Halloween Havoc IV

[Curt McGirt]

Fowler's not the only one who picked a Christmas-themed movie...

 

SO IT'S YOU! 

 

Nah, don't worry, I actually had a good laugh. Review will probably be posted tomorrow.

[Brian Fowler]

Well, dammit, there goes all the surprise.  Fuck it, you guys don't even get a Creature Feature show intro.

 

Movie:  Santa's Slay

 

Chosen by: Newb82

 

By all rights it should be unwatchable. It has really terrible acting by some "name" actors in the opening scene. It has C-level production value. IT STARS BILL FUCKING GOLDBERG AS AN EVIL FUCKING SANTA CLAUSE. However, I watched this a couple years ago on Netflix streaming and remember actually being entertained by it.

 

When I sent this to Curt, I included the tag of "I am so very sorry."  I also told Newb that I had not seen it, but having seen Santa With Muscles, I have fulfilled my lifetime quota of shitty Christmas films starring pro wrestlers.

 

Reviewed by: Curt McGirt

 

 

SANTA'S SLAY (2005)

 

I was really dreading this. Fowler's response to me getting it was "I'm sorry." I had my hate-magnet out for whoever gave this to me, judging from the skim I did of the film on Wikipedia. But you know what? It was actually... kinda fun. And funny. Maybe it's the metric ton of vodka I funneled in the hour and 15 minutes watching it on Youtube. Who cares? 

 

The opening four minutes show of all people, Fran Drescher, Chris Kattan, Jimmy Caan (!!!) and a gorgeous wavy redhead with blue eyes I've seen before and can't place (this is a recurring theme). They bicker amongst themselves in a sexy way (except for Caan telling Kattan "you half-a-fag I'll stick this fork in your eye") and then Goldberg busts out the chimney to kill them. As it is, this is a perfect Funny Or Die skit... of course, then it evolves into a movie. 

 

The credits start, and it looks like either a worshipper of Cthulthu or someone with the typing skills of Stephen Colbert made the background writing. Then we find out (dun dun dun!) that Brett Ratner produced this piece of shit. There you go friends, everything begins to make sense now. 

 

Two kids are working at a local deli, one is the kid from Big Love and the other is some young blonde from wherever. The owner is Saul Rubinek who I remember immediately as the movie producer from True Romance. We have a nasty granny talk a bunch of shit and she gets hers via Goldberg, during which he utters the immortal line "MOVE BITCH! GET OUT OF THE WAY!" Afterwards, the kid from Big Love goes to his house, owned by his crazy grandpa who has multiple locks, an alarm system and a bomb shelter armed with. Crazy pa-pa is played by Robert Culp who looks like nowadays Bruce Dern and I thought that was him for a second. Santa is the Antichrist, who wagered a bet with, apparently, Culp himself over a game of curling and lost, but the length of his wager is now up, so he can murder people at will instead of giving gifts. 

 

You still with me here? There's more. 

 

As a side note, the kid says to Culp, while reading through his book full of cult Norwegian folklore (yes), "I didn't know you were in the military." To which he replies, "I was."

 

Crickets. 

 

Jesus fucking Christ...

 

After this we get Dave Thomas (comedian, hoser) playing a sleazy preacher who survives a Santa attack on a strip club complete with cavorting bimbos for your required titty exposure for the film's length. Saul gets impaled on a menorah, the kids escape and try to blow away Santaberg with a shotgun until they manage to get to Culp's basement fortress. They then escape on snowmobiles and then there is a bazooka and a Zamboni involved. At this point I am shaking my head at myself for having finished this whole thing. 

 

BUT! 

 

It was funny as hell. If you like complete camp, with a bunch of character actors you either know or just vaguely know, this is for you (TINY FUCKING LISTER shows up at one point!). I was really expecting the worst of the worst, and would have greatly preferred to get Q instead of this, but what the hell. It was on Youtube, I didn't have to go searching the globe, I got a couple good laughs and I'm drunk. Fine night off. 

 

For those of you who wish to travel down the same reindeer-driven path:

 

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=VL46fAxWztA

 

- Curt

[Brian Fowler]

And house cleaning time:

 

I have two reviews left to actually run that I have gotten:  Myself and Kurt's.  If you aren't Kurt and you sent me a review, it got lost somewhere in the intertubes.

