Greenlee Gazette's Guide to Friday the 13th

It's Friday the 13th, y'all! You know the drill!

Happy Friday the 13th everybody! If you've read this blog even a little bit, you know that I'm a cheesy horror movie fan. And there is no cheesier series of horror films than the Friday the 13th series. From the beginning, it was a rip-off (but the first one!) of Halloween. But you could safely say that Halloween as a franchise was born due to the success of Friday the 13th. The following blog post was written for my annual Halloween scary movie retrospectives. But every time there is a Friday the 13th on the calendar, these movies come back into vogue. Better get it in now, this is the last one of the year!

Original post from October 2011.

Photo from Wikipedia.org

Unlike the original Halloween, I'm not sure anyone would put Friday the 13th in the "classic" category. At least not good classics. The series is loved with a heavy dose of nostalgia, and not a lot else.

Sure, it's iconic, was amazingly influential, and made a whole lot of money for both Paramount and New Line studios. But the Friday the 13th string of movies was easily the hollowest, least plotted, acted and impactful storywise of the horror movie franchises (Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Hellraiser). Each Friday film pretty much follows a mindless killer, stalking stupid people.

There were variations along the way. And if you try to assign a real-world continuity to the films, you'll give yourself a headache that feels like a machete in your skull. Here are some short recaps (star ratings do not relate to the real movie world, only within the horror movie genre!):

Friday the 13th - The first film is by far the best. Jason does not appear (outside of a possible hallucination), but his storyline is set up. Notable for Betsy Palmer's iconic performance as Jason's mother. Sets the tone and atmosphere for the first four to seven movies. Genuinely scary for the uninitiated. Plus, Kevin Bacon. ***

Friday the 13th, Part 2 -Almost as good as the first, though very short (especially considering the recap at the beginning). Notable for Amy Steel's strong performance, the VW bug scene, and the guy in the wheelchair. Struggles to find a reason why Jason didn't drown, and why he was motivated to start his killing spree. Though the explanation is weak, it is used as the basis for the rest of the series. **

Friday the 13th, Part 3 - This (originally) 3D installment is one of the weakest, with very little story, and shots that were intended for the 3D audience. Most notable for hand-walking guy's death, and Jason's acquisition of his iconic hockey mask.  I initially thought this installment was terrible, but it's better in retrospect. *

Friday the 13th - The Final Chapter - Yeah, right! It's the best of sequels, and could have served as the finale, but there was more money to be made. Jason ventures out of Camp Crystal Lake, and seems to meet his end. Considering that this was 1984, I'm sure you know that it wasn't to be. Plus, Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover? ***

Friday the 13th (Part V): A New Beginning - Close to as good as part 4, reviled by fans for its plot twist, but very much in line with the tone of the first four movies. And Corey Feldman only wishes he grew up to look like John Shepherd!  Woof. **

Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives - Yeah, I guess he lives. Often considered one of the best sequels, it left me cold. It felt like a different studio picked up the reigns. This edition has a vastly different tone from the first five films, and the gory kills just aren't there.  But I guess the MPAA is to blame for that. *

Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood - They throw a psychic girl into the mix, and tack on a ridiculous ending, which puts Jason into the same scenario as the end of the last movie--making this one irrelevant. On the plus side the tone of the first five movies is back. And for you gay fans out there, this one is known as FriGAY the 13th for the high number of gay actors in the movie. *

Friday the 13th, Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan - The tone is still there, as Jason stows away on a cruise ship bound for New York. Most of the action is on the boat, and there are some great scenes. But it feels like the series is running on fumes. And that ending. What the hell? *1/2

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday - Speaking of Hell, New Line Cinema took over the franchise from Paramount here, and it is very, very obvious this was made by others. Some of the feel is still there, and the film is undeniably fun. Adds a bunch of new story elements that wreck any (already strained) continuity from the first 8 films. Also ignores the end of Part VIII. Fun anyway. And it sets up the movie after the next one.**1/2

Jason X - Tenth installment puts Jason in space, with no context to the rest of the storyline. Continuity-wise has no home, and is akin to a comic book "elseworlds" or "imaginary story." Has its fun parts, but utterly skippable. But the cryogenic scene? Priceless. *1/2

Freddy Vs. Jason - I loved it. They took the monster from the best horror franchise (though it had run out of steam) and the worst (but still loved), and pitted them against each other. Truly, one of the best outings for this type of movie in a long, long time. That said, not the least bit scary. Plays like gory comedy. ***

Friday the 13th (Remake) - I was right that they couldn't really mess up the remake. It's a hoot. The twist--apparently--is that most of the characters you kinda want to see dead. And Jason is given a much heftier back-story. Unfortunately, they still don't explain what happened that made Mrs. Voorhees think he died when he didn't. Still, I'd put this in the top three with the first two installments. I don't know if there will be a part 2 (actually XIII), but I'm game. ***

Mini Movie Review: Final Destination 5

The Final Destination series is one of my favorite movie franchises, horror or not. The first one was one in a series of "teen stars in horror film" movies with a poster of four or five kids in a row with a logo. It was in there with Scream and Urban Legends and countless others. But FD had a special something. A sadistic glee, an inventiveness with which the victims were dispatched.

And then, the awesomeness was cemented with Final Destination 2. The plane crash disaster of part one was surpassed with an incredible freeway pileup! And the batch of nubile teens was offed! Right at the beginning! FD2 upped the ante by playing by part 1's rules, and making it better by linking all of part 2's characters with part 1's. Everything hooked together and made sense, and kablooey, a cool ending!

Then came part 3, which--unfortunately for me-involved amusement rides. I come from the industry, so I know that the roller coaster disaster in that installment couldn't happen that way. But undoubtedly, none of the disasters is 100% authentic, so, whatever. Part 3 didn't hook into the first two much, but is better to me than it first appeared. It is quite enjoyable for what it is.

Part four was entitled THE Final Destination, and by that moniker, you would think it was the last one. It was also in 3D, and heavily promoted as the final installment. It was fun--involving a NASCAR racetrack-type disaster. I'm a binocularly-challenged person, with the unfortunate inability to see 3D movies. But I liked FD4, just the same. It was better than 3, less than 2, about the same as 1. But who could know there would be a part 5?

I  should have known. I've been through, Friday the 13th V: A New Beginning. I've seen, Amityville II: The Beginning. I've seen Wes Craven's New Nightmare. I'm sure there'll even be Psycho: What You Really Didn't Know, is That It Started Like This! So, an unremarkably named Final Destination 5 wasn't surprising.
What was surprising, was that the fourth sequel would be as good as the rest of the series, or better. In fact, it's as good part two, perhaps as good as the original.

Horror movies tend to be derivative. And part five can't offer originality. But the special effects, the acting, the surprises? Part five has it in spades. The only flaw for me was the law of diminishing returns. The spectacular opening can't be matched in later set pieces. While I had a lot of fun, the thrills tend to get smaller by half with each dramatic demise. If they had only ended the picture with a dramatic finale on the scale (or 3/5 the scale) with the opening.

My rating: **** of ***** (with a nod to the genre, of course)

Mini Movie Review: Fright Night (2011)

Okay, so one of the things I wanted to do with my vast (now, nearly depleted) Christmas vacation, was to catch up on some movies. I don't get out to the moving pictures much, unless my friend Stupid Monkey Planet entices me out for a brew and a view.  So, one of the 2011 movies I missed was the remake of the classic 80s horror/comedy flick, Fright Night. The original is treasured by folks of my vintage (seventies/eighties pop culture fiends), but it is not--by any stretch--award winning cinema.

