The Last Broadcast (pt. 2)

Starring: David Beard, Jim Seward, Stefan Avalos, Lance Weiler Directed by: Stefan Avalos, Lance Weiler

The Blair Witch really only works so well because of the internet boom in the mid to late 90s (you can still see much of the original site at http://www.blairwitch.com/).  But along with that blessing came a curse.  In this case, many people had noticed some similarities in the Blair Witch and a lesser-known straight-to-video release called The Last Broadcast.  And while there are some similarities, the differences are vast.

The story is of Jim Suerd, imprisoned for the murder of at least two men, Rein Clackin and Locus Wheeler, and possibly a third, Steven Avkast, although Steven’s body was never discovered.  The maker of the documentary, David Leigh, believes it highly possible Suerd had been wrongfully accused.

Avkast and Wheeler are the hosts of a campy low-budget cable TV program titled “Fact or Fiction.”  Enlisting the help of Clackin, a soundman, and Suerd, a psychic, the four head in to the “Pine Barrens,” a large forested area in New Jersey, investigating an urban legend known as “The Jersey Devil.”   Suerd is the only one to return from the expedition.  The film goes on to examine all aspects of the murder, sometimes interlacing bits of footage from the unaired episode.

The set up for the film is well executed.  The documentary looks believable (with the exception of interviews with Suerd’s psychologist, who sits behind a very informal desk with his legs propped up, spilling the beans as if there is no such beast as doctor/patient confidentiality).  The acting is much better than one would expect for a straight-to-video film.  Those two aspects help make the mystery of an unsolved mystery intriguing enough.  However, in the end, the faults of the movie are just a little too much to overcome.

Just as in the Blair Witch, there isn’t enough meat here.  Certain points of the murders are visited, and visited again, and then revisited, just to flesh out the film’s running time.  You get tired of hearing from peripheral characters that don’t even seem to have a point in the film.  For instance, Sam Woods is introduced as a former television soap director who is hired to direct the live show they are doing from the Pine Barrens.  But he isn’t there during the filming.  So what’s his point in the film?  He has none.  Yet they continue to interlace interviews with him.

The filmmakers should have either fleshed out the story, or simply made the film shorter.  Whereas the Blair Witch could get away with this to a degree since the footage was “raw,” The Last Broadcast can’t afford itself the same comfort, and it really bogs the film down.

Another glaring problem with a film repeatedly hinting that the antagonist is the “Jersey Devil,” is we are given absolutely no background on the legend.  None.  Zero.  Zip.  Zilch.  The entire faux-documentary is based around four guys focusing an entire show about a legend we, as the viewer, are never told ANYTHING about.  Is it a creature?  A monster?  A zombie?  A wild animal?  A serial killer?  Has it ever supposedly killed somebody?  Have people gone ever gone missing in the woods?  None of these questions are even posed, much less answered.

Worst of all, when what really happened in the forest is finally revealed you can only be angry at the filmmakers, trying so hard to surprise they forgot the best twist endings at least make sense.

There is a scene in the Blair Witch when Heather turns on the camera in the pitch dark of night and starts blathering hysterically in to it.  The scene is claustrophobic and unsettling in illustrating her complete lack of hope.  This is an iconic moment, if not in film, at the very least in the genre.  All the internet rumors about stolen ideas seem to boil down to a sort of jealousy.  Internet geeks wanting to say they saw a similar film before it was “cool,” filmmakers wanting to say they made a similar film that was never recognized.  Ideas are always shared and taken and embellished upon.  Did the two filmmakers of Blair Witch borrow a few ideas from The Last Broadcast?  It’s possible, but in the end what really matters is they simply made a better film.  Sometimes it’s hard to look past your own creation to realize the truth.

Written by Ryan Venson

The Blair Witch Project (pt. 1)

Starring: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard Directed by: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez

When was the last time you were worried a mutant killer with a hacksaw was going to jump out of your closet and hack you up in to small pieces just for the sake of a massacre?  The thought probably doesn’t cross your mind too terribly often.

