Deathproof (2007)

Hot badass chicks and muscle cars. How can you go wrong? Once again I loved the -let me specify- scratched print effects. I wasn't crazy about the torn print effects. I have to say I think Rodriguez was overall more artful in his effects use. But I have to give it up to Tarantino-he's exciting. Where Planet Terror is primarily a love story, Deathproof is a revenge story. It was Faster Pussycat expanded and fleshed out in some really good ways. Kurt Russell was good, although the more family friendly light romantic comedy stuff he does with Goldie and such (and I know he started out on Disney) the harder it is for me to remember Snake Pliskin. I think he should do like Travolta and only be a badass for a while. Rosario Dawson was rockin as always though I'm a little conflicted about her final scene and I was so on board up until then. And I liked the casting of Zoe, I have to give it up to Tarantino also that he takes chances and that's why he really is an inspiring artist. Oh, and of course I loved the chick from Brooklyn with the bad accent and the pot belly. I am all about picking up her lapdance moves.

Bug (2007)

This is their best movie poster I think. I never saw this design in any advertising for the movie. Now about the movie.
I was looking forward to a film by Friedken, because I love him. It seems like they kept threatening to release the film and putting it off. He does specialize in claustrophobic one-set movies. I'm not sure if he pulled it off this time. I'm sure there's a reason. Like maybe he didn't finish it. It wasn't his kind of ending. I thought Harry Connick Jr. was good and scary as Ashley Judd's abusive husband. This is a good movie to watch if you want to see a lot of Ashley Judd's breasts. Which also didn't seem very Friedkin-like. Oh well, not that I'm complaining, you gotta have something right?

Grindhouse! Planet Terror (2007)

I'm sorry to say I did not watch them as a double feature. I'm even sorrier that I did not see them as a double feature in the theater. What was I thinking?
But let me talk about Planet Terror. I love the bad print effects and the trailer for Machete. I love the inconsistencies, like how the lady cop's uniform suddenly is torn off into a little sexy top, and how she suddenly becomes part of the biochemist's team.
Rose McGowan as Cherry Darling is every woman's fabulous shadow. I love Jeff Fahey. I love Jeff Fahey and Michael Beihn as brothers. I love the bitchy twins.
I laughed, I cried.
I loved Cherry's dance moves that came together in the end to make her such a badass. I loved that Marlee Shelton as Josh Brolin's wife was a cheating dyke, and not only that, her lover was Fergie from the Black-Eyed Peas.
It's so chock full I can't even list all the things I love about this movie. Little moments that are so great.
At Blockbuster there are regularly only two copies of Planet Terror on a whole wall of Planet Terror boxes. There are a lot more copies of Death Proof and I hope that is not meaningful in terms of the movie quality.

The best thing actually about the 1408 DVD was the trailer I saw for the movie "Black Sheep." I highly recommend watching this trailer.
Black Sheep Trailer

1408 (2007)

1408 is just out on DVD at Blockbuster. It was good. It was scary. A lot of things played off of The Shining, the whole creepy scary hotel thing. And this is based on a short story by Steven King also, so that makes sense. The Shining meets 13 Ghosts meets __ - something familiar, when I think of it I'll let you know. John Cusack is well cast and miscast. He's sort of not scary enough, to me anyway. Although I liked him and was surprised at him in Identity. This kind of felt like he's bored with it already. Samuel Jackson was great as always.

Hostel 2005

OK, I'm probably the last person with an interest to see this movie. I only knew about it because my Internet Technology students at AI recommended it (this was like 2 years ago, talk about living under a rock). OK, some of the male students recommended it, and some of the famale students were like, it's just slasher crap.

I beg to differ. I loved it, having finally seen it.

But before I talk about Hostel, let me talk about my new local Blockbuster. I just joined Blockbuster under duress, because it's 2 blocks away and I'm trying to get to know the neighborhood, and Dish Network does not offer a particularly good deal on Satellite combined with Internet. So help me, I'm going with Verizon for DSL, and I don't want to get further into it than that.

But the important thing is, this blog was based on Cable horror, and as the previous posts will indicate, cable horror actually full on sucks. I think I was living in the 80's or something, where cable was a good place for horror. But come to find out, Blockbuster is a good place for horror. I never would have thought Blockbuster because when I lived in New York, Blockbuster was the conservative regime where even regular dumb movies were only available in their more dumber edited form. Subversive Blockbuster in my neighborhood has more horror than I can shake a stick at, and I don't know what to make of it. But I will just let sleeping dogs lie and do my best to not call too much attention.