Image from Wikipedia

The original Fright Night starred a pre-Herman's Head William Ragsdale, a pre-Married. . .with Children's Amanda Bearse, a pre-gay porn Stephen Geoffreys and a post-Susan Sarandon Chris Sarandon. It was as much humor as horror, and is a pastiche of the 80s. I loved it then, I loved it later, and I. . .kind of. . .like it now. It is simply a product of its era. So, quite rightly, a remake should be of its current era.

Whether it is or not is a question for a future time, and for a student of the twenty-pre-teens. As it is, I quite liked it. Anton Yelchin (2011's Star Trek's Chekov) stars in the Ragsdale role of Charley Brewster. As in the original, Brewster is the unfortunate neighbor of new home owner Jerry Dandridge (Colin Farrell), a vampire. As in the original, Brewster comes to realize Dandridge's real nature with the assistance of his nerdy friend Evil Ed. And Evil Ed gets to live up to his name this time too.

Chris Sarandon, the original sexy vampire.

The new version amps up the effects (the original's were effective the first time, but don't hold up well upon repeated viewings), and has the advantage of almost thirty years in technology. Farrell is at least as sexy as Sarandon (who appears in a cameo), but lacks the subtlety of the original. The change in venue to Las Vegas makes sense, but will not fool a near-native like me. And there is something about modern movie making that simply surpasses the art of the 1980s. But the charm of the original is lacking.

I liked 2011's Fright Night. It even made me jump at least once, matching the original. But will it rate in my lifetime top 100, to be viewed over and over as I age into oblivion? Probably not.

My rating: *** (on a scale from crap to *****, genre always kept firmly in mind)

Movie Review: Scream 1, 2 and 3 Revisited

All images from Wikipedia

Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's much anticipated Scream 4 (or SCRE4M, if you prefer) comes out in a couple of weeks, right before my (gasp!) 45th birthday. As a long-time horror movie junkie, I'm very excited about this. The original Scream was something of a reinvention of a long stagnant movie genre. It influenced nearly every horror movie that has come since, if not within the films themselves, at least in the movie posters and DVD/Blu-ray box art. That lineup of attractive stars in front of a splashy logo, some drippy, bloody and/or torn looking graphic? Scream did that first. It spawned I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend and countless other imitators, many (including Scream itself) with a string of sequels.

What set Scream apart from earlier slasher movies was a subversion of horror movie cliches, a winking "genre savvy"-ness by characters within the film, a writer that was raised on  pop culture (hell, he created Dawson's Creek), a mixture of humor and horror, and the biggest thing of all: known stars. In the old days, horror movies--especially the slasher type--might have a marginally known character actor (Hope Lange, John Saxon, Betsy Palmer), but were mostly stocked with a bunch of unknowns. Your Kevin Bacons and Johnny Depps became well known of course, but nobody knew them when they starred in the first Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, respectively. Scream started the trend of stocking a horror movie with a roster of up-and-coming young (typically very attractive) actors, often from hit teen TV shows.
And all of this new stuff was put into the hands of the very capable Craven, creator of Nightmare and several other standout horror classics.

But Scream was 15 years ago now. All of that novelty has been absorbed and trodden and retreaded to death by now. We've segued through (and passed?) torture porn like Hostel and the endless Saw series. Scream--often thought of as something of a horror parody itself--was parodied in the first of the also endless Scary Movie (which curiously was the working title of Scream) films. Indirectly, Scream is responsible for the horrible stream of "Movie" movies that came after. So the movie that started all of that, and its sequels, are now part of nostalgia, with a patina of prestige and respect, but they've grown rather hazy, at least in my mind. So, I set out this weekend to rewatch them.

I have Netflix on my Blu-ray player. I have the full (expensive) cable setup with HDTV OnDemand movies out the wazoo (HBO, Showtime, Starz, Epix, Vutopia, etc.). In all of that, only one outlet had any of the Scream series, and it was part 3. Way to go, movie programmers. So, I set out to Fry's Electronics, figuring they'd have all three parts, probably with deluxe DVD and Blu-ray sets to commemorate the 15th anniversary and the new sequel. Wrong! After much, much hunting, I found parts 1 and 3 on DVD only for $9.99 apiece. They're collectors editions, I guess, but the director's commentary on part 1 was from 1997, so they're nothing special.

Missing part 2, I decided to try Target. Nothing. I went to Costco. Ditto. I tried Sam's Club. No dice. At Wal-Mart I got a little luckier. They had part 2 on Blu-ray (only) for $15. One copy, neither of the other two movies. I'm a little stunned at the lack of foresight by the movie studio, the stores and the television programmers. Or, maybe the new sequel isn't predicted to drum up much of a buzz? Regardless, I settled in at home after my quest to enjoy the entire (so far) saga. [Here there may be spoilers]

Scream (1996) starts the ball rolling in a seemingly novel (but cribbed from Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic Psycho) way, by killing off the seeming star of the flick early on. Neve Campbell turns out to be the central figure (the last girl, in slasher-speak), and she is aided by bitchy newswoman Courtney Cox and goofy cop, David Arquette. This sets up a sort of triad of stars that runs through all of the films, including the new one.  As in many old 80s slasher pics, the new murders happen one year after another terrible event. Not surprisingly, the events are related in obvious and not so obvious ways. The movie misdirects you into thinking several people could potentially be the killer, and also plainly directs you to doubt yourself. Along the way, several characters comment on the events as though they know that they are in a horror movie. They mostly die anyway. Nothing about the movie hints that there is an inevitible sequel.

Scream 2 (1997) picks up a couple of years later, with Neve's character now in college. Her genre savvy pal (Jamie Kennedy) is there with her, being one of the few to survive the first movie. Neve's got a hotty boyfriend (Jerry O'Connell) and new friends, and she's a budding actress in the college play. And then, suddenly people start dying again, seemingly at the hand of the same ghost-faced killer from the original story. The problem is, the original killer(s) died. Of course, in a horror movie, dead doesn't always mean really dead. Is it the same guy(s)? Is it the new boyfriend? The surviving pal? Goofy cop Dewey? Bitchy reporter Gale? Cotton (Liev Schrieber), the guy who almost got executed when Neve's Sydney character misidentified him? Or someone else? The answer(s) feel a little out of left field, or at least they did on my first viewing. But today, in context with just having watched the first movie, it didn't feel like such a bad fit. Not as good as part one, but pretty good.

Scream 3 (2000) looks and feels different, and indeed it is largely written by a different person. The setting has also changed from small town America to Hollywood. The movie-within-a-movie idea began in part 2, with Stab, a slasher picture based on Courtney Cox's character's tell-all book. Here, Stab 3 is in production, and much of the action takes place at the movie studio, which has rebuilt the original small town on a set. Movie in-jokes abound, such as "Jennifer Jolie" playing a version of Cox's reporter, and being told "sorry it didn't work out with Brad Pitt."  There are new characters, an old character that comes back (sort of) even though he's dead. And the killer still looks the same, but is a different person, that manages to tie in to the rest of the story.  By itself, Scream 3 is an enjoyable movie. But it suffers in comparison to the first two.  Also, Neve Campbell is at best a supporting player in this one, with Arquette and Cox (the latter with an atrocious hairdo) doing the heavy lifting.

