From Zombos Closet

June 2007

1408 (2007)
Room for Terror

/ Movies (Horror) / Leave a Comment

 

Zombos Says: Very Good

While I readily admit that some hotel rooms I’ve spent time in were murder, none of them ever tried to kill me. Unfortunately for writer Mike Enslin (John Cusack), room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel punches his number with a vengeance. With an ominous song blaring from the one-hour clock-radio heralding doom, hot and cold running ghosts, and concierge service to die from, he’s in quite a pickle; but, after all, he did insist on spending the night in it.

What is it about writers? Especially depressed ones that have lost a loved one and search for some truth behind that long dark curtain of the night? Enslin’s on a quest to find just one ghost, one real moan, one real hint of life beyond the pall. He’s so obsessed, he’s lost track of his own life, and wife, while spending night after fruitless night searching for hope shining off a ghostly glimmer. I feel for him. I watch Ghost Hunters on the Sci-Fi Channel again and again, hoping for just that moment, that one shining, incontrovertible bit of proof there’s more to death than meets the unseeing eye. If and when that moment comes, I hope it doesn’t try to kill me, too.

That’s the mystery of room 1408: what is the malevolent force residing in that room, driving people to mutilate and kill themselves? In true J-horror fashion, we never learn the answer, but the question is well-illustrated in psychological, not gory, terms, driving Enslin to fight both the room’s and his own inner demons. And they keep coming on strong, giving him little respite nor a good night’s sleep.

The postcard warning him to stay out of room 1408 is too enticing for him, so instead of heeding the warning, he heads to New York City to the Dolphin Hotel, to insist on spending the night in a room that’s killed fifty-six other guests—with one drowned in his chicken soup. The hotel manager, Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), sums it up best: “It’s an evil f**cking room.”

Not even Olin’s detailed scrapbook of news clippings and death photographs convinces Enslin to forgo 1408 and spend the night in the penthouse suite; but it does provide for a chilling, tension-building walk as Enslin peruses it, page by gruesome-death page, during his walk from the elevator to 1408. Once he enters the room, and nothing immediately jumps out of the closet, he relaxes a bit and pops open the bottle of high-priced liquor Olin tried to bribe him with; but that lets the spirits out, metaphorically speaking.

And once they’re out, hell starts to follow as the room’s evil entity makes its presence known by blaring “We’ve Only Just Begun” by the Carpenters, and fooling around with his turn-down service. When he can’t get out of the room, now that he realizes it really wasn’t a good idea to enter it in the first place, his hand-held recorder becomes more than a voice-recorder; it allows him to vent his fear, his anger, and his thoughts, giving us a front-row seat to watch his mental state go from cocky to scared sh*tless in no time flat.

As the room’s temperature shifts from hot to arctic, and the paintings on the wall take on a Night Gallery-style life of their own, Enslin’s fear turns to rage as he fights the good fight to leave the room on his terms, not splattered on the pavement below, or, like one previous guest, stitching up his own, self-inflicted throat slice from ear to ear.

Cusack handles the three-sixty mood swing with verve, and his disoriented performance brings us into the room alongside him. Horror is best when served alone, and he proves it by keeping us asking if and how he’ll find the way out. Without lavish gore, director Mikael Håfström increases the shocks by first showing little, disquieting events that rattle Enslin’s composure, then increases the assault on his nerves with CGI-enhanced calamities that build in intensity. Gabriel Yared’s effective music is mixed in with harsh, discordant sounds and the pleasant-sounding, but tauntingly malign voice on the other end of the telephone, promising more unpleasant room service to come. All of this plays on our nerves, as well as Enslin’s.

Never has room service been this bad, or this much fun. In a summer of horror that can too easily become mired in uninspired by-the-body-count nihilistic splatter, 1408 goes back to the old school for its scares.  And it works.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

/ Superheroes / Leave a Comment

Zombos Says: Fair (misses the fantastic spirit of the comic book story by a mile)

I was grievously disappointed with Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I wasn’t grievously disappointed with the first Fantastic Four film, just very disappointed. But this second film definitely cut me to the quick. Deeply. I expected so much more.

