The Lightning Bug's Lair

Blood Trail (1997): Bloody Trails to You, 'Til We Meet Again

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:46:00 +0000

The history of America's expansion into the West is a tale that can't be told without a certain amount of blood. The sands of the West ran red with the life force of both native and settlers, and the sanguine soaked history has lead to the Western genre of films being one of the most violent. That's what always makes me think the Western would really be interesting with some Horror infused into it. Somewhere between the jangle of spurs, there should be room for zombies. slashers, ghosts, and maybe even a vampire or two. Today's feature, an under-appreciated indie film coming out of Texas, is perhaps the best example of the two genre's gettin' hitched. Combining a slasher sensibility with a supernatural story and a cast that looks (and acts) like the supporting cast of Tombstone, Barry Tubb's Blood Trail blazes a new path for Six Gun terror, and it even brought along a pair of Texas singer-songwriter legends for good measure. So, saddle up, folks, as National Blood Donation takes up Horace Greeley's sage advice and heads toward the setting sun and into the Weird, Weird West.

While robbing the graves of Native Americans, a pair of cowboys stumble on a body buried in the ground a different way. Uncovering it, they release the deadly spirit of Bloody Hands (Raoul Trujillo) which takes possession of one of the men and begins to cut a bloody swath across the Indian Territories. A group of Marshals and Deputies assigned to the area, including their Indian scout, the Christian convert Wolf (Craig Ironpipe), begin to track down the killer falling into a trail of blood. As the spirit lures the men deeper into the West, many of them perish.

I know that plot synopsis seems a little skimpy and lacking in character detail, and there's a good reason for that. Blood Trails does a number of things right from impressionistic scenes of violence to its very deliberate pace set to build suspense, but one thing it does really poorly is populate the story. With at least ten lawmen to keep up with, some of which drop in and out of the story, plus a couple of other random fellows, it's almost impossible to figure out names and keep them straight. Some characters, like one poor sap who hangs himself, shows up, does his deed, and is found later. However, I still have no bleedin' idea who he is even after watching though a second time. All the actors, a great many of them non-professionals, are earthy and likable, but I felt like I needed a program because you can't know the names of all the players without a program.

A number of them are famous faces though, well, depending on how much you like Texas songwriters. Robert Earl Keene is probably the most recognizable name due to the popularity of his song, "Christmas with the Family" around Holiday time. Keene is a respected Texas musician who comes from the same crop of songwriters that spawned Lyle Lovett and Keene's co-star Joe Ely, writer of . Ely, who also contributed the soundtrack to the film (which was a bit too much like the background music for a Santa Fe spa for my taste, has a nice scene early in the film before being dispatched by the newly possessed cowpoke. Keene also has an amusing scene before being dispatched off-screen. DJ turned prank call comedian Roy D. Mercer also appears. Equally disposable is the appearance of Heroes' Adrian Pasdar.

While the film is bogged down with the crowded cast, it scores when it comes to its horror elements. While most of the violence is alluded to rather than shown, the cast sells all the proper moments. The film's opening credits, in which a Native American dancer performs with his back the camera and a disconcerting mask affixed to the back of his head, sets the viewer ill at ease with its visions of body distortion. Suspense is built well without cheap jump scares or trickery, and the interspersed, impressionistic visions of Bloody Hands go a long way of selling the danger. Director Barry Tubb, best known as a supporting actor in films such as Top Gun and TV's Friday Night Lights, gives Blood Trails plenty of room to breathe with wide open shots, delicate pacing, and an& understanding of how to build action. With a gentle edit of the script, Blood Trails could have been one of the best Horror films I've seen in a while and not merely just the best Western Horror.

After Blood Hunt, Barry Tubb directed a children's film before returning to movies of a a darker bent with 2010's Clown Hunt, which appears to be about just what it sounds like it would be about, and in 2011 with Javalina, featuring a wild boar who hunts down the hunters who killed its parents. After seeing Blood Trail, I would definitely like to give his other movies a shot. If they're anything like Blood Trail, they should be interesting to watch. When I said earlier that Blood Trail was an under-seen film, I couldn't have meant it more. Poking around to find out what others thought about this film, I only found one other review out there, and it seemed to have been ripped straight from an IMDB user's work. Blood Trail is a film I encourage fans of both Horror and the Western to see. On both fronts, it treats its root genres with respect and both are enhanced by the other's presence. It's not often I review something that I watched sight unseen and like it this much, I hope you take time to put this one on your queue and check it out for yourself.

