From Zombos Closet

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)
A Taste of Country Dying

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Zombos Says: Very Good

You know the saying, dying’s easy, comedy is hard? Try doing horror-comedy, now that’s hard. Eli Craig and the rest of the cast and crew of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil do a stellar job playing off usually more serious slasher grint and gore to show the funny bone in awkward body impalements, whizzing buzzsaw head-slicing, woodchippered ground round torsos, and assorted lacerations as hillbillies Tucker and Dale’s vacation keeps getting interrupted by a group of city-bred college youngin’s who’ve seen too many horror movies. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry (from laughing), you’ll wonder how grisly death can be so funny. We needed these guys around when Freddy took on Jason.

The way out-of-the-way gas station Allison (Katrina Bowden), Chad (Jesse Moss), Chloe (Chelan Simmons), Chuck (Travis Nelson), Jason (Brandon Jay McLaren), Naomi (Christie Laing), Todd (Alex Arsenault), Mitch (Adam Beauchesne), and Mike (Joseph Sutherland) stop at is typical for The Hills Have Eyes and Wrong Turn kinds of gas stations: shabby, grimy, and frequented by droopy eyed, scruffy types wearing dirty clothes, construction boots, and sour looks. Tucker prods the shy Dale into meeting Allison. Already spooked by the milieu, Dale’s greeting, made with a bad stammer and while holding a scythe, scares off Allison and her friends. Tucker continues to lecture Dale on being more assertive as they drive to Tucker’s recently purchased dream cabin in the woods, which is also rundown, filled with cobwebs, dirt and dust, and a dangerously loose, nail-studded beam poised to do some serious head-whacking.

This comedy of errors begins its blood-letting when the frat kids, camping nearby, listen intently to Chad’s Memorial Day Massacre campfire story about a hillbilly rampage that happened twenty years ago, leaving only one survivor. They laugh it off and go skinny dipping. Allison is startled by Tucker and Dale, who are on the lake fishing. She falls, knocking herself unconscious. Tucker and Dale rescue her and take her to the cabin. Her friends, thinking she’s been kidnapped, plan her rescue. Much accidental carnage ensues when hillbilly massacre-primed college students stumble, run, and turn abruptly into sharp objects each time they confront Tucker, who’s not very good with power tools to begin with. Inside the cabin Allison wakes up, and after her initial fright learns that Dale is actually a nice guy, and very smart, when he pulls out the board games. We also learn Allison is a nice girl and also smart.

Meanwhile, her friends are dropping faster than whack-a-mole. Mike’s full-body slam dunk into the woodchipper leaves Tucker and Dale holding incriminating evidence when the sheriff (Philip Granger) pulls up. The sheriff steps into close proximity of the nail-studded beam, which results in more screaming and panic from Allison’s friends. She tries to explain how they’ve got it all wrong, but now they think she’s suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome.

Somewhat like the comedy duo of Abbott and Costello, Tucker plays straight man to Dale’s fall guy, but it’s Dale who must save Allison from the psycho-killer suddenly popping up. Backwoods horror characters and situations are refreshingly skewed: the beautiful blond is approachable and wants to be a psychologist; the unsophisticated hillbillies are kind-hearted, average guys–on vacation; the sophisticated college kids expertly self-destruct; and the sheriff is ineffective (oh wait, that’s to type, actually).

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is one of those rare events: a festival-shown horror movie that’s actually intelligently produced, well acted, witty, gory, and surprising in that it didn’t get a wider theatrical release in the U.S. I hope Tucker and Dale go on another vacation real soon.

Ghost Rider
Spirit of Vengeance (2012)

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Zombos Says: Good

There are moments in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance when Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage), as the demonic Ghost Rider, forces men to gaze into his big, dark, empty eye-sockets with his penance stare. The penance stare makes his victims experience all the suffering they’ve caused. During those long staring matches, I anticipated seeing pinpoints of red that would slowly grow to become like eyes, filling his dark skull-orbs with crimson light.  The pinpoints never come. Someone in production should have noticed how dull it can be looking at someone else looking into dark, empty, eye-sockets with little else happening. Other moment’s  in this second, more pyrotechnically intense, yet more oddball, franchise entry should also have received notice. Watching Ghost Rider’s magical chain, whipping around to char-broil assailants into glowing embers and ash, and his flaming touch consuming everything is more exhilarating than the first movie, but everything else is underdone.

Johnny Blaze isn’t doing well with his deal with the Devil. He’s sulking in Eastern Europe (which considerably cuts production costs).  A mysterious religious order needs his help to protect a boy the Devil (Ciaran Hinds) wants badly. The boy, Danny (Fergus Riordan) is the Devil’s son. In order to become supremely powerful on Earth, the Devil needs to take over his son’s body. Although Danny has the required “D” sound for being the Devil’s offspring, he’s not evil. Not yet. His mother’s (Violante Placido) deal with the Devil is going sour, too.

That’s it. You now know the whole story. Johnny Blaze reluctantly agrees to become the boy’s protector, but Ghost Rider provides the seering muscle. Weapons with escalating destructive power are employed by the underlings hired to kidnap the boy. The weapon-toting underlings are employed by suitably nasty Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth). He gets whumped in spite of all the fire-power, but Roarke (that’s the Devil’s human name), brings him back to life, adding the power to decay everything he touches. With Johnny Blaze turning everything to smoking charcoal and Carragan turning everything to rot, the computerized special effects team earns its pay. One funny bit has Carrigan unable to spoil a famous snack. It’s sweet and moist, and a zombie hunter in another movie has quite a hankering for it. Guess?

When the boy is safely sequestered with the tattooed monk, Methodius (Christopher Lambert), who lives in a cave, Blaze gets a new deal to become Ghost Riderless. But the tattooed monk is Christopher Lambert, so any genre fan worth his or her salt will already know how safe that situation is. A not so surprising reorganization of effort to stop a Satanic Mass and save the boy leads to a Mad Maxish road rage confrontation that flames out too soon.

Perhaps that’s because the four or so writers and two directors, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, don’t all go in the same direction. There’s a Ghost Rider hissy-piss that either will crack a smile for you or insult, brief tender moments that should have been felt more, and Cage’s crazed and damned Johnny Blaze needs a bigger plot to simmer and boil in. Every other character is two-dimensional in spite of the flat 3D embellishment. Animated, graphic novelish, backstories show strong visual flair (and provide a cheaper way to bring an audience up to speed), but their tone doesn’t jive with the rest of the movie.

Opportunity for another sequel is given, but it better run on a higher octane than this one or I’ll be using the penance stare myself.