That Boy's Got the Devil in Him...A Shit-Ton of Reviews - Originally posted April 12th 2007

Been busy lately. Well, I've been busy writing these reviews anyway. I've got a good 5 of them to post this time around, so you'll be able to spend a couple of (paid, shhh) lunch breaks reading these. Included are reviews of Grindhouse, segment: Planet Terror, The Dreams in the Witch-House, The Roost, The Resurrected, and The Nest.

A few preliminaries before I go into things.

Number one, after having some less than stellar cinematic experiences within the last few weeks, I realized why the bad review has its place in this world: public service. My words of warning will allow you to avoid the same movie-watching mistakes I have made. So in the spirit of 'don't step there, and if you don't believe me believe my boots' I'm presenting not one, but two reviews of not-so-good flicks. Don't worry, I basically stick to my 3 sentence rule, with a little variation, but hey, rules are made to be bent and then re-made, right?

Number two, I saw Grindhouse. Twice. [Editor's Note: that's three times now] And as I've mentioned I'm including a review of Planet Terror, but I've decided not to include my review of Death Proof because after a second viewing and some discussion I don't feel equipped to review it. I don't know too much about the exploitation genre and I hate nothing more than an uneducated reviewer pissing on something because he's got it all out of context. Not that I piss on Death Proof at all, but I figure I'll leave it to someone who knows what Tarantino is going for better than I do to provide an expert opinion. I'll just say I liked Death Proof though I felt it was very slow compared to Planet Terror.

Lastly, Phantasm and Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead hit shelves this week, so watch for my review of the entire Phantasm series very soon.

So without further adieu, here are my reviews:

Title: Grindhouse
Segment 1: Planet Terror
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Year: 2007

Oh man. Oh man. This is definitely one the best things I've seen in a few years. Hands down. I mean, there have been some good films in the last five years, but this kind of movie has not been released in a good while.

I'll save my discussion of the machine gun leg for a bit. That's one of the things that got me in the door, and it was definitely delivered on. The other thing that got me in the door was the promise of gore and a whole lot of it. So the minute the words "special makeup effects by Gregory Nicotero" flashed across the screen, I knew that I was getting my money's worth, and then some. I might go so far as to say this is some of his best work, although I can't seriously claim that I've seen every single film Mr. Nicotero has worked on. I have, however, seen a good lot of them.

The film aging effect was cool, and it did two interesting things. The first is obvious, giving the film an aged, cheap, scratched up look. Made you feel filthy just watching the thing. Even though I was sitting in the immaculate (by some standards) AMC Forum 30 Auditorium Number 17 while watching this the first time, the dirty film effect did make me peer around a few times wondering how much dried semen covered the seats around me. I know that there was a lot of fresh semen on the back of the seat in front of me. Hah!

The other effect the film aging technique had was a little more subtle, but actually more powerful. For me, the dirty, grainy look of the film served to obscure many of the CGI effects and made them look more real. I think part of it was my brain being fooled into thinking the film was older. The other part was purely visual, but it worked. The CGI was a lot harder to spot most of the time, and some effects were more eerily believable than they might have been on a crisp print.

Honestly though, Mr. Rodriguez has outdone himself. The director of such gems as Spy Kids and The Faculty (I poke fun) delivers about as much gross-out over-the-top violence as one film can handle. There's blood, pus, exploding heads, pulsating growths, eyeball mayhem, dripping members, and a whole lotta limb-ripping cannibalism. Not to mention the ubiquitous machine-gun prosthetic. I think you get the idea.