Overall, they did a commendable job of tying the three films together. It stretches credulity a little, that the killer in the third movie motivated the killers of the first. Much like Back to the Future Part III, where they managed to create back story that worked, and Saw (from part 2 forward) where it got too convoluted, Scream 3 uses story elements from the first movie, and substantially rewrites what really happened, without contradicting anything. One thing I have to wonder though, is if they ever considered casting Neve's brother, Christian Campbell for the role that Scott Foley played? It would have been a very good fit, but might have given away the ending too easily.

Scream: highly recommended
Scream 2: highly recommended
Scream 3: if you liked the first two

DVD Review: Return of the Living Dead 3 & 4

As usual, when The Other Half is away, if there are no pressing tasks or errands, I watch horror movies. I could use The Walking Dead, AMC's new hit zombie reason as an excuse, but the truth is, I just love them.  A couple of weeks ago, I found a zombie 4-pack DVD in a bargain bin for $5. If you do the math, that's just $1.25 per flick!  It didn't matter how trashy they were,  at that price, who cares?

Image from Wikipedia

The set includes Dead and Gone and Boy Eats Girl (I kid you not), but I elected to watch the two quasi-sequels to the two quasi-sequels to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.  Back in the early 80s, Dan O'Bannon, one of the original guys behind Night decided to make a sequel.  Unfortunately, Romero was making his own, and Day of the Dead--itself a follow-up to Romero's Dawn of the Dead--was released the same year.  So, while Day wasn't a smashing success, it was considered the "official" sequel.  That left Return of the Living Dead to always be considered "unofficial."

It's just as well, because Return was rewritten to include a healthy amount of campy humor, rendering the finished product very different in tone from Night. Still, it was very entertaining, fairly successful, and started a chain of sequels of its own.  Thus, the awkwardly titled Return of the Living Dead, Part II followed.  Part II was confusing, using two of the stars of the first installment in different roles. But it did well enough to lead to a few more belated sequels.

Return of the Living Dead 3 (or III if you prefer) came out in 1993, and was wholly different from the zombie films of Romero.  As in the previous two installments, the dead were reanimated by a toxin known as Trioxin gas.  Once exposed, the corpses would rise, and--new to the genre--would screech, "BRAINS!!!"  And they meant it too, eating brains right through the skull as if chomping on an apple.  Part 3 lacks a lot of the humor of the first two, but the tone is definitely lighter, and not as serious as Romero's films. For one thing, all of the dead are not rising all over the world, so the horror of Armageddon isn't present.  Also, in the Return series, living people who are exposed to Trioxin manage to hold on to their humanity for a while, as they are zombified.

In Part 3, this is taken to absurd lengths, with the lead actor's girlfriend dying early. He foolishly reanimates her, and she spends the rest of the picture fighting the urge to chomp on his noggin.  She finds that pain helps fend of the hunger, so she cuts, pierces and otherwise mutilates herself.  Luckily, she's got an eye for fashion, and so her body modifications just make her look like an extreme punk rocker.  The film is okay as these things go, very nineties, very lightweight.  Only Kent McCord is around as a name actor, but most acquit themselves fairly well. There are no real scares though, and the gore is rather uninspired.

Image from Wikipedia

Part 4 drops the numbering, and just calls itself Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis. It was made in 2005, so it's surprising they didn't just tweak the script and leave off the ROTLD moniker, but I guess it might have made them a few more dollars this way.  This time, it's Trioxin 5, and military scientist Peter Coyote (wearing a ridiculous rictus grin throughout) hijacks a supply that is inexplicably sitting in the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant.

Coyote's nephew (the parents died a year earlier) and his friends go to rescue their friend, who has been captured--for no discernable reason--by the government research facility Coyote works for.  These rebellious teens (they ride motorcycles!) dress up like miners (!) and infiltrate the facility with the help of a classmate who works there at nights in security. With me so far? You could be excused for thinking this doesn't make sense.

As the kids get deeper and deeper into the facility, they discover stranger and stranger military experiments, mostly centered around zombies. The military wants to weaponize them of course (a nod to the previous entries).  This includes cloned zombie babies (!!!) and Star Trek: The Next Generation BORG zombies. I'm not making that up.  And they're the lead kid's dead parents!!!  Along the way, several of the kids get eaten, at least one gets zombified, and a preteen actually gets his cranium munched. Kudos for that one at least.  The film was clearly filmed in Romania or nearby, as several actors have accents that give them away, even one of the "American" teenagers.  Again, nothing here is scary, and some of the "rules" seem to have been chucked when it comes to "how to kill a zombie."  There are also too many cliches here, from crawling through air ducts to the repeated problem of guns running out of ammo. Apparently, there is a Part 5 out there which features some of the same cast, so it ain't over yet.

If you find the 4-for-$5 set and you're into this sort of thing, go for it. But don't look to hard or make a special trip or anything.

Return of the Living Dead 3:  Recommended only for zombie fans
Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis:  Not recommended at all, unless you get it in a box set

Movie Review: Hit and Run

Image from Wikipedia

Every couple of weeks, I try to use the On Demand feature of my cable box, to help justify the cost of my exorbitant monthly fee. Every week, the various channels have a helpful "Just In!" listing, but usually there isn't a lot that interests me. So, I'll drill down the list in the hopes that something jumps out at me. This weekend, I took a chance on a 2008 movie called Hit and Run, which was listed as a thriller.  The synopsis said it was about a girl who goes out drinking, and then goes home, only to find (later) that there is a man impaled on the bumper of her Jeep. Okay, I'm in! (Here there may be spoilers.)

I used to drive a Jeep, and the girl in the movie drove a similar (though older one), making the setup very relatable.  I don't make it a habit to drive drunk--quite the opposite, actually--but in the nine years I owned the Jeep, did I ever drive when I probably shouldn't have?  Nothing jumps immediately to mind, but probably. Luckily, I never hit anything in such a state. In fact, I never hit anything at all at any time in those nine years. Guess I'm due.

Anyway, the film starts out with the girl's night at the bar, and then the long (very long) drive to her house. The credit sequence is very splashy, which is weird. And the "near miss" she thinks she had along the way, and the unobstructed headlight spray from her Jeep made her unknown "hit and run" rather implausible.  The girl's behavior afterward to cover up her actions are also a little over-the-top.

Things calm down a bit, and her marginally ethical boyfriend decides to help her. And then he doesn't, then does again.  Boyfriend gets iced by the presumed dead victim, and hereafter, the film makes no sense whatsoever.  We find out via a news report that the victim was bipolar. So is the movie. It veers wildly from scenes of relative--if tense--calm, to outrageously manic.  Our bipolar victim becomes mindless killer, seemingly indestructible. He is also somehow all-knowing, aware of the girl's identity, address, and phone numbers.

Countless wild rides in the Jeep go to-and-fro, with the victim and the girl alternately having the advantage. Several return trips are made to the scene of the crime, and my finger hovered over the "stop" button many times. I should've gone with that impulse.  There was no one to root for in this movie, not the girl, her boyfriend, the victim or even his family.  The girl turned out to be somewhat indestructible (and bonkers) herself, surviving a severe bite, multiple stabbings, and a long ride strapped to her own bumper (which was rammed at least once into another car).  To top it off, it was obvious that the ending was trimmed to exclude the survival of the victim, just by the slow zoom to the one good eye he had left. His eye didn't open, but I'm positive they filmed it.

