Landis did the prologue, one of the highlights of the movie. The punchline is kind of weak (a practice run for the end of the “Thriller” video?) but I just like seeing a long, simple scene of Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks in a car talking about inconsequential shit to pass the time. And it’s kinda funny that even in the official TWILIGHT ZONE movie the characters have some confusion and debate about which stories were on TWILIGHT ZONE and which were on OUTER LIMITS.

But Landis’s actual segment isn’t as good. It’s a simple concept: bigoted asshole (Vic Morrow), angry that he got passed over for a promotion, rants in a bar using a variety of slurs. But when he leaves the bar he goes through a series of living nightmares where he’s a Jew in Nazi Germany, a black man being chased by the Klan, a civilian stuck in the Vietnam War. The opening, with the guy’s friends trying to stop him from making a scene, has some pretty good tension. And it’s interesting how it parallels the nightmare scenes in AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. Otherwise it would be, at best, a passable episode of the ’80s TWILIGHT ZONE.

I made the mistake of reading up on the accident before watching the movie, so I had that in my head. Due to a foreseeable problem setting off pyrotechnics too close to a flying helicopter the vehicle lost control and crashed, killing Morrow and two kids he was supposed to be rescuing in the scene. Landis and others were on trial for years afterwards, and no doubt will always be haunted by what happened. I can’t imagine how terrible that would feel. I accept Landis’s defense that he hires experts to fly helicopters and set off explosives and counts on them to tell him if there’s gonna be a problem. But unfortunately the kids were being paid under the table to get around curfew and safety regulations, so there’s no way around the guilt on that one. They weren’t supposed to be there. So that’s gotta hurt for everybody involved. Just awful.

So after watching that you get segment #2 by Spielberg, and it’s so treacly it feels like a waiter being overly fake-friendly after screwing up your order. This is the rare Spielberg joint that fully fits his reputation as a corny sentimental do-gooder. It’s about Scatman Crothers checking into a retirement home and starting up a conversation that makes the old people nostalgic for the games they played as kids. He turns out to be some kind of magical being who travels around giving retirees one night of being a child again in order to re-awaken their youthful spirit and also to make them realize it’s okay to be old so you don’t have to go to school or hang out with boys who smell like pee and eat their boogers.

I mean it’s a cute enough idea I guess, but the score is “isn’t this shit MAGICAL?” overbearing and the ol’ Spielberg naturalism was starting to give way to backlot idealized phoniness. This doesn’t look like any nursing home I ever saw, doesn’t have an authentic clinicalness or sadness. Just some eccentric old people who all live in a house together and rebel against the doctor in charge. Then it’s precocious child actors doing funny imitations of old fuddie duddies. Yippee.

“Kick the Can” is an early warning sign for HOOK… in fact, is that British kid that does a flip and jumps out the window actually supposed to be Peter Pan? Sure seems like it. Is this a prequel to HOOK? This is like one of the bad episodes of Amazing Stories, and watching these Spielberg movies chronologically makes me realize it’s his first bad one. I mean, even if you don’t like 1941, it’s like… DUEL, SUGARLAND EXPRESS, JAWS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, the one you didn’t like, LOST ARK, E.T… and then this corny ass bullshit about lovable seniors acting like little kids. Talk about a sudden loss of momentum.

Luckily the last two segments, by Joe Dante and George Miller, are much better. Dante’s is the one about the creepy little boy (Jeremy Licht) who gets everything he wants because of his god-like powers. Kathleen Quinlan backs over his bike with her car, gives him a ride home and is invited to hang out with his family (Kevin McCarthy from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, the voice of Bart Simpson, Cherrie Currie from The Runaways). They all act very bizarre and you slowly realize it’s because they’re terrified of the kid and have to do whatever he says, including eating hamburgers with peanut butter on them and saying they love it.

The most Joe Dante-ish moment is probly when a weird Tex Avery meets Rat Fink cartoon creature comes out of the TV. Not animated, a great looking rubber animatronic character. Better than anything in his later movie LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION.

My favorite segment is definitely Miller’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” the famous one where John Lithgow is freaking out on a plane, at first because he’s scared of flying and then because he legitimately saw a fuckin gremlin on the wing of the plane. Keep that in mind next time you’re close to suicide because they won’t let you look at Twitter on your iPad for 5 minutes while they prepare for takeoff and you disagree with the FAA that it could ever interfere with their navigation or communications equipment and god damn it I’m the customer I DEMAND respect this is an outrage I’m suing everybody forever what about freedom. No, this is a fucking gremlin, this is a grownup problem, but for some reason nobody believes him about that so he makes them more and more uncomfortable as he starts to seem crazier and crazier dealing with the matter. It’s an everybody-pin-down-the-unruly-passenger situation long before 9-11.

The setting is different from other Miller movies, but the filmatistic mastery is not. He knows how to move the camera around to keep things visually exciting in a confined location as well as to illustrate the increasing confusion and disorientation of Lithgow’s character. And of course Lithgow is pretty good at being a wild-eyed, sweaty, ranting mess. That’s one thing he knows how to do.

My favorite part is when a little girl on the plane looks at him and says “You big silly! You used to be a normal person!”

It’s too bad Spielberg was being such a big silly with his segment, but I bet he’ll bounce back eventually.

All of the faces in this movie are interesting – very Nordic, very lived-in, very un-Hollywood. Pietari’s dad is a rugged outdoorsman type of badass. We trust his abilities because he’s intorduced carving wooden stakes for a tiger-pit style wolf trap. Then he cuts an apple with the same blade, takes a bite and puts the rest in the mouth of the severed pig head he has as bait.

Well, his trap doesn’t catch any wolves. Instead it catches a skinny old naked man with a long white beard. He kinda looks like Brion James. He doesn’t seem jolly at all in my opinion and won’t talk to them, but does perk up when he smells gingerbread or senses a naughty kid nearby.

It’s a great relationship between this man’s-man butcher and his goofy little son who walks around in the snow in his underwear. Dad looks kind of annoyed and embarrassed by his son at first but we see and hear about alot of examples of him being a good father and looking out for his kid’s safety and happiness.

The landscape is bleak and eery, the performances are quiet and understated, there’s an underlying tension and the absurd premise is treated very dryly, without mugging or wackiness. They bring up old legends of mean Father Christmases that punish naughty children, so it seems to have some kind of logical basis in mythology. And the photography is really nice, looks great on the blu-ray.

But it seems to me like there’s a major shift in tone for the last act. Suddenly the kid turns into an action hero. He tells all the adults what to do, and they listen, even though it involves hanging all their kids from a helicopter net as bait, with him hanging on the side like Batman. And this part involves some showy CGI, for the first time in the movie. And then the very end of the movie, where you find out what the title means, makes the whole thing sillier than I was taking it for. I was enjoying it as a serious (if absurd) horror movie, so the punchline made me feel a little dumb – oh, you guys were just making a joke this whole time?

