From Zombos Closet

JM Cozzoli

A horror and movie fan with a blog. Scary.

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

/ Movies (Bad) / 9 Comments

Freddy KruegerZombos Says: Fair

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

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

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

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

Again and again and again.

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

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

This is one boring movie when it should have sizzled.

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

Television: Happy Town
American Gothic Terror Returns to TV

/ Streaming/TV/Mobile / 1 Comment

Happy_town The locals call us "The Bready." We happily employ 12 percent of Haplin's residents, and we are proud to make Haplin a place where the air is alive with the aroma of fresh baking bread, all the live-long day! Enjoy! (Our Daily, Baking and Confectionary, Haplin, MN)

Zombos Says: Very Good

Measure two fingers of sinister mystery from American Gothic, add a dash of Stephen Kingish small-town-hiding-dark-secrets, spice with serial murderer and missing people, stir in an all too quiet and aloof visitor, Merritt Grieves (Sam Neill), top off with a more recent visitor who's way too anxious to ascend the staircase leading to the dark third floor of the boarding house she's staying at, and finally dabble assorted bitters of quirky townsfolk and a sheriff and his son in over their heads. Shake it all violently, garnish liberally with tidbits of plot, then knock back this new series on ABC called Happy Town: it's quite a rush given the promise shown in this first episode, In This Home on Ice.

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Television: Happy Town
American Gothic Terror Returns to TVRead More »

Cowboys of the Silver Screen Stamps

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Bill_Pickett_Handbill While mailing the American Vampire comics to contest winners today, I noticed these nostalgic stamps at the post office. Westerns were the mainstay of Universal Pictures before they discovered more lucrative box-office receipts with monsters. Cowboy serials were the ideal world of every white boy growing up in a long ago era, when American pride, fortitude, and integrity were as sociable and wholesome and as much a given as eating mom's apple pie with a glass of milk on a Sunday afternoon.

As for me, I saddled up with the Lone Ranger and Tonto, rode the trails with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and I always hoped to get the pretty girl, kick-ass a little harder with the villains than Tom Mix, and strum the guitar strings faster and straighter than Gene Autry. I'm still working on his Cowboy Code. I wish some of the people I meet and read about these days would work on it, too.

Missing from this wonderful line-up of Americana is Bill Pickett. He's a black cowboy. Not too many folks sashayed up to the box-office to buy tickets for movies with black cowboys back then. But there's black and white in that silver screen all the same.

Way back in 1923, rodeo sensation Bill Pickett became the first black screen cowboy in The Bull-Dogger, and he was just the first in a long line of cowboys of color who galloped through movie history alongside their more mainstream, pale-faced peers. (Robert Silva, The Good, the Bad, and the Black Cowboy)



Looking at these wonderful stamps reminded me of Stephen Avalos' The Ghosts of Edendale, a creepy twist on the invincibility and purity of men wearing white ten-gallon hats, and Dead Birds, a Lovecraftian-western best not viewed alone and after dark.

Which Western horror movies would you recommend? And if you dare say Billy the Kid Versus Dracula, better put up yer dukes, cause them's fightin' words! (Click on the graphic for a larger view while you're ponderin'.)

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Trading Cards: Midnight Madness, Desert Rats

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Desert_Rats_wrapper Here is the twelve card story for my favorite one in the series, Desert Rats, from Rosem’s Midnight Madness Card Set. Story is by Steve Kiviat, and illustrations by Alfredo Osorio. (Copyright 1990 by Rosem Enterprises.)

Can’t you just eat it up! It is so quaintly gruesome. And look at those cute little fuzzy faces. They just gnaw at your heart, don’t they?

Click on the images for a larger view.

 

Desert Rats Desert Rats
Desert_Rats_1-6back Desert Rats

Book Review: and Falling, fly By Skyler White

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and falling, fly Dominic's voice is meltingly tender. "What if you're right? What if hope is the master of Hell? What if something in your own mind, in your own hopes, or fears, or ideas, is the cause of your suffering? What if you are not damned?"

"If I am not damned, what am I?"

"A woman in pain."