I thought when I started typing this review that there might be something coming that would tie this film together. I thought they might explain how the girl was found out. Nope.  The movie just gets worse and worse, and at times reminded me of the abysmally bad Truth or Dare? A Critical Madness, the low-rent, cult 80s slasher movie.  This one doesn't even merit "so bad, it's good" status.

Avoid at all costs.

DVD Review: George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

Image from Wikipedia

I've been a zombie fan ever since I watched George Romero's Night of the Living Dead from the back of the family station wagon at the drive in. I was probably eight or nine, and Mom and Dad thought I was asleep in the back after the first feature ended.  I was of course freaked out, but I seriously dug it!  I never did catch a Romero Zombie flick in its first run.  But with the advent of home video, I've caught them all, some in multiple formats, over the years.

The original Dawn of the Dead, the first sequel, was a horror masterpiece. Even jaded critics like Leonard Maltin thought so.  Day of the Dead followed, and while it was initially considered a disappointment, it holds up pretty well today. After that, there were a series of spoofs, remakes, sequels-in-name-only, and imitators like 28 Days Later.  The remake of Dawn of the Dead was alright, but the original was so good, it couldn't be improved upon.  Shaun of the Dead turned out to be both a great zombie flick, and a fantastically funny comedy.  And then, finally, Romero made another official sequel, Land of the Dead.


Oddly, that sequel does not stick with me at all. I remember at the time being let down, and not feeling the viewing experience was worth it. Maybe with zero expectations, I should rewatch it, to refresh my memory.  Anyway, when trying to fill up my Amazon.com shopping cart, in order to score free shipping, I discovered that there was another zombie flick out there, Diary of the Dead.  Despite being disappointed with the previous offering, I decided it was worth the $14.

So, was it? Yes and no.  First of all, the style of the film--shot from the perspective of a film student--has been done to death.  It's a confining format, forcing the story to be told from the cameraman's (or camera men's) point of view. This can stretch credulity (much like in Quarantine), when no sane person would be so obsessed with capturing video when the world is falling apart. But if you're going to use this framing device, you can't tell the story unless somebody is filming it.  My suggestion for future filmmakers using this contrivance:  let us see through the lens, sure, but occasionally come outside the first-person perspective.  I think we can handle the shift.

 The story is interesting, putting the action at the beginning of the zombie infestation. This assumes that Diary is contemporaneous with Night, and possibly Dawn.  We'll just have to ignore the old 60s and 70s cars and hairdos in the originals.  Because Diary is chock-full of modern touches, from the cameras being used, to the internet and cell phones.  The zombie effects are good, as they usually are in Romero films. There are scares, and plenty of grossouts. The on-screen dissolving of a zombie's head via acid was particularly cool.

The acting--never a hallmark of the genre--is perhaps a notch above some of the other entries.  There are a few good lookin' actors, both male and female, to give everyone a little eye candy. This film spends more time than any previous entry showing us the world-wide scope of the zombie epidemic, via media and YouTube. But the global scale of the problem may be the film's undoing.  As in each of the sequels, the outcome is so hopeless. Each time, our batches of survivors gets thinned out while attempting to outlast the zombies. Eventually, they get winnowed down to just a couple, with no hope in sight.  Perhaps if the scale of the problem weren't so big, there might be some sort of hope, a refuge or something for the characters to get to.

All in all, it's a decent movie, for all of its familiarity and the contrivances.  The other main trope they use is voice-over narration of one of the survivors. If that sort of framing bugs you, you've been warned. If you're a George Romero fan, absolutely, give it a spin.  But it doesn't come close to the first three installments, Dawn of the Dead being the pick of the litter.  Amazingly, while writing this review, I found out that there is yet another sequel, released last year, called Survival of the Dead.  Amazing the stuff you miss when you stop reading Fangoria.  


This is the kind of movie where it doesn't matter what the reviews are. You will watch it or not, depending upon your attraction to these kinds of movies.  I suspect that even though I can't remember Land, and only halfway liked Diary, I'll still be checking out Survival.  No sense fighting it. . .

DVD Review: My Bloody Valentine

Image from Wikipedia

"Happy f**king Valentine's Day!" That line, spoken by veteran horror/schlock star, Tom Atkins, sets the tone for the quality of dialogue in the remake of My Bloody Valentine.  After a montage of animated newspaper images and voice overs of a mine disaster flash by (the film was originally in 3D, made painfully clear by the staging of many shots), the film starts out with the bad guy escaping, and then to a bunch of kids partying in a mine shaft.

You read that right. In order to have the killings take place in a mine, they've got a literal underground party going on here.  The ridiculousness of that aside, I've got to say, they didn't stretch out the film before getting to the gore. At less than ten minutes in, the body count is at least to a dozen.

Image from FanSiter

The key to enjoying a film like this, is to go in with low to zero expectations. And by "film like this," I mean the string of remakes of classic horror films of the 70s and 80s. By the time they got to My Bloody Valentine, they'd reached sub-classic status. It was in the C- to D-list range in the slasher pantheon. I'm expecting Terror Train to be made next.

Anyway, the first round of bloodiness centers around a demented, seemingly indestructible (like Jason Voorhees and Michael Meyers) coal miner. He doesn't seem to have motivation, but since when do movie serial killers have any real motivation? Not here. Nothing beyond typical horror movie psychosis.  Every single cliched slasher trope is here: whimpering girls unable to keep quiet near the killer, characters doing what no human would do in those circumstances, the ability for the killer to be everywhere at once, false scares, running through the woods. . . Bouncing boobies, even full-frontal female and full-backal male nudity. The stuff intended for 3D is a throwback to Friday the 13th Part III, right down to the eyeball gag.  And like any Part I in a rebooted series, it is of course left open for a sequel.

But you know what? It kinda works.  For what it is--and it is an 80's-style slasher movie--it's pretty good. It's certainly better than any of the late Friday or even Halloween sequels.  There is some genuine suspense, a shock here and there, buckets of blood, a body-count to rival any in the genre, and it manages to keep you guessing, when these things are usually fairly obvious.  Add to that capable acting by (most) of the actors, particularly Kerr Smith (Dawson's Creek), Jaime King and--hubba, hubba--Jensen Ackles (Supernatural), and you're in for a fun time. Provided that you don't expect any more from it than what it is.

Recommended (for what it is)

Movie Review: Carriers

Image from Wikipedia

I've continued on my obscure movie quest, watching one or two a week on the Cox On Demand. This week, I picked Carriers, because it starred Chris Pine (Capt. Kirk of the new Star Trek), and the whole end-of-the-world genre has always been a favorite. It also co-stars Emily VanCamp, one of the stars of Brothers & Sisters, and Lou Taylor Pucci (from no other project I've ever heard of).

The film starts after a world-wide epidemic has already claimed most of its victims, and centers upon four survivors, Pine and Pucci (as brothers), Piper Perabo as Pine's girlfriend, and VanCamp as fellow traveller whose origins aren't explained.  The setup is not original, having been used for countless genre stories, most notably Stephen King's The Stand. Since we've been spared the actual horror of the plague--save for a few flashbacks--this is basically a road picture, with a vague destination in mind.

The brothers have memories of their favorite childhood vacation spot on the beach, and decide that's where they should go. Along the way, they reluctantly pick up a man (Chris Meloni of Law & Order: SVU) and his daughter, which waylays them a bit. There are of course also stops for gas, presumably food and water, and run-ins with other survivors.  The picture is basically a suspense/thriller, with hints of horror and just a touch of gore.