In what’s called, by older comic fans, the Silver Age of Marvel Comics, the arrival of Galactus and his herald, the Silver Surfer, is a high point in the very successful collaboration between Stan Lee, writer, and Jack Kirby, illustrator. In this landmark story, the turbulent Sixties’ philosophical struggle between the Flower Power hippies and the war machine Establishment is reflected in the relationship between the quintessential flower-child, Silver Surfer, and his nasty job for the ultimate status quo Establishment man, the Devourer of Worlds and wielder of the Power Cosmic, Galactus. Aside from making for terrific illustrations used in those nifty psychedelic black light posters, the depth of the storyline—unusual for comic books up until then—was heavy, man, and downright righteous. But you’d not know any of that after watching this film.

Ff02Instead, what we get is more standard chuckles between Ben and Johnny, Susan’s concern over how their celebrity is ruining her marriage and family plans, along with another one of her “Oh, damn, I’m nude again in public” scenes, and simplistic children’s twaddle that completely erases the grandeur, nobility, and greater depth depicted in the comic book for gosh sakes. Digest that last sentence again: the 1960’s comic book storyline had more depth than this movie.

In this film, the Silver Surfer has more depth in his navel then in his relationship with the Fantastic Four or Galactus. More thought was devoted to introducing the toy-potential Fantasticar than the significance of dealing with a power cosmic wielding, mass destruction godlike being whose hunger for sustenance must be fed at all costs. It wasn’t bad enough they changed this giant, purple-suited human-like being into a Dyson vacuum commercial, they also had to remove a key plot element also: blind Alicia’s relationship with the Silver Surfer.

In the original comic book storyline, it is Alicia’s philosophical arguments and pleadings that open the Silver Surfer’s eyes and long-dormant heart, causing him to turn against the big guy. Instead, Sue Storm just bats her eyes and the Silver Surfer is reminded of his long lost love; how convenient. Gone are the philosophical debates about life in all its forms being important. I suppose that’s too sixties for today’s more sophisticated audiences.

Ff01 Apparently, what’s more appropriate is writing down to the audience by relying on the usual funny banter and sight gags, with by-the-script Fantastic Four family squabbling. Hello, anybody notice Armageddon approaching yet? While Reed does the disco hustle at his bachelor party, and Johnny dons his Keebler-endorsed blue suit, whatever happened to a little suspense? Except for that brief planet explosion in the opening, more time is spent away from the impending doom than on it. I got it that being a celebrity is annoying, but hey, so is having your planet chewed on like rock candy while you’re still standing on it.

Another critical character missing is the Watcher. Another big, toga-robed bald guy, the Watcher does just that. He’s an observer and doesn’t involve himself in the little problems of life and death. Until he sees the Silver Surfer heading for earth. For the first time, he takes a stand and steps in to hide the planet from Galactus’ herald, but fails, leading to the drama that is sorely missing in this film, and the Silver Surfer’s redemption.

Ff48 At this point, you’re probably saying to yourself, man, a purple-dressed and toga-robed duo of giants would have been laughable on screen. Perhaps, but you bought everything else up till now, right? You’re okay with a flaming man, an invisible woman, a rubber guy, and an orange rock pile with a head, not to mention the Alcoa Reynolds Wrap riding the sky on a silver surfboard without any swim trunks. At least their appearance in the film would have made the story more—ironically—human and visually interesting.

Doctor Doom makes his obligatory sequel appearance. This time he’s very interested in the Surfer’s mode of transportation, the energy-empowering surf board. While this plot actually does happen in later issues of the comic book, why rush into it here? Planet-eating bad guys not enough? Interestingly, Kirby decided on the hang-ten board mainly because he was tired of drawing spaceships, but maybe his sub-conscious nudged him into this dichotomy of having a being that can cruise the universe at will like some surfer-dude riding out the eternal big one, but only just so far as his servitude to the man would allow, like some cosmic weekend warrior living free in his SUV until Monday rolls around again.

