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Movies (Drive-in)

House on Haunted Hill (1959)
Movie Review

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House_on_haunted_Hill
Zombos Says: Classic

In his book, Step Right Up! I’m Gonna Scare the Pants Off America, William Castle describes his chance meeting with a depressed Vincent Price in a coffee shop on a rainy evening. Price, melancholy over losing out on an important picture earlier that day, listens to Castle’s pitch on the role of the scheming millionaire Frederick Loren, who’s out to murder his wife.

“Sounds interesting,” he [Price] said. “Go on.”
“During the night, many strange ghostly things happen…blood dripping from the
ceiling…walls shaking…apparitions appearing. The millionaire—the part I
want you to play—has plotted to kill his wife. She plots to kill you…It’s a
battle of wits.”
Price smiled. “Who wins?”
“You do, of course. She tries to throw you in a vat of boiling acid.”
Price’s eyes gleamed. “How charming! I think I’ll have another piece of pie.”

Castle sums up by saying “the deal was made on the second piece of pie that same rainy night.”

While the 1940s had Universal’s iconic Monsters and RKO’s Val Lewton and Jacque Tourneur, the 1950s had William Castle’s spook show entertainment. Your ticket price guaranteed receipt of thrills and chills not only on the theater screen, but in the aisles as well. Realizing his B-movies—mostly written for a younger audience—needed a little something extra to generate buzz, Castle ramped up the marketing hype by using lurid
trailers, tawdry poster art, and clever—silly—gimmicks to hawk his movies. Like that wonderful prize you can’t wait to get to in a Cracker Jack Box, Castle’s gimmicks were always simple and sweet in effect, and perfect for the Saturday matinée crowd.

Whether it was the insurance policy handed out during Macabre, or Percepto tingling your theater-seated butt in The Tingler, or squinting through Illusion-O glasses to see all Thirteen Ghosts, you always got your money’s worth. While he didn’t quite scare the pants off America with his theatrics, he did put a nice crease in them for many horror fans.

For House on Haunted Hill he used Emergo, which was an inflatable, glow in the dark skeleton moving across a wire hung overhead. It emerged during a key scene to allow the audience much frightful merriment derived from throwing a concession stand’s worth of candy and popcorn at it. My guess is it also increased sales for those items, so the theater owner was quite merry, too.

Vincent Price had already proven his mettle at playing a smarmy, sinister sophisticate (The Mad Magician, House of Wax, and Richelieu in The Three Musketeers), so the role of Loren was right up his dark alley as Castle shrewdly knew. Price’s star presence would give the movie a touch of class plus a delightfully petulant malevolence that would bolster ticket sales to the young audience members making up the majority of theater-goers in the 50s. With adults staying home to watch the new novelty of the small screen, kids and teenagers ventured forth in record numbers to have a good old corny time in front of the big one. And with the major studios cutting back on A-movie, and especially B-movie productions, and their studio system of star-grooming and film distribution in tatters, the era of carnivalesque promotion and independent stars had begun.

Gimmickmeister Castle ate it all up like a kid eagerly scarfing down popcorn, Milk Duds and Chuckles in one mouthful, but he did take movie distribution seriously: his melodramatic send-ups of spook show horror clichés, done in remarkably simple dark and light, accompanied by shrill screams and throaty groans, were family-friendly terrors Joey and Janey could enjoy while their older siblings smooched in the back rows with their boyfriends and girlfriends. The film’s haunted-house-ride styled opening, with the screen kept black as a piercing scream rips through the theater, followed by moans and chains clanking, was astutely tailored for hugging and smooching.

To play against Price’s more sober Loren, Castle cast the master of the wide-eyed stare, and perennial fall guy, character actor Elisha Cook Jr. (Captain Kirk’s anachronistic lawyer, Samuel T. Cogley, in the Classic Trek episode, Court Martial) as the woebegone house owner, Watson Pritchard, to scare up the gruesome with his tales of disembodied heads never found, blood stains dripping from ceilings, and that vat of boiling acid awkwardly placed in the middle of the gloomy cellar’s floor.

It’s all ludicrous fun in a slick, schlocky package that, surprisingly, exhibits some memorably eerie terror moments, hinting at J-horror stylization long before Japanese horror came to the forefront: a floating apparition with long hair, albeit blond, appears in lightning storm flashes through a barred window high above the ground, and the cloudy-eyed housekeeper with her annoying habit of gliding—more like rolling—quietly across the floor in the darkest places antes-up the fright-sights. Also unusual for a low budget film, composer Von Dexter’s music rises above its B-movie assignment
to become an evocative and melodramatically creepy as hell—in that 1950s creepy as hell sort of way—accompaniment priming shivers of its own.

