From Zombos' Closet

Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965) By Professor Kinema

by Professor Kinema

Since the name, as well as the basic premise, of Frankenstein was in the public domain, it turned up in film titles generally synonymous with the word "Monster." Throughout the classic Universal series the name was alternately given to the descendants (sons, daughters, grandchildren, and distant relatives) of the original mad doctor/creator as well as to the undying creature itself. It was also a name familiar enough to attract moviegoers. This would seem to explain why Frankenstein (in name only) turned up in Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster.

In this film, Frankenstein is a robotic astronaut--an Astrobot--named Col Frank Saunders (Robert Reilly). The generic sounding "Space Monster" proves to be a caged beast doing the bidding of pseudo-humanoid aliens. Since these aliens have a mega destructive plan for Earthlings, they all could be considered Space Monsters. Their plan also involves kidnapping a a number of nubile women to be used as breeding stock. Hopefully, their offspring wouldn't inherit the obviously poorly fitted skullcaps that adorn the male aliens' heads.

The alien invaders have names like Princess Marcuzan (referred to only as 'Princess') and Nadir (a name that could appropriately mean "the pits?"). The Frankenstein/robot element functions ultimately as the hero and savior, in a truly surreal combination of characters and plot elements, topped of with genuinely horrendous and amateurish makeup work, setting the scene for a cultish film. It's all presented '...in Futurama,' to boot.

At the end of the trailer for Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, an announcer states it's "...in Futurama," but the only other mention of Futurama turns up in the opening credits as "Futurama Entertainment Corporation Presents." The end credits mention "Interiors Photographed at Seneca Studios, Hempstead, New York." The exteriors were lensed in Puerto Rico.

At the beginning of his career, a young James Karen plays Dr. Adam Steele. This is his premier feature film. Staying primarily a TV and stage actor he would go on to appear in over 80 movies (to date) including Poltergeist, and The Return of the Living Dead (Parts I & II), and also be a spokesman for Pathmark.

Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster was initially released on a double bill with Curse of the VooDoo. Space Shield Eye Protectors were given to lucky first-run patrons (as long as supplies lasted). Presumably these eye protectors could also be used to protect the eyes from any VooDoo Curses. The film had several re-releases, turning up with titles like Duel of the Space Monsters, Frankenstein Meets the Spacemen, Marte Invade a Puerto Rico and Mars Attacks Puerto Rico (and not Hempstead, NY?). The only mention these space monsters are from Mars is found in the shot of a newspaper headline, which reads, "Earth Scientists Warn of Martian Threat."

A four page promo feature of Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster turned up in Famous Monsters of Filmland #39, June 1966. The article states this film was chosen as the lead-off film at the (prestigious) 1965 Science Fiction Film Festival in Trieste.

An archival print exists in the Museum of Modern Art's film collection. A short article in the New York Times, January 1, 2010, states, "The impaired cognition of New Year's Weekend make's it an ideal time to encounter Robert Gaffney's enjoyable, goofy drive-in movie here in an improbable screening at the Museum of Modern Art."

It was the final entry in the museum's series titled Nuts and Bolts: Machine Made Man in Films From the Collection.

Movie Review: Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974)

Zombos Says: Poor (but goes well with crackers)

 

“Atrocious lighting, abominable story, ludicrous Neanderthal men dressed in furs and carrying clubs, and thrift store couture from the costume department; shall I go on?”

I folded my arms tightly, waiting for Paul Hollstenwall to counter my argument. I dared him to find a shred of decent creativity or craft in Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks.

“Michael Dunn as Genz, the necrophilic, breast-squeezing pervert,” he replied. “He brings a little respectability to it, don’t you agree?” Paul’s wide, earnest, eyes drilled into me.

“So you’re saying the small part Dunn plays was a wise career move?”

“Well, it’s not like he can pick and choose from a variety, really. He’s a dwarf. After the Wild, Wild, West, what else is there?”

I thought about what Paul said. “True. But Genz is a long drop from playing the mirthfully nefarious Dr. Miguelito Loveless. A very long drop.”

Paul leaned back and took a sip of lemonade. We were sitting in the solarium, enjoying the warmth, peace, and quiet, next to the pelargoniums, whose scent of chocolate wafted through the room. Zombos and Zimba were out and about, hence the peace and quiet. The aftertaste of that movie still lingered in my mouth, no matter how much lemonade I drank.

 

There is no peace or quiet in Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks, otherwise known as Terror! Il Castello Delle Donne Maledette. The plot ignores incredulity, but makes for a perfect accompaniment to crackers when viewed after two or more glasses of Chianti.

Dr. Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi), using a Walmart-bought laboratory, operates on Goliath, one of two Neanderthal men terrorizing the countryside. The other is Ook, but I’ll get to him in a minute. For now, just sit back, close your eyes, and think about it. That’s right. It’s that awful and dopey. This is the first time I’ve ever used the word ‘dopey’ in a review.