Bugg Rating

Sadly there's no trailer for Blood Trail. So instead enjoy this video of Joe Ely singing a favorite of mine "Me

and Billy The Kid"

Blood Simple (1984):'Cause When Blood Gets Difficult Things Get Really Messy

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Before Raising Arizona made it cool to put a panty on your head, before the Dude abided, and way before No Country for Old Men made cattle guns the 'it' thing for the hip killer on the streets, the Coens started off their career with Blood Simple, a flick that brought the Noir of the 40s right into the neon arms of the 80s. While the screenplay was wholly original, the Brothers took the title of their film from a passage in famed pulp novelist Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest. In the novel, Hammett describes blood simple as the addled, fearful mindset of people after a prolonged immersion in violent situations. A perfect term to describe the reactions of many of the characters in the Coen's films, and it fits this film like a glove. Violence, greed, lust, and suspicion are the engine that fuels this film, and with a coterie of astounding performers, the Coen's kicked off their careers with a movie that is anything but simple.

Julian Marty (Dan Heyaya) owns a small Texas bar, but drunk patrons are the least of his worries. He's convinced that his wife Abby (Frances McDormand) is running around on him. So he hires a private investigator, Loren Visser (M. Emmett Walsh), to track her down. When the private eye returns with pictures of Abby and Julian's employee Ray (John Getz) in flagrante delicto, the barman has a bigger job for the gumshoe, he wants the lovers killed. Visser takes the job, but he fakes the pictures of the bullet ridden bodies and double crosses Julian, plugging him with Abby's gun he stole from Ray's house. Soon after, Ray stops by the bar and finds Julian dead and Abby's gun. So thinking he's cleaning up Abby's crime, he hauls the body off to dump in the desert. Only Julian's not quite dead yet. So Ray buries him alive. After telling Abby that he covered her murder, she goes to the office to find it ransacked, unbeknownst to her because Visser left a clue that would lead the cops to him. Instead, she begins to believe that Ray killed Julian.

I could go on further about the ins and outs of the film, but I'm sure you get the idea. The plot is twistier than a party at Chubby Checker's house in 1960. Blood Simple draws on many influences to create its story. With shades of Film Noir and The Postman Always Rings Twice author James M. Cain's classic novels all wrapped up in thick layer of Texas heat, Blood Simple strikes up a symphony of treachery that doesn't let go until the film's final frame. The film hinges on the character's lack of communication between each other, and the misunderstandings coupled with the intrusion of private dick set them on a spiral that leads nowhere except down a progressively tragic road. Blood Simple is also greatly enhanced by the mood laid down by cinematographer, and future blockbuster director, Barry Sonnenfeld. With a feeling of dread cast over the proceedings like rising heat on a Texas highway, Sonnenfeld and the Coens come together to create a total vision with Blood Simple.

Of course none of this vision would have made a bit of difference if it were not for a stellar cast. Holly Hunter originally auditioned for the role of Abby, but due to other commitments, she had to pass on the role and suggested her roommate Frances McDormand try out for the role. It would kick off a collaboration between the actress and the Coens that would span over seven films and twenty five years. McDormand could not have been more perfectly cast. While not overtly sexy, she has a presence to her, and it made her the perfect woman to come between Hedaya and Getz. In an early teaser trailer used to drum up business, Hedaya's role was played by Bruce Campbell, and as much as I like the Chin of Chins, he just wouldn't have been a good fit here. Hedaya can play desperate, sweaty, and slimy like no other. Well, except perhaps M. Emmet Walsh which is what makes their scenes so great. When
Walsh was cast, the role was fine tuned to the actor, and it worked perfectly. So perfectly that the only actor I could even imagine in the role other than Walsh would be Sydney Greenstreet. If there is a weak link, then it would have to be John Getz. I'm not saying he was bad, but in the face of the film's other performances it just doesn't stack up.