Now back to Hostel. As opposed to a Rob Zombie flick, which is about 70-80% gore to 20-30% story, this was more like 70-80% story and 20-30% gore, so fine by me and probably explainable in that Tarantino was a producer. I will be researching Eli Roth the director in the near future as well. I understand he's from Massachusetts.

OK, so there are 3 main characters, a super moral American guy who's blonde and dorky (Derek Richardson as Josh) , a wordly American guy who's dark and could be in cultural background Middle Eastern or South American (Jay Hernandez as Paxton). And he also speaks fluent German. Plus a morally corrupt party boy/man from Iceland (Eythor Gudjonsson as Oli).

Who do you think buys it first? Who lives? I was surprised. What gets them in trouble though, is the pursuit of, and for lack of a better word I'm going to go out on a limb here, pussy. Pretty much the Icelandic guy is a party guy like I said. The wordly guy likes pussy. The moral guy had a bad breakup. The wordly guy is out to get the bad breakup guy some pussy to get his mind off things.

Flagrant desire for pussy is definitely the primary first level underlying moral corruptness in a downfall here, so I wouldn't call it just gore. There's a morality tale here too. And the next level of punishment is basically for being a person of the first world and then naively leaving your safe zone. Because the Americans are the most sought after prey but the Japanese seem also to be very valuable. So actually you can probably tie in the pussy with the Ugly Americanism to equal comeuppance for exploiting foreign women, especially those of Eastern Europe in this case.

So I have to say I like the theme of comeuppance for exploiting women (and particularly 3rd world women but also 3rd world men), because so many gore flicks are so superficially punishing women simply for being sexual beings. And that's probably an oversimplification because I think the gore flicks are often anti-sex in general for both women and men (such as Halloween, Friday the 13th). Although if you look at the stuff from the 70s like Maniac, I think they take it out a little more on the ladies.

Anyway, I'm so glad I watched Hostel. I thought it was very entertaining. And switched to Blockbuster. I can't recommend either one enough.

Kibakichi 2004

It's hard to imagine that this was made in 2004 because it feels like a 70s flick. I watched it for a while without understanding much, but the opening talks about some kind of demi-gods and a lot of weird stuff happened so I stuck with it. I only figured out that it was a Werewolf movie 50 minutes in. At the end it got pretty good because it a has a Werewolf/Other Weird Creature martial arts standoff, with a guy in a werewolf costume that reminded me of the old Godzilla movies where there's a guy in a Godzilla costume stomping through a 4 foot tall model of Tokyo. And I never figured out the connection between Werewolves and Samurai. I guess not being too into the Samurai genre, I'm a little ignorant about that part. Here's a more informed review that acknowledges how you might be scratching your head if you're me: http://www.kyonsi.com/kibakichi.htm. And while I'm diverting you, you might as well check out this link that came up on Amazon when I was looking for a good image for Kibakichi. http://amazon.com/Zombies-Breast-Implants-interests-part/lm/K9PZHUORNJY8/ref=cm_lmt_srch_f_1_rsrsrs0/103-7020206-3083050

V for Vendetta 2005

Speaking of a lot to like, I just watched V for Vendetta. A surprisingly good treatment of a graphic novel which I think don't usually come off that well. Great production value, great cast. Future England is a good stand-in for our own present. When I saw the multitude in Guy Fawkes masks my heart yearned. This is the film that Natalie Portman was publicizing so hard with her shaved head. Whatever, that part actually amounts to pretty trivial shock value blown out of proportion. And that's a weird thing for me to say because generally I'm kind of into shock value. Because of this movie, I couldn't get the 1812 Overture out of my head for a couple of days. That might sound like a bad thing, but this movie is breaking a few of my "rules" and it's working for me.

