"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Ambulance (2005)

When I realized the upcoming Michael Bay joint AMBULANCE was a remake of a 2005 Danish movie, I figured that meant it was probly a pretty good high concept film. The last time Jake Gyllenhaal starred in a remake of a limited location foreign language film it was THE GUILTY, which I had really enjoyed. So I rented an import DVD of AMBULANCE (Ambulancen), and it fulfilled my hopes.

I actually think the Bay movie looks potentially good, and it’s obviously gonna be very different – way bigger, way more expensive, way more pretty, way more complicated, way more blowing hot air about our great military heroes and what not. Seeing the elegant economy of this one actual makes the remake trailer seem more laughable… of fucking course they saw this and said “How can we get the War on Terror in here?” (If not “How do we get them out of this ambulance?”)

But that’s fine. However that one turns out, I’m glad it led to me to this really solid movie that uses simplicity to its great advantage. It doesn’t have to be epic to be a total rush. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 29th, 2022 | 10 Comments »

Gamera, the Giant Monster

In 1965, when King of the Monsters Godzilla had already starred in five movies and battled Anguirus, King Kong, Mothra, King Ghidorah and Rodan, a new kaiju hit the scene, a fella by the name of GAMERA, THE GIANT MONSTER. I respect Godzilla, and I concede that he beat Gamera to waking up in the 20th century, and to starring in movies. But we’re told in this movie that Gamera is from Atlantis, and though I’m no historian I’m pretty sure that means he was around before whichever dinosaur era the puny pre-radiation Godzilla came up in. Gamera is the O.G. He’s just a late bloomer.

The Gamera movies were created by Daiei, the studio founded in 1942 that produced Akira Kurosawa’s RASHOMON, Kenji Mizoguchi’s UGETSU and SANSHO THE BAILIFF, and also the Zatoichi, Yokai Monsters and Daimajin series. This one was clearly made to compete with or cash in on Toho’s popular Godzilla series, but that’s odd because it’s a black and white movie where one monster is awakened and attacks Tokyo, not another monster. By this point Godzilla had done three color films and had been fighting other monsters for a decade. And it wasn’t as if most films were black and white then – Daiei’s own Zatoichi movies had switched to color. Was this made for people nostalgic for the original GOJIRA (which was eleven years in the past at that point)? Were they trying to make sure the world had a movie like GOJIRA but not a total bummer inspired by the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima? And is doing that kind of like how KONG: SKULL ISLAND mimics all your favorite Vietnam War movies without all the horrors-of-the-Vietnam-War darkness? Uh, not really. They were just trying to save money. More on that later. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 28th, 2022 | 9 Comments »

Vern’s Oscar Round-Up 2022

Ah shit, here we go again. Another Oscar Sunday coming up. As I’ve been doing for some years now, I scrambled to watch all of the best picture nominees that I hadn’t already seen anyway, plus as many as I could from other major categories. This year, for various reasons, I did not write reviews of most of the movies that were nominated, so I’ll kinda-sorta do that here.

No time for a monologue, let’s go straight to the best picture nominees, presented in alphabetical order for your organizational convenience. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 25th, 2022 | 73 Comments »

Nightmare Alley (2021)

“Folks here, they don’t make no never mind who you are or what you done.”


The first shot in Guillermo Del Toro’s Depression-era noir movie NIGHTMARE ALLEY is of Bradley Cooper dragging a wrapped-up corpse into frame. It reminded me of the teaser trailer for THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 (2007). That was not a good movie, but it was a great teaser, so when a best picture nominee reminds me of it, that’s pretty impressive. If BELFAST or THE POWER OF THE DOG started out like the legendary Lady in the Lake teaser for LEATHERFACE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III they would move up a notch for me, personally.

Cooper’s character Stan is inside a small house in disrepair, and he drops the body into a hole in the floorboards, puts on his coat and hat, takes a moment to contemplate and light a cigarette, sets the place on fire and leaves. If anybody walked into the movie exactly two minutes late and saw him on a bus out of town they probly spent a good chunk of the movie thinking he was a good ol’ salt of the earth everyman trying to survive day-to-day through hard, humble work. The rest of us had to watch him very unsettled, wondering what he’s up to, questioning the sincerity of everything he says or does. ‘Cause you can never fully trust a corpse dragger. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 24th, 2022 | 44 Comments »

Deadly Games

DEADLY GAMES (1982) – not to be confused with the much better DEADLY GAMES (1989) a.k.a. DIAL CODE SANTA CLAUS – is a slasher movie that I guess was very rare on video until now. I never came across it during my Slasher Searches, but now Arrow put it out on a nice blu-ray.

This is hardly one of the greats, but you know me, I’m a scholar, and I like seeing all the different variations and permutations of the formula. This one is interesting in that it takes place in a little bit more of a world of adults than most of them. And it’s not one of those crude regional movies – for the most part the production values and acting are slick and professional. And Steve Railsback is in it! If Steve Railsback is in it it’s a real movie.

