Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Bruce Campbell is The Bulgarian Bruce Campbell
Man with the Screaming Brain (2005)
Directed by Bruce Campbell, Screenplay by Bruce Campbell
Let’s face it, if you like Bruce Campbell then you’ll watch this film and try to find some enjoyment in it no matter how bad it is and if you don’t then you should be stranded in Bulgaria until you learn to appreciate the little things like clean drinking water and a chuckle or two from a Bruce Campbell movie.
William Cole...Bruce Campbell
Jackie Cole...Antoinette Byron (An All My Children and Melrose Place alum, among other things.)
Tatoya...Tamara Gorski (Played an actress seeking eternal life in Angel Season 1 episode “Eternity” and was also Morrigan on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys)
Uri...Valentin Giasbeily (The Bulgarian James Dean, Valentin made 3 films in 2005, two of which involved Bruce Campbell. The third was Mansquito.)
Dr. Ivanov...Stacy Keach (Stacy Keach...what can I say? You get busted once for cocaine and this is where your career goes.)
Pavel...Ted Raimi (Because a Bruce Campbell movie without Ted Raimi would be empty and soulless.)
Larry....Jonas Talkington (Talkington has been seen in such classics as Shark Zone, Raging Sharks, Lake Placid 2, Boogeyman 3 and the classic Mansquito.)
Yegor...Vladimir Kolev
Mayor...Velizar Binev (Can be seen in Octopus, Octopus 2, Shark Hunter, Shark Zone, Raging Sharks, SharkMan and Lake Placid 3)
Bar Punk...Remington Franklin (Remington Franklin sounds like a fake name.)
Director of Photography....David Worth (That’s right, this film was shot by the man who directed Shark Attack 2 and Shark Attack 3 but before you get too snooty about it you should also know that he was the DP for Clint Eastwood on Bronco Billy and Any Which Way You Can and if he was good enough for Clyde the orangutan then he’s good enough for you.)
The first thing to note about this film is that the idea took 19 years to get made. The lesson here is that if you have a dream project and you spend nearly two decades trying to work the system to get it produced then you too could suddenly find yourself adapting your story to work in Bulgaria...and you’ll probably still be able to get Stacy Keach for it if you get started right now.
One of the refreshing things about this film is that unlike other low-budget films shot in Bulgaria it doesn’t try to pretend that it’s located some other place. The result is that rather than looking like a really cheap American movie it looks like a really well made Bulgarian film.
The story itself is a critique of rampant capitalistic excess and exploitation of the anarchic conditions of the post-Communist eastern Europe. Campbell’s William Cole is a rich man looking to avoid taxes by investing a modicum of cash in a useless boondoggle tax-shelter in Bulgaria. Cole has pursued the glory of Mammon at the expense of giving any love (or practically any attention) to his wife Jackie. This lack of love will get William Cole in trouble as he tries to make amends by buying his wife off with jewelry helpfully sold to him by his ex-KGB cabdriver Uri. As a rule, you should never buy jewelry from a cabdriver, much less an ex-KGB cabdriver because there’s a good chance that it was originally meant for a gypsy girl who will come looking for revenge.
When the aforementioned vengeful gypsy shoots both Uri and William Cole the mad scientist part of the plot takes over as Stacy Keach and his bumbling assistant Ted Raimi embark on the kind of Frankenstein adventures in science that would make a bioethicist twist in agony.
Now, there are a couple of ways of taking the ending. In one interpretation the forces of western capital ultimately overcome and continue to exploit the newly open, naive and weak easterners. Or, it’s about love ultimately acting as the saving grace that redeems the American couple and in a strange way also unites the Uri and Tatoya.
But what I find interesting is that not only is this a story of new world reason and resolve going up against old world superstition and corruption but that it’s also a story where science ultimately does provide a solution. In the end the mad scientist comes through and science, though it had briefly created a monster or two, managed to work out a way to move forward. Usually once you get a mad scientist in the mix the story takes the form of a cautionary tale, but here it takes a cautiously optimistic tack. Sure, the whole thing is a fantasy but it’s one where science is not dismissed altogether but rather encouraged to keep experimenting until the scientists get it right. And that may just be the most enlightening part of this film.
As for the rest. Well, it’s got a couple of interesting chase scenes and some nice shots of lovely Bulgaria. Bruce Campbell in a restaurant fighting himself is worth more than a few laughs. If your measure of a movie is that it should have flawless special effects then you should go attach the battery from a Yugo to your taint and then watch Transformers 4: The Rise of the Fall of the Mechanical Machine. If you refuse to watch anything other than Claude Chabrol films, well, you should get out more often. But if you need a break from watching another marathon of the Real Housewives of Albuquerque then you should watch this film and enjoy something that’s doesn’t kill your soul.
Man with the Screaming Brain isn’t for everyone. We all make our choices. I choose to watch this. Others may choose to watch Jersey Shore while rubbing themselves with kiolbassa. The choice is yours.
Bonus Features
1. Audio Commentary w/Bruce Campbell and Producer David M. Goodman
An extra hour and a half listening to the ever smooth Bruce Campbell chat with his buddy about making this film? Why not?
Fun anecdotes about making a movie in Bulgaria abound. Put off catching up with Gossip Girl for another couple of hours and enjoy this special feature.
2. Brain Surgeons: Making The Screaming Brain
The one thing that we learned, that I learned from Bubba Ho-Tep is that there’s a whole counter-culture out there that has alternative cinemas that want alternative movies. And this really is an alternative movie. This movie’s so weird that it belongs in an alternative house that won’t compete with Die Hard 9. -- Bruce Campbell
This is a quick history of how Bruce Campbell and David Goodman met and came up with the idea for this film (many eons ago) and how Bruce Campbell developed as a director.
3. Neurology 101: Evolution Of The Screaming Brain
This where we learn the long sad history of development behind Man with the Screaming Brain. It just shows that incredibly difficult it is to play by the rules and attempt to get money to make a film, especially when you start over 25 years ago before the levelling effect that has come with digital technology. So, what happens to a dream project deferred? It gets shipped off to Bulgaria. Welcome to the motion picture business, folks. If you ever need a fourteen minute lecture in front of a blackboard about the nature of the business side of filmmaking this is it right here.
4. Trailer
This trailer almost makes me want to watch the movie again. Almost.
5. Behind-The-Scenes
This is great material for stunt and fx coordinators. Lots of great Bulgarian scenery.
6. Bruce Campbell Bio
Not nearly as amusing as Bruce Campbell’s actual autobiography.
7. Storyboard Gallery
Alright, I’ll admit that I’m the guy who actually likes going through the storyboard scenes retrospectively to see how it was drawn out.
8. Comic Book Gallery
This is a preview of the comic book from Dark Horse, which I will admit that I read before I saw the film. For the completist, you get a bit more backstory in it and the artwork is good.
9. Trailers
1. Evil Dead
Relive the excitement of the first Evil Dead film.
2. Evil Dead 2
Relive the excitement again. Right now. The only shame is that there’s no Army of Darkness trailer on here.
3. Dead & Breakfast
Line-dancing zombies. I wouldn’t lie to you about that. I’ve seen the movie and it lives up to the preview.
4.Lightning Bug
A serious film from the director of Laid to Rest.
5. Thou Shalt Not Kill...Except
This early 1980s trailer looks like it’s for a fake movie, but the movie is very real and it’s by the director of Alien Apocalypse, which was filmed in Bulgaria just before Man with the Screamig Brain with much of the same cast and extras.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Destro Kills
Laid to Rest (2009)
Directed by Robert Hall, Screenplay by Robert Hall
A man with a shiny face tried to make me dead.
Dramatis Personae
The Girl aka Princess....Bobbi Sue Luther, wife of Robert Hall
Tucker.......Kevin Gage (aka Stitch Hessian, Jayne Cobb's long lost partner in the Jaynestown episode of Firefly.)
Cindy, wife of Tucker...Lena Headey (Queen Gorgo from 300, Sarah Connor from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)
Johnny, brother of Cindy....Johnathon Schaech
Jamie, girlfriend of Johnny....Jana Kramer (girlfriend of Johnathon Schaech at the time, now soon to be ex-wife of Johnathon Schaech)
Steven....Sean Whalen
Mr. Jones....Richard Lynch
Tommy....Thomas Dekker (John Connor from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.)
Chrome Skull...Nick Principe
Young Store Clerk...Lucas Till
Anthony....Anthony Fitzgerald
Bound Girl....Seraphine DeYoung
Sheriff Bates...Mark Bentley
It's not easy being a killer who wears a chrome mask with a video camera perched on your shoulder like a pirate's parrot. It's a lot of work to keep that mask on your face (it's not like you can walk into Home Depot and ask what glue is best for keeping chrome attached to skin) and making sure that camera is pointed in the right direction and doesn't come flying off while you go about your killing spree eats up a lot of precious mental energy that might be better spent on figuring out which direction your victim is going to run and which weapon to hurl at them. But this is what you get when serial killer identity is Chrome Skull instead of The Stealthy Assassin. Chrome Skull makes videos as a trophy and (perhaps wisely) doesn't trust a videographer to follow him around as he does his thing.
His thing, of course, is slicing people up in ingenious ways.
We first come across Chrome Skull through The Girl who wakes up in a coffin in a funeral parlor with a bad case of amnesia and a worse case of I'm-about-to-be-brutally-murdered-by-Destro's-evil-cousin. The Girl doesn't even know her own name or how she ended up wherever it is she has found herself.
Now, one of the more interesting choices in the film is the attempt (not always successful) to decouple the violence of the film from sexuality, at least from the audience perspective. While the killer is clearly getting thrills (sexual or otherwise) from his violent activities, there is a concerted effort to take away the sexual exploitation element in this film. This is chiefly expressed in the way The Girl (who is unmistakably attractive) is dressed in loose-fitting clothes and the pure shock of the killings depicted as opposed to the kind of joyful sexualized slaughter that you get in something like the latest reboot of Friday the 13th. The message of Laid to Rest seems to expressly be that while Chrome Skull is getting aroused by capturing and slaughtering people you, the audience, shouldn't be aroused by what he's doing. The director and his wife could have easily exploited her obvious attractiveness to sucker in more viewers by having her scamper around in a thong while being threatened and brutalized by the masked demon but they decided to try something different and for that alone they earn some of my gratitude. The way horror films and especially the slasher and torture subgenres conflate sexuality with violence is trully messed up because inevitably they tend to trade on and depend on the conflation that is supposed to be perverse and evil. Torture porn depends on you, the audience, developing a desire to see brutality inflicted on someone else and deriving some enjoyment out of it. It's sick. When the sexual element is added in it becomes more sick. Old-fashioned gore and its contemporary incarnations are all about the technological joy of the special effects--e.g. how awesome it is to figure out a way of making something that looks like someone's jaw was ripped off causing a fountain of blood to spurt like a geyser. Torture porn is about wanting to see an object of desire violated in some fashion. That's what the difference is. Laid to Rest has gore, but it is a film that in some ways critiques the voyeurism. In short, it is not coincidental that Chrome Skull is walking around with a camera perched on his shoulder like a parrot. The taping and the voyeurism is essential to Chrome Skull's identity as a sick bastard. It is also crucial to the critique of the kind of folks who get off on watching films of people being tortured. Laid to Rest isn't a sick film because it takes no enjoyment of Chrome Skull's methods. This is not to say that his slicing and dicing of people is by any means sanitized, it's just that Hall makes a good-faith effort to remind us that the killer is bad and that if we want to enjoy what he's doing then we're also bad. It's a point that is better made in The Last Horror Movie, but again I have to credit Hall and Luther for trying for something better with this film.
Speaking of something better, this film was itself a product of the hiatus in industry productions that was a result of WGA strike. (The same strike that resulted in Doctor Horrible's Sing-along Blog.) Sometimes I think we could all use a few more writer's strikes in Hollywood. The results of the last one were outstanding.
Of course, while the main part of the film tries to play down the sexual element of the violence this only comes after the opening titles which are combined with a greatest hits of Chrome Skull montage that takes us to Bobbi Sue locked in the coffin. It's not like we are unaware that Chrome Skull is a crazy killer taking out his sexual frustrations with a knife. It's just that we would usually get all that torture as the main event. Whereas here it's just the intro to something a bit more interesting. The amnesiac victim's memory is so bad she doesn't even know the word "coffin" which she refers to as a "dead box" and when she tries to call for help she doesn't even know that 911 is the number to call. (Luckily someone was kind enough to leave a note next to the phone about the emergency number.) Comic elements pop up, like when Mr. Jones, the old man at the funeral parlor is scared by the shaking of the dead box and then when he sees the girl locked in a room and tries to get her out his death while trying to put his key in the lock has so little suspense for us in the audience that while it is gruesome (and terrifying for the people in the film) it is almost funny for us. (And when we find out more about Chrome Skull and the old man it seems like he may even have had it coming.)
Meanwhile when Tucker shows up in his plain-looking van and gives the Girl a ride it seems like he will either turn out to be the killer (he's not) or that this will devolve into some sort of pornographic interlude. (It doesn't.) I can't believe that this is an accident. I think Hall plays on what have become atrocious conventions of the slasher genre to try something different. So Tucker gives the Girl a ride and then takes her home where she's offered a space on the couch, though with some strong reservations from Tucker's wife, Cindy.
