Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category

Halloween: Resurrection

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

A couple years back you’ll remember that I reviewed the whole HALLOWEEN series. And I mean the WHOLE series. The first one, the middle ones, the last one. The very last one. The one where they got the original stars back, they got a halfway decent script, they brought everything full circle, they chopped that fucker’s head off and they cut to the credits. The end, forever. Never again. Against all odds, they came up with a decent wrapup to an endless series of bad sequels.

Well sadly what they went and did, they talked poor Michael Meyers into doing ANOTHER one, one that nobody in the world wanted, one more in the tradition of parts 4, 5 and 6, but even worse. I guess I can’t blame Mike, with a mug like that how you gonna get leading man roles. He’s a character actor at best unless he’s in HALLOWEEN, then he’s the star.

They never really mean it when they say a movie is the last in the series, but I’m telling you, I really mean it when I say this is the worst in the series. The premise is sort of a self consciously modernized HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. Busta Rhymes (the rapper who I think should play Dolemite instead of LL Cool J) is Vincent Price, because he’s gathered all these kids together to spend the night in Mike Meyer’s childhood home, and straps cameras onto them like some kind of REAL WORLD type show, but it’s broadcast on the internet instead of real tv. This premise makes the following unwise assumptions:

  1. the audience doesn’t know that nobody watches “internet programming”, especially live on a day they could be doing something else (i.e. Halloween)
  2. the audience believes home computers can download 100 live feeds of full screen tv quality digital video at the same time
  3. people still believe computers make blipping and blooping noise whenever you hit a key or a graphic appears on the screen
  4. we’re really gonna buy that this company won’t get paid for their event until after it’s over
  5. we really want to see a HALLOWEEN movie that is almost entirely about a group of kids walking through the shadows of one small house
    5b. and that we don’t mind if all they ever cut away to is a bunch of kids at a party standing in a room watching a computer screen with the kids walking through the shadows of that one small house.

I think I called UNDISPUTED asinine, but I wasted it, I should’ve saved that word for this one.

The one section that doesn’t revolve around the house is the ridiculous opening which explains away the great ending to the last movie. We are told that the Michael Meyers who attacked Laurie at the end and then got his head chopped off was actually a paramedic who Michael had switched clothes with! In this scene Michael tracks Laurie down at an asylum where she has set up a bunch of boobie traps and manages to hang him upside down. But he kills her anyway and frames one of the other inmates for the murder. I guess I wasn’t paying attention in this series – when did Michael and Laurie turn into fuckin MacGyver?

This is one of those embarassingly out of touch movies where they seem to think that being on the cutting edge of technology is enough to make the movie work, even though they’re not really on the cutting edge of technology. They keep cutting to shaky, fuzzy digital video footage from mini-cameras attached to the actors. This was an interesting new gimmick in 1986 when they did it in ALIENS. Now it’s 2002, it’s, what, ten or more years later. You’re gonna have to try a little harder to dazzle us, asshole.

As long as I had to see the fuckin thing, I wish I saw it in the theater so I could’ve heard everybody laugh every time they had a “subliminal” Michael Meyers face appear when the video flipped over. SPOOOOOOKKKY!

Busta Rhymes is the most charismatic individual in the movie, but he doesn’t get shit to do except talk to himself making wacky jokes like he thought the movie was supposed to be more along the lines of HOW HIGH. Supporting my theory that he should play Dolemite, there are scenes where he does fake kung fu on Michael Meyers and is overdubbed with Bruce Lee style squeals. We understand that he knows these kung fu moves because earlier he watched a kung fu movie, which was also overdubbed with Bruce Lee style squeals, even though it wasn’t a Bruce Lee movie. At the end Busta has a sudden change of heart and makes a half assed stick it to the man speech about the media exploiting violence, which I guess you learn after you’ve faced Michael Meyers. It’s like one of those dolphin encounters you can get.

There is one new addition to the Michael Meyers mythology: we now know that rappers are immune to his killing powers. When LL Cool J survived what seemed like certain death, I thought it was a fluke. This time Busta gets stabbed several times in the back, but appears again to save the day. At the end he gets a sling for an apparent arm injury but his rapping powers have healed over the stab wounds.

If Mike shows up again I wouldn’t bother calling the sherriff, just call the Wu-Tang Clan.

The asshole responsible for this poppycock is Rick Rosenthal, the director of HALLOWEEN part 2. That movie was okay but apparently he did a bad job so they had to fire him and have John Carpenter reshoot a bunch of the scenes. In an attempt to recapture that classic not-that-badness, they hired Rosenthal again and fired him again and replaced him with (I heard) Steve Miner, who doesn’t contribute any of the thrill he gave to part 7 or Friday the 13th parts 2 and 3-D. Before they did the reshoots, Dimension wasn’t even planning to release this piece of shit, but Ms. Curtis and Mr. Rhymes talked them into it. I guess you can’t blame Busta, he probaly told everybody he was in a HALLOWEEN movie and nobody believed him, and if they hadn’t released the movie he would’ve looked like a liar. Still, I’d rather be called a liar than be called the guy from HALLOWEEN 8.

One final question for you folks to ponder. How come they always got wires in these type of movies, and they always get cut and then they cause massive electro shock and fire. What kind of electricians do they have in Haddonfield, Illinois? They need to be more careful. Not that I don’t appreciate a livewire laying around here or there in case Busta needs to shock Michael Meyers in the dick. But there are kids in that neighborhood. Anyway, Michael’s house finally gets burned down at the end, so they’ve finally gotten rid of Laurie Strode and the Meyers house.

Or have they? I’m guessing Laurie faked her death, like she did in part 2 according to conversations in part 7. And the house was actually an innocent house that Michael switched with his house at the last minute.

