Kevin Bacon plays a regular ol’ businessman guy whose son is randomly murdered in a gang initiation killing/convenience story robbery by tattoo-having, muscle car-driving, meth-dealing fantasy skinhead gangsters. When it becomes clear that the killer will only get a few years in prison he decides not to testify so that the case will be dropped and then he hunts the guy down and murders him. That is why it is called DEATH SENTENCE. The end. (more…)
Archive for 2007
Death Sentence
Sunday, September 30th, 2007
Hatchet
Friday, September 28th, 2007Well, I guess now it’s officially a pattern. The pattern goes like this:
- small independent horror movie plays a few small film festivals.
- People on the internet go ape shit because they got to see it first.
- Buzz spreads for a year or so.
- Anchor Bay (#1 releaser of horror movies in the VHS days) buys rights, gives tiny theatrical release.
- I see it on DVD.
- god damn it, why don’t they make good ones anymore
This pattern started with BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON and fortunately this one is not as asinine as that one. It’s not terrible, but it doesn’t cut the mustard. Believe me, I wish it did. I see mustard everywhere and I want nothing more than for that mustard to be cut by a movie like this. But just being above the standards of the DTV giant snake movies is not a horror resurgence.
I had hopes for HATCHET because unlike BEHIND THE MASK there’s nothing postmodern or meta about it. It’s just a straightup slasher movie about a big, unkillable freak chopping people up in the Louisiana swamp. His name is Victor Crowley and he’s played by Kane Hodder, who played Jason in some of the later FRIDAY THE 13ths. Victor has a backstory kind of like Jason meets the guy in THE BURNING: he was a deformed freak who kids treated bad, then his dad (also Kane Hodder) hit him in the face with a hatchet and also I think he was set on fire or something, I forget. (more…)
9/25/07
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007A week ago I reviewed the DEATH PROOF dvd for The Ain’t It Cool, but I forgot to link to it. Since then I have been moving, which it turns out is a huge pain in the ass. (Who knew?) I promise I got some shit in the works and will be back in action soon, thanks for your patience.
p.s. I heard that the new director’s cut of COMMANDO does not have the legendary beating a guy with his severed arm scene. Anybody verify that?
Death Proof (DVD)
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007For me GRINDHOUSE was one of the great theatrical experiences of 2007. A rare modern instance of filmatists trying to put on a real show, and giving you more than your money’s worth. Two movies for the price of one, plus fake trailers – an affordable night or afternoon out. Yeah, I read about how it failed to make money for the Weinsteins, but guess what? That’s what happens when you spend decades buying other people’s movies so you can cut them, dub them, retitle them, sit them on a shelf for years, and then only allow them to be rented at Blockbuster. When you spend that long doing that many cruel and unusual things eventually your bi-yearly good deed will fail for you too. Because you are an asshole.
So in that sense GRINDHOUSE is even better than you realize at first glance. It’s a good time at the movies AND it lost money for some assholes. Two birds with one stone, in the form of two movies.
Down to business: I was one of the people who thought Rodriguez’s PLANET TERROR was kind of a fun fake movie but Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF was a good actual movie. I liked it. So that’s where I’m coming from reviewing the new DEATH PROOF dvd out today. A guy who bought the dvd because he likes the movie.
That’s right, the DEATH PROOF dvd. As opposed to the GRINDHOUSE dvd that would contain the original double feature as shown to packed houses on the outer edges of the United States. You may say wait a minute, why are these bloodsuckers releasing the two movies on dvd separately? No longer a double feature? Without even including the trailers? And as if we are so stupid that we don’t know they’re gonna release it as a double feature later? (more…)
9/11/07
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007Well, I reviewed the movie ZOO on Ain’t It Cool. They are really into super hero movies and what not so I figured, you know, send them a review of an arty experimental documentary about that guy who was fucked to death by a horse. The story is almost off the front page already but the talkback is just getting good – some guy admitted to, uh, loving animals. You know how it is on the internet.
