Snuff Motel

Vacancy (2007)
Directed by Nimrod Antal
Screenplay by Mark L. Smith

Vacancy covers a lot of familiar horror tropes in a competent way.  (I know that's not exactly a glowing review, but hey that's what happens when you're not on the studio dole.) We have a couple with relationship difficulties.   We have a detour through rural countryside on a road trip.    And we have a creepy motel. Yep, you probably feel like you've seen this film before but that feeling hasn't stopped you from watching every romantic comedy ever made so why should stop you from watching people go into a creepy motel where they are likely to be terrorized and murdered?

This is a film about love.  It's about a couple who have already decided to get a divorce but when terrorized and nearly murdered they ultimately reaffirm their love for each other.  Which is good, because if you and your spouse are being threatened to death by a bunch of hicks trying to make a snuff film and you hate your spouse more than the people trying to kill you then there's something wrong with you--or clearly there's something really wrong with your relationship.   In the case of David and Amy Fox their problems are deep but not insurmountable.   Nothing that can't be overcome with love and the impetus of survival in the face of massive danger.

The massive danger in this film is the commodification of death in the form of violent media.   The cultural critique here is aimed vaguely in the direction of our increasing appetite for real violence which keeps pushing us back toward the idea of snuff films.   In the great spirit of American entrepeneurship the management of this motel has worked a way to create and distribute snuff films--commodified violence.  You have to hand it to the spirit of American ingenuity.   The foreigners in Hostel sell their violence experience to an aristocratic wealthy elite.   The killers in Vacancy are much more democratic.  They create a violent experience that can be reproduced and sold to all classes.   If the idea occurs to the folks in Hostel they think better of it--for the owners of Elite Hunting it is better to do a steady business with the elite rich who will also keep their activities discreet.   For the folks running the motel in Vacancy it probably never occurs to them that they might find a sick bastard who will pay them to let them kill someone in their motel.

At any rate, it isn't the psychosis of an individual that puts The Foxes in danger.   (Yes, they are foxes which makes the killers fox hunters.   You're welcome for that British anti-foxhunting leagues.)  Their lives are ultimately put in peril because of greed and simple business.   Mason (I leave that name to the fans of Dan Brown to think about) and his accomplices are doing good old fashioned American business and the guests at the motel are just the dupes who keep the engine of industry rolling.   The Foxes are merely a commodity and the truck drivers stopping in to pick up a sandwich and some snuff videos are the customers whose willful demand keeps the merchants of motel death in operation.  

The media critique implicit in this film goes roughly like this:  Here we are slaving away making fake violence for you and it just isn't good enough for you, is it, you sick fucks?   No, you have to watch Cops or The Real Murderers of Bevery Hills because you hope to see a real person getting their head bashed into the sidewalk and when even that became stale for you along came the internet with all kinds of sick videos to keep you going.  What the hell is wrong with you people?  And there's an interesting question here about the social purpose of violent films.   Are they a safe means of cathartic release of violent tendencies?   Are they a gruesome means of confronting the idea of death--especially of the violent kind?   Or are they just an appetizer of violence that creates a need for more violence in an escalating pattern that will inevitable lead to Thunderdome?   In short, why do these truckers need to watch snuff films of people getting killed in a motel?   And wouldn't watching a film like The Strangers or, for instance, Vacancy be enough to satisfy them?  Apparently not.

At least this film solves doesn't posit killers who can walk through walls or have the ability to fold space.   The moteliers have a system of tunnels and entrances that serve both as their means of entry and also as our victims' means of escape thus not only serving to clean up a plot point but also to create plot possibilities.

I think one of the charms of this film is that despite the incredible odds against them David and Amy survive.  (Well, David is badly hurt, but I think it's safe to say that he's still alive at the end.)   That's a testament to their intelligence and to their will to survive.  Yes, indeed.  These crazy kids will live and because of that, maybe their marriage will survive as well.   Yep, it's a movie about the hardships of love and the strength that it requires to persevere and survive.

Maybe it's because I saw this immediately after The Strangers, but I found this to be a much more watchable film and thus I might even recommend it...if you're in the mood for a motel slasher film.

Dramatis Personae
Amy Fox.....Kate Beckinsale (Much Ado About Nothing, Cold Comfort Farm, Underworld, Van Helsing, The Aviator, Pearl Harbor, Republicans Get in My Vagina) You had me at Kate Beckinsale.
David Fox....Luke Wilson (The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, Idiocracy)
Mason, the motel manager....Frank Whaley (Pulp Fiction, The Doors, Born on the Fourth of July, Field of Dreams, Hoffa, Swing Kids)
Mechanic.....Ethan Embry (CSI: Miami, Fairly Legal, House, Brotherhood, Fear Itself, Eagle Eye, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Masters of Horror, Numb3rs, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Timeline, LA Dragnet, Sweet Home Alabama, Vegas Vacation, That Thing You Do, Empire Records, Harts of the West)  He spends much of the film wearing a mask, which has to be a bit thankless.
Killer....Scott G. Anderson (Titanic, Touched by an Angel, Vacancy 2)
Truck Driver....Mark Casella (Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Joe Gould's Secret, Cop Land, St. Elsewhere, Scarecrow & Mrs. King, MASH, Simon & Simon, CHiPS, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue)
Highway Patrol....David Doty (Weeds, Scrubs, Dollhouse, Seabiscuit, Wyatt Earp, Caroline in the City, The Golden Girls, Empry Nest, JAG, Never Been Kissed, Mumford, The West Wing, Star Trek: Voyager, Malcolm in the Middle, The X-Files, Six Feet Under, Spin City, The Drew Carey Show, The Practice, Minority Report, Down with Love, Nancy Drew, Childrens Hospital, Bad Teacher)
Snuff Victims....Norm Compton (Magnum, PI, Jake and the Fatman, The Big Tease, 24, 8mm, The Replacement Killers, The Fan, Hot Shots Part Deux)
Caryn Mower (Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Crossing Jordan, CSI, Ally McBeal, V.I.P., Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Dead Man's Chest, The Office, Parks and Recreation, 24, NCIS: Los Angeles, Community)
Meegan E. Godfrey (How I Met Your Mother, Criminal Minds, Pushing Daisies, Monk, Desperate Housewives, Dexter, CSI: Miami, General Hospital, Law & Order: LA)
Kim Stys (Angel, Monk, NCIS, My Name is Earl, Sons & Daughters, CSI: Miami, Californication, Piranha, House, Justified, The Mentalist)
Ernest Misko (The Big Valley, Wild Wild West, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari)
Bryan Ross (Sex and Death 101, The Longest Yard, Grandma's Boy, Obsessed)
Chuck Lamb (ThanksKilling, Stiffs, Horrorween)
Snuff Guy #3....Richie Varga (Eraser, Melrose Place, Weird Science (TV))
Snuff Guy #4....Cary Wayne Moore (The Donner Party, Gilmore Girls, Justified, Hart of Dixie)
Steven R......Andrew Fiscella (The Hard Times of RJ Berger, House, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Prom Night, CSI: NY, Without a Trace, Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent)
Brenda B.....Dale Waddington (Castle, Monk, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, iCarly, Mad Men, The Closer, Important Things w/Demetri Martin, The Young and the Restless, Criminal Minds)

Original Music by Paul Haslinger (Crank, Turistas, Blue Crush, Underworld, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, Underworld: Awakening)
Cinematography by Andrzej Sekula (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, American Psycho, Cousin Bette, Four Rooms)

Special Features
1. Alternate Opening Sequence
I think the crime scene opening gives away too much without adding anything that interesting to the film.   Plus, it breaks the mood of a film that is mostly set at night.
2. Checking In: the Cast & Crew of Vacancy
Pretty standard promo stuff.   Nimrod Antal comes off as an intelligent director and the scenic component is very nice to see in action.
3. Mason's Video Picks: Extended Snuff Films
It's a little awkward watching these fake snuff films.   They seem almost mundane, which is the point.
But there's something too perfectly meta about watching these things.   I think I would have liked them better if there was some sort of commentary that explained the scenarios that had been concocted (if any) for the victims in these fake motel snuff films.   That would have been interesting.
4. Raccoon Encounter
I'll admit that this deleted bit probably sold me on this film.   I know it might have destroyed the tone of the film had it been included, but the fact that they left it on the disc is encouraging in terms of the imagination of the filmmakers.  The setup is that David swerves to miss a raccoon on the road and thus the car falls into difficulties.   Later when David stops to take a leak by the side of the road he is startled by...a raccoon.   If they could have thrown the raccoons into the motel as well that would have been awesome.
5. Previews
Coming to Blu-Ray
Things that have already come to Blu-Ray.
30 Days of Night
Vampires in the polar regions.   The soundtrack for this trailer makes it one of the best ever.
Resident Evil: Extinction
Umbrella Corp in Vegas.
Vantage Point
I've seen so many trailers for this that I feel I don't need to see the film itself.  I'll stick with the vantage point of not seeing this movie.
I Know Who Killed Me
I don't care who killed you.
Revolver
Another Guy Ritchie film with Jason Statham.  I'm not saying the Ritchiverse is not good, but everything does seem to run together in my head now.
Perfect Stranger
Based on the 1980s sitcom Perfect Strangers.  Not a good adaptation.
Rise: Blood Hunter
Another vampire movie.  It's like Blade only with Lucy Liu.
Hostel Part II
See the review from earlier.  A film that is better than I had imagined.
Bobby Z
Paul Walker, Laurence Fishburne and Olivia Wilde.  Vaguely interested by the cast, uninterested by the plot.
Fearnet.Com
Whenever I see a website trailer I always feel like it must already be defunct by now, but apparently fearnet is still up and running...running on fear, that is.