CINDY: Are you out of your mind? We don't even know her. She's probably one them crystal meth tweakers.
When the Girl starts talking, though Cindy shows some heart and sees her as a genuine victim and shows genuine sympathy. The same is true for Tucker, who turns out to be just a nice guy trying to do someone a favor. Of course, if you're a bald guy with a bum leg and a goatee and you're married to Lena Headey (even small town Southern Lena Headey) then it's a lot easier to pick up the amnesiac girl without any ulterior motive. Besides, Cindy is a real firecracker and it's clear that Headey is getting some enjoyment out of playing a sassy rural middle class woman. Sadly, she doesn't get too much enjoyment out of it because before you know it Chrome Skull has tracked down Princess Gemstone (the only name she can remember from her childhood is that of a doll she had.) Cindy is last seen hanging upside down from her bedroom window with a Chrome Skull sticking his big knife in her ear. It's incredibly gruesome, like a lot of violence in horror movies--but what sets it apart is that Tucker sees it and the most important part of this isn't the tortuous killing but the dramatic impact of Cindy's death on Tucker. He tries to trade his life for hers. He's broken, his life is shattered at that moment and then only thing that stops him from hobbling over and ending his own life right there in a duel to the death with Chrome Skull is that he's drawn away by the pleas of the girl who may yet have a chance to escape. From here on out, if Tucker is the kind of guy we're beginning to think he is, then it's a death match between him and Chrome Skull and Tucker just wants to make sure that Chrome Skull dies with him.
And again, Chrome Skull isn't some sort of supernaturally gifted killer. Heck, Tucker managed to stick him pretty good and knock him to the ground. Now, if the death of Cindy was meant to convey dramatic depth, what happens to Cindy's brother and his girlfriend is just a classic case of padding the body count. Johnny and Jamie pull up in their car right as Tucker and Princess escape, which means they've stumbled right into Chrome Skull's kill zone. If Cindy’s death was tragic then this pair is the comic counterpoint. They neatly take the place of Tucker and Princess who have managed to escape (for now) and their deaths are classic horror movie staples. You know they don’t stand much of a chance, especially since they are quite ignorant of the danger that is around them. Jamie’s first line is a question near and dear to the heart of anyone who’s ever been somewhere they don’t want to be watching something they don’t want to watch, like for instance a tepid revue of Cole Porter tunes by and for geriatrics.
Jamie: Why are we here, Johnny? We could have stayed home for some lovin’.
Why are we here, indeed? To this seemingly existential question Johnny gives us the stand-up answer that he saw his brother-in-law with a strange woman earlier in his truck earlier in the evening and he’s going to tell his sister what he saw. The price of his fraternal devotion/nosiness is to have a knife hurtled into his face at great velocity (Chrome Skull’s field of vision from behind the mask doesn’t seem to intrude upon his accuracy) and then have his face cut off entirely. For those who enjoy technical effects this is quite a marvel. For those who enjoy the thought of seeing Johnathon Schaech’s face being cut off this is a double bonus. For those who are repelled by such brutality, then this would be exactly the kind of thing about a movie like this that you don’t want to see.
Actually, it’s Chrome Skull vs. Jamie that is exactly the kind of traditional horror movie match-up that is disturbing. It’s a little like watching Dick Cheney shoot a turkey that’s chained to a post. From the moment Johnny is killed and Jamie starts screaming you know she doesn’t have a chance of making it out of here alive. She’s trapped in a car and even if she makes it out of there Chrome Skull clearly has the edge on her with his knife throwing abilities. (Did he work in a circus? Who knows?) With Tucker and the Girl already on the run it would take a bizarrely innovative storyteller to create a loose end in the script by giving Jamie a chance. So from the outset we know she’s going to die and it’s just a matter of how it will happen. This is the essence of the sadism of horror films and it goes a long way to undercut some of the more interesting developments that this film makes in the genre. As in most horror films this situation is a foregone conclusion. There is utterly no suspense about whether or not the victim will be killed, it is only the means that remains to be seen.
But what other options are there? Killing her is the fastest way to get the antagonist back on the trail of our heroes. Jamie and Johnny are merely obstacles in the way of the main conflict. But what if she made it out? That would leave Chrome Skull in a quandary. He has too many targets on the loose. It, in fact, creates quite an unusual crisis for a horror film villain. And a third option would be to have Jamie actually defeat Chrome Skull, but that would turn the rest of the film into an unusual film about post-horror damage control and reconstruction. (An idea, which may yet find its day.)
But the truth is that Jamie is a relatively annoying character who only gains our sympathy once it’s clear that her candle is about to be snuffed out. In her attempt to escape the car she gets a bad slice between her fingers and then after making it out of the car she is obviously cut quickly but keeps running toward the house where the sight of Cindy’s body dangling from the window (why couldn’t she or Johnny see it there before, you may wonder?) stops her in her tracks and only then does she notice that the cut she received across her midriff had opened her up all the way to her innards. (I suppose that’s what we may call near-disembowelment.) This is not unlike many an action film where a person doesn’t quite realize they’ve been beheaded until their head starts sliding off the neck. Again, the gruesome special effects are very well done but there is something extra unsettling about the way the girl never had a chance. (Neither, for that matter did Cindy in her brief encounter with Chrome Skull already in a position to kill her.)
Meanwhile Tucker and the Girl seek help from a computer nerd named Steven who unfortunately doesn’t own a phone but uses his computer to try to get in touch with the sheriff. Steven’s mother recently died and we will soon learn that she was taken to the same mortuary where we first met Chrome Skull. Now, here’s the paradox of Steven: he’s a computer nerd who very quickly runs down information online about the killer (who we learn has killed around 30 or 40 women in the Florida, Alabama, Georgia area and who sends the videos to the police) but when he prints out the information it’s on his aging dot-matrix printer. Really? Dot matrix? It’s like running into a technological wizard who’s really good with a slide-rule. It’s unusual to say the least.
So, he prints up information about the girl which Tucker reads and then puts away in his shirt. Now we have our team together, who for the sake of argument we will call the DeChromers. Tucker, the strong man out for vengeance, Princess the amnesiac girl who may have special powers (dare we hope?) and Steven the reluctant techie who would rather stay home.
Steven: My stomach hurts. I can’t take all this death stuff while I’m grieving.
So, Steven reluctantly goes along with the rest of the DeChromer team to the sheriff’s office, and are wise enough to arm themselves before walking into the inevitable elaborate ambush that Chrome Skull has set up. (Chrome Skull really seems to have taken his game plan from Cobra Commander.)
They escape the ambush with Princess sustaining a flesh wound on the arm. They make their way to the Jones Funeral Home where Chrome Skull screws with Steven’s mind by carting around the nerd’s dead mother and using it to spook him. Tucker goes off to coordinate with his brother in law, but comes back without seeing the increased carnage. Meanwhile Princess begins to take charge of the situation and really comes into her own as she decides to take the fight to Chrome Skull and make him pay. Now it’s a serious matter of revenge as Chrome Skull is back and turns out to be using the coffin workshop as a storage unit for his victims. When Princess sees a live one (The Bound Girl) tied to a headless victim in a coffin she attempts one of the most ineffectual rescues of all time. When Princess fails to get the rope untied before Chrome Skull comes back she’s left with an ethical dilemma? Stay and die with the girl or run away and find something to fight with. She chooses to live and then has to face the gruesome sight of Chrome Skull brutally (and I mean brutally) decapitating the Bound Girl and showing off the head to her. Again, this is the sort of extreme misogynistic violence that we can expect in most horror films, but then Chrome Skull is an extreme misogynist killer. Princess meanwhile is captured, but lucky for her Tucker shoots Chrome Skull and the DeChromers once again get away.
Chrome Skull, though, according to the FBI profile, is an affluent white male who may be a professional and his skill in doing surgery on himself to remove Tucker’s bullet proves the point. The plot gets thicker as Princess watches some of the tape in Chrome Skull’s camera and realizes that the Mr. Jones the funeral director was in league with Chrome Skull the whole time, but when the camera batteries die she’s left not knowing the rest of the story, so she takes Chrome Skull’s car and uses the GPS to take her toward the nearest convenience store. But Chrome Skull can access that info remotely (ah, technology, the modern serial killer’s friend) and gives chase in a really tacky hearse. That leaves Tucker and Steven trying to catch up to Princess before Chrome Skull does. The pacing of the story is really good here as it develops into a multi-party chase sequence with the addition of a pair of young white dudes in a car heading toward the same store while listening to “Sexy Bitches Are My Favorite Kind of Bitches” which you can really appreciate because un-sexy bitches are really not anybody’s favorite kind of bitches. If I was going to like “bitches” I’d probably like the sexy kind too. On the other hand Sexy Roast Beef Sandwiches are not my favorite kind of sandwiches. (Sexy pancakes, though are my favorite kind of pancakes.)
Chrome Skull catches up to Princess and puts the knife to her throat but before he can kill her his camera runs out of tape. (Ah, technology, the modern serial killer’s nemesis.) So, if you can believe this, Chrome Skull sends her into the store to buy more tape. Really, Chrome Skull? What kind of idiot would actually do that? Oh, sure Chromy, do you want a six pack of Shiner and some Slim Jims too? You know, for when you’re done killing me?
The store becomes the Alamo where the last stand takes place. The poor schmuck working behind the counter goes outside to stop Chrome Skull but ends up blowing his own head off with a shotgun. One of the two guys (Anthony) gets his head cut off and placed in a refrigerator (which nobody notices--are these people all just unobservant?) but Steven comes up with the stratagem of grabbing Chrome Skull’s briefcase where he notices the container of adhesive (it isn’t just magic holding that mask to his face, after all) and replaces it with an extreme super-glue that will be impossible to get off. Unfortunately he doesn’t live to see his brilliant plan take effect because he’s killed with a can of tire sealant that is injected through his ear. Chrome Skull even tries to dishearten Princess by showing her the tape of herself as an escort in Miami but while he’s gloating he reapplies the now tainted adhesive and then just about kills himself trying to get the mask off his face. In the end, he manages to get his face off his head and then Princess takes an aluminum baseball bat and finishes the job. As gruesome violence goes, this is of the gratifying variety--given what Chrome Skull has done for most of the film he’s got all that coming and then some. There’s a brief touching moment as Tucker dies and Princess gets in the car with Tommy and they drive away toward Atlanta, with Princess having symbolically laid her past life to rest (that’s right there’s more to the title than just the dead people in the funeral home) along with Chrome Skull and his victims.
This may be the only film I’ve seen where the city of Atlanta holds the shining promise of a new life, thus making Laid to Rest the dawn of Atlanta Pastorals.
The music includes performances by Deadbox, a band that includes director Robert Hall and Thomas Dekker who also performed “Sexy Bitches.”
So, what to make of Laid to Rest? I think in the end it’s a horror film with a decent message and which doesn’t actually celebrate the violence that it shows, but uses it as a key plot element. Chrome Skull is an evil bastard (an evil RICH bastard, no less, so there’s a level of class warfare going on) who does violent deeds and is met with an equally violent end. For the squeamish or those who would refrain from seeing any kind of violence, obviously none of the mitigating factors will allow for a differentiation between this and true torture porn. But there is a difference here and I have to give credit to Hall for trying something different even while doing a classic man with a mask killing girls with a knife slasher. The worldview underneath this film is neither traditional morality nor torture porn anarchism, but a kind of redemptive ethics that gives someone a chance to start fresh--especially if they’ve had their past beaten out of their skull with convenient amnesia. Also, it does raise the important question of what kind of bitches are your favorite kind of bitches.
Bonus Features
1. Commentary with Writer/Director Robert Hall and Actor/Producer Bobbi Sue Luther
Lots of good stories about the homegrown nature of this project that was done during the WGA strike and which was possible through some serious volunteer and low-paid work. Apparently Lena Headey wanted to do the film only if she could die a real horrible death and wear an eye-patch, but sadly they didn’t let her wear an eye-patch.
Also, the commentary reveals the origin of “Sexy Bitches Are My Favorite Kind of Bitches” and that the director wanted to show the difficulties in decapitation to make up for what he perceives as the ease of decapitation in other horror films. In other words, he wanted to make a film that didn’t make people think that neck bones have the consistency of margarine.
2. Postmortem: The Making of Laid To Rest
What is the most simple premise that I think I can do a compelling story with and a good job dramatically and thematically and I thought “Guy in a mask chasing girl” that usually works. -- Robert Hall
I like just how much fun this group is having making this film. It’s always reassuring to see how the gore was made and that people seemed (as far as we can tell) to be having fun. And it’s something filmed in Maryland that isn’t The Wire.
3. Torture Porn: The SFX of Laid To Rest
Admittedly I think gore is a huge portion of a film like this. -- Robert Hall
Now, before you get excited about the use of the phrase “Torture Porn” I should note that the title is used here with a certain sense of hilaritas because the Makeup FX chief on the film is named Erik Porn. I can only imagine how uncool (or possibly cool) it would be to be named Porn. The effects are gruesome yet downright fascinating and seeing the various stages of construction required will either inspire you when you see the kind of work that is put into these effects or will depress you because you don’t see the value in the effort put into these effects.
4. Deleted Scenes
The first deleted scene is possibly one of the best deleted scenes ever. It’s Chrome Skull’s death scene reinterpreted with a new almost Shakespearean monologue.