Genz is one of Frankenstein’s assistants, but his habit of feeling up the nocturnal goods, fresh from the grave, gets him into trouble. He’s sent packing, to roam the countryside simmering with revenge on his mind. He and Ook find each other and become fast friends. Ook is the other Neanderthal terrorizing the villagers. Genz teaches Ook all he knows about sexual deviancy, which terrorizes the villagers even more. Even Mexican horror movies don’t stoop this low.

Frankenstein’s other assistants include a lecherous hunchback (“come with me, we go to woodshed!”), who fools around with the cook. The cook looks a lot like the ugly sister, Doris, in Shrek. Their pantry hanky-panky upsets her husband, the clumsy butler, Hans (Luciano Pigozzi). Visiting the castle are Frankenstein’s daughter Maria (Simonetta Vitelli) and fiancé, and her friend Krista (Christiane Rucker), who studies science and becomes fascinated by the savings Frankenstein accomplishes by using all that Walmart laboratory equipment. A portrait with moving eyes watches Krista take a bath, and eyes behind a wall clock’s glass door watches Maria make love to her fiancé. We watch in horror—not the good horror movie kind—as flaccid close-ups, lethargic pacing, and choppy zooms make high-school theatrical endeavors appear to have more carefully arranged production values than this production. The accompanying music sounds mostly like someone gargling throughout the movie.

While Frankenstein shows Krista his “accumulator,” Genz shows Ook how to cook meat in Ook’s real man-cave. Gratuitous nudity is provided by Maria and Krista bathing in the man-cave’s natural hot tub, but they act like sisters unfortunately.

Not much heat is generated by the sparse showing of townsfolk, who light the torches to go after Ook when a local girl is killed. When Genz sneaks back to the laboratory to free Goliath, that Neanderthal brute kills the hunchback, the butler, and Frankenstein. I confess I was glad he did that. After Ook grabs Krista—she returned to bathe in the man-cave again—he and Goliath go into smackdown mode. Both smack each other back and forth until Goliath kills Ook.

(Note to self: suppress urge to write ‘he does it with a left (h)Ook)’.)

The villagers show up to kill Goliath.

Inexplicably, Krista hugs Genz, the homicidal pervert as the movie ends on a philosophical note when someone sums it all up: “There’s a bit of a monster in all of us.”

Travelogues have more drama. Watch one instead.

Movie Review: Mesa of Lost Women (1953)

Zombos Says: Poor (but hilarity abounds)

Leering dwarf faces keep intercutting at inappropriate times, producing an effect not unlike the subliminals inTerror in the Haunted House. The spider women, with the notable exception of Tarantella, all dress like extras in She. Adding to the Woodian confusion, if you look quickly enough, you will see Mona McKinnon (Plan 9) and Dolores Fuller (Glen or Glenda?, Jailbait) among them. (Bad Movie Report)

There are movies that act like ridicule magnets. Anyone who has watched enough television or eaten too much popcorn at the cinema can easily name at least one special instance of ignominy felt from being spectator to a cinematic catastrophe, or feeling resentful from having time, better spent elsewhere, sinfully squandered and ticket money regrettably wasted.

Then again, there are people like our neighbor, Paul Hollstenwall.

“Wasn’t that a hoot,” said Paul, pulling up the collar of his raincoat and pulling down the brim of his hat.

No, wait a minute, I was only imagining he was standing in front of a sleazy theater. I adjusted my mental eyesight better. After watching the movie he brought over, Ron Ormand’s Mesa of Lost Women, I needed to do a lot of adjustment. We were in Zombos’ library and Paul was sitting on my left, dressed in his usual brown tweed sport coat, faded jeans, and worn Pumas. Zombos was sitting on my right and—wait, where’d he get off to?

“More like a howler,” I told Paul. “I’m not sure what jarring close-ups of leering dwarves, non-speaking hoochie cooch-dressed women, and a hairy spider with eight legs that doesn’t move them--the legs I mean--much, has to do with the title. No, wait, come to think of it, just about everybody was lost most of the time, including me and Jackie Coogan as the mad scientist Dr. Aranya, hanging out in a cave and doing what I’m still not sure of.”

“He was mutating spiders into giants and mutating women with his spider venom,” supplied Paul.

“Why? And why were those women and dwarves constantly underfoot? It doesn’t make sense.”

“He’s a mad scientist. What’s to make sense? Don’t they always mutate, create, or destroy things in horror and sci-fi movies? Because they’re crazy, I mean. The movie’s definitely a double-biller for a drive-in, so adding some feminine pulchritude kept eyes peeled on the screen more than Aranya or loopy Dr. Masterson (Harmon Stevens) would have.

Paul had a point. And he actually used the word pulchritude in a sentence.

“What surprises me is how good the cinematography is compared to the rest,” I said.

“That is because the directors of photography were too good for this dreck,” said Zombos, entering the library. “Ice cold mint juleps should be arriving just about…now.”

The bell on the library’s dumbwaiter buzzed. I headed over and extracted the drinks. Chef Machiavelli’s mint juleps would have even satisfied Tennessee Williams.

“The photography,” continued Zombos, “was done by Karl Struss and Gilbert Warrenton. More than adequate for this otherwise incompetent opus." He took the glass I handed to him and sat down on my right. "All that desert photography made me thirsty.” He took a sip then continued.

