From Zombos' Closet

Movie Review: Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007)

Zombos Says: Fair

Half-way into the movie I started to wonder why I wasn't feeling the love. Where was the lingering taste of candy corn on my lips, the smell of burning pumpkin innards, charred by candle flame, in my nose? Certainly there was no suspense, or even anticipation of it, from the unstoppable bogeyman as I watched Rob Zombie's re-imagining of John Carpenter's 1978 retelling of The Hook urban legend, Halloween. Of course, Zombie didn't have actors like Jamie Lee Curtis or Donald Pleasence to bolster his story, but since he spent much of the film focused on the unkempt Daeg Faerch as the young Michael Myers, perhaps that's a moot point. Or maybe not?

Making Myers more psychotic serial killer than ghost-like supernatural force to reckon with may be the cinematic equivalent of getting toothpaste and dental floss in your trick or treat bag instead of mouth-watering chocolates and sugary sweets. With Zombie's penchant for dysfunctional, white-trash families, and potty-mouthed, libidinous characters you really really don't care about, and lingering stares at his all too familiar blood-splattered tableaus, the hairs-rising-on-the-back-of-your-neck quality of the original story has been carved out and replaced with the pedestrian graphic violence prevalent in today's horror repertoire. 

Subtlety is not one of Zombie's stronger directorial abilities. He prefers to show everything, raw and bloody, and provide a rationale for why Michael Myers slices and dices like crazy. With a stripper for a mom, a Bowery bum for a father, a very loose unsisterly sister, and school chums that despise him with a passion, Michael will either become a born-again Christian, or a serial killer. While some may argue both cases can be the subject for a horror film, Zombie chooses the latter, and promptly drains the Jack-O-Lantern life out of the franchise.

The adversarial quality of Carpenter's film, exemplified by Jamie Lee Curtis struggling to survive the normally festive Halloween night, and Donald Pleasence earnestly warning of the bogeyman, sustained the tension and suspense of Michael's return to Haddonfield. Zombie erases this adversarial plotline by perfunctorily moving from sex-romping victim to sex-romping victim in well-orchestrated, but uninvolving mayhem as Michael goes after his now grown up baby sister. There is no anticipation of violence here, and therefore no suspense or real scares from the unexpected. Michael kills anything in sight so knowing what he's going to do next is a no-brainer. He's going to kill everyone in sight. Ho-hum.

Malcolm McDowell's Dr. Loomis is more social worker than psychiatrist, and doesn't have the vulnerability that made Donald Pleasence's more fearful Loomis more interesting. When McDowell tells Michael—after the body count has been steadily rising—that "I've failed you," I thought to myself "Ya think?" Zombie's Dr. Loomis laments why Michael is so screwed up he can't be helped; Carpenter's Dr. Loomis realizes Michael is just plain evil, he's dangerous, and needs to be locked away forever. Which one do you think would sustain more tension in the storyline?

The trend toward making serial killers humongous in stature also works against subtlety here. Tyler Mane's Michael Myers is visually imposing, but evil is most devilish when it comes in  average height. And how the hell did little Mikey grow so big anyway? Mask-making is hardly a resistance-exercise, and that's all he did in his little cell; make paper-maché masks of all kinds to hide his face.

Zombie does toss in a few nods to the original film, and makes good use of the original soundtrack. There's also a nod to his former band, White Zombie, as  Murder Legendre briefly pops up on a television screen. Zombie continues this theme as classic horror movies appear on television screens here and there. Numerous cameos include Micky Dolenz and Sid Haig.

Zombie knows his craft, but relies on trash-violence and unsavory characters to tell his story every time, demeaning the level of artistry Carpenter showed in the original. Giving Michael Myers a sordid background, filled with animal cruelty and vicious murder, removes the mystery behind the mask, making this just another slasher film whose action  could have taken place at any time during the year. But this movie’s monster is supposed to be the Halloween bogeyman, damn it.

Re-imaginings like these make us realize what makes a classic so classic. That, at least, is a good thing.

Movie Review: Primeval (2007) What a Croc

Zombos Says: Fair

Director Michael Katleman's Primeval is a film filled with monsters. There's Gustave, the four-legged, meat-eating kind, and Little Gustave, the two-legged and hungry for power kind. Both do not help make Primeval a good horror movie. The story's tension and scares are lost in the flip-flops between social commentary, which requires lingering and thoughtful scenes, and horror, which requires the exact opposite.

Based on a real-life crocodile that's been attacking people along the Rusizi River in Burundi, Africa, you'd think the story would pretty much write itself: the largest man-eating crocodile in history, born out of a genocidal civil-war raging in Burundi. With so many bodies floating around in the river, it's no wonder Gustave develops a taste for human flesh. Yet, Katleman's film misses the real horror of this human tragedy.

Movie Review: Hannibal Rising (2007) Sympathy for the Devil?

Zombos Says: Fair

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
If you meet me, have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste
from the song by The Rolling Stones

 

How does one give sympathy to the devil? That's the challenge Thomas Harris faced when writing his background story on the birth of one of the most riveting fictional human monsters, Hannibal Lecter.

Of course, the first question to ask is why do it? Giving tea and sympathy to a consummately evil character that sends shivers down your spine with just that look and just that smile is quite an accomplishment. Why ruin it? When the Borg where humanized in Star Trek The Next Generation, the franchise lost a perfectly frightening bunch of monsters with no redeeming social values, and future stories lacked the visceral fear of resistance is futile, prepare to be assimilated.

Not only do we learn how Hannibal becomes a cannibal—blame it on a traumatic life experience—we have to hear it through Thomas Harris' flowery-mouth dialog appropriate for literature, not a movie. For a laconic character that's short on words but long on cuisine, this is not a good thing; a known unknown-evil is more worrisome and scary than a known known-evil (to coin a phrase from Donald Rumsfeld).

Director Peter Webber ponderously poses every scene with self-conscious importance. This slows the pace throughout, and scenes where Hannibal begins to succumb to his guilt and insanity are lackluster because of it. James A. Michener-styled background tableaux abound. With near-risible martial arts aunt's (Li Gong) offerings to ancestral samurai, and a poorly thought through revelatory exposition capped by Hannibal crying "you ate my sister!" I imagine popcorn bounced off theater screens everywhere as audiences chuckled.

Adding to this undercooked souffle, Hannibal Lecter (Gaspard Ulliel) postures in every scene as if he's doing a Vogue layout for Hannibal Lecter fashions. His ominous leering and malicious grinning doesn't evoke any of the uncanny calmness of Anthony Hopkins more menacing portrayal. The look of this movie is given more importance than its substance.

Great care is taken to preserve this fashionably slick look, making everything ce chic when it should be ugly and revolting. Hannibal's growing insanity, growing thirst for revenge, looks so beautiful, like seeing his life story captured in a photo shoot for Vogue or Elle.

It's Word War II, and young Hannibal, and his younger sister, are fleeing the Nazi's. Their parents thought they had a safe haven in the woods, but that turns out to be a magnet for more atrocities. Tragedy strikes and both parents are killed. He and his sister must face the long, cold winter alone in a hostile environment. Mercenaries looking for food and a warm place to hide endanger the children. Food is scarce. Starvation sets in and hungry eyes stare at the children. The hunger is too much and it's now a quick cheek pinch here, an arm tug there to find which, boy or girl, has more meat on their bones. Hannibal's sister loses. He's helpless as she's brought outside to be slaughtered.

