Monday, April 10, 2006

SPECIAL EVENT: Skeeters Video Fortnight

The summer of 2004-2005 has been a bugger down here in New Zealand. Pelting rain, hailstorms, high winds and winter-like cold. So what am I doing during the consistently first week of good weather? I'm inside, watching movies, of course.

In fact, I'm on a Cheap-Ass Video Week. Thanks to Five-Flicks-for-Five-Bucks voucher, I've picked up a couple of films I've been meaning to see, one I've been intrigued by, and two that'll I probably get a few unintended laughs out of. So, let's get a few brief thoughts about my viewing choices, shall we?

Movie 1: Series 7

I'd heard a lot about this movie in the last year or so. It's a low-budget satire of reality TV, based on a Government-sanctioned TV show where randomly-chosen (?) citizens are picked to hunt each other down. (In effect, a Running Man-style plot, only seen from the other side of the camera lens.) There's probably dozens of on-line reviews of this film, so I won't bother with the details. Instead, here are my thoughts on the positive/negative aspects of the film.

Positives:

Solid Acting: Good performances all round from the core cast, especially with the off-beat subject material.

Excellent Parody of the Subject: This film truly captured the felling that you were really watching a Reality Show. (Especially during the wonderfully cheesy Bullshit Emotional Sequences.) On the small screen, these positives did veer into the negatives at times, though. Mainly because I became a little complacent, almost forgetting I was watching a movie. I laughed my ass off when the script suddenly became nothing but lines cribbed directly from "Worlds Wildest Police Chases", though... where was Sgt John Brunnell when we needed him?)

Some Good Black Humour: Ever watched a teenage temper tantrum end with a knifing? It's here, baby.


The Negatives:

Backstory?:
We really had very little background on a society that condones on-air murder. (Which is appropriate, I suppose, as the "Show" is obviously meant to be seen as edited in a way that makes Fox News accuse them of being a shade biased.

Not Enough Franklin: Franklin James, the "Bat-shit Crazy" Conspiracy Theorist was one of the most interesting characters to me. The fact he's on the show makes me believe he was one of the few who actually DOES know the full story behind the show. Sadly, his screen-time was severely limited, and just as he starts to fill us in on his theory, he gets his ticket punched. Once again, in the context of the film, it's appropriate. (As anything he said on-air would surely have been edited out by the Oppressive, Yet Never-Mentioned Powers-That-Be.)

Skeeters Summary: Not bad. Not as good as I was expecting, but not bad.

Movie 2: The Living Dead Girl

This was the "intrigued" selection. Distributed by "Redemption Video", it caught my eye with its rear cover photo. (Showing the main character, dripping blood from her mouth and concealed with a badly airbrushed bikini... well, it's a French film from the late 60's, so there was bound the be full-frontal nudity at some stage, right?) I figured it was a vampire movie, and decided to give it a whirl.

Well, it's not a vampire flick. It's a zombie film... kind of. I think. The major problem with this film is... it's just too damn... French. Instead of explaining WHY our Doped-Looking Heroine had come back from the dead (Or DID she? Beats me...), the director insisted on being Mr. Artsy Fartsy. Which is fine, but when the plot is "Woman (possibly) returns from the dead, kills people with her over-long fingernails and eats them", we could probably have dispensed with the pretentiousness, yeah? I did learn a few things from this film, though.

  • French Cinematic Toxic Waste is as versatile as American Cinematic Toxic Waste. Kills living people, brings dead people back to life.

  • If you want your actors to pretend a barrel is really heavy, perhaps you should fill it with water or something. It kind of destroys the illusion when the barrel rolls like, well, a really light thing.

  • Third-degree facial burns are instantly fatal.

  • Bright red paint and blood are virtually identical. Not.

  • Editing a film coherently is a skill. Hiring someone with that skill was apparently optional in France in '68.

  • Adding an American may help your film sell in the States. Actually giving him something useful to do besides complain, whine, deny the obvious and eventually get a battle-axe haircut is also a good idea.

  • Real Estate agents who "Test the Furniture" with their boyfriends are probably not going to see out the flick.

  • French dance music kinda sucked in '68.

  • Zombies eating someone alive: Good Visual. Zombie eating someone alive for three-four minutes while the victim screams incessantly: Slight Overkill.

  • Y'know, an ending would have been nice.

    Skeeters Summary: Look, either do an Art Film, or a Gore Film. Don't be wishy-washy, dude. Neeh.

    Movie 3: The Blair Witch Project

    Well, the hype that turned this into a massive worldwide hit and made several student film-makers exceedingly rich is long gone. And so I was able to watch this film on its own merits. Both of them, in fact.