The flimsy plot has Frederick Loren inviting five guests to spend the night with him and his wife in the notorious house. If they survive, each guest will receive ten thousand dollars for their unwitting part in his cat and mouse game to do away with his adulterous wife. The cheerless Loren, along with the cheerless Pritchard, greets everyone amid the cobwebs. Loren carefully chose each guest, they all need the money badly, and chauffeured them to the house in cheerless hearses. His droll sense of humor continues when he hands out the party favors: handguns, neatly packaged in mini-coffins.

Before you can say “cheese dip anyone?” Pritchard leads them on a murder-highlights tour of the house, ending with the vat of acid in the cellar for his show-stopper. “You mean that’s still filled with…?” asks one astonished guest. He picks up a dead rat, tosses it in, and in a few roiling seconds up comes the bony white skeleton picked clean.

No one wanted cheese dip after that.

In venerable horror movie victim tradition, everyone decides to go it alone after one guest’s nerves start to unravel and the mysterious housekeepers high-tail it before midnight, locking everyone in. Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig), the screamer of the bunch, keeps finding reasons to scream her fool head off, and the frisky Lance (Richard Long)—all frisky guys in horror and pornography movies are named Lance by the way—insists on walking into pitch dark rooms to get knocked unconscious or trapped. The spookiness kicks in gear when they stay behind to explore the gloomy cellar; actually Lance stays behind hoping to explore Nora. By the way, did I mention there’s this big vat of corrosive acid carelessly placed in the middle of the cellar floor where anybody could kind of trip into it…or get pushed into it?

There are two really chilling scenes in House on Haunted Hill.

The first happens when Lance disappears into a dark room, leaving Nora alone in the gloomy cellar. The doors to the many rooms Lance opened, to poke his head into for a quick look, one by one slowly close on rusty hinges as the lights wink out in turn. What’s that you’re thinking? Why yes, of course; a spook sends Nora screaming up the stairs to get the party started. The other terror moment happens when spook-magnet Nora gets all tied up by a floating apparition during a lightning storm. With Von Dexter’s music dramatically pounding in-between the lightning flashes, it’s a hair-raising moment. Toss in the organ playing by itself and the hairy monster hand reaching for her throat from behind a door (a set up first seen in The Cat and the Canary and later exploited for laughs by Abbott and Costello), and off we go to the visually impressive, but implausible, climax where the cat and mouse game turns nasty.

The ticket sales for House on Haunted Hill impressed Alfred Hitchcock so much he was inspired to do his own B-movie: Psycho. The IMDb notes in their trivia section that while only orchestral theme music was used in the film, lyrics for the music were written by Richard Kayne. Here they are:

There’s
a house on Haunted Hill
Where ev’rything’s lonely and still
Lonely and still
And the ghost of a sigh
When we whispered good-bye
Lingers on
And each night gives a heart broken cry
There’s a house on Haunted Hill
Where love walked there’s a strange silent chill
Strange silent chill
There are mem’ries that yearn
For our hearts to return
And a promise we failed to fulfill
But we’ll never go back
No, we’ll never go back
To the house on Haunted Hill!

I hope you will pay a visit to House on Haunted Hill. It wouldn’t be too hard to hook up an Emergo gimmick yourself. Just make sure to have lots of popcorn, Milk Duds and Chuckles on hand for your guests. You can leave out the cheese dip and handguns.

Picture courtesy of Dr. Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans website.

House on Haunted Hill (1959)
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Death Race 4: Beyond Anarchy Arrives October 2nd

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Deathrace beyond anarchyDeath Race: Beyond Anarchy arrives on DVD/Blu-ray October 2nd, 2018. Here's the neatly pressed information for you speedy anarchy types.

News Flash! – The stakes are higher than ever in the intense action-adventure Death Race: Beyond Anarchy, arriving Unrated and Unhinged on Blu-ray™ combo pack, DVD, Digital and On Demand October 2, 2018, from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, in association with Impact Pictures/Chestnut Productions. The wildly anticipated next installment of the popular Death Race franchise, this Universal 1440 Entertainment original production brings fans along for the deadliest competition on wheels, where brutal fights and explosive car races abound. An action-packed thrill ride, this all-new movie is the grittiest and bloodiest installment yet!
 
Franchise newcomers Zach McGowan (“Black Sails”) and Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon) join returningDeath Race fan favorites Danny Trejo (Machete) and Fred Koehler (“American Horror Story”). Death Race: Beyond Anarchy also features talented actors Christine Marzano (Rules Don’t Apply), Terence Maynard (Edge of Tomorrow) and Velislav Pavlov (The Expendables 2).