There’s a scene in the funeral home where Princess remembers that she likes pizza but can’t remember what kind of pizza she likes.
There’s another bit in the funeral home that develops Steven’s character and his relationship with his mother.
Outside the barn Tucker and Steven try to come up with a plan on how to rescue Princess.
5. Bloopers
Horror films should always include a blooper reel. The bit where the coffin goes flying and Bobbi Sue comes rolling out of it is awesome. I got a real kick out of the full six minutes of this.
6. Trailer
Lesson learned from this trailer: If someone says “You’re safe here” then it’s a good bet that you’re not going to be safe there. And if someone says “Nobody’s going to die here tonight” then a lot of people are going to die tonight.
7. Trailers
1. Lightning Bug (2004)
A film loosely based on Robert Hall's life and his beginnings in doing horror movies and special effects. It's like a Tennessee Williams play with gore.
2. The Alphabet Killer (2008)
Eliza Dushku sees dead people and also Michael Ironside, Cary Elwes and Timothy Hutton. I won't spoil the ending for you here about who the Alphabet Killer is that way I'll still have some leverage to talk about it should I ever review this film.
3. Crowley (2008)
Simon Callow as a man who becomes Aleister Crowley in this strange looking little film.
4. Tokyo Zombie (2005)
I don't care if I never see this movie or if this movie isn't even real because this trailer alone is a piece of hilarious art. Tokyo Zombie is A#1!
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wet Hot American Torture
Experiment in Torture (2007)
directed by Sean MacArthur, screenplay by Sara Angressani, Sean MacArthur, B.C. Hickey
Experiment in Torture is a meta-cinematic triumph, because watching it seems to be an experiment in being tortured. This is exactly what you deserve for watching a movie about strippers being abducted and tortured for no apparent reason. If you look up this film on IMDB you will find that the only entry under the "Fun Stuff" category is a suggestion that you watch another film or that you just ram your head into cinderblocks until you are unconscious. I forced myself to continue watching this "film" in part as a punishment for having spent nearly a whole dollar on this thing. This was one of the last films I watched in my spring slasher-fest and it was a suitable ending to an often tedious activity. While I still had plenty of other slasher films left in my bag o'cheap movies this one hammered a nail into my desire to watch more of these and then proceeded to hammer several more nails into my desire and then torched my curiosity with a can of gasoline. I don't even remember much of anything about this movie, and have little or no desire to refresh my memory. To be quite honest, I had trouble following the "plot" even while I was watching this atrocious monstrosity. Part of the problem seemed to be that somebody decided that if you can't hear words then you won't notice that they don't make sense. I've heard of mumblecore art films, but MUMBLE-TORTURE? Of course, intelligible words are not the same as intelligible speech and apparently the three people who put their collective minds to work on this "script" lost all ability to form sentences in the English language and certainly had no ability ever to string together two or more sentences into a coherent thought.
I am now going to attempt to put together something of a plot summary for this film:
1. Serial killers don't need a reason to kill. They just do...
This is the brilliant insight into the human mind that this film starts with. Unable to collectively come up with any kind of motivation for their killer, the filmmakers opted to go straight for chaos. Then we meet a guy who is talking the ears off of several women at a strip club. At this point it would seem that his means of expressing his misogynistic rage is to kill women with his pseudo-intellectual tediousness. Then we have some elapsed time after which the tedious fellow tries to get several of the women to hang out with him and continue his tedious conversation. One of the women responds with sarcasm. This makes her the smartest person in this film. I don't know what's more galling here, the obviously dumb guy trying to sound smart or the sarcasm of someone who clearly disdains all thought. And, as if to prove that humanity is a lost cause (as if this film wasn't enought proof) two of the women decide they've got nothing better to do than to continue hanging out with this guy. How bored are you people? I've never met people that bored or boring in my life.
2. We fast forward again (because time and space have no meaning to us anymore) to the girls in their car following the tedious guy in his car. They don't know where he's leading them but now they're stopped and he comes to their car. After some more tediousness the girls attempt to thank him for a lovely evening and go home.
Tedious Guy: I was just wondering, do either of you girls like Johnny Mathis?
Passenger Girl [shrieks with excitement]: I love Johnny Mathis!
Tedious guy punches the driver girl and then fast forward to them in the woods somewhere being bound and dragged around by the tedious guy and his masked accomplice. One of the girls reaches into a bag (presumably belonging to Mr. Tedium) and pulls out a brown bottle that she smashes against the accomplice's face. Close-up on the bottle's remnants on the ground with 2 pieces of masking tape on which we see the handwritten words "Hydrochloric" and "Acid". The accomplice guy then stabs the passenger girl to death and we see the guys running off into the darkness. This is one of the clumsiest set-ups for a plot device ever. And roll opening credits...
I should note here that the driver, Melissa (as if we get a chance to care about her name) is played by Iranian-born actress Marjan Faritous who has gone on to do hard-core pornography under the name Persia Pele. This is a decision I can hardly fault when "mainstream" acting consists of playing strippers who get punched after being asked if they like Johnny Mathis. At that point driving around Mobile, Alabama in a van and having sex on camera sounds like a step up on the career ladder.
And, on a more philosophical note, how would you feel if the last intelligible sentence you ever uttered was "I love Johnny Mathis!"? That's gotta be a bad way to go.
3. Now we're back at a strip club (presumably later, but I don't know because space and time have ceased to hold meaning here) and there are two new guys sitting and commenting on the girls and how they need to get rid of the hovering brother of one of them to get things moving with the girls. This is the point at which the machinations of plot and the revolving characters, not to mention the complete meaningless of time and space, turn this "film" into something unnecessarily arcane. I don't know who these two guys are and what they have to do with the pair who had the trouble with the acid in the first scene and I don't know why nobody in the strip club is wondering what happened to the other two girls. Is this the same strip club? Are we in the same timeline or plane of existence? I don't know and stopped caring about the time I heard the words "I love Johnny Mathis!" if not several minutes before. More characters (strippers, creepy guys, cougars, hawks, jerk-offs) are introduced and eventually some of the strippers accept a deal to go do a private party at a lake-house. A long chunk of time is then spent in creepy driving scenes, less creepy boating scenes and times that we might just put under the general rubric of an "exotic dancer camping retreat." This is part of the experiment in torture. How long can you watch this before you start screaming at the screen like a maniac about wanting to see some blood? I think (but I'm not sure because space and time ceased to have meaning for me) that about an hour passed during which time one of the strippers fell drunkenly off a toilet while trying to pee and another one was in the shower and several of them were in the woods for some unknown reason. Maybe it was two hours. Maybe less, since this is only supposed to be 80 minutes long. I don't know or care.
4. Somehow we end up with a basement filled with women in various states of torture or being tortured by people including acid face...well, mostly acid face. At one point he (or someone else) turns on the other guys and kills off some of them. Again, I lost track of why any of these things were happening. Acid face drills a hole in one woman's foot and slashes another's throat. It all comes off as pretty haphazard. It's all chaos here in the lakehouse of torture. Melissa (you remember her? the one who got punched in the face in the car...) comes back and shoots acid face, cuts off his hand and then helps the survivors to escape.
Melissa: You should have finished what you started.
Well, unless you're talking about this movie, in which case you should have quit and gotten jobs at Whataburger.
Melissa: How does it feel for your stupid fucking life to be an experiment?
I'm not sure, but thanks for asking. Also, I'm beginning to really dislike Johnny Mathis.
5. There's some sort of meaningless denouement with the good guy males (there were some?) regretting not being the ones to kill acid face themselves. And then we get a shot of Melissa sitting in a chair with a haunted look in her eyes (on account of not knowing about how she feels about Johnny Mathis--and, of course the horrific torture and killing and other deviant acts we can only imagine). This is supposed to be meaningful. It's not. All meaning was lost about the time the opening credits rolled on this thing, maybe well before that. I wouldn't know, because all time and space have lost meaning for me thanks to this film.
6. As if this wasn't enough there's an "Experiment in Torture" theme song specially written for the ending that seems to have been written by a Strawberry Alarm Clock tribute band with lyrics by Johnny Mathis. Will the torture never end? How long must this experiment go on? (The actual artist is named Zoomer. Zoomer needs to get a job begging for leftover grease in front of a Whataburger.)
7. Jesus on a stick, there's a post-credits behind the scenes tag moment! Stop it! I hate Johnny Mathis! Stop making movies!
Finally, the madness stops. It's morning again in America. I eject this disc from my player. Life can continue on. What was this experiment about? Will we ever know? I honestly don't care. I think the thing about miserably bad movies is that each one is horrible in its own way, which is what makes it difficult to pick one film as the worst film ever. I mean, Experiment in Torture is one of the worst films I've ever seen. I really hated it. But it's like saying one specific rat dropping is the worst rat dropping you've ever tasted. No matter how many rat droppings you taste, you don't really become a conoisseur who can rank them in terms of foulness, the last one you had will continue to be the worst one you've ever tasted until you stumble upon another one. Now, the mark of wisdom is the person who avoids tasting any rat droppings.
But artifacts of culture (books, movies, etc) are like relationships. You don't know how bad it's going to be until you're in it. You could avoid some of the worse ones, sure, but sometimes you just have to take a chance instead of staying home and watching Man vs. Food. Experiment in Torture is like going out on a date with someone who walks around twirling a loaded pistol. You know you're going to get shot before the night is out, but if you're bored enough you might go ahead and go to dinner just to see what happens. The answer, of course, is that you're going to get shot. Also, you might start imagining that the whole film is taking place in Johnny Mathis's imagination. Mostly, though, you'll be disgusted with yourself, with the people who made this film and with Johnny Mathis. If this was the last film left in the world I would destroy it and start from scratch with the idea of moving pictures.
And another thing...
Are you seriously telling me it took THREE people to come up with this? It only took one person to write Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Anna Karenina only took one writer. But Experiment in Torture needed three people. I would be more forgiving if this had been the product of one deranged mind. But a trio means that at any given moment when even two people might go off the deep end and agree on a bad idea then there was a third person who not only didn't put the brakes on this crazy train but who shoveled more shit-covered coal into the engine of madness. Three people? Really? Three monkeys throwing poop on a wall could have come up with a more coherent script. Forget what I said earlier. If these three people were working at Whataburger they'd hand me a bag filled with dried hippo turds and say "here are your fries!"
Trailers (for what can only be better movies)
1. Saw III
There's a line in this trailer that goes: Suffering? You haven't seen anything yet.
Do you people not know what disc you've put this on? I just watched Experiment in Torture you stupid puppet face bastard. I KNOW SUFFERING and you have no idea who you're dealing with here. I will tear you into little pieces and then make those little pieces watch this movie until Johnny Mathis shows up to punch you in the pieces of your dismembered face and then ask you "How do you like me, now, puppet ass!" Saw III? Saw your ass! Saw your tiny leathery puppet ballsack! Saw your mom!
2. Captivity
Elisha Cuthbert is being held in a torture dungeon. To paraphrase that Dodge commercial there are three things that America got right: Cars, Freedom and Torture. Guess which one is represented here.
3. Holla
Ah yes, the long awaited all-black remake of Scream. I'm not joking. I'm not sure anyone other than Johnny Mathis was waiting for this, but it was long-awaited.
4. Night of the Living Dead 3D
De3d
Zombies in 3-D might be cool, but can we have something like Late Afternoon of the Living Dead or Naptime with the Living Dead?
5. Fido
In this awesome film zombies (including Billy Connolly) are kept as pets and menial servants by normal people. It's tender and heartwarming, wacky and offbeat, zany and irreverent and also water soluble.
6. Dark Storm
A government experiment has gone awry and now the only person who can save us is Stephen Baldwin. I want you to think about that sentence for one full minute...and then never think about it again.
I've never seen that much dark matter in one place.
Other than in Stephen Baldwin's testes, that is.
directed by Sean MacArthur, screenplay by Sara Angressani, Sean MacArthur, B.C. Hickey
Experiment in Torture is a meta-cinematic triumph, because watching it seems to be an experiment in being tortured. This is exactly what you deserve for watching a movie about strippers being abducted and tortured for no apparent reason. If you look up this film on IMDB you will find that the only entry under the "Fun Stuff" category is a suggestion that you watch another film or that you just ram your head into cinderblocks until you are unconscious. I forced myself to continue watching this "film" in part as a punishment for having spent nearly a whole dollar on this thing. This was one of the last films I watched in my spring slasher-fest and it was a suitable ending to an often tedious activity. While I still had plenty of other slasher films left in my bag o'cheap movies this one hammered a nail into my desire to watch more of these and then proceeded to hammer several more nails into my desire and then torched my curiosity with a can of gasoline. I don't even remember much of anything about this movie, and have little or no desire to refresh my memory. To be quite honest, I had trouble following the "plot" even while I was watching this atrocious monstrosity. Part of the problem seemed to be that somebody decided that if you can't hear words then you won't notice that they don't make sense. I've heard of mumblecore art films, but MUMBLE-TORTURE? Of course, intelligible words are not the same as intelligible speech and apparently the three people who put their collective minds to work on this "script" lost all ability to form sentences in the English language and certainly had no ability ever to string together two or more sentences into a coherent thought.