Oh geez, I just realized that the word probaly spread on some bestiality message board somewhere. “Did anyone see this review of ZOO? Here is the link.” Yeah, thanks for that headline Harry, I appreciate it. I didn’t think about that, all kinds of goatfuckers and horse receivers reading my review. And then following the link here.
Uh… Welcome, horsefuckers. Please wash your hands before clicking on anything.
Zoo
Monday, September 10th, 2007ZOO, directed by Robinson Devor, is a movie you might’ve heard of when it played Sundance last January. For some reason it had a very limited theatrical run, it was not really given the same chance a SPIDER-MAN or a SHREK would get to catch on with the public, but fortunately THINKFilm releases the DVD September 18th.
I really liked Devor’s first movie THE WOMAN CHASER. That one, COCKFIGHTER and MIAMI BLUES are the only movie adaptations of my favorite writer, Charles Willeford. Patrick Warburton is so good playing a bored used car salesman turned desperate embezzler/nihilistic independent filmmaker that I have a hard time not picturing him as the lead in other Willeford books as I’m reading them. I can’t recommend that movie enough, but unfortunately it’s never been released on DVD, and good luck finding the VHS.
What I didn’t know when I saw that one was that the director was somewhat local. He apparently splits his time between L.A. and Seattle, where with local writer Charles Mudede he filmed his second and third movies, POLICE BEAT and now ZOO. Based on a true incident in the small town of Enumclaw, ZOO is mostly set in the outlying rural areas of the Puget Sound region, the camera floating dreamily through barren farms, glimmery blackberry bushes and beneath ominous cloudy skies. But the central character, called “Mr. Hands,” works as an engineer for Boeing, so there is some footage of him on a balcony looking out on Seattle proper, the home of John Wayne’s McQ, Bruce Lee’s grave, me, and I guess Frasier. The cinematography by a guy named Sean Kirby is excellent, and he shows Seattle not as a postcard of the Space Needle, but as a menacing explosion of buildings springing from the earth between water and mountains. This is my Seattle, this is how the city should be shown. (more…)
Shoot ‘Em Up
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007We all know HARDBOILED is one of the greatest action movies of all time. This has been discussed, voted and agreed upon officially. But for all the time dedicated to honoring that movie, not much has been set aside for the HARDBOILED poster. Remember the first time you saw that, before you saw the movie? What more did you need to see? That simple, perfect, iconic image of Chow Yun Fat (whether you knew who he was then or not) holding a gun in one hand and a baby in the other – that should’ve been enough. It doesn’t tell you everything about HARDBOILED, but it tells you alot. The theory of badass juxtaposition at its most basic symbolic level – one man holding life and death. Good and evil. Innocence and violence. Machine and flesh. Yin and yang.
More importantly, the guy is holding a baby in one hand and a gun in the other. Forget what it means. Concentrate on what it is.
Well, that’s also what SHOOT ‘EM UP is. An entire movie based on the feelings you get looking at that poster. This one has Clive Owen instead of Chow Yun Fat (a worthy successor) and it’s a different baby (they tried to get the HARDBOILED baby but he wanted too much money). The movie has obvious references to Leone and Looney Tunes, and lots of bad puns like a Schwarzenegger movie, its influences are all over the place. But clearly the main one is John Woo, and specifically HARDBOILED. If director Michael Davis (writer of PREHYSTERIA 3) was a baby, John Woo would be carrying him during the shootout. But since he’s only a baby he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. So the movie is John Woo not in substance or even in style, but in the simple fact that it’s a whole movie about a bad motherfucker carrying a baby while running around, shooting hundreds of people, sliding, swinging, rolling, dropping, flying, falling, catapulting, and, you know, carrying on. While shooting. (more…)
Halloween (2007)
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007please deliver to:
Michael Meyers
Spooky old Meyers house
Haddonfield, IL 61764
Dear Michael Meyers,
Vern here. Big fan. Going way back. I watch HALLOWEEN once or twice a year. Part 2 once every couple years. Part 3 every once in a while, even though it’s lame that they wouldn’t pay you enough to come back for that one. 4 and 5 I watch once every 3 or 4 blue moons. Part 6 I watched once in a theater and once on producer’s cut video and that’s quite enough of that shit, thank you very much. Part 7 I actually like, mainly because of Laurie getting away, deciding she can’t run for her whole life, going back, chasing you down and lopping your god damn head off. No offense. And then part 8 I saw on DVD and if I could I would become a child, dress up as a clown and sneak into that movie’s bedroom with a knife. Not that I would get off on that or anything, it would just be the right thing to do. You would hate that one too because they burn down your house.