If Kill Bill was a self-referencing homage to martial arts films, with casting decisions built in as references in and of themselves (i.e. you're supposed to know who Sonny Chiba is) then Planet Terror is a self-referencing homage to all the gooey, slimy, gory 1980's creature and zombie flicks. It has the same sort of built in casting references (i.e. you're supposed to know who Michael Biehn and Tom Savini are for the reveals on them to make any sense). The story is pretty typical fare with a little twist, and, of course, done much better than many films toying with the same basic premise. This is helped by the above-mentioned excellent casting choices. As I said you've got the Michael Biehn (of The Terminator and Aliens) and Tom Savini (of both Dawn of the Dead films, From Dusk Till Dawn, special effects guy on quite a few of George Romero's 'Dead' movies). You've got Bruce Willis (for like 10 seconds) and Michael Parks (Earl McGraw in nearly every other Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez movie ever made) and a shit-ton more. It's a cornucopia of b-movie faces.

One of the big set pieces to this film is itself a tribute to 80's horror: Rose McGowan's infamous machine gun leg, which is obviously inspired by Bruce Campbell's chainsaw hand in Evil Dead 2. This brings up kind of a big point I want to make about the difference between typical horror pablum and the cult classics that stand out above them. In your average, forgettable piece of horror tripe, you have your average forgettable human characters that flee and scream and cry and whine through the horrible ordeal they are going through and in the end, either survive by luck or don't make it at all. These characters are generally worse than just 'average' in these films; they are in fact usually just parodies of their prosaic, uninteresting real-life counterparts. This is what usually contributes to the all-around lifelessness of these movies. The characters are worse than flat, they're barely characters. I tend to find it insulting that I'm supposed to identify with these people.

Having so-called 'normal' people deal realistically with the premise of a horror movie (done effectively in The Descent) only works with extremely well-written characters. Your hard-partyin' teen stereotype must be abandoned, at any rate.

In the cult classics, however, there is necessarily an iconic hero (or heroine) that emerges from the ashes (so to speak) of their normal persona, someone who is beyond human, over-the-top, slightly skewed out of reality. Someone who becomes a machine or weapon themselves, or modifies some normal appliance into a barbaric armament to destroy whatever evil they're facing. Ash with his iconic chainsaw hand and double barreled boomstick comes to mind. So does Reggie from Phantasm with his 1970 Hemicuda and 4 barreled shotgun, Lionel with his lawnmower from Dead Alive, Ripley with her flamethrower/pulse rifle from Aliens, George with his motorcycle and samurai sword in Demons, and more recently Marion from Undead with his triple shotgun, and Sara with her homemade four-barreled shotgun in Dead and Breakfast. There is ample evidence to suggest that this plot device, this heroic transformation, has its roots in mythology. But I'm not here to dig into anthropology, I'm merely pointing out that many of the movies, or stories really, that we remember the best have this idea as one of their features.

Honestly, I don't know what Planet Terror will be like with the missing reel restored (you can count on there being an unrated extended DVD release) but without it, you've got pretty much 90 minutes of non-stop action and splatter. Excellent. As of now, I've seen this twice, and will probably see it again. And I haven't done that since I was 11 and saw Jurassic Park six times in the theater.

Title: The Dreams in the Witch-House
Director: Stuart Gordon
Year: 2006

This short film is part of that Masters of Horror series that was on HBO awhile back, which you might have seen at your local DVD retailer. My initial thoughts on seeing it were pretty harsh. I've watched it again, and I have to soften my opinion a bit, but that's not saying a whole heck of a lot.

My three sentences:

This film lacks any real special effects and contains very little patented Stuart Gordon gore, though it succeeds nominally at invoking a Lovecraftian atmosphere. It's worth purchasing if you are a Lovecraft junkie, but be aware that this is a mediocre adaptation and a downright forgettable Stuart Gordon flick. This film actually subtracts a little too much from original story, to the point where it kind of comes off as a stage production of a Lovecraft story, with all the attendant special effects technology that stage productions have…you know, colored lights and wires and such.

I'll reserve one extra sentence for my biggest complaint: Brown Jenkin is DUMB AS HELL. Gordon takes one of the creepiest and most iconic of Lovecraft's creations (one that used to give me nightmares), a bizarre rat with a hairy human face, a demonic witch's familiar, and he makes it into a goddamn Beatrix Potter character!

Anything positive?

