From Zombos' Closet

Movie Review: Kids vs Monsters (2015)

Zombos Says: Poor

At 100 minutes, Kids vs Monsters doesn't live up to its title, becoming instead tedious, poorly written, unamusing, and not fetching at all. And you know a movie's bad when I use a word like "fetching" in a review. 

I keep wondering where the 7 plus millions of dollars spent on this (according to IMDb) went. Not even the feckless, irksome cartoon backstories interrupting the less than lively live action (see my comment on "fetching" as it also applies to "feckless") show the expenditure. The two principal sets used--one a monster realm throne room where the rich parents watch their kids being attacked by each monster in turn, and the second, Ms. Gallagher's Reform School, where the kids hang around insulting each other while waiting for each monster to attack them, in turn--show little effort toward original art direction or intentions for originality. 

It's ho-hum from start to finish in spite of having talents like Lance Henriksen, Malcolm McDowell, Richard Moll, and Armand Assante. With the dialog they're given, I'm surprised they didn't roll their eyes more often when delivering each line. The lackluster script ignores the essential character evolution necessary to make this work, and the monsters are laughable in all the wrong ways. Endless talking by McDowell, monotonously delivered, is energy-draining to see and listen to. 

Director Sultan Saeed Al Darmaki and scripter Sarah Daly should have realized they had some monstrous-sized shoes to fill after Monster Squad, Little Monsters, and any number of animated monster movies with kids that have set a baseline for expectations. None of which are met.

The kids include the obnoxious fatty, Bobby (Jesse Camacho), the spoiled beauty queen, Candy (Francesca Eastwood), the depressed goth girl, Molly (Sidney Endicott), the do-good kid, David (Bridger Zadina), the social media girl, Daisy (Anna Akana), and the pugilist, Oliver (Daniel David Stewart). Each of them has disappointed their parents so much, their parents go to Boss Monster (McDowell) to complain and sign a contract with a strong death clause. Boss Monster, who doesn't look like a monster at all, is in charge of all the other monsters that look like monsters in the Monster Realm. We know it's the Monster Realm because McDowell eats up a lot of screen time telling the parents they're in the monster realm. And, of course, we have to listen too.

Henriksen is one of the minions of Boss Monster and assists with more pointless and spiritless dialog in-between McDowell's laborious descriptions of each monster as he introduces them to square off against the kids. One by one. This movie's title is wrong: it isn't kids versus monsters, it's a monster versus a kid. Way too late into the movie do we get any sense of team coordination with the kids actually banding together to fight and protect each other. But that doesn't last long at all and the singular kid versus monster modus operandi resumes. If you're expecting a Monster Squad team up, forget it. This movie doesn't have the nards to make it happen here.

Each prelude to an encounter includes watching a lengthy cartoon backstory for each monster as McDowell explains its life story before we finally cut back to the reform school for live action, or any action at this point. Before that return, however, the parents are also given way too much time to complain and chitchat. And this happens for every encounter. EVERY FREAKING ENCOUNTER.

The monsters are as creatively inspired as the kids. I'm being sarcastic. Among them are Mr. Beet (yes, he's a big beet-headed monster played by Michael Bailey Smith), who punches Oliver to the moon, a Cthulhuish witch who puts the hex on them, for a spell, and a lumberjack Big Foot with a French accent who likes sweets to death. One actually humorous scene has Big Foot in the bathroom as he's interrupted dropping a log. Enjoy it while it lasts. 

In-between the flat back and forth from reform school to monster realm throne room, the fussy Butler (Richard Moll), acts all Lurch-like to provide comedy relief in a comedy.

It doesn't help. After 45 minutes, you'll agree with the person who says "I want more action!"

 A courtesy stream-screener was provided for this review.

Der Nachtmahr (The Nightmare) 2015

Zombos Says: Good (almost)

I've said it more often than not: to make a movie work, in its simplest composition, one of two things must happen. The good and great movies have both these things happen, but at least one needs to be there if you want an audience to pay attention, invest interest, and believe in the characters and what's happening to them.

The first thing is forward motion. Whether through dialog, character development, actions, or effective editing, without visual or story movement from start to finish, the movie won't work. Leaving an audience sitting around hoping for something, anything, to happen is not the way you want them to feel. And what happens must evolve and not just happen willy-nilly.

The second thing is to make a decision up front and stay committed to it. Is the story funny or serious, quirky or cheeky, or a  carefully blended mix, and why is it that way? If a director can't make up his or her mind in how they show us this, the audience won't be able to make up its mind, either. Remember Tim Burton's Dark Shadows remake mess? He couldn't figure it out and neither could we.

Perhaps more significantly, a director needs to know what to explain or not explain, and if a situation of "no explanation" is desired for artistic or dramatic reasons, how can you achieve that through what's shown or not shown, heard or not heard, to keep an audience satisfied with their investment in your story. Unsolved mysteries can be annoying or tantalizing: if you do the first thing really well, no one may notice, or care much, that you didn't tie a pretty bow to wrap up the second thing neatly. Horror movies, especially, suffer from franchise-itis endings, where a tidy and satisfying story is butchered by an ending that doesn't, sacrificed for a potential sequel.

Director Akiz tricks us into thinking he's covered both of these things, but he sort of  does, sort of doesn't, so Der Nachtmahr pulls us in just enough, leaves us wondering and wanting more explanation, just enough, and provides just enough to fill in the gaps as we choose. I'm not sure if he intentionally did this or a lucky accident occurred here, but this is the kind of movie you won't see too often from Hollywood. It demands active viewing not passive, and its characters aren't at all endearing or clever or the kind of people you want to hang around with. Or maybe I just don't want to hang around with them. They are vacuous (okay, maybe not the philosophically-minded student, but he's in the minority), living vacuous lives filled with pretensions.