But when was the last time you were home alone and you heard a creek or groan in the house that turned your hair on end?  The makers of The Blair Witch Project probably understood this concept as well as anybody.

Three amateur documentary makers decide to investigate a local urban legend known as the “Blair Witch.”  After interviewing a few locals who regale the filmmakers with seemingly absurd stories of kidnapping and murder, the three college students from Maryland; Heather, Josh and Mike, armed with a bevy of recording equipment, trundle in to the woods in October of 1994.  As the legend-in-a-legend would have it, they never returned and police are unable to locate them despite an exhaustive search.

A year later, students from the University of Maryland’s Anthropology department discover an old cabin in the woods, in which they recover the original trio’s film cans, DAT tapes and video-cassettes. This film is the raw footage from those tapes.

The beauty of the Blair Witch is the sense of fear and dread created from what you don’t see.  A baby crying in the woods.  The crunching of footsteps in the night.  The disembodied wail of a kidnapped compatriot.  There are no special effects, no living dead, no evisceration.  The trio become more and more lost in the woods, spooked by an unseen urban legend until, one by one, they start to unravel.

While this leads to some great moments, it is also the weakest link in the film.  In order to make a feature length film, the scenes of growing insanity become repetitious.  Mike screams in frustration and cries.  Josh screams in frustration and cries.  Heather, the last to give in to the certainty they are lost in the woods, finally breaks down and, you guessed it, screams and cries.  Throw in a dash of in-fighting, and you have what passes for mental breakdown.  For what it’s worth the actors do pretty well with what they have been given, they just haven’t been given a whole hell of a lot.

But that’s also the purpose of the film.  You aren’t supposed to believe this is a film made for your entertainment but, rather, what you are watching is actual real footage culled and cobbled from the remains of a mysterious disappearance.  Executed hand-in-hand with a brilliantly orchestrated online campaign, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez wrote and directed a faux-documentary the likes of which had never been seen.  Some people going to see the film actually believed or, at least, pretended to believe, the footage could be real.  They created, if not a masterpiece, a film as unique and important to modern horror as I can remember in my lifetime.

Or had they?

Written by Ryan Venson

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Starring: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher Directed by: Robert Wiene

I chose to watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari knowing nothing about the movie other than it was a classic horror film and 77 minutes long.  I did not realize it was from 1920, silent, or in the “German Expressionist” style.

While writing this review, I probably spent more time on Wikipedia looking up fun facts related to this movie than I did watching it.

First, German Expressionism.  One hallmark of movies in this style this is use of "wildly non-realistic, geometrically absurd sets, along with designs painted on walls and floors to represent lights, shadows, and objects."1 This is true.  From the angular, curly-cued tents at the fair to starbursts and stripes on the floors to several quasi-triangular doors, the sets really are a treat.  Even in black and white.

Another element of this movement is making films centered around "madness, insanity, betrayal, and other 'intellectual' topics."2 The plot focuses on a man, Francis, (played by Friedrich Feher) relating a tale about an evil doctor (played with significant creepiness by Werner Krauss).  This doctor emerges at the town fair with a somnambulist (a sleepwalker, for those of you who don't speak Latin) named Cesare who, the doctor claims, can answer questions about the future as asked by the crowd.

After Cesare (played by Conrad Veidt) correctly predicts Francis’s friend Alan will not live to see the next day, as he is then murdered in his sleep, suspicions run high.  Eventually Alan discovers the doctor is the director of an insane asylum and is preoccupied with the tale of a 17th century monk named Caligari, who taught a somnambulist to kill people via the same scheme the doctor is currently enacting.

Since there are only 77 minutes in this silent film, I am on the verge of spoiling the entire plot. You will have to watch the rest of the movie yourself to find out why this film is credited as introducing the twist ending (which if you have read the High Tension review, is not always a good thing).