I am now going to attempt to put together something of a plot summary for this film:
1. Serial killers don't need a reason to kill. They just do...
This is the brilliant insight into the human mind that this film starts with. Unable to collectively come up with any kind of motivation for their killer, the filmmakers opted to go straight for chaos. Then we meet a guy who is talking the ears off of several women at a strip club. At this point it would seem that his means of expressing his misogynistic rage is to kill women with his pseudo-intellectual tediousness. Then we have some elapsed time after which the tedious fellow tries to get several of the women to hang out with him and continue his tedious conversation. One of the women responds with sarcasm. This makes her the smartest person in this film. I don't know what's more galling here, the obviously dumb guy trying to sound smart or the sarcasm of someone who clearly disdains all thought. And, as if to prove that humanity is a lost cause (as if this film wasn't enought proof) two of the women decide they've got nothing better to do than to continue hanging out with this guy. How bored are you people? I've never met people that bored or boring in my life.
2. We fast forward again (because time and space have no meaning to us anymore) to the girls in their car following the tedious guy in his car. They don't know where he's leading them but now they're stopped and he comes to their car. After some more tediousness the girls attempt to thank him for a lovely evening and go home.
Tedious Guy: I was just wondering, do either of you girls like Johnny Mathis?
Passenger Girl [shrieks with excitement]: I love Johnny Mathis!
Tedious guy punches the driver girl and then fast forward to them in the woods somewhere being bound and dragged around by the tedious guy and his masked accomplice. One of the girls reaches into a bag (presumably belonging to Mr. Tedium) and pulls out a brown bottle that she smashes against the accomplice's face. Close-up on the bottle's remnants on the ground with 2 pieces of masking tape on which we see the handwritten words "Hydrochloric" and "Acid". The accomplice guy then stabs the passenger girl to death and we see the guys running off into the darkness. This is one of the clumsiest set-ups for a plot device ever. And roll opening credits...
I should note here that the driver, Melissa (as if we get a chance to care about her name) is played by Iranian-born actress Marjan Faritous who has gone on to do hard-core pornography under the name Persia Pele. This is a decision I can hardly fault when "mainstream" acting consists of playing strippers who get punched after being asked if they like Johnny Mathis. At that point driving around Mobile, Alabama in a van and having sex on camera sounds like a step up on the career ladder.
And, on a more philosophical note, how would you feel if the last intelligible sentence you ever uttered was "I love Johnny Mathis!"? That's gotta be a bad way to go.
3. Now we're back at a strip club (presumably later, but I don't know because space and time have ceased to hold meaning here) and there are two new guys sitting and commenting on the girls and how they need to get rid of the hovering brother of one of them to get things moving with the girls. This is the point at which the machinations of plot and the revolving characters, not to mention the complete meaningless of time and space, turn this "film" into something unnecessarily arcane. I don't know who these two guys are and what they have to do with the pair who had the trouble with the acid in the first scene and I don't know why nobody in the strip club is wondering what happened to the other two girls. Is this the same strip club? Are we in the same timeline or plane of existence? I don't know and stopped caring about the time I heard the words "I love Johnny Mathis!" if not several minutes before. More characters (strippers, creepy guys, cougars, hawks, jerk-offs) are introduced and eventually some of the strippers accept a deal to go do a private party at a lake-house. A long chunk of time is then spent in creepy driving scenes, less creepy boating scenes and times that we might just put under the general rubric of an "exotic dancer camping retreat." This is part of the experiment in torture. How long can you watch this before you start screaming at the screen like a maniac about wanting to see some blood? I think (but I'm not sure because space and time ceased to have meaning for me) that about an hour passed during which time one of the strippers fell drunkenly off a toilet while trying to pee and another one was in the shower and several of them were in the woods for some unknown reason. Maybe it was two hours. Maybe less, since this is only supposed to be 80 minutes long. I don't know or care.
4. Somehow we end up with a basement filled with women in various states of torture or being tortured by people including acid face...well, mostly acid face. At one point he (or someone else) turns on the other guys and kills off some of them. Again, I lost track of why any of these things were happening. Acid face drills a hole in one woman's foot and slashes another's throat. It all comes off as pretty haphazard. It's all chaos here in the lakehouse of torture. Melissa (you remember her? the one who got punched in the face in the car...) comes back and shoots acid face, cuts off his hand and then helps the survivors to escape.
Melissa: You should have finished what you started.
Well, unless you're talking about this movie, in which case you should have quit and gotten jobs at Whataburger.
Melissa: How does it feel for your stupid fucking life to be an experiment?
I'm not sure, but thanks for asking. Also, I'm beginning to really dislike Johnny Mathis.
5. There's some sort of meaningless denouement with the good guy males (there were some?) regretting not being the ones to kill acid face themselves. And then we get a shot of Melissa sitting in a chair with a haunted look in her eyes (on account of not knowing about how she feels about Johnny Mathis--and, of course the horrific torture and killing and other deviant acts we can only imagine). This is supposed to be meaningful. It's not. All meaning was lost about the time the opening credits rolled on this thing, maybe well before that. I wouldn't know, because all time and space have lost meaning for me thanks to this film.
6. As if this wasn't enough there's an "Experiment in Torture" theme song specially written for the ending that seems to have been written by a Strawberry Alarm Clock tribute band with lyrics by Johnny Mathis. Will the torture never end? How long must this experiment go on? (The actual artist is named Zoomer. Zoomer needs to get a job begging for leftover grease in front of a Whataburger.)
7. Jesus on a stick, there's a post-credits behind the scenes tag moment! Stop it! I hate Johnny Mathis! Stop making movies!
Finally, the madness stops. It's morning again in America. I eject this disc from my player. Life can continue on. What was this experiment about? Will we ever know? I honestly don't care. I think the thing about miserably bad movies is that each one is horrible in its own way, which is what makes it difficult to pick one film as the worst film ever. I mean, Experiment in Torture is one of the worst films I've ever seen. I really hated it. But it's like saying one specific rat dropping is the worst rat dropping you've ever tasted. No matter how many rat droppings you taste, you don't really become a conoisseur who can rank them in terms of foulness, the last one you had will continue to be the worst one you've ever tasted until you stumble upon another one. Now, the mark of wisdom is the person who avoids tasting any rat droppings.
But artifacts of culture (books, movies, etc) are like relationships. You don't know how bad it's going to be until you're in it. You could avoid some of the worse ones, sure, but sometimes you just have to take a chance instead of staying home and watching Man vs. Food. Experiment in Torture is like going out on a date with someone who walks around twirling a loaded pistol. You know you're going to get shot before the night is out, but if you're bored enough you might go ahead and go to dinner just to see what happens. The answer, of course, is that you're going to get shot. Also, you might start imagining that the whole film is taking place in Johnny Mathis's imagination. Mostly, though, you'll be disgusted with yourself, with the people who made this film and with Johnny Mathis. If this was the last film left in the world I would destroy it and start from scratch with the idea of moving pictures.
And another thing...
Are you seriously telling me it took THREE people to come up with this? It only took one person to write Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Anna Karenina only took one writer. But Experiment in Torture needed three people. I would be more forgiving if this had been the product of one deranged mind. But a trio means that at any given moment when even two people might go off the deep end and agree on a bad idea then there was a third person who not only didn't put the brakes on this crazy train but who shoveled more shit-covered coal into the engine of madness. Three people? Really? Three monkeys throwing poop on a wall could have come up with a more coherent script. Forget what I said earlier. If these three people were working at Whataburger they'd hand me a bag filled with dried hippo turds and say "here are your fries!"
Trailers (for what can only be better movies)
1. Saw III
There's a line in this trailer that goes: Suffering? You haven't seen anything yet.
Do you people not know what disc you've put this on? I just watched Experiment in Torture you stupid puppet face bastard. I KNOW SUFFERING and you have no idea who you're dealing with here. I will tear you into little pieces and then make those little pieces watch this movie until Johnny Mathis shows up to punch you in the pieces of your dismembered face and then ask you "How do you like me, now, puppet ass!" Saw III? Saw your ass! Saw your tiny leathery puppet ballsack! Saw your mom!
2. Captivity
Elisha Cuthbert is being held in a torture dungeon. To paraphrase that Dodge commercial there are three things that America got right: Cars, Freedom and Torture. Guess which one is represented here.
3. Holla
Ah yes, the long awaited all-black remake of Scream. I'm not joking. I'm not sure anyone other than Johnny Mathis was waiting for this, but it was long-awaited.
4. Night of the Living Dead 3D
De3d
Zombies in 3-D might be cool, but can we have something like Late Afternoon of the Living Dead or Naptime with the Living Dead?
5. Fido
In this awesome film zombies (including Billy Connolly) are kept as pets and menial servants by normal people. It's tender and heartwarming, wacky and offbeat, zany and irreverent and also water soluble.
6. Dark Storm
A government experiment has gone awry and now the only person who can save us is Stephen Baldwin. I want you to think about that sentence for one full minute...and then never think about it again.
I've never seen that much dark matter in one place.
Other than in Stephen Baldwin's testes, that is.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Be Afraid...Of Laughter
Don’t Be Scared (2006)
Directed by Master P, Co-Directed by Myke Diesel, Screenplay by Master P
I suppose we have to begin here by questioning the sanity of anyone who goes out and buys a horror movie directed by Master P, even if it costs less than 99 cents. Curiosity only goes so far as a defense, but I will say proudly that if it had been an adaptation of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome written and directed by Master P, I would have exhibited a similar curiosity. And furthermore, if you aren't just a little bit curious about what a film of any kind written and directed by Master P is like then what ARE you curious about in this world? Now, that doesn't mean that you have to go out and watch this movie, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't at least be somewhat curious about it. Just go ahead and admit that you're a little curious, because life is better when you're curious about things. Now, there may not be any undiscovered continents to explore, but here is something that is left to be explored and so here I stand before you, a man who has been to the undiscovered country of Don't Be Scared and can safely tell you all about it so you don't have to put on a pith helmet and watch it for yourself.
The biggest shock of the film for me was when I popped the DVD into my player and (as I often do with films of dubious merit or undue potential for making me want to poke my eyes out) checked the timer to see how long it was. The counter said 45 minutes. The back cover of the case said it was 75 minutes long. I actually found myself wondering if I had a defective copy, one which had been purged of 30 minutes of precious storytelling. I thought about this long enough to break out into hysterical uncontrollable laughter, a sheer childish joy that sent me reeling onto the ground and unable to breathe. It was a laughter of pure absurdity and it made me happy. At that moment I knew that I had purchased one moment of genuine good cheer for something along the lines of 78 cents. I could just chuck the disc out into my backyard for the raccoons to play with and I had gotten more happiness out of it than some people get in their whole miserable grasping lives. There are coked up filmmakers in Beverly Hills (probably with a hand in distributing films crappier than this) who don't know the kind of joy I had laughing at the missing 30 minutes.
I know that a part of me must have felt like calling Master P a cheat for delivering a half-finished movie to me, but that thought only made me laugh harder. I again had trouble breathing and had to take a few minutes to catch my breath from the laughter. And all I could think to say to myself was "Master P, you magnificent bastard!"
From this point on I knew that no matter how bad this film was, it was already almost over. (If you try the same trick while watching Last Year at Marienbad you usually have another hour and a half left to go.)
Needless to say, this 45 minute "film" was clearly missing something in the middle. You could tell there was a large chunk of action and exposition in the middle that had either been excised or never created. The same was true of the beginning and the end. The plot (yes, there was one) revolved around the death of a black student, Julius Curse (Joseph Williamson) at a Halloween party in an apartment. One of the girls had invited him to the party but the white boys didn't like his presence so they killed him and then buried him in the yard. Then we skip ahead several years later to another Halloween party (which looks suspiciously like the first party) at the same apartment. And now another black guy (this one played by Master P) is invited by a girl. In a way, you could say that this is the Last Year at Marienbad of Master P horror movies. Meanwhile in another room in the apartment a group of kids is playing around with calling up spirits and they unwittingly call up the spirit of Julius Curse (only after they accidentally call up Michael Jackson, who the kids find more frightening than Julius.) Try not to get too attached to the plot, it won't be with us for long.
Now, you might expect there to be a wide swath of exploitation to pepper this 45 minute vaganza (the "extra" was lost along with the other 30 minutes), and there certainly are a lot of attractive people at the party, but the end result is surprisingly light on the exploitation, even the obligatory shower scene (you didn't think that would get cut, did you?) features a woman with masking tape covering her nipples, but maybe that's a character choice. The fact that half a dozen people can disappear and be murdered in a 3 room apartment shows just how rockin' a party it must be. So, yeah, Julius gets his revenge on the people who killed him and their girlfriends, too, the cops show up to investigate the room full of corpses and the "film" comes to an abrupt end. It's like an expressionist drunk dial of a horror movie. To call this result rudimentary is to redefine rudiments. Rudiments should be made of sterner stuff. I haven't even mentioned that at least half of the dialogue in the party scenes can't be heard over the soundtrack. Dammit, Master P, what are you trying to pull here? I can't really hate Don't Be Scared, because there isn't enough of it to hate. And the whole racist murder angle gives it a kernel of something to hold on to. But still, I can't help feeling like this film is part of some long con and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Either that, or that they honestly forgot to edit in the other (better?) half of the film.
Master P, you magnificent bastard!
Bonus Features
1. Trailers
Don't Be Scared
HollyHood Cinema presents a trailer that is curiously enough not missing a half hour of material.
