Zombos' Closet of Horror

The Last Airbender (2010) Gasping For Air

ZC Rating 2 of 7: Fair (watch the animated series instead)

What is a vibrantly fun and engrossing animated adventure series has been rendered drab, ponderous, and has had the crap kicked out of it before conversion to live-action.

When everyone kept mispronouncing Aang's name in The Last Airbender I realized M. Night Shyamalan was holding true to form, which means once again he exhibits his propensity toward ponderous, preachy, hubris-driven moviemaking. It's the kind of moviemaking that comes from writing and directing inwardly for one's self and not outwardly to others. George Lucas is the king of hubris-driven moviemaking (the best episode in the Star Wars series, The Empire Strikes Back, was not directed or scripted by him). I now crown Shyamalan the prince and heir apparent.

The Last Airbender (really Avatar: The Last Airbender, but possible confusion with James Cameron's Avatar led to "Avatar" being dropped from the movie's title) is an American anime series filled with engaging, colorful characters living in a mystical world divided into Four Nations according to the four elements of Air, Earth, Water, and Fire. These nations include the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Air Nomads, and the Fire Nation. Within each of them are gifted individuals who can manipulate the natural element of their nation using martial arts-like movements: they are called Airbenders, Earthbenders, Waterbenders, and Firebenders respectively.

Keeping a peaceful balance between each Nation is the Avatar, a person who's been reincarnated many times and the only one who has the ability to bend all four elements with mind-blowing power when his (or her) Avatar Spirit state is awakened. When the Avatar goes missing the Fire Nation conducts a military campaign to subjugate the Water and Earth Nations. Fearing the reincarnation of the Avatar within the Air Nation, Fire Lord Sozin has it destroyed and its people killed.

The series ran for three seasons on Nickelodeon. Shyamalan begins with Book One: Water from Season One, when the Avatar, missing for 100 hundred years, returns to stop the Fire Nation and restore harmony to the world. 

Young Aang (Noah Ringer) is the Avatar. Katara (Nicola Peltz) and Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) of the Southern Water Tribe free him from a ball of ice, where he's been trapped in suspended animation, protected by his Avatar Spirit state after getting caught in a tumultuous storm. Katara and Sokka, after a long-winded and unnecessary explanation of the spiritual nature of their world and the significance of the Avatar, accompany Aang on his quest to learn manipulation of Water, Earth, and Fire in preparation for fighting the Fire Nation. Prince Zuko (Dev Patel), ostracized and disfigured by his tyrannical father, Fire Lord Ozai (Cliff Curtis), for speaking out of turn, is obsessed with restoring his father's approval by capturing the Avatar.

What makes the animated series endearing, charming, and just plain groovy fun to watch is the interplay between its characters, their humor mixed with serious situations, and the overriding spirituality--a mix of 1960s Psychedelic Movement, Eastern Religions, and New Age riffing--that imbues its story with purpose and contextual sensibility. The combination of American cartoon and anime styles creates a unique visual playfulness and verve that is never overly dark in tone or preposterous in its unfolding. None of these endearing qualities made it into this live-action movie, which is ponderous to tears and burdened with tedious voice-over explanations and lengthy exposition crumpling the sparkling creativity of the animated series.

Shyamalan's casting choices do not fit their animated counterparts well at all. Acting ranges from wooden to pretentious: Katara is a smart, confident, go-getter in the anime; here she's awkward, uncertain, and burdened with clumsy dialog; Sokka, lighthearted and Jim Carrey-styled improvisational in the anime is rendered broodingly serious and a killjoy; Aang, the pivotal character who's aangst over facing his Avatar responsibilities and his fear of causing harm through his unbridled anger provide room for emotional growth in the anime,  tempered by his boyish spirit of adventure, cannot muster a strong presence here. Look at any still picture of Noah Ringer as Aang and you will see no chi energy emanating from his posturing. He has the Avatar tattoos and glider staff but that's all. Appa is a big fuzzy plush toy of flying bison perfection (Aang rides him through the clouds), but we don't see much interaction between Aang and his cherished Appa, although they are practically inseparable in the anime.