Zombos Says: Very Good

Ambiguity and certainty abound in Skyler White's novel and Falling, fly, along with fallen angels turned vampires, a neuroscientist traumatized by his cycle of reincarnations, and an Irish Goth-punk hotel that is either Hell, Limbo, or a comfortable bed and breakfast for its guests. In words thought and spoken, her characters shift between first and third person narratives to dwell on the certainty of their fate and the ambiguity of their despair: continue living fettered by their assorted curses or dare to surmount them even if it means painful loss. But are they indeed cursed as they believe or are they living a delusion? That's the tantalizing conundrum White presents with her words as they blend mellifluously into scenes ripe with irreconcilable decadence, sex, and mythologically-based–and sanctioned–angst over what may or may not be real.

…

Book Review: and Falling, fly By Skyler WhiteRead More »

The Silent Scream (1980)

/ Movies (Slasher) / 1 Comment

Silent scream

Zombos Says: Good

Listen to the Movie Review

Scotty (the impossibly thin Rebecca Balding) needs an apartment badly. She’s late to the college semester and the college dorms are filled. At the end of an almost fruitless day of apartment hunting, shown in humorous vignettes of crappy places and dubious renters, she finds a small, comfortable room in a big, brooding, beach-side house at the top of a hill. Three other college latecomers join her: there’s the spoiled rich Peter (John Widelock), the feisty, bosomy, fun-loving girl Doris (Juli Andelman), and the hunk, Jack–who makes sure to keep his shirt off or unbuttoned as much as possible because he’s the hunk–played by Steve Doubet. Living in the house are the brooding Mrs. Engels (played by Mrs. Munster herself, Yvonne De Carlo), who stays mostly up in the attic; the quiet and ill at ease Mason Engels (Brad Rearden) hangs out in the bedroom across the hall; and everyone’s unknowingly waiting for a family secret about to become known. Violently. Now guess which one of the college kids gets killed first.

The family secret is also a natural one for an American Gothic story rather than a slasher movie. It takes its time to reveal itself as the tightly wound and fragile Engels’ family composure unravels, and not much mayhem occurs until Scotty is tied up in a closet with her blood about to be spilled across the floor. Deep focus (in an interview on the DVD using a split diopter to accomplish this is mentioned) keeps both the desperate Scotty, who’s eyeing the closet doorknob, and the closet doorknob that is just out of reach, in sharp focus as the knife-wielding killer comes closer: a surprising giallo-styled visualization in an American Gothic framework, culminating in a frisson of terror when door edge, sharp knife, and Scotty’s hand get awfully close to each other.

As one family secret is exposed, another one causes Mason, who’s already emotionally tighter than his buttoned up and tie-less collar, to retreat into fantasy, leading to more violence. There is not much gore or body count here, but Jim and Ken Wheat took over an ailing, unfinished movie and penned it into a ‘coherent’ family tragedy playing out in an old and not so dark house atop a lonely hill. Imagine Henrik Ibsen writing a slasher play and you wouldn’t be too far off the mark describing The Silent Scream. Bridging together existing scenes with clearer motivations, stronger relationships, and a linear progression that slowly builds drama, The Silent Scream is a low key slasher easily lost among the more traditional murderfests of the 1980s like Sleepaway Camp and Friday the 13th because of its less frenetic, more television-styled direction.

The Silent Scream is not much of a mystery; neither is it much of a blood-flowing slasher story. The acting ranges from bread and butter, courtesy of television veterans Cameron Mitchell and Avery Schreiber, to studio classy with Yvonne De Carlo and Barbara Steele. In-between, the college kids act much like college kids do in a slasher movie–they want to have fun and fool around–but there’s a more natural and slower tone to their behavior here. This naturalness makes them more personable. I didn’t want to see any of them die. Peter does act like a jerk when he’s drunk, but he’s spoiled, so he’s a predictable jerk. Doris is fun-loving, but not the kind that usually leads to trouble in a horror movie, and Scotty and Jack do eventually snuggle, but they take their time before jumping into bed.

This is the movie Ti West should have remade instead of his homage to 1980’s slashers, The House of the Devil. Both keep to the same pace, both have an impossibly thin college girl in danger, and both involve families with deep dark secrets, who live in old houses with horror waiting in the attic. But The Silent Scream has a better story and better directorial nuances, making it a more chilling and distinctive movie that draws you in instead of trying to impress you with the director’s ego.