If Blood Simple had been the only film that the Coens ever made, it would still be enough to vault them into the hallowed halls of genre film, but that this first film was only one of many more to come, makes it a career high point at the beginning of a career filled with such moments. While they would revisit crime again in films such as Raising Arizona and Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou with a more comic tone and Noir sensibilities in Fargo, The Man Who Wasn't There, and No Country for Old Men, there's a special blend of straightforward honesty to the proceedings in Blood Simple. If for some reason you're not familiar with the Coen Brothers, then starting at the very beginning would be a great place to kick off a love affair with their films. If you're an exisiting fan, then go back and see where it all started. There are shades of everything to come from the absurdity of Barton Fink to the double crosses of The Big Lebowski to be found. If you look for them that is, then it all seems to very simple.

Bugg Rating

Bloodrayne (2005): Glad I Packed My Bloodbrella

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 03:15:00 +0000

I thought more about not reviewing this movie than I ever had any movie before. Not only does it have a reputation as being quite bad, it has the Uwe Boll to back that up. Now I'm not saying that every Boll film is complete trash, but when the man adapts a video game, all bets are off. After making the masterclass in how to make a bad game flick with House of the Dead, Boll returned to console for a pair of big screen translations in the form of Alone in the Dark and today's film, Bloodrayne. Now, while I spent some time with a gamepad in my hand, I never got into the Tomb Raider games or their knockoffs. So I never encountered the vampire hunter Rayne in her original pixelated form. This means I have only a basic Wikipedia based knowledge of her exploits. This is both a good and bad thing. I won't spend eons dissing the movie for not adhering to the source material, but if there was anything redeemable about the character, once Boll's movie is done with her, there's a good chance I'll miss it.

Model turned actress Kristanna Loken, best known as the T-X from Terminator 3, stars as Rayne, a dhampir, the spawn of a human mother and vampire father. In this case, the living dead-beat dad is chief vampire baddie Kagan, Ben Kingsley slumming it. As the film begins, Rayne is the captive of a carnival sideshow, being fed animal blood to show off her "tricks". When she gets a hold of some human blood, she goes batty killing off the other performers before escaping into the woods. Hot on her trail are two bands of riders. Vladimir (Micheal Madsen), Sebatian (Matthew Davis), and Katrine (Michelle Rodriguez) are vampire hunters and leaders of Kagan's opposition the Brimstone Society. They're out to keep Rayne away from Kagan's forces, lead by the creatively head shaved Domostir (Will Sanderson), before the vampire-in-chief can get his hands on a powerful talisman that Rayne possess.

Thankfully, Bloodrayne was not a waste of my time. Why you might ask? Here's why..

That's right Michelle Rodriguez in an adventurer outfit entirely unsuited for swordplay. If nothing else in this movie was worth my time watching, then at least I had her screen-time to give me solace. Some people don't like her, those people are wrong. So there. Anyhow, to my great surprise, I actually ended up finding a few other things to like, but don't worry, it's not all a lovefest. I've still got a number of things to hate on. Now I won't even get into Uwe Boll's direction of the film. If you've seen any of his other movies, then you know what that's like. There's a workmanlike diligence to entertainment, and Boll is more than willing to throw in splattery violence, nudity, and just enough of a nonsense plot to get the job done. Bloodrayne hits this standard stride.

The fate of the film kind of falls to the actors, and unfortunately, while there were a couple of inspired performances, many of the players seemed like they were waiting on the check to clear. Much of the film falls on the shoulders of Kristanna Loken, and there's a reason that the T-X didn't have a huge speaking role. Loken, while pretty enough to look at and matches up pretty well to her video game counterpart, just never rallys the viewer into caring about her. She does doff her clothes in a sex scene with Matthew Davis, and many will find this the film's highlight. So it should be noted that the scene is supposedly not simulated, but as the actors as shot from waist up, it would be hard to determine if the only penetration in Bloodrayne came from fangs.

David, sporting an impressive mullet, is so milquetoast that i never had much interest in him either. On the other hand, his partner, played by Micheal Madsen, might have been there for the money, but his lackadaisical performance leads to a few good moments as Madsen plays Vladimir like the most laid back vampire killer since Blade got hooked on Hydrocodone. Rodriguez, apart from filling out her outfit, turns in the films best performance, but I imight be biased. Bloodrayne also gets a shot in the arm from Meat Loaf as a lecherous vamp surrounded by real Romanian hookers, Kingsley bringing a grand presence as Kegan, Udo Keir in a brief appearance as a monk, and Billy Zane in one of the world's worst hairpieces.