Doom ingratiates himself to the military, and too easily snatches the board away. Speaking of depth, there’s much more to Doom in the comic books than you’d ever guess from his weak portrayal here, but at least he does wear his suit of armor and cape this time around. As the Fantasticar makes its commercial appearance—kiddies, it’s already available at Toys “R” Us!—Doom fights to keep on surfing, even though the planet’s about to be pulverized. Go figure. Maybe he just wants to live up to his name.

Jumping to another issue in the comic book series, Johnny’s ability to absorb the Fantastic Four’s other powers, which amazingly comes after his run in with the Silver Surfer, gives him powers like the Super Skrull (Fantastic Four Issue Number 18), and he goes after Doctor Doom. Before that brief showdown, his predicament provides the underpinning for most of the too easy, audience-tested chuckles as wacky antics ensue because of it.

In one of the most anti-climactic “why didn’t he think of that in the first place if it were that easy” denouements, all’s right with the world as the Silver Surfer realizes the error of his ways and saves mankind. Considering the title of this film is Rise of the Silver Surfer, I suspect a spin-off franchise is in the works. Just think of the marketing potential. I can see the silvery toys lining those shallow shelves now.

Like I said, I was grievously disappointed.

Hannibal Rising (2007)
Sympathy for the Devil?

/ Movies (Bad) / Leave a Comment

 

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.

Book Review: Tim Curran’s Dead Sea

/ Books (Fiction)

Deadsea

Zombos Says: Good

They expected torment and death. They expected thirst and drowning. They expected starvation. They expected suffering in all its guises and, yes, they expected things to come at them out of the mist, the sort of things that had crawled alive and breathing from nightmares and cellars and dank dark places. And on this matter they were right.

–Dead Sea

“Oh, stop being such a spoilsport,” Zombos said, helping Zimba aboard the yacht. Chef Machiavelli, dressed in his Speedo Fiji Garden watershorts, pouted as he passed me, waving his finger.

“No. No. And no again.” I was adamant. “Let others go down to the sea in ships. I’m not setting foot on that deck, no way, no how.”  Zombos threw up his hands in disgust. I folded my arms tighter in defiance.

After reading Tim Curran’s novel, Dead Sea, there was no way in or outside of hell I was going to put one foot aboard any ship. I didn’t want to have my eyeballs sucked out of their sockets through my butt, nor did I want some gelatinous, throbbing, hairy ovoid turning my insides out. Between Jaws, the Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch, and now Dead Sea, I hate the water and every hungry, slimy thing swimming through it. Jacques Cousteau be damned.

And damned is what the crew of the Mara Corday find themselves when the oily luminous fog washes over them and knocks out all of their high-tech navigation equipment. Unlike Scott Carey’s increasing problems with his diminishing stature in The Incredible Shrinking Man, after a similarly bizarre encounter with a luminous mist while boating, the Mara Corday’s crew has to deal with the increasing encounters–and sizes–of the ubiquitous and ever-larger pelagic inhabitants of an ungodly and unearthly ocean. And boy are they hungry; both the crew and those slimy, endlessly-tentacled inhabitants, that is.

While reading Curran’s deadly sojourn into this alien body of water, I was reminded of Hammer Films’ The Lost Continent, which was derived from Dennis Wheatley’s Uncharted Seas. An avowed William Hope Hodgson fan to boot (interview), Curran loves the sea so much he apparently wants to frighten the rest of us away so he can enjoy it all to himself.

Making doubly sure he covers both cosmic and supernatural bases, Curran tosses in a little Lovecraftian spice in the guise of a master evil that prowls around his alien seascape, sucking out the minds of unfortunate victims like a 7-Eleven Slurpee through a straw.

Curran anchors his story around George Ryan, a first-time seafaring man who reluctantly goes on the voyage for the needed money, and rocks the boat with Saks, a loud-mouth, “slab of cement,” that you keep wishing would get his comeuppance. The other crew members are colorful and full in personality, and as their predicament becomes more dire, act in all the right and wrong ways you would expect people to do in such a situation.