Death Race: Beyond Anarchy on Blu-rayTM, DVD and Digital, includes exclusive bonus features that take viewers deeper into the intense world of Death Race, with special behind-the-scenes footage and filmmaker commentary. Additionally, Death Race: Complete 4-Movie Collection will also available on DVD on January 30, 2017. Now fans can experience the glory of all four movies in one complete must-own set including, Death Race, Death Race 2, Death Race 3: Inferno and the all-new movie Death Race: Beyond Anarchy.
 
Bonus Features:

  • Inside the Anarchy: Filmmakers and cast describe how this chapter of the Death Racefranchise stands out from the rest. From new locations, to a fleet of new cars, to a new star in Zach McGowan, see why Death Race: Beyond Anarchy is the deadliest Death Race yet!
  • Time Served: Lists & Goldberg: Hear Death Race franchise veterans Fred Koehler and Danny Trejo discuss what it’s like to be back playing Lists and Goldberg, and how their characters have changed.
  • On the Streets of Death Race: Beyond Anarchy: Director Don Michael Paul and cast explain how the stunt work gave the production a uniquely energetic feel.
  • Feature Commentary with Director/Co-Writer Don Michael Paul and Star Zach McGowan

The Story:

Danny Trejo returns as the ruthless bookie, Goldberg, in the wildest, bloodiest, Death Race ever. After a failed attack on inmate and legendary driver, Frankenstein, Black Ops specialist Connor Gibson (McGowan) infiltrates a super-maximum federal prison with one goal – enter the immoral and illegal Death Race and take Frankenstein down. Connor enlists the help of Baltimore Bob (Glover) and Lists (Koehler), and unexpectedly falls in love with bartending beauty, Jane (Marzano). Connor will have to fight for more than his life in this brutal world of no guards, no rules, no track, and no fear.
 
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Death Race 4: Beyond Anarchy Arrives October 2nd Read More »

The Manster (1959)
The First Two-Headed Human Monster Movie

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        This movie review will appear in the upcoming Unsung Horrors, edited by Eric McNaughton. I have a few more reviews in the book, but there are dozens upon dozens of reviews, written by We Belong Dead magazine contributors, sharing their passions for those neglected horror movies you should know about. If you loved the now sold out 70s Monster Memories, written by the same wild bunch of fanatics, you'll love Unsung Horrors.

 

Watch out! The Manster and his mad companion Dr. Faustus are terrorizing (your city). This thrill show will be the shock experience of your life. Suspense like Hitchcock! Mood like Tennessee Williams! See The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus and The Manster at the Bijou Theatre, NOW! (15 second radio spot copy from the Lopert Pictures Corporation Double Bill Pressbook, The Master Suspense Thrill Show! for The Manster and The Horror Chamber of Doctor Faustus)

The manster poster      Okay, so what if Psychotronic described reporter Larry Stanford’s (played by Peter Dyneley) unwelcomed second head as a “carved coconut”? And so what if Bill Warren doesn’t much care for the movie in his so-big-it-could-give-you-a-hernia-reading-it book, Keep Watching the Skies! (He flatly states it “stunk.”) And, well, yes, there’s that dreadful, awfully written monologue given by Matthews (Norman Van Hawley), Stanford’s newspaper boss, who, after the movie should have ended, reflects with “who really did all these things” and “he was just an average joe” musings. Groan.

     And I suppose we can’t easily ignore the stagey acting by Larry’s wife in every scene she’s in (played by Jane Hylton, Dyneley’s real-life wife), but especially when she ruins a perfectly good close-up by telling the Police Superintendent (Jerry Ito of Mothra and Message from Space) “when you find him, will you remember something has happened to him, something he can’t control.”

     Sure, you bet. Something that makes him kill again and again and grow hair in the worst places, like some Dr. Jekyll strung along for an acid ride with Mr. Hyde. Only this time he’s dressed in a trench coat splattered with blood and has a homicidal second head calling the shots while his first one downs quite a few of the more intoxicating kind.

     But let’s ignore all of that and examine the reasons you should see this movie.

     The Manster, Half Man-Half Monster (also titled The Split in Britain) was released to U.S. theaters in 1962, on a double bill with The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus (which the so-darn-picky Bill Warren found “evocative” and “poetic”). A science fiction movie with horror overtone, The Manster is a low budget, noir-ish looking schlock propelled by a crazed Japanese scientist meddling with nature-flavored tokusatsu body horror.

     Certainly any monsterkid worth his electrodes will vividly remember the impact of seeing that horror’s result: first, the unblinking eye peering up from Stanford’s shoulder; soon after followed by that homicidal, hairy, coconut-head sprouting from the same spot. You can bet monsterkids everywhere reacted to this in either of two ways, of course: (1) wishing for an eye to pop up on their shoulders, too, so they could bring it to show-and-tell at school (Munsters and Addams Family chit-chat could only go so far, you know); or (2), for the more squeamish among them, clapping hands to their mouths, hoping that the screams they promised they’d never make hadn’t awakened their sleeping parents who had warned, in no uncertain terms, to NOT stay up late and watch THOSE movies on television.