    1) It's realistically shot.
    2) It has an eerie final shot.

    Unfortunately, the rest of the film is simply a zero-budget student film with an improvised script. Improvised scripts can be a killer, in the wrong hands. This one quickly became a near-endless series of profanity, along with a near-endless argument about "The Map". (I capitalised the words, as we hear them more often than anything else in the film. In fact, you could conceivably re-market this as "The Blair Map Project", without changing a single frame.) Add to this a ridiculous plot-twist (Involving the Map, of course.) that comes sailing out of left field, almost as if he actor was as desperate as me to hear something new and ad-libbed at random. And the major flaw of this horror flick?

    It ain't that scary. The legendary Blair Witch’s' tactics involve many things. Origami, native handicrafts, sound effects. But a small pile of rocks is hardly spine-chilling terror in my opinion. In fact, the most effective scenes for me were often the ones shot in complete darkness. Which would be good if this was a radio play. Too bad film is an intrinsically visual medium.

    Plus, the motion-sickness camera didn't help. One of the "scary gifts" was what appeared to be a bundle of twigs wrapped around a blood-soaked scrap of t-shirt. But as the camera wavered all over the show, never centring on the object for a second, my wife snapped "Hold the bloody thing still!" in frustration... and she'd only arrived home to watch the last 45 minutes of the film.

    Skeeters Summary: Great marketing. Average film.

    Movie 4: American Ninja

    Ahh, Golan-Globus Productions... we meet again, at last. Well, I sat through [B]Breakdance[/B] recently, I can handle a rushed-to-production ninja flick. Pretty laughable, this one, with a plot that just makes less sense the more you think about it. To sum up, our Hero ("Joe") is a U.S soldier with no memory, no past, and, since he's played by Michael Dudikoff, no discernable personality. He rescues his Colonels unbearably bitchy daughter from an attack by a group I dubbed "The Podgy Militia", who manage to violate Ken Beggs Rule of Guns in fine style. (Those things actually work best if you DON'T hold them 1/16th of an inch from your targets head.) In the midst of the fistfighting, a group of extremely-lost ninjas show up, and any sense of logic gets tossed out the window. (Unless ninjas are routinely sighted in what appears to be the Philippines.) I actually took a page of notes, intending this to be a full-length review. Instead, I'll just list the things that I'll remember from the flick.

  • Ultra-Bitchy Daughter mouths off to a Rebel armed with a machine gun and DOESN'T get her damn fool head blown off.
  • Ninjas able to bounce around on a truck like it's loaded with a consignment of trampolines.
  • "Joe" able to ninjitsu armed men to death without any one of them thinking to, y'know, fire the guns they're holding.
  • My Pun Circuits going into overdrive as Joe Tool-Fu's guys to death. "You're screwed! See ya, Jack! He's barred!".
  • 80's film-makers were not above using "Film-Run-in-Reverse-to-Make-Ninja-Jump-Backwards" trick.
  • Bitchy Daughter becomes instant love interest, rather than getting a well-deserved slap in the mouth. My note read "Oh, fuck off!".
  • The wide variety of VERY non-regulation haircuts among the soldiers.'
  • The "WWII Japanese soldier not realising war is over" sub-plot.
  • Why was the Japanese ex-soldier wearing a Chinese coolie hat.
  • The sudden outbreaks of Ninja Gymnastics.
  • Red Ninja! Blue Ninja! Yellow Ninja!
  • For bad guys, Inspired Leadership always seems to involve snapping some guys neck during a training bout.
  • The best way to avoid a court-martial is to have a Commanding Officer who's as corrupt as a Bolivian politician.
  • For good guys, Inspired Leadership always seems to involve a brief brawl, followed by a manly handshake.
  • The fact that pretty much everyone in the U.S Srmy is corrupt, incompetant, or both.
  • Shadow Ninjas!
  • The character of Johnson, or as I called him, "Rambro". Yes, you’re ripped. I still think you should be on a charge for your improper uniform standards, pal.
  • Crashing cars always explode in a huge fireball, even after trundling slowly down a 20 degree slope and tapping a tree lightly.
  • The bad guys lack of survival instincts. Standing and watching as ninjas fight, instead of escaping in your nearby helicopter, seemed a bad strategy.
  • That ninja strategy is just as bad. Attack him one at a time, men! By the way, did any one you bring a gun? Nope? Good, just charge in and get killed, then.
  • Ninja Magic just gets you killed in the end.
  • Ninjas will ALWAYS run through swinging obstacles, even when they could save a hell of a lot of time but running AROUND said obstacles.
  • Toy helicopters never really look convincing when they explode.