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Seed of Chucky

Friday, November 12th, 2004

Well judging from the low turnout for this picture in its first couple weeks, I might be the only one. But DAMN if I don’t love BRIDE OF CHUCKY. THat was the amazing slasher sequel landmark where the former Hong Kong director Ronny Yu knocked the CHILD’S PLAY series off into a weirdo direction where the killer doll suddenly gets a killer doll wife and it turns into a silly comedy, but with occasional moments of visual poetry courtesy of future oscar winning cinematographist Peter fucking Pau.

Now if you’re like me you remember the very end of BRIDE OF CHUCKY, suddenly a little sharp-toothed baby chucky pops out. It’s like the traditional sudden-jolt-ending used in every horror movie since CARRIE, but at the same time it’s a funny joke because you just KNOW it means we’re gonna get a SON OF CHUCKY some day. Or SEED OF CHUCKY it turns out due to the ambiguous gender of the baby.

SEED OF CHUCKY is the first movie in history to open inside Chucky’s penis, in a computer generated sequence about the actual Seed of Chucky having a go at the Egg of Tiffany, then growing into a baby. Then we skip forward and find the baby at the World Ventriloquism Championships in London. It turns out some random British punk rock fake-ventriloquist found the seed of chucky in the cemetery after BRIDE OF CHUCKY ended. The poor little doll is now living a Charles Dickens style childhood in a cage in London. His name is Shitface and he has the voice of LORD OF THE RINGS hobbit Billy Boyd as he tells us about his sorry existence in a hilarious voiceover.

It turns out the Chucky and Tiffany dolls have been somehow repaired (no explanation needed or offered) and are being used as puppets to star in a movie about their lives. The baby Chucky finds out and journeys to Hollywood where he accidentally does a voodoo spell to resurrect them, and also speaks Japanese to them (long story). (more…)

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My Name Is Modesty and Frankenfish

Thursday, September 9th, 2004

VERN’S VHS PILE

Howdy boys. Well I know Moriarty’s got his DVD shelf that he’s real proud of and he has more DVDs than he will actually live to ever watch, which is good. Always wise to have that shit around to pawn, in my experience. I’m not saying he’s gonna get a whole lot for BASIC, GHOST SHIP, ROLLERBALL, MR. DEEDS, and that kind of crap (yeah, I studied that picture too), but hey, if it buys half a bowl of soup on a cold day it might be worth it. Always save for the future. Anyway I’ve got a couple more reviews of straight to video movies for you so I thought it was time I shared with you something very special. Not to brag or anything but this is Vern’s VHS Pile:

Yep, that’s right, that’s a pile of VHS tapes right there. Most of them are screeners, all of them are an obsolete format, and one of them is even a good movie. Two if you count the headcleaner. I know alot of people will not believe I actually have such a pile, so let me just head you newsies off at the pass and tell you that no, that is not fake, that’s a bonafide 100% real photograph, and all are owned by me, not rented like Ja Rule’s mansion on that episode of CRIBS I read about.

MY NAME IS MODESTY

Well the upcoming pictures I am reviewing today are the two at the top of the pile. We’ll start with what I figured was the most promising, MY NAME IS MODESTY. Or as the box says, QUENTIN TARANTINO PRESENTS MY NAME IS MODESTY.

It took me a minute to figure out what this was, but some of you may remember: a while back Mr. Tarantino was thinking about doing a movie of Modesty Blaise, the pulp heroine from comic strips and novels (I believe John Travolta is reading one of the books on the john when he dies in PULP FICTION). Well obviously he never ended up doing it, and Miramax’s option on the character was about to run out, so they hired Scott Spiegel to do a straight to video about the character’s backstory, to set up the “real” Modesty Blaise movie they might do some day (unless they decide instead to just buy up a bunch of Hong Kong movies and let them sit on the shelf for years).

A popular texas based web sight reported on this story about 2 years ago, when they said that the movie had been shot and the creator of Modesty Blaise was going around implying that he was not too happy about it. Then it sat on the shelf and we all forgot about it.

But there is exactly one way that a dusty old movie can escape the Miramax archives: by convincing Tarantino to put his name on it, even though he didn’t make the movie. If it worked for Jet Li it can work for Modesty Blaise. So just like the HERO trailer, this one tries to get visions of KILL BILL dancing in your head. The screener box mentions revenge twice (even though this is not a revenge movie). On the back it calls Tarantino “The Master of Action Storytelling!” and declares that “WOMEN ACTION HEROES ROCK!” Below that it says:

“-Catwoman………Catwoman

-Kill Bill………The Bride

-X-Men………Storm, Mystique, Rogue

-Daredevil………Elektra

-Die Another Day………Jinx

-MY NAME IS MODESTY………Modesty”

Well, that proves it I guess. This thing is gonna be huge!

Actually I really was hoping for the best. When people talk about Scott Spiegel they always go back to “co-writer of EVIL DEAD 2.” That doesn’t seem to mean much at this point, but the thing is, he already did a straight to video Quentin Tarantino Presents movie that I really liked. For whatever it’s worth, I still think FROM DUSK TILL DAWN PART 2 TEXAS BLOOD MONEY is the greatest achievement to date in straight to video sequeling. It’s not a theatrical level of quality but it’s alot of fun. Great premise, good cast (Danny Trejo, Robert Patrick, Bruce Campbell cameo, Woody Harrelson’s brother) and great sense of over the top cinematics. I mean this is a movie with POV shots inside a bat’s mouth, on a dog doing pushups, on an oscillating fan. For a cheap-o straight to video sequel shot in South Africa to jump out of the tv and kick you in the ass is a pretty impressive stunt. So I figured I could trust this dude to get me again.