Image from BSCReview

I enjoyed it. Van Camp and Pucci are both quite good, with a jaded innocence about them, and obvious emotional pain mixed with practical ruthlessness.  Pine is quite frankly good in everything I've seen him in.  So the acting brings the quality of the movie up a couple of notches.  Story wise, there are a couple of areas where the movie started to feel like The Happening (and if you click that link, you'll find my review of the worst mainstream movie of all time), but never falls all the way into the ridiculousness of that film.

Ultimately, the ending is bound to blow.  A happy ending is almost out of the question, because it would feel forced and phony.  As in George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (and its sequels and prequel) or 28 Days Later (and sequel), you're pretty much guaranteed to have an ambiguous, open ending.  As with any road picture, the story is really about getting there, and once you're there, where do you go?  Because of this, I can't give the movie my full endorsement.  It's well done, and if you are a fan of any of the actors or sibling writing/directing teams (in this case Àlex Pastor and David Pastor), by all means, check it out.  As a lazy Sunday time waster, it isn't bad either. But in the scheme of things, I can only say it's only slightly. . .


Recommended

Movie Review: Sex Drive

Image from Wikipedia.com

I'm not exactly the teenage sex comedy target audience.  So what the heck was I doing watching Sex Drive (Unrated Edition)?  Well, it has Seth Green (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Robot Chicken) in it.  I figure if he'd be in it, it might just be worthwhile.  But it could just be crap. Which is it? A little from column A and a little from column B.

The unrated version features a funny intro by the producer/writers, reading (intentionally badly) a disclaimer about the film.  They warn us to watch the theatrical version, and only to come back for the unrated stuff later. The reason is quickly apparent.  This is more than a "director's cut." It includes footage usually saved for the special features of the DVD: improvs, throwaway jokes, cutups from the cast, sequential takes, the lot.  But since I doubt I'll watch the film twice, I'm glad I got to see this version.  It kind of plays like a live-action cartoon.

It is difficult to make an intentionally stupid movie, and still make it funny. But this one ain't half bad.  It's surely better than Fear Dot Com, which I watched and reviewed earlier today.  The acting is decent, the story is serviceable, and some of the jokes actually made me laugh out loud.  Most surprising, there were assorted storylines that weren't forgotten at the end. They managed to tie up things they could have just written off, and a couple of them were actually surprising (and funny). Where Fear Dot Com was merely pointless, Sex Drive is pointless fun.

Recommendation: Turn your brain off and enjoy.

Mini DVD Review: Fear Dot Com

Image from Wikipedia

Why "mini?" Because this is all I need to say:  Fear Dot Com is a pointless, convoluted, headache-inducing, mess of a movie that isn't worth anyone's time, ever. Not for free, not even if the only other things to watch are The 700 Club, The Nanny, Cop Rock and According to Jim. The acting is odd, the photography is drunken and dark, the plot is threadbare, even the soundtrack sucks.  Play Scrabble by yourself.  Vaccum under your sofa cushions. Count the kibble in your dog's dish. Clean out your freezer. Do anything else besides watch this festering pustule of a movie.

Avoid at all costs.

Movies to Avoid: The Stepfather and Wedding Crashers

Last weekend, I watched a movie that I'd almost completely forgotten about by the start of the week. And today I watched another one that I probably would forget if I wasn't writing about it now.  Neither picture was awful, both were shot, edited and presented well, both had acting that was above average, even well above.  But both were utterly by-the-numbers for their genre, completely without originality or surprises.

Images from Wikipedia

Wedding Crashers is an Owen Wilson/Vince Vaughn comedy, and if you've seen one, you've really seen them all. It got such great buzz, I thought it might be a notch above.  Like The Hangover, Crashers is vastly overrated.  There are a few chuckles to be had, I suppose. And I'd watch Bradley Cooper in just about anything  (ie., Hangover).  Still, the whole movie is underwhelming.  It starts with the premise that these two overgrown frat boys love to crash weddings on the weekend, creating cover stories and ingratiating themselves in order to get laid.  I'm not saying nobody does this, but I can't imagine it's a very common pastime, particularly for Wilson and Vaughn, who aren't kids anymore (thankfully, the movie references their encroaching age).

Of course, our boys end up falling for their prey, and (less than) hilarity ensues.  As the family figures out the charade, it appears the crashers may get their comeuppance. Instead, the douchey Cooper character gets his. By the end--and I doubt it's possible to spoil this for you--everything works out for our heroes, and both get to keep the girl, despite their deception.  Maybe if they'd added Paul Rudd, Michael Cera or one of those funny looking guys with a "Jew 'fro," this could have been better, but I doubt it.

The Stepfather is a movie of a whole different type. The film is a remake of an old 80s low-budget cheapie (but cult favorite), about a deranged man who is a family crasher.  He targets women who've recently been divorced or widowed, and tries to supplant the husband/father.  He's on a quest for the perfect family, and when things start to turn sour, he gets very unpleasant.  The original character was played by Terry O'Quinn (John Locke on Lost), to very creepy effect. The new version is played by Dylan Walsh (Sean MacNamara on Nip\Tuck), and he does a fine job.  I just kept noticing his acting, being so familiar with his previous character.  I also had no surprises, having seen the original a couple of times.  I knew his motivation going in, and the film hews pretty closely to the original.

Image from Ace Showbiz

The male protagonist, Penn Badgley, is the potential stepson, and he's about six years too old for the part.  His girlfriend, played by Amber Heard, has the same age issue, but is at least then age-appropriate for Penn. Anyway, both are more than capable actors--very good, actually--and very easy on the eyes. If you aren't attracted to one of them (or both?), you may need to consult a doctor.  Eye candy aside, the movie just doesn't seem to have any reason for being. It isn't scary enough to be horror, isn't bloody enough to be gore, and isn't suspenseful enough to be a thriller.  Despite all the obvious talent involved, I just can't recommend it.

UPDATE:  I've noted in several earlier reviews that when I watch seemingly any two movies, there is almost always some sort of link between the two.  In addition to the fact that both plots center on characters who insinuate themselves into people's lives, there is something else.  In both films, there is a gay subplot that serves very little purpose.  In the case of Wedding Crashers, it is the twitchy, artist brother of one of the "target" women.  He's creepy and unbalanced, and the humor derived from the subplot is sketchy and borderline homophobic. In The Stepfather, the prospective wife's sister is clearly a lesbian, with a long-term partner, though this isn't stated in dialog, really.  The subplot serves no obvious purpose, and the fact that the two women are gay is rather offhand; incidental to the story.  I have no problem with this actually, and think it is rather refreshing. After all, most families have gay members, and their sexuality is almost never relevant to the family's day-to-day lives.  So kudos to the movie makers for that.

DVD Review: Wrong Turn 2: Dead End

Images from Wikipedia

There have been several movies I've popped into the player, where I had high expectations, and was tremendously disappointed. The Happening was one of the worst offenders.  So, most often, I try to keep my expectations realistic, to prevent myself from disappointment.  With this weekend's selection, Wrong Turn 2: Dead End, I went in with zero expectations at all. And you know what? It was a rollicking, good time!

The first edition of Wrong Turn was your typical slice 'n' dice, starring Greenlee Gazette favorite, Eliza Dushku (of Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse).  It was a fun movie, and didn't pretend to be anything more than it was.  It left enough of an impression on me that when I saw the sequel in the bargain bin for $5, I thought, "Why not?"  This one doesn't feature Dushku, but carries on the theme of the first one, namely that there is a family of mutated freaks living in backwoods West Virginia, genetically deformed by years of toxic waste from an old abandoned paper mill.