"Judicious use of dissolves, wipes, and recall the first meeting between Dr. Masterson and Aranya in the cave laboratory. That set was the size of a walk-in closet. Yet look at how they moved our view left to right, from in front of the lone lab table. It gave depth and liveliness to a tight and narrow space."

"Shame they couldn't clip the cantina scene with Tarantella (Tandra Quinn) doing her endless tarantella," I quipped.

"No!" Paul said. "She's so dark and mysterious. Don't forget she's really a spiderized woman."

"Well, she certainly had the legs for it, even if only two of them. Now, maybe you can tell me what Masterson going all loopy and weird was about?"

"He goes dopey after Aranya injects him with a drug," said Paul, "to stop him from interfering with Aranya's nefarious work—"

"—Making dwarves and spiderized woman. Okay then, what about the cantina scene? He shows up, sits down with a couple of perfect strangers, watches Tarantella dance—how'd she get there in the first place?—and dance. And dance some more. Said spiderwoman glares at him while he talks to the couple, a man and woman who don't know him from Adam. And he talks, and talks some more. And then they leave the cantina. He insists on them all taking a plane ride, with a little persuasion from his gun, the plane engine catches fire and conveniently they all crash land on Aranya's mesa." I stopped to take a breadth.

"Did you notice how the pilot did not turn his steering wheel at all during the flight," said Zombos. “He must have graduated from the Plan 9 school of method acting."

I continued. "Now they're all on the mesa, along with that giant spider that doesn't move much, and assorted dwarves and pretty women who stand around like a chorus in a Greek tragedy, only they don't say a word. We even see them, most of the time, standing a scant few feet away from everyone else, but everyone else doesn't see them at all. Then Wu, the token Chinese guy, buys it in the woods. Of course he has to mutter a proverb or two before getting killed about being killed, which is why they needed him in the first place I guess. And I think the mesa set was even smaller than the lab." 

"Indeed," added Zombos. "When the pilot takes out his penlight to light the way through the woods, everyone keeps moving back and forth through the same narrow path, holding hands."

"Then more close-ups of grinning dwarves and pretty women ensemble standing around an arm's length away while the pilot and the woman from the cantina hit it off by the campfire. Out of the blue he's telling her what kind of woman he likes and they kiss." 

"At least much humor ensues with one fellow jumping TOWARD the nearly comatose giant spider when he sees it, and let us not forget the effusive potential for derisive commentary throughout," said Zombos.

"So," I summed up, "we've got a music score that runs rampant from the get-go, ignoring the action on screen much of the time, a confusing triple bypass flashback going on between characters to tell an already incoherent story, and a crummy script that opens up a world of mirth in the viewing, not to mention some bizarre scene cutting and papier mache mise-en-scène. Oh, and I shouldn't forget the ponderous Criswell-styled narration to aid in our understanding of this nonsense."

"And deliciously potent mint juleps to make it all go down agreeably," said Paul.

We all drank to that.  

Movie Review: Dylan Dog, Dead of Night (2010) No Bark or Bite

Listen to the Movie Review

 Zombos Says: Fair

It's stupefying how movies can deviate so much from their original sources of inspiration. Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is a good example. The screaming doorbell, the Groucho character (I can understand dropping the Groucho character), and the London locale of the comic book series this movie is based on are gone. Replacing them is a New Orleans sticky gumshoe who looks amazingly like Brandon Routh, but acts like a cardboard standee of him, a threadbare plot that rolls up very much like True Blood and all that slick vampire jazz, and Marcus (Being Human's Sam Huntington), a lively sidekick turned lively zombie oozing all over the place for comic relief.

Even if the source material wasn't ignored as much, the movie would still flatline. The story reeks of too many writers huddled around cups of warm coffee and piles of stale Danish, and director Kevin Munroe plays it straight and doughy. The quirkiness, the differential feel of weird sliding along zany, and Dylan Dog's anti-establishment leaning is missing in action. This 'nightmare investigator' is plain as day, although he still dresses smartly in a red shirt and black jacket. He carries bigger guns, too.

At 250.00 dollars a day plus expenses, Dylan's settled for taking photographs of cheating spouses. He lives in a cruddy office, drives a two-miles-from-the-dump Volkswagon Beetle, and wants to forget the lost love of his life, but can't. He's Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe rolled into one--Routh even provides unnecessary noir-appropriate voiceover--but without that chippy dialog or trenchcoat style to match it.

He's shaken out of his career stupor by the daughter of a man mauled to death by an intruder in the Ryan Mansion. She got his "No pulse, no problem" business card from a priest, but Dylan brushes her off, telling her he's out of that business. She insists, he resists, until his buddy Marcus is mauled to death by an intruder. A quick change of clothes into the red and black, and he's back chasing monsters. And explaining ad nauseum about his paranormal business without cracking any inflectives. He explains New Orleans is chock full of vampires, werewolves, and zombies, and before he started chasing bedsheet bingo players he was the chief investigator appointed by the netherworld to maintain the peace. I would have liked to have seen that movie.