The opening credits for MY NAME IS MODESTY had me going too, with a catchy theme song and a montage of action shots and spinning roulette wheels printed in candy colors. It’s a big blast of badass old fashioned energy and then the main problem is, well I think where the trouble starts is when after that the movie starts.

I’m not saying it’s terrible. It’s perfectly okay, I think. It’s just not fun to watch. The story is about Modesty Blaise, who runs the roulette table in a small European gambling establishment. A rival gang comes in, kills her boss and takes everybody hostage. She convinces their leader to play roulette with her. Every time she wins 3 games in a row, he has to let a hostage go. But every time she loses, he gets to ask her questions and she has to tell the truth. (no dares, sorry.) So he just asks her about herself and then she narrates her backstory, which involves being a young war refugee who fights with a stick, steals a car, then learns how to read and names herself. Exciting shit.

I don’t know anything about Modesty Blaise, I haven’t even seen the old movie with Monica Vitti. But I always meant to see it and that’s because I figured it would be, you know, entertaining. I checked a web site and it looks like this new movie stays pretty true to the details of the character’s backstory, but unless those book covers are lying, there seems to be a whole lot more action and thrills in there than in this movie.

Those opening credits promise “A MODESTY BLAISE ADVENTURE” but there’s not all that much adventure since the entire movie takes place either in the one room where they’re holed up or in some dismal Balkan wasteland somewhere in the past. There is no globetrotting or sneaking around or jumping off things. No helicopters blowing up, or even landing. No swinging on ropes, setting up traps, solving mysteries or breaking into museums. Nothing.

Well, there’s one short karate fight at the end, but not a memorable one.

But the biggest problem is there’s no humor at all. Not camp or otherwise. Not even much smiling. There’s an overbearing score that always sounds downbeat. The whole thing is so gloomy. It’s like a pilot for some syndicated show you’ve never heard of that you come across on cable one depressing Saturday afternoon.

The best thing about it besides the credits is Alexandra Staden, the actress who plays Modesty, is pretty good. She has an exotic look with ghostly light blue eyes. If you stretched Maggie Gylenhaal out so she was about 6 inches taller, she would look like this. But they don’t let her be very appealing. She’s always so serious.But I give her the benefit of the doubt. I figure this gal might not be a bad choice to play Modesty Blaise if they make another movie, but good this time.

FRANKENFISH

FRANKENFISH is a movie maybe you haven’t heard of but some of you comic strip fans are gonna shit your pants. I think you already know where I’m going with this. You see this movie marks the long anticipated return of Mark Dippe, director of SPAWN. Remember, it was a movie about a devil guy and there was an evil farting midget clown I believe. And that guy who’s famous for being cut out of KILL BILL, but he was also in EXIT WOUNDS – he was the main dude in SPAWN I believe.

Anyway yeah, big surprise but somehow the director of that movie ends up doing a straight to video movie about a giant mutant fish eating people. I was thinking maybe they would mix it up a little, give us something original like a giant mutant fish that falls in love with a jewel thief or discovers a shocking secret from his past or tries to join a spelling bee or something like that. Instead they just go the eating people route. oh well.

What you got here is basically a bad ripoff of a bad JAWS ripoff, this time updated with the amazingly different twist of its a genetically modified fish. Inspired by the snakehead fish or whatever it was that was in that lake somewhere. You heard the story. In this fictionalized account, there are a couple of giant mutant fish in a lake, and some people also in the lake. They get trapped in one small piece of swamp where almost the entire movie takes place. And they fight against the giant mutant fish. Every once in a while it hops out and eats somebody’s head or something. Towards the end you find out that it was not a product of Nature Gone Amuck or Man’s Hubris or Scientists Playing God. Actually it was one of those Evil Hunters who needed The Ultimate Prey so he created the Frankenfish. Because everybody knows that the ultimate prey is, a, uh, a fish. In the water. For hunting.

Anyway, this is kind of a bummer to admit but this movie is actually incredibly boring. For the first half of the movie they don’t even show the Frankenfish. That would be fine if it was a suspenseful movie with characters and plot. But this is fucking FRANKENFISH from the director of SPAWN. I don’t care if it worked in JAWS, when this movie has a buoy moving around to imply the presence of a large fish below, that’s NOT FUCKING SCARY. I don’t know who they are fooling with these type of movies, they must realize that there is not a single human being on this planet who will ever by scared in any way by this movie. Including kids. So quit pretending. Just show the goofy CGI fish and get it over with. I don’t care if Alfred Hitchcock made things scarier by not actually showing them. That doesn’t apply to fucking FRANKENFISH. The goofy CGI fish in our imagination is not any better/worse/different than the goofy CGI fish we’re gonna see later. So quit beating around the god damn bush.

There are no funny/scary/memorable/above average characters in the movie, although Richard Edson is in it (playing a rasta dude, somehow) and also Mark Boone Jr. from VAMPIRES. I remember Muse Watson (the killer fisherman from the I KNOW ABOUT YOUR LAST SUMMER pictures) was in there at one point but the fish must’ve ate him or something, I don’t know. I watched this shit yesterday, how am I supposed to remember it in that type of detail.

Anyway, I wouldn’t recommend anybody waste their time on this horse shit, but I do have to admit a couple things. Number one, the CGI effects are pretty decent for low budget straight to video crap. Not as good as STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 but way better than BOA VS. PYTHON for sure. There was one part where there was an explosion and they added a person flying out of the fire and into the water. That looked cool and I even rewound it to watch again. So good job computer people who did that shot.

Number B, I gotta admit there are a couple of inspired moments in this one. Like, at least 1, maybe 2 minutes worth of good material. I’m just gonna go ahead and ruin the best part for you so you either don’t have to watch it, or know what to look for if you catch it on cable. See, the giant mutant fish eats a guy’s head, right? And it keeps killing these people. Then it’s going after this one guy and actually jumps up on the dock and wiggles around. But the guy shoots it in the head before it can eat him.