FILE UNDER:  HORROR/SLASHER/RURAL/MOTEL MURDERERS

No Exit?

The Strangers (Unrated) (2008)
Directed by Bryan Bertino
Screenplay by Bryan Bertino

In this film very loosely based on The Stranger by Albert Camus a pair of attractive people are terrorized and then mostly murdered by some strangers.   If the unknown and the inexplicable are the source of much of our fear then the unaccounted for is just annoying.   The crucial moment in understanding the philosophy of this film comes near the very end when the victims ask why they are being terrorized and the killers respond with "Because you were home."  That's cold.   And if the film wasn't riddled with unnecessary cheap scares and a bloated notion of suspense then maybe it would have earned that line a little better, though I'm not sure what it means to "earn" nihilism.

The Strangers started out with some promise as a film about a relationship that has gone sour.
I think this may be the resurrection of an old trope in horror films where the terror of the outside reflects what was initially an inner turmoil in key relationships of the terrorized.   (The Shining, anyone?).
In The Strangers we start with James and Kristen driving home from a wedding reception to his family's remote vacation home where he thought he'd be celebrating his own engagement with Kristen.
But she rejected him.  Maybe the sound was too low maybe it doesn't matter but I still don't understand why she shot down his proposal.   Maybe it's because she had seen Underworld.   I would have said that this film has the most awkward driver/passenger pair in recent film history, but then the road trip couple in Vacancy really gave this one a run for its money in the uncomfortability category.

Having been shot down by Liv Tyler (an experience which suddenly gives him an everyman quality) James sinks his despair in a tub of ice cream.   But before we can sympathize with him for too long he and Kristen start to have some slightly awkward sad sex.   But then comes the murderous interreptus when there's a creepy knock at the door that prevents them from continuing.    From this point on the couple are at the mercy of the mask wearing slow-kill trio of murderers.

The first stupid thing that happens here is that James leaves the house to go for a drive.   Notwithstanding the little bit of ice cream that he had he's already been drinking and just killed a bottle of champagne.  I know the relationship has become awkward what with the whole rejection of marriage thing but still, there's no excuse for letting James go for a drive when he's been drinking....especially when he's upset.   I understand his impetus for wanting to get out of the room, but taking a drive to the corner store for some smokes is really a bad idea given the time of night.

The next stupid thing that happens is that the killers seem to have unfettered access to some sort of permeable (and very quiet) wall that lets them get into and out of the house at will without making any noise unless they want to make it.   The rest of the film consists of a series of cheap scares designed to frighten James and Kristen (and the audience) without actually going in for the kill.   The killers are so unconcerned that they play on a swingset and loll around the grounds.

The victims, meanwhile are completely incompetent.  Now, we have to believe that this house is isolated because it's a vacation community in the off-season.  That explains the reason no other house can be appealed to for safety.   But surely the victims could have tried to break into one of the other houses.  (They do have plenty of time.)  Maybe one of the other houses has an alarm, or a working telephone, or a shovel to crack over the heads of one of the three most complacent killers you could ever hope to find.   There's no excuse for the level of imcompetence that James and Kristen show in the face of a ludicrously inefficient home invasion.  The "strangers" don't just bust down the door and tie up their victims.  In fact, the victims have frequent opportunities to run outside.  The inefficiency of the killers is highlighted by the fact that they don't even get to the actual stabbing part until well after sunup.  And, in one of the most ridiculous endings of all time it appears as though Kristen survives at the end despite the loss of most of her blood, which means that for all of their work in terrorizing the "strangers" only manage to kill one person and cause the death of another.   (That would be the poor schmuck played by Glenn Howerton who takes a shotgun blast in the face from James when he is mistaken for one of the killers.)   The only reason for opening Liv Tyler's eyes at the very end is for a cheap scare.  You assume she's dead so when the little kid goes over to her you don't expect her to open her terrified eyes.   The reason you assume she's dead is because they stab her in much the same way they stab and kill Scott Speedman's character and he is definitely dead.

This last moment is in keeping with the ethos of the rest of the film where Bertino seems more than willing to sacrifice storytelling or a sense of consistent universe in favor of individual scares and set-pieces.  I don't give a two-tone fig about realism, but having killers who enter and exit the house for no reason other than to set up a scary moment is beyond senseless.  And if I could bring myself to believe that the idea was to present something bizarre or absurd then maybe I'd go along for the ride.   But instead I have the feeling that it's the cheap scare driving the car here and it takes away from the story.
I know I'm supposed to be horrified by the senseless and cruel violence of the "strangers" but instead I'm just annoyed by their terrible inefficiency as killers.  It's one thing for the killer whale to toss the seal up into the air a couple of times.  It's another for it to swallow the seal and then spit it back out and bite it again.   That's what seems to be happening in this film.  I'd have thought by now that gruesome murderous psychopathic Americans would have achieved a higher level of ability by now, but The Strangers shows that even the most creative fictional murderers seem to turn out to be rank amateurs when it comes down to it.   I'll put it this way:  if you put the "strangers" up against the murderers from any of a number of other horror films these "killers" would be dead before the opening credits roll by.

I'm not saying that The Strangers is an unwatchable Uwe Boll film.  But I'm a little miffed at the way the set-piece of the house is set up.   It would have been a lot more interesting to find out that the killers had the ability to walk through walls--and it would have explained a lot.  Instead it's just plain dumb.  The Strangers take an entire night to terrorize a couple of people.  I'm not creeped out by this film so much as annoyed by it.   I'll say it again:  the killers in this film took an hour and a half to stab two people when they had almost supernatural ability to come and go from the house for the entire time of their terror jaunt.   I suppose you could say that it's terrifying to be toyed with like that, but for an audience it's excruciatingly dull when you think about it.   And as for the "based on true events" pile of hooey--well, just stop it.  Seriously.  I HAVE HAD IT UP TO HERE (POINTS TO AN IMAGINARY LINE SOMEWHERE ON HIS UPPER TORSO)  WITH THE FAKE "BASED ON A TRUE STORY" TITLE CARDS.   PLEASE STOP PRETENDING THAT THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED.  

The Strangers is well made and glossy and full of cheap scares with unmotivated terror that is not so much unremitting as uninspired.   In short, this film is like a ten dollar grilled cheese sandwich.  It's a pretty sandwich but it's a bit expensive for what it is.  

Horrificus Personae
James Hoyt, a guy....Scott Speedman (Underworld, Felicity)  You should have stayed with Felicity, then you woudn't have been stabbed by this gang of shock-teases.  
Kristen McKay, his girlfriend....Liv Tyler (Lord of the Rings, Empire Records, Stealing Beauty, The Incredible Hulk, Robot and Frank) If you're a fan of Liv Tyler then this film will satisfy you with some quality screen time.  
Mike, James's brother/friend?....Glenn Howerton (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Serenity, Crank, Crank: High Voltage, Unsupervised, The Cleveland Show, Glenn Martin DDS, ER, That '80s Show)  Man, you're only in this movie long enough to take a shotgun blast to the face.   Such a shame.
Man in the Mask, the leader of this murder outfit?....Kip Weeks (Glory Road, American Primitive, A Girl, a Guy, and a Space Helmet)
Dollface.....Gemma Ward (The Black Balloon, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The Great Gatsby)
Pin-Up Girl....Laura Margolis (Dirty Sexy Money, Monk, Masters of Horror, Friends, The Drew Carey Show, The Ballad of Danko Jones)
Mormon Boy #1....Alex Fisher
Mormon Boy #2....Peter Clayton-Luce (Neither of these characters are particularly Mormon.  They're too young to be on a mission and the pamphlets they're carrying are of inderminate Christian material.  It's a small matter, but why call them Mormons?)

Director of Photography....Peter Sova (Tin Men, Good Morning, Vietnam, Donnie Brasco, The Proposition, Wicker Park, Lucky Number Slevin, Push)

Previews
1. The Incredible Hulk
Oh look, it's another film with Liv Tyler.  
2. The Scorpion King 2
What makes me sad is that I know I'll break down and see this film at some point.
3. Hellboy II
And somehow I've still managed to avoid seeing this film.  
4. The Incredible Hulk TV Series
The Strangers would have been a lot better if Bixby's Hulk had shown up to give the killers a thrashing.

Bonus Features
1. Deleted Scenes
James Reflects At The Bar
I'm not sure what the point of this scene was.   It doesn't add much to the character and it certainly isn't all that interesting.   And I'm sure one reason that it is deleted is that it might point to the possibility that James shouldn't be driving at any point in this film.
Bathroom Discussion
This one seems more to the point of explaining the James and Kristen's relationship though in some ways it explores their relationship without making things clear.  
2. The Elements of Terror
A typical promo piece.   There are some interesting aspects of the set and the filming that might be worth a look but it's not much of a learning experience compared to listening to an Eli Roth commentary or getting a behind the scenes look at something truly fascinating.

Val Kilmer's Steam Bath of Death

The Chaos Experiment (2009)
Directed by Philippe Martinez
Screenplay by Robert Malkani

Some films are mind fucks.   The Chaos Experiment is more of a mind hand job.   It's not brilliant but it does give you some sense of mental release, though maybe not the sort of satisfying release you might get from something that is actually profound and thought-provoking.  If this metaphor is uncomfortably extended for you then you can imagine how it feels to sit through all 90 minutes of The Chaos Experiment.