The showdown between the Fire Nation's armada of ash-belching ships and the Northern Water Tribe is rendered incomprehensible for anyone who hasn't seen the animated series, and near gibberish for those who have. The movie appears to be missing important bridging scenes for what eventually wound up onscreen and a key dynamic of Aang's involvement, a more plausible reason for why he traveled to the Northern Water Tribe in the first place, is pushed to the side. Shyamalan's insistence on drawn-out movements to bend anything exaggerates those motions to absurdity, and his action-stopping slow-motion overuse during battle scenes undermines their intensity and suspense. When Aang finally enters his Avatar Spirit state to combat the armada, this live-action confrontation appears anti-climactic when compared to the similar animated sequence, where his destructive power is rendered more awesomely than shown here. The movie's texture is dark with bright colors muted. Even the flares of fire are dull and lifeless, and do not convey a sense of heat. Critics have noted the retro-fitted 3D version is even darker. I watched the 2D version and it is pretty murky.

As a fan of the anime series I'm disappointed in this confused, overly complicated, and pedantic adaptation. As a movie critic I can say that for a spiritual journey filled with wonder and energy this first movie in a potential series does little to emotionally involve us and gives even less to wonder at. Unless you're wondering what I'm wondering--and it's not to find a duck and a hose at this hour. I'm wondering how a heavy-handed director is given a movie that requires a touch as light as air. That's what I'm wondering.

Jonah Hex (2010) The Spell is Broken

"President seems to think your special. Magic, even."

ZC Rating 2 of 7: Fair (read the comic series instead)

I miss Doctor Miguelito Quixote Loveless (Michael Dunn), the diminutive villain with grand schemes on the 1960s television series The Wild Wild West. He was a villain to reckon with, one far above John Malkovich's burlap sack portrayal of renegade madman Quentin Turnbull in Jonah Hex. Loveless devoted his creatively criminal and misguided scientific genius to endless schemes embellished with his weapons of mass destruction, gleefully challenging government agent James West to stop him each time they crossed paths.

Paths are crossed in Jonah Hex, but they don't seem to head in any sensible direction. They meander around with the artlessness of that silly Wild Wild West movie with Will Smith, then saunter a well-trod vengeance trail much like The Outlaw Josey Whales, and finally stop plumb cold at the usual quest-between-mundane-here-and-mystical-there with less force than The Crow.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) Not a Dreamy Remake

ZC Rating 2 of 7: Fair

Look, here's the thing in a nutshell: if you're going to do a remake, reimagining, reboot, or whatever you'd like to call it, you better come to the table ready to ante up big and play it for all it's worth. Otherwise, why bother?

Freddy Krueger may be properly dressed in his signature striped sweater, brown Fedora, and nasty blade glove, but he has nowhere to go in this unimaginative reimagining of Wes Craven's original nightmare. Under a deathmask's worth of immobilizing rubber makeup (although I admit it appears more medically correct), Jackie Earle Haley's perpetually pouting face made me pine for Robert Englund's glistening bald pate, leering, spongy flesh-burned face, and his manic, gleefully malicious dream-devil in the boiler room enthusiasm.

The outrageous, lethally-twisted dream intrusions that are the hallmark of this franchise are put to bed in Samuel Bayer's cardboard standee version of Freddy, where winking consciousness between Elm Street's dreamland and wakefulness is less important than an almost back to back line-up of dead-teenager-walking kill-fests, escalating the body count while decreasing emotional involvement from us for those being stalked. This is a painting by numbers, pretty to look at (it is superbly photographed by Jeff Cutter), but rote in its execution of mayhem: there is no sizzle when we should feel the burn as much as child-molester Fred Krueger did.

Dead Clowns (2003)

The following guest review was written by Brenda Hineman, confessed B-Movie junkie, she also writes about Halloween costumes at StarCostumes.com. Not being a goremet, I'll let her handle the messy movies. I find clowns too creepy anyway. Debbie's on her own with this one. (Note: I'm using the IMDb date for the movie; the DVD release date is 2007).