Eight years later. Hannibal has lost everything, including his dignity, as his home is converted into an orphanage for bully-boys that grow tired of his nightmare-induced screams. Soon he's off to Paris to see his aunt, Lady Murasaki Shikibu, who prays to her ancestors’ samurai-suited shrine, and teaches Hannibal the fine art of hitting people with a stick while wearing copious padding. Hannibal admires her long and sharp Katana and enjoys rubbing it with clove oil to keep it sparkling.

An encounter with a fat butcher at the local market sets him down the non-vegetarian road of self-destruction. He takes time away from his medical school training to return to his crumbling home to retrieve the dog tags of the vile men who ate his little sister. He tracks them down one by one, making tasty dishes of cheeks and mushrooms, Emeril Legasse style. Either beheading them, or drowning them, or munching on them, there's little revulsion generated. There is no suspense and no hint of that complex mix of Hannibal's genius and madness.

As the bodies pile up, along with Hannibal's growing culinary prowess, Inspector Popil (Dominic West) is hot on his trail. With insightful observations like "It's vanilla. He reacts to nothing. It's monstrous," when viewing Hannibal's polygraph test, and "What is he now? There’s not a word for it yet. For lack of a better word, we’ll call him a monster," I had no doubt the inspector would fail to get his man.

In the final confrontation between the man who led the mercenaries to consume Hannibal's little sister and the revenge-consumed Hannibal, the meeting is passionless.

But it looks good.

Hannibal Rising is presented like one of those plastic fake food displays you see in Japanese restaurants. They look almost good enough to eat. Almost.

But plastic is plastic.

 

Movie Review: Murder-Set-Pieces (2004) Murder to Watch

Zombos Says: Fair

Around two-thirds into Murder-Set-Pieces I looked at my watch. I don't do that often when watching a film. In this case, though, I looked at it twice. I really wanted to get it over with, and, unlike some reviewers less meticulous (or masochistic) than me, I always watch the whole movie just to make sure I don't miss anything that remotely resembles art, or scares, or anything that stands out as a memorable horror-moment. I was disappointed that I didn't find anything like that here.

At the end of the movie I sighed with relief and wondered what I ever did to the to warrant watching this emotionless and tensionless excursion into the mind and actions of a one-dimensional, neo-Nazi, muscle-bound serial killing photographer prowling Las Vegas for his next torture-gig photo shoot.

America's Top Model has more tension.

While many of the reviews for Murder-Set-Pieces mercilessly castigate director Nick Palumbo  as a misogynistic this or racist that, that's not quite the vibe I picked up. He's just doing what any director does; telling his unsavory story through the camera lens, take it or leave it. I actually thought Palumbo did a solid job of direction, but just made some questionable choices with the material; like his confusing use of ill-placed, tinkling-music flashbacks and shock-montages showing the fractured mind of the nutbag photographer, or the spin-art overuse of blood on everything in sight. Then there was the bordering-on-comic way he'd cut to the photographer driving in his Mustang, again and again, prowling night-time Las Vegas for more nudie-cutie opportunities, with the same overused audio of the car's engine racing and sputtering.

I drive a Mustang. Maybe I’m more sensitive to this because of that.

But the most important directorial misstep here is the lack of building suspense and the pedestrian way in which each murder-set-piece is handled. At no time are any of the tortures or murders the least bit shocking, the least bit emotionally draining (as in the Hostel franchise, for instance).

We follow the photographer around, as he bounces off the padded walls of his mind, as if we're carrying his equipment bag and nothing more. And when he whips out that straight razor, there's no fearful whimper from us, no gasps. Perhaps I'd have been more drawn in with the uncut version of the film, but Anchor Bay's R-rated DVD only implies defilement and torture, and cuts away from the chainsaw through head type of chunky violence gore-hounds love. So gore-hounds be warned: look for the uncut version if you are so inclined. As for me, I'd rather have more meat and less sauce in the storytelling, not the dismemberments.

Which brings us to the storyline itself, which is less meaty and less filling than a horror movie should be, due mostly to Sven Garrett's lifeless performance as the photographer with too much killing time on his hands. Even though he suffers from manic bouts of shouting in German and nose-bleeds as he flashbacks in weird vignettes of him as a boy walking train tracks while a flirtatious blonde parades in front of him. While his look is right, that's where his energy for the role ends. When he pumps iron, all sweaty and gritty, he still doesn't pump enough energy to light a diode, let alone a performance that cries out for psychotic, balls-to the-wall-abandon. His torture and killing sprees are monotone, with the only lively color coming from the blood all around him. So what if he likes to eat his meat raw and bloody. Without the gusto, it's still just undercooked.

Even the cameos with Gunnar Hansen and Tony Todd do nothing to fortify the film. Hansen, playing another neo-Nazi crazy, sells the photographer a gun, and Todd, who manages an Adult Video store, tries to throw him out after he asks for a snuff film called Nutbag (an in-joke reference to Palumbo's other film).

The hidden torture-death playroom he uses to humiliate and terrorize his victims is a caricature of a hidden torture-death playroom, and doesn't generate an atmosphere of dread and fear. Way too much red blood is spattered over everything, making it more of a demonic Pee Wee Herman's acid-trip induced idea of what a playroom should be. While it does reflect a bit of the 1970s gleefully repellent grindhouse sensibility, with naked, hanging upside-down and chair-bound women, it fails to elicit feelings of disgust or shocks of horror. Palumbo and Garrett show no finesse in the fine art of visually or thematically challenging an audience, which is so important if torture horror is to have any impact, even when the chainsaw comes out for some head-scratching the hard way.

The plot motivations also lead to some head-scratching. When the photographer's girlfriend pines away for him after he breaks off the relationship, he's such a lifeless kind of guy, you wonder where her tears are coming from. Even her little sister knows the guy's a creep and good riddance. After the break-up, he still stalks the kid, watching her from his Mustang. When the kid complains, her big sister doesn't want to hear it; so she steals the creepy freaky guy’s spare house key, begs a total stranger to drive her to his house, and lets herself in—to do what, exactly? Why didn't she just go to the police? What, the Vegas cops too busy to follow up on one more psycho? especially when they've got a trail of dead bimbos across the strip?

That's when I looked at my watch a second time.

The ensuing encounter between her and him, as he's all bloodied-up from playing with another hapless victim, is devoid of terror and suspense. There is no build-up leading to this encounter, so when it comes, it plays out without fanfare or intensity. When she hides under his bed, apparently the kid has never seen a horror film, I rolled my eyes in disbelief, and when she runs back to the playroom to hide—you know, the no-exit, basement torture-chamber soaked in wall to wall blood and nicely decorated with his recent kills--I doubted Palumbo ran his script through the reality-checker first.

The ending leaves the photographer with a headache and the blood-spattered and hopefully wiser kid walking down the highway in shock.

She wasn't the only one.

 

Movie Review: Frankenstein Versus the Creature From Blood Cove (2005)

Zombos Says: Poor (even with the lap dance)

Disclaimer: The following review is filled with cheap shots, cheesy double-entendres, and puerile, trashy writing. Read it at your own risk.

