From Zombos' Closet

Movie Review: Fright Night (2011) A Well Done Stake

Zombos Says: Good

In this remake of 1985’s Fright Night, Jerry (Colin Farrell) is the vampire living next door to Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin). Although he’s Twilight sexy (Chris Sarandon in the original was Disco sexy), Jerry’s still got that nasty shark-toothed over-bite, although when his mouth does its CGI stretch it lacks the drool-dripping, visceral punch of the old-style analog mechanical effect . Surprisingly, Jerry also lacks sexual tension. All he really cares about is his next meal. An isolated housing development gone bust, located on the outskirts of Las Vegas, provides all the takeout he can handle until Charlie realizes why an increasing number of kids aren’t showing up for classes.

This go round, times have changed: Charley’s cool by not being a horror movie-loving geek, and his home is surrounded by desolation and “House For Sale” signs; and Roddy McDowall’s tuned-out horror host turned vampire slayer is upstaged by Tennant’s hip-deep-shallow Peter Vincent, a boozy, profane Las Vegas punk-goth-rock stage magician with Peter Frampton locks, Chris Angel darks, and Mick Jagger thins.

What this updated and glossier version offers is a one-two punch delivered by Farrell and Tennant and no ridiculous sequel--yet--to ignore. (Any Fright Night fan who dares think 1988’s Fright Night Part 2 is remotely worthwhile is persona non grata as far as I’m concerned.) I naturally gravitate toward Tennant, being a Dr. Who fan and all, but here he's part Doctor-making-a-house-call, a tad much of a sod, and all together shamelessly sixes and sevens throughout. His manic cursing and alcohol-induced distancing keeps it dicey flippant while Farell plays Jerry entirely darkly black-humored, and egotistically nasty-mean: he's been around for over 400 years, so he's got attitude.

The revelation for Charlie comes after his outcast former friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse)  disappears, leaving surveillance video behind of Jerry, only you don't see Jerry because vampires--say it with me, faithful ones--don't cast reflections because they have no souls. When Jerry knows that Charlie knows, the cat and mouse fun begins, and Jerry introduces the simple concept of no home? no invitation needed to enter! limiting Charlie's defensive strategy when Jerry blows it up. I can tell you Jerry's a lot more direct in this version. He doesn't have a lacky servant like the green goo-filled handyman Sarandon had in 1985 to do his dirty work.

An exuberant car chase adds a cameo for Sarandon and more CGI opportunities for mayhem as Charlie works the kinks out of his vampire defense. Vincent offers some advice and his collection of vampire-hunting artifacts, but doesn't want to get involved for personal reasons, which are made clear later on. There's a funny--although now standard for hip horror movies--bit involving an eBay-purchased automatic stake-gun, and more humor to be found in the final confrontation beneath Jerry's abode. He's a subterranean vampire, so he likes to dig a lot.

I criticized the shock-drop opening in Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, but I'll go gentler with the one used here as Jerry obliterates an entire family in the blood-spattered opening minutes. It's confusing until the rest of the movie catches up with it and it's still a cheap shot I associate more with straight to DVD amateur endeavors. Do some directors really think horror fans need a quick and loosely attached gore-jolt to settle down for the rest of the movie? 

What this new Fright Night lacks is not the talent or the production quality;  it misses the mark on raising the emotional thermometer, the feeling a movie  can roll you over with, like a steamroller, if its story invests you in it. A handful of horror movies do this and, more and more it seems, many are only concerned with the CGI-involved action quotient instead of the needed quality time between it. Remember the attack on Peter Vincent by Evil Ed in 1985? If you haven't seen it, watch the original Fright Night, then compare that simpler scene to the CGI-effects laden penthouse smackdown in this movie. You tell me which one has more feeling.

Sure, the special effects may be so cool now, Brewster! but back then you had heart. I'd stake my expert opinion on it.

Mexican Lobby Card: The Mutations

An unusually sedate Mexican lobby card. The foreground illustration and inset picture push a romance-in-peril theme as the monsters hang out in the background.

Mexican Lobby Card: Monkey Shines

I admit it: I couldn't pass up the cute little maniacal monkey with the big hypodermic needle. Just look at that crazed, glassy-eyed stare. The inset picture's not too shabby either. Horror and straight razors go together like cereal and milk.

Mexican Lobby Card: La Loba

This Mexican lobby card has a very stylish primitive composition. 

Movie Review: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2011)

Zombos Says: Good

One criticizes Guillermo del Toro at one's peril. He's become a savior to fans of the Cinema Fantastic, the horrific, and the arabesque in movies, wielding his creative sword to smite mainstream naysayers into acquiessence with tales of morose children imperiled by Baroque situations. This is another such tale, although it's based on the television movie that frightened del Toro and many other genre fans--myself included--when it first aired in 1973.  The criticism I'll dare to level here is del Torro's glossier version tries very hard to impress, but never actually does because he builds it on familial relationships overused in horror movies: the displaced, unhappy kid with separated parents and an unwanted stepmom; and he replaces simple, old-fashioned mystery-building with letting the CGI boys run wild. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is a good monster movie, it's just not a good scary one.