The extras shed some light on that situation. Turns out the movie was preceded by 2 shorts made by an advertising firm. They’re little fake documentaries about these elite hunters and then you find out that the wild animals they’re hunting are “Father Christmases.” The movie is sort of a prequel leading up to that concept, and it’s funny and all, but for my tastes I think they came up with something better expanding it for the movie that they undermined a little by sticking with the original idea at the end. I mean, a monster Santa isn’t any sillier than a doll possessed by a serial killer. I’m glad they didn’t turn CHILD’S PLAY into a joke at the end. They shoulda waited for BRIDE OF RARE EXPORTS.

Still a good movie though.

I could be wrong but I don't remember these toys being in the movie. So the Toymaker might have some other ones out there hoping for a part 6.

The horror this time is more Charles Bandian. Late at night a kid (William Thorne) hears a knock on the door, he goes out and finds a mysterious gift on the doorstep. His dad (Van Quatro) stops him from opening it but when he investigates himself he finds a toy Santa that attacks and kills him.

Later, the kid is so traumatized he becomes mute and the widow/mom (Jane Higginson) takes him to a kindly (?) toy shop owner (Mickey Rooney) who shows him a bunch of toys. I assumed right away that Rooney would be the maker of the evil toys, but they do a good job of throwing in some question marks in the form of his weirdo son and some dude in a leather jacket that’s snooping around and could possibly be altering regular toys into evil toys.

Oh, I should mention that Rooney’s character is named Joe Petto and his son is named Pino. One of those subtle literary references. Then there are more gifts that are opened that unleash little planes and vehicles and army men that fire projectiles or chop people up. I have a hard time buying that these little flimsy things couldn’t just be kicked out of the way (they don’t have extra-dimensional Phantasm technology) but I will forgive it. A caterpillar thing called Larry the Larva crawls into a guy’s mouth and tears out his eye. A rubber hand fingers a guy’s butthole during sex and he thinks it’s his girl and he likes it.

I’m gonna have to spoil some plot twists in order to tell you what made this movie worthwhile. First of all, the guy in the leather jacket turns out to be a good guy, he’s trying to track down the killer toymaker, he’s not the killer himself. But I love that he gives the hotel manager who’s hassling him about rent the Larry the Larva that kills him. At the time it seems like maybe it means he’s the killer, but in retrospect you have to decide whether it was an accident (he honestly didn’t know this was one of the killer toys – seems unlikely) or if one of the heroes of the movie committed murder because he was behind on rent.

Then there’s the ridiculous final twist, where we learn that Pino is more occhio than his name lets on. He is not a human but an advanced doll. He even takes his clothes off to show his doll-like joints, then tries to rape our heroine with his Ken-doll style anatomically-incorrect crotch. While calling her “Mommy.” I hadn’t seen this in a movie too many times before this.

The relationship between the living doll and the toy maker has some parallels to EDWARD SCISSORHANDS and his inventor played by Vincent Price. I know Scissorhands stabbed that football player and threw him out the window but still it seems like he turned out a little more well-adjusted than little Pino Petto.

One thing I thought was funny about this movie is that the character of Pino reminded me the whole time of the lead nerd on that sitcom I hate The Big Bang Theory. In that show he acts that way because it’s adorably nerdy, in this movie he acts that way because he’s a murderous rapist robot built by a drunk Mickey Rooney. I guess things have changed culturally since 1991.

Mickey Rooney on the original SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT

You know what, that was overdramatic probly. But still. This is the first time I watched them. Here are my findings.

Part 1 was about this abused orphan that gets drunk and goes on a murder spree dressed as Santa. Part 2 was about his little brother grown up, having 45 minutes worth of flashbacks of stuff that happened when he was a baby and then going on his own jolly murder spree. Part 3 I think was still about the brother but now played by Bill Moseley with a glass dome on his head exposing his brain and if I remember right he flips out whenever he sees the color red.

With part 4 they abandon that bloodline and premise and sort of do what John Carpenter tried to do with HALLOWEEN III, turning it into a holiday themed horror anthology series. I think that idea works better with this series since 1) not many people really give too much of a shit about the original storyline or remember the name of the killer Santa so they’re not gonna be that disappointed that he’s not in this and 2) because Christmas is not a horror-related holiday like Halloween it sort of lends itself to a wider variety of novel horror gimmicks, I think.

This one in my opinion sort of cheats though by not really being about Christmas. Yeah, it climaxes on Christmas Eve, there’s a Christmas party, there are decorations around. But the actual storyline doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas. In fact, the heroine is Jewish and doesn’t celebrate Christmas. I could pretty much guarantee this was a script that was re-written to take place at Christmas when they found out they could use SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT’s good name to sell it. So that keeps it from being a perennial classic I would want to dig out every year like BAD SANTA or the Johnny Cash Christmas specials.

And I got other problems with it that I’ll get into, but I do have to give it credit for being a weird movie. It doesn’t go where I expected it to, has some imaginatively creepy shit that happens in it and even though I kinda got a problem with the subtext I gotta acknowledge that I find it interesting to discuss and that it did make me uncomfortable, and those are both positive things for a horror movie and not common in part 4s.

The director is Brian Yuzna (SOCIETY, BRIDE OF REANIMATOR, story credit on HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS). The story on this is credited to a bunch of people but one of them is Richard Gladstein, who began his executive producing career with part 3 and must’ve used his Monte Hellman connection to get in on RESERVOIR DOGS and later PULP FICTION and JACKIE BROWN. Not bad.

Somebody named Neith Hunter plays Kim, the calendar and classified ads editor at an L.A. alternatively weekly called The Eye. They must see themselves as lefties ’cause they got a bunch of  anti-Reagan Administration Robbie Conal posters in their offices, but they also act like a bunch of sexist pigs. Her editor (PHANTASM’s Reggie Bannister), her reporter boyfriend Hank (Tommy Hinkley) and the other boys in the office know she wants to try her hand at reporting with a story about a weird suicide that happened in town. Instead of saying “You go, girl!” they assign her story idea to Hank, tell her to get them coffee and shut a door in her face.

Well, she’s not gonna take it anymore, so she goes rogue to write the story anyway. In the opening scene we saw this poor woman scream and fall off a building while on fire, and Kim goes to the building during the daylight, talks to a weird butcher (Glen Chin) and book store owner Fima (Maud Adams) that were around when it happened. Even if you don’t suspect that the book store lady had something to do with it I think you’ll wonder about how much she touches Kim and why she invites her to a picnic. I mean maybe it’s just good customer service, I don’t know.