 

If you haven't sent me a review yet, now would be a fantastic time, so we can have a nice violent bloody review filled Halloween.  If not, hey, we've got enough to get to the holiday at least.

[piranesi]

 

 

 

SANTA'S SLAY (2005)

 

 

 

You had me at Culp.

[Burgundy LaRue]

I haven't seen Santa's Slay, but it seems like it would be a good pairing with Jack Frost, which is hilariously bad IMO.  Watching it while sober was fine, but I'll be sure to be two vodka tonics in next time for an even better experience.

[Jingus]

If you haven't sent me a review yet, now would be a fantastic time, so we can have a nice violent bloody review filled Halloween.  If not, hey, we've got enough to get to the holiday at least.

I'll have sent mine to you by tomorrow morning.  Still have the short banked writeup that I can send at pretty much any time, but I want to rewrite and expand it.  

[Curt McGirt]

I eschewed mixing and went with doubles chased with juice for that little viewing experience. Did I mention Santaberg starts throwing presents that explode like he was the Green Goblin? Yeah, that happens too.

[ingrsco]

I have yet to send my review. Work changed scheduling and duties and other things have kept me from it. However, I am off the next 5 days and will break myself away from playing those damn videeya games to write it up tomorrow.

[piranesi]

It's all cool Halloween lasts until Nov. 3 this year.  If you go to Catholic school, you're off on Friday, so it's a

 

FOUR-DAY PAGAN ORGY!

[Brian Fowler]

Can you feel it deep in your spine, my creatures?  So close to the bloody day, oh so very close.

 

Movie: Citadel

 

Chosen by: Suicide King of Spades

 

I watched this last year and thought it was very solid.  Good scares, and great atmosphere, with the protagonist being in a Repulsion-like situation early on where he's afraid of everything.  Critics don't seem to agree, but it seems like their biggest problem is the movie's politics - it sends the message that underage gangs and criminals don't deserve sympathy or understanding. What I was told is that writer-director Ciaran Foy underwent a real-life attack by a group of kids, and this movie is his reaction to that, so if you know that, you might see things a little differently.  Anyway, I'm looking for someone to back me up on this movie actually being good.

 

Reviewed by: Lawful Metal

 

Citadel

 

I had heard about this movie for a while, but I was hesitant to watch it.  The movie begins with a very pregnant woman getting attacked by sociopathic children.  As a husband to a wife that has given birth to six children, I’m very sensitive to anything happening to a pregnant woman’s belly.  And, having been a prosecutor and (thankfully very infrequently) a defense attorney in the juvenile justice system, I know that violent juvenile offenders are a reality.

 

There’s been a number of films tackling this European juvenile delinquent blight.  They range from the very good, Ils and Harry Brown, to the uneven and unenjoyable Eden Lake.  I’m sure there’s more.  Even the alien invasion Attack the Block tackled the issue.  I have no idea of the social reality of these types of movies.  I do know bad things happen, and bad people (young and old) do bad things.  A lot of time, there are contributing factors (poverty, drugs, broken homes, mental illness), but there’s also the ideas of personal responsibility and not making excuses when you fuck up and make bad decisions.  Of course, the media blows all of this out of proportion; the really bad offenses are pretty rare, and ninety-nine percent of the kids stuck in the juvenile justice system are just dumb kids doing dumb things and getting caught in a callous web that only further perpetuates their delinquency.  Best place for kids to meet bad influence friends is in the juvenile lockup.

 

Oh, the movie.  Citadel deals with the aftermath and the psychological horrors done to Tommy, who watched the attack on his wife through the elevator window.  Now suffering greatly from agoraphobia and severe anxiety, he has to care for his daughter Elsa on his own.  He lives in a rundown section of the city where the police fear to patrol and the buses in and out have stopped coming.  The feral children in this urban scrawl have ceased to even be human.  At one point, the priest says they’re demons, but then pulls back and laughs at Tommy’s gullibility.  I’m not so sure.

 

The hooded demon children of this movie bring forth an instant fear when they appear.  This fear of people wearing hoods is a knee-jerk one for many people.  There’s the obvious example of a hooded juvenile in Florida.  The fear isn’t so much that they will violently attack people; it’s that they do it for seemingly no reason.  It’s fun.  They have absolutely no regard for anything. 