Slither 2007

Speaking of parasites, I just saw Slither. Almost brand new and a lot like Parasite 1982 in some ways. Similar looking parasites, big explosion at the end that kills the parasites. Slither is also a lot like The Faculty in some ways. Slither has a lot to love. Michael Rooker first of all, was really shining (I mean like an actor, not like Dick Halloran). The actors looked like they were having fun. Maybe that's because they're all good actors or it's because they were having fun. I like to think both.
Things I learned on my summer vacation from Slither about alien destruction karma:
1. If the people in your town are looking physically weird or behaving in a contradictory manner (for example, cleft palates and clergy really enjoying a cigarette) you (and they) are probably good candidates for alien invasion.
2. If you don't have sex with your husband, he will go take a walk in the woods where he will be personally invaded by an alien even if he doesn't want that because he's gotta get it from somewhere OK? Furthermore, you are declaring right then and there you will ultimately be with the other guy who's been carrying a torch since you were kids. Because not having sex on that one night does imply that entire choice.
3. Even an alien cannot resist the ideal American woman, who looks like Barbie, dresses like a suburban lady but still sexy, truly loves her husband and is in fact actually a good person (see fabulous Elizabeth Banks above).
4. Said alien does not count on above true love, and that will totally f*** him up such that you can get the chance to blow him up.
5. You do not need to be a big fancy scientist to figure out that you can just blow up an alien. Sure given more recent films one might say that it could create more spawn but sometimes you still these days can just blow them up so you might as well try that first when the chips are down.
6. Southern accents can be very sexy.

Parasite 1982

Speaking of Demi Moore, I just caught Parasite (1982). The new DVDs plug it as her first starring role, and she does look very St. Elmo's Fire in it. This movie has some extraordinary depth of field in places, and that made sense once I saw that it was originally released in 3D. It also is low budget and often crappy, but I couldn't tear myself away, even before Demi got into the action. The ADR was really bad in the beginning so I thought it might be a spaghetti horror film. I'm still not sure, something funky was going on there.

 
Demi, then and now.

Mr. Brooks 2007

Today I was the delighted recipient of a press pass to Mr. Brooks via Pop Culture Intel
First let me say thanks Steve Head. You should read his movie blog and look for his other writings. OK. Kevin Costner plays a serial killer the way he plays a CIA guy in the days when the CIA was boring. Or was it the FBI. Anyway, he plays a serial killer as if there was a time when serial killers were boring. He isn't scary or even creepy, and my friend said to me, did it excite you, did you want him to kill you? And I would say yes, if I had to be killed by a serial killer, I would like it to be him because it seems like it would be the quickest and least painful choice. But don't get me wrong, I was entertained watching him. Dane Cook was barely recognizable to me, so that was weird and probably a testament to his good acting. William Hurt was the most interesting. They started him out with Voice Over and I kind of wished they had kept it that way, but he pulled it off. It was definitely a progression in the direction he started with History of Violence. Where in that movie I felt he was tacked onto a role that was written for Walken or Hopper, here I'm starting to accept and even appreciate Hurt's new career direction. The cinematography felt excessively safe. Great abduction scene. Not great shootout scene. Terrible special effects on shovel throat-cutting murder (don't let that statement mislead you into thinking there's a lot of blood/violence in the movie, because not so much although they pull a little out towards the end). Implausible numbers of serial killers in Portland, Oregon. Implausible hair on detective Demi Moore (she couldn't possibly do her job with all that long hair out loose like that). Then again most of it was implausible by definition but for me some of those little details become distracting. The best part to me was the cat and mouse between Mr. Brooks and his daughter. That could have been developed more. Oddly Mr. Brooks' character I think could have been developed more, in a way it was like his aspects just didn't really add up for me, like there was some glue missing. All in all, very entertaining, though predictable Hollywood drama-style approach to horror. But I say the more Hollywood wants to do horror, the better, please more. I may have to come back to this after I've had more time to absorb it. I actually feel like I could want to watch it again and I never feel like that, I usually hate watching stuff more than once.

Derailed 2005

OK, this is really more of a thriller but I liked it. Clive Owen as a big chump who gets screwed over by con-artists. If you're like me and you like con-artist movies, there's something in it for you.
One other notable trend is the movie bad guys are all French now. I don't know why.
And I have this fun fact. Vincent Cassel, French bad guy, is the chump from Irreversible, one of the most horrifying and memorable films I've ever seen.

Let me add to this thriller review.
I also saw Next with Nicholas Cage. I liked it. If you're like me and you like ESP and magical thinking movies, there's something in it for you. Also with French bad guys.