So was Bloodrayne a good movie that will inspire me to check out the two sequels that followed (both starring Norwegian actress Natassia Malthe replacing Lokan)? As the kids say these days, hell to the no. While I found myself entertained by Bloodrayne and thankful that the film keeps a pacy delivery the sped the movie along, it didn't inspire confidence that further movies would do more than rehash or rip off successful franchises like Underworld. However, as far as video game movies go, it was far from the worst I've ever seen. Even under the gentle hand of Uwe Boll, Bloodrayne manages to be better than Super Mario Brothers, Tekken, the Tomb Raider films, and Doom combined together. For some reason, the same stories that work on consoles never seem to exactly work on the silver screen as if the experience wouldn't translate if the viewer didn't have a gamepad in their hand. Someday, there will be a video game film that does the same thing The Dark Knight did for comic books, prove that the source material can become a viable artistic vision across mediums. Until then, well, I surely won't say we've got Bloodrayne, but it's there if you want to watch it and stuff.

Bugg Rating

Bloodsport (1988): Put Up Yer Dux, Put Up Yer Dux

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:55:00 +0000

They say the body is a temple, and that may well be true. If it is, then my temple is a kind of run down, ramshackle type of affair that someone has converted into a funky eatery. Jean-Claude Van Damme's body on the other hand is a lavish, ornate place with all the bells and whistles, gold leaf, bas reliefs, and tapestries galore. There's no greater example of Van Damme's temple in action than 1988's Bloodsport, the movie that established JCVD as a major action star and catapulted him into the vaulted category with Stallone, Arnold, and Segal. As Jean-Claude stretched, punched, and kicked his way to the top of an underground fighting tournament, the Muscles from Brussels is far from the vulnerable actor he portrayed in the self titled JCVD. This is the young Van Damme who would just as well punch you in the face as impress you with his painful looking splits. Paired with the "true life" story of Frank Dux (pronounced Dookes), Jean-Claude made one of his best action features ever, and a great addition to National Blood Donation Month.

Frank Dux (Van Damme) goes AWOL from the Army in order to travel to Japan to take part in the Kumite, an underground full contact fighting tournament. He travels there to honor his teacher, Senso Tanaka (Roy Chiao), who taught him the way of martial arts after the Senso's own son tragically died. Once in Japan, Frank finds himself to be one of the few Western fighters, and he soon makes friends with Ray (Donald Gibb), a rough and tumble redneck looking to start trouble at the Kumite. Ray taunts champion Cong Li (Bolo Yeung), a decision he would come to regret, and one that pits Frank and Cong Li on a collision course. As the tournament progresses, Frank continues to climb through the single elimination bouts while romancing a journalist and being pursued by American agents sent to bring him back to uncle Sam. Needless to say, he's a busy fellow, but he has time enough for a few montages, a chase sequence to one of the worst songs ever, and to bring his whole body and face into the performance.

This was not Jean-Claude's first film. He had appeared in a number of small parts, sometimes un-credited, in movies like Breakin' and Missing in Action. Bloodsport is really the movie that made JCVD a household name, and it also should have brought his facial acting skills to the fore of every conversation. I don't know that I can even adequately explain how expressive Van Damme is with his face, and I'm not just talking about when he'd fighting. Surely then he makes tons of grimaces and Bruce Lee-eque poses, but what I'm talking about is in his downtime. Before he even starts a line, he contorts his face into the emotion he's about to deliver. This is very handy if you're watching the film with the sound off, and you might as well. Bloodsport is an action packed film that fun to watch, but if you signed on for plot advancement that doesn't involve someone getting smacked around, then you're going to run into some difficulty here. The lack of plot really doesn't hinder Bloodsport, but it is very interesting to see how bare bones the plot (and Jean-Claude's acting) was compared to later films in his oeuvre.