Apparently, being an ugly mutant makes you murderous too, because anyone who wanders into their woods gets brutally (and usually creatively) murdered.  The first film chronicled a bunch of nubile youngsters who made a wrong turn, and ended up in mutantland.  This one features the cast and crew of a Survivor-type reality show.  It does feature a wrong turn of sorts by the first character we meet, Kimberly Caldwell, played by. . .Kimberly Caldwell.  Kim makes an impressive entrance, as a Hollywood diva, stuck in Hooterville.  Things don't go very well for her. 

The other name star in the film is Henry Rollins, jar-headed front man of Black Flag and pop culture renegade.  He plays an ex-marine, and current reality show host.  He looks badass, he acts badass, and as corny as I'm sure it is intended to be, it works.  The rest of the cast is capable, though sometimes just barely.  It is the camera work that shines here, as well as the brilliantly nasty special effects. If you're tired of horror movies that skimp on the gore, guts and gushers, this movie will bring all that and more.  Buckets of blood. Barrels, in fact. 

There isn't much about Wrong Turn 2 that is original.  Besides being a sequel, it covers territory that we've been to before in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, The Hills Have Eyes series, and countless others.  Most of the horror movie cliches are there, from the jump scare, to the gratuitous sex scenes, to gross outs like unintentional cannibalism.  Henry Rollins even enters Arnold Schwarzenegger territory with his little post-carnage quips.  But many of these tropes are subverted too.  The black guy doesn't die first (or even second), Caldwell's departure is unexpected and very well done (think Janet Leigh in Psycho, if George Romero directed), and you can't ever predict which characters are going to make it. I was surprised by at least three different characters being killed off that I expected to make it. 

Wrong Turn 2 won't ever be a bold-faced entry on any of these actors' resumes, but it is most certainly more enjoyable than 2/3 of the horror movies on my video shelf (of which there are dozens), and tops the original.  Sorry if I get your expectations up too high, and subvert my own premise, but for me this one is: Highly recommended (but only for its intended audience, of course)

DVD Review: Bug and Baghead

Today I decided to pull two movies from my over-stocked video library that I had not previously watched. I stopped at the Bs, selecting Baghead (an "official selection" of the Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals, whatever that means) and Bug starring Ashley Judd.  I expected Baghead to be odd, and Bug to be scary.  Both were just odd.

I wrote a DVD review earlier this weekend, and commented that no matter what two movies I watch, there is almost always a connecting link between the two. I searched for what it might be in these two disparate selections, and only found this: the blurbs and descriptions on the DVD boxes are woefully fiction-based.  Let's start with Baghead:

Images from Wikipedia

". . .a wildly funny parody of low-budget horror cinema. . ."--David D'Arcy SCREEN DAILY

Wildly funny? No, not one laugh to be had. Parody of low-budget? How about just low-budget. Horror cinema? Was this supposed to be scary?

"The funniest spoof of horror film of the year!"

I don't know what "horror film of the year" was in 2006, but if this is a spoof of it, they failed miserably.

"Beware of Baghead"

Yes, by all means, beware!

"A really, really good film."--Don R. Lewis, FILM THREAT

In what world? Baghead is a meandering, almost plotless film, ostensibly about a group of friends (two sort-of couples) who go to a cabin in the woods to write a feature film that they're all going to star in, and become famous.  The two men, chunky Steve Zissis and hunky Ross Partridge, are good enough actors but hardly A-list material. The two women, Greta Gerwig and Elise Muller, are just terrible.  While at the cabin, one of the girls has a dream of a stalker in a bag mask, and they decide to turn that into their movie idea. So apparently, a Friday the 13th ripoff is their ticket to fame! But maybe it wasn't a dream? It really doesn't matter, because finding out is a tedious, mind-numbing (and thanks to the camera work, dizzying) affair.  Baghead is credited as "A Duplass Brothers Movie," which leads me to wonder, is that bragging, or is it a warning?

Bug's blurbs aren't much better:

"Very possibly William Friedkin's best movie. A stunning performance by Ashley Judd!"--Richard Schickel, TIME.com

No, The Exorcist is very possibly Friedkin's best. This one is not.  And while Ashley Judd did give this performance her all, "stunning" wouldn't be my adjective. "Insane" or "screaming" would be good.

"One of the most disturbing horror movies imaginable"--Stephen Schaefer, BOSTON HERALD

Disturbing? No, confusing. Horror movie? It wasn't scary, not one bit.

"Searingly intense"--Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

I respect Ebert's opinion, and can only assume this one is taken out of context. It is intense in parts, but that tension comes at the expense of a very, very odd plot.

Bug is a much more mainstream film, at least from its actors (including Harry Connick, Jr.), its director, and such.  The talent behind and in front of the camera is not the problem in this one.  If the film were billed as a psychological drama, I may have gone in with a different mindset.  It was billed as a horror film by the director of The Exorcist, and blurbed as better than that!  No way, no how.  To review it much beyond what I've said would be to "spoil" it, were such a thing possible. Let's just say it doesn't go where you expect, there isn't much about it that is pleasant (beyond the nudity of the lead actors, though this sadly doesn't include Connick), and it will leave you rather unsatisfied at the end.

Another unifying theme between Baghead and Bug:  during both films, there was a point where I contemplated just ejecting the DVD part-way in. I should have.  Verdict:  Avoid both.

DVD Review: Valentine's Day and Shortbus

There's a strange thing that happens when I watch two movies on the same day, maybe it happens to you too. No matter how different the two films, in genre or in tone, there is almost always some common element between them.  Now, I couldn't have picked two movies with seemingly less in common.  Shortbus is an independent "art" film, with the most explicit sex scenes I've ever seen outside of porn.  Which is not to say that I uh. . .watch porn. Ahem.  And Valentine's Day is a romantic comedy from Garry Marshall.  Shortbus features a largely unknown cast, and Valentine's Day is chock full of major A-list stars.

But both films feature sprawling casts with seemingly no connecting link, until somehow, all of the storylines overlap.  Both have most of the storylines that are mostly tied up at the end, with some ending happily, some sad, and others left up in the air, or answered in a surprising way.  And both feature a character who likes to take Polaroid snapshots of other characters in the film.  That's quite a bit in common, and it has to be the tenth time something like that has happened without planning it.  But aside from those similarities, the movies are vastly different experiences.

Images from Wikipedia

Shortbus is not for everybody, and if you're one of those it isn't for, you'll know it within the first couple of minutes. The opening scene is an inter-woven montage of most of the major characters having full-on, down and dirty sex. Not "Hollywood" sex, but actual sex of the non-simulated kind. There are things going on there, of both the heterosexual and the homosexual variety that I can nearly guarantee you've never seen in a "mainstream" film before.  Oddly enough, the scene is there to introduce you to the characters, and sets the film in motion.  The cast of unknowns is surprisingly good, and attractive in an unconventional, non-Hollywood way.  The film was written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell, the guy behind Hedwig and the Angry Inch, so it would be fair to think that it was a gay film, but it isn't exclusively that.  But if you have a problem with "the gay" you're going to hate this movie.  Me? I was pleasantly surprised. I was engaged until the end, and impressed too.  The extra element of sex was interestingly handled, and strangely enough, not always sexy. 