Now hot on the trail of the monster mauler, Dylan visits Vargus (Scott Leo Diggs) at the vampire nightclub Corpus, where the love of his life was murdered. He also visits the meat packing plant where the werewolves hang out. In between visits, he's helping Marcus get used to his new zombie lifestyle that includes eating maggots served fresh on a bun (no pickles), and regular visits to Big Al's Body Shop for replacement body parts.

Huntington plays his Being Human self, which I enjoy watching because it matches his physical presence well, but without enough writer support his zombie-angst filled interludes--including a zombie support-group meeting--stretch thin. There's one good line. It comes just after Marcus wakes up undead, when he's told "Good thing about being the living dead, no more jogging."

While it's no Maltese Falcon, the artifact at the center of the mayhem is the Heart of Belial. The owner of it gets to bring back a demon who will destroy everyone the owner doesn't like. Or so the legend says. No one ever reads the fine print.

There is one good thing here, but it comes after seeing the movie, when you can read the Dylan Dog Italian comic book series by Tiziana Sclavi. Better yet, I'd recommend doing that instead of seeing this movie.

Movie Review: Red Riding Hood (2011) Hoodwinks Audience

Zombos Says: Fair

"I still want my money back," insisted Zombos. He gets like that when we see a movie he doesn't like.

"Fine, then," I relented. Here's your six dollars. But I'm not paying for the popcorn and Junior Mints. You ate most of those anyway." Zombos folded the money and pocketed it, then rushed back to the concession stand. Probably to buy more Junior Mints. While I waited for him, I thought through my impressions of Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood.

 

A child's imagination of fairy tale prettiness infuses everything. Clothes, people, the surrounding medieval forest, it's all colorful, cheerful, and naively pretty. Clothes are clean and neat, people are clean and neat, and the village is clean and neat. No Dark Ages grunge or malaise to be found here. Cindy Evans' television series costuming (the way rustic villagers in Stargate SG-1 episodes are dressed, for example), reinforces this lightness. And although snow is falling and winter is upon them, no one is bundled up against the chill. No frosty-breath comes from mouths and the ladies' bosoms are bared for spring, especially Valerie's (Amanda Seyfried). When Grandmother (Julie Christie) gives her the red-hooded cloak, it's a fashion statement, not a garment to wear because it's cold.

The Village of Daggerhorn has been beset by a killer wolf for many years, yet the village is happy, a thriving place with everyone well-adjusted, immaculately groomed, and nattily attired. The forest is happy with its bright fields of flowers, and the village idiot is happy, and as pretty and well groomed as everyone else. He doesn't act too idiotic, either, just enough to be adorably off.

Father Auguste (Lukas Haas) is the only one who is dour and shows concern. He has sent for the witch and werewolf hunter Father Solomon (Gary Oldman playing Gary Oldman). Father Solomon's prior experience with a werewolf left him traveling around in an armored carriage with heavily armed guards. Arriving in the village, one guard, sitting atop the carriage, keeps aim with his crossbow, sweeping it back and forth as if he expects trouble any second. It looks pretty silly. Solomon also travels with a large, hollow, bronze elephant, with a door in one side. He locks people he doesn't like in it and lights a fire underneath to torture them.

This is as medieval as it gets.

Before Father Solomon arrives, Valerie's sister is killed by the wolf, sending the men off to hunt it down. They find a gray wolf, kill it, bring its head back, and show it to Father Solomon, claiming he's not needed. He disagrees and gives them the standard rundown on werewolfism. They ignore him and hold a rave party instead (or what would be the equivalent of one, I’d guess, for medieval times). The computerized werewolf shows up, chews up the scenery and townsfolk, and speaks to Valerie before he leaves. She notices his big brown human eyes as he tells her to run away with him or else he'll put the bite on the entire village.

Valerie now has a difficult decision to make. Run away with the darkly handsome, tousle haired, woodcutter Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), or stay and marry the handsome, tousle haired blacksmith Henry (Max Irons), or run away with a real stud, the tousle haired werewolf with big brown eyes. There is no tension or suspense produced by her difficult decision: Hardwicke's tone is non-committal, David Johnson's story is vapid, and Seyfried's performance is overshadowed by her hooded cloak. I had a more rewarding time at the concession stand making up my mind between Junior Mints and Reese's Pieces.

The romance turns into a whodunit as Valerie stares into people's eyes, wondering who (maybe whom?) the werewolf is. When the revelation comes it's like an ending from an Agatha Christie mystery.

Come to think of it, I want my money back, too.

 

Movie Review: Skyline (2010) Not Much to See

Zombos Says: Fair

Here it is in a film cannister: if you've seen the trailer for Skyline, you've seen the most exciting part of this slimy-aliens-from-space pulp drama of Borg-like ( part machine, part organic, all regenerating),  Matrixy-looking, multi-tentacled creatures vacuuming up humanity through a sparkly blue light as easily as dust mites are sucked up an Oreck.