Repos
Okay, I know that a remake of Repo Men with Master P and Katt Williams is probably the last thing you'd want to see after watching (or even reading about) Don't Be Scared, but when the trailer voiceover says "A crackhead from Brooklyn gives it two thumbs up." and then there's a title that comes up on the screen reading "2 thums up" -- crack head, I have to admit that I started getting curious again. Master P, you magnificent bastard!
2. Music Video--"Shine" by Romeo
A shiny yellow sports car and a girl in a park with Romeo and several of his buddies. Also missing about 30 minutes of other material that I'm sure were cooler than what is left here.
Directed by Master P, Co-Directed by Myke Diesel, Screenplay by Master P
I suppose we have to begin here by questioning the sanity of anyone who goes out and buys a horror movie directed by Master P, even if it costs less than 99 cents. Curiosity only goes so far as a defense, but I will say proudly that if it had been an adaptation of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome written and directed by Master P, I would have exhibited a similar curiosity. And furthermore, if you aren't just a little bit curious about what a film of any kind written and directed by Master P is like then what ARE you curious about in this world? Now, that doesn't mean that you have to go out and watch this movie, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't at least be somewhat curious about it. Just go ahead and admit that you're a little curious, because life is better when you're curious about things. Now, there may not be any undiscovered continents to explore, but here is something that is left to be explored and so here I stand before you, a man who has been to the undiscovered country of Don't Be Scared and can safely tell you all about it so you don't have to put on a pith helmet and watch it for yourself.
The biggest shock of the film for me was when I popped the DVD into my player and (as I often do with films of dubious merit or undue potential for making me want to poke my eyes out) checked the timer to see how long it was. The counter said 45 minutes. The back cover of the case said it was 75 minutes long. I actually found myself wondering if I had a defective copy, one which had been purged of 30 minutes of precious storytelling. I thought about this long enough to break out into hysterical uncontrollable laughter, a sheer childish joy that sent me reeling onto the ground and unable to breathe. It was a laughter of pure absurdity and it made me happy. At that moment I knew that I had purchased one moment of genuine good cheer for something along the lines of 78 cents. I could just chuck the disc out into my backyard for the raccoons to play with and I had gotten more happiness out of it than some people get in their whole miserable grasping lives. There are coked up filmmakers in Beverly Hills (probably with a hand in distributing films crappier than this) who don't know the kind of joy I had laughing at the missing 30 minutes.
I know that a part of me must have felt like calling Master P a cheat for delivering a half-finished movie to me, but that thought only made me laugh harder. I again had trouble breathing and had to take a few minutes to catch my breath from the laughter. And all I could think to say to myself was "Master P, you magnificent bastard!"
From this point on I knew that no matter how bad this film was, it was already almost over. (If you try the same trick while watching Last Year at Marienbad you usually have another hour and a half left to go.)
Needless to say, this 45 minute "film" was clearly missing something in the middle. You could tell there was a large chunk of action and exposition in the middle that had either been excised or never created. The same was true of the beginning and the end. The plot (yes, there was one) revolved around the death of a black student, Julius Curse (Joseph Williamson) at a Halloween party in an apartment. One of the girls had invited him to the party but the white boys didn't like his presence so they killed him and then buried him in the yard. Then we skip ahead several years later to another Halloween party (which looks suspiciously like the first party) at the same apartment. And now another black guy (this one played by Master P) is invited by a girl. In a way, you could say that this is the Last Year at Marienbad of Master P horror movies. Meanwhile in another room in the apartment a group of kids is playing around with calling up spirits and they unwittingly call up the spirit of Julius Curse (only after they accidentally call up Michael Jackson, who the kids find more frightening than Julius.) Try not to get too attached to the plot, it won't be with us for long.
Now, you might expect there to be a wide swath of exploitation to pepper this 45 minute vaganza (the "extra" was lost along with the other 30 minutes), and there certainly are a lot of attractive people at the party, but the end result is surprisingly light on the exploitation, even the obligatory shower scene (you didn't think that would get cut, did you?) features a woman with masking tape covering her nipples, but maybe that's a character choice. The fact that half a dozen people can disappear and be murdered in a 3 room apartment shows just how rockin' a party it must be. So, yeah, Julius gets his revenge on the people who killed him and their girlfriends, too, the cops show up to investigate the room full of corpses and the "film" comes to an abrupt end. It's like an expressionist drunk dial of a horror movie. To call this result rudimentary is to redefine rudiments. Rudiments should be made of sterner stuff. I haven't even mentioned that at least half of the dialogue in the party scenes can't be heard over the soundtrack. Dammit, Master P, what are you trying to pull here? I can't really hate Don't Be Scared, because there isn't enough of it to hate. And the whole racist murder angle gives it a kernel of something to hold on to. But still, I can't help feeling like this film is part of some long con and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Either that, or that they honestly forgot to edit in the other (better?) half of the film.
Master P, you magnificent bastard!
Bonus Features
1. Trailers
Don't Be Scared
HollyHood Cinema presents a trailer that is curiously enough not missing a half hour of material.
Repos
Okay, I know that a remake of Repo Men with Master P and Katt Williams is probably the last thing you'd want to see after watching (or even reading about) Don't Be Scared, but when the trailer voiceover says "A crackhead from Brooklyn gives it two thumbs up." and then there's a title that comes up on the screen reading "2 thums up" -- crack head, I have to admit that I started getting curious again. Master P, you magnificent bastard!
2. Music Video--"Shine" by Romeo
A shiny yellow sports car and a girl in a park with Romeo and several of his buddies. Also missing about 30 minutes of other material that I'm sure were cooler than what is left here.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Naughty Mittens
Murder Loves Killers Too (2009)
Directed by Drew Barnhardt, Screenplay by Drew Barnhardt
TITLE CARD:SOME YEARS AGO
Narrator: The friends lived in such a way as to defy boredom, refusing all proposals of responsibility and swimming upon the high tide of youth. The free spirits approached with a thousand anticipations of all the wonders their days would bring. Sadly, it was not to be as fate did not intend that they should enjoy their times for very long. Nevertheless, they were resilient in their determination to enjoy themselves with an enthusiasm unrivalled. They practiced the science of every kind of misconduct and professors of that science were always made welcome. They made good on innumerable occasions to improve their intimacy with a blind partiality, as a bird sings or a rose blows from nature. Let it suffice to say that they were poised to enjoy their summer escape, free of care, at the idyllic mountainside retreat...and, no doubt, they would have had they not all been brutally murdered, one by one.
I had a feeling this film was going to be different from the run of the mill spring break cabin slaughter movie when the nonsensical British narrator started up with a Wind in the Willows style narration as a van full of kids drives along a curve in the mountains. It looks like a jeep filled with a drunk version of the Scooby Doo gang is going by. Then, when the above narration is complete we get a subtitle that reads "NOW" and a more contemporary looking bunch of college kids headed to a cabin. Why did we have that opening? I have no idea...and I love that. In the car we meet our victims, the thrill seekers Brian (Scott Nadler) and Tamra (Mary LeGault), the spaz Lindy (Kat Szumski), the voice of reason girl Aggie (Christine Haeberman) and the other guy Kyle (John Jenkinson). Their first mistake is driving up to the mountains in an old Chevy Nova and pushing the car to its limits, which unfortunately for them were reached sometime in 1975. But at least we have good tunes because this is where we get to hear the song "Let's Traumatize Aunt Debra" which sounds like a Man Man song and is one of the original musical highlights that makes this film so much more enjoyable. I must also add that the opening theme has a Tales from the Crypt-like charm to it that I quite enjoyed.
One of the unexpected charms of this film is the the nonchalance of the killer. The annoying young folk have been in the cabin for all of a minute before one of them (Lindy, who was already clearly high on mushrooms and rotten weasel meat back in the car) stands too close to the drapes by the sliding door and is just grabbed and taken away while everyone else is still exploring the vacation house. There's no blood, no screaming, not even much in the way of suspense. One minute Aggie was talking to her and the next she's gone--presumably out for a run in the woods.
It takes us more than half the film before we get the name of the killer, Stevie (Allen Andrews) and almost as long before we even get a word out of him.
Unlike a piece of torture porn we aren't treated to scenes of Lindy being tortured and killed. In fact, all we see of her ever again is when Kyle is caught by Stevie and hung up and eviscerated we notice that Lindy is being stored in the same storage room having already been done away with. Though we do hear her being killed offstage while her oblivious friends shrug off the sound. Kyle's capture is even more nonchalant as he goes out for a run and sees an open door and when he looks in he sees Stevie standing there in a bathrobe sipping from a coffee mug and before anyone can say anything Stevie knocks Kyle upside the head and drags him into the storage room. There's nothing like seeing a horror movie killer calmly enjoying a break from his "job." It was like that old cartoon with the sheep dog and the wolf who clock in and out at the same place and then attempt to kill each other until 5pm. Stevie is the kind of serial killer who clearly enjoys what he's doing without having to work at it every moment of his life. You just can't imagine Jason Vorhees having a sandwich or Freddy Krueger enjoying a cup of coffee or Michael Myers taking a dump and that is clearly a failure of imagination that Drew Barnhardt solves in this film with Stevie who, we find out has a very real suburban life that he goes back to after his periodic murder sprees. In fact, he pretty much pretends to go on business trips when all he does is drive out to the cabin and kill people.
At any rate, while Unlucky Lindy is spared onscreen grotesqueries Kyle has no such luck. Kyle is hung up with a meathook in the back and is stabbed and has his intestines (well, just one intestine) pulled out. Meanwhile his friends are in the living room having a drinking montage which gives us another shot at original music, in this case a party song ("Let's Hole") with the chorus "Booty loose, booty troubles, booty juice, booty bubbles." The drinking/party montage takes us to sundown and gives Stevie a chance to catch his breath and prepare for the evening takedown. Also, Stevie is a bit of a clean freak so he cleans up the bottles and glasses in the kitchen area while he waits for his next chance to kill. It's nice to see a murderer with a work ethic and who values tidiness. He is, of course, also clearly deranged as evidenced by the "Happy Birthday big Stevie!" cake he puts on the table and the party hat he puts on the unconscious Brian before proceeding to stab him and then (as if multiple bloody stab wounds weren't enough) snap his neck. And Stevie's tidiness does not extend to keeping the cake from getting spurted with blood. Hey, at least Brian got one last chance to fool around with Tamra on the pool table upstairs before being ceremoniously offed by a psycho. And at least he doesn't get what Tamra gets, which is a flying knife that goes straight into her open mouth. Freudians, start your engines!
Now it's just down to Aggie vs. Stevie and at least Aggie is aware now that there is a problem. Knowing really is half the battle in this case. There is a long sequence as Stevie tries to hunt down Aggie while she does what she can to escape or hide or both. Stevie gets the drop on her and finally we get to hear him speak as he delivers a monologue to her while she's tied up in a bed and he proceeds to explain his issues calmly in what has to be one of the most egregiously awesome cases of monologuing in any kind of film ever:
God, I'm so sorry about this. Yeah, let me explain. The fact of the matter is...I'm sorry, bear with me...I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. I wasn't gonna say anything, but, if you're gonna get wet you might as well go swimming. Truth be told, the way this is gonna break down is I have a sexual problem and I'm gonna need your help.
Yeah, I know that's not exactly what you wanna hear, but it's important to me, nonetheless. Yeah, I know, you've pretty much got a situation on your hands, but, be that as it may, if we can collaborate in a productive manner I don't see any reason why we can't get through this together, re-energized even. I've been doing some work around the house with your friends and I must say I've not been able to open up a line of communication with any of them. But, far be it from me to muddy the waters, when in all likelihood you'll get the spirit of this thing right away and run with it. Thankfully, I had a few moments to sit and collect my thoughts and I wrote down all my feelings about you in a letter.
My Beautiful Flower,
Watching you grow has been the greatest joy of my life. You inspire me at every turn. You allow my imagination to run wild with new possibility. That you have come into my life is proof of a greater power. That power is love and it is alive in all of us. I don't know what I would do if I ever discovered that you have been untrue. I want you to know that we will be together for the rest of your life and whenever you feel vulnerable or afraid I will be there.
Okay, are you ready to jump in? Hit the ground running, as it were? Are you comfortable? There you go. Now, I want you to know that from here on out if you feel it necessary to address me, I'm going to have to insist that you call me "Dad." We're going to have to go over these lessons later. But for now, I have some concerns that must take precedence and we're going to have to focus on my issues for the time being, okay?