However, there are several good things about this film.  If you like moody orchestral music, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is chock full of it.  If you like scenes to fade in and fade out – even if they are only a few seconds long – this movie is for you.  If you like early special effects, there is a fantastic scene where the doctor's consuming obsession with Caligari is visualized by the phrase "you must become Caligari" appearing and disappearing word by word on the screen, surrounding him.  If you are a fan of super heavy eyeliner and/or the goth look, this might be your new cult favorite (fun fact:  both Edward Scissorhands and The Crow were inspired by Cesare the somnambulist).3 Also, modern references to the film continue as Rob Zombie, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Coldplay have given nods to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in the "Living Dead Girl," "Otherside" and "Cemeteries of London" videos, respectively.4

If you have less than an hour to spare or have little patience for slow-moving films, you might consider looking up the 55-minute version on YouTube.  I should have watched this one as I nodded off during the last 10 minutes of the film (i.e. the entire plot twist) and had to rewatch them.

A Very Lazy Works Cited List

1 and 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Expressionist

3 and 4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cabinet_of_Dr._Caligari

Written by Jennifer Venson

An American Werewolf In London

Starring: David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, Griffin Dunne Directed by: John Landis

Being a “child of the 80s” doesn’t really mean remembering the 80s all that fondly.  I was only three when the 80s began, twelve when they were all said and done.  The first movie I can remember seeing in the theatre was Gremlins.  It scared me pretty bad when the Mogwai turned in to those slimy pupal stages.  Actually, I remember being a lot more scared of those than the actual Gremlins.

It’s probably unnecessary to point out I did not, at the ripe age of four, catch An American Werewolf in London during its original theatrical run.  The problem with films in the 80s that tend to be classified in the “cult” niche is a healthy amount of how much you enjoy the film is based on nostalgia.

An American Werewolf is about two friends, Jack and David, who are assumedly on a trip around Europe.  I say assumedly because they start in England and talk much about their future stop in Italy.  This never comes to fruition as Jack and David are attacked by a werewolf in Yorkshire.  Jack is killed.  As David is playfully scratched on the chest and face by the lycanthrope, the local constable shows up and shoots the beast dead.

David falls in to a shock-induced coma, waking three weeks later.  Scotland Yard informs him that, according to local police and a few eye-witnesses, he and his friend were attacked by an escaped lunatic, not a wild animal.  David refuses to believe his memory of the events could be so incorrectly skewed.  He is plagued by bizarre nightmares.  The mauled corpse of his friend Jack shows up to inform him he was, indeed, murdered by a werewolf and is stuck in limbo as a decaying corpse until the last werewolf of the bloodline which mauled him can be killed.  Unfortunately, it happens to be David himself.

As there must be in a film of the werewolf ilk, there is much of what I like to refer to as Wi, or werewolf incredulity.  The police don’t believe there is a werewolf.  David’s doctor doesn’t believe there is a werewolf.  David’s nurse, and soon to be lover, Alex, doesn’t believe there is a werewolf.  David is inclined to believe he’s a little more crazy than werewolf.  I understand the need for this sort of device in a werewolf film….after all, if somebody told me they were a werewolf, I might be a little on the incredulous side myself…but the amount of time spent on this particular device to flesh out the run time of the film seems a bit excessive

The film is touted as a dark-comedy-horror.  I failed to see the humor.  There is some friendly prattle between Jack and David at the beginning of the film which is mildly humorous, but this is more to establish their friendship than anything.  One of the Scotland Yard Police is a bumbling Inspector Clouseau.  This slapstick seems out of place.  The one funny bit?  There is a running gag wherein every time Jack shows up his walking corpse is a little more decayed.  It’s subtle and dark, just how I like my humor.

At best, the film is uneven.  There is too much downtime.  Too much time in the hospital, more time with David sitting around Alex’s apartment doing nothing, a completely unnecessary and out of place sex scene.  When David finally does become a werewolf, there is a pretty impressive metamorphosis scene, especially considering the time period, but most of what happens when David is actually a werewolf is anti-climactic.  A close-up of a victim followed by a snarl or a short (and slow) chase in a subway shown from David’s point of view so the werewolf doesn’t have to be in view of the camera.