    Skeeters Summary: No boobs, no blood. I feel cheated. Mindless fun, though.

    Movie 5: The Punisher

    Dolph Lundgren, actor.

    I can barely type that with a straight face. (In fact, my spellchecker advised me to "consider revising" that statement.) I hired this as a comparison to the recent remake. God-DAMN, did it suck a mountain of suck the size of Mt. Saint Suckmore. Insanely, pontlessly violent, a script so thin you could read a paper through it, and Dolph in the lead role. (Even though he did vanish from the screen for large chunks of the film.) Poor old Lou Gosset, Jr. From Oscar winner to Mr. Monotone's second banana. What the hell happened there?

    I'm not venturing on a lengthy review, due in part to a VERY degraded tape that turned large parts of the film into an overexposed wobble-fest. (Stupid videotapes got thinner and cheaper as the years went by... I've seen early 80's-era tapes that have held up better than late 90's ones.) But, here's a brief summing up.

    Crap.

    Brief enough for you?

    I never read the Punisher comic... but I can imagine how badly the fanboys took this film. Imagine if MY comic hero had been played by a monotonic semi-actor, had the premise mutilated, and the heart and should of the comic ripped out in bleeding chunks...

    Oh, wait, I'm describing Judge Dredd, aren't I? I empathise completely, Punisher fans.

    Skeeters Summary: If the guilty are punished, the producers of this film should be on bread and water to this day.

    Well, that should have been it right there. Instead, Video Week became Video Fortnight, thanks to a newly opened video store and another "5 DVD's for 5 Bucks" coupon. I refreshed myself between crap with Family Guy: Season 1 and Billy Connelly, Live in Dublin. Then, back into the B-grade I charged.

    I'm a schmuck.

    Movie 6: Beyond Re-Animator

    I loved Re-Animator. I even loved Bride of Re-Animator, even though it's been years since I last saw it, and might hate it now. (Internal Memo: Look for THAT film next time I'm at the video store.) This much-belated sequel? Hadn't heard much about it, decided to complete the "trilogy". ("Trilogy" in the loosest possible sense of the word, of course.) What did I think of it?

    Well, let's lay the cards on the table. There's a ton of reasons I could have hated this flick.

    In no particular order:

  • The bollixed time-frame. I'm SURE the first two flicks were set in at least the 40's or 50's, if not earlier, although that may be my fading synapses lying to me. (See Internal Memo above.) This one's set squarely in the modern day, which kind of negates the whole "Gothic Horror" thing.
  • The rather one-note performace from Jeffery Combs as Dr. Herbert West. I'm aware he's played this role twice before, and should know better than I how best to approach it. However, he firmly maintains just one expression in the film, that of tight-lipped disdain for his fellow man. I did get one genuine laugh from his straight-faced "Interesting" line. He needed a few more reaction shots like that, I feel.
  • The horrendous score. It started with "We're hoping Bernard Hermann doesn't get re-animated, because he'll come looking for revenge" music, an almost note-for-note steal from Pyscho. (Shrieking violins included.) Then segued into a less blatant rip-off, but one with what sounded like badly-placed amplifier feedback, which rapidly became annoying as all get out.
  • The thrown-in-for-no-reason boobie shot.
  • The disappointing lack of gore. (On the DVD, the director Brian Yuzna informs us it was a concious descion, wanting more horror and less blood. Which brings me to my next point...)
  • It isn't scary.
  • The leading lady and her mysterious floating accent. Looking at the cheap-ish production, I was expecting a crew list full of people named "...ov", but this film was NOT in fact shot in Bulgaria. Instead, it was lensed in Valencia, Spain. And apart from the two leading men, pretty much every actor was Spanish, speaking their dialogue in English. The female lead's name sounded European, though. As the film started, she affected a passable American accent, but as the film progressed, it gradually floated East, becoming more Hungarian-sounding (I think,at least... Bela Lugosi is my only linguistic guide.) by the scene. By the end, I was begging her to yell "Pull der schtring!". Most distracting.
  • Logic, Coherant Plotting and Why You Don't Need Either: An Essay. My wife wandered in and watched a few minutes of the flick around the 65 minute mark. "This looks like crap." she noted. I was quick to leap to the films defense with "Yeah, I think the thing just choked on it's own stupidity.". Okay, not so much a defense as a summing up for the prosecution. Idiotic characters doing idiotic things, for idiotic reasons. Mad scientist accidently caused the death of your sister? Makes perfect sense to find him 13 years later and help him create more mayhem. (I originally thought the Young Doctor might have kept his sister on ice somewhere, and was looking to make Dr. West jump-start her. (Which would have been idiotic, but no more than the plot they actually used.) Find a massive syringe full of neon green liquid? Inject yourself! (Even REAL junkies might balk at that.)
  • Fake-looking CGI Torso-Man! (See Braindead (AKA Dead Alive) for how a REAL living torso should look.)
  • Fake-Looking CGI Torso-Mans' "George of the Jungle"-like swinging ability. Where the hell was he getting the leverage from? (Also applies to his ability to leap 20 feet across the room and choke someone.)
  • Overacting that made Fatty Arbuckle look like the model of restraint.
  • Zombie Attacks that could only be effective if everyone in the film was an idiot.
  • Everyone in the film was an idiot.
  • The fakest-looking rubber weiner in movie history. (Okay, it's a slim field, but it was ridiculously rubber-looking.)