You know what? I'm going to call an audible here. Sorry to throw you a curveball like this, but whenever I get an idea I like to realize it to its full potential. I call it "The Hippo." It's important to leave a window open for when these things pop up. So, what I'd like to do is untie your hands from behind you and then tie them in front so that you can put your arms around me like an embrace and then we'll go from there. But, I'm not going to do this unless we're on the same page. Do you agree to these terms? Are you with me? Okay, now I needn't remind you that screaming is a bad idea. It doesn't mesh with the way I like to do things and it just makes things take a lot longer. And I hasten to add that what I do require is a certain amount of concentration on my part. Naturally, I have a process and I like things just so. I mean, I wouldn't come into your house and repaint the whole place. Are you okay? I'm afraid it has to be okay. Oh yes, this is very good for me. You know what? I know a way to make this even better. I want you to know that I want you to keep things natural I think you notice to the extent that---
At this point Aggie manages to get off a quick kick and struggle her way out of the cabin but she can't seem to get into a car quickly enough so she makes her way into the woods where Stevie catches her and then proceeds to dump her in the truck of his car and goes home to his suburban life. When Stevie gets home his wife, Stella (Kathryn Playa) who is wearing the same kind of white shift that Stevie had put on Aggie (and on Lindy for that matter), greets him, surprised that he has come home early from his "convention." While she sends him into the kitchen for some leftovers she hustles her lover out of her bedroom in what now seems to be turning into a French farce. Gee, Stevie, maybe if you weren't a psychopath obsessed with your own daughter then Stella (Stella!) wouldn't be cheating on you. In the morning we get a scene of domestic banality and quiet desperation. The daughter Missy (Kelly Devoto) failed a math test and is defiant of her mother's authority, Stella wants to have a talk with Stevie about something important, and Stevie wants something more substantial for breakfast but isn't allowed because of his cholesterol. Stevie puts off Stella's talk and heads to the driveway where Aggie jumps out of the trunk of the car and proceeds to viciously beat Stevie with a tire iron. And then she rips out his tongue with her bare hand and proceeds to shove it back into his mouth and hold his jaw shut while he chokes to death on his own blood and tongue. (Spoiler alert?) But it doesn't end there...it ends with Stella and Missy running out of the front door of the house to find the awkward scene of brutality in front of them. And cut to black...
I have to say that this is one of the most awesome endings of all time. And just to put the icing on the awkward cake we are treated to one last original song, "Naughty Mittens" which is one of the peppiest happiest tunes you could ever find.
It's rare to find a film that mixes in creepiness with humor without becoming too cutesy or simply devolving into parody. This is that rare case. It's worth watching for "Naughty Mittens" if for no other reason. It's fun just to say the words Naughty Mittens. I chuckle every time I think of the words Naughty Mittens.
The point is, that this film shows superior writing and makes the most of limited resources and knows how to add value to what they have with interesting choices and great music.
Bonus Features
1. The Making of Murder Loves Killers Too
The cops got called on them when they were filming in the cabin, but the cops found the whole thing hilarious and fascinating. Great look at the process.
2. Creating a Killer
A look into the approach to creating the character of Big Stevie.
3. Director's Notebook
"And, of course, you open with the Barry Lyndon style narration...which, I don't feel enough slashers have Barry Lyndon references and that's what you get from Murder Loves Killers Too." Drew Barnhardt
I really admire a writer/director who makes a horror film with a reference to Barry Lyndon. A crappy horror director, to be sure, would fall back on all kinds of cliched references to The Shining, but Barry Lyndon? Now, that's what I call an interesting choice.
4. Music to Murder By: Scoring Murder Loves Killers Too
Ryan Franks is a genius. That's all I can say.
5. Title Madness
Drew Barnhardt opens up a binder and reads a list of titles that were considered for this film before they arrived at the final title. I cannot do justice to this without commenting on the complete list of titles, but since reading them out takes nearly 14 minutes of time I'll have to save that for a separate post. Suffice it to say that if someone makes just one of these titles into a real movie it would be hilarious. I can't even pick just one favorite, but as an example I will use You're Dead as a Doornail, Debisue.
6. Artwork Gallery
It's not the Metropolitan Museum of Horror Movie Art.
7. Original Trailer
The trailer is way too conventional and creepy and doesn't hint at the weird juxtaposition of humor and horror here.
Directed by Drew Barnhardt, Screenplay by Drew Barnhardt
TITLE CARD:SOME YEARS AGO
Narrator: The friends lived in such a way as to defy boredom, refusing all proposals of responsibility and swimming upon the high tide of youth. The free spirits approached with a thousand anticipations of all the wonders their days would bring. Sadly, it was not to be as fate did not intend that they should enjoy their times for very long. Nevertheless, they were resilient in their determination to enjoy themselves with an enthusiasm unrivalled. They practiced the science of every kind of misconduct and professors of that science were always made welcome. They made good on innumerable occasions to improve their intimacy with a blind partiality, as a bird sings or a rose blows from nature. Let it suffice to say that they were poised to enjoy their summer escape, free of care, at the idyllic mountainside retreat...and, no doubt, they would have had they not all been brutally murdered, one by one.
I had a feeling this film was going to be different from the run of the mill spring break cabin slaughter movie when the nonsensical British narrator started up with a Wind in the Willows style narration as a van full of kids drives along a curve in the mountains. It looks like a jeep filled with a drunk version of the Scooby Doo gang is going by. Then, when the above narration is complete we get a subtitle that reads "NOW" and a more contemporary looking bunch of college kids headed to a cabin. Why did we have that opening? I have no idea...and I love that. In the car we meet our victims, the thrill seekers Brian (Scott Nadler) and Tamra (Mary LeGault), the spaz Lindy (Kat Szumski), the voice of reason girl Aggie (Christine Haeberman) and the other guy Kyle (John Jenkinson). Their first mistake is driving up to the mountains in an old Chevy Nova and pushing the car to its limits, which unfortunately for them were reached sometime in 1975. But at least we have good tunes because this is where we get to hear the song "Let's Traumatize Aunt Debra" which sounds like a Man Man song and is one of the original musical highlights that makes this film so much more enjoyable. I must also add that the opening theme has a Tales from the Crypt-like charm to it that I quite enjoyed.
One of the unexpected charms of this film is the the nonchalance of the killer. The annoying young folk have been in the cabin for all of a minute before one of them (Lindy, who was already clearly high on mushrooms and rotten weasel meat back in the car) stands too close to the drapes by the sliding door and is just grabbed and taken away while everyone else is still exploring the vacation house. There's no blood, no screaming, not even much in the way of suspense. One minute Aggie was talking to her and the next she's gone--presumably out for a run in the woods.
It takes us more than half the film before we get the name of the killer, Stevie (Allen Andrews) and almost as long before we even get a word out of him.
Unlike a piece of torture porn we aren't treated to scenes of Lindy being tortured and killed. In fact, all we see of her ever again is when Kyle is caught by Stevie and hung up and eviscerated we notice that Lindy is being stored in the same storage room having already been done away with. Though we do hear her being killed offstage while her oblivious friends shrug off the sound. Kyle's capture is even more nonchalant as he goes out for a run and sees an open door and when he looks in he sees Stevie standing there in a bathrobe sipping from a coffee mug and before anyone can say anything Stevie knocks Kyle upside the head and drags him into the storage room. There's nothing like seeing a horror movie killer calmly enjoying a break from his "job." It was like that old cartoon with the sheep dog and the wolf who clock in and out at the same place and then attempt to kill each other until 5pm. Stevie is the kind of serial killer who clearly enjoys what he's doing without having to work at it every moment of his life. You just can't imagine Jason Vorhees having a sandwich or Freddy Krueger enjoying a cup of coffee or Michael Myers taking a dump and that is clearly a failure of imagination that Drew Barnhardt solves in this film with Stevie who, we find out has a very real suburban life that he goes back to after his periodic murder sprees. In fact, he pretty much pretends to go on business trips when all he does is drive out to the cabin and kill people.
At any rate, while Unlucky Lindy is spared onscreen grotesqueries Kyle has no such luck. Kyle is hung up with a meathook in the back and is stabbed and has his intestines (well, just one intestine) pulled out. Meanwhile his friends are in the living room having a drinking montage which gives us another shot at original music, in this case a party song ("Let's Hole") with the chorus "Booty loose, booty troubles, booty juice, booty bubbles." The drinking/party montage takes us to sundown and gives Stevie a chance to catch his breath and prepare for the evening takedown. Also, Stevie is a bit of a clean freak so he cleans up the bottles and glasses in the kitchen area while he waits for his next chance to kill. It's nice to see a murderer with a work ethic and who values tidiness. He is, of course, also clearly deranged as evidenced by the "Happy Birthday big Stevie!" cake he puts on the table and the party hat he puts on the unconscious Brian before proceeding to stab him and then (as if multiple bloody stab wounds weren't enough) snap his neck. And Stevie's tidiness does not extend to keeping the cake from getting spurted with blood. Hey, at least Brian got one last chance to fool around with Tamra on the pool table upstairs before being ceremoniously offed by a psycho. And at least he doesn't get what Tamra gets, which is a flying knife that goes straight into her open mouth. Freudians, start your engines!
Now it's just down to Aggie vs. Stevie and at least Aggie is aware now that there is a problem. Knowing really is half the battle in this case. There is a long sequence as Stevie tries to hunt down Aggie while she does what she can to escape or hide or both. Stevie gets the drop on her and finally we get to hear him speak as he delivers a monologue to her while she's tied up in a bed and he proceeds to explain his issues calmly in what has to be one of the most egregiously awesome cases of monologuing in any kind of film ever:
God, I'm so sorry about this. Yeah, let me explain. The fact of the matter is...I'm sorry, bear with me...I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. I wasn't gonna say anything, but, if you're gonna get wet you might as well go swimming. Truth be told, the way this is gonna break down is I have a sexual problem and I'm gonna need your help.
Yeah, I know that's not exactly what you wanna hear, but it's important to me, nonetheless. Yeah, I know, you've pretty much got a situation on your hands, but, be that as it may, if we can collaborate in a productive manner I don't see any reason why we can't get through this together, re-energized even. I've been doing some work around the house with your friends and I must say I've not been able to open up a line of communication with any of them. But, far be it from me to muddy the waters, when in all likelihood you'll get the spirit of this thing right away and run with it. Thankfully, I had a few moments to sit and collect my thoughts and I wrote down all my feelings about you in a letter.
My Beautiful Flower,
Watching you grow has been the greatest joy of my life. You inspire me at every turn. You allow my imagination to run wild with new possibility. That you have come into my life is proof of a greater power. That power is love and it is alive in all of us. I don't know what I would do if I ever discovered that you have been untrue. I want you to know that we will be together for the rest of your life and whenever you feel vulnerable or afraid I will be there.
Okay, are you ready to jump in? Hit the ground running, as it were? Are you comfortable? There you go. Now, I want you to know that from here on out if you feel it necessary to address me, I'm going to have to insist that you call me "Dad." We're going to have to go over these lessons later. But for now, I have some concerns that must take precedence and we're going to have to focus on my issues for the time being, okay?
You know what? I'm going to call an audible here. Sorry to throw you a curveball like this, but whenever I get an idea I like to realize it to its full potential. I call it "The Hippo." It's important to leave a window open for when these things pop up. So, what I'd like to do is untie your hands from behind you and then tie them in front so that you can put your arms around me like an embrace and then we'll go from there. But, I'm not going to do this unless we're on the same page. Do you agree to these terms? Are you with me? Okay, now I needn't remind you that screaming is a bad idea. It doesn't mesh with the way I like to do things and it just makes things take a lot longer. And I hasten to add that what I do require is a certain amount of concentration on my part. Naturally, I have a process and I like things just so. I mean, I wouldn't come into your house and repaint the whole place. Are you okay? I'm afraid it has to be okay. Oh yes, this is very good for me. You know what? I know a way to make this even better. I want you to know that I want you to keep things natural I think you notice to the extent that---
At this point Aggie manages to get off a quick kick and struggle her way out of the cabin but she can't seem to get into a car quickly enough so she makes her way into the woods where Stevie catches her and then proceeds to dump her in the truck of his car and goes home to his suburban life. When Stevie gets home his wife, Stella (Kathryn Playa) who is wearing the same kind of white shift that Stevie had put on Aggie (and on Lindy for that matter), greets him, surprised that he has come home early from his "convention." While she sends him into the kitchen for some leftovers she hustles her lover out of her bedroom in what now seems to be turning into a French farce. Gee, Stevie, maybe if you weren't a psychopath obsessed with your own daughter then Stella (Stella!) wouldn't be cheating on you. In the morning we get a scene of domestic banality and quiet desperation. The daughter Missy (Kelly Devoto) failed a math test and is defiant of her mother's authority, Stella wants to have a talk with Stevie about something important, and Stevie wants something more substantial for breakfast but isn't allowed because of his cholesterol. Stevie puts off Stella's talk and heads to the driveway where Aggie jumps out of the trunk of the car and proceeds to viciously beat Stevie with a tire iron. And then she rips out his tongue with her bare hand and proceeds to shove it back into his mouth and hold his jaw shut while he chokes to death on his own blood and tongue. (Spoiler alert?) But it doesn't end there...it ends with Stella and Missy running out of the front door of the house to find the awkward scene of brutality in front of them. And cut to black...
I have to say that this is one of the most awesome endings of all time. And just to put the icing on the awkward cake we are treated to one last original song, "Naughty Mittens" which is one of the peppiest happiest tunes you could ever find.
It's rare to find a film that mixes in creepiness with humor without becoming too cutesy or simply devolving into parody. This is that rare case. It's worth watching for "Naughty Mittens" if for no other reason. It's fun just to say the words Naughty Mittens. I chuckle every time I think of the words Naughty Mittens.
The point is, that this film shows superior writing and makes the most of limited resources and knows how to add value to what they have with interesting choices and great music.
Bonus Features
1. The Making of Murder Loves Killers Too
The cops got called on them when they were filming in the cabin, but the cops found the whole thing hilarious and fascinating. Great look at the process.
2. Creating a Killer
A look into the approach to creating the character of Big Stevie.