Rain began to sideslip across the windowpanes and the bedroom grew darker. Zombos alternately draped himself over his bed, the settee, and the cushy leather wing chairs. We were at our wits end, he from a bad cold and the doldrums, and I from wet-nursing him. We had exhausted the claret, the sherry, and now our beloved green fairy—Absinthe—was almost gone. The situation was becoming intolerable. The thunder storm refused to let up, dwindle down, or simply go away.

Glenor broke up the tedium with the morning mail. Among the bills, personal correspondence, and advertisements (Zombos loves receiving those reassuring messages from Forest Lawn Cemeteries), there was a soggy package from William Wincler, director of Frankenstein versus the Creature from Blood Cove.

"Well, it’s in black and white," I said, unwrapping it. Zombos loves black and white movies. I waved it in front of him to tempt him.

He waved his hand in the air while blowing his nose. I took that for a yes. I popped the disc into the DVD player and poured out the last drops of Absinthe.

"Lap dance special?" Zombos said as the menu choices appeared. "What is that?"

I shrugged and clicked the remote to select it. The both of us were quickly nonplussed. "My word, I suppose that gives new meaning to the phrase 'Frankenstein's Monster,' " I said.

"Good lord," said Zombos, "if Zimba sees this she will pickle me. Quick, select something else."

The rain was coming down in bucket-fulls by the time we started the main feature. At Zombos' request, I held onto the remote and positioned myself close to the door, just in case Zimba popped in during one of the numerous 'talent and asset' cheesecake scenes. Frankenstein's Monster and the Creature were not the only big monsters in this movie.

We watched the Creature, a biogenetically-engineered one, escape the mad scientists' lair by jogging out the front door and gate, heading straight for the beach.

"Did the Creature just walk out the front door and gate?" asked Zombos.

"Well, no, exactly. Technically, he jogged out the front door and gate," I corrected him.

Loopy scientists, dressed in their Clorox-white lab coats, drinking coffee after dinner and chit-chatting, decide, on a whim, to go and find Frankenstein's Monster to continue their experiments now that the Creature had escaped and is sun-bathing on the beach.

They travel to Shellvania, which probably lies next to Exxonia, in the Gulf of Transylvania. Faster than you can say boo! they easily find the Monster in an unmarked grave using their trusty pocket-sized Reanimated-Tissue Traces Finder.

"What in hell is that thing? Is that made out of Legos?"asked Zombos.

"It does look like it," I said. "Why, just last week at Walmart I saw Lego kits for Star Wars and Transformers. Be easy to make a Reanimated-Tissue Traces Finder, I’d think.

"Amazing," said Zombos. "In my day, it was Slinkies, Silly-Putty, or Mr.Potato Head."

While digging up the Frankenstein Monster, a werewolf attacks them, is frightened off, then attacks them again—in broad daylight. After being viciously assaulted, sort of, by the well-groomed werewolf, and shooting it dead, the unperturbed scientists decide to chat on and on about its medical condition. Eventually they go back to digging.

"I would have been hauling ass right about then," I said.

Zombos nodded in agreement.

"Hey, look, the werewolf is Eddie Munster all grown up."

We watched the cursed thing transform back to its human shape. "No wonder the werewolf looked like his Woof Woof doll."

Back in Los Angeles (I wonder how they got Frankenstein's Monster past Homeland Security?), the mad scientists set to work on brainwashing the Monster to follow only their orders.

What? That’s what mad scientists do.

Meanwhile, Percy, Bill and Dezzirae are off to the deserted beach—where the Creature ran off to—to shoot a photo spread for Kitty Kat magazine, highlighting Gabrielle's bosomy assets.

"Lord! Now those monsters are scary!" said Zombos.

Getting Creature-is-near vibes, mayhem ensues, sending them hustling back to the Kitty Kat magazine office, but their editor sends them right back to the beach for more photos; which leads to our next suacy and well-endowed model, Beula, making the mistake of swimming topless when danger is nearby. She obviously hasn’t seen Jaws or even Piranha. The Creature pops up to bore us to death—oops, I meant claw her to death.

More mayhem ensues as the Creature follows our panic-stricken trio to the parking lot, then to the—I didn't see this one coming—mad scientists lair. Calling for help by patiently ringing the doorbell, Bill, Percy and Dezzirae are invited inside, only to become prisoners because they've seen too much.

By this time, so have we.

Frankenstein's Monster is sent to kick the Creature's butt, but instead gets his butt kicked. Mad Dr. Lazaroff (Larry Butler) helps him recuperate. He also receives a visit from the ghost of Doctor Frankenstein.

"Is that Ed Wood?" asked Zombos as the ghostly apparition appears to Dr. Lazaroff.

"Can't be, he's not wearing an Angora sweater," I said.

"Roger Corman, then?"

"Not dead yet," I answered.

"Oh, right. It must be old Henry himself, then," Zombos concluded.

"Story aside, the cinematography is good, don't you think?" I asked. "The action scenes between the Monster and the Creature lack bite, though. Seems more like they're having a hissy fit."

Zombos agreed. "The pacing is non-existent. The camera angles are fair and bosomy."

When Selena Silver goes into her shamelessly gratuitous pole dance routine in a seedy bar, all hell breaks loose when Frankenstein's Monster enters. It’s pointless for me to describe how he got there in the first place, or why we’re even there because this whole production is pointless.

"Is that Ron Jeremy?" asked Zimba, standing at the door. 

"Why yes, I think it—" Zombos turned a shade paler than he normally is.

I sensed a battle brewing, one more horrific than the cat-fight between the Monster and the Creature. I turned off the movie and hastily left the bedroom. 

Wait a minute, I thought to myself as I paused at the top of the stairs, how did Zimba know what Ron Jeremy looked like?

Movie Review: Dinocroc (2004) Croc of What?

Zombos Says: Fair

How does one describe a movie that's bland? I'm fighting the temptation to go off on a tangent with sentences with the word 'crock' in them. While that might help spice the review, it's an obvious but cheap shot.

This movie is a crock. Its bland by the numbers characters and action, with bland superficial dialog, and less than stellar computer graphics work. Jake Thomas plays Michael Banning, and actually does as good a job as any of the other actors; but he's not given much to do. At least they didn't spike his hair. Thomas spends the movie riding around on his bike looking for his dog Lucky, the three-legged run-away.

Then there's the evil corporation, Gereco--stop me if you've heard this one about an evil corporation--conducting secret genetic experiments on man-eating monsters. Rabbits won't suffice? These experiments blend the genes, by accident, of a Sarcosuchus and a dinosaur. The resulting monster escapes its holding pen because an idiotic scientist walks right in--as it's killing everything else in the pen--leaving the door wide open. She gets her throat ripped out as she tries zapping it with a pocket-sized stun gun.

Joanna Pacula plays the evil mouthpiece for Gereco, Paula Kennedy, who denies everything even as they send their top, man-eating monster hunter to recapture the monster. Using Lucky, the three-legged dog for bait, Lucky really turns out to be lucky and high-tails it just as the crafty hunter gets eaten instead, leaving only his legs behind. The CGI blur happens fast, but dotes on those legs.