A quick glance of wikipedia and imdb message boards finds no discussion of this, but the movie couldn’t be much more obvious about being about lesbianism. Kim gets angry at her boyfriend, she asks her co-worker played by Allyce Beasley (Ms. DiPesto from Moonlighting) why she needs men anyway, she strikes off on her own. Then this lady Fima protects her from a creepy homeless guy (Clint Howard) touching her butt, shakes her hand and won’t let go, stands uncomfortably close, offers snacks and a free book, invites her to a picnic. When she does show up for the picnic they hug, there is cheek kissing, there is hovering as if they’re gonna kiss. Fima gives her drugged wine that makes her roll on the picnic blanket sensually and then Fima does finally kiss her when she seems to be unconscious. Later, among creepy hallucinations about giant bugs and evil faces in the walls she also sees a glimpse of lesbian porn.

These are all women who hate men and love Kim. The titelistical Initiation is not just into a cult or a book club in my opinion. Let’s just say it’s into a gang you may know from THE WARRIORS called The Lizzies. She’s curious but she lives to regret it. Instead of hot sex she gets slimy bugs and Clint Howard.

You want to know how terrifying this movie is? There’s a part where the heroine is drugged, surrounded by old ladies who are rubbing oil on Clint Howard, who is wearing a mask with a long dick for a nose and who proceeds to rape her, it seems like. (But not with the nose – that might be the weirdest part.) At the climax they squeeze giant millipedes to squirt slime onto her face. But more of a clear gel than a jizz type of look.

I swear, this seems like a propaganda movie designed to scare the shit out of your daughters before they experiment with girls. After this they’ll associate pussy with weird rituals, insects and Ron Howard’s brother. Shirtless and oiled. Get that deep enough in their subconscious and they’ll go running back to that boyfriend whether it’s good for ‘em or not.

There’s a whole thing about Kim meeting her boyfriend’s parents and the dad gives her a bunch of sexist shit. He doesn’t think she should be an investigative reporter either, because “Well, I think a woman’s place is in the home, raising a family.” When they cut to her reaction to that line the boyfriend’s little brother’s expression made me laugh:

Sympathetic and embarrassed. He’s smart enough to know his dad’s a huge asshole. Alot of good it does him though – Kim later ends up kidnapping him and bringing him to the cult to help save her own ass. I mean, she rescues him, but in my opinion it’s not responsible adult behavior to endanger a child with a cult.

That’s kind of what makes this movie interesting, though. It can be refreshing when the protagonists can’t always be counted on to be sane. Same with the lesbian subtext. I think it’s unintentionally kind of homophobic but it also seems like an honest look into Yuzna’s psyche, an unfiltered look at his fears. It’s uncomfortable in a good way.

There’s also some great “surrealistic visual design and effects” (as the credits call it) by Screaming Mad George. The giant bug stuff is obvious but there’s some genuinely creepy weirdness where her fingers get long and tangled together, her legs grow together, things like that. And there are a bunch of shots where objects line up to look like a face, and I was impressed that they didn’t make it too obvious, they trusted in subtlety. Maybe the idea of a creepy spiral in a plate of spaghetti was too far on the silly side, but oh well. Points for trying.

I don’t know how good I can claim this is but it’s definitely way better and more interesting than I expected all these years that I avoided watching it. Does that count as a Christmas miracle? I think it does. God bless us, every one.

Definitely the highlight is the opening scene in which a family of rich assholes played by Chris Kattan, Rebecca Gayheart, Fran Drescher, the twins from CRUEL INTENTIONS 2 and an uncredited James Caan (!) are having a bitchy Christmas dinner when Santa (Bill Goldberg from WWE and HALF PAST DEAD 2) suddenly busts out of the fireplace Kool Aid Man style and massacres them. It’s kind of like that opening of PUNISHER WAR ZONE, just a big maniac going way overboard with not context about who or why. He combines Christmas-themed gimmicks (tree topper as throwing star, etc.) with wrestler shit (tackling, punching, kicking and bodyslamming people through furniture and structures) and just horrible violence (setting Drescher’s hair on fire, pinning Caan’s hands to the table with the good silverware).

After that great intro it becomes the story of Nicolas and his gun-loving girlfriend (Emilie de Ravin – after Lost, before THE HILLS HAVE EYES) uncovering “the truth about Christmas” and trying to stop Santa’s rampage. It’s the rampage that makes the movie funny, though. He just stomps around murdering everybody, including at a strip club (the bouncer calls him “fat boy”) and a deli (he impales Saul Rubinek on a Menorah, causing his last words to be “There is a Santa.”) You know how Jewish people have to put up with Christmas being shoved in their faces every year? There’s a running joke here about how the Gentiles have no clue that there are even Jews in town. After the murder at the deli one cop wants to talk to some Hasid witnesses, he says “Grab that Amish group outside.”

Goldberg is really funny as Santa. He plays him kind of like Cain played Jacob Goodnight in SEE NO EVIL, except with some later-Freddy type one-liners. He’s like a demonic, dirty-bearded Santa, then he takes off his jacket and has a wrestling-type belt and a sleeveless vest so he can show off his guns. His transportation is a flying sled, they say it’s pulled by a reindeer but it looks like a buffalo to me. As the official secular replacement for Jesus, Santa crashes his sled right through a Nativity scene. He uses exploding gift boxes, he stabs a mugger with a candy cane, he breathes fire, throws ornament smoke bombs. Interesting note: Santa is apparently a germophobe, because he cleans a stripper pole with Windex before tearing it out and using it as a weapon.

The hero (whose name – I really wanna emphasize this – is Nicolas Yuleson) decides he needs to “finally put an end to Christmas,” and he might be able to do it by shooting Santa with a defective nutcracker that he keeps in a back sheathe like a sword. Santa’s gonna put up a fight though. For example he throws a hard cover copy of A Christmas Carol at Nic’s head.

One-time writer/director David Steiman was Brett Ratner’s assistant on THE FAMILY MAN, RUSH HOUR 2 and RED DRAGON. Not his assistant director – his assistant. So Ratner produced the movie and, I don’t know, he must be tight with James Caan or something. So that sort of explains what’s going on here. But I’m not saying he did a bad job. I mean there is some cheesy acting and shit in here (oh shit – the Christmas rap song the kids play in their car!) but it’s a funny movie. And the action is actually really well done, but I’m guessing that might fall at the feet of Andy Cheng, a member of the Jackie Chan stunt team who is credited as second unit director and fight choreographer. He was Jackie’s stunt double in MR. NICE GUY, WHO AM I and SHANGHAI NOON and he did choreography for THE SCORPION KING and THE RUNDOWN. He was fight choreographer and second unit director for Isaac Florentine’s U.S. SEALS II. And he knows how to make an exciting scene about a wrestler dressed as Santa Claus killing everybody in a strip club, it turns out.

I’ve been skipping this one for a few years because I pictured a different type of cheesy than what it actually is. SANTA’S SLAY is alot of fun and I hope you will share it with your family and loved ones this holiday season. Or give it to the poor.

Anton Yelchin plays the hero Charley, Imogen Poots (CENTURION) plays his way-out-of-his-league girlfriend Amy, Christopher Mintz-Plasse plays his friend “Evil Ed,” who gets bit by his neighbor Jerry. Because Jerry is a vampire – don’t worry, it’s not some weirdo biter guy.