Val Kilmer plays "Jimmy" which may not be his real name.  He shows up at the Grand Rapids Press--I think it's actually quaint that any earth shattering events could occur in Grand Rapids, Michigan.   Anyhow, this guy shows up saying he's got a story that the press must run.  You see, he can prove that global warming will make people go crazy and kill each other thus bringing civilization to utter collapse.   Being a conscientious scientist, Jimmy can prove his theory because he has run an experiment.  His experiment consists of luring 6 unwitting people into a steam bath and locking them inside.  The editor nods and smiles and calls the cops.  Actually he calls a specific cop, which is Armand Assante who has nothing better to do than to interrogate Val Kilmer about the people he's holding hostage.  How did Jimmy get six people locked in a steam bath?   Well, he managed to accomplish this by convincing them that it was a dating event.   Steam-dating?   Yep.   If only he was a little bit crazier then he would have been crazy enough to call it steam-dating.
Now the film goes back and forth between the interrogation, the people in the steam bath and occasional shots of Val Kilmer lying in a hospital bed and then imagining himself on a carousel.   Like I said, it's not exactly mind...blowing.  But it is mildly interesting.

Now I do have several issues of methodology with regards to the steam bath test.   First of all, is it the steam heat that drives the six people nutty or is it the fact that they're confined?  How is this supposed to relate to being "trapped" on Earth as the climate becomes more steamy?  And the fact is that two of the six people (Catherine and Christopher) knew about the nature of the experiment to begin with.   Christopher turns out to be Jimmy's doctor from the mental institution and Catherine is his girlfriend or wife or something like that.   Thus they had an unfair advantage over the other four who had no idea what was going on and they really were in some sort of Grand Rapids singles steam bath mixer.
The steam or the confinement merely confirm some character issues.  For instance, Frank is a goomba jerk of the kind that makes you wish the whole male population of New Jersey could be washed away in a big storm.  There's a special kind of overt misogyny in this brand of character that sometimes conceals a tender side, but mostly just conceals an even deeper misogyny and lack of civilized grace.  While it's a relief that he's the first to be killed (while trying to choke Jessie, I think)  it's also a shame because he was the most likely to go apeshit and just kill everyone and then suck the marrow from their bones while jerking off or something truly cinematically insane.   Okay, maybe it's for the best this film wasn't directed by anyone like Cronenberg.  
Grant is an aging jock who doesn't mind mentioning that he takes viagra because it forces people to have to think about his erect penis.   He manages to hold it together longer than the rest and when he finally does break down and get violent it turns out that the wild accusations he throws around were true.   He rightly figures out that Catherine and Christopher are in cahoots.  So the steam may have driven him to rage but the experiment was tainted by the fact that the rage he had was actually quite on the mark.  As for Margaret, I can't believe she would give up a night of listening to The Cure and cutting herself for any kind of organized dating event with strangers.   The only surprise is that two people are killed before she takes a jagged edge of tile and slasher her own throat with it.  I would have thought she would have killed herself while the others were introducing themselves and talking about their likes and dislikes.  "Likes: kittens, ponies, The Cure and boys who turn out to be gay or suicidal or both.  Dislikes:  The fact that I have utterly no ability to feel anything positive or negative whether I'm masturbating or cutting myself."   The only reason I can think that Margaret was there was as a special request because Grant and Frank seem like people who are used to having sex with people who are crying before after and during the act.
And then there's Jessie, who clearly was lured into this situation because she is the kind of woman who has an attractive body, knows this fact and also knows the monetary value of it and intends to liquidate that capital for the right settlement.   At least, that's the initial character assessment of her.   While it might be true that all people do a version of sizing up someone's attractiveness, income and potential most people are less forthright about their calculations and have the civilized veneer of hiding it under the conventional talk about "love" and "ponies" and "money doesn't matter" or whatever.  Jessie provides the fanservice of walking around and lounging with her top off long enough to show off the goods and establish her dominance of attractiveness and to inform Frank that he's out of the running and then having sized up the bath as being small time tries to leave thus sparking the crisis of the film.
The other key feature of this character is that she is not killed by anyone from inside the steam bath.  In fact she takes multiple shots in the forehead from a nail gun shot by an unknown assailant while she's looking out the broken window of the door.   This should really scotch the scientific value of the experiment because her death was artificially introduced by an outside factor and was not an organic result of the collapse of civilization in the bath.  In fact, at the moment of her death the five survivors were all cooperating and acting as a team.   This would seem to run in direct opposition to the germ of the theory.

The real shame of The Chaos Experiment is that it has more than a few moments of beautiful cinematography and music in the service of a less than stellar film.   And even the film would have been better if the nutty theory that instigated the event made more sense.  But then, maybe that's the real point:  the theory and the methodology were inherently flawed and thus the whole thing was bound to be just a pointless exercise in confinement and killing.   It was a poorly thought out experiment put together by a guy who is not all there.   Of course the methodology doesn't make sense.   This guy thinks he can get gold coins by bopping midgets on the head with a wand.   And the real villain, Christopher, just seems to get his jollies by indulging the lunatics long enough to see what new experiences he can get from them.   So he and Catherine were enjoying some thrill-kill fun while they could.   There is something interesting about how Catherine tells Christopher that he doesn't control Jimmy anymore and thus he has to kill him.  And I feel a little bad for crazy Jimmy who will probably not get another chance to work on his crazy theories.  But the question is what kind of pair of lunatics would willingly have themselves locked into a steam bath with some people?

I'm not sure what this film means for science.   Should we ignore the people who say that climate change is a danger to the world because they're all crazy?   You might say that it isn't about the science but once you mention a topic like global warming it's hard not to think about the implications.   I certainly don't agree with Jimmy's assessment of the results of global warming or with his method of proving it.   He could have locked six people up in a room with comfortable temperature and they probably would have killed each other.  Especially these six people with whom I don't think I could have tolerated spending time even in an unlocked steam bath.

I can't help but get the feeling that this film was a result of someone getting slightly cooked inside a steam bath and then with the magic of Final Draft translating their addled ravings into screenplay format.   If you lock six people in a steam bath with a screen showing this film will they also kill each other?  I don't want to find out.

Jimmy....Val Kilmer (Tombstone, Top Gun, The Doors, Real Genius, Top Secret, Batman Forever, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang)  I dare you to come up with Val Kilmer's internal monologue as you watch his face in this film.  
Detective Mancini....Armand Assante (The Mambo Kings, The Odyssey, NCIS) Oh, Armand Assante.  What else can I say?
Grant....Eric Roberts (Star 80, The Pope of Greenwich Village, The Odyssey, Cecil B. Demented, The Dark Knight) I have a friend who thinks Eric Roberts is actually a psychopath.  I'd like to use this film as evidence to the contrary but I have a feeling that there would be hard feelings if I encouraged the watching of this film as any attempt at proving a point.
Frank....Quinn Duffy (The Last Don, Game of Death, JAG, NightMan, The Nutty Professor)
Margaret...Cordelia Reynolds (CSI: Miami, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Damages, Army Wives, Cold Case)
Jessie....Eve Mauro (Miss March, CSI: NY, CSI: Miami, Bones, Torchwood, Osombie, Dexter, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Wicked Lake, Land of the Lost)
Christopher....Patrick Muldoon (Days of Our Lives, Saved by the Bell, Who's the Boss?, Melrose Place, Starship Troopers, Stigmata, Ice Spiders)
Catherine....Megan Brown (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, RoboDoc, Feast III: The Happy Finish)
Walter Grubbs, editor of the Grand Rapids Press....Ricky Wayne (Mexican Sunrise, Real Steel, The Glades, Burn Notice, Monsterwolf, House of Bones)
Lt. Clark...Doug Alchin (To Live and Die in Dixie)
Officer Briggs....Julianne Howe-Bouwens
Newspaper Comedy Writer....Mark Bonto (LOL, Real Steel, 61*)
Nurse in Hospital...Carrie Drazek (Bart Got a Room)
Nurse....Yvonne Misiak
Orderly....James Cantrell
Tara...Sarah Martinez
Waitress...Jana Veldheer (Offspring, Playback, To Live and Die in Dixie)
Press Staff 1...Eileen Briesch
Press Staff 3....Mike Karpus
Ricky...Shelby Stehlin (Video Girl, Exit 727)
Sam...Michael Travis

Cinematography by Erik Curtis (Game of Death)  If Grand Rapids looks as good as this guy makes it look then it might be worth a trip.  

Original Music by Don MacDonald (Fido, Kissed, Suspicious River)

Previews
Meteor 
Nothing says the end of the world in a fiery storm of molten rocks like the combination of Stacy Keach, Ernie Hudson, Christopher Lloyd and Jason Alexander.   The question is: if you knew the world was going to end in the next 36 hours would you be curious enough to see this film?  
Knights of Bloodsteel
Wow.  This looks so bad I think I might have to see it.  
The Last Templar
If The Leonardo Cipher was too slick for you then you might enjoy this Mira Sorvino historical treasure hunting apocalyptic supernatural conspiracy movie.  

Hollywood Gets The Axe

Hatchetman (2003)
Directed by Robert Tiffi
Screenplay by Robert Tiffi

Not only is Hatchetman a typical example of a psycho slasher film but it reaches even further back into the cautionary tropes about moving to the big city.   In fact, there are so many cliches in this film that you might almost wonder if it's a parody.   Stripper trying to get into law school?  Check. Stripper being stalked by ex-boyfriend who just got released from prison?  Check.  New girl in town who wants to try out stripping to make some money and is now possibly going to get killed when she should really just go back to Smalltown, USA and marry the first single guy who can operate a tractor?  Check.   Girls who take showers while riddled with fear?  Check.  Killer who puts on a gruesome mask and a hooded sweatshirt?  Check.  Killer who can miraculously survive a pitchfork to the chest and escape before the end credits to allow for a sequel that will never happen?  Check.   That's already more checks than you'll find in Prague.   (That pun is still not as bad as the cliches in Hatchetman.)