One of the highlights in this film--I'm stretching a mile here-- is what, unexpectedly, happens to Thomas as he goes searching for Lucky late at night in Gereco's wildlife preserve. What happens ends too abruptly. What should have ended abruptly are the dialog exchanges between the crocodile hunter they bring in, Dick Sydney (Costos Mandylor), the Grant's Lake Animal Shelter control officer, Diane Harper (Jane Longenecker), and Michael's brother, Tom Banning (Matt Borlenghi). The action bogs down when an old romance--queue the piano tinkling--is rekindled and the hunter tries some really bad pick-up lines.

A predictable insert-scene-here time-killer has two drunk hunters poaching on the Gereco wildlife preserve; quickly scratch off two poachers. To speed things up, the Gereco scientist hunting the monster spills the beans about the whole mess to Harper and Tom and they volunteer to help. As they search in the preserve, they come across a pile of man-eating monster doo-doo and the scientist quips "Holy sh*t."

Dinocroc Vision kicks in as the monster gets hungry. I don't mind monster-point-of-view vision--I love the Snake 'o Vision in Snakes on a Plane--but here it's not very inspired or enhancing. Another oddity is how all these would-be hunters carried only single-shot rifles. What, automatics would've blown the budget? The thing's as big as a mobile home and they hunt it with pea-shooters.

The scientist goes down for the count when the group crowds a skimpy motor boat and tries to hunt Loc Nesses' land-legged cousin with single-shot rifles and tranquilizer darts. More people get eaten as people crowd the water's edge for some relaxing horror movie-victim involvement. The local sheriff's Keystone Cops deputies get eaten. Lot's of people get eaten. Mostly off-camera or in "shaky-cam" CGI blurs. There's no suspense, no build-up to a climactic ending that brings the beads of sweat to your brow.

I really really wanted to see Lucky either get eaten or save the day. Instead, they use other dogs to lure the monster into a trap. The animal-loving Harper doesn't go along with this so she's cuffed along with Tom after he tries to help her. But Tom is a metal-sculpting artist. He lights up the acetylene and before you can say I should have watched Rogue, they're racing ahead of the dog-eating monster to release each and every stray dog chained between the monster and the trap. As they race against time to free the dogs and come closer and closer to the trap, the hunter finally does something and jumps in to lure the monster away from them. They start yelling "Dick! Dick!" as the monster gets closer to him, in passionate close-ups of concern. It is funny I admit.

The trap is sprung, but since they only have one bolt cutter to release all the chains holding the trap's doors, the sheriff must race from one end of the long trap to the other to release the doors to lock the monster inside. But the monster gets out and chases Harper and Tom some more. It finally gets run down by a train and Tom determinedly walks over to its stunned, prostrate body to poke it in the eye with a metal rod. It doesn't move.

Not much in this movie does.

Movie Review: The Garden (2005)

Zombos Says: Fair

I adore Lance Henriksen. Like Jeffrey Combs, he approaches every role with aplomb and skill. Ever since his appearance in Pumpkinhead, I find his characters always rich and emotive. That craggy, lined face and those penetrating eyes speak volumes before he even utters a single word of dialog. And in The Garden, he gets to focus all his demeanor, and that lined face, to portray Lucifer, the big bad fallen angel himself.

In Medieval Christian belief, Lucifer's pride led him to rebel against God, and thus be cast out of heaven, never to see the face of God again. Times change, of course, and the name Lucifer has assumed different connotations, including merchandising rights to a few notable brands of hot sauce. But for The Garden, Lucifer remains the fallen angel who wants to desperately bring the apocalypse upon the mundane world just so he can once again look on the face of God.

Unlike the coming apocalypse in Night Watch, this one is more subtle. It is similar in that it requires just one person to make the wrong choice, but there are no CGI bells and whistles, nor chaotic scenes of impending destruction. Instead of the modern apartment building that is the center of annihilation in Night Watch, in The Garden it is a tree nestled on a quiet farm.

Not just any tree, mind you, but the Tree of Knowledge . The Tree of Knowledge which bears fruit that Adam and Eve were never meant to eat. Everything was fine until Eve was tempted by the serpent—Lucifer in disguise—and God quickly sent her and Adam packing with all of mankind's future woes. Many interpretations exist for the tree, and the nature of the fruit it bears, but for The Garden, the interpretation that seems to fit best is the one that sees the tree as a decision tree. And eating any of its fruit means you make a really, really bad decision (as God made man "Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall").

So the stage is set. Ben (Lance Henriksen) patiently tends to the tree and schemes for a man to take just one bite of its fruit. Once that happens, the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse will ride forth to bring death and destruction to the world of man. Forcing God's hand to destroy that which he created and open the gates of heaven, Lucifer will then be able to see the face of God again.

As godliness goes, usually the struggle between good and evil requires human players in the battle to make decisions that will either aid or hinder either side's plans. For what is God without us? And who would Lucifer tempt if not us? Our principle players for this particular battle, which takes place on this quiet farm, are the boy, Sam (Adam Taylor Gordon), and his father (Brian Wimmer).

Sam has nasty visions of a dead tree and people with their mouths sewn shut, and he is prone to cutting himself when agitated. His father is coping as best he can, but he suffers from alcoholism and a failed marriage. With the boy recently released from psychiatric observation, both hope to strengthen their failed relationship. Ah, weakness! Lucifer can smell it a celestial plane or two away. An automobile accident brings father and son to the farm, and into Lucifer's waiting hands. Let the games begin.

Sam's dad, easily falling under Ben's influence, decides to take Ben's offer to work on the farm for a spell, and Sam, reluctantly, must attend the local school, which is taught by Miss Chapman. As the days progress, Ben persuades Sam's dad to loosen up a bit, but his charms are lost on Sam, who begins to suspect that something is not quite right about the farm, or Ben. His suspicions are confirmed when he sees Ben murder his visiting psychiatrist (Claudia Christian) to keep her from taking Sam away. Or are they? Is Sam seeing visions or reality? And just who are those people with their mouths sewn shut that keep sneaking up on him?

The pacing of The Garden is slow, and the drama occurs between the son, the father, and the devil, not through flashy CGI or action sequences. It is structured more like a stage play, and Mr. Henriksen has a field day playing the devilish one with forced whimsy, pathos, and monstrous evil. He helps to make it work, even though the director, Don Michael Paul, in his audio commentary, notes that budgetary and location constraints forced him to compromise his intended vision with the actual filmed one.

As Ben continues to manipulate Sam and his father, Sam Bozzo's story begins to muddle. While combining religious beliefs into a coherent story is difficult enough, the interplay between characters and their ultimate purpose to the storyline becomes uncertain. Miss Chapman is more than she seems, and though she plays a major role in bringing Armageddon, the reason for why she would want to do such a dastardly deed is never clear. And when Ben finally explains to Sam's dad his ulterior purpose for him, well, he just believes it all without a knowing wink or shake of the head that this guy is bonkers. The bully from school also gets his comeuppance from Ben, but why? Nothing the bully does has any effect on Ben's plans.

Story inconsistencies aside, the direction, special effects and acting are fair, and the unusual subject matter worth consideration. Jon Lee's score is moody and bittersweet, and a perfect companion to Mr. Henriksen's wonderful performance. The DVD extras are well done, and include audio commentary by the director, biography of Lance Henriksen, a behind the scenes look, and trailer. Commentary by the writer would have been welcomed, if only to clarify some plot points.

