Movie Review: Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1986)

I wanted to do this little Howling marathon by including all of the movies of course, but short of buying it, it doesn't look like I'll be able to watch the first Howling just now. It's definitely unfortunate because I have only seen that one once, many years ago, and I barely remember it. Surely, however, it couldn't have been more entertaining than Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf was.

The movie begins at the funeral of Karen White from the first movie, where Christopher Lee, playing occult investigator Stefan, informs her brother Ben that - you guessed it - "your sister is a werewolf." Karen's colleague Jenny also gets involved as the three travel to Transylvania to put an end to the one who started it all, the queen of the werewolves, Stirba.

What. The hell. I'm no stranger to flat out odd and ridiculous movies, let me tell you. The thing about Howling 2 that makes it so odd and ridiculous (and therefore highly entertaining), however, is just how freaking random everything is. The whole movie is a random mishmash of funky weird shit that has no flow whatsoever. After watching it for a while, you find yourself saying, "Oh, we're... we're going here now? Okay, sure, just transition without making any sense, yeah. That'll be fun." There's a bare minimum of a story here, and the movie just jumps right into it all with pretty much no set up. By the conclusion, I completely lost sight of where we all were and how we got there in the first place.

Oh, there is plenty of crazy to talk about here, but where does one begin? First of all, ditch any ideas you might have had about character, plot, good special effects - the stuff all those other "serious" movies rely way too much on. That doesn't happen here. Like I said, the movie dives right into the craziness with Ben and Jenny having almost no problem with the existence of werewolves and then deciding out of the blue to go to Transylvania with this weird guy where they do... kinda nothing. There was no reason for them to go to Transylvania. Anyway.

The actors playing werewolves here... give those people a gold star. They had to do the most stupid, embarrassing shit in Howling 2, but I'll be damned if they didn't seem totally committed! The hot black werewolf chick Mariana seemed to have the most fun, constantly growling and acting all werewolf-y even when she wasn't transformed into a werewolf. All of the werewolves do that, actually, and it's soooo dumb and hilarious. I'm pretty sure no one can talk about this movie without mentioning one particular scene: the werewolf threesome. Stirba, Vlad, and Mariana gettin' it on in the most sloppy and unsexy way possible. Wow.

Saying that this movie is very 80s is a major understatement. There's shitty music blaring everywhere and some serious rock 'n' roll and punk-related costuming. Stirba wears the best one, which I cannot describe but only show:

Rock it, girlfriend. The werewolf party scenes were reminiscent of the beginning of The Lost Boys - minus awesome saxophone man, but plus an equally hilarious punk band - and did nothing to help me take this movie the least bit seriously. Cocaine was pretty big in the 80s, yes? Okay, I think I understand the movie a bit more now.

The editing. Oh my goodness, the editing. It made the movie all the more fun. If there is one thing I love, it is a movie that has the sense of humor to use one of my favorite editing techniques - amateur screen wipes! Diagonal wipe. Diamond wipe. SPIRAL wipe. This movie uses a freaking spiral wipe and it was glorious. It also likes to cut to random statues or whatever on buildings, the people at the fair in Vlkava (the town in Transylvania that is the apparent epicenter for werewolves), and they also cut back several times to previous scenes in the movie. Maybe just to fill time or because they didn't know what the hell else to do. 

The best scene of the entire movie, however, is what plays over the credits. I've never scene a movie do anything like this before. It's pretty much like a music video for the punk band featured in the movie where they use all the good stuff that you've seen previously - most specifically focusing on the part where Stirba rips her top off to expose her boobies. I could not stop laughing. This part was edited beautifully for their purposes of yet again making Howling 2 as ridiculous as it possibly can.

Oh, so much more to talk about here. So little space on the internet. With horrible fight sequences, gunshots only seen in close-up, werewolf three-ways, and werewolves who can shoot red lightening out of their fingertips and pop a dwarf's eyeballs, Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf is immensely successful at being so random, so stupid, and so freaking awesome at the same time. Big time kudos for all that. 

HAPPY OCTOBER

I know my favorite month of the year has only just begun, but I'm a little disappointed that it doesn't quite feel like October yet. Today it was in the mid-80s and a bit muggy - totally not fall weather. I want to be chilly and wear hoodies and flannel pajama pants. We've been having the foggy mornings but not the crispy evenings. 

Despite that, it's still October! Best month ever that leads up to the greatest holiday ever. But once I again, I suck big time and have nothing blog-related planned. The reason I haven't been blogging lately is partly because of Breaking Bad (which I just started watching) and partly because I haven't watched anything all that blog-worthy lately. Or I've just run out of things to say, which I never thought would happen.