So the guy gets up, walks into a little cabin and turns on a grill. He goes back out with a big knife, slits open the side of the fish, reaches in and pulls out its giant mutant fish heart. Then he brings the heart in, puts it on the grill for a minute. Gives it a couple spins but definitely keeps it pretty raw on the inside. Then he takes the heart and yells something like, “YOU KEELED MY BROTHER, NOW I EAT YOUR HEART!” and does just that, starts eating the heart.

I thought the gimmick was gonna be that the fish is still alive even after his heart has been cooked and eaten, but instead they went for the old “another fish jumps out and eats him” routine. It’s pretty deep though if you think about it. This guy was eating the fish’s heart to avenge his brother, but the fish too had a brother. It’s the same endless cycle of violence that Dr. King spoke about with his “eye for an eye leaves everyone blind” line, and that Shakespeare depicted so vividly in Titus Andronicus. I think alot of our presidents and secretaries of defense and terrorists and what not could learn a little something from FRANKENFISH. And more than that, they deserve to have to sit through it.

[A note for our British friends: it's true that most Americans really aren't too concerned about eating GMOs (genetically modified organisms), so it's not that farfetched that this dude would eat a barely cooked mutant fish heart to show off. It's a cultural thing.]

Anyway thanks everybody I gotta go now, I gotta polish the pile or something. thanks everybody

–Vern

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=18307

[ratings]

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Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Thursday, March 18th, 2004

(originally published at The Ain’t It Cool News)

Boys,

A few months ago I would not think I would be saying this. But I just saw the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, and I did not want to perpetrate violent acts against anybody afterwards. Not the Scooby Doo guy, not the commercial director guy, not anybody. If the Scooby Doo dude would’ve been standing right there when I came out, and there was a clear opening to punch the guy hard in the balls, or toss him through a windshield like Steven Seagal did to that pimp in the opening scene of OUT FOR JUSTICE, I still wouldn’t have done it. I would’ve been like, “It’s cool man, it’s cool.”

That’s high praise. I would not punch the writer of this movie in the balls. Put that on the poster, fuckers. (more…)

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Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed

Wednesday, February 4th, 2004

What’s up boys–

A while back I reviewed for you boys a real good canadian teen werewolf picture called GINGER SNAPS PART 1. That was a real smart and original low budget picture for the teenage girls sort of like HEATHERS but with less showoffy dialogue and more werewolves and crap.

Well today I got me a special treat and that was a screener of GINGER SNAPS 2: UNLEASHED. There are alot of part twos coming to the video market this year and it’s very exciting but I guarantee none will be as good as this one. Also I know I had nothing to do with it but still I feel like I should personally apologize for that title. It means nothing! I mean might as well be GINGER SNAPS: RESURRECTION. Or reloaded or full throttle or farewell to the flesh. Or GS2 RETURN OF THE SNAPPING GINGER. That’s just a dumb title. Other than that I got no complaints about this well made sequel.

As you remember (well, I didn’t, but I’ve been punched in the head alot) our young female werewolf friend Ginger died at the end of GINGER SNAPS PART 1 (pre-unleashing). And her younger sister Brigette was left with the werewolf in her blood. In the world of this movie (Canada, I guess) werewolves do not turn back and forth from human to wolf, they turn slowly but permanently from human to wolf. Let’s call it being unleashed. (more…)

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Thursday, October 16th, 2003

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (the fuckin remake)

NOTE: This review ran on The Ain’t It Cool News back in 2004, but something fucked up the formatting there so here is a more readable version. You can still read the original talkbacks here.

Vern massacres the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE!

Hey folks, Harry here… Well let’s see… Mr Beaks and I both liked THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, but Quint and now Vern didn’t like it… with Vern more or less striking with out and out hatred and venom. This is exactly what will happen to you if you carry the original in the theater with you. So, if you’re expecting the experience of the first film… I suggest renting the first film. If you want to see a “STUDIO VERSION” of this story, then check this film out, but I only suggest going if you’re open to that.

Meanwhile… here ya go, for all you monkeys that have been saying that TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE was 100% based on Ed Gein… take a look at this LINK!!! See, we’ve got crazy psycho killers from Travis County!!!

Harold & the boys,

I bet Harry and some of the others out there agree with me that Mr. Tobe Hooper’s THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE is not only a great horror picture, but one of the all time greats of American independent Cinema. A real hall of famer. Well if so you’ll remember that crazy old drunk in the cemetery at the beginning. “You laugh at an old man.” The kids are asking around about which bodies got dug up and the old man tries to warn them away from this godforsaken shit hole out there in Harryland.

Well today I am that old man leaning up against the tombstone, warning you against the worst type of dumb movie: the kind of dumb movie that is a remake of perfect movie.

When I first heard Michael Bay was producing a remake of ‘SAW I just about had a heart attack. Even back when Tobe Hooper wanted to do one I thought that was a bad idea. But this sounded like the worst possible combination of bad filmatist and good movie. Then I heard that Daniel Pearl was returning as cinematographer, and that crazy drill sergeant fuck with the big eyebrows, R. Lee Ermey, was in it. I started think damn, I almost want to see this movie. Then all the reviews started to appear on, you know, popular Austin-based movie web sights that will remain nameless to protect their reputations. These were positive reviews, sometimes by smart people, often people claiming to be fans of the original masterpiece. And I started to get more curious. What if they really did it? What if they overcame the odds and made a good or okay remake, like THE THING or THE FLY or THE BLOB or even NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 1990? Hell, I was dead set against THE RING AMERICAN STYLE but I ended up liking it alot.

Well, this ain’t fuckin that. This ain’t even on the level of PLANET OF THE APES.

