internet. Although it is a suspenseful, creepy and entirely unnerving ghost story, it is also a commentary on communication and the alienation and loneliness we experience which is created by modern technology. This gives it a lot more substance than your typical gore fest horror movie, which is nice to have every now and then. Especially for me when I am watching these kinds of movies every day!
Finally, it's Zombday! But since there aren't many zombie flicks on my list this year, I decided to go with one that could be classified as "wacky".
This film plays with all sorts of horror genres. It has a bit of the science fiction genre, aliens running around on a ship and accidentally releasing brain eating slugs on Earth. It obviously has comedy horror, as I said before it would have been appropriate for a Wacky Wednesday. It has slasher horror with an ax wielding maniac and zombie horror because the aforementioned brain eating slugs turn the living and dead into zombies with the sole purpose of producing more brain eating slugs. It is sort of an homage to films that have come before it but also in a weird class of its own. It fits into the "80s horror" sub-sub genre. I kind of made that up but I think it is a valid classification since so many horror movies made in the '80s are quite unlike many today. Meaning they mostly have similar subject matter and execution characteristic of the era, maybe it is possible a lot of the "teen screams," "gore horror," and "horror-comedies" came out of this decade? I am just speculating, but I enjoy a lot of movies from this time, in fact many are considered classics (Nightmare on Elm Street), and feel they need to have their own grouping.
Odd looking alien with a vial of brain eating slugs
Brad, did you do something different with your hair?
Night of the Creeps had some good practical effects and some wonderfully cheesy acting and story-line. I know I have complained about bad acting before (You're Next) but when it is intentional or just so bad that it is funny, then it is more acceptable. It surprises me that I had missed this one for so many years because I quite liked it and it fits with so many of the others that I continue to enjoy. However, it wasn't mind-blowingly good, worth a watch but not more than once.
Supernatural Sunday is kicked off with a good old ghost story. Technically it should have been on Tuesday since it is a British film, but I make exceptions when something has been on my list for more than year.
This film is a story about a young, widowed lawyer, Arthur Kipps. He travels to a sleepy coastal English town to examine papers of the Eel Marsh house his firm is arranging to have sold. It is sort of your standard ghost story, a town is cursed by a spirit seeking revenge for the death of her child. When she is seen at the house or near the property she "takes" children in the town, by making them commit suicide. So it is no surprise the town's people don't want Kipps around the house.
Creepy house
The house in the film was designed like your standard haunted house with creepy family portraits on the stairs, cobwebs everywhere, creepy taxidermic animals (particularly creepy "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkeys) and creepy children's toys, some of which looked like taxidermic animals made into music boxes. The perfect recipe for terrifying your viewers.
I really don't know what could possibly be giving my son nightmares.
Really. What could it be?
That, and a ghost woman wearing all black with a veil covering her face and when she appears, she often screams in your face! AAAAGGGGHHH! It had some good tense moments that made me jump and although it is pretty predictable, it is a fun flick.
Boo!
On another note, Daniel Radcliffe stars as Arthur Kipps and as much as I tried not to associate him with Harry Potter,at some moments, I couldn't stop from seeing scenes as if he was Harry.
Arthur Kipps at the train station - platform 9 3/4.
Train going through the English countryside at night - train to Hogwarts.
Daniel walking out of a room beneath the staircase - Harry's oh so cozy room at the Dursley's house.
However, he was really good in it and once I disconnected from seeing him as Harry, I saw him more as the character he was portraying. I also chose this one for Sunday in anticipation of him starring in the film adaptation of Joe Hill's novel Horns hitting theaters on Halloween this year.
Wait, he's parseltongue in this too? Now, you're just giving them to me.
It was a decent and moody ghost story so it gets 3 skulls.
A Slasher Saturday with an atypical home invasion story.
Another one I had high hopes for after reading some rave reviews. The majority of the acting was poor, and the plot was pretty predictable. I guess I've seen so much that not a lot surprises me or freaks me out anymore, but I always have hope that I will find that one that blows me away. Half way through this film I wasn't exactly blown away, but I was pleasantly surprised.
Home invasion horror movies seem to have had a resurgence in the last five or so years. Most are scary because it is one of those terrors that is all too real. Many people have home security systems and guns to protect themselves and their families based on some of those fears. In this film, a family gathers at a vacation home to celebrate the anniversary of their parents. A seemingly peaceful and happy occasion quickly turned to horror when the family is attacked by unknown, masked assailants both outside and inside the house. Then the revelers are picked off one by one. Basically your straight up home invasion type of flick, there is even one character that shines under pressure and fights back; our Australian heroine, Erin (Sharni Vinson). She was really the only decent actress in the whole thing. I literally cringed early in the film when the mother was saying that she heard someone upstairs and was imploring her husband to leave. It was just so unbelievable, but then Sharni carried the whole cast through a twisted and darkly humorous and gory romp.