Ezra Godden is decent. He's actually believable as a Lovecraftian protagonist, which has generally been pretty difficult for a lot of actors to do. Props to him for that. I hope he can make a career out of it.

All in all, The Dreams in the Witch-House is worth picking up on the cheap, and worth watching as part of a Friday night lineup of Lovecraft flicks, but watch it earlier in the evening and save the heavy hitters for later, because it's definitely one of the weakest recent films of that canon out there.

Title: The Roost
Director: Ti West
Year: 2005

Wow. Included in the special features of this DVD is a short movie called "Prey" billed as 'director Ti West's student film'. I think someone forgot to mention that The Roost is director Ti West's OTHER STUDENT FILM.

Maybe I need to try and watch this again. Maybe I'm slighting The Roost for some very shallow reasons. Maybe I'm just too oversaturated by sick special effects and free-flowing gore to appreciate this film's subtler points.

Maybe not.

Ok, in three sentences:

This movie takes a low budget and chooses unceremoniously to do nothing with it. The plot is beyond trite, and sucks as much life out of the movie's premise (bats that turn people into zombies with a bite) as it can by including the obligatory four hard-partyin' young people on their way to never-mind-it-doesn't-matter-you-can't-force-yourself-to-care-about-these-characters-much-less-their-unconvincing-story-setup-ville. Ok, last sentence, with the upshot: no gore, almost no on-screen violence, a body count that makes Sense and Sensibility look like a snuff film, and an inexcusably student-film-y setting: a goddamn barn in the countryside (obviously somebody knew somebody so they could film there for a few days, in lieu of, you know, a movie set).

Notice how I found a loop-hole around my 3-sentence rule…parenthetical asides and excessive hyphenation?

I guess, if there are positives, the bats were cool. I'm not sure if there was a bat trainer, or if the bats were CGI. Either way, it seems that's where all the budget was spent. The fact that I can't tell the difference is a testament to their effectiveness, but I would say 'director Ti West' definitely blew his wad on the bats and they, because of the pathetic screenplay, don't get to be as much of a tension-generating screen presence as they should have been. Some of the makeup is alright, but makeup is only one aspect of a good zombie flick. There are a whole lot of other things this film doesn't get right, almost too many for this to be anything other than a rent-it-once deal. It's almost too slow to be any fun, either, unless you are going to MST 3K-it.

Skip this fucker. Unless you are a REALLY huge fan of zombies. Then see it once, get mad at it, and go watch Day of the Dead.

Title: The Resurrected
Director: Dan O'Bannon
Year: 1992

Here we have a real lost gem of the early 90's. Wonder why I'd never heard of this movie before just a few months ago. The Resurrected is an excellent Lovecraft adaptation directed by, yes, Dan "Return of the Living Dead-Alien-Lifeforce, Etc Etc Etc" O'Bannon, busiest guy in b-Hollywood. It's based on Lovecraft's short novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and with the exception of a couple of character changes and the modern setting, it's pretty true to the book. I think what sets this adaptation apart from most others is that the changes to the story aren't actually hugely important to the central idea. This film actually does a pretty good job of trying to capture the complex idea Lovecraft was trying to get across, and invoking an atmospheric darkness.

I think the change that worked best was the inclusion of March, the private detective, through whose eyes and narrative we view the action. This detective story angle turns The Resurrected into a Lovecraftian film noir, which works really well in favor of both the film itself and the screenplay. I was surprised at how intelligent, agile, and natural the film was. Usually, even the best Stuart Gordon adaptation has an awkwardness to it, a feeling that the subject matter of the story is being somewhat forced into the form of a screenplay.

None of that here.

The screenplay is fluid, the characters have acceptable depth, and the acting is good for b-standards, and in a few cases, pretty convincing, especially Chris Sarandon's personality change between young Charles Ward and the 17th century wizard, Joseph Curwen. I admit, in all my jaded armor, the first time Curwen makes his appearance, it was pretty damn eerie.