(Attention people who read movie reviews before seeing the movie and then are surprised that the review discussed things that happened in the movie. Don’t read this one.*)

I won’t exaggerate. This isn’t as bad as it could’ve been. It doesn’t have that supercrack editing style you think of when you sadly find yourself thinking about Michael Bay. In some ways it’s better than TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION. The acting is better and the ending’s not quite that dumb. This one’s more like part 3. There are a couple of sicko lines and ideas that you like intellectually, but it feels contrived, like it’s trying to be a CHAIN SAW movie, not like it actually IS one.

I guess the premise here is that the original masterpiece is a fictionalized account of an actual event, and this moronic remake is the real deal. Trouble is the real TCSM feels real, and the remake feels like any other phoney baloney movie. These are horror movie characters who do the type of stupid shit that horror movie characters do. They don’t just make a couple mistakes and run into trouble. They repeatedly wander around in and break into scary looking places where they obviously shouldn’t go, especially after just watching a girl rant about someone trying to kill her and then blow her own head off.

They open up things and fuck with strangers and run right into spooky, foggy abandoned slaughterhouses while being chased. They trust people they obviously shouldn’t. They are very gullible about proper police procedures. They see dead bodies and almost get sick, but never actually do get sick. They have to pee but the bathroom’s too gross, so apparently they hold it for the rest of the movie. They pick up jars of pee and look at them but never realize hey, that’s a jar of pee. They get punished for smoking pot and making out, like teens always do in all those ’70s horror movies EXCEPT Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

This is a movie where if you hide in a closet, 5 squeaky rats will appear out of nowhere to give away your location. Where a small meat cleaver can easily cut through bone. Where a girl can be terrorized all day long and keep her shirt tied up to expose her cute little belly button the whole time. But don’t worry, babies won’t be harmed and inbred kids will turn out to be nice in the end.

I always liked how the original started out on a sweltering day, continued into the night, and ended with the sun coming up again in the morning. It felt like you were really in that ordeal all night. This one starts on a hot day with Michael Bay style fetishistic shots of kids covered in a glistening layer of sweat, and ends on a pouring down rain Dark and Stormy Night like you see in the movies. One of those Texas summer floods, I guess.

This is also the type of movie where Jessica Biel backs up against a wall and Leatherface’s arms tear through the wood behind her and grab her. I guess they must be setting up a LEATHERFACE VS. JASON because Jason’s gonna be pissed when he sees Leatherface ripping off his shit. (Does Jason go to movies? I guess maybe not.)

I mean, this isn’t ‘SAW, this is just a movie. They try to copy some of the ambient score of the original, but still when there’s an emotional moment or something your typical orchestra music pipes in to tell you how to feel. Thanks.

If Michael Bay and that guy who was fired from END OF DAYS really are fans of ‘SAW, well… they sure have a funny way of showing it. Actually, what I should say is they must not’ve seen it since they were kids. We all heard how Bay said this would be less gorey than the (not gorey at all) original, and of course it turns out to be far gorier. (Don’t see it for that, though, it’s nowhere near as disgusting as part 2.) But more importantly, most of the elements that make the real movie so great are left out of the remake and not replaced with anything that could make up for losing them. You don’t just put Leatherface and some body parts in a movie and have yourself a Texas Chain Saw picture. Have you even seen the movie?

Okay, here’s a quiz then. Who’s the best character in TCSM?

Well duh, the hitchhiker. But there’s no hitchhiker in the remake, not an Edwin Neal type anyway.

What is the best scene in TCSM?

Well, if it’s not the hitchhiker, obviously it’s the dinner scene. Not in the remake at all.

Can you believe that? It’s like remaking STAR WARS without that round space station thing blowin up at the end. Or NORTH BY NORTHWEST without the cropduster.

There’s also no Grandpa. No creepy news report on the radio. No graveyard scene. No graverobbing at all. No speech about the slaughterhouse (”That was better. They died better that way.”) No onscreen meat eating. Not a lot of bones, just a couple attached to dolls by a little boy. There’s no Cook. R. Lee Ermey plays a similar role, but doesn’t get as much screen time as Jim Siedow did.

There are no scenes where family members yell at each other. In fact, hardly any interaction between the family members at all. TCSM isn’t about Leatherface, it’s about a family of maniacs, but this remake keeps them all separate until a little part at the end, like you don’t assume they’re in it together. R. Lee, the only memorable new character, doesn’t even interact with Leatherface.

They do have the metal door slamming, and the butt shot of course, and Leatherface cutting his leg. They kind of got the saw twirling at the end. And they definitely remembered the meat hook. They keep going back to it like, oh, I know what’ll get ‘em. The meat hook. Let’s go back to the meat hook again.

Leatherface is okay. He mostly looks better than the last two sequels. Just to be safe they keep him in the shadows most of the movie, so he kind of looks like the real Leatherface from some angles. You know, like how Will Smith really looked like Ali when they showed him from the back.

But then he has this one mask that’s got evil eyes on it, you know, like a creased brow. I guess Leatherface must’ve cut off an evil guy’s face when he was making evil eyes at him. I bet that guy deserved to get his face cut off, he looked pretty evil, man.

Oh yeah, but get this. He takes the mask off! He really does. He has a messed up face with no nose, and later they say he had a rare skin disease and everyone picked on him so that’s why he wears people’s faces. I don’t know if it was a Michael Jackson reference or not. But I do know for sure it was, you know, totally fuckin stupid. This screening was attended by a whole new generation of dumb horror fans (like you saw at the friday the 13th sequels in the ’80s) who yell YEEEAAAH!!! for every act of violence against any character. But even some of these guys groaned when the mask came off. I talked to one guy who said that turned him against the movie.

