Madhouse

Peter Toombes (pun very much intended) had become a giant star making horror movies in the 50’s and 60’s and was most famous for playing his signature character Dr. Death, portrayed by the one-and-only Vincent Price. At a New Year’s Eve party, however, tragedy strikes and he shrinks away from the public eye and puts aside Dr. Death for good. 12 years later and old friend and colleague, played by the incomparable Peter Cushing, convinces him to movie to England and reprise the role for a British TV series. He agrees and both the accolades and the tragedies seem to pick right up where they left off. At this stage in his career, Vincent Price was sick of horror. In fact, he hated the direction the new generation of horror filmmakers were taking the genre. Rather than try and emulate them, the fantastic Mr. Price made this piece in a very classic style and commented on the new wave in subtle ways, through monologues and roles for heartless producers. He also used the story to comment on himself. Here is someone, like himself, sick of doing this but finding himself doing horror once again, and, so, the question becomes will Peter use this opportunity to be a hero or a victim?

If there is one thing that separates old horror from the new generation of horror (and by old and new I don’t mean anything in the present day, but rather the pre-70’s horror and the horror genre birthed by people like Wes Craven, George Romero and John Carpenter in the 70’s) it is the type of the weight of the threat posed by the villain. In fact, one might say it boils down to movies being creepy versus scary. For example, this movie, to me, played more like a whodunit with some fantastically creepy atmosphere, but it wasn’t scary at all, not a single frame of it. granted, I’m not easily scared by movies (I find horror more fun than scary), but this movie feels more like old Hollywood with it’s grand score and classically trained actors than it does anything resembling a harrowing tale of the evils of some demented mind. That said, I enjoyed this movie immensely. I find it very hard to dislike a Vincent Price vehicle and throw in Peter Cushing and you have a near guarantee I will like it. This movie contains classic Price monologues and Cushing coldness.

ME

Hobo with a Shotgun

Hobo with a Shotgun tells the story of a man who has seen enough. He’s taken all he can stand and he can’t stands no more. An old train hopper stumbles upon the town of Hopeville and finds it to be brimming over with crime and violence, mostly due to the vice grip a crimelord named The Drake has on the town. He just looks the other way, but, after a couple days in this lovely town, just can’t take it anymore. So, he goes down to the local pawnshop, buys a shotgun and starts “cleaning up the streets.”

Hobo with a Shotgun is a spoof of those grindhouse movies from the 70’s and 80’s that, usually, prominently featured vengeance, blood and any other exploitative, scandalous thing they could pack into 90 minutes. Problem is, the only good spoofs are those that show a real affection for the genre and aren’t just mocking it (for a great example, please see Black Dynamite, actually, just go see Black Dynamite either way). This movie is not that kind of spoof. They are clearly just mocking those action movies that now populate $1 bins across the country. Everything is over the top, the writing is just awful, the acting awful, the effects are ridiculous and the movie seems to have no point whatsoever. Then again, I did kind of enjoy it. call me sick, but maybe that’s why I can’t resist those $1 bins and half my movie collection is made up of movies where people’s heads explode following a punch or where the dialogue is laughable. So, in the end, if you love those trashy old movies and this one happens to be on late night cable, give it a view, but otherwise, just go rent Ricky Oh or Death Race 2000. That said, I gotta admit, the music for Hobo was spot on perfect.

SA

The Last House on the Left

The Last House on the Left tells the story of a girl’s night out gone very wrong. In reality, I suppose you could say that it was about three different groups whose respective nights don’t quite end the way they’d hoped. Mari and her friend Phyllis head out of the suburbs to see a rock show in Harlem. They’re almost adults now, they can handle a rock show in Harlem, what’s the worst that could happen? Well, when they get to the city they decide to try and score some weed. The people they ask just so happen to be a traveling group of serial rapists and murderers. They proceed to rape Phyllis and then put both of the girls into the trunk of their car like leftovers for later. They then stop at some random spot in the suburbs for more rape and torture and it just so happens to be right across the street from Mari’s house. That’s when the shit really hits the fan.

This movie is significant to any and all horror aficionados, such as myself, for two reasons. First, it is considered one of the first to usher in the age of, what is known as, new horror. It’s not new anymore, as this movie came out in the early ‘70’s, but what ‘new horror’ means is that horror shifted from being not so creepy swamp monsters and vampires and started being about truly terrifying supernatural possessions and serial killers. Freddy Kruger and Rosemary’s Satanic baby are very different from flying brain monsters and movie adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe starring someone like Vincent Price. I suppose you can say that new horror is when horror went from being creepy to being scary. The second things significant about this movie is that it introduced the world to a, then, literature professor who was interested in making movies named Wes Craven.