What is most frustrating about Werewolf in London is the potential.  The nightmare scenes are suitably random and nightmarish.  There’s a walking corpse/zombie.  A giant werewolf, of course.  Unfortunately by and large it is slow and plodding, and even when Jack shows up for what you originally think will be comedy relief, every time he simply repeats his mantra, telling David to “kill himself” so he can be freed from purgatory.

If you saw this film when you were young you may have some fond memories of it, but seeing it for the first time in 2010 it feels dated.  It has some good ideas, unfortunately its many parts just never quite congeal, causing it to fall a bit flat.

Written by Ryan Venson

High Tension

RYHT000Z
RYHT000Z

Starring: Cécile De France, Maïwenn Le Besco Directed by: Alexandre Aja

I grew up in the heartland of America, and therefore was taught to fear two of High Tension’s most distinguishing features…isolated farmhouses and the French.

Right out of the gate I am going to tell you that High Tension is 90% “great horror” and 10% “one of the worst things I have ever seen.” A difficult dichotomy to be sure, but far from impossible.  Like many films of the genre, it starts out sprinting only to trip across the finish line. I’ve gotten ahead of myself, so let me take a step back.

Two female students, Alexa and Marie, are on their way to Alexa’s parent’s home in the country.  Shortly after they arrive, a strange man shows up, brutally slaughters  Alexa’s family, binds Alexa, and throws her into the back of his truck.  Marie manages to stay hidden during this ordeal, but cannot just let this madman kidnap her best friend. The rest of the movie becomes a cat and mouse style horror film wherein Marie desperately tries to get the upper hand on the antagonist and save Alexa.

What surprised me when I first saw this film in 2003 was how well made it was, especially since I never think of French cinema when I think of horror.  Set aside that 10% for a moment and you will find a very well shot, crisply edited film that delivers exactly what the title promises, tension.  We stay with Marie as the frenetic pace of the film carries us along. We are hiding under the bed, fighting the urge to sob, as the stranger looms above.  We hop into the back of the truck to try and save Alexa, only to be locked in with her. When the opportunity presents itself, we try and escape to get help, and if no help will come, we fight. Marie makes the same choices that most of us would make, and that is why it is so easy to get caught up in this story.

Should you find yourself watching this movie, I beg you to turn it off just after the final confrontation with the stranger. You will still have seen a fine horror film.  Because while I am still very afraid of the French, what with their loosey-goosey healthcare and their love of Jerry Lewis, it is their inability to properly end a horror movie that scares me most (see also Them).

Written by Drew Martin

Santa's Slay

santasslaycover
santasslaycover

The old bait and switch.  You know what I mean, you go into the store for some Halloween decorations, costumes  and candy, and you notice there's already Christmas wreaths and wrapping in the aisle right behind it.  Santa's Slay masterfully employs this technique from the very beginning. It's not as scary as the title might suggest, but it is certainly a bloody good time.

The movie opens on a Christmas dinner with the likes of James Caan, Chris Kattan and Fran Drescher sniping at each other over a leathery holiday dinner.  This will not be your actual star studded cast, (either to your relief or dismay), but a vignette introducing you to Santa.

Ah, Santa. You also might have believed he Santa is a kindly old angel, gleefully distributing gifts to good little girls and boys. Not so much.  Former pro wrestler Bill Goldberg brings Santa to life as a bringer of holiday fear who drives a sleigh pulled by a buffalo and delights to deliver a boot to the head (or a sharpened candy cane to the eyeball) to, well, anyone who gets in his way.

A glorious Claymation™  interlude explains that Santa is actually a son of Satan, who typically celebrated December 25th with killing people.  He lost a bet to an angel and consequently had to be good (for goodness sake) for a thousand years and bring happiness and gifts on December 25th instead of death.  Unfortunately, the thousand years are up, and Santa is on the rampage again.