     Yes, The Manster is one of THOSE movies that epitomizes 1950s horror.

     There’s a secluded scientist (Tetsu Nakamura) in his mountain-side laboratory–built over a volcano’s heat vents!–experimenting on people without a moral compass to guide him, creating mutations and misery through his experiments in evolution; there’s the world-weary reporter anxious to leave Tokyo and get back to his wife in the U.S. (or maybe not so anxious, actually), who gets caught up in more than just a quick story as he meets that mad scientist; there’s the usually ineffectual authority figures holding press meetings to watch body counts rise; and there are those budget special effects the director and cinematographer wisely kept in the dark most of the time. Aside from the bouncy balloon effect of the second head on Stanford’s shoulder when he runs, he still presents a terrifying image when standing still, limned against darkness, both heads snarling with beastly evil as they prepare to kill. There’s a whiff of noir atmosphere, but only a whiff as the police close in.

     An English language co-production between United Artists and United Artists of Japan, with American and Japanese actors, The Manster impresses with its troubled, rough-edged reporter, its eventually remorseful scientist (okay, sure, he shoots his mutated wife and pushes his brother into a heat vent, but he’s sad about it afterwards), and its brutish premise of man and monster at odds with each other in one body.

     There’s even an evocative and eerily poetic scene (in your face, Bill Warren!), showing Stanford as he follows priests to a temple where he’s attracted to another priest praying inside. It’s nighttime. The second head isn’t showing yet but its murderous desires are. Stanford enters the temple, sweating, irritable, looking for help but he doesn’t realize it.      He tries talking to the priest with useless small talk. The priest stops praying and looks at him. Not understanding what Stanford is saying, and not really caring to, the priest goes back to his chanting. Wrong thing to do. Stanford becomes more agitated and the squat Oni statue, with glaring, angry eyes, is making him crazier by the second. He glances around the room at the dozens of other statues staring at him. Sweat starts pouring. The Oni’s stare pushes him over the edge. Our view moves to the cold, lifeless statues. Off screen, the chanting suddenly stops, replaced by a gurgling scream. This scene is always neglected by critics in their terse reviews. Shame on them.

     The characterization of the leading man, Stanford, the reporter who’s worn out and not as clean and pressed as the trench coat he wears, is not your typical leading man role for a 1960s movie, either. Peter Dyneley, a British actor playing an American (he voiced Jeff Tracy in Thunderbirds Are Go and Thunderbird 6), presents an atypical character as Stuart Galbraith notes in his Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films:

 

     By 1962, characters in nearly every science fiction film made in the United States and even Japan were standard, perfunctory “types”: stoic, by-the-book military men, dedicated scientists, etc. Peter Dyneley’s Larry Stanford was different—a tired family man, looking ready to retire, harboring a deep resentment against his wife and frustration regarding his career which only become exposed while in his monster state.

 

     Stanford’s atypical character isn’t the only one. Scientists in the 1950s and 1960s were usually on the up and up. Except for the occasional rogue conducting experiments not included in a Gilbert Chemistry Set (I was a Teenage Frankenstein and  I was a Teenage Werewolf for instance), men of science were stalwart defenders of earth and humanity. Dr. Suzuki, our mountainside-secluded scientist with jail-like cells in his laboratory and a dwindling family tree? Not so much. He does manage to come around toward the end, just when everyone is about dead. Seeing Stanford in so much distress, he injects him with a final dose intended to split man from monster.

     But will Stanford survive? Will he split from his stifling wife? And are mountainside laboratories built on volcanic heat vents a good idea? You be the judge. The Manster is waiting for you.

Information sources used for this article include: The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film by Michael Weldon, et al., 1st edition, 1983; Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties by Bill Warren, 2nd printing, 2010; and Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films by Stuart Galbraith IV, 1994. And of course, IMDb and Wikipedia, too.

The Manster (1959)
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Mojin: the Lost Legend Hits DVD May 3rd

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Mojin the lost legendThis news just in…if it's anything like Detective Dee: The Mystery of the Phantom Flame, I'm in!

Based on the #1 Bestselling series of novels and starring Shu Qi (The Assassin), Chen Kun (Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon), Angelababy (Tai Chi Hero), and Huang Bo (Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen), MOJIN: THE LOST LEGEND debuts on Blu-ray™, DVD and Digital HD May 3 from Well Go USA Entertainment.