There are a couple good ideas in the movie. There’s a part where a gal has to help an amputee up after he falls dumping his piss bottle down the john. That’s an uncomfortable situation you don’t see in movies alot. Also R. Lee Ermey has a couple good lines and a scene where he forces a guy to sit in a blood spot where the girl killed herself and put the same gun in his mouth. Instead of a girl on a meathook its a dude that already got one leg cut off, and he sticks around for a while and tries to pull himself off. I was thinking okay, maybe he’ll escape and hop around on one foot for a while, that might be funny. But no, he stays hooked. I wasn’t really rooting for the guy anyway because who gives a shit about that character. It’s almost like they don’t want you to like most of the cast, because all but two of them want to just dump the suicide girl’s body on the side of the road before they even talk to the police. Not that the kids in the original were your best friends (especially Franklin) but they didn’t go out of their way to make them all into selfish assholes.

It was cool that they got John Laroquette to do the narration again, but I didn’t like what they did with it. The narration starts out the same as in the real ‘SAW but over crime scene shots supposedly taken by the police. He talks about the police files as if this whole movie is taken from what’s written in the files. Then of course by the end of the movie you know that the police didn’t find out that any of this stuff happened, so what’s the deal with the police files?

At the end they pin the murders on some name like “Thomas Newton, also known as… LEATHERFACE!” But come on, Laroquette. How do you know that? Nobody called him Leatherface in the whole movie. To WHO is he also known as Leatherface? Just us?

And one more thing Laroquette. Didn’t you think that deal with the SPOOOOOKY scratched up black and white footage was lame? It’s supposed to be police taking footage of the crime scene. I did like how they showed scratches and a clump of hair on the wall, and you had to wait to see where that came from. The dumb part is they go back to the footage again at the very end of the movie. Suddenly, Leatherface pops up and grabs the cop and they freeze on a blurry frame of the Leatherface mask. The only known image of him, blah blah blah.

Yeah, that’s exactly what we need. Remake a 30 year old classic and end it with a lift from the fucking BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

Why did you let them do it, Laroquette? You fuckin blew it, dude.

Listen up all you fuckers out there who might some day make a TEXAS CHAIN SAW movie. There are many reasons why part 2 is the only chainsaw sequel that anybody likes very much. And it has nothing to do with Leatherface. Forget about fucking Leatherface! Part 2 has a different Leatherface, with a mask by Tom Savini. He’s a little more retarded and sexually confused, so you kind of feel sorry for him. But they have Jim Siedow back as the cook, and they let him loose. “This town loves prime meat.” The hitchhiker died in part 1, but they brought in his brother Chop Top (back from Vietnam) played brilliantly by Bill Moseley. This is a very funny, completely insane character who talks about music while he picks pieces of skin off his head wound with a coat hanger and snacks on them. “Leatherface, you bitch hog, you ruined my Sonny Bono wig!” These are the characters that make a ‘Saw picture. Matthew McConaghey didn’t cut it, and not even Viggo Mortensen did. R. Lee almost cuts it but he’s only a cook, he needs a hitchhiker or a Chop Top at his side.

Come to think of it R. Lee doesn’t have as much dimension to his character as the cook did. That guy was brutal like R. Lee but he seemed kind of conflicted about it. He ties up Sally and puts her in a bag, and as he drives her to the house he keeps apologizing and jabbing her with a broom handle. Then he complains about his electric bill. R. Lee’s character is funny-scary-sick, but he’s still not as interesting.

I know some of you kids in the talkbacks will say who cares, I want to see Jessica Biel’s titties. Well if that’s the case read Maxim, asshole. You don’t even have to be 18 to buy it I don’t think. If you like softcore porn of actresses from tv shows, then fine. What’s next, remake TAXI DRIVER with the gal from Alias? Have some fuckin respect. Remake a Shannon Tweed movie or something.

Please, I know you kids have seen the positive reviews on the internet, but don’t listen to that shit. If the internet gave a good review of jumping off a bridge, would you do it?

This looks like shit, it walks like shit and it is in fact, you know… walking shit, I guess. If you feel like watching THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, it just got re-released on dvd. Check it out. This remake is not the same thing. When Jessica Biel cried, “I just want to go home,” I thought – “You and me both, lady.”

New Line, it’s not too late to shelve this fucker. Let’s pretend this never happened. All will be forgiven.

By the way, I know Michael Bay also wants to remake OMEGA MAN, and that other asshole is doing DAWN OF THE DEAD. Tell you what, I’ll save you the trouble of having to figure out all my favorite movies so you can piss all over them. Here’s a list of some movies I like:

Once Upon a Time in the West, El Topo, Blade, Ghost Dog, Die Hard, When We Were Kings, Petey Wheatstraw, Rope, Sonatine, Mad Max, The Getaway, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Dirty Harry, Vampire Lovers, The King of Comedy, Mr. Majestyck, Fight Club.

So there you go, have at it frat boy. Re-imagine the shit out of ‘em. Introduce them to a new generation ’til they can’t see straight. Make them “less gorey” and “emphasize the thriller aspects.” They won’t know what hit ‘em!

And after that you can lick my plate, dog dick.

thanks bud,
Vern

p.s. Oh yeah but I guess you did a pretty strong performance as the cut off head Harry. good work buddy.

*At this preview screening they actually searched each person with a metal detector at the door, causing a huge bottleneck which blocked the top of a jampacked escalator. If people hadn’t jumped out of the way repeatedly it would’ve been one of those horrible freak accidents like when 20 kids jump on a waterslide all at once. I figure if New Line Cinema thinks it’s okay to risk maiming a bunch of teenage horror fans just so a bootleg of their shitty movie won’t get out 2 days early, then it’s okay for me to give away every last surprise in the movie.