Horror films play on and with fear.  Fear of the unknown is the key fear.  It's the fear that something that we can't quantify is going to jump out of somewhere dark and end our existence.  In Hatchetman this is combined with the fear of the gruesome or ugly.   The mask the killer wears is seriously scary rotted flesh skeleton toothed monster.   But, it is still just a mask.   And once you realize that you're not really dealing with a supernatural creature (albeit one with a hand axe picked up from the local hardware depot) then the fear is quantifiable.  And unlike a creature like a T-Rex a killer with a mask and an axe is almost charmingly human scale.   And because he's not a ghost or some sort of crazed super-zombie the fear is mitigated and transformed.  On the one hand a human scale killer living in a rational world is not as scary as a super smart shark that can float in the air.   On the other hand, Norman Bates is scary because he is possible.  And a stalker with an axe is possible.  Although some of the hacking he's able to do with very little swinging room are quite improbable and more than likely physically impossible.  Seriously.  Hatchetman is able to hack off limbs with a handaxe while sticking his arm into the driver's side window of a car and swinging in that narrow space.   That's almost ridiculous even for a supernatural slasher.

But of course, the fact that he's targeting strippers is what moves us into the realm of the ridiculous psycho slasher subgenre of film.  The killer implicates our own voyeuristic tendencies in his complex web of morality.  On the one hand he's killing these purveyors of sexuality presumably as a punishment for their commodification of that sexuality.   But his very stalking of these girls makes him a voyeur and someone who seeks out sin, even as he tries to punish it.  And what is the real reason the Hatchetman is killing strippers?  You could say it's because of whatever motivation it is he reveals (I think it had something to do with his mother, probably.  I really didn't care at that point.)  But the real reason he's killing strippers is because strippers make awfully photogenic victims and it gives a perfect reason to show scenes inside a strip club.   This is slightly better than the traditional made-for-cable "thriller" where the cops always seem to have to get information from a stripper, but not by much.   Making the strippers an integral plot element is both more honest and more desperately obvious.   But really, would it have been any less ridiculous if the victims were a college swim team whose members really liked to take long showers?   It's the desires of the audience that are as much the problem as the poor schmucks who make this stuff.   This civilization clearly has some issues.   Big issues.  And yeah, it's kind of ridiculous to try to work out these big issues while talking about a silly hatchet killer movie, but it seems more fruitful to try to get something out of having watched this film instead of being drawn into the question of which stripper's nipples were the most interesting.

The one thing that had me going in this film was that there were several candidates for the killer set up. The stalker released from prison was an obvious red herring.   Rob the overly enthusiastic apartment manager who installs a camera in Star's bedroom was goofy enough that being the killer would have been a good contrast for his dumb regular persona.   Gerry the rich guy with strange proclivities certainly would have been a good suspect from a class struggle perspective.  For that matter, Curtis the actual killer (oops, spoiler) lives in a really nice house all by himself and so isn't exactly a poor down on  his luck psychopathic murderer.  The notable red herring is Marty the creepy guy who likes to work on his car and sneak into girls' apartments and steal their underwear.  The combination of Marty, Rob and Curtis the Hatchetman makes Los Angeles into a place where your choices are A) Have your every move watched by a stalker with a hidden camera.  B) Have your underwear stolen by someone who breaks into your apartment. C) Have your hands hacked off by an axe murderer.   That's not a world of great opportunity in Hollywood.
The one perhaps unintentional red herring that had me going for a while was that I thought the killer could be the nervous first time stripper Molly, but maybe it was just that the actress was adding a subtle possibility there that wasn't actually plausible in the plot.

To go back to the strippers for a second I think they serve to some extant to distance us from the horror.  If you think of horror stories (and murder mysteries) as a way of standing in for our fear of death then the victims serve as sacrificial replacements.   The nearer these sacrificial stand-ins are to ourselves in form the closer we feel to the situation and the more catharsis we get from watching our substitutes die in our place.   It serves to bring out our fear of death and then in some way allow us to deal with it.
Conversely, the further the victim is from ourselves the closer we get to a callous, even fetishistic enjoyment of seeing someone who isn't like us dying instead of ourselves or our substitute.   Thus the cheers in the audience when Paris Hilton was killed in House of Wax.   This thesis could go a long way to explain other horror movie tropes in terms of who gets killed and how.  It's just an idea.  I don't know how much I buy into it.   Suffice it to say that I'm not a stripper in Los Angeles, but I am a human being and I'm still disturbed when I see any person get their hands lopped off by a guy with an axe.

The collecting aspect of Curtis the Hatchetman is interesting because it is emblematic of consumerist material desire.   He can't just see the strippers, he has to kill them.  He can't just kill them, he has to take a trophy for his collection.   If the strippers are commodifying sexuality then the Hatchetman is commodifying death and making material collectibles out of it.  Though, looking at the size of the refrigerator in his garage where he keeps his hands you have to wonder how many more people he can kill before he runs out of storage space in his current mode of collecting.

As for the big city?  Well, it's the real killer, isn't it?   People come from everywhere with their dreams of...whatever it is that people dream of and then they become strippers and then some psycho kills them.   There's your cautionary morality tale: Beware of Hollywood and the psychos that dwell in it. And, in a larger sense, beware of the big city and the ways it can kill you.
On the other hand, the morality tale is diluted by the happy ending where Claudia is accepted to a law school in LA and her cop boyfriend Sonny finally proposes marriage, though Curtis the Hatchetman does manage to survive a pitchfork in the chest and evade capture so maybe he can still exist as a boogeyman to warn young folks about the dangers of moving to the big city and becoming morally lax.
In fact, that may be a more satisfying way of interpreting the ending than imagining that the filmmakers ever thought they'd make Hatchetman 2.

I thought I'd sworn off slasher films after the pile of them I watched a while back but I let this one slip through since it had been a while.   Now I remember why I had avoided these kinds of films for so long.  Films like this defy categorical interpretation.   Is it misogynistic or does having Claudia survive and go to law school make it empowering.  Does Molly become another slave to the system of exploitation or is she empowering herself by taking charge of her own sexuality?  One of the reasons this film snuck up on me was that the cover art and description soft-pedalled the stripper aspect.   The cover itself seems to indicate a forest motif (which would make more sense with the hatchet being the weapon of choice.)    But it's hard to avoid the fact that this film can be summed up by the statement "If you love watching strippers, but also want to watch them get killed, then this is your movie."
Of course, it's equally true that if you replaced the word "stripper" with "attractive person" then you would not only be describing much of the horror genre but much of the murder mystery genre as well.   How many Law and Order (or even more clearly, CSI) begin with the gruesome murder of an attractive  person?   (Sometimes even strippers.)    So maybe there's something wrong with the culture in general and trying to pin it on one film that is more obvious about it is kind of disingenuous.  

Claudia Wagner, stripper applying to law school -- Cheryl Burns (L.A. Noire)  Are there any strippers who aren't applying to law school?  Why is it always law school?  I'd love to see a film where a stripper is working her way through a graduate program in Hermeneutics and is thus likely to have to remain a stripper even after she graduates.
Sonny Banner, Claudia's cop boyfriend -- Jon Briddell (Midnight Movie, 11/11/11, Hot Wax Zombies on Wheels)  On the basis of films like this it seems clear that the entire LAPD is dating strippers and erotic novelists.
Molly, Claudia's roommate -- Nina Tapanin (Witches of the Caribbean, Wash Dry and Spin Out, Red Riding Hood Meets Frankenstein)  You might dismiss the character of the innocent girl who gains self-confidence through stripping, but I like how you might almost believe she's the real killer.
Star -- Mia Zottolli (Blood Scarab, The Mummy's Kiss, All for Lust, Rolling Kansas, Carnal Desires)  Star is pretty unsympathetic right up until you see that Rob the apartment manager has put a hidden camera in her bedroom.   Even Curtis the Hatchetman thinks that's not cool, and he ends up killing her...with a hatchet...and keeping her hands as a trophy.
Chloe Bennett -- Racquel Richard (Expose)
Michele Spencer -- Elizabeth Ryan
Brittany Evans -- Fonta Sawyer
Rita -- Leila Renae aka Leila Hashemzadeh (Staying on Top, Passion Cove)
Tina -- Christina Lepanto
Robyn -- Robyn Heller (That Side of a Shadow)
Rob, the manager of a crappy apartment complex -- Chris Moir (In Hell) You know your character is doomed when the killer has better ethics than you.
Curtis Moore -- Darren Keefe Reiher (My Big Fat Independent Movie, Sons of Anarchy, 24, Chuck)
Marty, a panty thief/mechanic -- Matt McDonald (Scream, Freedom Park, Idol)
Daniel Strong -- Daniel Browne/Daniel Rhyder  (The Cavanaughs, Layover, 3-Day Weekend)
DiAngelo -- Gino Maurizio
Dallas -- Gina Maurizio
Gerry Rubins, a rich guy who throws crazy parties -- Brian Katkin (Burial of the Rats, Dinocroc)
Officer Jacobs -- Dan Warner (Bunny Whipped, Goldmember, Norma Jean & Marilyn, NCIS, CSI, CSI: Miami, The Shield, Cold Case, 24, The Bernie Mac Show, Alias, Passions, Hallowed Ground, Criminal Minds, 2 Broke Girls)
Officer Mills -- Toney E. Smith (Take Down, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Sex Surrogate)
Plo
Tenant #2 -- Rachael Leigh Santhon (Passenger Side, Adjusting Arbie, What We Do Is Secret)
Police Officers -- Joseph Luis Rubin (Ali, Diagnosis Murder)
Tim Thomas (Rendition)
John D. Crawford (Elizabethtown, American Dreamz, Walk Hard, Step Brothers, The Vampire's Assistant)
David Banks (Nutty Professor II)
Jason LeGrande (Bikini Detectives, Yard Sale)
Ike Ogut (Kandahar, Bury the Evidence, CSI: Miami)
Carlos Osorio (Sexo con amor)
Duffey Westlake (Joan of Arcadia)
Alan Deane (The Cape)
Floyd Conder (Pants on Fire)

Cinematography by Ken Blakey (Mandrake, L.A. Heat, Freedom Strike, Executive Target, Beverly Hills Bordello, Bikini Summer, Bikini Summer II)
Original Music by Gerhard Daum (Hollywood Kills, Forsthaus Falkenau)

Bonus Trailer
Spinning Boris 
Another Showtime original.  In this one Jeff Goldblum and Liev Schreiber help Boris Yeltsin track down a masked killer who's hacking strippers to death with a handaxe.