Directed by Wuershan (Painted Skin: The Resurrection), the action/adventure fantasy thriller follows three retired tomb raiders  lured back to their original vocation by a mysterious, businesswoman/cult leader who wants them to find the ancient tomb of a Mongolian princess. They eventually learn that what she really wants is to possess a famed artifact known as the Equinox Flower that allegedly has the power to raise the dead. Bonus materials include a making-of featurette and behind-the-scenes interviews with the Chen Kun and Huang Bo.

Synopsis:

Some people have a special gift. They’re able to travel between the realms of the Living and the Dead … and Tomb Raiding can mean Big Business. Welcome to the world of the Mojin. MOJIN: THE LOST LEGEND pits a trio of legendary grave robbers against scholars, rivals, and the law – until an offer from a mysterious stranger tempts them into one last heist…an adventure that will test their skills, their friendship, and ultimately – their mortal souls.

 

The Hollywood Reporter says:

Demonstrating that China can produce a lavish, mindless fantasy epic as effectively as Hollywood, Wuershan's (Painted Skin: The Resurrection) adaptation of a novel from a best-selling series should prove a blockbuster in its native country. Receiving a day-and-date release in the United States, Mojin: The Lost Legend should also appeal to American audiences raised on a diet of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. Heck, there are even zombies, because really, what's a lavish, mindless fantasy epic without them? 

Mojin: the Lost Legend Hits DVD May 3rd Read More »

Cockneys vs Zombies (2012)
Guns and Gory

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Cockneys_2324135b
Zombos Says: Good

Sometimes a zombie movie is just a zombie movie. It’s at those times that a zombie movie can be most entertaining, too. There are no metaphysical inflections, no religious thought-munchies, no ulterior sociological or political motives to be plumbed, or character digressions to be dissected in Cockneys vs Zombies; just a lot of hot and heavy guns, grenades, fiesty old people, motley younger people, and lots of ravenous zombies to mix it up with, which director Matthias Hoene does with lively gore and cheeky zest and lots of ammo. The heavy weaponry and unlimited ammo supply is provided by Mickey (Ashley Bashy Thomas), the metal-plate-in-his-head, sanity-challenged, neighborhood thug who keeps his stash in a cargo container. A large cargo container.

The zombie menace begins when an East London construction crew unearths an underground vault. On the stone door is written “sealed by the order of King Charles II.” They open it. Among the hundreds of skulls and skeletons and rats are a few lively corpses. Let the bloody mayhem begin.

As the outbreak spreads, two brothers (Harry Treadaway and Rasmus Hardiker), unaware of the growing menace (and in general, not very aware of their future prospects whatsoever)  want the local bank to chip in to help save their grandad’s (Alan Ford) nursing home, the Bow Bells Care Home. They enlist the aid of Davey (Jack Doolan), a not so good alarm tech specialist who gets caught a lot: Katy (Michelle Ryan), a looker added primarily added to the script so we would keep looking (especially when she carries her handgun in her butt-crack); and Mickey, who we already know is bonkers, but still well-equipped with the hardware needed to heist the bank. What could go wrong?

It all goes wrong as the zombies close in and the gang that shouldn’t rob banks and the old folks at the home (Honor Blackman among them) need to survive the onslaught. And try to wake up Hamish, who’s hard of hearing and sleeping in the back yard that is filling up with zombies. The brothers have guns, the old folks have walkers. This is possibly the first time in a zombie movie we learn who is faster: an old man in a walker or the shambling George Romero-styled zombie chasing him.

Moving back and forth between the dire predicaments both brothers and the Bow Bells Care Home  occupants find themselves in, the script isn’t as witty as Shaun of the Dead or Zombie Land, but is as much fun to watch. The make up effects lean toward wet and messy, with a little CGI added to punctuate head removals, close proximity gun blasts to appendages, and de rigueur  intestinal slurpages. In dispatching one zombie chomping down on a fresh forearm, a shotgun blast to the zombie’s face leaves its lower part still firmly attached to the victim’s arm; for a long while, which is gross but funny, and that’s par for the tone of the effects.

The brothers eventually figure out how to rescue the old folks trapped in Bow Bells, but wheelchairs and walkers are a burden. Lucky the zombies are slower than the old people. But there are still a lot of them. And a lot of guns to go around. And a very sharp Samurai sword to swing for a bloody good time.

Cockneys vs Zombies (2012)
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Hobo With a Shotgun (2011)

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Hobo-with-a-shotgun-movie-poster Zombos Says: Good (for gore and Trash Cinema fans, that is)

We were in the cinematorium discussing what the hell Hobo With a Shotgun was about.
I love Rutger Hauer, and he’s perfect in the role of Hobo, with his craggy face and sparkly eyes under all that grizzle, but really, what the hell?