Since the Blair Witch Project in 1999, with its low-budget, high-gross success, many young filmmakers realized that it was indeed possible to make a film without a huge Hollywood budget. Advances in technology have also gone a long way toward putting decent quality video equipment in an affordable price range for hobbyists and amateur filmmakers. Collectively, this has advanced what was already a thriving, albeit exclusive, cult horror film scene populated by writers and directors (almost always one in the same) whose creative visions were enough to overcome budget limitations.

Over the last decade, what has extended from that scene is a fledgling scene often referred to as "micro cinema" - that is, very low- budget films shot on-the-fly with directorial edits often being dictated by the realities of unpredictable site and actor schedules. One of the more noted directors of this budding micro cinema scene is Steve Sessions, writer/director/scorer of, among other films, Dead Clowns.

The plot of this 95-minute gorefest is this: Fifty years ago in Port Emmett, Mississippi, a hurricane derailed a circus train, throwing it off a bridge and into the river. Unfortunately, the clown car (and all its occupants) never surfaced again. Now, fifty years later, as another hurricane approaches, the clowns are rising from the deep to eat the people of Port Emmett.

Santa Claws (1996) Don't Watch Out For This One

ZC Rating 1 of 7: Poor

Disclaimer: Zombos' Closet cannot be held libel for the loss of precious holiday time or mirth should any reader decide to ignore the numerous warning signs in this review and purchase, open, and view Santa Claws alone and/or sober. By reading this review, said reader releases Zombos' Closet and its heirs, in perpetuity, from fault, risk, and all future liability or damage that may occur from such viewing.

"How long has he been like this?" I asked.

"For the past half-hour," Glenor Glenda said.

"You should have called me sooner. How could you be so careless!" I felt Zombos' faint pulse.

"He said he wanted to watch something different," Glenor said. "I didn't know."

"How can you not know?" I held up the offending DVD, Santa Claws, from Shock-O-Rama Cinema while admonishing her.

"Paul Hollstenwall said Zombos asked for it specifically—"

"Paul! So he's the one to blame for this. The last time he was here he wasted our time with Neon Maniacs. I can't believe he'd stooped this low. The man is incorrigible; a menace to decent horror fans everywhere."

"I told Paul he shouldn't. I told him he should have gone to you first,"  Glenor said with tears in her eyes. "But Zombos said it didn't matter, that he wanted something new, something totally different to watch. He said he was too old to play it safe anymore. He's been that way ever since his birthday."

"Well, the damage is done. I hope you've learned your lesson," I said, lifting a brandy snifter to Zombos' lips. The color was gone from his cheeks. "At least with Paul Naschy films I have a chance, but this? I'm not sure how to bring him back to sanity." Zombos was grayer than usual and his breathing was short and shallow.

"What was that?" I asked. I leaned closer. Zombos' lips had moved, and a faint whisper caught my ear. "Say again?"

"Nudie-cutie," he managed to whisper. "I just...wanted...to see...nudie-cuties. My god, it was beyond horrible." He took the brandy snifter from me and held it in his trembling hands.

"Nudie cu—" Glenor started to say.

"That will be all, Glenor," I said, interrupting her. "I can take it from here. Thanks!" She left the room. Zombos slowly recovered in-between sips of brandy.

Nudie-cuties, scream queens, bodacious tatas--none of this can save Santa Claws. It is a film not to see alone or sober. It stands as the perfect DVD movie equivalent to bituminous coal: sufficient punishment for any horror fan on your Naughty Horror Fan holiday list. Sleazy synthesized background music, ear-numbing dialog delivered through cereal box acting, and sloppy camerawork all bump and grind together, along with the T and A, in this shoestring-budget film.

The Video Dead (1987): It's a Crime

"Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to read is true. There are many odd stories in the annals of horror cinema. This is one of them."

ZC Rating 1 of 7: Poor (but oddly engrossing)

"Slow down a minute and let me get this straight," said Detective Web. He paged through his notebook. "You say this Paul Hasselhoff--"

"Paul Holstenwall," I corrected him.

"You say this Paul Holstenwall is to blame for Zombos's death?"