Jerry is played by Colin Farrell. The mom is played by Toni Collette. Holy shit, this is a better cast than you’d expect. And all the main actors besides Chekov and McLovin are hiding accents. Some guy from Doctor Who plays a Kriss Angel type Vegas illusionist (I bet they asked Russell Brand first) who replaces Roddy McDowall’s horror host character as the outside vampire expert. Younger siblings of James Franco and Sophia Vergara are also in the cast.

From the director of LARS AND THE REAL GIRL and the poster layout of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. (The original FRIGHT NIGHT poster was already remade as the poster for RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART II. p.s. I could swear that's Nic Cage in the background

Charley is a semi-popular high school kid in the cookie cutter suburb of Bumfuck, Nevada. He grew up nerdy and has been avoiding his childhood friend Ed because he doesn’t want to be embarrassed in front of his two douchebag buddies or his super-hot girlfriend. What he doesn’t know is that Ed calls and texts so much not because he wants to play Dungeons and Dragons but because he’s discovered and gathered evidence to prove that the missing kids in their school were killed by a vampire. Which in my opinion is a pretty big deal, even in today’s society.

The vampire in question is of course Jerry, the new next door neighbor. Charley’s mom flirts with him and enjoys watching him sweat while doing work on the house. She’d probly be less into him if she knew what he was working on was a dungeon for locking up the girls he kidnaps. But everybody finds these things out too late. Shoulda listened to Ed.

I guess you could say Yelchin specializes in re-inventing previously existing characters for a new generation and doing them as sort of wimpy-seeming guys that turn out to have more sand than people thought (STAR TREK, TERMINATOR SALVATION, this). Here he’s a recovering nerd but kind of a dick, and has to not only prove his manhood but also be nicer. We don’t really learn how he landed a smokin hot girlfriend or why he’s stupid enough to neglect her to do vampire research. There’s a whole thing about how he’s a virgin and she wants to do him and he’s too distracted by the vampire thing. It’s probly supposed to make him seem sensitive but it made me just think he was a fool. You might die, dude, you should act now to take advantage of this incredible offer. Or, you should always be open and honest in relationships is what I mean.

Seriously, I don’t buy that even monsters would cause a teenage boy to turn down sex offers, but I also was bothered that he was being such a shitty boyfriend. If you really care about a girl then tell her about the murders, I always say. Once he lets her in on what’s going on they actually have a nice chemistry, they joke around with each other and look after each other’s feelings in a way that movie couples don’t always do.

We’ve all seen 1.3 million versions of the vampire story by now, and there are only so many variations possible, but personally I can still enjoy ‘em. Your mileage may vary. This one is pretty clever about it. There’s a funny part where Amy tries silver bullets even though they’re for werewolves (a cliche in vampire movies trying to play with cliches) but then immediately gets it right in her second try. And Jerry has an excellent way of getting around the “a vampire has to be invited in” rule – spoiled in the trailer, but still awesome when it happens.

It turns into kind of an action movie at one point, with some good gags, well staged for visual clarity and impact. I really like the look of the movie, and director Craig Gillespie (MR. WOODCOCK [!?]) seems to have a good grasp of filmatism, but there were a couple parts in night scenes that were muddled by weirdly dark cinematography. Maybe this could be related to the fact that it was shot in 3D, but you would think it would be even darker when projected than on blu-ray, so I’m not sure.

I kinda remember Evil Ed from the original movie, he was that weird looking dude that was also in 976-EVIL and later did gay porn. Here he’s less of a weirdo creep and more of a traditional nerd. I think his part might be smaller and less convincingly evil. But it’s kind of sweet what happens between these former friends.

TV writer Marti Noxon did the script (CHILD’S PLAY’s Tom Holland gets a story credit, but I figure probly just for writing the original movie). It seems to me you can tell it was written by a woman by the likable, capable (okay, and hot) female characters. They’re neither Milla Jovovich type comic book gunslinger babes or idiot victims. They can be smart and capable and funny and they can also screw up. Yelchin is a good type of middle-of-the-road hero too – he’s not a pretty boy but not a tough guy, not skinny but not tall, he has a motorcycle but it doesn’t work half the time. He’s a pretty average dude trying to find his inner-badass. I guess it helps that he gets to use a crossbow, that tends to make you seem above average. The leather neck guard I’m not sure about, that could go in either column.

Farrell is more of your larger-than-life movie hunk archetype, but that makes sense, he’s undead. I gotta give him alot of credit for this. He does the seductive-but-scary bad-boy-vampire thing seriously and well, never seems like he’s there to collect a paycheck. You know I’m a fan of mega-acting, but I’m glad he went the other way in this, because I’ve seen him in DAREDEVIL so I fucking know better. (There’s actually a part in this where he flicks a pebble real hard at a guy’s forehead. I wonder if that was a reference to his role in that movie where he was the villain with the worst super power of all time?) He’s subtle here. He finds alot of humor without seeming like he’s scouring around looking for it.

I’d consider this a B movie, in the report card sense. There are some funny lines, some good ideas, it’s quick and simple and upbeat. Not bad. I’ll take it.

It’s from AIP so it’s what you might expect from those guys, kinda trashy but kinda dull.

Michael York plays the guy shipwrecked on the island, Burt Lancaster plays the doctor. Both are fine. The opening scene, with York and two others near death in a small emergency boat, is pretty tense, and got me anticipating the mysteries of the island. But when those mysteries reveal themselves they’re not that exciting.

The animal people just live in a cave. I guess that’s easier than building a village ’cause you just shoot them 2 feet in front of a rock wall instead of having to create a whole world behind them. Their designs vary in quality. I suppose we as a society have been conditioned to accept the sight of a wolf man, while the same can’t be said for a boarman or a bearman. Maybe the younger generations will be more accepting of these types of animalmen than mine. I’m sorry, they make me uncomfortable. There should never be a man with a bear’s nose or some shit like that, it makes me sick. Keep it in the cave.

Some of them have good confused expressions, some are just kinda dumb monsters without much personality. I like Moreau’s right hand animal man, he’s the most human but least intelligent looking one. I can’t really decide if he has a good job or a shitty one. He gets to stay in the house instead of some fuckin cave that must smell like wet dogs and bearman piss. There is no evidence of plumbing or even a litterbox in that cave, there’s no way it doesn’t have all kinds of crazy animal-human hybrid shit and pee everywhere. So not having to live in that has got to be a hell of a blessing for this guy. On the other hand he has to serve the food, turn the big crank that raises the gate, gruntwork like that. Nothing that is gonna give him pride or give him opportunity for advancement.

And like many individuals of mixed heritage I bet he feels like he doesn’t quite belong anywhere. Moreau doesn’t respect him, but the animals probly hate him and consider him a sellout. When the shit goes down he stays in the compound with the humans. So his true loyalties come out.