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/16307

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Bubba Ho-Tep

Monday, May 26th, 2003

originally posted at The Ain’t It Cool News

Dear Harry,

Like I promised I’m back with more incredibly insightful and well Written SIFF coverage and last night I went to the midnight show of BUBBA HO TEP. I know you guys have already reviewed the shit out of this movie but personally I never read any of those reviews because I was waiting for me to review it. And I sincerely doubt I was the only one. So here it is folks, your very first look at BUBBA HO TEP. (more…)

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Cube 2: Hypercube and Dracula II: Ascension

Monday, February 17th, 2003

Boys -

It’s me Vern. Remember me, I write articles, win awards, etc. Today I am returning to my old shtick of reviewing straight to video sequels nobody asked for. Enjoy!

Actually the first picture I’m gonna deal with here is not completely un-asked for. The first movie CUBE was one of those small time cult movies that nobody is really rabid about but everybody kind of likes. The premise is that a group of strangers find themselves inside strange, symmetrical rooms with vault doors on each side. When they go through a door, they find themselves in a room exactly like the last one. And when they go through one of the doors in there, it’s another room exactly like that one. And when they go through one of the doors in there, it’s another room exactly like that one. And I could go on man. There’s nowhere to go. So of course they get into a George A. Romero type deal where they each have a different background and they argue and what not by they try to put aside their differences to solve the puzzle of “what in fuck’s name is going on here.” There is math, etc.

The acting is not all that great and none of the actors really have the kind of screen presence you want them to have. And the dialogue isn’t exactly on Romero’s level. But it’s such a good premise that you can’t help but enjoy it.

Well CUBE 2: HYPERCUBE is almost the same level of quality as the first one, its main downfall being that we’ve already seen this before. They do shake up the premise a little by introducing this idea of the “hypercube.” I don’t know if they made this up or if this is some actual thing that weirdo math guys are into, but the idea is that it is a 4 dimensional cube. There is length, width, depth, and the mysterious fourth dimension. Maybe time, maybe smell, who knows what it is. Only some math whiz guy I guess. Not me, I am a Writer. (more…)

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The Ring (2002)

Friday, October 4th, 2002

Boys -

First of all, you gotta start talking to each other again. I don’t like it when mommy and daddy fight.

Second of all, I know you already have an assload of THE RING (american remake) reviews. But I think you need to use mine also, as a sign of gratitude toward me, the man who first told you about the japanese RINGU series and the impending remake back in July of 2000. So look at this as the highly anticipated sequel to the article “Vern Steals A Look At THE RING Part I and II!!” CLICK HERE

Of course, I got one thing wrong back then. I said it was New Line Cinema doing the remake, turned out to be Dreamworks. I think the rights might’ve been passed around though, I remember Moriarty told me at the time that he talked to somebody at New Line and they swore they were gonna re-release it and not remake it.

Anyway I was real skeptical about the remake and I wrote an open letter to New Line that started like this:

“Now listen up you sons of bitches. I hope you have sat down and thought this through, and not just at a meeting with a bunch of marketing freakos who know alot less about what people want than they think they do. If you’re gonna remake this picture DO NOT FUCK IT UP. You BETTER know what you’re doing. These movies don’t work only because they are about this curse where you watch a video and the phone rings and a week later you die. They work because of the whole creepy tone — the way the actors talk, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, the quiet pauses and subtle but eerie cine-mato-graphicry. This is some SOLID fucking direction so you can’t just go hire some music video fuckwad and tell him to run with it. ”

Well I don’t want to take too much credit, but. Well, obviously, CLEARLY, the director Mr. Gore Verbinski read my letter. If not literally sat down and read it, then he must’ve soaked it up subconsciously, through his interactions with people who interacted with people who read the letter. (people at New Line, I guess.) Or better yet, maybe he’s just a good guy, and he knew that maybe he should, like, not fuck this one up. So what’s really so great about this movie, again, is the restraint and subtlety and what not. The tone. They didn’t american it up any more than changing the setting. The feel is all RINGU and no SCREAM or BLAIR WITCH or ATTACK OF CHUCKY or any other trendy american horror.

It makes you want to have faith in hollywood when you see something like this. Sure, it’s still the old american imperialism, buying up the movie and remaking it instead of releasing it. I don’t understand why they want to do that type of shit. But for that type of shit, THE RING (american remake) is pretty great, very faithful to the spirit of the original (which to me means the movie by Hideo Nakata, even though it was based on a book and came after a mini-series).

Like the original, this is a serious horror movie. Only one or two small jokes. No wackiness. No references to horror movies, not even Bride of Frankenstein. No modern cultural references or songs to date the movie. No rock music at all! They even gave the girls in the opening private school uniforms, like the japanese girls in the original. They didn’t turn them into “goths” or anything.

It’s a little more gruesome than the japanese version, but not in a way that ruins anything. It’s very quiet and atmospheric and the photographicry is beautiful. The cursed video itself is more show offy, with some real music video images. But there are also some creepy additions to it (a pile of maggots that becomes something else), and some of the old classics straight off the Nakata shelf.

They even avoided two of my biggest movie peeves. Somehow, Verbinski kept Hans Zimmer on a leash! Most american filmatists these days, hell, most filmatists period, they think they gotta hammer you in the balls with the music. Like in that movie WINDTALKERS, poor old John Woo let Jerry Goldsmith take a huge shit all over the war scenes.

Oh that’s right, talkbackers love grammar. what I mean to say is WINDTALKERS, that movie in which John Woo allowed the shatting upon by Jerry Goldsmith…. no, that’s not right. On which a huge crap was taken upon by Jerry Goldsmith aided by John Woo, or I mean with John Woo acting as bathroom attendant, and he didn’t even tip. He meaning Jerry, not John… Oh, fuck you guys anyway. I’m writing for the other fellas.