I Sell the Dead (2008)
And Not So Dead, Too

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I Sell the Dead Zombos Says: Good

Awaiting execution for his crimes of grave robbing and murder, Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) recounts his nocturnal exploits, conducted with his accomplice Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden), to the attentive Father Duffy (Ron Perlman). Over wine, Blake reveals how his low-paying start with providing certainly-dead cadavers to a nefarious Dr. Quint (Angus Scrimm) blossoms into a more lucrative endeavor procuring the less-certainly-dead–vampires, zombies, and a ‘sideshow freak’–for an inquisitive medical clientele. Director Glenn McQuaid embellishes this Victorian period parody and homage of late night B-movie horror staples with bizarre and suitably grimy characters, lots of foggy scenes, and a witty story that outwits itself now and then by rushing too quickly to the punchline.

Making Blake’s and Grimes’ jobs all the harder are the seedy, insane, and fear-inducing house of Murphy, led by Cornelius (John Speredakos) and his mysterious father. Valentine (she wears a mask to hide her badly burned face), and Bulger (he had his teeth replaced with canine chompers), round out the colorful Murphys, who vie with Blake and Grimes for the ghoulish spoils. Occasional comic book-styled illustration appears, especially when highlighting the picaresque Murphy clan, lending a horror comic motif similar to 1982’s Creepshow and the more recent Trick ‘r Treat (2008).

I sell the dead McQuaid keeps his scenes excruciatingly tight in an attempt to conceal the production’s budgetary limitations, but often this produces the opposite effect by calling more attention to his meager mis en scenes because of their static framing (made worse by a woozy camera movement within the frame when least needed). At other times, his closeups highlight the slapstick antics of Blake and Grimes, and their wild encounters with the Murphys, with giddy aplomb.

What really sells I Sell the Dead are McQuaid’s Victorianesque characters and their travails while digging up their best prospects. His penny dreadful-flavored twists and turns with horror conventions percolates new life into recognizable situations: a vampire encounter at a crossroads turns into farce when the garlic and wooden stake are unwisely removed and frantically put back, again and again; an unusually frigid grave yields an unexpected corpse; and zombies prove highly desirable for medical research into immortality, but tend to be hard to procure. A chance shipwreck provides an opportunity to cash in on the burgeoning zombie demand.

Rowing to Langol Island in the dead of night ahead of the Murphys, Grimes, Blake, and their new, overly eager, apprentice Fanny (Brenda Cooney) go looking for the shipwrecked zombies. They find one crated undead, the foot of another undead, and Valentine, Bulger, and an angry Cornelius. In the ensuing mayhem after Valentine removes her mask, frightening Blake, Grimes–and a zombie–into a frenzy, Grimes gets bitten and the undead bite off more than they can chew with the Murphys.

I Sell the Dead is a cheeky blend of the usual horror setpieces made unusual by playing them almost to absurdity as Grimes and Blake cope with the ever present threat of the Murphys and the rigors of their demanding profession in order to get ahead. Before they lose theirs. Jeff Grace’s music is a treat as it evokes the mood and style of earlier horror movies from Hammer to Amicus, especially when playing against the animated opening credits. For many horror aficionados, especially those weaned on Shock Theatre and supernatural horror movies from the 1950s to the 1970s, I Sell the Dead will be a lot of fun to watch.

Graphic Book Review: The Nightmare Factory Vol. 1, 2

/ Comics/Manga / 1 Comment

Nightmare factoryZombos Says: Very Good

Shhh. Listen. That is a furtive step creaking up the basement stairs. Hold your breath. That is a shadow crouching in the corner of the room, and every other room you enter. Breathe in. That is the briny smell of fish scales and water-logged wood, and freshly turned earth filled with bloated worms, and moldering leather-bound volumes crammed onto drooping shelves. Now look. Those crumbling facades of edifice and sanity, cracking and peeling in the mirror behind you, are yours. And yours alone.