I've seen a lot of artsy-fartsy films, and as many leave me cold as impress me. This one? I liked it. So if you're looking for a "different" film, you're open minded (or you are tired of only the ladies being buck naked in the movies), take it for a spin. Just make sure there are no kids, prudes or squeamish people in the room with you.

Valentine's Day isn't my usual kind of flick either, landing squarely in the "chick flick" category. The Other Half eats that stuff up, and he caught it while it ran in theaters, and had great things to say about it.  Immediately after, the negative reviews started rolling in. Its Rotten Tomatoes ranking is 18% fresh (that ain't good). So when we popped in the Blu-ray this afternoon, I wasn't expecting much.

But you know what? It ain't bad. Not even half-bad. It basically works like a Love Boat episode on land, with several love stories being told at once, intercut with each other. Like Love Boat, the storylines are mildly amusing, a little cheesy, a bit predictible, and maybe told a little too quickly (the story spans one day, February 14) to be realistic. Unlike Love Boat, there are many more stories, and we're not talking D-list Hollywood has beens. We're talking Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, Jessica Alba, Bradley Cooper, Julia Roberts, Patrick Dempsey, Kathy Bates, Queen Latifah, Anne Hathaway, Eric Dane, Jamie Foxx, and that is just for starters.  The movie is longish, but fairly breezy. The stories are light, but just engaging enough to keep your interest til the end. And if you've avoided spoilers, there are a couple of storylines that resolve in unexpected ways.  My verdict?  Harmless fun, go in with low expectations, and you'll like it just fine.

And by the way, Shortbus' Rotten Tomatoes ranking? 65% fresh (that's pretty damned good for a film like this).

Movie Reviews: Halloween, Halloween II and Saw VI

All images from Wikipedia

While the cat's away, it's movie day!  The Other Half is on a weekend two-day trip, so I got it in my head today to catch up on some horror movies (something TOH is not into).  I thought I'd check out Hollywood Video for some used DVDs, only to be surprised to see it out of business.  Sad. I started frequenting that store shortly after moving to Las Vegas 16 years ago; I even bought some LaserDiscs there. Poot.  So, I went to one of the Hollywoods that has been converted (due to some corporate divorce) to a "Mark's Video."  Their selection kinda blew, with the better vids not on the "on sale" list.

So I went someplace I had previously sworn off of: Blockbuster.  I will not be surprised to see that video store go under too, because it is a drastically different place than it used to be. The store seems to be a haphazard mixture of new, used and rentals with disorganized shelves. Not pretty, but they had a good selection!  They had a 5 for $20 group with only one movie I liked, so I moved to the 3 for $20 stuff. There I found Halloween, Halloween II (both Rob Zombie remakes), Saw VI, Zombieland, Bruno and Capitalism: A Love Story.  The latter two were just to fill out the 3/$20 deal.  I watched the first three today.  Warning: Here there may be spoilers.

I didn't expect much from any of those movies. They are just like comfort food for me, cheesy and fun.  And I'd been wanting to see them all for some time.  The results were a mixed bag.

Saw VI is exactly what you'd expect it to be.  More death traps, more Tobin Bell (even though his character died several installments ago) and a convoluted yet consistent storyline woven through all six films.  With each new chapter, credulity gets strained more. I mean, how much time did this dying, vengeful serial killer have to plan out all of these traps anyway?  But kudos to the makers for keeping exactly the same vibe, look and feel of the other films.  The traps still squick me out, and the tension is there.  It may not be logical that Costas Mandylor and Shawnee Smith's characters would continue Jigsaw's plans out (that's a lot of work, even if you like murdering people!).  If you like any of parts I - V, recommended.

Rob Zombie's Halloween is the last of the big horror remakes that I've gotten around to.  Like Friday the 13th, Last House on the Left, A Nightmare on Elm Street (and many also-rans), this one is part remake, part prequel, part homage.  And they got it mostly right.  I'm not a big fan of the long-haired, white trash 10-year old Michael or his pre-story.  It was too long, and hardly justifies become a mindless killer.  Lots of kids have it bad.  I felt like they were giving us a reason to sympathize with Michael Myers, but how can you do that when he kills everyone he comes into contact with, friend or foe?  For me, slasher films work best when at least some of the deaths come to characters who sort of deserve it.  And now that I think about it, there were a couple of those, but there were some that just seemed unnecessary and random.  It's an okay redo, but I can't say that it improved on the original.  For genre fans and Halloween completists, recommended.

I'd already heard bad things about Halloween II, and even saw it at the library, but elected to wait until after I'd seen Part I to watch it.  Among the things it had going for it were that it (much like the original Halloween II) retained the storyline and many characters/actors from the first part.  It plays like an extended version of part one, and is internally consistent. That's saying something for this genre.  But the film tries to shoehorn in elements that are outside of the traditional Myers mythology (as strained as it eventually got), and lifted the "psychic connection" between Myers and his sister from Halloween 5 (which also starred Danielle Harris, who's now been in parts 4 and 5 of the original, and I and II of the remakes).  There are too many dream sequences (particularly a long one at the beginning), and the characters are somewhat unappealing.  It's not a total washout, but I can't strongly vouch for it either.  For Halloween completists only.

DVD Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

Images from source, X-Entertainment



EDITOR'S NOTE: I started writing this post in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I decided to watch A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge right after the Betty White episode of Saturday Night Live. And then a funny thing happened. I was alternatively watching the DVD and typing my review, and I damned near fell asleep.  So, I saved my spot on both and hit the hay. Today, upon reflection, I'm not sure I know how to finish the write-up.  But I also didn't want to throw it away after all that typing. So what I'm going to do is tack on this prologue, followed by a quick epilogue, and then a link to a much better review! How's that for having your cake and eating it too?

ORIGINAL POST:

Inspired by the new "reboot" of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, I decided to re-watch the first sequel to the original movie. The movie has long been considered to be the worst of the sequels, and has also been assigned to be the gayest horror movie ever.  I'm inclined to agree with the latter, but not with the former.

While part 2 is not on par with 3 or 4, (and the less said about 5 and 6, the better), it isn't bad. In fact, much of the feel of the original is present here.  And while it is absolutely skippable in the whole scheme of the Nightmare franchise (part 3 picks up the story after part 1), it is still a pretty good movie.

It must be a challenge for writers and actors in a Part 2 of any franchise that wasn't intended to have a sequel. They've got to keep the vibe of the original, without overly rehashing it, or betraying it. And they will hopefully make it better.  Part 2 doesn't make it better, but it doesn't trash it either.  The acting for one thing is well above average. The writing takes the plot a little far astray from the original--Freddy can be supernatural in the real world?--but the feel of the original is still there, in my opinion for the last time in the series. Part 3 set up a whole new direction in both look and feel.  Sidenote: you could argue that without part 2 there never would have been a franchise. It made lots of money, inspiring the studio (and Wes Craven) to pull out the stops for the third chapter. It also continued the iconography with the house, which carried on through most of them.

Mark Patton is the protagonist, Jesse, in this one. Which alone is a strange choice in a horror movie. The "last girl" is a horror movie cliche that has lasted far beyond the vintage of this picture.  So casting a young man in the part is right away a unique way to go.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with Patton as an actor--he's very good--but much has been made over the years of his androgyny. What? Really? Why?