But since HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION is a movie and there just isn’t a feasible way of stabbing it I was almost glad that Rob Zombie was remaking HALLOWEEN. It’s wrong, it’s a bad idea, but at least it would prevent another scene where Busta Rhymes yells at you because he thinks it’s his friend playing a joke and you get scared and leave.
But now that I’ve seen Zombie’s take on the story I got some questions and comments. First of all, which one were you? I always thought you were the mysterious dead-eyed kid “sitting in a room, staring at a wall, not seeing the wall, looking past the wall… waiting for some secret, silent alarm to trigger him off.” But is it actually more like this remake? There was no silent alarm, you just tortured animals as a child and got abused alot and you were evil and escaped and killed more people?
I liked you better as the unexplainable killing machine. The walking puzzle with knives in place of answers. To be fair, Zombie does not explain you. He shows your cartoonishly troubled home life as a child, your being bullied about your mom being a smokin hot stripper, your childhood experiments with animals, the details of your first murders, your obsession with masks, your selective memory while in the asylum (”Is everybody at home okay?”) and then after an hour of that Zombie seems to say “Beats me, can’t explain evil. Let’s just run through the story of part 1 and the twist of part 2. Make it quick though, we only got about 45 minutes.”
In this one you’re more of a rampaging monster. They got this guy Tyler Mane, he’s 6′8″ and used to be a wrestler but he’s slimmed down, he doesn’t look like a muscleman thank God. But they got this whole cornball part in the asylum where he’s got stringy hair over a paper mache mask, there’s some guitars going and there is no way anybody can watch that part without thinking of WWE. They probaly shoulda thrown zebra pants on him and shot some sparks around, got it over with. Don’t watch that part, you’ll get so mad you’ll eat a dog.
I like Tyler Mane though. He played Tiger X-Man in the first X-MEN picture, I also thought he was real likable in the okay made for cable version of HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER. I’m not so sure about Zombie’s 1980s “if the gun is bigger it’s even more totally awesome” type philosophy here but it’s not Tyler Mane’s fault he’s a giant. He does a good job once they finally get the ol’ Shape mask on him and although the original, I suspect closer to the truth depiction was better it was a nice twist to have this guy going on a god damn speed rampage smashing people through bathroom stalls, stabbing through ceilings with 2 x 4s, in one part bashing through a door but not a Jason Voorhees style balsa wood door, he does it like a cop or a home invader. All bets are off, locks are powerless against this Shape. You might wanna try that trick out if you haven’t already. Seems to work.
Hey Michael did you ever see Zombie’s last movie THE DEVIL’S REJECTS? It’s pretty fucked up, you probaly have the DVD. I think this movie ate that one though because pretty much the entire cast is here. I’m not exaggerating. Sid Haig, Sherri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Ken Foree, Tyler Mane, Danny Trejo, Leslie Easterbrook, Tom Towles, William Forsythe, Lew Temple, Daniel Roebuck. That’s pretty much everybody but Brian Posehn and a couple extras!
I don’t know, do you watch horror movies? If so you might find the cameos distracting. There’s also Udo Kier, Clint Howard, Dee Wallace, Sybil Danning, Adrienne Barbeau. Not to mention Mickey fucking Dolenz and one of the SPY KIDS. It’s like the Rob Zombie Variety Hour. Kind of fun but makes it harder to get sucked in.