Welcome to the eerie world of Thomas Ligotti, an author who is either highly praised or mostly ignored by readers of the horrific, whose stories are adapted in these two volumes from Fox Atomic Comics. Somewhat Lovecraftian in intent, partially E. F. Bleiler– with a tincture of Robert Aickman–in portent, Ligotti’s stories are incessantly bleak and eldritch and filled with uncanny events confronting his displaced, misplaced, and psychically-debased characters. Images of festively-clothed clowns and harlequins, ancient alien things with grotesque appendages, and arcane horrors waiting patiently at your doorstep occupy his imagination. And now yours.

Reading Ligotti’s words, you always enter the story in the middle and work around to the edges of beginning and ending, leaving you very much like the little rat nibbling at a large wheel of cheese: feeling anxious because there is always more just out of reach and desiring it badly. This is neither a bad or good thing. It is simply Thomas Ligotti at work.

In volume one, the nightmares include a small town’s festival involving clowns and those that seem like clowns, a sanitarium that was better left standing than taken down, an intermezzo with a mannikin, and an artist’s brush with the mysterious Teatro Grotessco. Each tale is drawn by a different artist with relish and Ligotti provides the introductions. The stories are adapted by Joe Harris and Stuart Moore, and capture the anxiety, paranoia, and weirdness of Ligotti’s temperament. Dr. Locrian’s Asylum is the most unsettling in illustration and tone, and touches at the ghostly with an M. R. James’ spookiness. Interestingly, the first two stories are drawn using a black-bordered background, and the last two stories use a white-bordered one.

Gas Station Carnivals, The Clown Puppet, The Chymist, and The Sect of the Idiot are adapted in volume two. The questionable emotional stability of the narrators in the first two stories leaves you with a sense of dread and uncertainty, while the certainty in purpose expressed in the last two stories’ narrators leaves you with a sense of fear, of out-of-your-control-evil happening, again and again. The life-sized puppet-clown in The Clown Puppet floats silently in the back of Vizniak’s pharmacy, looking for a prescription that may be difficult to fill. Bill Siekiewicz’s arresting panels imbue the absurdity and malevolence of this apparition with vivid terror. The impossible remembrance in Gas Station Carnivals hints not only of a troubled memory, but of a troublesome future, especially with it’s story within a story framework. Ligotti introduces each story again, but more like he is thinking out loud with his ruminations rather than a fact-laden rundown of the story’s provenance. As in volume one, these ruminations, on the theme permeating each story, gives us a peak into Ligotti’s fears, and subsequently, those of his characters about to experience the uncanny. It is here in volume two that the sense of being in the middle of something far more sinister and dangerous than imagined, or of having walked in, unwelcome, on a private conversation is strongest.

In all likelihood, Ligotti’s writing stems from an inhibition to take his assigned medications in a timely fashion. Reading these tales, you may find a need for medication also, if only to not fear brightly-dressed clowns, and to be able to shake away the unease when all alone in those dark, quiet moments.

Critical analyses of Ligotti’s work can be found in S. T. Joshi’s book The Modern Weird Tale (2001) as well as in a critical anthology assembled by Darrell Schweitzer, a fan of Ligotti.

Rosem’s Midnight Madness

/ Trading Cards / 3 Comments

003 I was rummaging through Zombos’ closet last night and came across this set of Rosem’s Midnight Madness trading cards, acquired in 1990. The box set is made up of six delectably creepy and morbid stories written by Steven Kiviat, with each illustrated by Alfredo Osorio in suitably mordant colors.

As an additional treat, the box itself opens into a wonderfully frightening pop-up cemetery scene. The six stories are Shroud of the Undead, The Surgeon, Robot Killer, Jungle Parasite, The Pharaoh’s Revenge, and Desert Rats.

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Alice In Wonderland (2010)
Or Is It Underland?

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alice in wonderland Zombos Says: Good (but not so Frabjous)

Once upon a time, mercury was used in the making of hats. It affected the nervous systems of hatters, causing them to go bonkers with mood swings and flights of fancy and trembling distress and, well, to become as mad as a hatter. Which is all well and good to explain the Mad Hatter’s unpredictable behavior in Wonderland–or is it Underland?–but what about Tim Burton? He never ever is really ever quite the same, being the same as before, I mean, nor all grown up now will he be again, I’m afraid.