 

Here, the juveniles have gone full feral and wild: attacking indiscriminately, sensing fear, feeding off it, perhaps.  They skulk the streets in packs, seemingly always lit from behind.  When we do see the parts of them not covered by the hoods, they are terrifying.  When they burglarize Tommy’s home and we see one of their scaly scabrous hands, it’s hard to know if it’s real or Tommy’s fears coming to life. 

That’s one of the points of the movie, I think.  Everything is quasi-real. It’s dark.  The atmosphere is so dreary and the plot so full of the things in what you imagine Tommy’s nightmares – or anyone’s nightmares for that matter – it feels like any second, they’ll pull back the wool and show us that it was all in our – or Tommy’s – imagination.  But it’s not.  Unfortunately, this feeling actually hurts the ending, as you’re still left waiting for that revelation, that M. Night trick.  In a way it works – is it all real?  Was it all a therapy exercise?  We see that early on, where a therapist tells Tommy that his body language denotes “victim” – and this movie represents his overcoming of his fear.

 

Performances are stellar across the board, particularly Aneurin Barnard as Tommy.  He communicates the fear so credibly and sensitively that you never lose respect for him.  Frequently, actors who are asked to convey fear are shown to be shrieking harpies, flipping out over trivial things and flailing about so pathetically they become laughable.  Barnard never goes there, and rather than laughing at him, I very much empathized with him.

 

Bravura debut for Ciaran Foy.  It has a very real vision and follows through.  I wouldn’t read into any political meaning into the film; it’s not meant to make a statement beyond using our own real or imagined fears to bring the scares in this film to life.  The lack of impact in the ending hurts the film, but not immensely. 

 

Very good but not quite great.  Recommended. 

[S.K.o.S.]

Glad you enjoyed it, Mr. Metal!

[Brisco]

I think Jingus got mine, and its going to piss him off, and its going to rule!

[FluffSnackwell]

Come in, come in, gather round in the darkness

 

 

Film: Texas Chainsaw (2013)

 

Chosen by: Jingus

 

I'm not sure of the protocol when it comes to nominating very-recent movies, but it sure seems like hardly anyone saw this. And NOBODY liked it, AT ALL, except for ME. I swear, with God as my witness, one day I WILL find someone else who loves this film!In short, I think it's a damn fine modern slasher (which is rare enough already), but moreover it's a slasher which goes out of its way to avoid most of the standard slasher-formula crap. There's no Final Girl, there's no gratuitous scene of the cannibal family forcing their victims to sit down at the dinner table, no mysterious third-act thunderstorms where the phones and power go out, and especially no inexplicable lack of cops getting involved. And most hilarious of all, it proudly stands as an official member of the Texas Chainsaw Sequel/Reboot Club by joining all the others in flatly pretending that every sequel before this one simply didn't happen.

 

Reviewed by: Newb82

 

Texas Chainsaw (2013)Your enjoyment of this movie may largely depend on four factors: whether you can tolerate a movie in which just about everyone does something really shitty to someone else, whether you can buy an attempted babyface turn for Leatherface (yes, I'm serious), and whether you can get over the timeline making absolutely zero sense, and finally whether you can buy the ending or not.I could not, on all four accounts.I don't see why this movie needed to be in 3-D, since the most that seems to be done with it is a chainsaw being pointed at the camera. Hell, I don't see why this movie needed to be made at all. It didn't make me actively mad like JASON GOES TO HELL or the Zombie HALLOWEEN movies do, but this is just a bad movie, that I never need to see again.I could be snarky and say that the best part of the movie is when it shows scenes from the original to let you know that this is meant to be a direct sequel to that, and in this case, neither the original sequels, the remake, or the prequel to the remake apply. I won't, because I did like what immediately follows, which is the aftermath to Sally escaping the deranged Sawyer clan in the original, especially Bill Moseley, who played Drayton Sawyer (the father), as he did a good imitation of the original actor, Jim Siedow (Moseley also played Chop Top in TCM 2).There are characters in that opening that show up later in the present day (it's shown to be present day because of some of the technology present), and...they don't look like they've aged forrty years. Twenty maybe, but not fourty. Hell, we're supposed to forget at this point that Leatherface would be ready for an AARP membership at this point, but given that he's supposed to be physically able to do what he does after essentially sitting in a small room for forty years, so his age would be the easiest thing to overcome there.Where the lead character is supposed to fit in the Sawyer bloodline is beyond me. She's implied to be the baby from the opening, but that would be the youngest-looking forty-year-old in the history of the world. There's no way, given what the movie tells us, that she fits into the Sawyer family bloodline in any logical way, and I don't think the movies "scares" effected me at all because I was too busy trying to figure this out.Now, there's the ending...