But we really don’t know why he chooses the human team. Does he think he’s a human? Does he think he has to stay because the boar men will consider him a traitor and tear him apart? Or is he just being honorable, knowing it would be a punk move to suddenly switch teams now, when it’s convenient?

I bet it’s the last one. I bet it’s honor. Good job, guy. Respect.

There is one aspect of this movie that’s really impressive though, and that’s the stunts with the live animals, and there are alot of them. Due to his scientific pursuits Moreau has a bunch of tigers and lions and shit in cages. And when everything gets crazy at the end they all get let out. There are multiple scenes with characters in animal-person makeup in frame with and even wrestling these big cats. There’s a bear running behind a horse, shit like that.

According to the trivia blurb on the back of the DVD the life of the guy wrestling the tiger was saved by the fiberglass helmet underneath his makeup, which got bit by the tiger. Even knowing about these hidden helmets it’s insane to watch these scenes. How did they know it would be safe?

Director Don Taylor did a ton of TV and other movies from the late ’50s to the late ’80s. The one that jumps out at me is ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES, that’s the third one where Cornelius and Zira go into space and get warped back to earth circa the ’70s. He also did DAMIEN: THE OMEN II and that movie some people like called THE FINAL COUNTDOWN.

Craig R. Baxley’s cousin Gary (stunt coordinator for the Dukes of Hazzard spin-off Enos) plays the lionman.

If the guys in the first HOSTEL didn’t go on a trip and instead stayed home and watched a movie, which movie do you think they would watch? Well, probly back then it would’ve been WEDDING CRASHERS, but now days it would be THE HANGOVER. Don’t get me wrong, I thought that movie was pretty funny, but it is something of a sacred text among the douche community, so I like that now there’s a HOSTEL with the same basic setup: right before a wedding the groom’s bros (including DRIVEN’s Kip Pardue, now playing yuppie scum instead of naive up-and-comer) bring him on  a wild (and hidden from the bride) hooker-filled bachelor party trip to Vegas. And, you know, things get out of hand, but not in the same way that they do in the HANGOVER movies.

As in all HOSTELs there are loose women who perhaps are untrustworthy, beefy bored-looking security thugs in leather jackets, sadistic super-rich people, scary warehouses, roofies, misdirection, occasional torture and mutilation. Despite their continued reputation as “torture porn” the HOSTEL movies are not about trying to get you off on torture, or about rubbing your nose in it for long stretches. The torture is just there long enough to make you squirm and tell the characters to get the fuck out of there. Just like a good slasher movie you’re rooting for them to get away, even when they’re assholes.

And most of these guys are assholes, it’s sort of back to part 1 territory in that sense. But Spiegel’s sense of humor (he’s one of Sam Raimi’s childhood Super-8 buddies) and the lower production values make this even more of a goof. There definitely aren’t any scenes as grueling as the Countess Bathory/Heather-Matarazzo-hanging-upside-down scene in part 2.

In HOSTEL, the Elite Hunting Club security guys watch porn movies while on duty. In Part III one of them is watching BLACK DYNAMITE.

Setting it in Las Vegas takes away one of the major elements of the first two HOSTELs: that classic tourists vs. locals tension. It’s like in TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, those kids shouldn’t be nosing around on somebody else’s property. It’s rude and it’s dangerous. HOSTEL has that same conflict but with arguably more obnoxious characters. It takes advantage of the guilt and embarrassment I feel about my countrymen going into someone else’s home and being assholes. And of course there’s the “it’s dangerous” part of it – as rational humans we don’t understand what goes on behind Leatherface’s mask or behind his metal door, as foreigners we don’t really understand what’s going on in this town. The fear of the unknown.

Well, obviously this part of Vegas is a place designed for exactly those type of obnoxious tourists, there’s no problem with them being here. And the feeling of being lured in and tricked that they had in HOSTEL is sort of the whole vibe of Vegas. One character even comments on it. There is no problem with them being foreign to the place, but in Vegas there is that knowledge that brutal security teams and mafia are behind every mirror and every business, even if you don’t know about the Elite Hunting Club.

And it definitely maintains another major element of the previous HOSTELs, the idea of there being an elite class that enjoys basically using everybody else as cum rags. None of the protagonists are poor (and one of part 2’s has Bruce Wayne money) but it is the super-rich, the 1% I guess, who can say “You know what, I think I’ll treat myself to a dressing-up-in-surgeon’s-gear-and-drilling-a-guy weekend getaway. I work hard. I deserve it.” In the Vegas version the elite class are not only the “hunters,” but also high rollers, big stakes gamblers who watch the torture from a viewing room and bet on what will happen. Maybe the best image in the movie focuses on the pantsless lower body of a cocktail waitress doing her job, undisturbed by the mayhem erupting on the other side of the glass.

HOSTEL PART III is a DTV sequel in the old tradition of the DARKMANs and the FROM DUSK TILL DAWNs. It’s kind of a freebie sequel. If it was a theatrical release it would be a little disappointing, but as DTV you’re glad they made it. You can enjoy it without it completely counting. Some people who don’t really like the first two might even like it better, but maybe not. Alot of its cleverness comes from familiarity with the other two. It knows what you expect and it uses that knowledge against you, keeps playing tricks on you.

I’m being kind of vague, partly on account of I don’t want to ruin the little twists that made the movie fun for me, but to be honest alot of it has already left my head. I enjoyed the movie enough that it made me go back and re-watch the other two, and those kind of took over my thoughts. I’m not sure if I ever watched HOSTEL a second time on video, I might’ve. But I definitely only saw part 2 the one time in the theater. Watching them again I like them much better than I used to. And I don’t know if you guys would agree but when I go back and read my original reviews I feel like I missed the boat on both of them. The things I railed against seem pretty arbitrary now, I’m not even sure what my problem was, and I spent too much time on the unfair reaction I thought they got from others. It’s funny how different things seem when you’ve got some distance and you’re removed from the context of the time (what was said in the advertising, what the initial critical consensus was, what other horror movies had come out recently, what you were expecting going in, all that shit that doesn’t even come to mind when I watch it now).

This time HOSTEL got me going from the great opening credits sequence: closeups of blood, teeth and soap suds as some guy mops up an ungodly mess, whistling to himself the whole time. Then it goes into this story about three dudes in Amsterdam trying to get laid, and finding out about this too-good-to-be-true village full of hot women who will fuck any guy. I mean, it’s true, but they do it so they can sell the guys to a criminal organization that offers them up to be tortured by rich people. HOSTEL was THE SURE THING for the Bush years.

As I remembered, the protagonists are pretty obnoxious, and they die in reverse likability order. Watching it now that seems much more deliberate than I thought at the time. Back then it seemed to me like Jay “prequel Carlito” Hernandez was kind of a dipshit because Eli Roth relates to that type of guy, but now I think he’s just trying to challenge us to go along with the guy that didn’t seem like the hero. I still don’t think it entirely works, but I definitely let bygones be bygones when shit gets bad, and I root for the guy to get away. Plus, he earns hero status in the scene where he has a chance to get away but hears a girl screaming and goes back in to try to help her. (Whether or not his amateur medical assistance for her hanging eyeball situation is helpful I will leave to the experts.)