The deadly games begin when Linda Lawrence (Alexandra Morgan, THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES HOLLYWOOD) is alone in her fancy hillside house and gets creepy phone calls from a strange man (calling from a phone booth improbably located in sight of her isolated home). She’s scared, then convinces herself she’s fine. She talks to a boyfriend on the phone and tells him, “No, I don’t look like Janet Leigh” before getting in the shower. Always the PSYCHO shower scene references in these things. Anyway, a guy in a ski mask attacks her and she falls out the window. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 22nd, 2022 | 16 Comments »

Nemesis

Would you believe I’d never seen NEMESIS (1992) before? I’d heard claims it was one of the better movies for director Albert Pyun and/or star Olivier Gruner, but I didn’t get around to it until now. From the cover I always thought it was gonna be kind of a TERMINATOR knock off, so I was very surprised and impressed when it opened seeming more like BLADE RUNNER in the style of THE KILLER.

It starts in Los Angeles, 2027 A.D., which does not look overly futuristic, but is covered in an eerie orangy brown haze. Alex Rain (Gruner, who had only been in ANGEL TOWN) is in a hotel for a liaison with a woman, but then he shoots her in the head, revealing a bunch of wires and electrodes. “God damn cop,” she says. “God damn terrorist” he replies. Though he very poorly delivers a one-liner to her exploded head, he looks very cool when he walks out of the hotel with a Chow Yun Fat style tie-overcoat-and-sunglasses look, passing a bunch of people in the hallway who take a minute to figure out he’s the cop who shot their friend. But then they follow him. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 21st, 2022 | 23 Comments »

Wrong Turn (2021)

WRONG TURN (2021) was marketed as a remake of WRONG TURN (2003), but is I think either a bonafide reboot (starting over from the beginning) or un-subtitled sequel (after they dropped the original title, WRONG TURN: THE FOUNDATION). If you consider the premise of the six previous WRONG TURN movies to be “travelers are hunted by a family of deformed cannibals,” then this is not a remake. It’s more like a re-asking of the question “what if some young people got attacked in some woods in West Virginia?” that gets a different answer.

I like the structure of it. It begins with grey-haired real estate agent Scott Shaw (Matthew Modine, TRANSPORTER 2) out of his element driving through Appalachia in search of his missing daughter Jen (Charlotte Vega, AMERICAN ASSASSIN). He finds an inn that she and her friends stayed at, and only knows they meant to hike an Appalachian trail. The police chief isn’t much help and also asks “Who’s the Black fella?” when he sees her boyfriend Darius (Adain Bradley, 2 episodes of Riverdale) in a photo. Locals at a bar basically tell Mr. Shaw to give up because if she got lost in those woods she’s surely dead. Rude. But he says he’s not gonna give up. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 17th, 2022 | 6 Comments »

Invincible (2020)

I was excited to watch INVINCIBLE as soon as it came out, because it’s the first major Marko Zaror role I’ve been able to see since SAVAGE DOG in 2017. Since then he’s been in something called THE GREEN GHOST that I don’t think has come out, he had a tiny appearance in ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL, he doubled young Will Smith in GEMINI MAN, and it looks like he was in one episode of a Marvel TV show that I haven’t watched because it’s a crossover of several other Marvel shows I haven’t watched. I’ve missed him, so it was exciting to finally have another movie with his name on the cover.

Unfortunately, this is not what I consider to be a good movie, and not bad in an interesting enough way to recommend it to most people. It does however once again demonstrate Zaror’s extreme talent and professionalism – not just anyone could be in a production this shoddy and still be good in it, so for that reason I don’t regret watching it. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 16th, 2022 | 2 Comments »

Curfew

CURFEW is a 1989 New World Pictures joint, a kinda sleazy, kinda odd home invasion thriller that I never heard of until Vinegar Syndrome recently released it on blu-ray. In the dream-like opening scene, a guy named Bobby Joe Perkins (John Putch, JAWS 3-D, MACH 2) excitedly cuts a piece of cake for a not-very-enthusiastic-looking young woman. Suddenly a menacing man appears at the door – it’s his brother Ray Don (Wendell Wellman, SUDDEN IMPACT), who storms in and attacks the young woman, over Bobby Joe’s protests.

Then all the sudden the Perkins brothers are in prison together. Then all the sudden they’re out of prison together. At times the editing of this movie is incoherent, but there are other times when it’s got a good momentum to it. They stop to talk to some ranchers, cut to the ranchers already dead and the brothers wearing their clothes. Some of it works. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 15th, 2022 | 4 Comments »

Future Shock

FUTURE SHOCK is a 1994 horror(ish) anthology, it seems very made-for-cable, though it apparently was made-for-video. Or at least as a compilation it was – I believe it’s made from two pre-existing short films tied following a new story and a wraparound.

The connective material stars none other than Martin Kove, who was in a prolific post-KARATE-KID period of his career – that year he also appeared in WYATT EARP, WYATT EARP: RETURN TO TOMBSTONE (yes, a TV movie that came out the same year as the better known one), ENDANGERED, SAVAGE LAND, GAMBLER V: PLAYING FOR KEEPS, DEATH MATCH, CAGNEY & LACEY: THE RETURN, plus a Burke’s Law and a Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Here he’s rocking Swayze/Gibson style long hair, but playing a mostly buttoned down character, Dr. Langdon (yes, THE DA VINCI CODE was originally written as FUTURE SHOCK fan fiction but Kove refused to be in the movies because he knew they were gonna be fuckin boring, that’s why they almost didn’t make them and obviously regretted when they did [citation not necessary]), a psychiatrist who uses virtual reality to help his patients face their fears. (You see? In the form of little Twilight-Zone-ish short stories.) (read the rest of this shit…)

March 14th, 2022 | 7 Comments »

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