 

I don't buy Heather (the lead) deciding to stay in the house with Leatherface. Yes, he saved her from the cops and the mayor who wanted to kill her, but he still killed her friends, and now she's an attractive twenty-something willfully pissing any hope of a future away to remain tethered to him supposedly because of some familial pride. A family that she didn't know she was a part of 48 hours prior. Yeah, I don't buy it. If they make a sequel, it should be about her waking up and realizing what a dumb decision she made, and how she attempts to rid herself of Leatherface.

 

Even leaving all this out, you still only have a fairly bland slasher movie with the usual tropes, including dumb characters doing dumb shit to get themselves killed. The movie tries to get cute with several nods to the original (there's even a SAW reference thrown in), but doesn't come close to creating the tension and the terror of that movie.On the plus side, Alexandra Daddario (Heather) is REALLY hot, and you get to see "Alex" from LOST in her undies, so there's that.If you want to see a TCM movie, go with either the original, or even the 2003 remake, which is eons better than this one.

 

 

I regret to inform you that also fucking sucked massively because there WAS NO 30 PERSON INBRED CLAN in the original; just three dirtbags (ranging from severely mentally challenged to completely deranged) behaving badly without any kind of mother figure around to guide them. The massive Sawyer clan BS is something this 2013 thing spun out of whole cloth and simply didn't exist in the original.

 

Plus.........

 

Even going by the retconned version of TCM/Sawyer family history I'm supposed to buy that this dangerous retard who got his whole clan wiped out because of his "misunderstandings" with stranger folk suddenly being an antihero by the end of the movie..........even though he just wiped out several of his cousin's friends in the exact same manner.Worst face turn ever.

 

This was godawful as a TCM movie. The real shocker is at least they got Leatherface somewhat right instead of turning him into a cross between Lou Ferrigno Hulk and Jason Voorhees. Well, I mean if you ignore the fact for how well he gets around for an obese senior citizen and all.

[FluffSnackwell]

Since any new TCM sequel is FFB (F_______ from birth) they might as well just show what happened to Lattimer's one-armed Leatherface. Actually, Son Of Leatherface would be a nice end-around a lot of hiccups of setting a TCM movie in the modern day.

[FluffSnackwell]

 

 

Texas Chainsaw (2013) 

 

I usually totally disagree with Jingus in the October threads, but I just finished wathing this and I thought it was pretty good.  I found it easy enough to just retcon the original as happening 20 years ago instead of 40.  Based on the ridiculous stitches that they pass off as clothing, which are fully in line with the hideous late 90s exposed stomach look, I could have pretended this one was happening in 1995 up until they broke out the cell-phone cameras.I did actively dislike the group of lead characters (four of which were just so magnificently, painfully beautiful that it was borderline absurd) who spent the first 20 minutes or so essentially posing for an American Apparel photo-shoot they apparently thought was happening around them every minute of every day.  Die, motherfuckers.But I thought the initial house scenes were pretty good.  Just enough of the standard TCM imagery: Leatherface chasing someone down who almost escapes, (that big meat hook gives him the extra reach he needs!) the little quick glimpses of gore, the quick hammer shot to the head, the iconic meat locker.  I didn't get the impression that Leatherface was locked in a little room all the time, but that he had the run of the house when gramma was still alive at least sometimes.I also liked how that part and the expected chainsaw chase were quick and self-contained.  They got right to it.  The creeping around the house scenes were well directed and they made great use of the big complex spaces in the house.  Some of them rooms were huge and cavernous and spooky, some of them claustrophobic and panic-inducing (Marvin in the kitchen). The chase scene was fast and chaotic, but kind of made sense and of course relied on the male lead fucking up the getaway.  It makes no sense that there was a carnival right there and while that scene was fun looking (chaotic running, colors, lights and chainsaw sounds are literally like horror-movie pixie-stick dust), it really didn't make much sense.  But I really liked the pace of it.  And along the way there were some great shots.  The shot of Leatherface in the cemetary when Lost-Girl yells at him and he starts running toward her.  Pretty scary.  The Jurassic Park-esque scene of him running toward the back of the van seen through the back window.  I actually liked Leatherface as T-Rex in that scene. I also thought the mask-making scene was a nice gruesome touch.But you are right that the face-turn bit was kind of contrived.  But instead of seeing it as a face-turn it reminded me of those movies where the main monster at some point is used or unleashed in the middle of someone else's fight and just sort of incidentally causes chaos...and, shit, I'm having a hard time thinking of an instance...maybe like the T-Rex at the end of Jurassic Park?  Or like using getting Jason to turn on Freddie??? Dammit, I know there are movies where the "monster" is almost a side character, just a means to cause the Third act to go fucking bananas.  At least at first.  But fuck,