For the fan of gory and frenetic horror films, The Garden is not for you. For those who like to take a break now and then, sip a little blood-red wine and press the vinyl with a little Mozart while perusing Milton's Paradise Lost, this film may be a rewarding experience, mostly due to Henriksen's presence. Claudia Christian and Sean Young are never hard on the eyes, either.

Movie Review: Masterpiece Theatre's Dracula (2007) A Forgery

Zombos Says: Poor

From the Journal of Iloz Zoc

Feb 11. Westbury— Oh, the horror!  In this age of reimaginings and adaptations based on mere fancy and egotistical hubris, to be subjected to this singular carriage-wreck of a teleplay is more than I can bear. What mind could conceive such a thing; to put pen to paper with such disregard, such wretched villainy in this version of Dracula, and to put Bram Stoker's name upon it?

I hear the pounding now, like the beating of my racing heart, as he pummels the lid of his coffin, seeking retribution for this vile act.

I feel faint. I must lie down.

Excerpt from the front page of Victorian Variety — Who Do This Hoodoo? A Stinkeroo.

Feb 12. London—From the What-Were-They-Thinking social club comes this switch on the Stoker-coker pot-boiler, mangling Count Drac with so-called Brotherhood of Undead and syphilis shenanigans. Poor Van Helsing (David Suchet) is reduced to switcheroo role with Harker (Rafe Spall) and becomes head vamp's captive, set free in last half-hour to lead lackluster wooden-stake charge against is-that-all-you've-got? blood-sucker in a chamomile tea-paced climax.

Ninety minute walk-through-park story has Lord Holmwood (Dan Stevens) contracting syph from over-sexed Dad, forcing him to postpone nuptials with hot-to-trot Lucy (Sophia Myles) as he goes off to find cure from undead count using social ties with Brotherhood of the Undead, headed by a chap named Singleton, who dresses better than the count, clothed in simply gorgeous Freemason, secret society-style robe and hat.

Using Singleton (Donald Sumpter) as his go-between, Holmwood foots bill to have Dracula take longer than three-hour cruise to England aboard doomed ship Demeter. Due to minuscule budget, not much happens during faithful trip as weather doesn't get rough and the tiny ship doesn't get tossed.

Why does every movie miss potential, terror-filled carnage aboard the Demeter? Then again, why bother writing this snooze-fest?

Bat-man (Marc Warren), smitten by Harker's snippet of Mina's (Stephanie Leonidas) hair, decides to woo said Mina while chewing on Lucy's neck as an aperitif. Lucy, who's not been getting any lately, is only too anxious to oblige, sending would-be paramour Dr. Seward (Tom Burke) into spasms of impotent rage; or something like that, as his acting is a shade past monotone.

Meanwhile, at the Brotherhood of the Undead's office, Singleton and another member profess their adulation for the undead guy, only to have him wring their necks. Drac keeps pining for Mina, while Holmwood and Seward pine for Lucy, and this reporter pines for the big stake-o' pine in Drac's chest to end this unbelievable tedium.

In the basement, Seward finds Van Helsing—cowering un-Van Helsing-like—in a corner. David Suchet plays Helsing like a man running for the bus. Wisely choosing to hide his features in a white wig and beard, he routinely pulls out the crosses and stakes for the big showdown.

Gearing up for the anxiously-awaited—by this reporter—ending, Helsing, Seward, and Holmwood head over to Lucy's vault in order to test the sharpness of their stakes. Puzzlement here as to why Holmwood doesn't just let Lucy bite him in the neck to cure his syphilis—the whole reason for this mess—but why bother with good scripting so late into the story? With amazing ease, Holmwood plunges a large stake into Lucy's chest and she goes down for the count.

Speaking of the count, next stop is Drac's place of unrest, and after a little polite mayhem, Drac and Holmwood wind up dead (with Drac presumably deader than he was), mercifully ending this life-less version of Bram Stoker's classic.

Or does it? In a sequalization-antic, Drac appears to not be really dead after all.

Lord help us all if there’s a sequel.

Telegram to David Suchet from his agent, undated.

Hollywood—Look David, if you insist on appearing in these things, you better wear a white wig and beard to hide yourself. As your agent, I only want what's best for your career, and believe me, this ain't it. STOP

But go ahead, do whatever you think best; I can only recommend what I believe to be a saner course of action for you. STOP

Journal of Iloz Zoc, cont.

Feb 12. Westbury—I feel much better now. Chef Machiavelli brought me a nice cup of chamomile tea to calm my nerves. The life of a movie reviewer is not an easy one, and there are moments of real terror as well as joy. Why attach Bram Stoker's name to such a cinematic detour as this version, nay, this base use of his characters in such a folderol? Dracula himself is nothing more than a mercurial, long-haired rock star impersonator, showing no cunning, no evil wisdom garnered from living for centuries. And where is his foreign accent? And how can you relegate a novel, full of terror and action, to a mere ninety minutes?

Sadly, commercial interruption here would have been much appreciated.

Worst of all, key dynamics of Stoker's masterpiece were removed entirely, or presented in abridgment.

Harker is dead, and does not return to lead the fight against the count, and the sweep of action from Transylvania to England and back to Transylvania is gone. Van Helsing, once the self-assured powerhouse, the catalyst for action, is nothing more than a shell of his former incarnations.

Subtexts of vampiric sensuality and Victorian prudeness are lost against the flagrant syphilitic-focused plotline. Dracula himself is relegated to a supporting role, and displays no charisma, no depth, no fear-inducing terror. More effort was spent on his hairdo and self-conscious preening than playing an undead creature that has survived for centuries, knowing only the lust for blood.

Curse the day I started using TiVo, and the ease at which one can watch such an abomination, unsuspecting. 

Movie Review: The Boneyard (1991) No Bones About It

Zombos Says: Fair

It was a late winter night for us in the cinematorium, the mansion’s movie theater. Zimba was stretched out on the Empire scroll sofa, already snoring away while I prepared drinks for myself and Zombos.

"Make mine a double-espresso with lots of foam," said Zombos.

He stretched out his long legs and slumped in the Chesterfield club chair.

"And don't forget the popcorn."

I loaded up the big ceramic skull o'popcorn and brought the drinks over.

I prefer to sit in the traditional theater seats that take up the first half of the cinematorium. Zombos rescued them from the Manhattan 44th Street Theater just before its demolition in 1945 to make room for the New York Times newspaper headquarters expansion.

I dimmed the lights, took a sip from my frothy mocha cappuccino, and started the movie.

Our movie this evening, The Boneyard, is a macabre but uneven mix from director and writer James Cummins. While there are watchable moments, the remainder comprised of drawn-out scenes, comical monster puppets, and dull acting by the main character gets in the way of any good scares. The premise is promising: a burned-out and overweight psychic investigator, Alley (Deborah Rose), takes on child-ghouls that eat too much. But by the time we get to the demonized, gigantic Miss Poopenplatz (Phyllis Diller) and those demon-poofle puppets, it all becomes ludicrous as in what were they thinking?