"Yes. It's all his fault. He insisted we watch another one of his inane travesties of straight to video horror called The Video Dead. Zombos keeled over dead away toward the end. It was horrible." I held back the tears. Glenor Glenda, our maid, stood in shock over his body. Thank God Zimba and Zombos Junior were at the theater to see the more lively Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.

"I told him, I did," said Glenor, between blowing her nose and dabbing her wet eyes. "I told him to go with his son and get away from all this nasty horror. Oh, how will we explain this to his son? The missus will be so upset!"

"Hey, has this been dusted for prints yet?" asked Detective Web as he reached for The Video Dead VHS tape.

"Yeah, done."

"Haven't seen one of these in a while," he said, picking it up. "So tell me about this movie. I find it hard to believe Zombos died just from watching it."

"I...I don't know where to begin," I said.

"Start with the facts. Just the facts. That will do just fine."

"Let me think," I said. "Okay. It's about a television set that looks like it came from the house in Night of the Living Dead. The TV is delivered, by mistake, to a writer who is promptly killed by the zombies that can enter our world through it."

"Flesh-eating zombies?"

"Well, not quite. They strangle people, mostly, then toss them into washing machines and start the spin cycle."

"I thought you said the television set came from the house in Night of the Living Dead. Don't those zombies eat people?" asked Detective Web.

"Yes. I mean no. I mean I didn't say the set came from the house in Night of the Living Dead, it just looks like it did. Now, one neighbor does get eaten, sure, but that happens later in the movie, and we don't see it happen, just the messy aftermath. The rest of the time the zombies giggle a lot, and want to go dancing, too. Oh, and there's this Garbage Man fellow that appears briefly in the TV, but we never find out why, or what he's actually doing in there, or even how he got there in the first place. Then again, I'm not sure how the zombies got into the television set, either."

Prom Night (2008)

ZC Rating 2 of 7: Fair

Prom Night's life-size promotional cardboard standup of a door, strategically placed in theaters to pique the potential audience for this teen thriller, is a good indication of how much effort went into this movie. Opening the door produces a halfhearted, single scream. A hearty laugh would have been more appropriate.

My mind wandered a bit when Donna (Brittany Snow) and her boyfriend, Bobby (Scott Porter) exchange corsages as Donna's aunt and uncle look on, beaming with happiness. I imagined a prom night filled with monster corsages devouring boyfriends, Carrie-like J-horror prom night ghosts seeking vengeance, or tuxedoed zombies crashing the prom night party. Anything else but this unnecessary reworking of Jamie Lee Curtis's more violent 80's slasher. In my defense I will say I didn't attend my senior prom. Perhaps I have unresolved issues with that. Or perhaps this movie has unresolved issues with terror, tension, and thrills.

Director Nelson McCormick has done a large amount of episodic television work, so maybe this is why his movie is paced around imaginary commercial breaks. Each time tension builds he moves away from the action to show people dancing or crowning the prom king and queen. Like an episode of CSI, nothing appears out of control or erupts into hysterical terror. He also has a fetish for closets. I lost count how often someone opened, reached into, looked in, or hid in, a closet. Donna hides under a bed twice, but I didn't find that as annoying. Not much tension builds from opening closets. You can sum up the entire story this way: give sinister look, slash a victim, show dancing in slow motion, show someone opening a closet, give sinister look, slash a victim, show more dancing, show someone else opening a closet, slash a victim, stop the dancing long enough to show prom king and queen crowning, show someone opening a damn closet again, slash another victim.

Shrooms (2006)

League of Reluctant Reviewers:
The Perplexing Case of the
Axe-wielding Psycho
and the Getting High-minded College Kids

Psilocybin mushrooms (also called psilocybian mushrooms) are fungi that contain the psychedelic substances psilocybin and psilocin, and occasionally other psychoactive tryptamines. There are multiple colloquial terms for psilocybin mushrooms, the most common being magic mushrooms or shrooms.--Wikipedia

None of the creative people involved in the film, Shrooms, apparently ingested any during its production, making it one big, unmagical, mystery tour. The mystery is how it ever got green-lighted in the first place.