The point is that in WINDTALKERS you have no chance to get involved in the realism of the scene because DAH DAHDAH DUUUUUHHHHHHMMMMMM… that fucker keeps telling you how triumphant everything is. I see this all the time now, they gotta tell you which parts are scary and which parts are sad and especially which parts are funny or delightful. This is real dangerous in horror movies, because they substitute loud violins for scary scenes. In THE RING (american remake) Mr. Zimmer knows how to wait his god damn turn. He throws in some music here and there but he’s mostly doing the ol’ ambient sounds, and even keeps his fuckin mouth shut long enough for there to be long scenes with no music at all, just rain pouring on the roof. ‘Cause it takes place in Seattle.

Oh yeah, and my second pet peeve which this movie triumphantly avoids. This is the only movie I can think of off the top of my head where the characters use computers realistically. Somehow, every movie director in hollywood thinks that the viewing audience has never used a computer before. They expect us not to be distracted to see a character type “cursed videotape” into the computer, and it fills up the screen with giant letters, and then it goes BLIP BLIP BLOOP and a fancy 3-D animation hurtles us through a literal information superhighway as a voice says “searching internet for cursed videotape information” and then it gives us another animation of a videotape spinning around and gives a perfect scan of a newspaper article explaining the whole history of the tape. (extreme examples: THE NET, HACKERS, COPYCAT.) In THE RING (american remake) Naomi Watts uses a search engine, and a mouse, and she clicks on underlined text, and she has to click more than once, and there are no beeps. It’s beautiful! It’s like seeing a toilet in a movie for the first time in PSYCHO.

The story is fairly close to the original. But there are plenty of changes here and there – the tape gets an origin, the backstory to the curse is a little different. It’s kind of like somebody saw the movie a while back and tried to re-write it from memory. There are some real good bits that they added. One takes place on a ferry, another involves choking. Usually I like to give things away, like the guy from Felicity is the killer in SCREAM PART 3. But these are too good to ruin. When you see it, you’ll know what I’m talking about. These are very inspired, surreal bits good enough to have been in the original.

I still like the whole Nancy Drew mystery angle. Our heroine, this time a reporter for the Seattle PI (a real newspaper!) hears about the tape, watches it, and then spends the whole movie researching everything she can about it, following leads until she either dies or finds out What Exactly The Deal Is Here. (Note: Most modern reporters would just accept the police press release version of what happened, and wouldn’t ever find out about the tape. If she was a shitty reporter, she wouldn’t've had all this trouble.)

The structure is a little different and I think this throws the pacing off a little. I didn’t get the same death march feeling as it counted down the days until she’s supposed to die. It seemed to me like the first days passed by a little too fast, so you didn’t get the same drawn out sense of dread. On the other hand, the last day is handled real nice, and managed to surprise me even though I knew pretty much everything that was coming.

I liked it better in the japanese version that you heard just scratching over the phone. It made it more ambiguous whether it was really a curse, and made it more satisfying what she found later in that, you know, in that one place. But oh well.

Note to Seattle natives. This movie takes place in the area and you might get a few mild chuckles out of it. There is one scene where two monorails pass her, one after another. Not possible – yet! There are references to a Kirkland University. And it seems that the residents of some non-existent San Juanish island have that generic rural accent that all the country folk have in movies. Otherwise, nothing is too distracting, and they show a monorail, a bus, and a ferry – hooray for public transportation!

Anyway boys, I was real impressed with this movie, and glad that my gut feelings two years ago were wrong. If I had a scariness measuring machine, I think I would find that it was a little less scary than the original, but only by about two or three scariness measuring units. I can’t really be sure, because scariness measuring machines haven’t been invented yet, and even when they are I bet it will take a while for the prices to go down to a consumer level. Point is it’s a good picture. Now if the fuckers would just let somebody release the original on an NTSC dvd region code 1 (or better yet, 0) we can all be happy.

thanks dreamworks,

Vern

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=13472

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Vampires: Los Muertos

Monday, July 15th, 2002

Well boys there’s nothin like a mediocre straight to video sequel to start off your day. I didn’t even know they were makin a sequel to this one until I got ahold of the screener tape. I guess alot of people would ask “Who the fuck cares about VAMPIRES?” and laugh it off. It’s always weird when out of the blue they got a sequel to some movie you never knew anybody really thought about anymore, like URBAN LEGEND or MIMIC or MEN IN BLACK.

But I like most of Mr. Carpenter’s works and I think VAMPIRES is one of the good ones. James Woods is great throwin on the leather jacket to put his skinny old man frame in the Kurt Russell/Roddy Piper role. I guess he made up alot of his lines and maybe that’s why they work (Roddy Piper did the same in THEY LIVE. I bet poor Ice Cube stuck to the script in JOHN CARPENTER’S DISAPPOINTING GHOSTS OF MARS. I still can’t believe his name was “Desolation Williams.”)

Nothing about VAMPIRES seemed real radical but it had a feel of its own. How many vampire movies take place mostly in daylight in sunny, dusty Mexico, with that famous John Carpenter “it’s really a western” tone? And it just had a raunchiness that was much needed at the time, with the most macho dialogue of any John Carpenter movie, all the main characters being sadistic assholes, and lots of the ol’ latex-and-blood-packs gore effects. I don’t remember any god damn morphing in that picture. The master vampire tore Mark Boone Junior in half, and it was organic.

And if none of that impresses you you at least had to appreciate the first attack on a vampire nest, seeing the way these vampire hunters have methodically worked out their SWAT team tactics so they can hook vampires up to cables and drag them out into the sun. Fuckin vampires.

So I’m sure there are a few people out there like me who appreciated VAMPIRES, and a couple of them might even think hey, VAMPIRES was done on a low budget, it had a premise that could easily be continued with different characters, maybe I’ll check this one out. (more…)

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