But the other huge factor that this movie got right was the special effects. They were excellent! Some of the best creature, make-up, and stop-motion weirdness you could ask for. There was a surprisingly satisfying amount of goriness and visceral gross out; not too much to overshadow the story, but enough to show these guys wanted Lovecraft's hideous mutations to really breathe and move within the story, and that they wanted the violence to really hit home. I was stoked on this, in a movie that was already good to begin with.

A word on adaptations; I always walk into an adaptation knowing that considerations must be made in the translation between written word and film action. One should not expect a word-for-word, scene-by-scene re-telling of the book. Besides the obvious interventions of screenwriters and directors which always serve to put some spin on a story and alter the voice of the author, one has to consider the dramatic realities of film itself. In this case, the climax to The Resurrected did not occur in the original story. But that doesn't bother me at all. This is a movie; it needs a climax at the end to work. The dramatic climax of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward actually occurs about 3 quarters of the way through and the last quarter of the story consists of Lovecraftian denouement, with HPL deftly tying loose ends and leaving select ends untied. While this works in novel form, this somewhat languorous ending with its rambling resolution and minor piece of suspense at the end would be a total dramatic killer in a movie. So, I wasn't at all upset by the basically cosmetic theatrical alterations that had to be made. I liked this screenplay. It was very well done. This is recommended HIGHLY. My only gripe is the fucking DVD, while priced to sell (I found it for 7 bucks at Circuit City of all places) only comes in full screen. Alas, as I dig up more obscurities from the cinematic mausoleum I'm finding a lot of DVD releases with no special features and full screen the only available format.

Title: The Nest
Director: Terrance H. Winkless
Year: 1988

This thing is billed on the DVD case as part of a series of "Roger Corman Classics". While Corman seems to have had nothing to do with this film himself, someone related to him (I don't really know much of the story there) named Julia Corman produced. So, despite my obvious lack of savvy when it comes to Corman trivia or biographical factoids, the mere name Roger Corman is enough to attract me to a movie. And in this case, my undiscriminating taste served me well. The Nest is an excellent 80's invertebrate-infestation horror flick in the vein of the best of them (Slugs comes to mind). So, reasons to watch? First off, The Nest is about cockroaches! Excellent! That's enough to gross most people out alone. Then we learn that these aren't your average starving hordes of Periplaneta, these are genetically engineered carnivorous roaches! And then we further learn that these spiced up cockroaches have the ability to meld their DNA with whatever they eat, such that their resultant offspring are hybrids of giant Blattoidea and some random vertebrate mammal. I won't give anything away on that front, suffice to say, one of the results of this hybridization should be considered the stuff of cinema legend, and probably won't appeal to cat-lovers.

There is also a nice scene lifted from The Fly complete with all the attendant splatter, with some excellent creature effects, of the gross-out variety I love and expect from great 1980's fare.

Performances are for the most part above-average. Believable characters with believable motivations (no hard-partyin teens!), with the exception of the mad-scientist chick who created the roaches in the first place, who can be a little irritating. Maybe this was deliberate, maybe not, but I can assure you, when she bites it (ironic turn of phrase) it's satisfying to see her die more because it shuts her up than because of how evil she is.

Once again, my only gripe is the full screen presentation. Because of the obscurity of these films, I don't know that many of the "Roger Corman Classics" are available in widescreen, with the positive exception of Humanoids from the Deep, the only release in this series I've been able to track down that boasts digital re-mastering, widescreen format and a bunch of special feature documentaries. Unfortunately the US release is out of print and hard to find. It goes for fifty fucking dollars on Amazon. Not to get any more off topic, but I recently ordered a boot of the European release of Humanoids (called Monster in Europe), which comes in an uncut version (more gore and…uh…mammal stuff) but the original Euro version lacks the special features. The guys who did the boot combined the US and European release into one, so that you get the uncut Euro version of the movie along with the all the US version's special goodies. That's why specialty DVD retailers (FTW) are the best way to go. They love the movies you love, and they put the care into their 'products' that is deserved.