Zombie’s not as comfortable or as consistent as on DEVIL’S REJECTS, but he’s got some good sequences here and there. Biggest surprise: he must be really good with kids. Doug Faerch who plays you as a kid starts out kind of corny (he gives you long hair and a Kiss t-shirt! I don’t buy it) but when he’s in the asylum he’s really good. Those are my favorite scenes, when Loomis is asking you about what happened on Halloween and you think he’s asking what kind of candy you got. What an adorable little Shape. You’re not being a smartass, you seem like you really don’t know, like there really is an innocent little boy in there talking but there’s something else taking over. You, I guess. And the little boy doesn’t have a clue.
This is gonna sound weird but – are you tragic? In this movie you might be a little. Because you know there’s a little bit of that little boy there but he can’t help but massacre everybody, even the cool ex-con janitor who was nice to him in the asylum (Danny Trejo). That was a pretty good part where he found you standing in the middle of a bloodbath and tried to convince you to let him take you back to your room. That was fucked up man if you really did that you should be ashamed of yourself. Not to be preachy.
But the little boy in you wants to see your baby sister who you call Boo. I always thought that Laurie-was-your-sister thing was just some bullshit they made up for part 2 but in this remake it seems like the only thing you care about. You find her and we think you’re gonna kill her but you just show her a picture of you holding her as a baby and she doesn’t know what the fuck you mean. I remember when Quint reviewed an early script for this thing he said you talked in it and I was mad. But then I read that you only said one word. So now I know that word must’ve been “Boo.” And I kind of wish they left that in there.
Just for dramatic purposes though, I know you don’t talk, please don’t take it the wrong way. We’re buddies, right?
So I don’t think they quite nailed the tragic part, but I like what they were going for. We’re supposed to be a little sad for you, not like you’re a victim or anything but just because damn, whatever the fuck happened to that guy, too bad it happened.
Hey well at least you’re not fixated on your mom like Jason, Norman, Ed Gein, etc. I don’t know how you feel about your mom but I was disappointed that Zombie didn’t quite make her work. He got part way there. His wife Sherri Moon plays her and does a good job, much better than her giggly psychopath in DEVIL’S REJECTS. I really like when you’re in the asylum and she’s visiting you and trying to be a good mother. We tend to forget that you had a family and it’s an interesting angle to think of how much it would suck to be your mom. No offense. But because it’s Rob Zombie he also has to make her a stripper and have her live with William Forsythe who doesn’t have a single line that’s not calling somebody a bitch or a faggot or threatening to skullfuck somebody (or both, or all three).
If it was less of a cartoon, if there was a little more time making mom seem like a real woman worrying about what to do about her son (think of THE EXORCIST), I think it would’ve been pretty devastating when she (SPOILER ALERT) kills herself. Oh wait, I don’t have to spoiler alert that, you already knew that. Unless it was made up. Not sure. well, sorry if I gave it away. Don’t knife me into a wall, please.
By the way, maybe you could settle something here. Do you know how to drive? I say you do, Rob Zombie says you don’t. I like when I watch HALLOWEEN with a friend and it gets to the part where you steal the car. Somebody will usually say “What!? He’s been locked up since he was a kid, he doesn’t know how to drive!” And I just smile because I know that later the sheriff will make the same point and Loomis will say “Well he was doing very well last night!” I always liked that, but I can see why Zombie might assume that modern movie watchers do not have imagination and can’t handle that type of enigma without serious brain trauma.
But the thing is, he then re-enacts the scenes where in the original you were driving a car. Laurie, Annie and Lynda see a car following them around, they assume it’s somebody from school and anyway the car is distancing, they can’t see you inside. So they have the courage to yell shit at you.
In this there is no car, you’re a pedestrian, so they look directly across the street to a 6′8″ giant wearing a Halloween mask in broad daylight and they still talk shit and then giggle! It doesn’t make sense, Zombie must be wrong. I’m right, aren’t I? You’re a driver. Not licensed, but you have the skill, and have never gotten a ticket. I just know it.
By the way, what is your opinion of the rock balled “Love Hurts”? Because I couldn’t believe Zombie used that for the most crucial montage in the movie. I hope I wasn’t supposed to be laughing, but I was. Also did you really eat a dog because in this one you didn’t eat a dog but I liked before when you ate a dog.