Have no fear, whatever blog buddies I may have left. I do have at least one series of reviews planned: THE HOWLING SEQUELS MARATHON. Oh, yes. I'm skipping over the first movie and planning on just plowing through all the sequels - and I've never seen any of them before. I hear I'm in for a treat with the third one. 

So have fun this October, bloggers! Let's celebrate like only horror fans know how to!

Movie Review: Room 237 (2012)

You know, I love The Shining as much as every other horror movie fan or Stephen King fan or just plain old awesome movie fan. Stanley Kubrick was an oddball genius who created films that many people describe as "perfect." So taking into consideration Kubrick's careful filmmaking and attention to detail, is it possible that he had some much deeper meanings in mind when he created one of the most popular movies of all time?

Juli Kearns's Overlook map

The 2012 documentary Room 237 explores this issue, with interviews with several Shining fans giving their different interpretations and theories into what the movie represents. The interviewees are not seen on camera themselves nor are they given any kind of credentials other than the fact that they've obviously watched The Shining way, way, way, way too many times. Their theories are presented to the audience by way of clips from the film and other footage that sort of pertains to what they are talking about. 

This documentary was... hilarious. What, did you think I was going to say "fascinating" or something? No. If anything, I'll give the movie credit for being one of the best comedies I have seen in a while. Had me laughing the whole time. I've always known that there were some Shining fans out there who took the movie a tad bit too seriously and all, but this was my first time actually listening to them talk about this shit. Wait, I lied - I'd heard the stuff about the Native American genocide metaphor. It was funny to actually see them try to prove it to me. Anyway, though I admire the interviewees obvious dedication and perseverance, not a single one of their theories even slightly convinced me that The Shining is any more than it appears to be.

The conspiracy theorists actually do a good job of showing the "proof" of their ideas, even though they are all things that nobody else would have thought of... ever. They all say things like, "if you go frame by frame," or "you really have to look hard to find this one" when talking about their little Kubrick subliminal messages. I've seen the movie a pretty good number of times, okay? I never paid attention to what was in the background, granted. So here's a question for you - why would such a celebrated directed who obviously loved film put all the so-called "important" stuff in the background of his movie? Where did all this conspiracy shit even come from in the first place? Why can't the brilliance of The Shining just be that it is fucking awesome?

Seriously, the things they bring up about the movie are simply laughable. A baking soda can that is - gasp! - seen twice in the movie? A poster of a skier is really a depiction of a minotaur? The window in Ullman's office is improbable? Okay, yeah, I can kinda see where that one is coming from if I was anal retentive about architecture and spacial relations, but I'M NOT. Every time they mention some hidden message or whatever that looks to an outsider like a simple continuity error, the comment is always implied that Kubrick would never make such a mistake and that it has to mean something deeper. They saw what they wanted to see, and that's it. I'll give them that Kubrick was meticulous but not infallible. Continuity errors can happen to anyone. The world is an imperfect place.

My favorite theory was the one about how Kubrick used The Shining to subliminally tell the world that he staged the Apollo moon landing footage. Now that is just downright silly. It would be cool if it were true but you're really going off the deep end with that one, aren't you, sport? Okay, yes, I've always been a little curious about Danny's Apollo 11 sweater. Thought maybe it was just a 70s/80s thing that I wasn't around for and don't understand. There were lots of weird fashion trends going on then. Anyway, this is certainly the wildest theory to be represented in Room 237 and one that they thankfully did not spend that much time indulging.

In a weird way I liked the thing the one guy presented about watching the filming forwards and backwards at the same time, superimposed over one another. Yes, it does seem like you get some cool images from doing this, but seriously - stop and think about that for a second. Think about how much time and effort would have to be put into the filming and editing of that movie to make that happen like you think it's supposed to. It's damn near impossible. So that theory is definitely out for me.

Bah, if I go on thinking about this stuff anymore, I'll probably start to believe some of it myself. Room 237 is definitely something you all need to check out - whether you think you might agree with these fanatics or just laugh at them like I did. I really hate to be harsh, but it was sooooo difficult for me to even try to take any of this foolishness seriously. Maybe I'm just not as much of a deep thinker as these dudes are.

Movie Review: Leviathan (1989)

There's really no need for you to read my review of Leviathan. Nor is there any need for you to see the movie yourself, because, believe it or not, you've already seen this movie. Or at least, you've already seen every character and scenario that happens in Leviathan in some other movie. Leviathan isn't bad or anything, it's just really, really redundant and inferior to the movies it's trying to be.

In a facility at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, a group of underwater miners are on their last days of a mission to retrieve silver and other precious metals from the depths. They discover a sunken Russian ship, the "Leviathan," and unknowingly bring on board the reason the ship was sunk in the first place - the crew was experimenting with genetic mutation drugs that turn people into hideous sea creatures.