No Impact, Man

No Impact Man (2008)
directed by Laura Gabbert & Justin Schein

I thought I was going to be lightly amused by this film that documents a writer's self-aggrandizing attempt to reduce his footprint on the earth.   Instead I found myself furious at the self-righteous sham that Colin Beavan engaged in.  No Impact Man should be called No Impact Scam, because the real trick is the commodification of a concept and the packaging of that for the profit of Colin Beavan.    Nice trick, No Impact Man.   Even the name No Impact Man is like a supervillain taunt.  I imagine him wearing some sort of skintight hemp outfit with a big zero on it and cackling while stroking his no-impact goattee and counting up the cash that this scam has brought in for him.   I'm sure all of this has "raised awareness" of something for somebody at some point, but let's call it what it is: a writer's scam to avoid having to get a real job as a minimum wage slave.  

Forming his Legion of Doom, No Impact Man declares an arbitrary set of rules that define his attempt to have no environmental impact.   I would have thought that shutting down the laptop and not blogging would have been high on the list of things that make an environmental impact, but hey, No Impact Man has to be seen making no impact otherwise how would people know that he is a supervillain.

And what would a supervillain be without sidekicks.  No Impact Man's sidekicks are Business Week Wife and Innocent Child and of course the ever present but never mentioned No Impact Dog.
Probably the most egregious omission in this film is the very high impact dog that No Impact Man keeps in Manhattan.   It's the size of a small horse.   And in the deleted scenes it looks like there might be a second dog in the household, too.  And yet there is never a mention of the dog in the film.   I haven't read his book, so I don't know if he mentions the dog in there.   But in the film this horselike hound is a glaring indicator of the conspiracy of silence that people like No Impact Man engage in when it comes to the arbitrary rules of "green" that they attempt to enforce.   While we see Colin and Michelle argue about having a second child there is never a question that maybe keeping a horse-sized dog in Manhattan is as irresponsible and selfish as keeping a donkey would be, and far less useful and clean to boot.

In fact, if No Impact Man managed to impact zoning and regulations so that people in New York could keep small pack animals it might go a long way towards creating the kind of environmentally friendly world that he claims to want.   A donkey would do all the things that their bicycles would do and it would also be a nice pet and could take the place of the otherwise useless carnivore they are keeping captive.   And yeah, I am curious if they put their dog on a vegetarian diet like themselves or if they granted the dog a big impact waiver to eat meat.   The fact that nobody ever questions the matter of the dog in the film is indicative of the kind of hucksterism that this project represents.

Another key moment is when a company lends No Impact Man a solar cell to power his laptop when he shuts down the power to his apartment.   Must be nice.   Must be grand to live a life where people just give you things.   Wow, I could try to lower my impact if people just gave me things.  I'd ride a donkey all thirty miles to my job every day if someone wanted to give me a donkey and some fodder.   But nobody's making a movie about me so I have to pay for gas and drive to work instead of hooking up my laptop to my free solar power so I can blog about how I walked up some stairs to feed some meat to my dog while I eat local Manhattan lettuce for lunch.

Initially I thought that No Impact Woman would be the villain here, what with her addiction to shopping and her job shilling for the man at Business Week.   But a few minutes watching No Impact Man's controlling personality and sullen lack of humor and I can see why I'd want to throw myself into my work and maybe get my happiness through shopping or a child because No Impact Man is a jerk.  And for better and for worse he's a jerk with an ideology and a plan which makes him both interesting and more of a jerk than your average plain vanilla jerk.   I suppose that explains some of the attraction she might have for him.   Still, he comes off as a big enough jerk that you kind of want her to go ahead and fill the house with expensive handbags.

I guess this whole project would be less ridiculous if No Impact Man was living in a suburb with even the smallest sliver of land associated with it.   I'd like to see how he feels about bike lanes if he or his wife had to bike thirty miles to work and thirty miles back.    (A donkey cart would be much better for this.  If anyone has one they'd like to donate to me, I'll take it.)   It's really quaint to keep a litter box full of mulch.  Keeping a pile in the yard is actually hard work, buddy.   One of the most telling images in the film for me was when No Impact Man decided to visit a farm and there he is standing in a field and scribbling stuff down in a notebook like Nancy Drew so that he can "learn about where food comes from."  Here's the answer:  your food comes from people who actually sweat and work so that you can sit in your apartment tossing meat chunks to your dog and scribble a blog entry on your free solar powered laptop, you worthless remora.  Oh, I stand corrected, a remora actually performs a function in return for its symbiotic existence.  

A lot of my vehemence (and I seem to be harboring a lot of it) has to do with the faux innocent naivete of No Impact Man's project.  "Oh, I didn't know that it was so hard to walk up all these stairs."  "Oh, I did't realize that keeping food in a clay pot wouldn't actually refrigerate it.   How stupid do you have to be to attempt to replicate a means of keeping things cool that is used in Nigeria?   I'm sorry, maybe I'm just ignorant of the advanced refrigeration techniques of the Yoruba, but frankly I don't think so.  I suspect that some bigger fraud sold No Impact Man a bill of goods about how keeping a pot in a second pot with some wet sand in between would make for a cheap refrigerator and because No Impact Man is equal parts huckster and rube, he went for it.    Maybe he's just lucky nobody tried to sell him on the idea of putting a layer of dog poop mixed with straw all around his house as insulation like they do in Zampoochia.

Seeing the piles of people jump on the bandwagon and follow No Impact Man's project is seriously disheartening.   Look, he's riding a bicycle on the Today Show!  But if watching No Impact Man peddle his story to the media is annoying, watching him peddle his bill of goods to college students is cringe-worthy.   It's insidiuous, not because being aware of your environmental impact is bad, but because thinking that you can live your life like No Impact Man and thus save the planet is bullshit plain and simple.   Do we live in a wasteful society?  You bet we do.   And do stunts like this have any long term impact?  Well, my answer is no.   And if your only response is that things like this experiment "raise awareness" then I can only say that raising awareness doesn't actually lead to long term changes. If it did, then there would be no pets allowed in Manhattan and they'd replace the motor vehicles with more organic donkey carts.   But they're never going to do that, are they?

I never thought I'd say this, but the real hero of this movie is an old long-haired paunchy hippy.   Mayer Vishner is the only person in the course of the film to question No Impact Man's premise and challenge the fact that what he does in this stunt cannot make up for the lifestyle that he and his wife encourage.

MAYER:  At the risk of being too personal, but, you know, it's not, it's just the facts. Michelle writes for Business Week.   


COLIN:  Yes. 


MAYER:  Millions of trees are cut down on a regular basis in order to promote the thoroughly fallacious propaganda that American corporate capitalism is good for the people, good for you and me. You know, now, if it's your contention that she makes up for it, that evens out because she doesn't take the elevator in your 5th Avenue co-op, I have to say you're either dishonest or delusional.

I think it was awesome that this moment was kept in the film by the filmmakers.   And while you might dismiss Mayer Vishner as a lefty, he's at least on the mark about the kind of "I recycled so I can keep working for the company that's making all of planned obsolescent products that can't be recyled" feel good activity that No Impact Man engages in.   No Impact Man's real superpower seems to be his power to quietly dodge the old hippie's thorny question and never address it.   And like the issue of the No Impact Horse Sized Dog, it's easy to bury the question because nobody wants to touch the issue of the working woman (even if she's working at a place that depends on the very system that her husband claims is destroying the world) just like nobody dares to question the notion of keeping a horse sized dog on 5th Avenue because dogs are cute and friendly.

And that's what's so damned galling about things like No Impact Man.  They give us a veneer of effort to hide our structural excess.   And to see people who have plenty of time on their hands preaching nonsense when so many of the rest of us have to work so hard just to keep from drowning is just plain evil.   Every day when I'm driving home from work and sometimes when I'm driving to work there are people like No Impact Man biking along in leisurely fashion and I think to myself "it must be nice to not have to be at work in five minutes so that I can just ride a bicycle and slow down the cars driven by poor schmucks who can't afford to cycle around in the country that has enriched the very jerks like No Impact Man who now tell me that I should do more to consume less of the things that made him rich."
I think in long sentences when I drive.  

So, No Impact Man made me fume in a way that I'm sure was horrible for the environment.   So I'm just going to go back to my compost heap and do my part to make the world slightly less artificial without making a blog to glorify myself while doing it.  