And I forgot about some of the stuff that really works: the kid apologizing for flipping out on the old guy that put his hand on his knee, not knowing that’s the guy that’s gonna torture him; the great scene where Hernandez has to play along with a client who’s psyching himself up to go kill somebody; the hopeless attempt to not only escape but to maintain custody of his two severed fingers in case they can be re-attached. There are a few horrendous bodily mutilations to get through, but this still has a little bit of the CABIN FEVER type of fun, funny horror. I forgot about the great crowd pleasing moments at the end (SPOILERS: the Marcellus-Wallace-on-the-crosswalk-esque running-over-the-girls scene, and the hilarious buying-out-the-pack-of-wild-kids scene, with the insane head-caving-in shot).

One thing I had definitely not seen is the “director’s cut” ending. I put that in quotes because Roth says on the commentary that he prefers the theatrical cut or unrated ending, which is the one part II follows up on. He didn’t buy that the protagonist would do what he does in the scene. But it kind of blew me away, I thought it actually qualified as shocking.

In the ending I’d seen before Hernandez has escaped, and he sees that the businessman who tortured his friend to death is on his train. He ambushes the man in a train station restroom and slashes him to death with a scalpel. A simple revenge ending.

The ending I hadn’t seen before is not nearly as graphic, but goes way further over the line. In this version the businessman goes into the restroom, and he’s washing his face in the sink. The camera slowly moves in on him from behind, like Hernandez is sneaking up on him. Suddenly the businessman turns – but no one is there. The scalpel is abandoned on a sink. I guess he had second thoughts.

But the sicko’s not out of the woods yet. His beloved daughter is in the women’s restroom. He waits for her, worried, and it takes forever. He goes in to check, she’s not in there. He rushes around the station in a panic, yelling her name.

A train pulls out. Through the window we see that Hernandez is on it, holding a leather glove over the mouth of the daughter, trying to stop her screaming and crying. The end.

Holy shit! I couldn’t believe that. I did not expect this guy to go that far. But then again, how far is he going? I love the ambiguity of it. Is he gonna kill a little girl? Even just kidnapping her, that’s fucked up. But maybe he thinks he needs to rescue her from being raised by a sadistic murderer? We don’t really know.

What the fuck is he doing? How far is he even gonna get, trying to gag this crying little girl in front of all those people? It’s fuckin crazy. I never seen an ending like that. I loved it.

And I love how comparing the endings messes with our sense of morality. We’re on board with him chopping the guy’s fingers off, sticking his head in a toilet and slitting his throat. For that we can applaud. But he kidnaps the daughter, then we turn on him.

I actually prefer that ending. But I guess I can understand why they were afraid of it. And the one they went with is fine. Either way, I’m on the HOSTEL train now. I like it.

I remember I liked HOSTEL PART II better than the first one. I was surprised to re-read my review and see that I was pretty mixed on it at the time. I still like it better than part I, but I’m not mixed. Now I think it’s a really good movie, a great sequel and one of the best American horror movies of the decade, for whatever that’s worth.

The first obvious advantage is the less hatable protagonists. The part 1 dudes were just horny assholes on a trip trying to get laid, the part 2 ladies are art school students taking a weekend trip out of town. Yeah, Bijou Phillips is kind of a bitch, always talking shit about Heather Matarazzo, but you feel bad for Heather, and Lauren Germane is a solid Final Girl who is smart and capable and willing to climb over a wall with bare feet. In the slasher movie tradition she seems to notice what the others don’t notice and suspect something is up, although she doesn’t really accept that it’s really happening until it’s too late.

The girls are lured to the same village and hostel as in part 1. The guys were lured there with the promise of tons of hot chicks who will fuck them, in this one we learn that they lure girls there the opposite way: by telling them about a spa where they can get away from guys. Between the foggy spa and the night time outdoor parties (with music and dancing and villagers in festive masks) this one has more atmosphere and production value than the first one. It cleverly works as ominous and creepy to us (since we know what’s going on here) but also as something that would seem like a great time to the unsuspecting.

But the sequelizing masterstroke is the B-plot about two white collar American dudes becoming first time clients of the Elite Hunting Club. Instead of planning some big rafting trip or something the thing they’ve always dreamed of is to pool their money to go to Europe and pay to murder. One is a macho alpha male who’s really pumped about it, the other is meek and has second thoughts but is curious and sort of being pushed into it. He questions himself and his buddy tries to convince him that they’re just doing what everybody would if they could, that man’s nature is fucked up, etc.

Through movie convention we’re almost tricked into siding with the wimpy guy, because he’s not entirely sure about paying money to torture and murder an innocent girl. So he’s the good guy! And through their eyes we see more of the nuts and bolts of the operation, starting with the diabolical auction montage of rich people in board rooms and on golf courses, or even watching their grandchildren riding a carousel, checking their phones and bidding on our protagonists based on their passport photos (scanned by the kid at the front desk of the hostel, same guy from part 1). (I was gonna quote THEY LIVE’s “It figures it would be something like this” here, but then I re-read my original review and that’s what I did the first time around. Alike minds think alike.)

I think PART II really hits the horror ball out of the park of terror with the (SPOILER) death of Matarazzo’s character. Roth uses the diabolical trick of killing off the least deserving character first and most horribly. She’s not just drilled or something, she’s hung upside down naked while some guys casually light candles and set some mood lighting and then a lady with a Countess Bathory fetish lays nude beneath her, slashing playfully at her with a scythe and hornily rubbing the spillage all over herself. I gotta admit that even though I’d seen and liked the scene before I still had to look away a couple times. What sells it is a fuckin balls-out performance by Matarazzo, who you can tell is really hanging there by the way the veins pop out of her neck. One of the commentary tracks confirms that it was not some type of digital trickery. They couldn’t believe how game she was and she even did multiple takes and asked if there was more she could be doing. The other actresses were on set and it sounds like they kinda felt like the other rappers in “Scenario” when they heard Busta Rhymes’s verse.

That’s the most horrific scene, but there are other ones that show that things are not looking good for our girls here. This time we actually see Sacha, the head of the operation, who keeps the literal head of part 1’s protagonist as a souvenir. So this guy is not playing around. When a pack of street kids like the ones who ultimately (temporarily) saved the hero’s ass in part 1 interfere (and not in a very severe way) he slowly points a gun at each of their heads, and just when it seems like he’ll leave it at that he forces them to choose one among them to be executed. And they do it. It’s a cold fuckin world. How is some aspiring painter who likes going to spas gonna get through this gauntlet?

