Predator: Badlands
At some point on this here internet I started seeing people refer to the alien species from the PREDATOR movies as “Yautja.” I sure never noticed anybody calling them that in the movies. Looking it up now I have learned it comes from a 1994 book called Aliens Vs Predator: Prey by Steve Perry and Stephani Perry*, which is a novelization of the original Aliens Vs Predator comics. Okay, so it seems the word has been around for a while, but still – Yautja mind if you think I’m gonna call those things anything other than Predators. That has always been my stance.
So I laughed when the very first thing on screen in the new movie PREDATOR: BADLANDS was the word “Yautja.” They use the word dozens of times, conservatively. So it’s official now – they’re Yautja, from the planet Yautja Prime. But in this review they’re Predators. (read the rest of this shit…)
Basket Case 3
BASKET CASE 3 (advertised with the subtitle THE PROGENY, but that’s not on the actual credits) came a year after part 2 and continues in a similar vein. Once again, they knew exactly which “previously on” footage would make an incredible opening (Belial doggystyling Eve).
We’re still at Grannie Ruth’s place. She re-separated the twins after Duane’s little self-surgery, and luckily she has a padded cell and straitjacket for him. (Where does she get the money for this stuff? Is she eligible for grants?) Duane has been spaced out for months, giving Grannie an excuse to straight up tell him/us what’s going on now: Belial has gotten Eve pregnant, and “no one’s exactly sure what will come out of her,” so they’re all getting on a school bus for a road trip to Georgia, because some guy named Uncle Hal (Dan Biggers, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL) is “the only doctor I’d trust with a delicate case like this.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Basket Case 2
You know from the jump that BASKET CASE 2 (1990) is gonna have a little more money behind it than the first one, because it has both Troma and Shapiro Glickenhaus credits. That’s power right there. For those just joining it starts with footage from the end of part 1, with poor Duane and his murderous, surgically separated lump brother Belial hanging off a hotel sign, falling and splattering in front of screaming New Yorkers. We also get a news report from Times Square, describing Belial as “a small, grotesque monstrosity” and a “small, twisted deformity whose most startling feature is an unnervingly human face” and a “strange little being” that “might actually be human.”
An old lady, Grannie Ruth (Annie Ross, PUMP UP THE VOLUME), and her adult granddaughter Susan (Heather Rattray, “White House Press Conference Reporter [uncredited],” DEEP IMPACT) flip through the channels watching all the coverage, and seem to know who the Bradleys are, and they head to the hospital to free them. By that time though the boys have already escaped on their own and added to their crime spree. (Henenlotter pulls a HALLOWEEN II by having hospital staff hitting on each other before becoming victims.)
Basket Case
BASKET CASE (1982) is one of those cult movies everybody knew about in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It stayed alive by having a couple sequels and being in video stores or being mentioned often in Fangoria. Now it’s on 4K disc and on Shudder with credits saying it was restored by the Museum of Modern Art. But it was genuinely a creature of the grindhouses, a $35,000 exploitation movie conceived in Times Square by twentysomething New Yorker Frank Henenlotter, written on napkins at Nathan’s Famous, and shot in 16mm, partly in front of XXX theaters on 42nd Street. The producer was a hospital administrator whose only other films are Henenlotter’s and two yoga videos.
It opens with a mysterious murder at a house out in Glen Falls, before cutting to Times Square and a strange young man named Duane Bradley (Kevin VanHentenryck), who carries a large wicker basket. He checks into a shitty hotel, the kind where the v-neck undershirt-wearing clerk asks, “Couple of hours, couple of years, what? Give me a hint.” It’s twenty dollars a night up front and the lobby is crowded with residents gossiping about the death of somebody named “Dirty Lou.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Materialists
MATERIALISTS is a movie I missed in theaters, caught on blu-ray a while back, and this week it will start streaming on Home Box Office Maximum, if you want to catch it to. I really needed to see it because it’s the second movie from writer/director Celine Song. Her first was PAST LIVES (2023), which I didn’t review, but I loved it. It’s about an American woman (Greta Lee) reuniting with a guy (Teo Yoo) who she knew before her family left South Korea when she was little. He’s handsome and in love with her and reminds her of her roots, but also she loves her life and her boyfriend and oh man. It’s so good. Swooningly romantic, achingly beautiful, keenly observant, feels so true to people and to life, never like a formula. Why didn’t I write about it? Maybe I was afraid I couldn’t do it justice. I should watch it again.
Celine Song Joint #2 is pretty different. Another classy A24 production, but with beautiful movie stars* and a little bit of a satirical or social commentary aspect to it, in that it depicts a world of entitled people with superficial and unattainable demands for relationships. Madame Web herself Dakota Johnson (NEED FOR SPEED) stars as Lucy Mason, a top matchmaker for a New York City company called Adore. She has a great reputation for success, so her clients feel comfortable bluntly talking about people as lists of statistics: salary, net worth, race, age, weight, height. Most of it is very demeaning and presumptuous.
Everyone wants to marry rich, and Adore throws Lucy a party every time she hooks up a big wedding. At one of those (notch #9 on her belt) she tries to match the groom’s brother, Harry Castillo (Maxwell Lord himself, Pedro Pascal, THE GREAT WALL) with another client, but instead he begins pursuing her. (read the rest of this shit…)
Cronos
The last time I saw Guillermo del Toro’s debut CRONOS (1992) must’ve been more than thirty years ago. I know I was aware of it before he came out with MIMIC, but I can’t remember if I rented it before or after. So it would’ve been the late ‘90s or earlier. (Only ‘90s kids know CRONOS.)