Yeah, so I'm going to say what probably everybody else says about this movie: I liked Leviathan... when it was called The Thing. Or Alien. It rips from both and doesn't seem like it's trying to hide it at all. With all the metal hallways and bulkhead doors and crawlspaces with pipes and shit, the feeling of claustrophobia and being trapped is straight up Alien. Just underwater this time. The way the creature is able to sneakily hide in air ducts (even when it keeps growing and growing) and pop out at the just the right time also made me think of Alien, so there are no feelings of suspense or surprise at any time while watching Leviathan. The Thing was suspenseful. Alien was scary. Leviathan was boring and predictable.

I was actually kind of excited to see what this creature was going to look like because we all know that science-gone-wrong genetic experiments can sometimes have awesome results for horror movies. Instead what I got was just a fishy rip-off of the alien from The Thing. After the two infected people die, the mutation keeps working in their bodies until it absorbs them both together and they look like a fleshy, bulbous mass. It's pretty gross. After it kills more people, it absorbs them too so that you can see their faces in the mass. Does that sound familiar??!! Argh, so not inventive.

The kicker is that even after watching the whole damn movie, I still don't think I've fully seen the creature. We are shown different bits and pieces of the creature as it attacks at different times but I'm not for sure how all pieces come together or what the whole thing looks like. It's got a fishy head, human-like arms, tentacles, but no legs, so how the hell does it move? The practical creature effects by Stan Winston are nice, and therefore I would have appreciated being able to see the whole thing in a wide shot or something. Actually as I was surfing around pictures to include here, I came across one that is supposedly a prop replica of the creature:

Huh. I would have never guessed. There's actually two creatures at one point in the movie I think but there's no differentiation between them so I don't know if they both looked like this or what. At the end, the creature pops up on the surface with the survivors after the facility implodes itself (because that's always fun to think about happening), and even then they only show it in quick cuts. 

They try to make all the characters real cute and endearing. They have nicknames like Sixpack and Willie, and call each other by their last names. I didn't care. They are all the standard characters that you'll find in a movie like this and nobody stands out as being more than two dimensional. Daniel Stern tries his hardest, but he's the annoying sex pervert who hits on the girls all the time so you can't really like him too much. There are some other really good names here - Hector Elizondo, Peter Weller, Ernie Hudson, Meg Foster's eyes - and they do what they can. By the third act, when the movie turns into the run-around-and-try-to-escape-the-facility-before-it-implodes movie, I think all of us, including the actors, were just looking for a way to end this thing with some dignity. And they almost do - until the last shot of the movie was Peter Weller punching Meg Foster's eyes in the face. It was funny, and you wanted him to do it because her character is an evil bitch that was going to leave them all to die down there, but seriously. That's how you end the movie?

Eh, you're not missing anything with Leviathan. The creature effects are great and I liked the practical nastiness of them, but everything else just didn't do it for me.

Movie Review: American Mary (2012)

Even after being less than impressed with Dead Hooker in a Trunk, I was still highly curious about the next venture by the Soska Twins, sistahs in horror. It was easy to see their true love for the genre with that movie, and also their willingness to have fun with it and themselves. American Mary proves that they can also be serious about horror, and that they have the talent to make it happen in their own way.

Mary Mason is a young medical student who is strapped for cash when she's offered a lot of money to perform an unusual procedure for a woman. Becoming increasingly disillusioned with her career and life after a traumatic event, Mary throws herself into becoming an infamous underground surgeon for people who want extreme body modification procedures.

American Mary is a good ten steps above Dead Hooker in a Trunk in just about every respect. They got a fantastic actress to carry the entire film; the look of the film is beautiful with many stand-out (and sometimes shocking images); and heck, I can even see the costuming as becoming somewhat iconic. Love that black jacket that Mary wears. Anyways, I'm still a little stuck on what the title might mean, as I'm of the mind that filmmakers usually try to make their work mean something. Is it Mary's gruesome journey toward the good old "American dream" of making money and being successful? That's all I can really think of. You got thoughts, let me know.

Katharine Isabelle, who worked her way into the loving hearts of horror fans as Ginger in the werewolf film Ginger Snaps, absolutely kills it in American Mary. I'm not afraid to say that I found her sexy as hell in the role, and I think it was because she played a more subtle kind of sexy, not flaunting anything.  She wears heels even while performing surgery, and tight-ish clothes that flatter her body, but there's nothing at all slutty about her. She simply comes off as a confident woman who knows and likes herself, and there's nothing more appealing than that. Mary never loses that even after what she goes through and actually seems to use it to her advantage to make other people uncomfortable, rather than make herself more confident.