    So, that's the reasons I should have hated it. But in the end...

    Skeeters Summary: Yeah, I hated it. The only bit I actually liked came in the end credits, a brief "gag reel" fight between an animated schlong and a rat. Apart from that, let us never speak of this piece of crap again.


    Movie 7: Ju-On: The Grudge

    This was an unexpected one, as I watched it over at my father-in-laws place after dinner. (I returned the favour by showing him Head. Japnese horror and The Monkees... what a combo.) I didn't have a lot of previous experience with Japanese horror films, even though I've been meaning to dig up Ringu for some time now. After seeing this one, I'm wondering if I might give it a miss.

    No, it's not that I didn't like it. It's just I've heard Ringu is scarier. And Ju-On is scarier than a barrelful of undead monkeys. Scarier than a Tom Green film festival. Scarier than Paris Hilton without forty pounds of makeup. You get the idea. (And after TWICE writing "This isn't scary" in these reviews, this was a welcome breath of fresh air. Or, putrid stinking air, if you prefer. It is a horror movie, after all.)

    The only quibble I had with the flick was its narrative structure, a very Pulp Fiction "Wait, is this BEFORE that last scene or AFTER?" style of film. I usually have no problem with this, but this film had its' own unique complication.

    I couldn't tell two of the actresses apart. Yep, it's a cliche that all Asian paople look alike to Westerners, and propbably the reverse is true... but there's a reason it became a cliche, after all. (And this coming from a man who's dealt baccarat and spent six years as a tour guide at the Auckland Skytower... I occasionally feel like I've met every Japanese person who has walked the face of the Earth. And more than once I've started to say the words "Back again?" before realising it's not the guy I sold a ticket to an hour ago.)

    But apart from that, this was a really good pychological thriller. Unlike 98.8% of Hollywood horrors, there was almost no blood until the last few minutes, no ominous thunderstorms or spring-loaded domestic animals for cheap scares. Just an unrelenting sense of creepyness and tension, some remarkably subtle scare tactics, and some of the most disturbing, hackle-raising sound effects I've ever heard.

    Now, is it worth going to see the remake? I have a sneaking suspicion I might be wisest not too. Just call it a hunch.

    Skeeters' Summary: When I arrived home afterwards, I was alone in the house for an hour. I didn't venture into the bedroom (Down the short, but darkened hallway) to close the curtains until my wife came home. Now THAT'S a scary movie! Two lightly blood-stained thumbs up!

    Movie 8: A Mighty Wind

    I rounded out the video binge with one movie chosen on the strength of it's ancestry. A Mighty Wind is of course the from the "folks" (Ba-doom-ching!) who brought you Spinal Tap. Centering around a reunion concert featuring three folk music groups, I found plenty to like in the film. It's not as consistantly funny as Spinal Tap, although I was amazed at how many simple, almost throwaway, scene-ending lines had me laughing.

    It's also an excellent musical, with most of the songs sounding incredibly authentic. They're a parody, of course, but it's an affectionate parody, a parody you can hum along to. The central ballad "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" is good enough to get stuck in your head for days afterwards, the title track a perfectly straight folk song with a hilarious final line that had me snorting coffee out my nose.

    Skeeters' Summary: Plenty of laughs, and toe-tapping music. All in all, a good end to proceedings.

    And so, my marathon o' movies was at an end. I could drop off the discs, head home, rest up and think about maybe getting some sun.

    Then of course, I grabbed It's Alive and It Lives Again on the way out the door. I'm a schmuck.

    FILM OF THE FORTNIGHT: Ju-On: The Grudge.

    FLUB OF THE FORTNIGHT: Beyond Re-Animator.
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