Book Review: Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle and the American Action Movie
Monday, September 3rd, 2007I am here today to review a book. That’s right motherfuckers, I know how to read. The book in question is Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie (revised & expanded edition) by Eric Lichtenfeld. Our young friend Quint kindly suggested me to review the book and I was happy to check it out.
If you’re like me you’ve never heard of Lichtenfeld before, but you’ve enjoyed some of his work on special features for DVDs such as DIE HARD, PREDATOR, SPEED, and DIE HARD. Turns out he also has a really cool (but not updated enough) action movie blog called Reaction Shot http://reactionshot.blogspot.com/ . And not too long ago on slate.com he declared “Yippee-Ki-Yay Motherfucker” the greatest one-liner in movie history http://slate.com/id/2168927/ . So we share some interests.
I’ve read a few scholarly studies of horror movies, but I’ve never seen one on action. I know there are some action-centered review books, but as far as I can tell the serious-analytical-study-of-the-action-genre book is fairly new territory. In fact, if you type “action movie” into the amazon search engine, this book is the first one to come up. Go down the list and you won’t find another one that fits the bill until #46, Action and Adventure Cinema.
You’re especially gonna have a hard time finding an intelligent study of the genre from the perspective of a fan. Alot of people don’t take it as seriously as we do, they think it’s just supposed to be some dumb fun and they believe in that bullshit about “check your brain at the door.” And the people who don’t believe in that might be the ones that only want to study action movies to complain about their violence or their gender roles or racial stereotypes. Lichtenfeld doesn’t ignore those things, he touches on them, but he states in the introduction that he’s deliberately not focusing on them because those are the aspects of the genre that have been covered already. Instead he gives us an analytical view of the evolving themes and styles of action movies over the years. (more…)
Interview with director Scotty JX on Actiongirls: Soldiers of the Dead Part 1
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007Ladies and gentlemen,
As an individual who tends to write about movies on the internet I get a few emails.
And every now and then those emails are about some low budget undistributed independent movie somebody made, asking if I would check it out. I usually say sure, if you want to send it to me I’ll take a look. But then I say that I can’t guarantee I will review it. And so far I never have. If it doesn’t blow me away there’s no point in reviewing it. I feel bad because these are all nice people and they’ve worked hard on these things, but usually I’m not patient enough to watch. If there are people who are good at watching those things to look for hidden talent then I’m not one of them. I like a good low budget movie, but to me low budget is EL MARIACHI or above. BAD TASTE maybe. Preferably TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. I’m not the best guy to appreciate what you shot on video with your friends, no matter how good a job you did.
So when I got an email from a guy called Scotty JX about his movie ACTIONGIRLS: SOLDIERS OF THE DEAD PART 1 I was kind of surprised. Because he included pictures, and it looked like a real action movie. There was a fiery explosion or two. Some sweaty babes with guns. Some evil musclemen and bloody Nazis. And they looked like people that would really be in a movie, not just somebody’s buddy they had to settle for because they had no money. In some dusty closet I have an old VHS tape I bought at Woolworth’s or Fred Meyer or somewhere called THAT’S ACTION!, and it’s nothing but clips of explosions and shootings from low budget 1980s commando movies I never heard of before or since. And this ACTIONGIRLS looked like something that would be on that tape.
When the package arrived there was a disc, some printed information and some glossy promo shots printed off from a computer. I was looking over the stuff and some of the names on the credits sounded familiar. Susanna Spears for example, I think I’d heard that name. And Adriana Zarcova too. There was somebody named Lilian Tiger in it. And a guy named Mr. Haleek, that’s kind of an odd– HOLY SHIT, this is a porno! No wonder the director’s name is Scotty JX! I know people give McG shit for his name, and mink (Steven Seagal’s INTO THE SUN), but I don’t think any director would be called Scotty JX unless there were butts and boobs involved. With that realization it seemed to make a little more sense why I hadn’t heard of this movie. All the pieces of the puzzle were coming together like a bunch of penises sliding into a bunch of vaginas. (more…)