Then there are the others. As the crew enters the mist and things go to hell, Curran’s version of the Graveyard of the Atlantic, in which they’ve unwittingly entered, is populated with an ever-increasing assortment of briny, spiny, and deadly sea-life that not even Diver Dan would want to talk to. No sooner do they enter the mist than a crewman starts screaming about something inside him and off he goes over the side. Or was he dragged over the side? Then another crewman is snatched by something coming out of the thick fog. And before you can say “thar she blows,” the Mara Corday is struck by another ship and soon everyone is into the water trying to stay alive.

We follow their struggle for survival, alternately moving between the survivors in the raft, the lifeboat, and those just bobbing up and down on the debris from the sinking vessel. Fighting off the increasing attacks by the bizarre sea creatures–and their own petty squabbling as Saks just can’t keep his mouth shut–they slowly realize something else is seductively prowling around in the heavy luminous fog. Something that sounds like a woman’s voice, but it’s not a woman, making the hairs on the back of their neck stand on end. Then there’s that buzzing sound over the radio. It’s not static, but they’re not quite sure what it is.

Curran keeps the action moving, but does lapse into an overly long discussion–made by the survivors–of where they are and what the hell is going on. He also tosses in references to pop culture TV shows that make you self-conscious of the narrative you’re reading, disrupting the mood he is so carefully building. But his power at describing the alien and supernatural horrors of this Sargasso Sea will keep you reading page after page, hoping this or that character will survive, and wondering about the next horror to come splashing up out of the water.

Or out of the mist. In one tightly-written and creepy encounter with a derelict ship, the USS Cyclops, Curran steers his story neatly into an eerie and scary rendezvous that lies between ghostly terror and icky creature-horror. You’ll feel shivers down your spine just as the crewman who board her do.

Not satisfied with describing fibroid horrors feeding on the survivors, or multi-legged beasties with puckered mouths hungering for their flesh and blood, or an irradiated horror that melts the flesh from their bones into sticky puddles, Curran tosses in a UFO, the Fourth dimension, and a building climax of impending doom if they don’t find a way out.

Dead Sea is a good choice to read at night, when you’re all alone. Author Tim Curran displays a masterful touch at mixing genres, and in keeping the pace moving as he shifts the story back and forth between the separate groups of survivors struggling to stay alive and the horrors that wait patiently all around them.

 

“I say, what’s that thick fog rolling in?” Zombos said, just as he was casting off the tether lines. “Is it glowing? Zoc? Zoc?”

I didn’t answer him. I was too busy running as fast as I could to the safety of the mansion.

Hostel Part II (2007)

/ Movies (Gore)

 

Zombos Says: Very Good

I wanted to take a long hot shower after watching Hostel: Part II. I felt dirty. The horror genre is a distasteful, discomforting one to begin with; that’s what sustains it. It’s supposed to both titillate and frighten us at the same time with shocking images, unpleasant sounds, and extreme, sometimes disgusting, subject matter. But then there’s Eli Roth’s Hostel series, rolling up all those elements into a nice and tidy puke-ball of horrifyingly intense and nauseating brutality. The problem is that he does it so convincingly well.

Unlike another, albeit less gruesome, torture-flick, 1970’s Mark of the Devil, there are no gimmicky vomit bags to be handed out here to lighten the experience, though now’s the time they’d come in handy. Time was, you went to a horror movie to be grossed-out, but in a fun way. Thrills and chills, and some red spills, but ha-ha, just make believe your sick and keep that vomit bag pristine because it makes a wonderful souvenir.

Of course there are many horror films, from grind-house to art-house, that do their best to make you upchuck your last meal or your complacency, but Roth’s fictional Slovakian village, filled with menacing townspeople—including the children—pushes your complacency right out the window, then stomps on it’s fingers as it desperately dangles from the windowsill trying to avoid that long fall downward.

…

Hostel Part II (2007)Read More »

Interview: Max Sparber’s Essential
Ghoul’s Record Shelf

/ Music/Radio

Max Sparber has got one creepy, but very groovy record shelf. Leaving no tombstone unturned, no crypt left unopened, he seeks out new supernatural life in his quest for the morbid, the bizarre, and the ever-lasting bumps in the night-music that lie between the pit of our wildest nightmares, and the summit of our unholy dreams. Cool.