Isabelle makes the character of Mary an actually pretty fascinating one - from her turn as an intelligent woman with drive to a woman who has completely stopped caring about anything. She has a sense of humor, a sense of wickedness, but also vulnerability and emotion. At first disgusted by what she does and sees of her first two patients - Ruby and the guy that Billy tortured - after Mary is raped by one of her professors, she goes deeper into the macabre than she probably thought possible. She does what she does for the money, helping other people express themselves, but she's not doing anything to help herself. Mary rejects the obvious consolations of Billy and Detective Dolor, even though she seems to have a strange sense of loyalty or something to Billy. She's sure a quirky one, that Mary.

The film was surprisingly not as hardcore or bloody as I was expecting it to be, and it wasn't even all that disturbing. Okay, that one shot of what Mary did to Dr. Grant definitely got a little yelp of shock out of me but everything else was presented in a much more emotional way, rather than a shock you way. I liked that. The rape scene is even dealt with in such a way - it's in-your-face and it's emotionally heartbreaking as you can almost watch Mary's humanity and spirit leaving her. The whole movie is strange way to tell the story, for sure, but the Soskas manage to make it work for their purposes and their personalities and I have to give them props for that.

Though I was a little disappointed at the unceremonious end of our anti-hero and in relation the abrupt end to the movie, I still have a good feeling about this movie. It is a no doubt intriguing sophomore effort from these two filmmakers who probably have a few more gems up their sleeves before they are done with us horror fans.

Movie Review: Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964)

Oh my goodness, if I never hear another banjo-picking, Southern hillbilly song again it'll be too soon. Gah, Hersch, that was painful. Thankfully the rest of Two Thousand Maniacs! was not. It is one of Lewis's earlier movies and the second in the so-called "Blood Trilogy" (bookended by Blood Feast and Color Me Blood Red - the next two movies on my watchlist). I don't know if it is my favorite yet, but I can definitely say that it is the most well-made and entertaining of what I've seen so far. So let's talk about it, shall we?

Two groups of travelers find themselves in the little town of Pleasant Valley, where they seem to be "special guests" for the town's centennial celebration. But the people of Pleasant Valley have some very gruesome events in store for their guests, as revenge for wrongs committed against their town during the Civil War.

One thing I'm really enjoying about Lewis's movies are the stories. With the exception maybe of The Gruesome Twosome, his films don't seem to be of the standard fare that would come in later decades - there's always something just a bit... off about them, or there's some kind of twist that is so weird but at the same time still works. I loved the concept behind The Wizard of Gore, and now Two Thousand Maniacs with its whole all-the-town-is-crazy-and-kills-these-people-in-awesome-ways things is really making love the man. The ending of this film could be seen as complete malarky to others but, dangit, I liked it. It gives the movie a sense of mystery that it might not really deserve and it sure makes a hell of a lot more interesting than it could have turned out to be.

Our victims are two different groups of young lovelies traveling the countryside in hot convertibles going... wherever the heck they're going. Two couples in one car and a woman and the man she picked up hitchhiking are in the other car - and six just happens to be the magic number that Pleasant Valley needs to carry out their evil deeds. You see, back during the war a bunch of soldiers rolled through the town and pretty much killed everybody just 'cause they could. So now one hundred years later the town is out for vengeance against whatever Yankees they can get. Our Yanks don't know any of this at first, of course, and prove to be excellent fodder for the townspeople because they are absolutely ridiculous to believe that they would be special guests for a random town's centennial. And they just completely put their plans on hold because they get put in a crappy hotel by some of the most annoying and creepy people ever? Pfft, they deserved what they got, I'm not sorry to say.

And what do they get? Well, those are the fun scenes! The people have come up with some impressive ways to kill their guests, obviously modeled after what was done to them a hundred years ago. First to go is the dumb blonde who goes off with one hillbilly only to have him cut off her thumb, and then later her arm which is then put on a spit during the festive "barbecue." The amputation is nicely done with the effects - a lot better than some of the stuff Lewis would do later. Next up is the little annoying drunk boy who would have gotten the coolest looking death of all if they had actually showed it to us. He gets his limbs torn from his body by four horses running in different directions but they cut from the good stuff - probably because they couldn't do it - so all we see is one severed leg. My favorite death comes next, when one of the other guys is put into a barrel with nails stuck into it all over and rolled down a hill. Not so sure that that would kill him so quickly but I was willing to overlook that because of the inventiveness. Lastly is the crushing by a huge boulder, made even more fun by the dunk tank-like way they rigged it up. A woman is laying on a platform underneath the boulder while hillbillies throw balls at the target that will make it fall on her. Of course it does, and spectacularly crushes her.

What the movie lacks in the blood and splatter department sometimes, it makes up for with all-around hilarity. The rednecks act just as nauseatingly cliche as you would expect them too, but the actors are so damn enthusiastic with all their roles that you can't help but love them. They are way more interesting than any of the travelers, even the two main ones, Terry and Tom, who are only a little bit smarter than their counterparts. Heck, even the kids get a chance to shine, and little Billy certainly takes advantage of it. Such a doll. Anyway, I couldn't stop laughing through most of this thing, whether it was at the acting or the dialogue or just the craziness that was going on.