It starts with a drawn-out scene when detectives, played by veteran Ed Nelson and James Eusterman (Spaced Invaders), enter the world-weary—and messy—psychic's house. They need her help to solve a baffling case involving a mortician and what appear to be three dead children he’s been hiding. They draw their guns dramatically when she doesn't answer, but why do that? She finally turns up after an endless search of the house we’re forced to follow, room by room. When they fail to enlist her aid they leave.

Later that night she has a disturbing vision involving a putrescent little girl with lots of long, stringy blond hair, who wants very much to hug and thank her for her help in a previous case. This promising scene has nothing to do with the story, but it does cause Alley to change her mind about helping the detectives. Deborah Rose's lifeless acting is flatline throughout.

At the police station, Alley and the detectives listen incredulously to the interrogation of the mortician. He explains how his family has, for three centuries, kept the three child-sized ghouls—he calls them Kyonshi—from devouring living people by feeding them body parts garnered from the funeral home's cadavers. Kyonshi, or hopping vampires, are not flesh-eating ghouls, I think, so the use of the term here may be a stretch.

Next, it's off to the soon-to-be-closed coroner's building where the story kicks into low gear, but not before we are subjected to a confusing flashback experienced by Alley, followed by an interminable dialog between the two detectives standing in a hallway. Show and do aren’t buzzwords this director adheres to.We also meet Miss Poopinplatz. She manages the front desk along with her annoying poodle.

Alley has a vision of the three little ghouls awakening downstairs in the morgue with all the tasty attendants (Norman Fell among them) in the next room. Little tension is generated as boy-this-weight-does-slow-me-down Alley clumsily makes her way downstairs to warn the lab attendants of their impending Happy Meal status.

When she finally does reach the morgue, chewed up dead bodies are strewn everywhere. Gobs of blood splatter the floor and the little hellions are still chomping away—especially one who gustily attacks an exposed rib-cage. This is the only good gore scene in the movie. My guess is the budget was blown at this point. All this explicit gruesomeness is a sudden and unexpected jolt in an otherwise static movie. Bodies hang limply from shelves, carried there by the three child-ghouls. Sitting atop a battery operated forklift, the medium-sized ghoul feasts on a pathologist while another rips apart another body. The smallest ghoul has dragged the bloody corpse of a Pathologist to the fifth level of shelves. It eats an ear off and then snacks on a finger. The creature makes a happy purring sound as it chews. Its gaping mouth continues to rip a chunk from a pathologist's side.

Mayhem ensues as survivors try to escape. They trap and kill one ghoul, but he manages to stuff part of his skin—it’s disgusting to watch—down Poopinplatz's throat, turning her into a very tall and pop-eyed Muppet-like puppet monster that desperately needed more money and a better design to be convincing. The comical nature of the puppet derails the momentum established by the morgue scene.

Poopinplatz's dog, Floosoms, licks up bubbling yellow ichor oozing from one expired ghoul and quickly turns into a man-in-a-suit demon Muppet Floosoms. A horrified girl rescued from the previous morgue attack laughs when she sees this comicalpoodle monster.

Who wouldn’t?

The action is stopped cold, again, for another long and bewildering dialog as Cummins gives the ENTIRE background of the girl who survives the morgue attack. The action picks up again with an Alley and demon-Floosoms confrontation and some dynamite.

If Cummins used a lot less dialog, and Deborah Rose’s acting were a lot lighter, and the three child-ghouls were given more screen time to terrorize, The Boneyard could have, would have, been a scarier movie even with Phyllis Diller mugging it up as Poopinplatz.

Take a look, fast forward a lot, and you’ll be fine: the morgue smorgasbord scene is worth a look at least.

Movie Review: Jack Frost (1996) No Frost on This Pumpkin

Zombos Says: Fair

As another year begins its slide into posterityI suppose I should at least write up some resolutions I can judiciously ignore throughout next year. I’ll make my first resolution to do that — perhaps next week.

I recently watched Jack Frost on DVD — hey, there's an important resolution right there: make sure to watch more GOOD horror movies. Now that was easy. I made the mistake of listening to Yahoo Group members' recommendations on this one and — wait a minute, there’s my second resolution: do not listen to movie recommendations garnered from trolls in chat groups. My word, coming up with New Year resolutions is easier than I thought.

 

While the idea of a serial-killing snowman may be novel-looking on paper, its execution, which could have been on a par with Shaun of the Dead in wit and visual humor, falls far short; and you can't blame it on budget limitations, either. In the hands of a Roger Corman or Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman, low budgets ignite creativity with cheap but imaginative set pieces and self-indulgent—wink, wink-- scripting. That didn't happen here.

Whenever you combine the elements of comedy and horror you have to decide how far to go in each direction. Should it be a parody, a satire, tongue-in-cheek, or a mix of these approaches? What visual framing will tone your choices and how will the characterizations and actions move the story to highlight them, and keep funny-bone chuckling and shinbone trembling with fright?

Uncle Henry’s inappropriately risqué bedtime story voiceover to his young niece sets the mood. As he horrifies her, we, very slowly, look at ornaments on a Christmas tree, pausing to see the movie’s credits written on each one. At first a novelty, it becomes tiresome as it drags on. Uncle Henry's story introduces Jack Frost (Scott MacDonald) the criminal as he’s conveyed to his execution in a van aptly titled with Troma-like subtlety, "State Executional Transfer Vehicle." 

A collision with the also aptly titled "Genetic Research" truck reveals the miniscule budget: quick cuts cover up the absence of showy car-explosion pyrotechnics. Jack gets doused genetic research liquid, turning him into a wise-cracking, not very jolly, serial-killing snow cone with a button nose. A pseudo-scientific explanation is later given by one of the Genetic Company’s agents to explain this transformation, but it’s all intentional nonsense unintentionally witless.

Now to Snowmonton, a small town where an annual snowman contest-- hey, wait a minute, there’s that budget drain again: no snow! There are scant piles of flaky fake snow here and there, but the few snowmen in the contest look pitiful. How the townsfolk made them is bewildering: there’s no snow in Snowmonton. This might have been funny if directed with that thought in mind, but director Michael Cooney’s thoughts are on rote murder instead. We don’t see the first murder, just the victim’s discovery, with us looking from behind the old man’s spiked-hair-frozen head at three dismayed police officers. They are looking down at his icy body seated in a rocking chair. One of the officers absent-mindedly rocks the chair with his foot. That’s funny.

No reason for why this poor local yokel was murdered is given, but being a horror movie, who needs reasons, right? Only escalatingly gruesome and growing body counts matter. Jack Frost the snowman makes his appearance in a flaky-fake foam rubber suit. His oddly designed facial features don’t do much for either the comic or horror mood he’s trying to project.

I admit to the guilty pleasure of finding humor in the second murder, where Jack cuts off a bullying boy's head with a sleigh, but his grieving parents’ acting is so bad the humor is quickly lost. Luckily that acting doesn’t go on for long; mom is viciously dispatched by Jack using a Christmas tree’s string-lights and broken glass ornaments to shut her up. The attack starts funny, but heavy-handed direction turns it into a nervous laughter situation--something that looks funny but isn’t. Watching her face repeatedly mashed into the shards of glass while Jack makes merry quips IS NOT FUNNY. When her body is discovered, we see the three, still-bewildered, police officers through the blinking string-lights wrapped around her. The humor falls flat because we suffered through her sadistic murder. The movie’s tongue-in-cheekiness, its balancing of humor and horror, tips out of sensible control after this, becoming a slasher-formulaic catastrophe without focus.