Join us as he dares to speak…

How did your fascination with music that touches on the ghastly and supernatural come about?

A few places. Firstly, like quite a few American children, I had several Halloween records when I was young, including Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s The Monster Mash and several collections of Halloween sound effects. As an adult, I started tracking down albums like this to compile Halloween mix tapes for my friends, and began to realize that an enormous amount of music had been written with supernatural themes. That’s when I began collecting in earnest.

What is it about supernatural-themed music that makes you seek it out and collect?

Well, I have a notorious need for novelty—I get easily bored with middle-of-the-road culture, and, frankly, how many love songs need to be written? Or, at least, how many love songs that rhyme “June” and “moon”? With supernaturally themed music, you get this marvelous variety of songs, including music in which the singers literally impersonate classic movie monsters, as well as genuinely spooky stuff, and quite a few albums on which actual movie monster stars appear. Trust me—if you can find a recording with Vincent Price or Boris Karloff on it, it’s worth getting.

Tell us about your collection: who’s in it, your favorites, and how you go about finding those gems?

I have about 1400 unique songs in my collection now, some purchased at flea markets and thrift stores, some simply tracked down on the Internet. I tend to do a lot of reading of online horror blogs, and when they make references to supernaturally themed music, I jot it down and try to chase the song down.

My favorites in my collection are songs that aren’t merely novelties or satires of existing songs, but work as unique pieces of music. I remember hearing LaVern Baker’s Voodoo Voodoo for the first time, in which she uses a voodoo curse as a metaphor for obsessive love, and being impressed that Baker had created a song that dealt with such kitschy subject matter that still managed to remain a terrific R&B number. A lot of blues songs manage this as well, such as Black Cat Bone by Lightnin’ Hopkins and I Ain’t Superstitious, by Howlin’ Wolf, both of which borrow from folk superstitions and base themselves around spooky guitar parts.

At the same time, I also like songs that are just deliberately ridiculous. I’m a big fan of Nervous Norvus, for example. His be-bopping, ukulele-backed songs are just great, and he has such an oddly morbid sensibility. In Transfusion, for example, he sings of an endless series of car crashes and blood transfusions, while in The Fang he takes on the role of a zoot-suited space alien. And I have been listening to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins since I was a boy, and have yet to grow tired of him.

Nervous Norvus aside, what other bizarre or really-out-there music is in your collection?

I have an entire album of spells by a self-proclaimed witch named Louise Huebner. The album is called Seduction Through Witchcraft and was released by Warner Brothers in 1969. They recorded her reading off potions and spells, and then put a very deep echo on her voice, to make it sound spooky I suppose.

Country artist Red Sovine did several ghost stories, all about truckers who either see ghosts or are ghosts. I wrote about one, Phantom 309, on my site, but he has another called Bringing Mary Home in which a child hitchhiker turns out to be the ghost of a little girl killed in a crash, who every year on the anniversary of her death convinces truckers to take her home, whereupon she disappears.

Butch Patrick, who played Eddie Munster on The Munsters, released a 45rpm single called Whatever Happened to Eddie in the 80s, consisting of him singing over a new wave version of the Munsters, and basically updating people as to his activities. There was a point when you could hire him to appear at parties in his Eddie Munster outfit, despite the fact that he was now an adult—Ben Stiller parodied this once, on Saturday Night Live, if I remember correctly. The flip side of Whatever Happened to Eddie is actually a terrific song called Little Monsters, somewhat reminiscent of the music of Thomas Dolby.

Jack Kittel did a song called Psycho, which has since been covered by Eddie Noack and Elvis Costello, that is a weirdly hysterical country song consisting of a deadpan supper time confession by a young man who admits to mother that he’s killed just about everybody he knows, including most of his family members. At the end of the song it becomes obvious that he has also killed his mother and is confessing to her corpse.