Despite it’s prominence in the history of the genre, I’d never seen it. I figured it was about time. It’s influence is undeniable and I’m not sure there’d ever have been a John Carpenter or Toby Hooper without inspirations like this out there. That said, let’s talk about the movie watching experience. The performances were really uneven. Some, like Jeramie Rain and David Hess, were really great and memorable, while others were totally one note amateurish performances. In fact, just about everything about this movie was uneven, with moments of greatness peppered with things that just didn’t work at all. For example, the music was awful, completely out of sync with the tone of the movie and distracting and they would toss in these stupid moments of goofy cop comedy right after some heavy rape scene. In the end, it meant one could clearly tell the director had talent and promise, but the movie itself just wasn’t that engaging or scary, at all. Long story short, see it if you’re a fan of the genre and want your movie watching collection to be complete, but, otherwise, you can probably skip it.

SA

13 Assassins

In the Edo period of Japanese history, the samurai lived as powerful servants to the even more powerful shogunate. While the samurai may have been the ultimate warriors on the highly guarded and closed off islands that made up Japan in those days, their code required absolute devotion to their lords. So strong was this devotion that it was unthinkable to not follow the lord’s demands. Along comes Lord Naritsugu, who is both a high-level shogun lord and a complete psychopath. Everywhere he went he raped, tortured and killed at will, often the victim’s were completely innocent families, often using the noble samurai to finish the job. Naritsugu’s main samurai, Hanbei, is a seasoned veteran who was a top pupil back in the day, second only to an ultimate bad ass of a samurai, Shinzaemon.

Unlucky for Hanbei, Shinzaemon has just found out what Naritsugu’s been up to and that Naritsugu is about to take over has top shogun. Well, ole Shinzaemon can’t let that go down. Problem is, he can’t find anyone to join him in his quest to take out Naritsugu, as most samurai wouldn’t even think of touching a hair on a shogun lord’s head. So, all Sinzaemon can do is round up a group of samurai rejects and iconoclasts and try to take down Naritsugu. So, the ragtag group of 13 takes on Hanbei and his army of samurai to stand up for what’s right and bring down the hand of justice.

This movie is freaking awesome. I tend to either not much care for Takashi Miike’s movies at all or love them. This one definitely falls into the latter category. The movie is a tale about the dangers of absolute, unthinking devotion to authority. The style is that of a classic samurai period piece and, as such, mimics the great westerns of the golden age. Change the background to the frontier of the western U.S. in the 19^th century and switch out the main actor with Clint Eastwood and you would have a western classic on your hands. The white hats and black hats are similar in substantial ways and diametrically opposed at the same time. They’re also both heavy hands who ultimately must have a final showdown to decide the fate of the town. It’s classic stuff, high noon samurai style, and it’s awesome.

WW

Bridesmaids

Annie’s life is falling apart. She has no relationship with her mom. Her business has recently failed. She has no love life and the one guy she is involved with is a douche of the highest order. The only constant and positive aspect of her life is her lifelong best friend Lillian, but Lillian is now spending most of her time in Chicago, nearly an hour away, and now Lillian has announced she’s moving there because she’s engaged. Annie is essentially on the verge of a nervous breakdown when Lillian asks her to be the maid of honor and pairs her up with Lillian’s new best friend the all to together and seemingly perfect Helen. It is the straw that breaks the camels back.

What makes a comedy great? Is it the story? Is it the emotional bits that function to keep the story arch and character development going? Or is it just laughs? There are many comedies we can all think of that may be full of gags and laughs but that didn’t stick with us because they lacked the other elements. It’s rare that a comedy has all these elements firing on all pistons. Bridesmaids is no exception. I left feeling like it wasn’t that great because I didn’t care much at all about the emotional arch of the Annie character. I love Kristen Wiig, but it seemed like, for most of the movie, she was just doing her character from most of her movie appearances but just amped up a bit. At the same time, I laughed my ass off in this movie, more than any other comedy I can remember in a good long time. So, what does this mean? If I give the main story line a B-, does that mean the movie is a B-?

I don’t think that’s fair. Plus, as time passed I began to think more kindly on the Annie character and like her a bit more and also came to realize that excluding such an emotional aspect of the movie would have made it just another Apatow-helmed dirty mouthed gross out comedy. While I like some of his movies of such an ilk, it’s been done and, lately, done way too often. Instead, it was like those movies but worked slightly better, to where I am still thinking about the story and movie now, still mentally invested in the characters.