Documentis Personae
Colin Beavan, a somewhat naive jerk who decides to try an experiment
Michelle Conlin, the spouse of said naive jerk.  Writer for Business Week.  
Mayer Vishner, the hero of this movie

Original Music by Bobby Johnston

Extra Features
1. A Letter From Beth
Beth offers the No Impacts access to her books and periodicals. That's so nice of her.
2. Beachwalk & Talk
I really want to know if that second horse sized dog belongs to No Impact Man.
3. Bike Rant
This scene highlights the worst tyranny in the country, that of the homeowners' association, or in this case the co-op bozos who think a bicycle on the street outside of their building would be an eyesore.
4. Bobby Johnston, Composer
This may have been the most entertaining highlight of this experience for me.  I really liked the composer's methodology and the music is really light and fun.  
5. Building Super
Another hero.   This guy has to carry the weight of other people's attempts to have no impact or high impact or whatever.
6. Extended Mayer Rant
I was disappointed that the "extended" rant didn't include the key portion of the rant that was in the actual film.  
7. Freegans
I've always wondered about the incidence of parasites in food acquired through dumpster diving.
And I will continue to wonder because this scene doesn't answer that question.
8. How To Make A Pot In A Pot
The question isn't "how?" but rather "why?"  Nigerian style refrigeration?   Yeah.
9. How To Make Vinegar
Slightly useful if you don't already know how to make vinegar.
10.  Pregnancy Reveal Alternative
Not nearly as suspenseful as the way we find out in the final cut.
11.  No Impact Date
I think I'm going to call up someone tomorrow and ask her out on a No Impact Date.  
12. Scrabble
I can't believe they cut out this fascinating scene of people playing scrabble and talking about the environment.
13.  Sundance Q&A
Nobody asked and nobody answered any of the questions I wanted answered.
14. The Future of Bees
Maybe if there weren't so many itinerant hives and people were better about keeping local hives instead of trucking them in and taking them away we wouldn't have to worry about the colony collapses.  Also a reduced dependence on pesticides.  Oh, why do I bother suggesting things like this.  Just recycle some cups and take the stairs with that bag of meat for your horse-sized dog in Manhattan.    
15. Transportation Alternatives
And once again, nobody mentions donkey carts.   Because nobody wants to have to deal with the dirty reality of what it would take to make things better.  Clean air means smellier streets.  

Oscilloscope Releases
1. Gunnin' For that #1 Spot
Another documentary about people who look at basketball as their great chance.  Cheery.
2. Flow
Water and who controls it.  
3. Dear Zachary
There's only so much personal tragedy documentary I can handle.  I know this is a good story, but still.
4. Wendy and Lucy
Has Michelle Williams made a genuinely happy film lately?  The only way this one could seem less chipper would be if she were looking at basketball as her only hope out of a hopeless life.
5.  Frontrunners
People running for president of their high school class.   I'm sure these little sociopaths are fascinating.
6. Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie
If this movie actually does break out of the confining genre expectations of a Bigfoot Movie I'll be genuinely surprised.
7. Treeless Mountain
A depressing Korean film.   Just what I wanted for Christmas.   I'm sure it's also heartwarming in some way.
8.  Scott Walker 30th Century Man
Looks like it would make a good double feature with The Devil and Daniel Johnston.
9. The Garden
This is kind of the opposite of No Impact Man.   It also highlights why genuine attempts at doing something naturally constructive with urban land is more difficult than the window dressing that No Impact encourages.
10. Burma VJ
Now would be an interesting time to revisit this doc about Burmese protests.
11. Unmistaken Child
Another Tibetan lama story.  
12. No Impact Man
The trailer looks more playful than the actual people or the story is.

Win Ben Stein's Trojan Horse

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008)
Directed by Nathan Frankowski
Screenplay by Kevin Miller & Ben Stein

Expelled is possibly the worst Holocaust documentary I've ever seen.   First of all, it seems to conflate the tragedy of the Shoah with the erection of the Berlin Wall.   And then the filmmakers conflate all of this with the issues of evolution, eugenics, and contemporary academic freedom which are only tenuously related to the Holocaust.  

It's a shame that this film keeps mixing things up so badly, because Ben Stein's reaction to the Holocaust is genuinely moving.   You can sense his emotional connection.   Mostly you can sense this because of the way he sits at Dachau holding his head in his hands.  Ben Stein obviously feels the pain of the Holocaust deeply and while he does seem to get it confused with the Berlin Wall and the scourge of Soviet Communism I can tell that the Holocaust means a lot to him because everytime he disagrees with something or someone he compares it to the Holocaust (and sometimes to the Berlin Wall, but like I said, he seems to get confused sometimes.)

According to Expelled Charles Darwin was Hitler's intellectual forefather and people believing in Darwin's theory of evolution caused the Holocaust--and also the Berlin Wall.   Also, according to this film, people who believe in evolution are firing people from their jobs for not agreeing with them, which is sort of like putting up a Berlin Wall of ideas and then rounding up the ideas you disagree with and murdering them in some sort of metaphorical Holocaust.   And just because it's a metaphor doesn't mean that it can't be real, so Ben Stein goes to concentration camps and the Berlin Wall to show us that ideas can become real and that people who believe in evolution won't rest until they've put everyone else behind a wall and then murdered them.    It's really hard to disagree with this logic.   And I won't disagree with it, because Ben Stein is right and there really was a Berlin Wall and a Holocaust so he must be right about everything else too.    That means the people shown in this film are obviously being persecuted by the academic Evolution establishment.

Ben Stein is absolutely right about how academic institutions are against freedom of ideas.
I have a chemist friend who has been trying for years to get grants to publish his work on the transformation of base metals into gold but who is instead forced by the academic establishment to teach a form of chemistry he does not believe in just to keep his job.    This isn't the free marketplace of ideas he imagined when he escaped across the Berlin Wall carrying his Holocaust survivor father on his back.  There's something to be said for giving people the absolute freedom to say and do what they want in an academic setting.   Call me Laocoon, but I just can't shake the feeling that Ben Stein and his Trojan Horse gang don't actually want intellectual freedom and that there are plenty of ideas they'd like to shut down if they could.   That doesn't excuse the people who won't let my friend teach alchemy to his students, but it does make me awfully suspicious about the motivations of the "victims of persecution" that Ben Stein quickly equates with the victims of Hitler and Stalin.  
I just get a feeling that Ben Stein's friends are planning a party that I'm not going to be invited to.
I guess that's sort of the way people who weren't Nazis or Communists must have felt when confronted with the rise of said groups.  (See, Ben Stein.  I can equate what you're doing to what the Nazis and Communists were doing.   You've made it so easy.  All I have to do is stroke my chin gravely and close my eyes and suddenly it looks like I'm thinking of you as a threat as serious as Hitler or Stalin.   And maybe you and your Trojan Horse are that kind of threat to me.)

So why did I even bother to see this film?  Because I was curious.  Because I've actually seen how petty academics use their small power to enforce literary discipline on those who might question their way of seeing and talking about things.   And when academics can be this vicious in the relatively innocuous fields of literature and fine arts you can imagine the political stakes when we're talking about disciplines like science, politics, law and history.   So I was prepared to see someone go after the way that academics control the way we are allowed to speak about topics and the way the academy can use the badge of institutions to decide who is or isn't a credible speaker.   The tricky thing here is that if Ben Stein had gone after the literary enforcers he could have shot fish in a barrel when it comes to making people look silly for shutting other opinions down for arbitrary reasons.   But with science we know there's a lot more going on.   My other reason for watching this film is that I'm not an atheist, and I've found the radical atheism of the self-proclaimed defenders of science to be (to put it mildly) off-putting.
I was hoping that Ben Stein would have a go at them without resorting to the things which he (of course) resorted to.   But then, I should have expected that because Ben Stein has a Trojan Horse of the Apocalypse and it's about more than just Intelligent Design or finding a room to acknowledge God in science, it's about gaining ground for the religion of the rich and the ignorant to displace not only the secular creeds of academia but in so doing to also displace the religion of the oppressed and the religion of those who believe in a God that is not dependent on remaining ignorant of the natural world.   I suspect the people in Ben Stein's Trojan Horse are carrying a large number of corollary opinions that might even shock Ben Stein if he thought he'd have to live long enough to see his friends take dominion and make them come to pass.    But Ben Stein doesn't care, because he's made a strategic alliance and he's sticking to it.  

I think what bothers me most about this film is that technically speaking I believe in the notion of "intelligent design" insofar as I believe in one God (indivisible) who created the universe and who cannot be quantified or contained by our meagre senses and imagination.    So I should be on the side of people arguing against people like Richard Dawkins who insist on the absolute belief that God doesn't exist.
But something about this film just sticks in my craw and so I feel like Laocoon staring at the Trojan Horse wondering what's hidden on the inside of it that makes me mistrust it.   I can't quite put my finger on it, but something about this whole project makes me feel like a little queasy, like these people are secretly plotting to put up a new Berlin Wall and then commit a Holocaust-like genocide.
I suspect a bait and switch here and that I'm not actually welcome in the ID camp because the intelligent design in question is much more specific than they want to let on and Ben Stein won't spoil their game by admitting it.  Because Ben Stein has a whole herd of Trojan Horses and multiple agendas at play.
It would be facile to say that Ben Stein is unleashing something he may not be able to control.   And maybe Ben Stein has come to some sort of arrangement wherein he won't find the world he's created all that uncomfortable.  But for me, I look at the people at the Discovery Institute and I have to wonder if my belief in God would in fact be welcome there or if I would be first on their list of people to be sent to the work camp.  (Oh, did I just equate the supporters of Intelligent Design with Hitler and Stalin?  Who do I think I am?  Ben Stein?)