Anyway, to return to The Nest, I picked this up for 5$ as a pre-owned DVD at a Blockbuster Video, so I have to say I was pleasantly surprised at what I got. Certainly this movie should be properly filed under cult status, since it does a handy job of providing ridiculous gross-out, unsophisticated science fiction, and blatant ripping from more prominent movies like The Fly and others. Highly recommended.

THE AYATOLLAH OF ROCK AND ROLLAH!!! - Originally posted March 21st 2007

Ok, this time around we have two great under-appreciated gems from 1983, Xtro and The Deadly Spawn.

Before I jump into that, I do want to gleefully relate that both Phantasm and Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead are being re-released on special edition DVD in April. I can't wait. The week that that occurs is going to be awesome, because, on the 6th Grindhouse comes out, and then on the 10th the Phantasm movies come out on DVD. Beautiful. Keep that shit marked on your calendars.

Title: Xtro
Director: Henry Bromley Davenport
Year: 1983

Holy shit yes. I'm not going to waste a whole lot of time defending this movie, because it really needs little defending. This British alien-among-us film goes exactly where you want a film like this to go: to a very, very slimy place. I think the thing that I love most about horror and sci-fi films from the 1980's is the creature/special makeup effects. While I think CGI can look incredible, and I won't knock the versatility that comes with the technology there's something much more visceral about seeing a swelling prosthetic penis-thing covered in slime and attempting to…uh…conjugate with a screaming woman. A real swelling slimy prosthetic, in real time. That's what I love about films from the 80s. There's always a HUGE gross-out factor with any creature effect. And that's what I like. From the (I imagine infamous) woman-giving-birth-to-a-full-grown-man scene, to the aforementioned slimy members, to a slew of other bizarre prosthetic effects, Xtro delivers exactly what one wants: an extremely complex and inexplicable alien life-cycle that certainly rivals Ridley Scott's Alien and with way more sex. Way way more sex. I guess it's sort of the 1980's equivalent of Species, except the alien is a creepy British dude. Decent production values, and generally above-average performances all around (including a surprisingly non-irritating child character) work together with the great special effects and deliberately mystifying plot. The DVD I have also contains an alternate ending. Both endings are creepy, although I prefer the theatrical ending for the slime factor. Altogether awesome. Underrated, unknown, but highly recommended. There's nudity too, if you're into that.

Title: The Deadly Spawn
Director: Douglas McKeown
Year: 1983

Once again, holy shit yes. This low-budget American movie deserves cult status if it doesn't have it already. A thoroughly disgusting alien, lots of gore, and some over-the-top sensibilities similar to Peter Jackson's Bad Taste combine to make a satisfying experience for the lover of trashy horror/sci-fi. As in the above review, I was surprised by the quality performances, and the fact that The Deadly Spawn manages to unobtrusively slip in some unique character development throughout that lets it stand slightly above mere low-budget status. I particularly liked the subtextual debate between science and 'imagination' that went on through the film, with the message that science can't advance without imaginative people. Also, people get their heads eaten off. And the skin on their faces eaten off. And their limbs devoured. And aliens come bursting out of corpses, or devour the brains out of skulls. And bite old women in the head. Ad infinitum. This movie rules, if a reviewer may take liberties to make such a statement. The creature effects and makeup effects are particularly well-done, and the ending is excellent. I personally didn't see it coming. All around a satisfying movie for those who watch movies to satisfy their violent urges. Like myself.

Lifeforce/Beyond the Wall of Sleep - originally posted March 8th 2007

Okey, so here are my first two reviews. I've written some others, but I sat back and decided only to put up two reviews at a time. They aren't really very long, mostly because I stayed away from the tendency most "fan" reviewers have to give overlong accounts of a film's plot, which is the part I tend to skip when reading said reviews myself. Since I usually only skim for the words "gore" and "special effects" and "crap" and "brilliant" when reading said reviews, I stuck to basically talking about why a film worked, or why it didn't, mostly with regards to the above, but taking into account other factors where they are relevant.