Erin wielding an ax
When Erin is attacked by the man in the lion mask, she defends herself and makes quick work of him pretty gruesomely. This is about the time I started enjoying the movie more. Erin describes that she lived in a survival camp with her father in the Australian outback as she is hammering nails into boards. Later she lays those boards out beneath the window, a la a horror version of Home Alone. Not to mention the trap, an ax weighted with a brick, at the front door. The scene that really sealed the deal for me is when she dispatches one of the killers with a blender. That's right. She jams the blade with the base on the killer's head, plugs it in and turns it on. I couldn't help but think of Blendtec's "Will it Blend?" videos. "Will it blend? That is the question."
I imagine his voice in my head saying, "Killer's brain goop, don't drink this."
So even though half of the movie was kind of lame, it gets 4 skulls for impressing me with some good moments especially those that made me laugh out loud.
Before Jesse freed Willy, Willy terrorized a small Newfoundland town! Not really, I just thought I was being funny and clever... but here is this year's first Creature-Feature Friday.
I pretty much chose this one for tonight because I had a dream about killer whales the night before. Plus, it has been on my list for awhile. It opens with music composed by the famous Ennio Morricone (John Carpenter's The Thing) eerily put to the sounds of orca songs and echolocation. Early on we are introduced to the two main characters, one a fisherman, Nolan, played by Richard Harris and a marine mammal biologist, Rachel, played by Charlotte Rampling. Honestly, the cast in this film is another reason this has been on my list for so long, including some small very early performances by Robert Carradine (of Revenge of the Nerds fame) and Bo Derek (10). After the characters witness a great white shark being killed by an orca, it cuts to Rachel mid-lecture. She discusses the intelligence of killer whales and states that they have a, "profound instinct for vengeance." Nolan, upon attending Rachel's classes is interested in capturing and selling one of these profoundly intelligent creatures to a zoo. He succeeds, but in his success unwittingly kills a female and her unborn calf, igniting her mate's vengeance against him. Nolan is very regretful and empathizes with the whale as he also lost his wife and child in a car accident, but it all comes down to a man vs. whale battle in the very end.
After killing the female, Nolan doesn't look that regretful
It's the final showdown! (sung to Europe's "Final Countdown")
At a time when we became more conscious of our impact on the environment, and the Endangered Species Act was passed and Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" hit book shelves; Hollywood produced a lot of movies we classify into the "Natural Horror" sub-genre. Also partly because of Jaws but, I may be inferring this a bit, from 1960 to 1980 a lot of "nature strikes back" horror films were made, including Orca (1977). As an example from the film; Nolan asks the priest at his friend's funeral after he is killed by the rampaging orca, if you can commit a sin against an animal and the priest replies, "Sins are really against one's self." Which we can interpret as stating that our sin's against nature are not only harmful to it but to ourselves as well. Also, unlike others in the genre (Jaws again) Orca is also a dramatic piece about loss and suffering. The scene of the female losing her calf was much more disturbing than anything in Jaws or any other "natural horror" movies I have seen. In fact, the fake whales used in the film were so realistic that animal rights activists tried to stop the trucks transporting them to and from the set. With all of that in mind, I only give it two skulls because it was so far-fetched although a bit entertaining. I mean, the whale roared in anguish several times. It roared. ROARED. So silly.
I couldn't justify waiting till Monday for a zombie flick, so I picked one that it has been over 10 years since I first saw it. I could have picked any number of Romero films but I chose this one because out of all of them, it was the one I remembered the least.
A zombie test subject
I know it has been a long time since I saw this one, because I don't remember any of the "smart" zombie aspect of the film. When I first saw Land of the Dead in theaters I was intrigued by the idea that zombies could have enough brain power to remember their lives before undeath and sort of learn. That is also a subject Romero touched on in this classic. The story jumps right into some time after the first outbreak. A group of military personnel and some civilians hole themselves up in an underground bunker, periodically flying a helicopter to check cities nearby for survivors. We aren't sure who the civilians are until the story builds and we learn that they are a group of scientists that are trying to discover what makes zombies tick and maybe if there is a cure for them. The doctor they all call "Frankenstein" has questionable morals but discovers a particular zombie he names "Bub" that is very capable of higher brain function. He appears to remember a past life, saluting the soldiers and brandishing a gun.
Bub saluting
The zombies are in a way evolving, while the underground bunker setting and the barbaric attitude of the soldiers and "Dr.Frankenstein" make it seem as if the living are devolving back into cavemen. Of course, the practical effects of the time are a little hokey but at the same time impressive and fun to watch.
A head used for a death scene of one of the soldiers for the film
The film itself is a little slow, but the material, story and the bits of good gore towards the end are what make it one worth watching. I give it 3.5 skulls, I like it but I don't love it.