 

“Look, my good man, I’m going to croak by the time you get to that review. Time to jam the jelly and all that.”

I looked around. I was walking in the garden when a low voice, seeming to come from the daffodils, interrupted my reverie. My reveries are often interrupted, but usually by Zombos, not voices coming from daffodils. The flowers had bloomed unusually early this year.

“Down here, and mind your big feet.”

I looked down. A toad, dressed in a Harris Tweed suit and driving a very Mini Convertible Cooper, blew puffs of smoke from a long cigar as he looked up at me. He raced the engine, allowing the car to jump forward every now and then. I seem to have a penchant for meeting odd creatures that smoke long cigars and talk when they really should not be able to. Besides, don’t they know smoking isn’t healthy?

“I beg your pardon?” I said, for want of anything better to say.

“Your review. You know, of Alice in Wonderland. Burton and Woolverton want to do me next.”

“I…beg your pardon?” I said, repeating myself. A bad habit, to be sure, but I can’t help it.

The toad took a quick puff, shifted the car into park, and hopped up on the front seat. He took the cigar out of his mouth and opened his arms wide. His bright green complexion and brown tweed clothes contrasted quite colorfully against the yellow and white of the daffodils.

“Don’t you recognize me?” he asked, incredulous. “It’s me, Mr. Toad. Your bestest buddy from childhood. Dear oh dear, talk about the wind in the willows; more like you’ve got wind blowing round in that noggin of yours.”

I thought for a moment. “You’re Mr. Toad? From Toad Hall?” I said, not at all sure because my bestest buddy from childhood was The Little Prince as I best recalled.

“Kaching! A winner every time!”

“But, I don’t understand. Oh…wait a minute, this is silly. I can’t be talking to Mr. Toad from Toad Hall. I must have dozed off and…and I’m dreaming…yes. Next I’ll be seeing the White Rabbit running by, telling me to hurry up and write my review, too.”

“No, you won’t,” said Mr. Toad. “That groundskeeper of yours, Cretinous—”

“You mean Pretorius,” I corrected him.

“Yes, whatever. Look, anyway, he ran over the White Rabbit with his Mini Moke. Blind as a bat that man is. Last time I saw poor old Bre’er his lifeless legs were dangling off the kitchen table. Looks like you’re having rabbit stew for dinner.

“That’s simply not possible,” I said with certainty. “I hate rabbit stew.”

“Suit yourself. But you must get to that review, and until you do, I’m not budging one inch nor one ounce. Been slacking off you have, and I’ll have none of it when serious blogging work’s to be done.” Mr. Toad folded his long arms across his plaid vest and puffed away at his cigar.

“Look,” I said, “the movie’s not even horror. Why do you expect me to—”

“Not horror! Not horror he says! Then what do you call that ghastly dance the Mad Hatter does on Frabjous Day?” said Mr. Toad.

“Well, yes, now that you bring it up, it was pretty terrifying to watch.”

“And what about Bandersnatch’s eye getting plucked right out of its socket?” added Mr. Toad to strengthen his
argument.

“Hmm…true. Definitely a horror-gimmicky kind of effect. But there was no blood or stringy bits so I’m not sure you can—”

“Splitting hairs are we?” Mr. Toad folded his arms tighter and glared at me.

A minute passed by in silence.

“I suppose I’m not dreaming.”

“Correct, sir.” Mr. Toad continued glaring. He tapped the long ash at the end of his cigar onto the daffodils.

Another minute passed in silence.

I sighed. “All right, then. I guess I’m reviewing Alice In Wonderland.”

“Yippee!” said Mr. Toad. “Callooh! Callay!” He danced round the car seat with delight.

“Better watch your—”

Big feet.

I tried to warn him, but it was too late. His large left shoe kicked the gearshift into drive, and his equally large right one slipped off the front seat and wedged itself over the gas pedal and under the brake. The car sped out of sight with him croaking in terror and frantically grabbing at the steering wheel. I didn’t see the crash, but it did make quite a crunching noise. I couldn’t tell if the plume of smoke rising into the air was coming from his cigar or the wreck. After thinking it over for a few minutes, I decided to investigate, although doing so went against my better judgment, given the circumstances. As I walked toward the plume of smoke, Pretorius’ yellow Mini Moke drove past. I saw Chef Machiavelli riding in the back seat.