Of course, this is all part of the theological problem I have with both the extremist atheists and their ID opponents all of whom seem to insist on the need to "prove" the existence of God.
Everybody seems to be missing the point about what God is.   If you believe in a limited God that can be proven then you don't really understand the concept.    God is not an atom.   There is no molecule of God any more than there is a molecule of Love or Goodness or Evil or Hate in this world.   Mr. Dawkins is incorrect in his insistence that this disproves the existence of such things.   But Ben Stein is equally wrong in hitching his wagon to people who are bent on trying to prove that there are such atomic proofs of inanimate concepts.    I believe that God exists.  Unlike other concepts which I believe only exist because of our belief, I believe God exists with or without our belief.   Some might say that the existence of a universe and existence is sufficient proof that a prime mover had to create these things.   I say that God would exist even if there was no universe and even if there was no "existence" as we know it.
Any God that can be proven to exist in a finite way is a paltry idea compared to this perception of God.
God isn't a particle and can't be proven or disproven by us.   God is everywhere and nowhere.   You don't need to come up with a numerological code or a cipher to prove that God exists and the existence of a fossil from millions of years ago does not disprove God.   It only disproves those beliefs of man that have nothing to do with God.  
And maybe that's my real problem with Ben Stein and his Trojan Horse friends:  they believe in a small weak God who they can trot out when they want something and when they need an excuse to put their dirty hands on me to rule me with their tyranny.   The want to believe in a God that needs them.  I believe in a God that I need.

I guess if I wanted to think about important things then this film was a great launching point for arguments and discussions about things I care about deeply.   But as a piece of propaganda, I hope Ben Stein chokes on this film someday and I hope his Trojan horsemen suffocate in their wooden decoy.  

Documentis Personae
Ben Stein -- former speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford
Dr. Richard Von Sternberg -- with a name like that you'd think this guy would be the villain of a film about the Berlin Wall and the Holocaust.  Von Sternberg is secretly planning on acquiring a nuclear device which he will most likely detonate in order to precipitate the apocalypse....just kidding.  (Seriously, you litigious bastard, I was just kidding.  If you even try to sue me for this little bit of satire I'll make you eat your own feces, you lousy kraut.)
Dr. Caroline Crocker -- an immunopharmacologist adjunct professor whose contract with George Mason U. wasn't renewed because she may have said that Jesus intelligently designed brownies in her home-ec class.  Just kidding.  Actually, Sweet Caroline is a rogue CIA vampire hunter who is trying to stop the evil Dr. Von Sternberg from acquiring a weapon of mass destruction.
Dr. Michael Egnor -- a neurosurgeon who doesn't like evolution.

Dr. Robert J. Marks II -- Firstborn son of the Holy Roman Emperor Robert J. Marks I who first came up with the plan to detonate a nuclear device with the hope of precipitating the apocalypse.   Just kidding.

Actually, Professor Marks II is a cybernetic drone who consumes old people's medicine as fuel.   

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez -- A Cuban astronomer (which is something like a real astronomer only pressed together and grilled)

Dr. Paul Nelson -- grandson of Byron Christopher Nelson and a believer that the Earth is younger than we think and thus not old enough to drink.   

Dr. William Albert Dembski -- A mathematician whose name is perilously close to Dumbski which is perilously close to being Eastern European and thus he must be a secret communist.    

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer -- A major dude in the Discovery Institute.
Dr. Jonathan Wells -- a biologist who was inspired by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church to go out and take on Darwinism.
Dr. David Berlinski -- claims that he lives in the oldest building in Paris, really likes to lean back in chairs
Dr. Walter Bradley -- Engineering prof.
Dr. Uta George -- Director of the Hadamar Memorial  (Hadamar was the site of mass sterilization and killing of "undesirables" by the Nazis.)   

Dr. Peter Atkins, British chemist and atheist
Dr. Hector Avalos -- author of Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East
Dr. Richard Dawkins -- scientist, atheist, brewer
Dr. Eugenie Scott -- scientist, chief lightning rod for intelligent designees
Dr. Michael Shermer -- founder of The Skeptics Society, if you think you can be sure of that
Mark Souder -- former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana.  Resigned in 2010 after admitting to an affair with one of his part-time staffers.
Pamela Winnick -- a writer
Dr. Daniel Dennett -- another atheist
Dr. P.Z. Myers -- one more atheist

School Janitor, a school janitor....John Deonarine
Sara, a student....Lili Asvar (Viva Laughlin, Hannah Montana, Dexter, Greek, Women's Murder Club, Worst Week, The Haunting of Molly Hartley, Love Hurts, An American Carol)
Student....Toi Rose aka Antonio Christina
Multiple animation voices....Adam Behr

Original Music by Andy Hunter

Cinematography by Nathan Frankowski & Ben Huddleston

Previews

An American Carol 

A comedy about a Michael Moore-like character who is visited by several ghosts and also there will probably be some fart jokes in this film.  Was David Zucker ever funny?

Special Features
1. Fossil Hunter by John B. Olson -- An illustrated ad for a novel.  
"Fossil hunter is a delightful romantic thriller.  A female Indiana Jones off on a scientific treasure hunt..." -- Philip E. Johnson
Ugh.   I wonder if this Lara Croft ripoff at least has the decency to also believe in moral virtues or is that too much consistency to ask of people?
I'm fairly sure that even my curiosity will not prevail upon me to read this book, but hey at least I got to see the pretty drawings of the fossil hunter lady.  

2. An Important Message From Ben Stein:  Academic Freedom Petition 
Is one Trojan Horse not enough for Ben Stein?  Nope.  Here's a little Trojan Pony for you kids.  
This is the sort of thing that sounds like something I should get behind.  I want academic freedom.  I want to be able to write papers about phrenology and to criticize Derrida and Habermas without being pilloried by some jerks with tenure.   But the Academic Freedom Petition is a little like the Keep America Clean Act.  It sounds nice until you get to the second line where they slip in the part about the people they want to clean out of America.   That's the Academic Freedom Petition in a nutshell.  It's a good idea if all you know about it is the title.   It sounds downright patriotic.   But it's about as patriotic as the various actions of the government that allow for tossing people into our Cuban dungeons based on secret evidence that nobody has to show to anybody else.  

3.  Expelled: The Book 
David Berlinksi, who really likes to lean back in chairs and who lives in Parisian luxury has written the companion book to this film.   It features an attractive female archaeologist who fights off vampire trolls in the search for true science and faith.    Also, it has some pictures of Ben Stein holding his head in his hands and pretending to be sad about something.  

4. Practical Applications
The Design Hypothesis and Medical Research 
I think this is technically speaking a deleted scene, but since admitting that any scene from this film was deleted in editing would be tantamounting to saying that the director's creation was imperfect it's not called a deleted scene.    Oh, and I know I'm only half-joking about this being the reason it's not called a deleted scene.   At any rate, I don't know why this gem about medical science benefitting from the idea of a design (and thus a designer) was left out of the film.   It is of great comfort to me to think of HMOs in the future using this great science as their guide to

5.  Expelled Theatrical Trailer
If only Ben Stein had run this documentary like an actual classroom instead of like the kind of propaganda film created by the Nazis and Communists who he claims to hate but whose style of information he really seems to have internalized.   If this had been set up as an actual classroom discussion and had been left up to a certain degree of genuine improvised questioning and answering the end result would have been something along the lines of the academic freedom that Ben Stein is asking us to sign up for.   But Ben Stein doesn't want academic freedom.  He just wants to make sure that his ideas can shut up other people's ideas.  

6.  Bonus Music Tracks by Andy Hunter
"Stars"
This song is certainly not making the case for intelligent design of music.  
This is the worst piece of music I have intentionally sat through in a long time.
"Technicolour"
I stand corrected.   THIS is the worst piece of music I've sat through in a long time.   I used to believe in music until I heard this song.  Now I realize that music is just a haphazard collection of sounds clobbered together and given a name.
"Out Of Control"
I believe in God, but I don't believe in Andy Hunter.   Why did you make this music Andy Hunter?  Why?   I guess this is better than crappy metal, but not by much.   Is this Ben Stein's way of punishing the people who watch this DVD?  

The Giant of Bilbao

The Film Crew: The Giant of Marathon (2007)

The Giant of Marathon (1959)

I had high expectations for The Film Crew's assault on The Giant of Marathon, partly because I'd seen the film before and partly because a classic sword and sandal film should be like bread and butter for these guys.   Well, the bread is a bit stale and the butter needs some salt.  

I won't go into my issues with the film itself, because that's a whole other kettle of fish that should be examined at another time.   As for The Film Crew, this is a longer film than their other outings and I was pleasantly surprised by the general quality of the humor.  I think it's short of Wongo in many places, but it was especially nice to see some transgressive ethnic humor.  I can't think of the last time I've seen a film where someone insulted Basques, but....actually I guess Wild Women of Wongo was just one big pile of Basque jokes.  

Anyhow, The Giant of Marathon is a sufficiently ridiculous film (with Steve Reeves, no less) that all the great Hercules jokes could be trotted out.   I still can't help thinking that there was some meddling that prevented any of this humor from having a real edge, but at least the Basque stuff at the end had a little bark if not some bit to it.  

I guess I'd rate this at about the same level as Wongo in The Film Crew oeuvre, maybe even a little higher because of the funny hat sequence.    Nothing beats a good funny hat gag.   Except maybe a funny gag gag.  