"Do your thing, Coz!" and everything after that kind of pissed me off.  A fucking hot-tag to Leatherface?  And a bunch of catch phrases? And then what, she's going to become a cannibal?  Teach him how to be a regular dude?  living alone in a cannibal mansion next to a town where he just killed, like everyone? and WHY NOT GIVE HER THE LETTER EXPLAINING ALL THIS ALONG WITH THE KEYS TO THE HOUSE????Like, nothing could be more annoying than there being a letter that explains everything...but no one gives it to her until after she figures everything out herself?  But with all her friends dead (okay, that part wasn't so bad).  Like, what the fuck is she going to do there?  Tweet?  Skype? learn to whittle?

One note:  I loved "Marvin" the gung-ho deputy who thought he was so tough.Sheriff [over the radio]: Marvin, we believe Jed Sawyer is in that house!  You STAND DOWN!Marvin: Copy that, chief, but a chainsaw don't make you bullet-proof.I liked that guy.  Poor, poor Marvin.  But the iphone camera thing was dumb.  I felt like I was watching HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION or something.

 

 

This was a pretty good Leatherface movie minus the end. I totally bought this guy as Leatherface and not a pale imitation of all those other slasher mongoloids. But it was a horrible TCM movie which people seem to forget was originally a series about a group of hicks where Leatherface is a big stupid brute to the point of being a sic dog used as a pawn by his older brothers.

 

Also this was the biggest bunch of nobody local actors I've ever seen. Crappy Texas SAG members. Nothing more.

[Brian Fowler]

We return, for one, final, blood-soaked, nightmare inducing evening of pain and pleasure.

 

 

Movie:  A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors

 

Chosen by: Lacelle

 

(Who never did send his explanation of why, but, hey, fuck it, it's a Nightmare movie, you know why.)

 

Reviewed by: The Creature That Hosts The Havoc (or, you know, me.)

 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors

 

 

If you are reading this thread, you probably know that, in the mid-80's, just as the wave of slasher films started by Halloween and Friday the 13th seemed on the verge of dying off, Wes Craven released A Nightmare on Elm Street, it made shit tons of money, and revitalized the entire subgenre.  You also probably know that they quickly did a sequel, Freddy's Revenge, that made even more money, but was also mostly hated by the audience.

 

This was, of course, all pretty much standard operating procedure.  But then New Line Cinema did something very odd:  They listened to the fanbase, and changed course for the third entry.  First, they offed it back to Wes Craven, who was completely divorced from the previous film.  Craven declined to direct, but he wrote the story, and got the film off on the right foot. 

 

It's interesting to me how, despite being a generally very decent slasher sequel, Dream Warriors kicks off most of the trends that would grow to define the decline of the series.  Freddy the quipster really starts here.  Sure, he made jokes in the first film, but they were dark, mean spirited, and not particularly funny to anyone but Freddy.  I do not know who first coined the phrase "The Henny Youngman of the Slasher Set" to describe Freddy Krueger, but this is the film where that began to ring true. 