In this war of the worlds special effects opus of us losing against them big time, the kicker here is they want our brains, which they use like Energiser batteries to power either themselves or their machinery, or maybe it's both. I will, with difficulty, refrain from making any dead battery jokes just because they're attacking Los Angeles, but feel free to infer whatever you like, or even change the locale to suit your preference.

It looks like Independence Day, but it doesn't have that movie's patriotic enthusiasm or energetic characters; it looks like War of the Worlds (old and new versions), but it doesn't have either of those movies' overwhelming sense of decimation, growing futility, or soul-numbing despair; it even looks like 1954's Target Earth, whose hunting mechanoids scour the city's streets for survivors in hiding. With Skyline  mashing dramatic ingredients from many science fiction movies, the Brothers Strause fail to add any of their own sugar and spice to the familiar effects to make this more satisfying than the Coke and Reese's Pieces I had while watching it.

I will pin much of the blame on the dialog: it's stultifying.  None of the pretty people trapped in Terry's (Donald Faison) penthouse speak in their own words. They bicker, they yell, but in stock, one-line sentences. Pick any two people and switch the dialog around; there would be no difference. The ugly aliens have more personality and they don't talk.

As Los Angeles is vacuumed clean of residents, Terry's house guests hide from the invaders with the blinds drawn. His automatic window blinds reminded me of the house shields in Forbidden Planet. They weren't very effective either. There's Jarrod (Eric Balfour), his girlfriend Elaine (Scottie Thompson), Terry's girlfriend Candice (Brittany Daniel), and Terry's personal assistant (emphasis on personal) Denise (Crystal Reed).

They disagree on whether to stay or make a run for it. Eventually they reluctantly run, but a giant alien stomps on their escape. Oliver (David Zayas), the concierge, comes to their rescue. He and Jarrod disagree on whether to stay or make a run for it. Much of the movie seems to be spent on everyone disagreeing on what to do next. A possible tension-mounting relationship between Candice, Denise, and cheating Terry is quickly stomped on, too.

They watch as the military shoots nukes at the motherships--over Los Angeles--but the blown apart ships regenerate.  A few soldiers are dropped by helicopter to fight the maruading aliens, but they lose. Jarrod takes Elaine up to the roof, hoping they can escape by helicopter. The aliens intervene and they are captured. We get to see inside the mothership, how nasty the aliens are, and the groan-inducing potential for a sequel. However, I'll admit I do like the ending: it's hokey but pure pulp science fiction in tone.

Skyline is a straight to DVD movie that somehow got a lot more money to add a lot more fiery special effects. Now that's science fiction.

Movie Review: Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

Zombos Says: Fair (but only because I like Milla Javovich)

Watching the lissom Alice (Milla Jovovich) adroitly manhandle automatic weapons only goes so far to entertain in this unending series of flying bullets, flying kickassery, and flailing plotlines, padded with relentless undead and increasingly inane T-Virus mutations. Paul W. S. Anderson's unending slow-motion, freeze-frame interruptions to the CGI action are almost as annoying as the numb-thumping soundtrack that rocks on, oblivious to its purpose. Resident Evil: Afterlife is as glossy as a MySpace page and as dramatically rendered.

An NRA supporter's dream--mine, too-- of seeing an army of tightly-clad Alice clones rapid-firing their way through the evil minions of the Umbrella Corporation, and countless slobbering undead, lasts only as long as the CGI budget allows. After that it's up to the original Alice to fly around in her two-seater plane looking for survivors.

An impossible crash landing on the roof of a maximum security prison introduces a few more characters for us to play with. Oh, sorry, this isn't the interactive game, just the uninvolving movie: I keep forgetting. There is the sports star (Boris Kodjoe), the expendables for the monster attack scenes, the feisty and determined Claire (Ali Larter), the nasty producer who you know is going to screw everyone because he just wants to go home (Kim Coates), and the mysterious military guy they've locked up (Wentworth Miller).

With that amazing kind of luck that only happens in bad scripts and Resident Evil movies, an arsenal of heavy-duty firepower has been left behind by the army, but access to it is submerged under the water that's now flooding the lower levels of the prison. I won't spoil your fun--this movie does its best to do that already--but my favorite slacker hack of bad scripting, the air vent big enough to crawl or drive through, comes to the rescue as T-Virus nasties begin piling up.

The biggest nasty wears a sack over his head and wields a meat tenderizer and axe combo that is as big as that air vent I mentioned. No explanation is given--and I suppose none is really expected at this point--for this nine-foot mutant showing up at the prison gates. He winds up in the shower with Alice and Claire (but not like that). Anderson's action-interruptus slow-motion kills the excitement anyway.

The Umbrella Corporation's evil mastermind (Shawn Roberts)--he wears black and tauntingly slicks his hair back--shows up for the finale. He's ingested some T-Virus himself and tries to put the bite on Alice. More action-interruptus ensues.

You may have noticed I haven't mentioned the 3D. That's because there is nothing to say about it. Its use in this movie is as pointless as everything else.

Movie Review: The Last Airbender (2010) Gasping For Air

Zombos Says: Fair (watch the animated series instead)

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 based on 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 here 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 when in the Avatar state providing room for emotional growth in the anime, tempered by his boyish spirit of adventure, can,t 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 is 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 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 movie version of the anime’s spiritual journey, one 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 a 7 Eleven—I'm wondering how a heavy-handed director, with a lately spotty track record, is given a movie that requires a touch as light as air.