“It’s rabbit stew and frog’s legs tonight!” yelled Pretorius. Chef Machiavelli smiled at me as they rounded the bed of daffodils and headed toward the garage.

Now this is just not right, I thought to myself. I didn’t like frog’s legs, either.

 

Upon observing the now grown up Alice, the laconic Blue Caterpillar, Absolem (voiced by Alan Rickman), rudely tells her she’s lost much of her muchness. So has Tim Burton, it seems, in bringing his visual feast of Squire and Knave (Crispin Glover), big-headed and right-headed Queens, and a millinery Joker to moribund life; and strife, as the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) rules Wonderland with an iron scepter, and her pet Jabberwocky (voiced by Christopher Lee) broils the landscape along with those slithy toves.

Eschewing the brillig and mimsy, Alice In Wonderland picks up years after the young Alice (Mia Wasikowska) stumbled down the rabbit hole. At 19 she is famished from lack of sleep and lack of independence. Avoiding betrothal to a popinjay Duke (Leo Bill), she flees the unexpected engagement party to follow that worrisome White Rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen) once more to Wonderland; or should I say Underland. Silly Alice apparently got the name all mixed up after her first visit; it isn’t Wonderland at all, just Underland. Under all of us, I take it, but especially underneath Alice’s thoughts and dreams.

Linda Woolverton’s story is neither a remake, undermake, overmake, or reimagining: it simply sits among the borogoves with hat firmly in Johnny
Depp’s hands as the Mad Hatter. Only this time he’s not all that mad, but still quite colorful in a Kabuki-Creole sort of way with his Bozo-frizzy hair, pouting white face, and kaleidoscopic bow tie. And he’s quite the dancer, too, with his unnatural and illogical futterwacking after the climactic battle, to celebrate Frabjous Day. There’s more than meets the brow with this hatter, I am sure of it. It’s a shame we don’t get a chance to see it. This could have been quite the road trip movie with Alice and the Mad Hatter hitting those weird Wonderland-now-Underland trails. Instead, we get a Happy Kids Meal-styled futterwacking Mad Hatter, and a conventional wicked-Queen-needs-to-be-usurped modus operandi, complete with the usual cryptic scroll of destiny laying it all out in pictograms. And everyone waits for Alice to do the job with Vorpal Sword in hand, clothed in shining armor fitting her like a glove.

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

While the Vorpal Sword and evil Jabberwocky follow Lewis Carroll’s nonsense, Woolverton and Burton also follow a familiar trail of Walt Disneyisms, bringing a Narnian-like battle to the forefront of their girl-to-woman-to-independence growth in Alice. Although Burton’s dark visual palette infuses the nonsense, Woolverton’s script follows the conventions, leaving both tepid, much like the bickering between Tweedledum and Tweedledee
(Matt Lucas). The irreconcilable characters inhabiting Underland have no wonder in them, leaving Alice to decide alone whether to fight the Jabberwocky to free them all, and by doing so, free herself to pursue her own destiny in Aboveland, or succumb to her uncertainty and a loveless, pointless marriage.

Through all this, Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter hints at sadness, madness, and a peculiar life story begging to be told. He dances instead.

And why is the Red Queen so mean? Comfy pigs for her feet and screaming “Off with their heads!” does not reveal why she desires to rule Underland so wickedly. But rule she must, so she sends the elongated Knave of Hearts to do her dirty work.

All of this is weird to a point, but stays conventionally so, which is unusual for Tim Burton. He weighs seriousness in every scene, ignoring Carroll’s underlying insouciance, and the culminating battle as the armies of Red and White Queens clash on a chessboard-battlefield while Alice fights the dragon-like Jabberwocky for Underland becomes one of many such battles fought in many such movies.

How a darkly whimsical and maniacally nonsensical work from Lewis Carroll can lead to such a conventionally safe movie like Alice In Wonderland makes me wonder much, indeed.