There is an actual plotline centering around Nick Yuleson (Douglas Smith) and his kooky Christmas-hating, basement bunker-building, gadget-inventing grandpa (Robert Culp).  Aided by Nick's friend Mac (Emilie de Ravine), they must stop Santa before he resumes his Yuletide killing sprees. They realize early Santa's tough – a mere shotgun won't stop him – so they have to find another way to bring him down.  The sport of curling, a nutcracker, and a skeet shooting club with a bazooka all figure into the mix.

More comedy than horror, pretty much all the gore in this movie is in good fun.  Really the only thing scary in this movie is Fran Drescher.

Some other highlights include:

  • Old people swearing
  • Santa's rampage in a strip club
  • Santa delivering a Goldberg-style spear through a deli counter
  • Santa driving a Zamboni
  • The credits – they will tell you who's been naughty or nice
  • A plethora of bad jokes and even worse puns.  Such as Santa picking up A Christmas Carol in the school library and wisecracking "Bet this will scare the Dickens out of them," before throwing a gas grenade.

Give yourself an early Christmas present and watch this movie during the Halloween season.

Written by Jennifer Venson

Slither

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VMSJF00Z

Starring: Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker Directed by: James Gunn

As Halloween fast approaches, every movie theatre and cable channel will start to devote more and more time to the bastard genre of the film world, the horror movie.  Many stars have appeared in them. Many good directors have cut their teeth by making them.  Still, no genre seems to get less recognition for good work than horror. I blame Sorority Row.

Slither is, as many of the better horror films have to be, more than just a horror film. Horror/Action, Horror/Comedy, Horror/Thriller, Horror/Hip-Hop (thanks Snoop), pick a genre and slap it on the end of horror and it has probably already been made (stop dragging your feet Bollywood). Slither pulls off the horror/comedy in a way that would make Sam Raimi proud.

The movie opens the same as a hundred movies before; an object from space comes crashing down in Small Town, USA.  Of course this object contains a small slug like creature that is bound and determined to take over our planet. Now let me answer your question before you ask. No, this is not an allegory on our current immigration concerns. Why would you even think that?

The creature starts to take control of the residents of Nowhere, USA. Some people are used as massive wombs so the creature can reproduce, and others are used as food. No, this is not a social commentary on America’s love affair with making babies and eating our body weight at each meal. Let’s focus people.

Some people live, some people die. It’s a horror movie, the story you know already. The real strength of Slither is in the cast. More often than not, horror movies are merely a stepping stone for some drama club rejects who thinks that showing your boobs while getting while getting your head cut off is their ticket into real movies. And to be fair, we all loved Dame Judi Dench in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. However, Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks actually add a certain degree of credibility and comedic timing that is rarely seen in horror movies.  They manage to do this subtly, keeping the movie just out of the clutches of your Army of Darkness slap-stick nature.

One last thing I have to mention. I am very grateful to this movie for excluding something that too often ruins a movie, technology. Not technology in the production of the film, but in the film itself. No one is running around with their cell phone calling for help, or looking up “slug aliens” on Google.  New technology makes the world seem small in the movies.  “Let me just Skype this professor in Mumbai to figure out how to kill the monsters while you text the National Guard.”  The world is large, and Genericville, USA is just a small part of it, and the characters aren’t trying to save everyone, they are just trying to survive.

In closing, let me see if I can do this right, SLTHR MMLMAO ITS GR8 & SCRY TNSTAAFL!

Translation: Slither made me laugh my ass off, it’s great and scary, there’s no such thing as a free lunch!

Seriously, there is an actuall text abbreviation for “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”, look it up. I want you to use that sometime, and see if anyone has any idea what the hell you’re talking about.

Written by Drew Martin

Zombieland

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J4RJF00Z

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin Directed by: Ruben Fleischer

I love zombies.  Who doesn’t?