That's what I'm wondering.

 

Movie Review: Jonah Hex (2010) The Spell is Broken

Zombos Says: 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 weapon of mass destruction, created by Eli Whitney no less, figures prominently. They always do. Mysterious glowing balls of fire provide the triggering mechanism for larger balls of fiery, explosive material. Turnbull does a dry run of the weapon's capabilities by blowing up a small town just after church services. He threatens to blow up the nation's capital on the centennial celebration for July 4th. President Grant (Aidan Quinn) conscripts Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) into hunting down Turnbull and ending the madman's grand scheme. The bad blood between Hex and Turnbull goes back aways: Turnbull killed Hex's family in retribution for Hex causing the death of his son.

Something truly weird happens in this movie and I'm not referring to Megan Fox.

Yet.

A flashback done in comic book format explains, sort of, how the Indians helped Hex survive to become the I-talk-to-the-dead-bounty-hunter-badass wanted by the law. Watching the colorful but limited animation (it brought to mind those Marvel Super Heroes cartoons in the 1960s) I wondered Did they run out of budget? Was this movie originally planned as animation? Why suddenly eschew perfectly good live action for a graphic novel on screen? Why not pepper this lengthy backstory as flashbacks throughout this leisurely-paced movie to make it less onerous?

I thought about this until "I don't play house" Lilah (Megan Fox) and Hex hook up for a bedtime social visit. Then I started thinking Why is she in this movie? Beauty to his ugliness? She doesn’t have much to do, or much to say, or much to act on. Brolin has even less to work with, but he does have a nifty ability to talk to the dead. He just grabs hold of a moldy corpse and it springs to life. But he needs to talk fast because the fresher the corpse, the faster it starts to immolate into ashes. Aside from Hex's orneriness, this appears to be his best and only mystical ability.

Red-tinted fever-dream flashes of him fighting Turnbull around a coffin with a crow sitting on its lid are the only other mystical touches. They don't make sense, but touches they remain. Eventually Hex talks to enough dead people to find Turnbull. Before he meets his nemesis, he stocks up on the usual badass tricky gunnage that can deliver high explosive impact and flailing bodies flying asunder with minimal effort. He gets it from this movie's equivalent of James West's gadget-buddy Artemus Gordon.

Hex and Turnbull and Lilah square-off on an ironclad ship in Independence Harbor as it speeds toward the capital with its deadly weapon preparing to fire. Union soldiers pull up alongside in their version of the ironclad Monitor and ask Turnbull to kindly surrender his weapon of mass destruction and stop being such a damn nuisance. While they wait for his reply, he locks and loads and blows them out of the water in a shower of little ironclad pieces. I was hoping for a better reenactment of the Battle of Hampdon Roads.

The one thing they got right in this movie is when Hex whistles for his horse to come to him.

At least his horse knows what to do.

.

Movie Review: Survival of the Dead (2010) Romero Without Bite

Zombos Says: Fair

Survival of the Dead is a silly zombie movie when it shouldn't be and a terrible zombie movie when it should be terrifying. Revisiting threadbare plot themes, George Romero's once fearsome and unstoppable horde have become as bothersome as pesky mosquitoes in need of swatting when they get too close, and his always quarrelsome living survivors, not surprisingly, are still quarreling.

Only this time he's put them all on Plum Island and split the survivors into two feuding Irish homesteads headed by Seamus Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick) and Patrick O'Flynn (Kenneth Walsh). Seamus wants to keep the deadheads tethered or herded like cattle until a cure can be found. Patrick wants to shoot the rotters and be done with it. Almost everyone dresses, rides horses, and shoots guns like this is a Western; but it isn't, although an Old West zombie story might have been more engaging. A zombie riding horseback is even lassoed by a cowboy. I halfheartedly wanted to see the cowpoke heat up a Melody Ranch branding iron and tag the zombie. It would not have made much sense but neither does much of this movie.

Eschewing the grittier and more grotesque Tom Savini-styled makeup effects that made zombies and their habits more revolting and terrifying back in the day (although this storyline does take place a few days after the plague starts), Romero instead enhances the de rigueur skull-splitting with assorted CGI-flavored dispatches including the cranium plop, the flare gun incendiary noggin' (which reminded me of Jim Carrey's Ghost of Christmas Past in Scrooge), and the Looney Tune pop-eyed popper (I was disappointed no accompanying awhooozah! horn sounded when those pupils popped).

Romero's zombies don't look much the worse for being undead here. They continue to shuffle about everywhere, on land and in the water, but he directs Survival like he's planing a piece of wood when he should be gouging deep splintery notches in it instead. Survival's zombies lack bite: Romero prefers to make them loved ones gone bad instead of ravenous fiends looking to tear chunks of flesh from living bodies and play slinky with intestines. This may serve his story but turns his ubiquitous monsters, the same ones he fostered into popular culture, into slow moving hazards his characters avoid on the road to survival, but not too hurriedly. Survival's deadheads would fit comfortably into the undead and not very scary crowd at the Monroeville Mall Zombie Walk.