It’s funny that there’s a movie I like about getting old and it has now gotten old along with me. Del Toro was still in his twenties, making a movie about old men trying to stop aging. I’m not grandpa-aged yet but I’m gonna say he guessed pretty good. At 50 I relate a little bit to this guy getting fucked up about age.
Of course one of the things that’s changed since 1992 is that del Toro has become an institution, a name brand, a celebrity, a best picture, director and animated feature winner. Back then was an obscure makeup artist and director of short films and television, making an impressive feature debut, but only released in 28 theaters in the U.S. When I think about it I could easily picture del Toro having some super low budget calling card movie, like an EL MARIACHI, an ERASERHEAD or an EVIL DEAD. Wouldn’t have to necessarilly start with ‘E,” but it would show the seeds of what he’d become while having its own crude beauty. No, this is more like BLOOD SIMPLE for the Coen Brothers – he seems almost fully formed. He’d quickly get more extravagant with the effects and the sets, but this doesn’t seem DIY in the slightest. It has scope to it, it has style, it has most of his obsessions. A dark-fairy-tale-meets-monster-movie tone, a mystical antique, a weird insect, an innocent little girl, a part for Ron Perlman. No Spanish Civil War yet, but the backstory does invoke the Inquisition. (read the rest of this shit…)
Americana
AMERICANA is an ensemble crime movie set in rural South Dakota and Wyoming, where regular, likable doofuses clash with dangerous, organized crime doofuses. It definitely falls into the category of contemporary westerns (complete with a siege), but it might also be fair to say it’s in somewhat of a ‘90s post-Tarantino indie crime movie vein. Only in a good way, I’d say. Not a copycat. It’s a good variation on a clever but unpretentious story with some violence, some laughs, a good cast playing colorful characters, and even some interesting themes running through it. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
It’s divided into parts with titles, introducing different characters, and in the second one we see a living person who died in the first chapter, so we know it can be non-linear. But that turns out to be a one time deal – part 1 is a flash forward that establishes the tone and tips us off not to worry too much about one particularly scary guy. But there will be plenty of others to look out for. (read the rest of this shit…)
Nightbreed (special Halloween revisit)
There was a time when I was 14 years old and Clive Barker’s NIGHTBREED was my favorite movie. Maybe that was too soon to move on from BATMAN, or maybe they were both my favorite movie. They blew my brain open in a similar way, and come to think of it they have more in common than just baroque, enthralling music by Danny Elfman (his ninth and tenth film scores). Both are ambitious early films from idiosyncratic directors who are also visual artists, who are breaking into a larger budget range than their previous work but getting even wilder than before. Both are arguably a little stiff with the traditional action expected of a blockbuster, but it doesn’t even register much because they’re so overflowing with visual imagination and invention that they create their own, very specific worlds. And though both were intended as mainstream event movies, at their heart they’re by, for, and about misfits and weirdos.
NIGHTBREED, unfortunately, was treated like a misfit and weirdo itself. It was produced by Morgan Creek (YOUNG GUNS, ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES) and distributed by 20th Century Fox (whose other releases that year included DIE HARD 2, PREDATOR 2 and HOME ALONE), but they didn’t know what to do with it. Barker was forced to make compromises that were drastic, though not catastrophic in my opinion (or I would never have loved it so much). Other than changing from the book’s title Cabal (I agree with that), they really didn’t know how to market it to the normies, though they did okay with nerds. I still cling dearly to autographed comic books and a “Nightbreed Chronicles” paperback with portraits and bios of the movie’s Star-Wars-esque collection of background creatures. Though a triumph in the minds of myself and my best friend at the time, it was a financial flop and novelist turned director Barker never even wrote the next book in the proposed trilogy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Night of the Reaper/Random Acts of Violence/Jack-O
Slasher Search: A New Beginning: Stream Warriors: The Next Generation – Part I: Shudder
So, a few years ago I conceded that I have to change the rules if I’m gonna continue my Halloween tradition of searching for unknown slasher gems. I don’t think there’s much in the way of obscure vintage shit I haven’t come across, and if there is I’ll probly only find out about it when Vinegar Syndrome or somebody releases it on blu-ray (maybe even 4K).
But many of you seem to enjoy the ritual as much as I do, so I’m trying my best to do some variation on it, and the most realistic approach seems to be checking for newer slasher-ish movies on streaming services. When it comes to Tubi, the trick is digging through a million horror movies you never heard of trying to find the good ones. I plan to do some of that soon (probly after the holiday, sorry), but this month I’ve mostly been using the actual curated horror service, Shudder. So here’s an investigation of a trio I watched that are in the slasher tradition.
It Chapter Two
When IT CHAPTER TWO came out six years ago I heard that it was really bad (a subjective opinion) and two hours and fifty minutes long (a verifiable measurement). The “bad” part isn’t really a dealbreaker for a courageous viewer like yours truly, but combined with the length it was intimidating. Still, I intended to see it because I’m a horror fan and a merciful soul (I didn’t even hate director Andy Muschietti’s followup THE FLASH) and I promised friends I would see it so we could talk about it. But every October since it’s sat there on my list.
This month I watched a Sophia Lillis and a Finn Wolfhard and a couple Bill Skarsgårds and I decided it was time to stop running. It was time to go back home and face IT CHAPTER TWO. I’m not proud of it but my method was to watch it in three one-hour installments like a TV show. I know that’s not the way to watch an epic and I wouldn’t normally do it, but it finally got me through. (And the filmmakers probly figured out that was the best way to do it too, because they’re just starting a prequel TV series called Welcome to Derry.) (read the rest of this shit…)
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