I'll lay some of the blame with director Troy Nixey. The opening shock-drop--what I call those brief, jarring scenes often used at the beginning of straight-to-DVD-movies--of Blackwood (Gary McDonald), the house's first tenant desperately trying to get his missing son back, robs the suspense we needed as Sally (Bailee Madison) pays a forced visit to her architect dad (Guy Pierce) and his live-in, interior designer girlfriend (Katie Holmes). They're renovating a brooding Gothic mansion surrounded by intimidating formal gardens and filled with dark hallways and subterranean pests. Shades of Arthur Machen's forestry horrors and startling Pickman's Model revelations are hinted, but del Toro gives them fan-boy nods instead of plumbing deeper while Nixey's CGI animators and production designers direct the action out from under him. It all looks fantastic, but doesn't play fantastic. 

Transitioning the original danger of threatened adult (Kim Darby in the televised version) to threatened child--we're told the underground creatures love to eat children's teeth after terrorizing them--should have pumped up the quotient for eldritch terror dramatically, but it doesn't. We all ready know the threat looming after the opening few minutes and must wait for sullen Sally and everyone else to catch up;  except for the laconic groundskeeper (every brooding mansion must have one) Mr. Harris (Jack Thompson). He knows about the nasty buggers waiting behind the ash pit grate in the hidden basement, but damned if he'll tell anyone before they slice and dice him to a bloody pulp. Which brings me to another pet peeve I have with laconic groundskeepers in horror movies: namely that they're always laconic when they should be screaming bloody hell warnings, and they always spill the few beans well after the time they really needed to spill them ahead of. You can call it script contrivance, or even crafty planning depending on how it's used, but its use is often counterproductive, like the shock-drop that reveals much of the mystery before any detection can begin. I will call them cheap shots. I expected more from del Toro.

I also expected less. Suspense gives way to too much CGI conflict between Sally, the adults, and the evil goblins living beneath the mansion: brief scenes of eyes looking through keyholes, being threatened by pointy objects poised to strike from the other side; longer scenes of straight-razor dalliance at ankle level; and an encounter with a toolbox worth of pointy objects aiming through the darkness, capped by close-ups of goblins wreaking havoc, illustrate the story like a fairy tale book's pictures without embellishing its emotional contextual ambience.  Nixey knits scenes together with little suspense building: the house is creepy dark, got that; the basement's one of del Toro's nightmarish wetdreams, got that, too; but so what? More feeling and less seeing would have elevated Don't Be Afraid of the Dark to scare the bejesus stature. 

It's a shame del Toro wasn't able to recapture the terror he felt when he  first saw Kim Darby being victimized by the goblins. That sense of terror needed to be here. It isn't, although it looks like it is.

Silent Running (1972) Pressbook

The Gorgon and The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb Double Bill Pressbook

The Black Stamps giveaway, mentioned in this Double Bill pressbook for The Gorgon and The Curse of the Mummy, didn't really have any purpose. S&H Green Stamps, given away by supermarkets (I recall my mom pasting all those stamps into her saver book, filling it page by page) would allow you to trade them in for something desirable at the redemption center. There was no redemption center for Black Stamps. But being a horror movie fan, I'd have died to get them anyway. Natch!

Movie Pressbook: Clash of the Titans (1981)

Experiencing the fantastic was much easier to do in this original movie than the lacklustre remake.

Movie Pressbook: Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings (1978)

Mexican Lobby Card: El Vampiro

Note the background spider web (similar to the use of it on posters and lobby cards for the original Dracula with Bela Lugosi) to accentuate El Vampiro's blood-sucking trap of doom. Interestingly, the picture here is an actual photograph that's glued to the lobby card, which is one of the reasons I picked this up. The tilt of the photograph, the emanating spider web, and the vampire as pivotal point the rest of the illustration flows from, gives this card's layout a more sophisticated execution.

El Hacha Diabolica Mexican Lobby Card

Quintessential elements highlight the spook show appeal of this lobby card: chained skeleton, cobwebs, bat, decaying corpse, blood-dripping axe, full moon (although its yellow), and masked assailant.

Mexican Lobby Card: The Beast of the Yellow Night

I don't know, but this lobby card seems too low key. What do you think? “La Bestia de La Noche Amarilla” is a great example of how bold a Mexican lobby card can be. The common element here, of domination over a provocatively dressed female victim, is highlighted by each illustration: the monster’s blood-dripping, bone-chewing mouth looming over her; the monster’s beastly hand reaching for yet another screaming female victim; the monster standing over a victim. The illustrations don’t connect visually except for themes of brutal dominance and helplessness. This movie is a Phillipino/U.S. production.