“Hey, where’d Zombos go?” he asked.

“He left during the busload of children fricasseed by flamethrower interlude,” I said.

Trash cinema isn’t Zombos’ usual thing anyway, especially when it concerns fricasseeing kids. Come to think of it, it isn’t mine either.

While not as sexually outrageous and bizarre as Tokyo Gore Police or as repulsive as Street Trash, Jason Eisener and writers do a wild job that comes close, saturating this golden turkey with over the rainbow colors, plotting an absurd predicament even Albert Camus would find mind-numbing, and serving up a heapful of over the top—and under the bottom—caricatures. There’s a golden-hearted hooker (Molly Dunsworth), a hobo with a dream of owning a lawn mower (to start a lawn mowing business, of course), and The Drake (Brian
Downey), a criminal boss crushing the heart and soul out of Hope Town to create his own Scum Town. It’s silly, stupid, insulting, crazy, trashy, exploitative, and quite aware of all these things. Not to be taken seriously, it is seriously grindhouse as the blood flows, heads roll, and blacklight poster situations increasingly take on the look and feel of a psychedelic-fueled withdrawal.

“So, what did you think?” asked Paul, running his hands through his long black hair. His blue eyes beamed at me expectantly.

I took a deep breath. “I have conflicted feelings about it. Hobo With a Shotgun is like passing a bong around, with each toke building to a highpoint of intoxication only to eventually downslide into nausea.”

“Exactly! That’s the beauty of it. It’s mired in dirty realism and transgressive angst,” beamed Paul.

Maybe to a Charles Bukowski fan, I thought, but didn’t voice my assumption. My impression pretty much formed when Abby, the heart-of-gold hooker with a bear fetish, gets her hand mowed off, then uses the boney stump to stab The Drake again and again. I admit there’s a sense of poetic justice tucked away in there somewhere, but it’s buried under the gore and screams. Irony and sardonic mawkishness go ozone when Hobo walks into the Pawn Til Dawn pawn shop and sees his heart’s desire, a lawn mower for $49.99. There’s nothing that says ‘home’ more than a freshly mowed lawn. To get the money he lets a sleaze-ball (Pasha Ebrahimi) with lots of cash and a video camera tape him getting his teeth knocked out by another bum. Money in hand, just when he’s about to pay for the mower, schizo-robbers
come in and threaten a mom and her baby.

The shotgun hanging on the wall in back of the counter is also $49.99. He makes the tough choice all trash cinema heroes must eventually make. So instead of mowing grass he mows down bad guys, cleaning up the streets one shell at a time.

In-between the hospital hangings, the manhole cover necklaces, the mobs turning against hobos, and the Plague Twins showdown—motorcycle creepizoids dressed in Boilerplate—Abby, the hooker and hobo’s only friend, spends a lot of time with blood on her face, and hobo finds out if he can solve the world’s problems with a shotgun bought at $49.99, shells gratis.

Of course, if this movie was called Hobo With a Lawn Mower, things might have been different.

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Targets (1968)

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Targets_drivein_marquee

 

Zombos Says: Sublime

Our times have indeed changed.

Our psyches have succumbed to accepting serial killers and terrorists walking the daylight hours just as easily as Dracula hunts through the night. The simple truth is we no can no longer be scared by the black and white monsters of yesterday: or spook show scared by mad scientists and marauding apes; or Frankenstein’s Monster scared; or stalked by Bela Lugosi through a cemetery scared. We need victims suffering more pain and more terror in movies now for our scares: we need to see their limbs and minds pulled apart  in ever more creative and disgusting ways to lessen the real horrors snarling at us daily, ready to pounce without warning. We’ve overdosed on real fear as it constantly gnaws away at us like Lovecraft’s rats in the walls, until we need another fix that’s stronger than the Wolf Man’s bite or seeing baby zombies dancing on YouTube.

The monsters no longer live on Maple Street: they moved in on my street, and your street, and every other street in the world. They began moving in sometime around 1968, after the Vietnam War had taken its toll on our senses while it held us prisoner by its extensive primetime television coverage, giving Dracula and the Mummy serious competition for our scares.

George Romero shocked us with a visceral, unrelenting horror lumbering ever closer to our homes, but even before him directors like Herschell Gordon Lewis were upping the body count and buckets of blood with gusto; or telling us Uncle Charlie isn’t the person you think he is until we finally believed it. Blame Alfred Hitcock’s Shadow of a Doubt and Psycho for instigating this change from our comfortably distant monsters to the normal-looking family dismemberer, or the quietly deadly person next door with long pork in his fridge, or the nascent mass murderer down the block with the huge gun collection.