 

Also, the deeply personal and ironic nightmare/kills started here, slowly becoming more and more elaborate as the series wore on (eventually getting us to that fucking awful Take On Me inspired comic book nightmare...  God, fuck that movie...  I digress) giving us probably the best Freddy one-liner with "Welcome to primetime, BITCH" that has been quoted ad nauseam ever since (hell, piranesi even used it, with some other scenes in this film, to parallel one of the glorious Cardinal defeats in the World Series.)

 

But, enough about what it foretold in the collapse of the franchise, and back to what it is, which is a damn good slasher movie.  Now, that's not quite the same as being a "damn good movie" the way the original Nightmare, of Wes Craven's New Nightmare are, but it's an easy choice for third best in the series, and probably fighting for a spot in the lower half of a top ten best slasher films list.  Why?

 

First, although he's slipping, Freddy is still a viable threat.

 

Second, the core group of teens are interesting.  Maybe not completely so, but enough to not just want to see them die.

 

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Heather Langenkamp returns as Nancy.  For mostly personal reasons, including a stalker, Langenkamp mostly fled films after Nightmare, but she came back for this (and, eventually, New Nightmare, which quite uncoincidentally, give us the three films in the original 7 that are worth a damn.)

 

So, the plot?  Kids having nightmares are secluded and given a drug to prevent dreams, things go wrong, Freddy kills most of them, Nancy teaches the others how to fight, she dies heroically, and then the rest team-up together to defeat the boogeyman.  It's not complex, but it's quite a bit more than most slashers.  The core idea of the kids actually working together, and learning how to fight back, instead of one lone girl finally plucking up the ability to fend off the monster only after all her friends are gone, is the thing that first sets it apart.  The fact that story never really insults the audience makes it remarkable.  That it is competently shot and acted, despite being the third entry in a money grabbing horror franchise, is downright odd.

 

I'd be surprised if any of you haven't already seen this, but if you haven't, GO FUCKING WATCH IT!

 

Happy Halloween, dear friends and creatures of the night.

[piranesi]

By the time Parts 3-everything were being release, I was already at an age where I was pretty dismissive of the Nightmare series, what with the hair metal connections and the merchandising.  It felt coopted and lame to my dark teen self.  Like a lot of things I crapped on back then, I've had to come to terms over the years with what a pretentious and dismissive little suck I was then and reevaluate.

 

Looking at those movies now, they are surprisingly good and really fun.  The visual effects aren't always perfecct but they are so damned ambitious.  I may be overly sympathetic having watched the "True story of" on AMC and knowing just how little time they had to throw these together (the studio would put up a release date and poster art often before there was a finished script and they would still be shooting within a week of the release). 

 

The pizza of souls in Part 4 is hilarious and well done...just the sort of touch you would think such a fast shoot would be like "nice idea but we just can't make it work."  No matter how absurd the idea (the kid turning into a motorcycle gobot in Part 5, the roach motel scene in part 4.  They somehow always managed tomake it gorey and unexpected and funny and weird and it never looked that bad.

 

Maybe they didn't have the basic mythic/psychological hook of the basic original.  But they were way above, WAAAAY above what I had thought back then.

[Brian Fowler]

Like most multi-part slasher sequels, I have a love/hate relationship with them.  I mean, they are terrible, but I love slasher films despite all their awfulness, and your random NOES is way better than, say, a random F13.  But because of the heights the franchise occasionally hit, it makes the shortcomings of the rest more frustrating.

 

And, of course, Freddy's Dead is just fucking unforgivable levels of suck.

[piranesi]

 

 

And, of course, Freddy's Dead is just fucking unforgivable levels of suck.

 

To me it had one redeeming quality.  It had one of my favorite horror cliches.  There just happens to be a guy right there who is a "dream mythology" scholar or something...a thing that DOES NOT EXIST AS A SPECIALTY IN THE HUMANITIES!!!! but always seems to show up in these movies.

 

I love movies where a character goes to a local college and someone is like, "You should talk to professor Reinicke in our occult history department.  I think he wrote a book about the transmigration of souls through REM sleep."

 

And it was Yaphet Kotto.