Gargoyles 2007 Made For Cable

OK, I watched another Sci-Fi channel original, and I swear it's going to be the last one. They don't call it The Most Dangerous Night On Television for nothing. To give it a fair shake, let me start by telling you the premise. WWII Nazis bring gargoyles to life who then attack American planes. I thought they did a nice job making it look like a WWII film. The actors were good. The special effects were OK except in a couple of scenes they didn't so much pull it off.
A long time ago I resolved not to watch cable movies with commercials, and especially not if they've been "edited for length and content." I also don't like movies that are rated PG, or unrated because they are basically G. I think I need to get back to those resolutions. I have premium channels, and that's why I pay the big bucks. So I'm done. If the movie doesn't start with at least 6 warnings for Adult Content, Nudity, Violence, etc., etc., etc. I'm not wasting my time anymore. It's not like you would need to read this review to know you didn't want to see "Gargoyles" if you share the sensibilities I mention. You'd already know because it has commercials and big animated logos on the bottom right and no decent rating to speak of. Out.

Silent Hill 2006

Outstanding. How did this happen? With Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Alice Krige (Sleepwalkers), Deborah Unger, Lauren Holly-alike Laurie Holden and Gorgeous-little-girl-who-can-also-be-creepy Jodelle Ferland. Great cast. Feels A-List. So that's exciting.
Director: Christophe Gans. Never heard of him. But it looks like an earlier flick of his, -Pacte des loups, Le (2001) ... aka Brotherhood of the Wolf (Canada: English title) (USA)- did well at film festivals so I expect I'll be checking that out as long as it is shown on cable that is.
Writer: Roger Avery. Smokin. Wrote on Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, directed Killing Zoe.
Cinematographer: Dan Laustsen (Darkness Falls). That makes sense.

Things I love about this movie:
It looks incredible.
It actually creeped me out and I had to turn it off. That never happens.
The cable description called it "spooky."
The best zombie nurse from hell scene in my movie watching career.
Steps forward a little in the sense that it evokes some of the character looks and moves (an example might be the stilted movements of dead girls with long black hair) from other films but doesn't look exactly the same, different enough to feel like homage rather than reproduction.
This movie is based on a video game and it kept my interest for the most part.

Run don't walk.

Close Your Eyes 2002

This is some kind of British coproduction thing with Goran Visnjic who is or was apparently a big hottie on ER. This movie is pretty run of the mill crime thriller type stuff, with the exception of two scenes. One is the opening scene where he is hypnotizing a woman to stop her from smoking. Because he is a psychologist who treats people for smoking and who is also psychic. Anyway they do a nice job I think of showing her in her hypnotic state (I mean showing her interior state). And they have another scene I think is nice where they do the same with a little girl who has been abducted and tortured.
So you can pretty much watch those two scenes and that's probably enough.

Basilisk:The Serpent King 2006 Made For Cable

If you have Comcast like I now do, the user interface for recording genre films (or I guess really any films) sucks compared to DirectTV (put another way Tivo). So basically you go to the horror section and then you have to record stuff by date. Like it shows you the two horror films that are on today, you press the right arrow on the remote, it shows you the two horror films that are on tomorrow (one of which is the same as today) and so on.

I say this because as a result I record everything questionable or not in case it might be good, or in case I run out of steam after pressing the right arrow 6 times.

As a result of recording everything, I have been getting a lot of Sci-Fi Channel originals, which look like All My Children meets Lisa Bright and Dark meets Clash of the Titans. Mostly they suck. Well pretty much as a rule.

Of the recent Minotaur, Basilisk and one about an undersea creature who's name I can't even remember but had bad special effects in the first minute that made me just delete it immediately, I vote for Basilisk, mainly because it had Yancy Butler in it, the chick from Hard Target who is pretty much the same in this but older and not trying to be as nice. She was doing some Van Dammage.

I will give to Minotaur that it had Rutger Hauer in the first half (and that is actually just sad) and the cast were all really extremely good looking. But it was like All My Children as a period piece so that's bad. The special effects of the Minotaur itself were OK. So I would say fast forward until the end. You can pretty much ff through Basilisk too. And just delete the sea monster one, or don't record it in the first place.

If I see another Sci-Fi original that is good I'll let you know. But don't hold your breath.

Horror on Cable

OK, I'm gonna talk about horror on cable. Because that's always been a good source of horror films and continues to be, and because I watch a lot of them. Except for the glut being produced on the Sci-Fi Channel, which will be the subject of my next post just so we can get it out of the way.