A convenient plot device to make Jack more mobile has him change from snow to water as needed. How he moves along in the snow without legs is still a puzzler. Using his solid to liquid trick, he commits a rape and murder. I assume the scene looked awfully clever in the script, but to watch it made me scratch my head wondering what they were thinking. When Jack starts shooting icicle daggers from his body to gleefully kill, I found it difficult to keep watching. Cooney loses his street-cred completely at this point, making Jack Frost a movie for people interested in novelty killings more than coherent story-telling or characterizations. Sadly, the horror genre is full of such fans. Jack slaughters an entire family while cracking sarcastic one-liners all the way, then goes after Sheriff Tiler (Christopher Allport), the man who sent him to prison. More mayhem follows. The Sheriff’s habit of losing keys at critical, key-needed-urgently moments becomes tiresome, aerosol cans and hair dryers magically appearing in quantity to fend off Jack is humorless, and the preposterous, but imaginative, climax involving an anti-freeze filled truck bed and amazingly good timing to save the day doesn’t make up for the time wasted leading up to it. The townsfolk bury the anti-freeze bottles that now contain Jack Frost; of course, Jack will return in an even more cheaply conceived sequel.

While this is not a good horror movie by any worthwhile stretch of critical assessment, it does provide an excellent primer for budding scriptwriters on what you should avoid when attempting a horror comedy. This movie doesn’t deserve its cult status because it simply doesn’t earn it. 

Movie Review: Nightbreed (1990) Are We Not Monsters!

Zombos Says: Fair

"What the hell was that all about?" said Zombos. The man has been quite brusque since his recent birthday, but he did have a point.

"Offhand," I replied, "I would say it's about monsters, both human and otherwise, alienation, and uneven direction that stymied the translation from literary source to the screen. And to think he did such a wonderful job on Hellraiser. Tsk, tsk."

We had just finished watching Nightbreed, Clive Barker's ambitious but confusing directorial and scripting approach to his novella Cabal. Having not read the story I cannot speak for the pacing and clarity of the source material, but I can point to the cinematic folderol in his twist on the premise that good humans always fight evil monsters.

Nightbreed opens with an MTV music video-styled dream sequence involving very fashion-conscious monsters, cavorting around in a dark, misty landscape as if choreographed by Paula Abdul. Aaron Boone seems to be having a lot of these crazy monster-dance dreams, while the biblical word Midian haunts his waking hours, too.

He looks very clean-cut for a person with mental problems, and sports a cool leather jacket straight out of Grease, along with a nice pompadour to complete the look. He is seeing a psychiatrist, played by David Cronenberg—so you immediately know who the real psychopath of the story is. As the psycho shrink Dr.Decker, he has been slaughtering families left and right even before the film begins.

The one scene that had us sit up and take notice early in the film is his first appearance as the oddly masked killer. Picture your worst fear as a child. Was it the bogeyman? Perhaps he was hiding in the closet, or behind the door, or under the bed? Or was it the fear of losing your parents, and being left unprotected and helpless against the bogeyman?

In the film's only truly frightening scene, a little boy stands alone at the top of the stairs, and tells his mom he "heard a bad man." His mom tells him it was nothing and not to worry, and she promptly gets slashed to death by that bad man as the boy watches helplessly. The boy then watches the bad man go into the living room, where his dad's throat is quickly opened from ear to ear. The bad man returns, looks up at him, and slowly, quietly, walks up the stairs toward him, the knife glinting in his hand. Now cut back to the boy, slowly backing up helplessly against the wall. End scene. The implication is clear, the visual impact strong.

It is a brilliant scene, simple in execution, horrific in effect. Being a father, Zombos couldn't watch it. Unfortunately, the remaining scenes quickly lose that horrific tone, something Barker did not fail to do when directing Hellraiser. In that seminal film, the horror never ends; it keeps building without humor, without remorse. But not here. When Top Ten Horror Scene lists are tossed around, this scene is never mentioned: it should be, but it may go unnoticed because it is lost among all the other stylish scenes that lack coherence.

Dr. Decker first tries to convince Boone that he, Boone, is the killer that's going around murdering families. When that fails the psychiatrist convinces the police that Boone is the killer. Yet there is no explanation as to why Dr. Decker is butchering people, no backstory, and when he finds out about the monsters living in the ancient and really big cemetery called Midian, he also wants to kill them—just like that. He expresses no surprise that monsters are hanging out in the local ancient cemetery.

Perhaps he has a conformity fetish. Or perhaps the main pieces of this puzzle, including the relationship dynamics between Boone and Decker, were left on the cutting room floor. The Wikipedia entry on Nightbreed states: To this day, Barker expresses a disappointment with the final cut and longs for the recovery of the reels so it might be freshly edited. It was intended as "the Star Wars of monster movies", with over two hundred monsters created by Image Animation.

I’m not sure what "the Star Wars of monster movies" actually means.

Once the monsters of Midian enter the picture, everyone is rather nonchalant about it, and either wants to get to know them better or kill them. This is where the film takes a sharp left turn, goes racing past that STOP sign up ahead, and stalls in a ditch. When Boone is killed by the police and comes back to life, everyone, from Dr. Decker, the police, and even his girlfriend, is okay with the notion there are monsters here, even when Boone becomes a walking once-dead man without a heartbeat.

The cosmic consequences don't sink in to anyone in the film. Barker makes no allowance for pacing in a little necessary awe, disbelief, and "oh my god!!!"

Perhaps that's in the missing reels?

It also seems everyone knows about Midian except for boy-I've-got-a-headache Boone. He finally finds out where it is from another headcase he meets in the hospital, who frantically rips the skin off his face in hopes that will make him more acceptable to the monsters of Midian.

Right.

Barker does seem to have a fetish about skin in his films regarding keeping it on and in one piece most of the time.

When Boone visits Midian he runs into the monsters, who reject him at first. The evil psychiatrist tells the police they can find Boone in Midian, and he makes sure Boone gets gunned down by the police as he leaves the cemetery. When Boone comes back to life, the psychiatrist becomes quite upset and tells the police that Boone is not—dead.

So what's the deal here? The story is moving pell-mell, and badly needed exposition on whys and wherefores is not given.

Hello! Haven't read the novella! Need help here.

Even Boone's girlfriend, Lori, inexplicably heads to Midian searching for him, even though he shouldn't possibly be ambulatory, what with a few dozen bullets in him and being dead already.

Finding the place EASILY, she soon comes across a creepy dog-like creature caught in the damaging rays of the sun. She rescues it at the behest of one of Midian's inhabitants, who pleads with her from the doorway of a tomb. I don't know about you, but when dark hooded figures plead to me from open tomb doors, asking me to pick up a creepy dog-like creature—well, I'd be flying through the air in the opposite direction at that point. But Lori saves the creature, finds out it was actually a shape-shifting child, and suddenly wants to learn all about the monstrous inhabitants of Midian.

Just like that. No cosmic consequences, confusion, or fear on her part; just pass the tea and crumpets and let's hear all about it, deary.