Watching it now I think HOSTEL PART II is a great sequel. It does what the first one did better and adds alot more layers to it. It builds off the premise and mythology and shows it from different, more interesting angles. It has a part where the torturers are trying on different masks and shit they could wear and joking around like a couple of normal dudes. It’s kinda brilliant.

Man, is somebody gonna let Eli Roth direct another movie soon? Let’s get this going, Hollywood.
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kinda dumb original review of HOSTILE
convoluted original review of HOSTILE PART II

But now I’m happy to add BAD MOON on there too. From writer/director Eric Red (after he wrote THE HITCHER but before he flipped out and crashed his car into a bar killing 2 people), this is a story about a woman, her son, her dog, and her brother who she doesn’t know is a werewolf. It’s primarily just those characters and mostly confined to their house, yard and nearby woods, but it doesn’t feel small or cheap. Just intimate.

But it starts on an expedition in Nepal, where Ted (Michael Paré) and Marjorie (Johanna Lebovitz) have a run-in with a (in my opinion you know where this sentence is going)  werewolf. It’s a vicious fuckin beast, and Ted manages to shoot its head off (great effect) but not before it kills his girlfriend and bites him. So he’s got some rough days ahead.

Then we pick up months later at Janet (Mariel Hemingway)’s home. She’s a lawyer and single mother of Brett (Mason Gamble – one-time holder of the coveted Dennis the Menace mantle and little sidekick in RUSHMORE). They’re excited to get a call from Uncle Ted to come visit him in his trailer out in a national park or somewhere. He’s the cool uncle and the cool brother who’s manly and smokes and is one with nature and shit. They don’t get to see him enough because he’s always traveling around the world having adventures or, in this case, isolating himself while he tries to figure out if it’s possible to cure werewolfism. He has to do it himself because he’s probly a freelancer and doesn’t have health insurance.

Ted is a tragic figure. He lost his girlfriend and has to pretend like they just broke up. He doesn’t know what the fuck to do. And it turns out being a werewolf is even worse than we’ve heard – in this movie they turn wolf every night, not just on a full moon. So he has to rush Janet and Brett away as it’s getting dark and then go chain himself to a tree. (I’m not sure how he gets out of the chains in the morning, that part is not explained. Maybe he has the key on him the whole time but werewolves don’t know how to use keys.)

Well, the self-leashing method has some security holes, he ends up eating a guy. When the body is found the authorities assume it’s an animal attack, but he’s still panicked so in desperation he accepts Janet’s offer to go park his trailer in her yard for a while. He has this theory that family love maybe cures wolfthropy. Who knows?

So the movie is about what happens as he’s living there, trying to hide why he goes out into the woods at night, trying to restrain himself from eating everybody. And little Brett is suspicious and finding clues, and Janet is worried about him and trying to be a good sister, and this is all very dramatic. But what makes it great is that the main tension is between Ted and Thor, the family’s beloved German Shepherd. Because of his Canine-American heritage Thor is able to sense what’s going on here. He has dogdar. He doesn’t have to sneak around in the trailer and find a book about werewolves to get suspicious about Ted, he just smells it or hears it or something.

Thor is actually the title of the book the movie is adapted from, it’s written by an author named Wayne Smith. Apparently he told the story from the dog’s point of view. That’s not the case in the movie, but Thor is definitely a main character, in my opinion the hero of the movie, and he does have scenes where he goes off without the humans and you follow what he’s up to. He’s trying to protect the family but he’s fucking up what Ted’s trying to do, so they become rivals. And although Ted started out as a sympathetic character he turns into kind of a dick during this conflict and, sorry dude, the audience is going with the dog. The full time dog.

You know Thor is the hero because there’s actually a part where he gets framed for murder. And you know this is a unique movie because there’s a point where Janet suspects that either her brother or her dog has committed murder. One or the other, she has reasons to suspect both. They say this couldn’t possibly have been done by a human, but the idea that Thor did it doesn’t feel right either. She doesn’t know what to believe.

SPOILER. I think this is historic, my first (but hopefully not last) urination spoiler. This is a great moment in the movie so skip over this paragraph unless you’ve seen it or aren’t sold yet. At one point in the movie Thor goes over and pisses on Ted’s trailer. I assume he’s deliberately trying to mark his territory, to protect the family from this werewolf, drawing a line in the sand. But Brett just thinks he’s being a dumb dog. When Ted comes out of the trailer he looks over and sees that the tire is wet, probly smells it. Just a little reason to be annoyed with the dog. Ted knows that the dog knows about him and it grows into a whole rivalry, he sort of has to get rid of this dog to protect himself, and eventually succeeds when he tricks Thor into attacking him in front of Janet so everyone will believe the dog really is out of control and send him away. You can understand Ted doing this for self protection, but he also kinda hated that fuckin dog, so he’s real pleased with himself that he’s won this little competition. So what does he do? He walks over to Thor’s dog house and pisses on it.

Now that’s a fuckin movie right there! I’ve never seen that in a movie before. But I guess there aren’t that many human-dog rivalry movies. Maybe you don’t need a dog in there. Maybe they could do it in a movie where two dudes fight over a girl. But so far I think it’s only in BAD MOON.

So I love it for its uniqueness, but also the things that are in every werewolf movie are well done. For example, of course they gotta have 1. an old werewolf movie on tv and 2. a discussion about the rules of werewolves. But I like the way it comes out, with Ted explaining how it works but playing it off like he’s just joking around.

Some people might consider the monster effects clunky. They’re no AMERICAN WEREWOLF but I think they’re really cool. Although post-JURASSIC PARK this was still early enough that computer animation wasn’t very affordable, so other than a scene with some unfortunate “Black or White” type morphing it’s all done with good old fashioned puppets and costumes like the Lord meant it to be. You can tell the wolf heads have a limited range of expression so it’s great that the state they chose to focus on is mouth wide open, eyes crazed, the height of viciousness.

This also has one of the best reactions to a werewolf attack I’ve ever seen. When a guy sees the wolf coming at him he doesn’t just scream in terror, but also confusion, like: “wha-uuuuUUAAAAAHHHHH!?” It’s funny because it’s so true, it’s not only being attacked by a huge animal but also having your entire world tipped upside down.

I wonder, was that werewolf in the opening scene Nepalese, or some dude from somewhere else traveling around trying to cure himself, like an Incredible Wolf? If he was Asian does that sort of make Ted part Asian, now that he’s become wolf? Or is he Hindu now? I don’t really know how it works in the werewolf culture. Maybe because of this werewolves are above racism. Everybody’s got the same wolf in them. But I guess that’s why they focus their hatred on vampires. Or probly they would focus it on cat people if that was more of a thing. I wonder if they hate mail men? I guess probly not unless they were forced to live in a yard where the mailman comes every day. I don’t know, I guess until you’ve been in their paws it’s hard to imagine what their life is like.

What I do know is I highly recommend this one. Please spread the word ’cause as far as I can tell it doesn’t have much of a reputation.