ZC Rating 2 of 7: Fair

Down a forgotten street somewhere in New York City there stands a used-up, ashlar-surfaced office building waiting to be torn down. Should you enter through its bell archway, walk towards the solitary elevator that's seldom used, and turn right, you would find yourself in a narrow hallway. In its heyday, you could find the finest business agencies rubbing elbows, hustling and bustling, here. But that was in its heyday. If you walk past those frosted-glass doors now, with their chipped and peeling lettering looking like the worn names on tombstones, and continue all the way to the end, you would come to a frosted-glass door whose lettering still shines. That's my office. My home. My name is Sicular Greensleeves. Since my regular business has been slow, I decided to pick up some extra cash by working for the League of Reluctant Reviewers. I didn't realize how busy I'd be.

The Sickhouse (2007)

 

To visit plague-ridden homes, they soaked the robes in wax in hopes of repelling any infectious fluids or vapors. The rest of their skin, they covered with leather boots, smocks, gloves, and hoods. These strict precautions may well have protected them against the true cause of the Black Death--bacteria-carrying fleas that hitched rides on the ubiquitous rats. The doctors' distinctive masks could be made of leather or metal. The eye holes were covered with heavy netting or glass, and the long beak was stuffed with camphor-soaked cotton and herbs. Experts vary on whether the doctors believed the herbs had healing properties or simply used them to overcome the horrible smells.---Beverle Graves Myers, Cruel Music: The Plague Doctors

ZC Rating 2 of 7: Fair

"I don't have time for this," said Anna (Gina Philips), the comely archeology student in The Sickhouse. Zombos and I looked at each other. We agreed with her. Once again Paul Holstenwall, the scion of inconsequential cinema, had underwhelmed us with another exercise in pointless filmmaking.

Anna has just discovered the four punk metal wannabes who are freaking out because one of them appears to have the plague. For shame: that will teach them not to go kicking about in stolen cars for joy rides and breaking into bio-hazard excavation sites previously used as plague hospitals. And shame on Anna, too. Here she is yelling at them for breaking and entering when she did it first, releasing a centuries old evil--former member of that notorious 1665 London touring group known as the Black Priests--in the process. The five of them, the usual mix of underachieving and overachieving victims slamming into each other in supernatural slasher films, are in for a rough night of it. So is everyone else watching this whoozy camera, blurry-head-spinning-shockcut-apparition, and zoicks! music extravaganza. Whatever originality and novelty inherent in the story is undercooked by director Curtis Radclyffe's palsied camera and over-reliance on J-horror hackneyism.

The Blood Shed (2007)

Watching paint dry would be a more productive expenditure of your seventy-three minutes. Possibly not as much fun for some of you, but definitely more productive.

ZC Rating 1 of 7: Poor

The League of Reluctant Reviewers Presents:
The Inexplicable Case of The Blood Shed

Although the chandelier was unlit, light from the brightly burning logs in the large fireplace shimmered through its crystals, sending beams of white into the high, dark corners of the ceiling, across the walls, and across the richly carpeted floor. Facing the fireplace stood a high-backed Chippendale wing chair with exquisite cabriole legs. The chair was upholstered in the same deep color as the carpet. A short man briskly entered the room and walked toward the chair.

"Ah, Mr. Bolton, you are early." A small, stark white hand briefly appeared on the right side of the chair, flicked the ashes off a long cigar, then disappeared. "It must be a serious matter then?"

Bolton looked down at the ashes piled in the bronze ashtray resting on the oval-topped trestle table beside the chair. He pulled a DVD case from his worn messenger's pouch. He addressed the back of the wing chair. "Yes, it's a serious matter. Seventy-three minutes of bloody hillbilly debauchery that defies sanity, convention, and good people's decency. Bluntly put, it's schlock with a capital S."

"Excellent, I love a challenge!" said the voice, accompanied by a single clap of hands. From the left side of the wing chair a stark white hand reached out expectantly. Bolton was relieved to hand over the DVD. "You will find sherry and a polished Stiegel glass by the couch. We will be a short time, I'm sure."

Bolton removed his overcoat and retreated to the couch in the other room. He sat down, poured the sherry, and waited, as he normally did, for the review that no one else would do;  no one, that is,  except for the League of Reluctant Reviewers.