3. Director's Notebook
"And, of course, you open with the Barry Lyndon style narration...which, I don't feel enough slashers have Barry Lyndon references and that's what you get from Murder Loves Killers Too." Drew Barnhardt
I really admire a writer/director who makes a horror film with a reference to Barry Lyndon. A crappy horror director, to be sure, would fall back on all kinds of cliched references to The Shining, but Barry Lyndon? Now, that's what I call an interesting choice.
4. Music to Murder By: Scoring Murder Loves Killers Too
Ryan Franks is a genius. That's all I can say.
5. Title Madness
Drew Barnhardt opens up a binder and reads a list of titles that were considered for this film before they arrived at the final title. I cannot do justice to this without commenting on the complete list of titles, but since reading them out takes nearly 14 minutes of time I'll have to save that for a separate post. Suffice it to say that if someone makes just one of these titles into a real movie it would be hilarious. I can't even pick just one favorite, but as an example I will use You're Dead as a Doornail, Debisue.
6. Artwork Gallery
It's not the Metropolitan Museum of Horror Movie Art.
7. Original Trailer
The trailer is way too conventional and creepy and doesn't hint at the weird juxtaposition of humor and horror here.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Man Bites Man Bites Dog Bites Biscuits
The Last Horror Movie (2003)
Directed by Julian Richards, Screenplay by James Handel
First of all, just go out and watch this film. Track down a copy of it, put it in your queue or whatever it is you do and then come back here.
Did you do it? Don't lie to me. Go on, now, go watch this film. Come back here when you've seen it.
Did you see it? Come on now, don't be lazy.
And don't be scared.
There.
Didn't you actually start believing that the scene in the diner at the beginning was the movie you were going to be watching?
Wasn't it just a little jarring seeing that movie get hijacked by our narrator?
Now aren't you glad I made you do that?
You're a bit weirded out? Well, I understand that. It is, after all a bit of a serious intellectual exercise.
A seriously sick intellectual exercise.
On the other hand, it was kind of funny, too, right?
But it was the kind of funny that not only made you feel a bit dirty afterward but also called you out on your conflicted feelings about violence and voyeurism. Sure, you laughed a lot, but you were also tense for a lot of that time, right? And you wondered why the killer wasn't always a killer, why you had to see him having tea with his mother and being the cool uncle to his nephews. You thought to yourself that this has to be some kind of joke, this guy had to be either a monster or not but certainly not something in between. Movies aren't supposed to work that way.
You got especially pissed off when you thought about how this film violated so many of those "rules" of screenwriting and storytelling and you didn't know if you should be angry at the film or at those con-artists in the screenwriting workshops and their hack acolytes.
You're thinking again about that scene where he doesn't show you what he's doing off camera and then accuses you of wanting to see what he was doing. You wanted to see it, didn't you? And yet you deplore violence, don't you? But once it was there it was an awful tease for him not to show you what was so clearly audible.
You're a sick and twisted person. And so am I for making you watch it. And yet, because it makes you question yourself it was worth it, wasn't it? Saw will make you feel dirty for watching it, but never call you a sick fuck for having watched it--because they want you to watch the next installment. Not this film. It calls you a sick fuck for watching and wanting to watch the killer in action and wants to cloud your mind. Admit it. You were rooting for him somewhere along the line, there, weren't you?
I mean, not when you thought he was going to kill the kid that turned out to be his nephew. And not when you thought he was going to clock the old lady like the guy in Man Bites Dog does. But somewhere along the line he became your sympathetic protagonist, and yet that is so wrong. Isn't it?
It's rare when an intellectual exercise is so damned entertaining, but this one really is.
The Last Horror Movie is one of the three best films that critique the voyeurism of violence in our culture and in many ways Julian Richards goes even further in directly confronting the audience with their complicity than Mary Harron does in American Psycho (where we can, because of the ambiguity of the source material, pass off the whole thing as a daydream) or even Man Bites Dog, which this film pays homage to on multiple occasions. The conflict here is even more than we get when we watch Dexter, because he, at least as some sort of code that we can understand whereas Max is just killing people and the more tragic the result the better for him.
The thing that Julian Richards does here with Max (Kevin Howarth) is to give us a well-rounded character who is both awful and sympathetic and who is self-aware of the part we play in watching the violence he does. Are we not entertained by all of this? And what if this was actually a snuff film taped over a crappy horror movie? Would we keep watching it? Leave it to a small British film to make us ask the hard questions.
At any rate, this is a well written, excellently directed and performed little film that you should see. It'll make you think hard the next time you sit through a film like House of Wax cheering at people being murdered.
Special Features
1. Deleted Scenes
The Nazi Woman
Max hits a woman over the head with a skillet but is disappointed by how quick it all was so he puts her in a chair and goes into her bedroom where he finds a German military hat. "Isn't it funny what people are into?" He puts it on her head and takes some makeup and draws a little Hitler moustache on her. It's sick, but funny.
The Newsagent
Max goes to a corner store to look at the newspaper headlines for the last victim. Nice juxtaposition of his pride in killing with his slight embarrassment when the clerk asks him if he's reading the paper or if he's going to buy it.
The Art Student
The extended version of the scene with the art student that the assistant (Mark Stevenson) is unable to kill. The assistant first picks up a paint brush. "What are you going to do, paint her to death? Then he tries a plastic bag but it has a hole in the top. The student is terrified by the botched torturing. It's more disturbing in its own way than the slick violence of true torture porn, which gives you no cause to be as disturbed as this.
Grandma
This is an extended version of the scene with Grandma (the Beckettian Rita Davies) where she describes taking on a burglar and pouring a hot cup of tea down the burglar's trousers. She and Max share a laugh when he recalls that the doctors said that the burglar's testicles had been "parboiled."
2. The Last Horror Movie Featurette
A typical behind the scenes independent film look.
3. Cast Auditions
It's fun to see people auditioning for this film. It certainly shows us how good the writing was.
4. Commentary
The commentary makes clear that the nods to Man Bites Dog and other films were intentional and reveal an interesting thought process behind this film. It's not about revelling in the sick and twisted but calling our fascination with that into account.
5. Director's Friend's Short: The Shoe Collector
Directed by Justin Smith, Screenplay by Emyr Glasnant & Justin Smith
First of all, this is one of the best ideas for a special feature ever. Director's Friend's Short is up there with Director's Neighbor's Home Video of Cats Playing with Yarn.
That said, this is an excellent short film about another serial killer who has a collection of shoes. Like some of the best shorts it has a zinger of a twist and it has a gemlike quality of visual control. Most of the film (until the ending) is shot at ground level so it wins a Tarantino Award for consistent shots of people's feet and shoes.
6. Coming Soon
Corn
A horror film about defective genetically modified corn that makes sheep violent. Can Jena Malone defeat the evil corn?
Gypsy 83
Goth kids on a road trip going to New York for "Night of a Thousand Stevies" a Stevie Nicks contest at a Goth club. The very idea of a thousand Stevie Nickses running around a goth club in New York makes Priscilla Queen of the Desert feel like The Dirty Dozen by contrast. Sara Rue, Karen Black and Paulo Costanzo (Evan R. Lawson from Royal Pains) are all in this film, as is the great Andersen Gabrych.
Virgin
An interesting looking little film about a girl who claims to be having the Christ child. With Elisabeth Moss, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Robin Wright Penn and Peter Gerety.
Directed by Julian Richards, Screenplay by James Handel
First of all, just go out and watch this film. Track down a copy of it, put it in your queue or whatever it is you do and then come back here.
Did you do it? Don't lie to me. Go on, now, go watch this film. Come back here when you've seen it.
Did you see it? Come on now, don't be lazy.
And don't be scared.
There.
Didn't you actually start believing that the scene in the diner at the beginning was the movie you were going to be watching?
Wasn't it just a little jarring seeing that movie get hijacked by our narrator?
Now aren't you glad I made you do that?
You're a bit weirded out? Well, I understand that. It is, after all a bit of a serious intellectual exercise.
A seriously sick intellectual exercise.
On the other hand, it was kind of funny, too, right?
But it was the kind of funny that not only made you feel a bit dirty afterward but also called you out on your conflicted feelings about violence and voyeurism. Sure, you laughed a lot, but you were also tense for a lot of that time, right? And you wondered why the killer wasn't always a killer, why you had to see him having tea with his mother and being the cool uncle to his nephews. You thought to yourself that this has to be some kind of joke, this guy had to be either a monster or not but certainly not something in between. Movies aren't supposed to work that way.
You got especially pissed off when you thought about how this film violated so many of those "rules" of screenwriting and storytelling and you didn't know if you should be angry at the film or at those con-artists in the screenwriting workshops and their hack acolytes.
You're thinking again about that scene where he doesn't show you what he's doing off camera and then accuses you of wanting to see what he was doing. You wanted to see it, didn't you? And yet you deplore violence, don't you? But once it was there it was an awful tease for him not to show you what was so clearly audible.
You're a sick and twisted person. And so am I for making you watch it. And yet, because it makes you question yourself it was worth it, wasn't it? Saw will make you feel dirty for watching it, but never call you a sick fuck for having watched it--because they want you to watch the next installment. Not this film. It calls you a sick fuck for watching and wanting to watch the killer in action and wants to cloud your mind. Admit it. You were rooting for him somewhere along the line, there, weren't you?
I mean, not when you thought he was going to kill the kid that turned out to be his nephew. And not when you thought he was going to clock the old lady like the guy in Man Bites Dog does. But somewhere along the line he became your sympathetic protagonist, and yet that is so wrong. Isn't it?
It's rare when an intellectual exercise is so damned entertaining, but this one really is.
The Last Horror Movie is one of the three best films that critique the voyeurism of violence in our culture and in many ways Julian Richards goes even further in directly confronting the audience with their complicity than Mary Harron does in American Psycho (where we can, because of the ambiguity of the source material, pass off the whole thing as a daydream) or even Man Bites Dog, which this film pays homage to on multiple occasions. The conflict here is even more than we get when we watch Dexter, because he, at least as some sort of code that we can understand whereas Max is just killing people and the more tragic the result the better for him.
The thing that Julian Richards does here with Max (Kevin Howarth) is to give us a well-rounded character who is both awful and sympathetic and who is self-aware of the part we play in watching the violence he does. Are we not entertained by all of this? And what if this was actually a snuff film taped over a crappy horror movie? Would we keep watching it? Leave it to a small British film to make us ask the hard questions.
At any rate, this is a well written, excellently directed and performed little film that you should see. It'll make you think hard the next time you sit through a film like House of Wax cheering at people being murdered.
Special Features
1. Deleted Scenes
The Nazi Woman
Max hits a woman over the head with a skillet but is disappointed by how quick it all was so he puts her in a chair and goes into her bedroom where he finds a German military hat. "Isn't it funny what people are into?" He puts it on her head and takes some makeup and draws a little Hitler moustache on her. It's sick, but funny.
The Newsagent
Max goes to a corner store to look at the newspaper headlines for the last victim. Nice juxtaposition of his pride in killing with his slight embarrassment when the clerk asks him if he's reading the paper or if he's going to buy it.
The Art Student
The extended version of the scene with the art student that the assistant (Mark Stevenson) is unable to kill. The assistant first picks up a paint brush. "What are you going to do, paint her to death? Then he tries a plastic bag but it has a hole in the top. The student is terrified by the botched torturing. It's more disturbing in its own way than the slick violence of true torture porn, which gives you no cause to be as disturbed as this.
Grandma
This is an extended version of the scene with Grandma (the Beckettian Rita Davies) where she describes taking on a burglar and pouring a hot cup of tea down the burglar's trousers. She and Max share a laugh when he recalls that the doctors said that the burglar's testicles had been "parboiled."
2. The Last Horror Movie Featurette
A typical behind the scenes independent film look.
3. Cast Auditions
It's fun to see people auditioning for this film. It certainly shows us how good the writing was.
4. Commentary
The commentary makes clear that the nods to Man Bites Dog and other films were intentional and reveal an interesting thought process behind this film. It's not about revelling in the sick and twisted but calling our fascination with that into account.
5. Director's Friend's Short: The Shoe Collector
Directed by Justin Smith, Screenplay by Emyr Glasnant & Justin Smith
First of all, this is one of the best ideas for a special feature ever. Director's Friend's Short is up there with Director's Neighbor's Home Video of Cats Playing with Yarn.
That said, this is an excellent short film about another serial killer who has a collection of shoes. Like some of the best shorts it has a zinger of a twist and it has a gemlike quality of visual control. Most of the film (until the ending) is shot at ground level so it wins a Tarantino Award for consistent shots of people's feet and shoes.
6. Coming Soon
Corn
A horror film about defective genetically modified corn that makes sheep violent. Can Jena Malone defeat the evil corn?
Gypsy 83
Goth kids on a road trip going to New York for "Night of a Thousand Stevies" a Stevie Nicks contest at a Goth club. The very idea of a thousand Stevie Nickses running around a goth club in New York makes Priscilla Queen of the Desert feel like The Dirty Dozen by contrast. Sara Rue, Karen Black and Paulo Costanzo (Evan R. Lawson from Royal Pains) are all in this film, as is the great Andersen Gabrych.