Three Lewis movies down, and so far they're all winners in their own way. Can't help but be stoked about what's in store for me next (and hopefully I'll get them reviewed much sooner than I have been!) as I continue my strange and exciting journey through the works of Herschell Gordon Lewis. Stay tuned!

Project Terrible: The War of the Robots (1978)

Well, I was hoping that my other Project Terrible buddies would just sort of forget that I still had to watch this movie for Project Terrible, but Alec sure is a persistent fellow. I had problems getting it to load all the way on YouTube so that was my initial excuse for not reviewing the movie yet. Then I made the mistake of getting my internet fixed (just took a new modem - imagine that!) so my sense of duty and honest nature made me venture into the strange, Italian sci-fi world of War of the Robots, a truly gawd awful movie if ever there was one. Thank you, Maynard. You sure know how to pick 'em.

The plot. There's an old professor and his hottie assistant who are working on creating life out of nothing. No more explanation is given on how exactly that can be accomplished or what the hell he's actually doing. Anyway, these two get kidnapped by some robot aliens and taken back to their planet, so's they can use his expertise to help their race. Captain John Boyd of the ship Trissi, who is banging the hottie assistant, and his crew are sent to go after them and get help from some other aliens in order to do that. Or something.

War of the Robots has forced me resort to a meme to accurately describe my reaction to it. I think this one will do:

Indeed, Will Smith. I'm pretty sure that was the face I was making during the whole movie. I mean, I'll give the flick some props for being a bit more involved than I expected it to be, but then again, that fact just made the whole thing about 10 times harder for me to follow, mostly because I didn't want to. The movie is an hour and forty minutes long and it's about... an hour and forty minutes too long. I tried not to space out too much, but it was damn near impossible, especially during the space battle at the end that went on for about four hours. I actually clapped for myself when the credits finally came on screen.

Despite all that, there were many things to enjoy about War of the Robots thanks to some wonderfully bad dubbing, bad costuming, bad set design, and oh yes, bad acting. I have to mention one of my new favorite movie lines, which is when Captain John is first meeting the other alien race - the bald eyeless guys - and the alien asks if John can understand him. John's response? He points to some retarded gizmo on his wrist and says something like, "Yes I can understand you... thanks to this electronic translator." Bhaha! Really?!

The rest of acting is incredibly stilted and emotionless from pretty much all involved. I don't think I can completely blame it on the dubbing because, hell, I wouldn't have put that much effort into any of these roles either. I didn't even listen to half the dialogue at the beginning because it was all ridiculous spaceship jargon that didn't even try to make any sense. The actors were obviously just saying the words without having the slightest idea what the hell they were really saying.

Bad costuming... Okay, it's understandable for the time the movie was filmed and therefore it's hilariously bad. They all wear similar skintight outfits, just that some of them are different colors and some of the women's outfits are a bit more low cut. The robot aliens from Anthor (or whatever) are all freaking clones and have wonderful Village of the Damned hairdos - as do some of the humans on the Trissi, which is slightly confusing. Their "anti-radiation suits" when they arrive on the other planet are also hilarious because it is just more shiny, skintight plastic leotards that can't possible protect them against radiation, for one because they don't wear gloves or helmets with them. Lois's hairdo when she becomes the empress of the aliens (yeah, that happens somewhere in there) is quite impressive, I must say.

The set design and the action scenes also suck a lot. My favorite thing was how all their little laser guns didn't actually shoot anything - they just had a light at the end of the barrel to make it look like something was happening. Then when somebody actually got shot, apparently all the actors went to the Elementary School Playground School of Dying which consists of your upper body going all stiff all of the sudden and then just sort of crumpling to your knees. Every single alien died this way and it was way annoying. The space battles had only the basics of effects but it surprisingly didn't bother me all that much because it could have been much worse. Though light sabers come into play later on, it doesn't really help any of these scenes, despite the fact that they actually get to cut the aliens in half and cut off their arms.

For a while there, I thought I was dead and was actually experiencing what hell was like. Then War of the Robots ended and I was gladly brought back to real life. True sci-fi buffs might actually get something from this movie just for nostalgia or history but for everyone else, it is one that you can go your entire life without seeing and not miss a thing. No, truly. It's not a good movie. And you never need to see it, believe me.