Well, my wife for one.  She sleeps light, one eye open, waiting for the zombie apocalypse to begin.  Next to the bed is a baseball bat on which is engraved “The Butcher.”  You know, just in case.

That’s one of the great things about zombies.  You can kill (or is that re-kill?) them with a swift lick to the head.  That’s a pretty nice advantage.  A major silver lining for the zombie apocalypse: It ain’t vampires!  What would you rather do, try and hit a 22” melon attached visibly to a body with pretty much any nearby object, blunt or sharp, or stab a spiky piece of wood through a torso to impale an invisible organ approximately 3.5” in circumference?  Yeah, exactly.

That’s why, for all the lore of zombies raising from the dead and dragging their carcasses around, Hollywood eventually had to inject some vigor in to them.  It’s a lot harder to figure out how to terrorize a group of unwitting survivors if the antagonist moves at a snail’s pace.

That’s why the #1 rule for surviving Zombieland is cardio.  You need to be able to get away long enough to plan your attack.  Even if zombies have gotten fast….they’re still pretty dumb.

Zombieland stars Jessie Eisenberg as Columbus, an amiably nerdy narrator with a written list of survival tips which he references throughout the film.  Each tip is revealed seamlessly, adding not only to the film’s style, but also perfectly to its humor.

Eventually Columbus stumbles upon another survivor, Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), nicknamed after the cities they hail from.  Columbus is trekking cross country to get back to his city namesake to check on the well being of his family.  Tallahassee is, well, killing zombies.  Like it’s his job.  And I guess, in a world with no real vocations to speak of, maybe it is.  Gun, banjo, hacksaw, Tallahassee uses whatever object is nearby as his weapon of choice, and does so with such gusto and energy.  I guess sometimes you just have to wait for the zombie apocalypse to find your niche.

Eventually Columbus and Tallahassee stumble upon two cunning vixens, Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin).  After a shrew bit of chicanery, they steal Tallahassee’s truck, his gun, their pride, and yes maybe, just maybe, a little bit of their hearts.

Therein lies the success of Zombieland.  It turns out to be a road trip movie with zombies as a backdrop.  As a matter of fact, with the exception of the opening and closing sequences, there aren’t a whole lot of zombies in the film.  It is, by turn, well acted, well shot, sweet, and, above all, hilarious, with a little bit of action thrown in.  But never really any horror.  It’s best to not even think of it as a zombie film, because it isn’t really.  It’s turning the road trip genre on its ear, with screaming success.  The Griswold’s should take note.

Written by Ryan Venson

Piranha 3-D and It Happened One Night

piranha
piranha

I know that if Frank Capra were still alive he would have made Piranha 3-D. I also think that It Happened One Night would have been a little bit better had Clark Gable been attacked by a fish or two. Sadly, It Happened One Night is only a 2-D film, and that is why it will never be counted among the greats.

You hear me Capra?!

Where's your third dimension?!

Lazy bum.

it happened
it happened

Shutter Island and THEM

We sit down and watch the Martin Scorsese film Shutter Island which is about Zzz...Zzz...Zzz...uh...oh sorry about that. Good director, good actors, good source material...how could it not be great? No really, how could this movie turn out the way it did? We also watched the French horror film Them, proof that America does not have a monopoly on crappy horror movies.

Inception and Predators

We do ramble on about the greatness of Inception, but we still have plenty to say when it comes to Predators. We also speak quickly on a few films we have watched on dvd lately. Ryan announces that once we reach 1000 Facebook fans, he will let people vote on a movie themed tattoo that he will be getting. I am really hoping he get the script from the Hannah Montana movie tattooed on his ass. Make your friends become a fan of the show!

Iron Man 2/The Human Centipede

Two movies that share a common thread. Both films have a character who builds something as a gift for all mankind. Iron Man is created to protect the people from an increasingly dangerous world. The Human Centipede is  created to see if three people could be grafted together by connecting someone's head to someone's ass. I can't be sure, but I believe both films made about the same amount of money. Enjoy!