[Jingus]

I must shamefully admit that I could not find time to watch my pick; but thankfully, it's a movie I've already seen and reviewed.  For context: this initial first-time viewing of Re-Animator happened deep in the back half of a zombie marathon that I did a few years ago, which is my fig-leaf excuse for why this review is so short (by my standards)  and perhaps a bit harder on the movie than I should've been.  It does deserve a rewatch at some point, but nothing will change my original gripes about the source material nor its adaptation.

 

 

Re-Animator: 5/10
So this is the other "funny" supergory zombie cult "classic", eh? Not impressed. I just don't get the alleged "talent" of director Stuart Gordon. I've seen several of his movies (Robot Jox, The Pit & the Pendulum, Castle Freak, and Dagon) and all of them struck me as being too coldblooded, too sadistic, too dark-humored, too misogynistic. They're all cursed with wooden acting, unlikable characters, and implausible plot twists; and they always managed to look cheap no matter how big the budget was. 

The plot is in theory an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's story "Herbert West: Re-Animator", but it really has almost nothing to do with the source material. (Considering that it was one of Lovecraft's very worst stories which contained some really nasty racism, that may be a good thing.) It's a basic Frankensteinian tale of medical students who tamper in God's domain, but I found it hard to care about any of it. Our heroes are all passive weak-willed victims who are constantly manipulated by the loathesome amoral villains, so there's absolutely nobody worth cheering for. The only exception is West himself, played nicely by Jeffery Combs, but the movie seems like it can't decide whether he's an eccentric but admirable genius or a murderous blood-soaked mad scientist. 

Not helping is how damn long the movie takes to get the plot started; it finally picks up towards the end with some amusing stuff with the disembodied head, but that's not enough to make a good movie all by itself. And what's with the blatant soundtrack ripoff of Bernard Hermann? The theme music in this movie is a note-for-note steal from Psycho, I'm amazed they didn't get sued. I've heard this movie's cock sucked dry by many a zombie fanboy, but don't believe the hype.

 

[Jingus]

...and I watched it immediately following a screening of Braindead/Dead-Alive, which does all the exact same stuff and does it SO much better and on SUCH a larger scale than Re-Animator could've imagined.  

[FluffSnackwell]

Heh. You reviewed Re-Animator as if it was as overrated as that foreign darling turd Evil Ed or similar bogus hype heap ilk. Also dude who plays Herbert West has more charisma in his boogers than the entire cast of Dead Alive combined.  AND Re-Animator isn't even really an infected horde movie (one isolated morgue with a dozen or so people vs. a whole town of zombies?) Disparity in numbers there, sport. So the comparison sucks shit through a straw. Not the same plot at all but good try.

 

I do massively prefer From Beyond to Re-Animator but still put the latter in about the same tier as Dead Alive. Also apparently there is misogyny in everything. "No tits or lewdness in horror for anybody."

 

Bah. I say that's nonsense and somebody who cries misogyny so incessantly ought to not watch anything. I mean it's obvious they don't want to like anything so why fool themselves?

[FluffSnackwell]

I just miss the fact that the original Halloween II got shoved from the premium channels to crappy watered down AMC this year. It was all over HBO and its extra channels last season.  I really consider it the perfect body count sequel. 

[Jingus]

The things I do for art... you HAVE to watch a horror movie on Halloween, right?  I was thinking about doing the entire Hatchet Trilogy, back to back to back... but it would've been daylight by the time that ended.   So, desperate for anything that would seem street-credible enough, I threw in Nosferatu.  No, not Herzog's, I mean the original.  And then I remember why I never freakin' watch Nosferatu anymore, because I can never find a version with a soundtrack I like.  This one is at least trying, with some serious artistic ambitions; the notes are all black keys, it's all atonal and not sticking to any particular chord, and sometimes they just go full 70s with weird abstract sounds replacing music.  And it SUCKS.  Doesn't fit the movie at all.  I appreciate the effort and the thought behind it, but the execution just made me want to turn the damn thing off.  Especially not helping that they'd seemingly slowed down the frame rate a bit too much, or that the dialogue cards were always left hanging up there for insultingly long periods of time, or that there's a bunch of little extra footage here which isn't in the other versions but it's inconsequential shit with the townspeople.  And hey, I forgot that Nosferatu also helped start the trend of having odious comic relief being the worst part of practically any horror movie, the Renfield here... well, he's a Silent Renfield, with all the scenery-devouring melodramatic flourishes you'd expect.  