Movie Review: The Gruesome Twosome (1967)

Looks like my next Herschell Gordon Lewis experience came quicker than I expected, seeing as how a certain internet DVD service flat-out refuses to send me The Howling. It's been a "very long wait" for about two months now so I'm thinking I'm just going to have to buy it, though I don't recall liking it enough the first time for purchase. Anyway, I have to watch what they send me, and The Gruesome Twosome was next on the list. The Gruesome Twosome may have a fantastic title that I absolutely love saying, but it is a movie that does not live up to that title in the least. But it's still fucking awesome. Damn you, Herschell, and your terrible but strangely entertaining movies.

Young co-eds are disappearing in an unnamed college town and oddly enough, the perpetrator is kindly old Mrs. Pringle, who runs a local wig shop, and her mentally challenged son, Rodney. He kills and scalps the girls so mama can carry on with business, but now someone is catching on to them. Another nosy co-ed is determined to solve the mystery of the disappearances.

Holy crap, so many WTF scenes in this movie. And it starts right at the beginning. The opening scene before the credits is as odd as they come, consisting of two mannequin heads with wigs and cut-out construction paper faces basically talking about the plot of the movie about to start. I couldn't even hear what they were saying half the time because I was laughing so hard. Absolutely pointless filler? Indeed. Wonderful in its silliness? Undoubtedly. Oh, but the WTF was not even close to being over with this scene. Still plenty more to look forward to.

But... we have to introduce some kind of plot first. As the first real scene shows, Mrs. Pringle's operation goes something like this: she advertises a room for rent in her wig shop, a girl with a nice head of hair comes by inquiring about it, Pringle introduces her to her stuffed cat Napoleon (more on that later), then sends her into a room behind the wig shop where Rodney waits to attack and scalp. All the girls that we see meet this fate just sort of wander around without fighting back or anything so they kinda deserve to die for being so r-tarded.

Then we meet one of the most annoying characters ever, Kathy, the college girl who seems to be obsessed with solving mysteries - which we find out because several characters say something to that effect several times throughout the movie. Her boyfriend Dave has a habit of throwing a bitch fit every time Kathy says something that doesn't involve her tongue in his mouth so he instantly becomes the second most annoying character ever. Kathy only becomes involved with Pringle and Rodney because her friend Dawn is looking for a place off-campus, so we know that she's going to die and Kathy's going to go looking for her because she's nosy and annoying.

But honestly, screw the plot. I really just want to talk about the other WTF stuff. Case in point: Napoleon. The stuffed jaguar or whatever the hell it is in Mrs. Pringle's house that she talks to all the time. Of course it's probably there to add to the overall ridiculous nature and black comedy of the movie, but Mrs. Pringle herself pretty much takes care of most of that. Kudos to this actress for her commitment, as her comedic performance definitely made the movie a lot more bearable. Pringle shoots off these crazy lines full of wisdom and tropes, always asking affirmation from Napoleon. And nobody who encounters her has the heart to call her a crazy bitch. How nice.

More WTF occurs at the drive-in movie. Kathy and Dave are necking in the car, but the far more interesting part of this scene is the movie they are watching. I don't know what the hell kind of movie this is supposed to be. I am, however, interested in seeing the rest of it if there is more. The movie is a headless man and woman sitting at a dinner table (headless because the camera never fully shows their faces), and the woman is saying all kinds of clingy and womany shit to the man, Terrence, who only seems interested in the food on the table. He crushes the potato chips, scarfs a banana, takes a bit out of an apple, crushes a peach... not listening to anything the woman is saying (understandably, too). Lewis intercuts all this weird shit with shots of Kathy and Dave but for some reason this movie takes precedence in this scene - more filler is my only guess. Again, I could not stop laughing, especially when the woman started fondling her beer glass. Too fucking funny.

The whole thing ends rather unceremoniously when Douchey Dave brings the police to Pringle's house just as Kathy is about to get it from Rodney. She pokes him in the eye with a hat pin, they show his gooey eye in closeup and then... he dies. I don't really remember how. A short epilogue scene shows the wig shop closed and then there's a random shot of Napoleon to end it all. An hour and twelve minutes of pure WTF and nobody could have done it better than Herschell, I swear to goodness. This man is a genius of bad movies and I love him for it. Beyond "so bad it's good," The Gruesome Twosome is cinematic gold at its best... worst... it sucks, but it's awesome... you know what I mean.

Two Thousand Maniacs, be prepared to meet my DVD player very soon.

Indie Movie Review: They Will Outlive Us All (2013)

 

This has been one of the coolest things about having this blog - independent filmmakers and new authors send me their books and movies to review to help spread the word about their work. In return, I get to discover new entertainment that I might not otherwise have even known about. From "a gotta and two shearers" comes They Will Outlive Us All, a horror comedy that shows tremendous potential from all involved, and one that any horror fan can appreciate and enjoy.