It took Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets to solidify this change. At a time when major political figures were being assassinated, social unrest had hit its deadly zenith, and the Mai Lai Massacre unraveled moral certainty, Targets‘ spree-killer Bobby heralded the new monster model, the kit Aurora never got around to making: the unassuming neighbor with a wish for death on his lips—lots of deaths—and a fetish for guns. Lots of guns.

The greatest fear is the one breathing down your neck with its hands in your pockets. You can ask all the questions you want, but no answers will come. They never do. So you make up your own answers to satisfy yourself that you know WHY. But you never really do. There is no real WHY. There’s only how, and when, and who will be next.

Clean cut, upper middle-class Charles Whitman went on a shooting spree at the University of Texas at Austin, indiscriminately killing or injuring anyone he could target in his 4x Leopold Scope, mounted on his hunting rifle. Why he did that on an ordinary day in August of 1966 is anyone’s guess.

Maybe he had a brain tumor. Maybe he had a ruptured family life with a domineering, perfectionist father. Maybe he had an unhappy marriage. Maybe he had too many guns.

Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly), the indiscriminate, sniping murderer in Targets is Bogdanovich’s Whitman. Bobby’s unhappy but he doesn’t know why. Bobby wants to murder his family, but he’s not sure why. Bobby needs to shoot as many people dead as possible. We don’t know why.

Not knowing why is the true horror in Targets, and a brilliant understatement by Bogdanovich. The remaining horror is death; all the death Bobby deals through his targeting scope and the fear of death the aged and tired Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff) feels breathing down his neck. Roger Corman may have insisted Bogdanovich use Karloff’s contracted time, and the extra minutes of footage from Karloff’s movies (The Terror and The Criminal Code) to pad the movie’s running time, but Bogdanovich turns this budget thriller into a masterpiece of terror by incorporating those minutes as essential extensions to his story while allowing Karloff’s notoriety to flesh out Orlok’s credibility. They enhance the movie’s theme of fait accompli death; the irreconcilable one brought about by Bobby’s hand and the impending one soon to overtake Orlok, who, at the end of his career is closer to Death’s hand and now questions the worth of his life and career. Both men are preoccupied with death, but Orlok turns inwardly to shut off his future while Bobby turns outwardly to shut down his past.

Orlok doesn’t want to do any more movies. He turns down Sammy’s (Peter Bogdanovich) next script and suddenly decides to retire from the screen. Bobby doesn’t want to keep living the way he does so he starts planning his family’s murder and his killing spree. A glimpse into his car trunk reveals an arsenal of firepower, lovingly arranged like butterflies stuck on needles in a glass showcase to be admired. From a gun shop Bobby examines his new gun scope closely. He chances on seeing Orlok across the street and lines up the famed horror actor in the crosshairs. Afterwards, Bobby eats candy bars and blasts his car radio while he drives around to find the perfect killing ground along the Reseda Freeway. Orlok heads off to enjoy a quiet dinner, celebrating his retirement from movies where, as he says, anyone can be painted up to scare the audience these days.

Remember how Karloff felt when the Frankenstein Monster became a prop that anyone could dress up as? He gave up the role after Son of Frankenstein because of that.

Sammy persists. He shows up in Orlok’s hotel room, script in hand. He gets drunk with Orlok as they watch The Criminal Code. Both sleep it off. Orlok’s assistant Jenny (Nancy Hsueh) convinces Orlok to reconsider Sammy’s movie offer. And Orlok finally agrees to do the personal appearance he promised for the Reseda Drive-In for the screening of one of his old movies, The Terror.

Orlok quickly becomes annoyed by the questions and answers prepared for him by the interviewer  for the screening (Sandy Baron) and recommends he tell a story instead. Bogdanovich pulls the camera in close as Orlok, now really Karloff the Uncanny, relates the ironic twist of fate in An Appointment in Samarra. Not only does Bogdanovich pay homage to a master craftsman, whose name is synonymous with horror cinema, but he uses this wonderful opportunity to further his theme of death; and Karloff tells this story in one take (the production crew clapped when he was done).

Both Orlok and Bobby have an appointment to keep at the Reseda Drive-In.

Orlok arrives in his limousine and waits for his interview. Bobby sees an opportunity to evade the police and hides behind the big screen after his earlier rampage sniping at drivers on the Reseda Freeway is interrupted by the police searching for him.

One by one he begins to shoot people in the audience, until someone notices what’s going on and spreads the warning that there’s a sniper. Cars begin to leave, prompting Orlok to joke how much they enjoy his movie. Bogdanovich shows scenes of Orlok in The Terror in-between scenes of Bobby killing drive-in patrons, contrasting old horror with new. One scene, the one which upset me when I first watched Targets—and still does—involves a dome-lighted car interior, a crying youngster, and his unfortunate father. We see the youngster’s face first, the tears, the terror on his face; then we see his father shot through the head: unexpected death in an unsuspecting place. In this single moment, Bogdanovich shows us the most important thing we need to know about true horror, which doesn’t come from seeing the monster, but from seeing the monster’s aftermath.