But, hands down, 100%, without a doubt, the absolute best thing about this movie was Melissa McCarthy. Her character, Megan, was easily the funniest character I’ve seen in a solid decade. She took what could have been a completely forgettable side character and totally nailed it, to the point that, by the end of the movie, her merely being on screen made me laugh. From the first moment she speaks to the roll of the credits, she kept my attention and made me laugh like I haven’t laughed in years. Hilarious! So, in the end, I felt so so about some of the storyline aspects of the movie, but it was a decent story that was very well acted and it consistently made me laugh and, after all, isn’t that what a comedy is aiming to do?

S'good

Krull

As anyone who knows me or follows this blog knows, I love campy cinematic crap from my childhood. I own so many movies from the 70’s and 80’s that most people have long forgotten that it’s not even funny. I also love to scan back, remember some movie even I’ve long forgotten and give it an overdue repeat view. Anytime someone undertakes such an endeavor, they inevitably find that some movies they loved as a kid hold up over time and some most certainly do not. Well, all that to say, viewing Krull now, a movie I totally dug as a little guy, I realize just how much Krull sucks. There really isn’t a good aspect of this movie. The effects are awful, the props are awful, the acting, the writing, even the score, it’s all just terrible.

Krull has about as much suspense and drama as an episode of the A-Team. True, three people die in Krull, which is monumentally more than in any episode of the A-Team, but there was never a second where I felt any of the important characters was in any danger whatsoever. There were these highly trained killing machines with laser guns who seemed to be everywhere and were constantly trying to kill the five or so people on this mission. Those five or so people were not trained and had things like staffs and spears. Yet, they seemed to be able to easily defeat the killing machines through some cunning bobbing and weaving. Awful, just awful.

Their biggest help comes in the form of a Cyclops that looked like the neighbor from Home Improvement with a second rate mechanical blinking eye molded over his actual eyes. It’s the fakest thing I’ve ever seen and they chose a guy who is not at all imposing or athletic to be this big heroic warrior. Sheesh.

I could go on and on, but the absolute worst thing, hands down, was the music. The score is the most grand, sweeping, epic score I have ever heard and the movie is about as sweeping and epic as Clerks. They go to like two locations! Take the biggest and most bombastic parts of the Star Wars score and imagine that playing constantly throughout the movie, as in every single time a person crossed the room or took a single step. It was beyond description.

Long story short, if you’re aching for some retro fantasy, pop in Conan the Barbarian, revel in some James Earl Jones/Arnold Schwarzenegger goodness and skip Krull.

U

Trinity and Beyond

Trinity & Beyond is a 1995 documentary about America’s embracement of and development of nuclear weaponry. Using declassified footage, the documentary largely lets the old military footage of these gigantic test blasts and the preparation there for (and sometimes backlash thereof) speak for itself. If you are at all fascinated by human evolution, this movie is not something to miss. There are shots in this movie I have never seen and blasts the scale of which I have never known. On this level, it is truly disturbing.

Perhaps most disturbing of all is our willingness to simply accept that the development of these weapons was just part of life and completely necessary. While a few people may have spoken out against atom and hydrogen weapons, the majority, especially those involved in their creation, seemed to think nothing of it, as though it was as necessary as developing a sharper knife than your enemy. In reality, we were creating ways to destroy each other on a scale unlike any in human history. As though we were figuring out how to jump start an ice age or plague.

Where the movie falls short is two fold. First, the general aesthetic and score are campy at best. They make shtick of something of greater historical and ecological significance than nearly anything else. Secondly, and this is largely because it was made in the mid-to-early 90’s, it seems to treat the threat like something from the past. In fact, the story pretty well ends in 1964, as though America and many others like it stopped developing these horrific weapons back in the day. In reality, atomic weaponry is now in the hands of countries that can barely sustain a workable hospital or education system. These weapons of mass destruction are being refined and developed by numerous countries and, oh by the way, America and Russia still have plenty enough to wipe out a huge chunk of humanity. Put plainly, the movie seems to think this is a closed case, when, in reality, we are still in an era where a select few could send humanity back into the dark ages in a matter of hours.

Until we leav it, the nuclear age is going to be a disturbing threat to humane and ecological existence and if you are unclear of this after watching the footage contained in this movie, then ignorance must truly be bliss.

S’good