Virgin
An interesting looking little film about a girl who claims to be having the Christ child. With Elisabeth Moss, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Robin Wright Penn and Peter Gerety.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Hostel-Lite
Turistas (2006)
Directed by John Stockwell, Screenplay by Michael Ross
Turistas is the film that people think Hostel is. It's a moral fable about sex and travel and xenophobia with a thin veneer of class warfare and medicine thrown in to cover the gore fest. (Actually it's not a fest so much as a sampler plate.) Turistas takes us to the exotic countryside of Brazil. If there's one thing that I think of when I think of Brazil it's sex--the kind of sex where you wake up the next morning smelling of coconuts and missing a kidney. And Turistas delivers that kind of Brazilian sex. Turistas is an old fashioned moral fable about why it's a bad idea to leave the well-trodden path. The lesson here is that searching for some sort of "authentic" experience off the beaten trail will get you the "authentic" experience of being killed and having your organs harvested. Next time you should just stick to the tourist spots and avoid the adventurism. Of course, this point is kind of lost in the beautiful cinematography of lush tropical vistas and lovely writhing locals, but I'm pretty sure there are better ways to see those vistas than running through them while trying to escape homicidal health care workers and their mercenaries.
The organ harvesting is the post-colonial veneer of the film where the crazy doctor Zamora (Miguel Lunardi) a low-rent Bond villain, rights the wrongs done by the rich and the American and the European and the health care industry by kidnapping tourists killing them and harvesting their organs. There are several problems with his plan besides the obvious moral dubiousness of murdering people for their organs. 1. He has idiots working for him who manage to kill people in ways that destroy all their organs. (Running someone down until they jump off a cliff makes them useless for organ harvesting.) 2. His victims have probably managed to drink themselves into cirrhosis already in whatever brief time they've been in Brazil. 3. Zamora himself is clearly unhinged. He is even more unhinged than is normal for a doctor who is secretly kidnapping tourists and taking their organs for the poor.
Needless to say (and yet, here we are saying it) the semi Marxist doctor and his mercenaries are no match for attractive Americans (and Brits) who are on vacation. In statistics somewhat reminscent of WWII two Brits die and two out of three Americans survive along with an Aussie. The survivors are a brother and sister (her best friend gets harvested) and the multilingual Aussie girl who may not be a plucky American but presumably is good enough to survive. (Although, in the original draft of the script she didn't survive.)
So, is there anything worth seeing here? Well, there are some attractive people running around with little in the way of clothing including Olivia Wilde (13 from House!) and Josh Duhamel as the brother and sister Alex and Bea. (She's Bea and he's Alex.) Beau Garrett as Bea's friend Amy. (Beau Garrett did a guest spot on House a little while ago and she and Olivia Wilde are also both in Tron: Legacy.) And then there's Melissa George as Pru, the Aussie survivor. Plus there are the Brazilians Cristiani Aparecida and Lucy Ramos as Arolea. Arolea takes the less attractive of the two brits, Finn (Desmond Askew) over to a shack behind a bar on the beach and proceeds to have sex with him and then tell him the price for the aforementioned romp, which is really insult to injury given the fact that he's going to be dead soon anyway. At least the girls in Hostel gave their victims a freebie. Poor Finn gets his self-esteem destroyed, he's drugged along with the rest of the boys and girls not from Brazil and eventually murdered. There's a fantastic chase scene in underwater caves that is somewhat worth seeing on its own. And then there's poor Kiko (Agles Steib) the local who befriends the travelers, betrays them and then helps them, getting himself killed in the process. He's a goofy schmuck and along with the rockin' tunes of Marcelo D2 provides a lot of local flavor. Also providing local flavor is a bit of dancing to the tune of MC Tam's Vidro Fumê, an especially nasty tune from Brazil that would make Sir Mix-a-lot's dirty cousin Lord Nutsack blush.
The violence is, at its worst as gory as Hostel but not as sustained. The scene where Amy is cut open is probably the most disgusting set-piece here. All in all, the violence leaves me squeamish but without the interesting story and character that made the two Hostels tolerable. Some good performers here have to do a lot to make up the difference and they come close, but there's only so much they can do with what is essentially a jungle chase movie.
I think the best improvement would have been making Zamora less unhinged and more grey. Frankly, this film could have been worth the effort if if took the ethical quandary it began with and really forced us to confront some harsh decisions. As it stands, Turistas is tolerable but not really engaging, ultraviolent with a smidgen of thought and some nice visuals. Turistas may not leave you with a case of la turista, but it's not exactly appetizing either.
Special Features
1. The unrated version includes both the unrated version and the theatrical cut in case you like your torture films less filling.
2. The Bloody Truth: The Special Make-Up Effects of Turistas
Disgusting and fascinating at the same time. The kind of effort put into making the surgery scene at the end look so real is frightening.
3. Commentary with Director John Stockwell and Producer Kent Kubena
If you're interested in how to make a film in Brazil, then this is an interesting bit of commentary.
4. Deleted Scenes
I Have A Shit
Kiko: I have a shit that tells me what to do...but the shit is very old and very stupid.
He means to say "sheet" as in a sheet of phrases in English, but it is so much funnier to go on in this vein for a minute.
Bar Fight
It's more like Bar Altercation. Alex steps up to defend Amy from a guy who gets to grindy and then pulls a gun. It makes the whole bar scene a bit too dangerous too soon.
Morning After
A great scene where the cabana bar owner shows up in the morning and says they owe him a lot of money. Things are bad enough for them but to have the mundane problem of having to pay for a mess is almost funny compared to what else is in store for them.
Lost
They're lost in the jungle and Kiko climbs a tree to try to figure out where they are while the guys debate whether or not they can get back to where they started from if they have to kill Kiko. I think they should have just killed Kiko and set up their own little Gilligan's Island village in the jungle.
The Waterfall
An extended scene in the fabulous waterfall location. It raises the question of whether it's worth transplanting organs from someone hopped up on several different drugs.
Shower Trip
People high on E sitting under an outdoor shower.
Girl Talk
A tender scene with Amy freaking out while being comforted by Bea. This scene raises all kinds of unanswered questions about Bea and Amy's relationship.
Alex On Patrol
Alex walking around on nightwatch with a serious case of insomnia.
On The Prowl
At Zamora's "facility" a guard gets busy with the cook.
Kiko's Speech
Kiko delivers a long speech explaining his reasons for being involved with this group and defending his choices. And then he gets shot. Might have been even more fun if he had been eaten by one of those sharks from Deep Blue Sea.
Alternate Ending
In the Alternate Ending Alex smashes Zamora's head in with a rock in the cave.
5. Trailers
The Hills Have Eyes 2 (aka The Hills Still Have Eyes) This is a pretty good teaser. I don't want to see the film, but it's a good trailer.
Wrong Turn 2 (aka This Turn Is Still Wrong)
Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj (aka How Come You're Not Funny Anymore? 2: The Rise of Awful Comedy)
Path Finder (I was pretty sure Pathfinder was all one word, but hey it's Fox's movie...)
Directed by John Stockwell, Screenplay by Michael Ross
Turistas is the film that people think Hostel is. It's a moral fable about sex and travel and xenophobia with a thin veneer of class warfare and medicine thrown in to cover the gore fest. (Actually it's not a fest so much as a sampler plate.) Turistas takes us to the exotic countryside of Brazil. If there's one thing that I think of when I think of Brazil it's sex--the kind of sex where you wake up the next morning smelling of coconuts and missing a kidney. And Turistas delivers that kind of Brazilian sex. Turistas is an old fashioned moral fable about why it's a bad idea to leave the well-trodden path. The lesson here is that searching for some sort of "authentic" experience off the beaten trail will get you the "authentic" experience of being killed and having your organs harvested. Next time you should just stick to the tourist spots and avoid the adventurism. Of course, this point is kind of lost in the beautiful cinematography of lush tropical vistas and lovely writhing locals, but I'm pretty sure there are better ways to see those vistas than running through them while trying to escape homicidal health care workers and their mercenaries.
The organ harvesting is the post-colonial veneer of the film where the crazy doctor Zamora (Miguel Lunardi) a low-rent Bond villain, rights the wrongs done by the rich and the American and the European and the health care industry by kidnapping tourists killing them and harvesting their organs. There are several problems with his plan besides the obvious moral dubiousness of murdering people for their organs. 1. He has idiots working for him who manage to kill people in ways that destroy all their organs. (Running someone down until they jump off a cliff makes them useless for organ harvesting.) 2. His victims have probably managed to drink themselves into cirrhosis already in whatever brief time they've been in Brazil. 3. Zamora himself is clearly unhinged. He is even more unhinged than is normal for a doctor who is secretly kidnapping tourists and taking their organs for the poor.
Needless to say (and yet, here we are saying it) the semi Marxist doctor and his mercenaries are no match for attractive Americans (and Brits) who are on vacation. In statistics somewhat reminscent of WWII two Brits die and two out of three Americans survive along with an Aussie. The survivors are a brother and sister (her best friend gets harvested) and the multilingual Aussie girl who may not be a plucky American but presumably is good enough to survive. (Although, in the original draft of the script she didn't survive.)
So, is there anything worth seeing here? Well, there are some attractive people running around with little in the way of clothing including Olivia Wilde (13 from House!) and Josh Duhamel as the brother and sister Alex and Bea. (She's Bea and he's Alex.) Beau Garrett as Bea's friend Amy. (Beau Garrett did a guest spot on House a little while ago and she and Olivia Wilde are also both in Tron: Legacy.) And then there's Melissa George as Pru, the Aussie survivor. Plus there are the Brazilians Cristiani Aparecida and Lucy Ramos as Arolea. Arolea takes the less attractive of the two brits, Finn (Desmond Askew) over to a shack behind a bar on the beach and proceeds to have sex with him and then tell him the price for the aforementioned romp, which is really insult to injury given the fact that he's going to be dead soon anyway. At least the girls in Hostel gave their victims a freebie. Poor Finn gets his self-esteem destroyed, he's drugged along with the rest of the boys and girls not from Brazil and eventually murdered. There's a fantastic chase scene in underwater caves that is somewhat worth seeing on its own. And then there's poor Kiko (Agles Steib) the local who befriends the travelers, betrays them and then helps them, getting himself killed in the process. He's a goofy schmuck and along with the rockin' tunes of Marcelo D2 provides a lot of local flavor. Also providing local flavor is a bit of dancing to the tune of MC Tam's Vidro Fumê, an especially nasty tune from Brazil that would make Sir Mix-a-lot's dirty cousin Lord Nutsack blush.
The violence is, at its worst as gory as Hostel but not as sustained. The scene where Amy is cut open is probably the most disgusting set-piece here. All in all, the violence leaves me squeamish but without the interesting story and character that made the two Hostels tolerable. Some good performers here have to do a lot to make up the difference and they come close, but there's only so much they can do with what is essentially a jungle chase movie.
I think the best improvement would have been making Zamora less unhinged and more grey. Frankly, this film could have been worth the effort if if took the ethical quandary it began with and really forced us to confront some harsh decisions. As it stands, Turistas is tolerable but not really engaging, ultraviolent with a smidgen of thought and some nice visuals. Turistas may not leave you with a case of la turista, but it's not exactly appetizing either.
Special Features
1. The unrated version includes both the unrated version and the theatrical cut in case you like your torture films less filling.
2. The Bloody Truth: The Special Make-Up Effects of Turistas
Disgusting and fascinating at the same time. The kind of effort put into making the surgery scene at the end look so real is frightening.
3. Commentary with Director John Stockwell and Producer Kent Kubena
If you're interested in how to make a film in Brazil, then this is an interesting bit of commentary.
4. Deleted Scenes
I Have A Shit
Kiko: I have a shit that tells me what to do...but the shit is very old and very stupid.
He means to say "sheet" as in a sheet of phrases in English, but it is so much funnier to go on in this vein for a minute.
Bar Fight
It's more like Bar Altercation. Alex steps up to defend Amy from a guy who gets to grindy and then pulls a gun. It makes the whole bar scene a bit too dangerous too soon.
Morning After
A great scene where the cabana bar owner shows up in the morning and says they owe him a lot of money. Things are bad enough for them but to have the mundane problem of having to pay for a mess is almost funny compared to what else is in store for them.
Lost
They're lost in the jungle and Kiko climbs a tree to try to figure out where they are while the guys debate whether or not they can get back to where they started from if they have to kill Kiko. I think they should have just killed Kiko and set up their own little Gilligan's Island village in the jungle.
The Waterfall
An extended scene in the fabulous waterfall location. It raises the question of whether it's worth transplanting organs from someone hopped up on several different drugs.
Shower Trip
People high on E sitting under an outdoor shower.
Girl Talk
A tender scene with Amy freaking out while being comforted by Bea. This scene raises all kinds of unanswered questions about Bea and Amy's relationship.
Alex On Patrol
Alex walking around on nightwatch with a serious case of insomnia.
On The Prowl
At Zamora's "facility" a guard gets busy with the cook.
Kiko's Speech
Kiko delivers a long speech explaining his reasons for being involved with this group and defending his choices. And then he gets shot. Might have been even more fun if he had been eaten by one of those sharks from Deep Blue Sea.
Alternate Ending
In the Alternate Ending Alex smashes Zamora's head in with a rock in the cave.
5. Trailers
The Hills Have Eyes 2 (aka The Hills Still Have Eyes) This is a pretty good teaser. I don't want to see the film, but it's a good trailer.
Wrong Turn 2 (aka This Turn Is Still Wrong)
Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj (aka How Come You're Not Funny Anymore? 2: The Rise of Awful Comedy)
Path Finder (I was pretty sure Pathfinder was all one word, but hey it's Fox's movie...)
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