The two reviews I chose to put up, Lifeforce (1985), and Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2006), give a little bit of a range as far as subject matter, since one is a mid-80's alien-invasion saga and the other is a modern Lovecraft adaptation horror flick.

So without further adieu:

Title: Lifeforce
Director: Tobe Hooper
Year: 1985

This 1980's sci-fi horror flick has a bunch of weighty names behind it. For one, Tobe Hooper's claim to fame was directing Poltergeist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The screenwriter, Dan O'Bannon, wrote the screenplay for Ridley Scott's Alien. Lastly, and for folks as nerdy as me, the film is based on Colin Wilson's The Space Vampires. I haven't actually read this particular story of Mr. Wilson's, but I have read a couple of his other works, most notably The Mind Parasites, which I highly recommend.

What's it got?

This flick boasted a bigger budget than Poltergeist, and it definitely shows. The effects work is enjoyable, with most of the film holding up reasonably well alongside some of the more well-known sci-fi and horror flicks of that period. It's not heavy on gore, but there are some cool zombie effects that I liked, and Mathilda May is pretty much naked for the first half hour of the movie, if you're into that sort of thing. I couldn't help but dig it, admittedly.

A word of warning before I say why I really liked this film: This was decidedly NOT a character-driven movie. The characters are pretty flat and uninvolving, even by b-movie standards, with some of the British cast coming off almost cartoony, and Steve Railsback's leading man performance as the astronaut/hero was difficult to buy into at best, downright annoying at worst. So, if you ignore the characters (and that's not real hard here) this is still an excellent film. Why? It's a totally plot-driven film, something we see very little of. Most horror and sci-fi flicks are to a degree plot-driven, but usually the movie will set up a premise and let events unravel from there. The old "set 'em up and knock 'em down" type deal. This movie just kept moving and mutating as the action progressed. Honestly, the production and plot was extremely ambitious. It starts out as a small-scale sci-fi/horror-in-space deal, like Alien, then, once the alien is on earth, sort of plays like Species (way before Species), which gives way to a body-jumping possession sequence, sort of like a supernatural version of The Hidden, which then turns into a truncated zombie film, and by the end, a straight up disaster flick, with a slightly fucked up twist-ending.. The scale keeps ramping up as the movie goes on, to the point where the ending is epic compared to the more atmospheric beginning. And this totally worked in the film's favor, and makes the sacrifice of likeable characters completely forgivable.

Taken as a whole, Lifeforce ends up being extremely satisfying, and the conclusion just sealed the deal for me. You have to admit going from what seems a somewhat unassuming humanoid-alien space scenario to the epic spectacle of mobs of bloodthirsty zombies wreaking havoc in London all within the framework of one movie definitely makes this worth checking out. And, I imagine that in some circles it's probably considered a classic for those who are really into these films, for the names behind it alone. So, I'd totally recommend it as one of the more overlooked sci-fi/action/horror movies of the 80's.

Title: Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Director: Barret Leigh, Thom Maurer
Year: 2006

This is an adaptation (a very loose one) of the Lovecraft story of the same name, which takes place in the Catskills Mountains region of New York State around the turn of the century. Without trying to re-tell the story, I'll attempt to detail why I liked this film and what I didn't quite like that much.

For starters, the filmmakers made the interesting decision to do this movie (mostly) in black-and-white. This, by default, gives the film a gritty, contrast-y look and the feeling of watching a documentary at times. It also tends to give one the immediate impression of watching an amateur student film, a somewhat arty one at that. However, not all of the movie is in black-and-white, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. It fails mostly when the action lapses into a schizo-artsy montage sequence that is sadly recycled several times throughout the movie and always seems to pop up at inopportune moments when one is hoping that some 'plot' is about to happen. It works best after lengthy tension-building sequences where we are hit square in the face with full-color, gritty cinematography that almost implies moving from dream into reality. And since this movie is about dreams and reality, well, that sort of works.