We soon find out the monsters are the last descendants of shape-shifters, which have been hunted by humankind because they are DIFFERENT! and years ago found shelter living under Midian. Lori is fine with all this, and just wants to find Boone.

For the descendants of shape-shifters, it is odd that most of the monsters appear to be stuck in some really bad shapes. The menagerie of monsters that Lori comes across in her search for Boone is done mostly for shock value, and has little story-sense. The makeup art direction here is again reminiscent of an MTV music video, and the piece de resistance are the Berserkers, who reminded me very much of the man-in-suit beasties from Dark Crystal. They are penned up in a cell, vicious, and serve no purpose until the end, when they are released to attack the invading humans.

Lori eventually finds Boone who, it turns out, is supposed to be the Cabal, the legendary savior of the monsters of Midian.

I missed the lead up to that one; oh wait, there wasn't any.

But they didn't need saving until he showed up, bringing along kill-all-the-monsters humanity with him.

The police finally realize Boone is indeed dead but still walking, and, yes, there are monsters living in Midian. They quickly get pissed off there are monsters living together like normal people and gather up the usual assortment of redneck towns-folk, who don't have nine to five jobs apparently, along with a drunken priest who was in the cell next to Boone, and head to Midian to kick some monster butt.

Why suddenly introduce a drunken, world-weary priest? He plays an important part in later events. A little backstory lead up would have been useful here.

The cigar-chomping sheriff and his redneck entourage soon get their butts kicked (in a badly choreographed game of slow motion touch-football, low budget action way) by the Berserkers, set free to protect Midian—although I thought Boone was supposed to do that, him being the Cabal and all—but Midian gets blown sky high anyway, and the monsters are out of a home.

Boone does get to kill Dr. Decker, but the loopy "I saw their god and he burned me. I want to burn him back" priest, who now looks like a monster himself, brings the psychopath back to life and calls him master. Both whoop it up a great deal in a sequelization-antic ending that is obtuse as the rest of the film.

Did I mention that the score is by Danny Elfman?

That’s a plus.

My recommendation for preparing to watch this movie is to read the novella first. Perhaps that will fill in the cinematic gaps that you could drive a Ford Expedition through and make the film a more enjoyable viewing experience for you.

It certainly wasn’t one for me.

 

Movie Review: Left In Darkness (2006) Where's the Light?

Zombos Says: Fair

Horror fans are intimate with death. Whether sudden or prolonged, subtle or explicit, depicted in hyper-realistic or preternatural artistry, the intention or completion of death is the modus operandi of all horror movies. Often taken to absurd extremes, it is parodied, glorified, exemplified, and gorified. Sometimes theology is tossed into this terminal stew of misery and body parts. Not much, as that would hold down the body count while characters go through annoying self-reflective dialogs, delaying all the spouting-blood action with cumbersome discussions about life and death, heaven and hell, and why me?

Jason, put down that head! Let’s think about all this! or Freddy, cut that out—no, not like that! That’s not how we communicate. I mean you need to wait until I discuss the raison d'etre of your existence juxtaposed with my hacked-up dead friends—oh, and Tommy, too, who I never liked that much anyway.

Such character introspection in a horror movie tends to muck-up the story and require mental gymnastics today's audiences may not be in shape for. It is easier to show death than to explore its boundaries. No lengthy expositions, just nifty death throes and screams and body parts scattered aplenty. So when a horror movie brings death in close proximity to religious themes such as Heaven and Hell, otherwise collectively known as ‘the afterlife,’ it needs to justify its story between just enough horrifying action and just enough theological surmising to move it along in an entertaining, thought-provoking manner.

Left in Darkness fails to live up to this potential. Part of me finds its premise annoying: a devout young woman, Celia (Monica Keena), dies and must find heaven’s entrance before her limbo sanctuary is overrun by damnation. Dying is hard enough. To be forced into playing heaven, heaven, where the hell is heaven, like an Amazing Race episode with a detour of soul-eating demons wanting to suck you dry, shoots for a target of horror story convenience sans sense. However, there’s also a part of me that finds it an interesting dogmatic challenge to encompass it onscreen with sufficient suspense, terror, and ecclesiastical justification to warrant this wicked situation.

It could make for one hell of a horror movie, especially if you're an atheist. 

But the pivotal question almost every horror movie ignores is where's God in all this? And this movie ignores that question, too.

Riddle me this, horror fan: Why is it in every horror movie where you have demons and devils in the game, God’s always on the sidelines while the Devil’s players are hot in the game?

God drops a few cryptic clues to help her, but I'd be screaming for brawny angels with flaming swords instead.

And why is it HER battle?

Celia is an unhappy dead person. In flashback we see her in a cemetery reluctantly visiting her deceased mother who died giving birth to her. Her grandfather Joe (Tim Thomerson) is with her. He raises her after her dad abandons her. Joe asks her to talk to her mom, but she refuses and runs away, right into oncoming traffic. She is saved from premature death by an invisible boy named Donovan (David Anders). He acts like a protecting angel keeping her safe most of her life.

On her twenty-first birthday, Celia joins a friend for a party at the local frat house. Frat boys spike her drink and rape her unconscious body. Too much of the drug is used and she dies from an overdose. She wakes up, realizes she's dead, and now must search for a way into heaven. Clumsy jump-cuts and fast-motion scenes don’t aid her struggle and fail to hide lapses in story logic and budgetary shortfalls. Donovan, her childhood savior appears. So does Joe. But Joe, after explaining the game’s rules to her, turns into a demon. Donovan tells her Joe's soul has been eaten by a demon who digested all of Joe's memories and feelings. He explains the frat house in the netherworld she’s now in is her sanctuary until 2am. After that, the soul-eating demons can enter and gobble her up. How or why Joe became a demon is not explained.

At least in Beetle Juice the Maitlands get an Afterlife Handbook. Celia has to wing it without even Cliffs Notes. Donovan is not much help either. He pressures her to do what he wants. And why she only has until 2am to find the physical doorway, stairway, or closet to heaven is not clear. Why she even needs to go through all this trouble is not explained. She’s been a good girl.

Why does God need her to play detective?

Donovan does help her fight soul-eaters while she makes up her mind whether to trust him or not. She lets him into the frat house sanctuary—he couldn’t enter until she okayed it—and he tells her she needs to go to the basement to save herself.

Sure, why not? The DARK basement.

How dumb do the writers think we are? If this is their idea of foreshadowing, it’s done with a sledgehammer.

The man who caused her death commits suicide and joins her in the sanctuary. The natural tension such a meeting would generate is not explored here. Instead, it’s more like a Ghost Whisperer episode: metaphysical connotations, emotional confrontations, and appropriate dialog simply don’t apply.

The spirits of her grandfather and mom pop in and out to offer more cryptic clues to help her find heaven’s entrance and test her stress level telling her to hurry up, time’s running out. Her sanctuary starts winking out here and there, letting soul-eaters in. Any potential tension or suspense during all this is never nail-biting because Steven Monroe’s pacing is like a TV movie with scenes timed for commercial breaks.

Boil it all down to the bone and it’s about Celia making a choice.

She needs to listen to her grandfather, or her mom, or her guardian angel, or the voice within herself. Why she needs to do this is never explored. At least if she was an atheist I could relish the irony of her situation.

Like the afterlife, this movie is a complete mystery.

Just not a good one.