So, while I think an angry drunk classics professor (I'm looking at you, Victor Davis Hanson) might be at least as funny providing commentary for this film as The Film Crew, I still think this Film Crew outing was worth watching.   And since it represents the last ride of The Film Crew before they moved on to Rifftrax it has a certain nostalgic appeal, if 2007 is a year you're feeling nostalgic about.  (I'm looking at you, Victor Davis Hanson.)

I suppose I should apologize for making fun of Victor Davis Hanson, because I have no idea if he's a drunk or particularly angry but since he's not of Basque heritage I'm not really afraid of him.   Unless he shows up at my door wearing a giant Athenian pediment as a hat, then I'd be both a little afraid and a little impressed by him, even if he's not Basque.  

Bill Corbett

Kevin Murphy

Mike Nelson

Bob Honcho....Mike Dodge

Bob Honcho's Secretary....Beth McKeever

Trailers
The Film Crew
In this ad The Film Crew burst into the Rhino Records offices and hold some people hostage while a rogue FBI profiler tries to negotiate with them to meet their demands all while a vampire apocalypse is due to happen in a mere 78 minutes.  

Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion
In this comedy special Zach Galifianakis plays a rogue FBI profiler who tries to negotiate with a coven of vampires who are trying to prevent copyright infringement.  

Bonus Features
1. An Apology From Mike Nelson
This series of apologies is the best thing that The Film Crew ever did.  

2. Commentary by Walter S. Ferguson  
I think this bonus feature may be a tacit acknowledgement of the failure of the humor of the The Film Crew in their regular identities.    Instead of coming up with funnier (and perhaps more transgressive) humor in their regular track they resort to creating this Walter S. Ferguson character in order to do some interesting things.    

The Amazingly Couth Women of Wongo

The Film Crew: Wild Women of Wongo (2007)
The Wild Women of Wongo (1958)

I have to give special thanks to my friend Ryan for the gift of this film and thus inadvertently compelling me to watch the rest of The Film Crew's oeuvre.  

Wild Women of Wongo is, aside from being an alliterative treat, a quaint film that has all kinds of things that finally The Film Crew can mock with ease.

The framing premise is that The Film Crew is freezing in their basement lair, so this film will be a tropical treat for them.    This premise is quickly discarded because apparently comic writers and performers can't be trusted to keep a premise going for longer than the life span of a sickly fruit fly.

Speaking of sickly fruit flies, I think that was the original intended audience for Wild Women of Wongo.
If you're a sickly fruit fly looking for a mythological origin story with commentary than you're in the right place.

If you're looking for wild women, though, you should know that the wild women of Wongo aren't really wild.   Suffice it to say that they're wearing underwear and also seem to be couth enough to shave their legs.    Even the women of neighboring Goona have a certain degree of couth you wouldn't really expect from wild women.

There is a modicum of plot to this film, which is a creation myth with Wongo being the land of pretty women and ugly men and Goona being its opposite.  Both cultures are threatened by an outside group of people who storm in and kill some of Wongo's population while the women of Wongo are off appeasing their crocodile god.

Laaaaa
La la la la laaaa
La la la la laaaa
La la la la laaaa

Actually, the crocodile seems to be an alligator and it isn't very big when it has to be wrestled underwater.  The whole thing was muddled enough and what with people making jokes constantly it was even harder to figure out what was going on.   But then, I suppose the jokes were why I was watching this in the first place.

I guess The Film Crew was more comfortable making jokes about Wongo because they certainly seemed to have regained a modicum of humor.    It might still have been better if they could have a robot character to hide behind, but it was an improvement after the last two outings.   Maybe the whole thing would have been better if the Wild Women of Wongo were a bit wilder, but it's too late to fix that.

So, I guess Wild Women of Wongo is worth a chuckle or two and if you want to see the world's saddest dried alligator ritual totem then this is definitely the film for you.  

Bill Corbett
Mike Nelson
Kevin Murphy
Bob Honcho....Mike Dodge
Bob Honcho's Secretary....Beth McKeever

Trailers
The Film Crew
In this promo The Film Crew play three rogue CIA agents who are trying to reclaim their identities while escaping from a rogue vampire cult bent on destroying the world with something that requires a 90 minute long fuse.
Zach Galifianikis: Live at the Purple Onion
In this touching film Zach Galifianakis plays a single mother trying to eke out a living in Detroit while keeping her son from joining a gang.  
Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story
Alright, already.  I'll see this movie.  You got me.   I want to see this.

Bonus Features
1. Make Film Crew Dance
Ah, the wonders of moderate interactivity, wherein you can make Mike Nelson dance and then add in Bill and Kevin and finally make them all dance together in the sort of frenzied climax.
"What Madness Drives Her?!"
What madness, indeed.

2. Goodbye, Wongo-Style
Unfortunately, doing it Wongo Style, just means standing next to a cardboard cutout and winking.

Space Mission Impossible

The Film Crew: Killers From Space (2007)
Killers From Space (1954)

In this outing The Film Crew take on the atrocious Killers From Space, a wretchedly bad movie made by Billy Wilder's slow-witted brother Jim-Bob Wilder and which features Peter Graves as a pilot/scientist whose plane crashes during an atomic test and who is subsequently abducted by the killers from space who proceed to use him to make sure that a subsequent test will aid in their ridiculously complex plot to conquer earth using giant spiders and geckos.  

In general I'd like to say that The Film Crew does a better job of being funny with this film than they did with Hollywood After Dark.   On the other hand, I still think they must have had some shackles on them regulating their humor to keep them from exceeding the wry smile line.   The first thing that came to mind was the muted reaction to the fact that the USAF planes in this film are given the call sign "Tar Baby."   Thus, the ground controller is forced to pick up a microphone and check in on Tar Baby 1 and Tar Baby 2.
This is how I know that there must be some manner of humor policing going on with The Film Crew.   Because only a great degree of restraint would stop three comedians from going to town on the Tar Baby issue.

Goose:  Maverick, we've got a bogey on our tail.
Maverick:  Is it Jester?
Goose:  No, man.  It's Tar Baby.  I don't think we're going to be able to shake him off.

I'm fairly sure that Killers From Space was not made with the cooperation of the USAF, but I'm extra sure that Killers From Space was not made with the cooperation of the NAACP.
Seriously folks, the pilots' call signs are Tar Baby 1 and Tar Baby 2.   How could you leave that alone?
If I was doing a commentary track on this film I think every other word out of my mouth would be "tar baby."    But that's probably true of every movie I see, so maybe it's just me.

The crew does better with their reactions to the startling extreme closeups that keep popping up out of nowhere, and in fact they close out the film with some fake film knowledge about the "Robichaix" which is the name they bestow on this technique.  

The film itself is so ridiculous that it makes Hollywood After Dark look like Hollywood After Dark.
Actually, Killers From Space is still more coherent than Hollywood After Dark, but at least Hollywood After Dark had some dancing.   The most action we get here is Peter Graves standing in front of a projection of a "giant" spider.  

And with googly eyed space aliens I would have expected more jokes and better jokes from the commentators.   But maybe they were still in shock from hearing "tar baby."   Or more likely still, they were probably still in shock from seeing Rue McClanahans's naked sweaty back in Hollywood After Dark.  Or maybe they had to cut the part where they couldn't stop talking about Peter Graves's nipples.

There were long chunks of this film that made me wish someone had edited in one of the "dance" sequences from Hollywood After Dark into this film, but then I'm not sure if that would have encouraged The Film Crew to break their imperial conditioning and make a few jokes.  

So, I guess Killers from Space is just for people who like Peter Graves (but still want to hear three guys making fun of his movie), people who insist on seeing the whole Film Crew oeuvre, and for people who really like to hear three guys reacting to extreme closeups.  
It's slightly more amusing than the previous outing, but there's something about it that just isn't adhesive the way other things are, like, say tar babies.  

Bill Corbett
Mike Nelson
Kevin Murphy
Bob Honcho...Mike Dodge
Bob Honcho's Secretary....Beth McKeever

Trailers
The Film Crew 
So, there's this thing called The Film Crew (perhaps you've heard of them?) and here they are commenting on movies and one of those movies is Killers From Space.   I'll bet you're thinking to yourself that you'd like to see that and you'd be in luck because here they are right on this DVD.

Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion
In this stand-up comedy feature Zach Galifianikis plays a rogue CIA agent looking for revenge when a rogue CIA agent kills his family.  A thrill ride.  It's like The Bourne Identity, only with a big beard.

Bonus
"Did you know...?"
In the informative snippet we learn about the technique of backward masking and how it can be used to create things that sound like unintelligible alien speech, sort of like Last Year at Marienbad.

The truly great thing here, though, is that if you let the menu run as long as possible the frustrated Kevin Murphy will repeatedly ask you to make a choice and then eventually get off his stool and leave and then look back in to see if you've selected anything or not.   I'm a big fan of the menu screen comedy, so it was nice to see an attempt.  

Outtakes
This consists of a series of "outtakes" of a scene with an alien on a rock with a raygun speaking in lines that were then run backward and are now "recreated"  to reveal an angry bit player who has a beef with Peter Graves.  
"Pissing Me Off"
In this scene the bit player reveals that Peter Graves is pissing him off because he keeps trying to sell him insurance.
"Stupider"
In this scene the bit player reveals that his googly eyes are stupid and he says that the film's designers are even "stupider."
"This Costume"
Now he talks about how his costume makes him look like a tar baby and smell "like a Dutchman's crotch."  
"My Last Day"
In this scene he reveals that it's his last day and he's going back to work with the phone company because the film industry "smells like a Dutchman's crotch."
"Dressing Room"
Finally, our bit player declares that he's left Peter Graves a warm steaming going away present in his dressing room.