Sarge (Alan Van Sprang) and his small band of soldiers turned mercenaries, last seen in Diary of the Dead, provide most of the action. One soldier on guard duty watches a late night show poking fun at zombies on his laptop. Another one, Tomboy (Athena Karkanis) masturbates to kill time. They come across a group of hunters who have put CGI zombie heads on spikes for fun. Irritated by that, Sarge kills all of them except for Boy (Kevin Bostick), who shows them a YouTube video with Patrick O'Flynn extolling the fresh air and safety of Plum Island. I wonder if he has a Facebook page? They decide to go there and travel to the docks in an armored truck. After finding a million dollars locked away in the truck, they agree it's worthless given the current situation (the zombie plague, not the recession); but Boy still manages to keep the key.

It's a lucky coincidence the banished Patrick and his small band of followers are at the docks when Sarge pulls up. Over bullets and zombies, and occasional flashes of Romero's wit for dry humor--one man fishing keeps catching zombies, and a stick of lighted dynamite is fortuitously dropped into a zombie's grasping fingers--Patrick and the soldiers make their way to a ferry and sweep it clean of infestation. They power up the engines and head to Plum Island.

The tension does not pick up with this shift in fire power. Romero doggedly undermines it with his feuding patriarchs squaring off on the dietary habits of the deadheads, another you-were-infected-weren't-you? zombie in the making, an inconsequential twist, and a banal approach to showing it all. A few scenes of flesh and organ eating are for perfunctory consumption only. Zombies placed in the barn's stalls like cattle provides a whimsical touch, but Romero's unique ability to balance his story's importance between living and undead falters here. In Survival of the Dead the living are caricatures of people and the deadheads are imitation zombies.

Movie Review: Necrophagus (1971) A Strange Case of Dereliction

"If any of you want to accompany me to the cemetery
you better get ready. I'd like to know who died."

Zombos Says: Poor

Ripped from the case files of the League of Reluctant Reviewers comes this bizarre interpretation of a horror movie. It is incomprehensible. It is Spanish. It is nonsensical. It is so bad it is as much fun to watch as to belittle. It is Necrophagus, aka Graveyard of Horror, aka The Butcher of Binbrook.

 Since the direction is amateurish, the acting wooden and the script confused, one can only conclude that it was Nieva's Eastmancolor cinematography that won the film first prize at the 1971 Festival of the Cine de Terror at Sitges. (The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Horror)

 "Your hand is shaking Mr. Bolton," observed Chalmers as he ushered me into the familiar room.

He was right.

The weather had turned wetter, chillier, and foggier than was usual for May. That was my excuse anyway. My hand started shaking during the long walk to 999 Transient Street, the club where the League of Reluctant Reviewers hung out. I only come here when Zombos and Iloz Zoc do not want to bother themselves with reviewing certain movies. You know, the difficult ones. The movies normal people feel ashamed to be caught dead watching. Those guys act like critic-wimps sometimes, especially when Paul Hollstenwall is involved.

Man, that guy savors dreck like bears lick honey.

I have taken this trip often enough thanks to Paul, but it is rare for my hand to start shaking. The hand that holds the DVD. It was shaking badly now; almost as bad as when I had brought The Human Centipede to the club the other night. But that's another story. A real wild one. I must still be shell-shocked from that escapade.

"Perhaps I should take your wet coat and that DVD," he suggested. He shook the drops off my coat while gingerly easing the DVD from my clenched fingers.

I usually bring the DVD to the Champagne Room myself, but this time I let Chalmers do it. He led the way. The owner of the club, the unseen man with chalk white hands and a voice as smooth as velvet, sitting in the Chippendale wing chair always facing the fireplace, welcomed me in.

"And what have we tonight?" he asked, reaching out from the chair. "Hopefully, nothing as, shall we say, challenging as that previous movie?" He chuckled, but a little nervously.

Chalmers gave the DVD to him. Both hand and DVD withdrew behind the chair.

"Ah, I see. This should not take too long at all, I think." A white hand reached out to ring the bell sitting on the small table by the chair while Chalmers escorted me to the small waiting room, where a comfortable settee and comforting drink awaited me. This time Chalmers chose a warm Tom and Jerry instead of the usual chilled sherry. Good man.

I closed my eyes and let the hot liquid dribble down my throat, and waited for the League of Reluctant Reviewers to once again do their review magic.

 

A mad scientist, somewhat dead and feeding off corpse liquors to stay that way; a gaggle of women prone to hysterics and fits of slapping each other; and a skulking cemetery keeper, Mr. Fowles (Victor Israel), who gives googly-eye stares and never changes his clothes, infuse Necrophagus with unintentionally humorous melodramatics topped off by an inane story so incoherently told you will need to search Google for understanding it before you see it.

Even more surprising, you can't blame Jess Franco or Paul Naschy for this one.