 

Set in 2016, They Will Outlive Us All follows roommates Margot and Daniel as they try to escape the desolation that has become of New York City after a wave of devastating hurricanes by hiding out in their apartment, drinking booze and watching movies. Three strange deaths have occurred in their building and the arrival of an unwelcome visitor finally get them off their couch and fighting for their lives!

First of all, love the title. If you get the reference, then you should have a good idea as to what the movie is about. It's nice to see independent filmmakers do something outside the box for a feature instead of going with what's popular at the time. Forget zombies - let's do giant mutant cockroaches! You could even take it so far as to being a comment on the whole man's influence and on nature thing but we can leave that for another time.

One thing I was immensely impressed with in this movie was the acting by the two main characters. Many times in indie movies, the actors' performances can seem too forced, or they don't know how to talk and pause naturally. Nat Cassidy as Daniel and Jessi Gotta (also a producer and writer) as Margot had no problems at all acting like two roommates who know each other well and were incredibly comfortable and natural around each other. Their comedic timing and delivery had me laughing many times throughout, and the little quirks that the characters were given had a wonderful way of coming around at the end in both a funny and heartwarming way. By the climax, things become less about big roaches and more about the relationship between these two people, which I actually found to be really sweet.

Also impressive is the direction and camerawork which is fluid, artistic and at times quite inventive for the director having to film in such a small space (almost all the scenes are in Margot and Daniel's tiny Brooklyn apartment). There's one really nice day-to-night transition from the window and lots of different camera angles to keep the action and the story interesting and different in every scene. The lighting matches the apparent dark and depressing world that the characters live in, with tints of blue and green to make it look more bleak.

Whoever got the job of cockroach creating and puppeteering must have had a good time. The roaches (C.O.U.Ss - Cockroaches Of Unusual Size... absolutely love that) look pretty good for what they are, and the somewhat crude appearance of them actually adds a lot to the comedy element of the film. One of the best scenes is when Daniel traps the roach in a bag, it flails around for a bit while Margot tries to hit it with a baseball bat, and then it drags both of them down the hallway. I'm not so sure about it being able to be flushed down a toilet, but I guess they had to leave the big kill for the movie's climactic scene.

They Will Outlive Us All is a wonderfully shot and acted feature worthy of standing beside any other comedy horror out there. It's a tad short at only 73 minutes but that doesn't matter - I watched it twice after receiving it and thoroughly enjoyed it both times, actually wanting more by the time it was over. If you get the chance, don't miss seeing this one!

For more information on this movie and other productions the cast and crew are involved in, go to www.theywilloutliveusall.com.

Movie Review: The Wizard of Gore (1970)

Michele, meet Herschell Gordon Lewis. Hersch, meet Michele. I think we'll be seeing each other again very soon. However, if you were planning to shock or unsettle me with The Wizard of Gore, you kinda failed a little bit, dude. I had an absolute  ball watching this movie, because while eyeball-squishing and other things of that nature in a movie would usually make me squirm and freak me out, this one had me laughing my ass off at pretty much every scene.

Montag the Magnificent is a great magician who is able to saw girls in half and shove swords down their throats and never harm them in the least. That is, until the volunteers leave the theater and suddenly drop dead in the same method as the trick they were involved in. A local television host and her boyfriend catch on to what is happening after Montag's shows and try to put a stop to it all.

As is so often with the case with low-budget horror movies, The Wizard of Gore is one where you really can't spend all your time watching it nitpicking about how shitty it is. Because it is shitty. I'm just going to be honest: The Wizard of Gore is in many ways technically a really bad movie. But I'm well used to that kind of thing by now so I didn't care and I just went with it. So glad I did, too, because it made it so easy to enjoy the hell out of this thing.

So it's a little confusing trying to figure out what is going on with Montag's tricks at the beginning. The first trick he does is sawing a woman in half with a chain saw. There's no box or anything over her, he just saws right through her stomach. The weird thing is when how the scene keeps cutting from her being all bloody with her guts hanging out to her being perfectly fine. Once I realized, though, that the audience was not completely freaking out like they should have been at seeing Montag play around with her intestines, I figured out that what they were seeing was the bloodless version of the act. Montag hypnotizes the volunteers and the rest of the audience so that don't see what he's actually doing up there. I guess the bloody version that we get to see is just Montag having his fun.

The only big thing that there really is to talk about with this movie is the gore. Don't get your hopes up too much about the acting because you will be very, very disappointed in that regard. The only real passable actor that I found here was the woman playing Sherry, and the worst out of the whole bunch was her boyfriend Jack, who has more than a few moments of downright douchebaggery with his horrible line deliveries. But I digress. The name of the game here is of course gore, as the title tells us, and with all the things I'd been hearing about Lewis's famous gore over the years, I was excited to see what he had to offer me.