The acting is, interesting, to say the least. Most of the performances are over-blown to the point of ridiculousness. Some of the acting comes off exaggeratedly amateurish, but much of it strikes me almost as stage-acting not properly subdued for a motion picture. There are moments where this almost seems deliberate. And, in a way, it works. The presentation along with the acting make this feel like a student film, and your immediate reaction may be to dismiss Beyond as too ridiculous to try and watch. But, if you stick it out, and let the campiness get under your skin, it pays off. Your expectations become so low, the characters seeming grotesquely cartoonish, that when the meandering and choppy plot finally kicks into full gear about two-thirds of the way through, you are completely taken by surprise.

I ended up expecting so little from what presents itself as a flop, almost a parody of Lovecraft's story rather than an adaptation, that I was thoroughly caught off guard when the film turned serious. Suddenly, the cinematography is in color, the fuzzy gore-montages become distinct sequences, and the main character actually becomes a figure of menace rather than comic dorkiness. All this happens so quickly I found myself suddenly liking it all, and the climax is as unexpected as a ten gauge shotgun blast to the face after you've been laughing down the barrel of a toy gun for over an hour.

On second viewing, this change in mood feels rather calculated and you get the impression that the filmmakers wanted to take their audience on a ride. So, they give us what we expect: a beyond-schlocky Lovecraft adaptation that is laughable in its eccentricity and occasional ineptitude, with a huge helping of artsy student film sensibility that takes itself too seriously at times and populates itself with strident, egotistical drama-club rejects...and then it suddenly reinvents itself near the end as a serious horror movie with some deadly-serious ideas that ultimately works, and all without giving the feel of being two different movies spliced together. And that manipulated feeling brought me to the conclusion that the filmmakers were maybe not quite so amateurish. This little twisty-ness to the film, in place of some other routine 'twist' ending was deftly handled and makes me somewhat eager to see more from these guys.

I also have to commend the filmmakers for their decision to do this movie as a period piece rather than have it take place in a modern setting. It makes the weirdness really apparent and allows the sanitarium to have that gloomy, depraved atmosphere that otherwise couldn't have existed. The costuming and sets are pretty nicely done, which speaks to the ambition of the filmmakers, down to actually having a horse-drawn buggy in one part of the film.

The effects are ok. I don't want to spoil anything so I'll say the effects in Beyond range from so-so to pretty good for low-low budget standards. I can't say for sure if this was deliberate like the rest of the film, or if it was budgetary. Probably both. The gore effects, like I said, are mostly hidden in lame trippy montage sequences, but when you actually get to see some real action in a straight camera shot it has a little more punch behind it than if the film had just been splattered with gratuitous gore the whole time. Anyway, that's not so much the point of the story here (since there is really nothing like that in Lovecraft's original), and the gorier parts don't really take off until the lead up to the climax.

Throw in a cameo by Tom Savini, and the fact that the focus (I can't quite call him a character) of the film, an inbred Appalachian man named Joe Slaader, who goes psycho one day and kills his whole family, is played by William Sanderson (J.F. Sebastian in Blade Runner), and you definitely have to chalk this up as a serious film that uses its poorer qualities as a sort of thin disguise.

I definitely recommend this film to anyone who enjoys Lovecraft or anyone who is vaguely familiar with Lovecraft and has an appetite for b-horror movies. In some ways it follows the Gordon school of Lovecraft adaptation, i.e. take a story, juice it up with sex and gore and violence and twitchy characters, and let it rip. But this has a nice twist, and at the end, has a change in tone that convinced me these guys wanted to get across something of the feel and attitude of Lovecraft's writing more than just using his story as a spine for a splatter-fest. It may be difficult for anyone else to sit through, though, so if you aren't familiar with Lovecraft adaptations, either as a fan of Lovecraft, or as a horror fan, I'd probably steer clear.