 

I really miss a version that aired on SyFy back when it was still Sci-Fi in the late nineties.  It had a beautiful, dreamlike synthesized score which fit better with the gothic Prussian gloom of this production than any of the instrumental scores I've heard.  It also had mild, subtle, but effective tinting of the different scenes in order to get different feelings from the audience.  Does anyone know what that version was, or where I can find it?  I've been looking for it over the past fifteen years, and never found it.  

 

And now, Fluffikins: 

 

 

Disparity in numbers there, sport. So the comparison sucks shit through a straw. Not the same plot at all but good try.

Did you even read what I said?  I didn't claim their plots were identical, nor nothing close to it.  I very specifically stated that the comparison came from the coincidence of having watched one movie immediately after the other.  And I already noted the game-changing difference in levels of carnage.  Try to pay attention before you start blindly throwing insults around.  
 

Also apparently there is misogyny in everything. "No tits or lewdness in horror for anybody."
 
Bah. I say that's nonsense and somebody who cries misogyny so incessantly ought to not watch anything. I mean it's obvious they don't want to like anything so why fool themselves?

Where the fuck is this nonsense coming from? Get that Rush Limbaugh bullshit outta here.  

 

 

Since you're so interested in comparisons, let's do one!  Let's compare how much I talked about misogyny in the original post, versus how much Fluffy complains about it here.

 

Here's me talking about misogyny: 

 

 

I just don't get the alleged "talent" of director Stuart Gordon. I've seen several of his movies (Robot Jox, The Pit & the Pendulum, Castle Freak, and Dagon) and all of them struck me as being too coldblooded, too sadistic, too dark-humored, too misogynistic. They're all cursed with wooden acting, unlikable characters, and implausible plot twists; and they always managed to look cheap no matter how big the budget was. 

The plot is in theory an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's story "Herbert West: Re-Animator", but it really has almost nothing to do with the source material. (Considering that it was one of Lovecraft's very worst stories which contained some really nasty racism, that may be a good thing.) It's a basic Frankensteinian tale of medical students who tamper in God's domain, but I found it hard to care about any of it. Our heroes are all passive weak-willed victims who are constantly manipulated by the loathesome amoral villains, so there's absolutely nobody worth cheering for. The only exception is West himself, played nicely by Jeffery Combs, but the movie seems like it can't decide whether he's an eccentric but admirable genius or a murderous blood-soaked mad scientist. 

Not helping is how damn long the movie takes to get the plot started; it finally picks up towards the end with some amusing stuff with the disembodied head, but that's not enough to make a good movie all by itself. And what's with the blatant soundtrack ripoff of Bernard Hermann? The theme music in this movie is a note-for-note steal from Psycho, I'm amazed they didn't get sued. I've heard this movie's cock sucked dry by many a zombie fanboy, but don't believe the hype.

 

 

 

 

And here's YOU talking about misogyny: 

 

Heh. You reviewed Re-Animator as if it was as overrated as that foreign darling turd Evil Ed or similar bogus hype heap ilk. Also dude who plays Herbert West has more charisma in his boogers than the entire cast of Dead Alive combined.  AND Re-Animator isn't even really an infected horde movie (one isolated morgue with a dozen or so people vs. a whole town of zombies?) Disparity in numbers there, sport. So the comparison sucks shit through a straw. Not the same plot at all but good try.

 

I do massively prefer From Beyond to Re-Animator but still put the latter in about the same tier as Dead Alive. Also apparently there is misogyny in everything. "No tits or lewdness in horror for anybody."

 

Bah. I say that's nonsense and somebody who cries misogyny so incessantly ought to not watch anything. I mean it's obvious they don't want to like anything so why fool themselves?

 

 

I'm sorry, but how did the blue lead to the red? 

 

[Newb82]

Looking at those movies now, they are surprisingly good and really fun.  The visual effects aren't always perfecct but they are so damned ambitious.  I may be overly sympathetic having watched the "True story of" on AMC and knowing just how little time they had to throw these together (the studio would put up a release date and poster art often before there was a finished script and they would still be shooting within a week of the release). 

That was how I found out about the awesome NEVVER SLEEP AGAIN doc, since that special was an edited version o it.