Like I said before, though the gore and violence is very over-the-top and bloody and has eyeballs being squished and brains pulled out of heads, it's all really hilarious shit. Should I have been disturbed by some of the stuff I was seeing? Probably. But when you watch somebody stick their fingers into the eye sockets of something that is VERY obviously a doll head, how can you take that even remotely seriously? The only really well done effect I saw out of the whole movie was the girl who was impaled in the stomach by the punch press. Lots of bright red blood and slimy guts were there for sure, but the way she was squirming around with the thing in her stomach was actually pretty awesome. 

The funniest part is probably when Montag is about to perform his biggest trick to date on Sherry's daytime TV show. He's going to light them all on fire and apparently nobody has any problem with either him doing that or doing it in the middle of a TV studio. Anyway. Montag's also hypnotized everybody in the studio and everybody watching at home, but Jack manages to avoid this and goes to the studio to rescue his girlfriend. Montag ends up in the fire himself and we get to see his head get burnt to a crisp. Everybody standing around, again, doesn't seem to have any problem with this. "His power must have died with him. Hm." There is a freaking corpse burning in a fire. Must just be the same old shit with these people or something.

The ending also had me laughing at the silliness of it all but I still didn't care by then. Sherry was also an "illusionist" of some kind and now she's fucking with Montag? Sure! I'm with you. The Wizard of Gore is without a doubt a fun splatter movie that is kind of exploitation, minus the boobs. The gore makes for some excellent gags that are probably not supposed to be as funny as I found them, but that's just how I am sometimes. The acting and directing quality is... below par, to be nice, however it's something that is easy to overlook when you're dealing with all the other ridiculousness. 

Movie Review: Crawl (2011)

Well holy guacamole, where did this little movie come from? Australia, yes, but also from some mad genius after my own heart, because this movie kicked all kinds of ass. It was a random Netflix watch for me because the poster (not the one up there, though) made it look like some cheesy B-movie that I could waste time on, but it only took me about five minutes to realize that that was not going to be the situation here.

So what happens? Well, a bar owner hires a hit man to murder a business associate, and an innocent waitress gets caught in the middle when the hit man shows up at her house on the way out of town.

The biggest complaint I've read about this movie is that it is "slow." While that adjective might accurately describe other movies, I don't think it's the right one for Crawl. Crawl is more "methodical," I would say, and only "slow" if it fails to hook you in right away. Anybody with any kind of movie savvy will pick up on the influence of the Coen Brothers and Hitchcock with this methodical style. Not a rip-off of their style, mind you - the influence. It's easy to say that the filmmakers just ripped off Psycho and Blood Simple, but I say that if it worked there, it's gotta work here. And boy, does it ever. Each frame and scene is painstakingly laid out with real directorial skill, and the suspense scenes will have you on that cliched edge of your seat.

The music, and sometimes lack of music, is extremely helpful in conveying that suspense. At times it is only a few carefully repeated notes, and at times it is a jarring cacophony like the screeching violins from Psycho. Mostly, though, I'd say that silence serves the movie best for key scenes. As the waitress Marilyn investigates a creaking door in her house, the lack of music gives the audience no cues as to what to expect - a real scare or a fake out? Will the bad guy show up on the other end of the banging door or somewhere else? The way the movie revealed all of its surprises was something that I really enjoyed watching.

The movie's less than exciting pace is made up for by some scenes of real brutality. The murder at the beginning is of course only the beginning, as the situation gets exponentially worse. Crawl turns out to be quite a bloody piece by the end - there's a car crash, a bludgeoning, and most deliciously, an axe put to awesome use. The makeup work is realistic and gory, but nothing over-exaggerated just for the sake of being gory. Not that I ever have a problem with that - it just wouldn't have worked for this movie.

The hit man, or "The Stranger" as he is credited, is one of the best and oddest casting choices I've ever seen. He's an old Croatian, tall and skinny, dressed like a cowboy. He's the guy you'd probably see drinking coffee by himself at a diner or something. While we're talking Coen Brothers, I guess I'd be remiss not to compare him to Javier Bardem from No Country for Old Men. The Stranger is the same expressionless, emotionless killer as Bardem (minus the cool nail gun thing, of course), and his grandfatherly appearance is almost an excellent cover for what turns out to be a wholly unpredictable and calculating demeanor.

Georgina Haig as Marilyn (whose full name we find out from the credits is Marilyn Burns... hahaha) is also perfect casting for this role. Her big doe eyes fill the screen, her innocence in this crazy situation heightened by her good-girl blonde hair and cute little dress. She isn't given much by way of character development but that didn't bother me too much here, because this felt more to me like a situational movie rather than a character-driven one.

Crawl is a movie deserving of every word of praise on its poster up there. It is a very successful slow-burn thriller that will hopefully have most movie fans salivating over the awesome that oozes out of it. Definitely keep your eyes out for this one.