There are the usual foreign film idiosyncrasies like time wasted listening to students (really just that one nerd in the group), who are hanging out, discussing deep philosophy on a level similar to how many Einsteins can fit in God's head  and fractals (but so serious you wish it were more humorously intended, like Animal House's stoner view of the solar system under your fingernail.) Of course, the American film idiosyncrasy found in horror movies involves students, who are hanging out, discussing male and female anatomy and party protocols. So there.).  

Akis does go bananas with his rave scenes. They are jarring, overly loud, and filmed with an arrogance and a diffusing color as his camera follows the hedonistic friends through their partying and drug excesses. In contrast to his endless malaise saturating every scene, these disorienting raves hint he's making a point about his characters and their priorities. So which nightmare you choose to see is up to you. Tina sees the creepy one, which meanders around without saying anything and is always hungry, forming a symbiotic relationship so what happens to it happens to her. Perhaps its aimlessness is hers. When it bites into a razor blade cutting its tongue, her tongue is cut. Her parents see that as a cue she's reverting to old habits. Her counselor tells her to talk to it. But it doesn't speak. Her friends start retreating.

A Donnie Darko moment of time rewind violence jars the storyline toward confusion and possibly a Tangent Universe. Or not. Hard to say, given there's a backstory to Tina (Carolyn Denzkow), alluded to through her visits to a counselor and an ever-present concern, despair, defeat, and anxiety felt from her parents. Then the police are called, a creature is seen (similar to the one in Fuselli's 1781 painting), and off we go, seeing through Tina's mind what she believes is happening, or seeing the reality as perceived by those around her.

The movie shifts into an Eraserhead kind of visual weirdness, but takes too long getting there and doesn't dare enough, and takes us for a car ride at the end to wonder where we're going or where we've been. Too much vibe when more jibe with the two must-happen things I mentioned above, would have made the movie work harder for us so we didn't have to. 

Beach Girls and the Monster (1965) Movie Pressbook

So, what's a really bad horror movie with girls, sand, and a monster? Why, The Beach Girls and the Monster, of course, from 1965.

Pressbook: Black Shadows (1949)

Remember when we went to the theater to be mystified by foreign cultures and different life-styles, way back when? Now we're just mortified. Mostly. What drew me to this 11 x 17 inches, 8 page, pressbook, was the cover. Very eye-catching, very colorful with its red and black inks. 

Halloween Weeny-Witch Party Book

I posted the advertisement for Squire's Arlington Skinless Hot Dogs. In the ad you could send away for this party book. I saved you the trouble. 

Halloween Advertisement for Wurlitzer Music

Sure, you have your Amazon Prime Music, Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, and on and on and on. Back then, we had Wurlitzer. Eat your heart out.

 

Them! (1954) Movie Pressbook

Here's the 20 page pressbook for Them! And some interesting tidbits from the Wikipedia article on the movie: 

• Actor James Whitmore wore "lifts" in his shoes to compensate for the height difference between himself and James Arness. It has also been noted that Whitmore employed bits of "business" (hand gestures and motions) during scenes in which he appeared to draw more attention to his character when not speaking.
• The Wilhelm scream, created three years earlier for the film Distant Drums, is used during the action sequences: when a sailor aboard the freighter is grabbed by an ant, when James Whitmore's character is caught in an ant's mandibles, and when an overhead wooden beam falls on a soldier in the Los Angeles storm-drain sequence.
• The giant ants were constructed and operated by unseen technicians supervised by Ralph Ayers, and were actually purplish-green in color. During the climactic battle sequence in the Los Angeles sewers, there is a brief shot of one ant moving in the foreground with its side removed, revealing its mechanical interior. This blunder has been obscured in the DVD releases of the film. (Wow, I've seen this movie a few times and never noticed. Will be looking next time.)
  

Pressbook: Black Dragons (1942)

The best part of this pressbook for Black Dragons is the Bela Lugosi product tie-in to Remington. Who knew even Dracula needed to shave?

Pressbook: Night Monster (1942)

Here's the Realart re-release pressbook for Night Monster, a tidy little thriller from Universal, with tons of atmosphere and stylish camerawork to enjoy. You can read my movie review here. 

Press Photo: Anoka Halloween Parade 1949

Here's a Tribune press photo showing the Anoka, Minnesota, Halloween parade marching along Main Street, October 31st, 1949. I love the sign that reads "the house that Jack built." Definitely a monsterkid in the skeleton costume.

 

Double Bill Pressbook: The Monster That Challenged the World and The Vampire

The design of the caterpillar-like creature in The Monster That Challenged the World is on my shortlist of favorite monsters of the 1950s. Although the script resorts to the usual 1950s woman in peril and is totally helpless until the man arrives but he gets into trouble so she screams a lot until more help arrives scenario, it's still a worthy B Movie staple. This pressbook shows the fantastic poster art and fun ballyhoo used for promoting this double bill of "blood-curdling monsters of the age!"

Halloween 2015 Sighted: Spirit Halloween Store and the Zombie Subway

Spirit Halloween is doing a scary subway display this year, and I finally got to see it in all its gory. This store is at the Source Mall on Long Island. The mall, facing stiff competition from others close by, and hit by its anchor stores leaving, is pretty spooky all by itself. The top floor is mostly shuttered shop fronts, and the food court is now more a snack instead of a meal kind of place. But the Spirit Halloween store has the advantage of using a large, previously vacated space, so the merchandising is spectacular (if you're a Halloween fanatic, that is). Now if only I had room for all this stuff...