B-Grade Low Art Film 101 - originally posted feb 20th 2007

I think I'm going to use this space to post personal film reviews. I would have used my livejournal for this, but most of my friends on there wouldn't care. Here, at least, no one has to read my blog if they don't want to. Plus I have very few human friends on here.
So, I guess I'll lay my ground rules and reasons out on the table. That way, I can call myself out if I'm not following my own rules, or I can look back at this to make sure I'm pursuing my original goal.

First: What kind of movies?

As the subject line states, mostly b-movies. Independent horror films (with lots of gore), sci-fi/action and sci-fi/horror films. Cult classics of the late 70's and 80's. Blockbuster hollywood monster movies. Stuff that a lot of people stick their noses up at.

Not every movie is Fight Club, and thank goodness for that. Movies like that have allowed a host of people to pretend they like film when they really don't. They'd rather discuss what basically amounts to a book they never read. Such a realm of snobbish cultural illiteracy is not for me.

So, what won't I review? Movies I did not see, for starters. Which would include teeny-slasher flicks, dramas, romantic comedies, academy award winning movies (with the exception of The Lord of the Rings), artsy indie movies and other stuff that I would never set out to watch, or that I see by accident or stumble across through other people.

Not to say I don't like those kinds of movies. I just usually don't pay money to see them. They're not my passion, I guess.

So, rules...?

I probably won't include extensive reviews of movies I didn't like. Since the internet is a place where people use thousands of characters and waste tons of hard drive space to spew vitriol, I think I'll probably refrain. It seems to me to be a waste of time to write a ton of words about something you didn't care for. I'm not going to go out of my way to troll for movies I won't like. I'm not exactly sure how people end up seeing some of the movies they review, but I notice a lot of the negative reviews (especially the user reviews on Amazon.com) are written by people who tend not to be fans of the genre. I don't know where they get both the time to watch movies they don't generally care about, and where, on top of that, they get the time to wax eloquent in their assault on such films...?

It seems like commenting or reviewing or opining is just an excuse, most of the time, for dick-wagging and venom-spitting for the sole purpose of feeling superior to something for two internet seconds in front of a bunch of anonymous internet people. Who has the time for that kind of dishonest and uninformed monologing? (not really a word, I suspect)

I like to think I don't have that kind of time. And because, also, one of my informal life philosophies is to generally ignore things I have little interest in, what I will do is limit myself to reviewing a disliked movie in 3 sentences or less. That makes sense since pretty much the only reason to dislike the kind of movies I'm going to be reviewing here is that they lacked some element necessary to make a movie of that kind good. Much better analyses of these elements will be found in my positive reviews. Negative reviews will simply state what was missing.

Simple as that.

My goal will really be to turn people on to movies. I'll mainly be writing the reasons I think someone should see a particular film. These reasons may or may not be good enough to convince most people. Since none of the aforementioned films will be on par with Apocalypse Now, etc. they probably won't be to everyone's taste and thus my reasons for liking a film may be the same reasons someone else would dislike it.

Not sure where to start with reviews just yet. Next post will probably begin this blog in earnest. I'll try to stay away from reviewing movies I think everyone has seen. So, as much as I love The Terminator, I probably don't need to wax eloquent as to why. A movie like Scanners, on the other hand, or Bad Taste, or Lifeforce, or Slither...well, there you go. I think you'll get the idea.

Welcome to brutality

I'm transferring my movie blog over here, because myspace sucks and I'm kind of sick of dealing with my stupid profile over there.

So, what I'll do is retro-post all of my old movie reviews before I continue with the series.

I may actually try to add serious discussion and other things to make this more of a blog, but I'm going to quit posting any sort of irrelevant garbage altogether. I spend way too much time on the internet at work, and I've come to the conclusion (among many) that a lot of the 'user-generated' content that I am familiar with is pretty uninteresting. It's nothing against my friends, but they just don't post anything I care to read.

So, I'm going to suck it up and 'do unto others' as the old adage goes (expressed with as much secular gusto as I can muster). I just want to do my part to reduce the clutter. Can't have these tubes getting all clogged with unreadable personal crud, awful spelling, and meaningless poetry.