Orlok, seeing Bobby has a rifle, goes after him with his cane. Bobby, confronted by an approaching Orlok on the drive-in screen behind him and the real one in front of him, becomes confused. Orlok knocks the gun from Bobby’s hands, asking himself “Is this what I was afraid of?”

As the police handcuff Bobby, he boasts he rarely missed. And isn’t that what we are all afraid of?

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The Dead Matter (2010)

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Thedeadmatter

Zombos Says: Good

In director Edward Douglas’ The Dead Matter, the power of a scarab-shaped amulet brings back the dead. For Vellich (Andrew Divoff), a vampire who desires to control the dead, the amulet means power; for Gretchen (Sean Serino), it’s like the monkey’s paw that grants wishes, and her one wish is to bring her dead brother back to life. Two vampire hunters, McCallister (Jason Carter ofBabylon 5) and Pym (Bryan Van Camp get caught in the middle of these desires.

Vellich is an old world vampire, more traditional in his ways, with flowing long white hair and a strong taste for human blood. He’s not the Twilight kind (okay, except for the flowing long hair) and his patience is short, demonstrated when he rips the jaw off another vampire’s face. Nice touches of gore like this are added here and there, and, possibly due to the presence of Tom Savini (he plays the vampiric druglord Sebed) they blend with the action instead of the action stopping to admire them. A few CGI effects are also added, but at this budget they are at the level of an 80s to 90s movie’s effects. This doesn’t hurt The Dead Matter, but to Tony Demci’s pacing and plot that pits vampires Sebed and Vellich against each other for possession of the amulet, complicated by sibling love mixed with guilt: Gretchen blames herself for her brother’s death.

Thedeadmatter3 Eerie spook show CGI effects enhance a late night seance in the forest when Gretchen and her wiccan girlfriend Jill (C. B. Spencer) convince their skeptical boyfriends to join them. Gretchen  hopes to contact her brother. She contacts something else as the amulet beckons from where it was left hidden from Vellich by a dying Pym. While McCallister searches for it, Gretchen discovers it can raise the dead when Pym’s ambulatory body shows up unexpectedly. He’s more like a traditional zombie, not the brain-eating or body parts kind. Souless, unable to feel or think, or even move without Gretchen directing him through the amulet, he becomes her surrogate brother. She has him ‘eating’ ice cream and doing other things she and her brother enjoyed doing, like riding a carousel. It’s filmed not so much tongue in cheek, but with a macabre sense of humor and sadness. She thinks she’s found a way to reunite with her brother, but Pym’s bodily shell is telling her otherwise.

Her friends try to persuade her to give up the amulet and her ultimate goal, but she hangs an air freshener around Pym’s neck, tidies him up a bit, and continues working on raising her brother from the grave. Serino’s acting falls short during all this. She’s too soft when she needs to be firm, and too rational when she needs to be irresponsible. Bryan Van Camp’s Simon Garth-styled zombie is fun to watch and ironically gives life to her scenes with him. He simply is. No emotion, no motion unless asked for, no intellect; stillness that shows he’s just an empty shell. His utter silence is creepy as hell. McCallister tracks the amulet to Gretchen, but so does Vellich. By this time, the scarab-shaped relic has become a part of her, and the demonic presence in the amulet takes over, calling the dead to it. Moody scenes of the dead rising and shambling to the summons are done with restraint, showing atmosphere over carnage. The climax brings everyone, living or dead, back to the forest.

Thedeadmatter2 Carter dresses and acts the way you would expect a vampire hunter to, and Divoff as Vellich is vile enough to provide a sinister Gothic presence, aided by his abilities to turn into a dark cloud, or appear as someone else. Tom Savini’s Sebed chews up the scenery with gusto. He pushes a drug that replaces a vampire’s need for blood, but it’s addictive. It’s the new way, he tells Vellich. Maybe he’s a fan of True Blood, too.

Count Gore De Vol has a cameo in a bizarre nightmare sequence. You won’t recognize him without his makeup.

This straight to DVD 3-disc deluxe edition–the movie and two music discs, the soundtrack and Midnight Syndicate’s best of compilation– is a well thought out treat for Halloween, or really anytime the mood strikes you.

A copy of The Dead Matter was provided for this review. 

The Dead Matter (2010) Read More »

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.

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

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.

Alice In Wonderland (2010)
Or Is It Underland? Read More »