The short of it has handsome Lord Sherrington (Bill Curran) return to his family castle in Scotland (actually shot in Spain) to find out what happened to his wife Elizabeth, who died in childbirth. Sherrington's brother, a research scientist (or something like that) also happens to be missing. A lengthy narration at the end of the movie explains what his brother was doing and why he went missing, but at this point, for anyone still watching, it comes too late and doesn't explain much anyway.

The long of it has two doctors acting rudely and mysteriously; Elizabeth's frisky sisters and a niece (sorry, no nudity) either pining away for or fainting over Sherrington's affections; the cemetery keeper skulking around a lot with his annoying pop-eye stare; Sherrington's fondness for playing a tune—which sounds very much like On Top of Old Smokey—repeatedly on his harmonica.

Yes, a harmonica.

Add a police inspector investigating the brother's disappearance (at least that's one possibility for the policeman’s loitering around the castle since no reason is ever mentioned), two Scream-like robed and masked attackers loitering around the cemetery day and night, and another doctor who must be a villain because each time he enters a room, the camera zooms in on his face while zither-like zing-zing-zing musical notes alert us to his potentially villainous role.

There’s also a fast change of seasons with snowball fights and summer-like greenery mixing together within a time period not more than a week or so long by my reckoning, so that’s fairly confusing, too.

When Lord Sherrington insists on playing his harmonica and seeing his wife's body, he's rebuffed by the doctors and the cemetery keeper. Entering the cemetery at night, he starts flinging dirt at the camera—pretty funny, really—as he digs up his wife's coffin to find it empty. More dirt is flung at the camera as he digs up other coffins, also finding them empty. The two robed and masked loiterers knock him out cold and drag him someplace where a pulsing mound of dirt has tubes running out of it. He wakes up. Something in the mound of dirt wakes up. He screams a lot and that's all we see: him screaming a lot.

Director Miguel Madrid's penchant for close-up monster point of view angles, showing people on the ground screaming and holding up their hands to fend off an attack from the unseen growling something, don't do much to raise the scares. Needless to say, Sherrington goes missing; but not his harmonica, unfortunately.

Endless scenes with the gaggle of women reminiscing over their lust for him (or perhaps it was his lusty harmonica playing?), berating each other for their lustful reminiscences, or holding hands and looking scared as they go searching for him in the Scottish castle that's not in Scotland, round out the rest of the 80 minutes or so running time. As well as close-ups of a gloved hand poked into an overcoat's pocket, moving from room to room, legs walking, and startled faces, punctuated now and then by the first few notes of On Top of Old Smokey or zing-zing-zing music for dramatic effect to complete the tour de force of cinematography on display here.

I’m being sarcastic.

When the monster finally does show up it goes after a girl so it can pointlessly carry her unconscious body in its arms while walking into a hail of police-fired bullets. Scratch one monster posthaste.

Devout fans of early 1970s Spanish horror movies will argue Miguel Madrid brilliantly and intentionally fragmented Necrophagus by shooting it non-linearly and then raggedly cutting his scenes to create disorientation in the viewer.

Don't believe them.

 

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

Zombos Says: 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’s well 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.

Ironically, the interpersonal perquisites of cell phone, too many close-ups of Google-like search engine queries, and a victim's anguished YouTube-delivered solilocam cry for help, distance Freddy's victims from each other—and from us—by substituting the more intimate sleep-over vigil shown in the original film, when Tina, Nancy, and Glen fret over their shared nightmares, with a modern digital one that trades the popcorn closeness for laptops and no-doze medications. While Freddy's potential victims share a forgotten connection from having attended the same preschool, their relationships are made weaker because of this digitized distancing, rendering them less supportive of each other and easier prey for their tormentor. Which is good for Freddy because, being less creative in his attacks in this remake, he doesn't do much beyond making sparks when he scrapes his blades against the pipes.

Again and again and again.

At least Nancy remains his favorite little girl. But this Nancy (Rooney Mara) is not 1984's Nancy (played by the feisty Heather Langenkamp). Here she puts up a less-spirited fight against Freddy and spends more time searching the Internet for information and sketching her nightmares instead of trying to save her friends. Where Craven drove his story through the battle of wills between Nancy and Freddy, escalating the stakes through an ambitious series of special effects to add urgency and nightmarish uncertainty, writers Strick and Heisserer use the slow revelation of Freddy's nastiness with children as their primary driver, eschewing the giddily insane, booby-trapped confrontation between Nancy and Freddy for repetitive, almost static, boiler room scenes of Freddy looking ominous and victims looking scared. Fans can debate the merits or demerits of this changed dynamic, but this remake’s less dreamland, more rational approach keeps the story as rigid as Haley's burn makeup.

As a fan of horror movies, and yes, the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, I can tell you this movie is a disappointment because it takes from the original storyline but doesn't seem to understand it. Freddy is here, his victims are here, lots more technology use—and no weird-looking hairdos—are here, but the nightmarish invasion of one's dreams is missing; the menace that sparked the first entry in this franchise is missing; 1984's spirit behind the envelope-pushing special effects is missing.

This is one boring movie when it should have sizzled.

Now, if they had Johnny Depp play Freddy instead…?