What was your monsterkid upbringing like? When did the bug hit?

I watched horror movies as far back as I can remember—I used to wake myself up very late at night to watch monster movies after midnight, with the volume turned very low, sometimes with a sheet thrown over myself and the television to hide the glow, so my parents wouldn’t know I was up. I was a huge fan of The Twilight Zone as a boy and similar shows. I remember going down the street to a corner drugstore when I was young and discovering an issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland—it had an image of Yul Brynner from Westworld, with his face taken off to reveal a mass of circuits. I convinced my mother to buy it for me and was immediately hooked.

I also purchased a lot of horror-themed comic books when I was young, and built plastic models of the Universal horror monsters that glowed in the dark. It was pretty easy to be a fan of horror when you were a boy growing up in the early 70s—even my grade school library had a large collection of Alfred Hitchcock’s ghastly selections of short stories, and a series written explicitly for children called Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators.

I just never lost the taste for it. Even now, looking at Dr. Mysterian’s collection of DVDs, at least half of them are horror-themes, including a distinct section for zombie films.

What’s in that unique collection of zombie films?

I have quite a few—I’ll just name two or three. There’s George Romero’s films, of course—I saw Night of the Living Dead on PBS when I was a boy, and was really shocked and impressed by it. I also have Sugar Hill, a strange Blaxpoitation film from 1974 in which the Voodoo saint, Baron Samedi, raises a group of zombies to help a nightclub owner avenge the death of her boyfriend. And I have King of the Zombies, which is almost entirely about ethnic comedian Mantan Moreland looking frightened. Somehow it managed to get nominated for an Academy Award when it was released, in 1941, for best soundtrack.

Who is the mysterious and bizarre Dr. Quentin Mark Mysterian?

Dr. Mysterian is a pseudonym, borrowed from the band name Question Mark and the Mysterians. The actual Dr. Mysterian is a writer and editor currently living in Minneapolis, formerly of New Orleans, who writes weekly predictions of the future, directly inspired by fraud psychic Criswell, which can be found in the pages of the Omaha Weekly. The official story is that Dr. Mysterian was in a freak accident that gave him the power to forecast the future, including seeing the exact time of his own death; obviously, some of the details of Dr. Mysterian’s life are exaggerated or fabricated to protect his true identity.

What question are you dying to be asked, and what’s the answer?

What is the grossest song ever written? And the answer is, of course, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song Feast of the Mau Mau, in which he describes, in excruciating detail, a truly reprehensible meal, then gibbers in a faux-African language. When he used to perform the song, members of his audience would flee the theater, sickened.

Snakes On a Plane (2006)

/ Movies (Drive-in) / Leave a Comment

Zombos Says: Good

“When I say snakes, you say plane,” yelled a giddy fellow in the front of the theater.

“Snakes!”

“Plane!” everybody yelled back.

As we waited for the 11:59am showing of Snakes on a Plane, the audience was euphoric. Again and again, he yelled “Snakes!” and we – I mean they – yelled back “Plane!”

Another roar went up when the lights dimmed and the trailer for Black Snake Moan, which also stars Samuel L. Jackson, brought a rousing cheer. So what is it about Snakes on a Plane and the in-your-face mother-f**ker acting style of Samuel Jackson that has this audience so hyped?

The film opens innocuously enough with an easy-listening pop song playing as a lone biker – Jones is his name – zips through the lush forests of Hawaii, enjoying the scenery. Oh, wait a minute, someone’s dangling from a rope. Bungee-jumping perhaps? No; definitely not. This guy is hurting and bleeding. He tells the biker to get away, just as Eddie Kim, the psycho who’s going to take a bat to this guy’s skull, pulls up. For the biker, it turns out to be the wrong place at the wrong time. Being an average, sporty kind of Joe, his luck isn’t very good either.