He's not buff like Grady, Jesse's best friend, but he doesn't come off girly to me. Plus, Jesse has a girlfriend in Lisa (Kim Myers), who is probably the best actress the series has seen (possibly excepting Part 3's Patricia Arquette).  Jesse (who lives in the iconic Elm Street house of Part 1's "last girl," Nancy) and Lisa find Nancy's diary, and figure out that Freddy Krueger is haunting Jesse's sleeping and waking life.  Freddy is trying to break through to the real world by taking over Jesse's body.

So while the dreamworld is a little under-represented in this chapter, I don't think--like many fans of the series do--this anomaly is a bad thing. Freddy has tried a variety of ways to keep up his murder spree, so his attempt to take over Jesse's body is just one more thing he tried. But back to the gay stuff (and yes, I realize that Freddy wanting Jesse for his body--"You've got the body, I've got the brains!"--is just one more thing that makes this flick have a queer vibe.

I watched this movie for the first time in 1985 or '86, a time when I was well aware of my sexuality, but still keeping it under wraps. I was not as savvy to homoerotic allusions then, but I definitely noticed even then that this movie was working for me on more than one level! Some of it is overt and leans slightly homophobic. But casting Patton (who is very attractive in a non-threatening way) and Robert Rusler (Grady, who is very attractive in a bad boy way), and then getting them out of their clothing much of the time was much appreciated by me! And while Jesse's and Grady's relationship can only be seen as gay in subtext, I have to say I picked up on it, even in the 80s. I think only Jeepers Creepers 2 gives ANOES2 a run for its money for gay subtext in a mainstream horror film.

EPILOGUE: So that's where I left off, musing about the gayness of the movie. This particular facet of the film has been covered--and much better--by others. So rather than beat a dead horse, here is one of those better reviews.  But before you go there, you might want to read this excellent interview with the star, Mark Patton, who oddly enough has been "missing" for 25 years. That interview is here.  Now, onto the review.

[Excerpt]

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge; The Man of Your Dreams is Back!

Nightmare On Elm Street 2 is probably the least heralded of all the Kruegerfests, and rightfully so. Compared to the rest of the series, Freddy's Revenge displays a severe lack in scares, gore, and yes - even the main man himself. I found the movie pretty watchable on the whole, but can easily understand why fans collectively aimed their assholes at it before taking a sh*t. If you erased this one from the continuity entirely, nobody would know the difference. . .


Read more at: X-Entertainment

Lazy Weekend; 2012 Mini Movie Review

While we got a few chores and errands done, I've been largely off line and lazy. I did watch three of four (five?) of the Sunday politics shows. Yawn. Can we not go a single freakin' week without Mitch (Shelley the turtle) McConnell? Really? Anyway, nothing noteworthy there.

We picked up the movie 2012 on Blu-ray, and watched that this afternoon. As Hollywood blockbusters go, it does not disappoint. You must turn off your brain, just as you must in movies like Speed, Independence Day (a Mac-compatible space ship? Really?) or The Day After Tomorrow.

We're following a family from the beginning, just as the world starts to crumble. So it wouldn't make any sense if they got wiped out in the first reel. But the number of times this family (and star John Cusack) nearly meet their doom and survive by a hair's breadth stretches credulity. I lost count after four.

The film is action packed, to be sure. It has stunning special effects--literally the destruction of just about everything on the planet--which is what I bought the movie for. But the plot does hang together better than most movies of the type. It is head-and-shoulders above the nearly as eye-popping but brain dead War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise version), for instance. If you want sci-fi with a story you can sink your teeth and brain into, get District 9. If you just want to have fun, you could do a lot worse than 2012. Just don't think about it too hard.

Recommended.

Retro Review: Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City

Back in 1993, something extraordinary happened on broadcast television. A mini-series based on Armistead Maupin's novel, Tales of the City was aired on PBS. Why is that so extraordinary? Well, to start, Tales started out as a daily column in a San Francisco newspaper in the mid-70s. Then it was collected in book form, a series that eventually spanned seven books. I think it's kind of amazing that a serialized newspaper column made such an engaging, and popular set of books.

More amazing is the fact that when it was finally brought to television, the timing was perfect for a flashback to 1970s San Francisco. 70s nostalgia was all the rage then, and the mini-series was spot-on. So what had once been a contemporary slice-of-life story had the added element of being a period piece.

Then there is the subject matter, a very frank take on sex, drugs, gay sex. . .all sort of taboo on broadcast television, let alone PBS. Even more incredibly, same-sex kissing, joint smoking, coke snorting, even nudity appear in the series, quite casually. As raunchy as it would seem on the surface, Tales has an oddly innocent feel to it. Of course, it still rather squicked out some tight asses, and PBS was forced to offer a censored version to their affiliates. Luckily for me, our station (WOSU Columbus, where I lived at the time) aired the uncensored version.

This came at a time in my life when I was teetering on the edge of big changes in my life. I was 27, and had led a mostly chaste and boring life. But for a year or so, I'd dipped my toe into the dating pool. I wasn't doing laps yet though, and I hadn't yet "come out" to very many people. Tales of the City was a revelation to me. The frankness and matter-of-factness of it rather solidified my feeling of "OK" with who I was. I'd already pretty much figured out that there was nothing wrong with me, but with those who disapproved of gay people. Tales helped cement that feeling.

After watching the first mini-series, I immediately scooped up all six of the initial run of books. I think this is an excellent way to get into Tales: watch the first mini, then read all of the books. The cast is so terrific, they stay in your mind, and make envisioning the characters in the books very, very easy. Marcus D'Amico is adorable (almost painfully so) as Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, a gay man in San Francisco by way of Orlando, Florida (in the era of Anita Bryant). Mouse was dipping a toe in too, but in the heyday of the sexual revolution. Laura Linney is perfect as Mary Ann Singleton, the naive transplant from Cleveland, Ohio. That'd make me a combination of Mary Ann and Mouse. Olympia Dukakis is terrific as Mrs. Madrigal, the enigmatic landlady of the apartment house most of the characters inhabit. No one in the production is miscast, but then again, I saw the mini before I read the book. Maybe the other way around doesn't work as well, but I doubt it.

Anyway, I know that the timing in the course of my own life made Tales more relevant and interesting. But this week, I borrowed the original from the library, and I watched the entire 300-minute set in the space of last night and this morning. It's still just as good, still just as addictive. And Marcus D'Amico is even more adorable (what the heck ever happened to him?). I even went further, watching the first three episodes of More Tales of the City, a five-years-later sequel. More Tales featured many cast changes, with Chloe Webb, Paul Gross, D'Amico and others replaced with other actors. The most jarring replacement is Mouse. While Paul Hopkins really did just fine in the role, he had the thankless job of following what many believed to be THE Michael Mouse. Fortunately, there were just enough of the same actors, with a dash of new characters (Burke Andrew played by Colin Ferguson, and Jackie Burroughs as Mother Mucca) to gloss over the cast changes. More Tales lacks a bit of the nostalgic WOW factor of the first, but I'm finding it fun as well.

I think most people could really enjoy both the mini-series(es), as well as the books. Only the most prudish person wouldn't be quickly won over by the material. There is a charm to it that is difficult to describe. A lot of people liken Armistead Maupin's writing style to Charles Dickens. I don't know about that, but I'm sure Maupin wouldn't complain about the comparison.

A word of warning if you're looking to buy the DVD collection. There is apparently a censored version that is still billed as an un-censored version. I don't know how you tell the difference, either. As I said, the set I got was from the library, and it has all the swear words and nudity I remember. The version I got is a 3-disk set, 300 minutes, and not rated, from Acorn Media. Here's a taste to get you started. . .