And (SPOILER) [SERIOUSLY GUYS THIS IS GIVING IT AWAY] all these hairy people (TURN BACK NOW) are actually ani(SPOILER)mals that he made into almost-people. The ones that aren’t on his staff live out in straw huts. And he must’ve been at this for a while, because it’s a pretty populated village. They’re lost souls I guess so they don’t truly understand the difference between right and wrong (or wright and rong), instead they have to be indoctrinated by hairy Bela Lugosi as “The Law Sayer,” who just recites a series of rules to them every night. And if they get out of line Moreau enhanced-interrogates them in “The House of Pain” to remind them what’s what.

At first it’s a novel place for Parker to visit, but he wants to get back home to his fiancee (Leila Hyams) on the mainland, especially after he starts getting glimpses of vivisections and shit, and wants nothing to do with this island. But Moreau strands him there longer ’cause he’s hoping Ed will fuck the panther girl. That could be a good experiment.

Isn’t that a great evil plan for a mad scientist? To trick his guest into fucking an animal woman? Ed doesn’t catch wind of the plot, but he can tell the girl has a crush on him, so he tries to do the honorable thing and explain that he’s in love with a gal back at home. But Lota doesn’t know what this “love” is so she rubs up against him and he can’t resist, he kisses her.

Then he stops. Is it because he’s thinking of his gal Ruth and second-guessing the plans of his johnson? Or does Lota have one of those sandpaper tongues that cats have? Maybe panther breath? Well, he tries again, but he feels her fingers on his back, looks and sees that she has claws. Oh shit – animal person!

There’s a long shot of the shocked look on his face, and him thinking, eyes darting back and forth. And we know that he’s thinking “I better go confront Moreau about this,” because that’s what he does next. But is it possible he spends some of that time considering going through with it? At any point during that shot is he thinking whether it’s completely disgusting or kind of hot to fuck the panther girl? I think yes.

Moreau is a great character. I guess in the book he’s more nuanced, he’s not such a sadist, he truly believes that what he’s doing is good. But you get some of that here. He can conceive of himself turning animals into humans, but not of treating them like humans. He still uses them as his lackeys, controls them and physically abuses them. My favorite example of his sick mindset is when he yanks Lota by the hair to point to her tears and show that she’s human. Okay, if she’s human why are you treating her like that? On second thought, maybe he does treat humans like that. Maybe he’s just an asshole. Talented scientist, though.

There’s a great atmosphere. The makeup effects stand up as perfect to this day. They’re creepy and hideous but still human, and the actors seem authentically subhuman. The scenes in the village feel nightmarish but real – the night sky, a crowd of monster faces lit by torchlight, voices all around like there are plenty more in the dark somewhere outside of our sight. Bela wears pants and a button-up work shirt, trying hard to be human. It seems like that’s all they want. In fact, the scary part in my opinion is not so much them being animals as them being treated like shit. I mean, there’s alot of them out there and only a couple homo sapiens inside that mansion. And we’ve seen that they can get in. They’re strong and they have sharp teeth. If they ever decide they’ve had enough of Dr. Moreau I think they’ll figure out what to do.

It was weird watching this right after Gaddafi got killed in Libya. I couldn’t help but make connections. The lost souls have long been under the tyrannical rule of Moreau, terrified of him, victim to his cruelty, not really knowing anything else. Some are treated better by him, some are loyal to him, some are made to do sick shit for him, and afterwards they blame him: “He tell me spill blood!” But eventually the people figure out they don’t need him, shit hits the fan, they tear him apart. It’s the story of any dictator.

I’d never seen this before and I watched it on the new Criterion blu-ray. While the transfer is not as flawless and crisp as some of the Criterions it does look really nice and apparently is miles ahead of previous editions. Probly the best anybody’s gonna be able to do. The extras are good too. They have a discussion about the movie between John Landis, Bob Burns and Rick Baker. I enjoyed that but was more excited about the interview with Richard Stanley, the original director of the 1996 Marlon Brando version who was replaced by John Frankenheimer early in shooting. Yes, he does get into what happened and while I still think there’s probly more to be said he does give me a different impression of the events than I had before.

I always thought he got fired because the studio hated his take on it, but the way he tells it it was a financial disaster so they pulled the plug on the whole thing, he collected his play-or-pay deal and just didn’t come back when the project miraculously came back to life. There’s also the legend of him camping out in the rain forest and spying on the production while disguised as a dogman extra. He tells that story too but not as if he was crazed and disgruntled. He just says he had all this studio money so he decided to live in nature with a couple dogs or whatever. He’s just a rugged Australian outdoorsy dude I guess. Then one day he’s on the river and runs into some people from the crew, they tell him how unhappy they are with the new regime and convince him to come check it out to make himself feel better about not being involved anymore.

I don’t know man, I still love that movie, but I like the story he tells. At the end he apologizes for having anything to do with the “desecration” of the book. He doesn’t seem to think LOST SOULS does it justice either, but says it’s his favorite version (duh).

Another featurette is an interview with Devo, showing clips from a short film they made and how their whole concept of “Are we not men?” and “devolution” comes from ISLAND OF LOST SOULS. Pretty interesting. Too bad they don’t have a featurette about pioneering white rappers House of Pain though, that could’ve been good too.

It’s funny how that poster up there blames the whole thing on the Panther Woman, like she purposely lured people onto the island and messed with them. Not true at all. She’s even more of a victim in this whole thing than he is. And now she takes the fall in the marketing. The actress – who is credited as “The Panther Woman” on the opening credits, but Anglicized her name to “Kathleen Burke” on the end credits, was a dental assistant who won a contest to play the role, submitting her photo and being chosen over 60,000 other entries. She went on to be in 21 other movies over the next six years, including MURDERS IN THE ZOO, BULLDOG DRUMMOND STRIKES BACK, THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER and THE LION MAN. She lived until 1980, wasn’t ever caught eating somebody’s chickens or anything like that so I assume she fully adjusted to the human lifestyle and lived happily ever after.

I doubt the same happened on that island, though. Surely the power vacuum left by Dr. Moreau’s absence led to all kinds of sectarian strife and shit. I’m sure many fought for the creation of a compassionate democracy, perhaps with Sayer of the Law as interim prime minister until some form of animal senate or council could be voted in. But you fuckin know eventually some charismatic tiger man or something came along, put together a powerful militia, took control and probably brought back an even more fucked up version of the House of Pain… there could be some crazy shit going on there and I don’t know if we want to get involved but it could definitely come back to bite us on the ass. Or I guess more likely on the back of the legs is how animals usually do it.

Anyway, this is an excellent movie and it’s from Paramount, a studio that didn’t really get in too much on the horror bandwagon back then. But it’s as good and beautiful as my favorite Universal classics. The director, Erle C. Kenton, later did some Universal ones in the ’40s (THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN, HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, HOUSE OF DRACULA). I think I liked some of those, but not like this.