Crazy boy Kim and his thugs catch a glimpse of him and the chase is on. He escapes, barely, and we next see him in his apartment, watching a news report about the killing he witnessed. Jones hears a buzz coming from the door, and as he peeks through the peephole, he sees those same nasty looking thugs he ran away from nonchalantly drilling his door lock out. He starts running again, but this time it’s into the arms of FBI agent Nelville Flynn, who  tracked him down by lifting the fingerprints off the can of Red Bull energy drink he left at the scene of the crime. And here I thought that stuff was supposed to give you wings; Jones could have used a pair right about now.

snakes on a planeFBI agent Flynn unloads a can of whoop ass on the thugs, and before you can say snakes on a plane, we’re at the airport. It’s at this point I realize this film is cheesy good. Melt in your mouth damn good. The script is simple, direct, and filled with simple and direct dialog, which is sometimes witty, sometimes trite, but always fun. From the yellowish-brown tinting of the film, to the 1970’s style of direction and characterization, this is a vitamin B-12 kind of B-movie.

And then there are the characters. As the plane is delayed, we meet the passengers waiting to board the ill-fated flight. There’s the over-sexed young couple—you know they’re going to get it but good; Mercedes, a young woman carrying her little dog named Mary Kate; two boys riding alone; a really obnoxious businessman—you just know he’s going to get it especially good; the fat lady boozing it up—ha, ha, let’s watch her get it good, too—and the really nervous guy whose afraid to fly, along with his wife. There’s also a mom and her baby, but no singing nuns, so that was a relief. Mom, baby, snakes? Yup, you know what’s coming.

Agent Flynn and his partner, along with Jones, and a large crate of poisonous snakes in all sizes hopped-up on pheromones to boot, are soon in the air. Seems crazy Kim wants to make sure Jones doesn’t testify, even if it means bringing the entire plane down and killing everyone in it.

It’s when the over-sexed young couple head to the bathroom that the horror movie kicks into high action gear. Lord, tell me they didn’t just light a reefer in the bathroom? That’s the foreshadowing for a really gruesome death in horror movies. And so it begins.

snakes on a planeThe audience counted down the seconds on the explosive timer as the digits dropped to zero. The crate breaks open and soon the little and big nasties are crawling everywhere and wreaking havoc.

Using wicked real and VFX closeups, we see the snakes in all their slithering and fangy glory as they bite passengers left and right, leaving bloody welts, swelling body-parts, and blackened dead bodies in their path.

And there’s also snake-o-vision! You too can see the horrified faces of the scrambling passengers through a snakes’ eyes, just before the fangs sink deep and the venom spits out. Brought to you in fuzzy greenish color.

The snakes knock out the avionics on the plane, and with the plane flying into a storm, things are quickly moving from bad to worse. Thank the lord the writers of this film didn’t watch Airport, otherwise they would have taken out the pilots, too. Damn, I spoke to soon.

Just about every airplane disaster movie cliché comes into play as the passengers fight to survive. And yes, there’s a snake in microwave interlude also. What’s so amazing is that it all works fairly well, and the story keeps moving. You’ll be on the edge of your seat, and waiting breathlessly for Jackson to say those words only he can deliver. When the time came, the audience said it with him.

“Enough is enough. I had it with the mother-f**king snakes on this mother-f**king plane!”

Agent Flynn and the passengers do a rousing version of the A-Team and fight to take back the cockpit from the venomous horde, and its up to the guy who logged 2000 hours of flight time—playing a flight-simulator game—to save the day.

Snakes on a Plane is a terrific popcorn and soda summer movie, and Samuel L. Jackson is the only actor possible to make it work so well. I dare you to tell him otherwise.

The DVD comes with a good assortment of extras. Pure Venom: The Making of Snakes on a Plane gets the cast and crew involved discussing the technical and logistical aspects of filming. CafeFX’s featurette on the visual effects work involved in creating the computer-generated snakes is short and sweet. Snakes on a Blog covers the Internet hype surrounding the movie months before it was released, and Meet the Snakes, with snake handler Jules Sylvester, made me glad I’m not a snake handler. There’s also interactive content available on the DVD if you have InterActual Player 2.0, but don’t rush out and buy the player if you don’t have it.

Murder-Set-Pieces (2004)
Murder to Watch

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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.