Bloodsport was the last film directed by Newt Arnold. He was primarily a second unit or assistant director for films like The Goonies, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Alien Nation, and he had not directed his own feature since 1971's Blood Thrist, a Manila based horror tale. I found the style of capturing the action filmed by Arnold and cinematographer David Worth (Never Too Young To Die) to be perfect for actually seeing the fights. One of my big criticisms of modern action films is that the violence is always films from so close up that it is impossible to tell what is going on. Arnold fills his movie with wife shots and well placed close-ups. Sure there were a number of occasions where the angles didn't do the choreography any favors, but the blows that look like they landed home convinced me well enough that I don't want to do any full contact fighting. It also made me long for the olden days of MMA before that became all about sweaty dudes laying on a mat. Back then you could see a Sumo go up against a Muey Thai fighter, and it was awesome. That's truly one of the best parts of Bloodsport. Who doesn't want to see the guy fighting like a monkey get bear hugged til he passes out? Who doesn't want to see a Kung Fu fighter brawl with a redneck? Commies, that's who.

Donald Gibb is perhaps known best to folks as Ogre from the Revenge of the Nerds films, but I really enjoyed seeing him take on a character with a bit more personality. Plus, in his first scene, he plays the old school Karate Champ game with Van Damme, and that is just cool. I wish I could be as enthusiastic about Leah Ayres as Frank's journalist gal pal. The love story is extremely wedged into the story, and Ms. Ayres makes no impression in her few scenes. Other than the fact that she's just about the only woman in the movie, I couldn't see a reason that Frank's character would go for her. I needed her to be a bit more Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall in Big Touble in Little China) and less of a wan love interest. The two other actors who really make an impression are Bolo Yeung and Ken Siu. Yeung looms large, literally, over the proceedings as Chong Li, and his presence gives the film some real teeth. Ken Siu has only a minor role as Victor Lin, but his giant glasses and Asian mullet are hard to forget. I should also mention that Forrest Whitaker also has a small role as one of the agents sent to get Frank Dux back. He's barely in the film, but anytime he was, I couldn't help but think about a throw-down between JCVD and Ghost Dog.

Bloodsport is a great example of where '80's action went right. It wasn't convoluted with jingoistic anthems like many of the Chuck Norris movies. It wasn't teeming with guns like Stallone's flicks. It didn't take a science fiction or supernatural bent like Arnold favored. It was a straight up flick about a martial arts tournament done right. It had that same headlong feeling that I get watching Enter the Dragon. From stem to stern, Bloodsport goes for the jugular, rips it out bare handed, lets it spray all over the room, and it dares you to not have a good time. While much of Van Damme's other movies are hit and miss, these early movies like Bloodsport and Kickboxer show a martial artist who is desperate to show the world what he can do. Now that often seems to mean the splits, but it also means some very real kicking ass.

Bugg Rating

Blood of Dracula's Castle (1969) It Tests Shale-B Positive

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:55:00 +0000

Ask any vampire (go ahead, find one, I'll wait), and they will tell you that there is no place they would rather have their castle located than in the middle of a Arizona desert with hardly a tree or bit of shade to be found. Okay, maybe they wouldn't, unless they were that glittering, gibbering fool Edward Cullen, but if you're Count Dracula in an Al Adamson film, there's no better digs to have. Al is a cult movie legend. From films like Satan's Sadists to Blazing Stewardesses and Black Samurai, he left an enduring mark on horror, trash, and sleaze cinema in his all too brief eighteen year career. Today's film was his third directorial effort, and much like H.G. Lewis did with A Taste of Blood, Adamson was looking for a way to bring one of horror's greatest figures into the 1960's. However, unlike Lewis, Al wasn't going to settle for a Dracula surrogate, he was going to go for the real deal. So along with a psycho killer and a lunatic (and I'm not talking about the director), Dracula moved into a sandy castle intent of sipping the Bloodiest of all Marys.

Glen Cannon (Gene O'Shayne) is a photographer for Universal Magazine. One day while snapping shots of his model girlfriend Liz (Jennifer Bishop), Glen receives a telegram telling him that he's inherited a castle in Arizona from his distant Uncle. The castle is currently occupied by Count and Countess Townsend (a.k.a The Draculas) (Alexander D'Arcy and Paula Raymond), their moon worshiping butler George (John Carradine), the Frankenstein monster's cousin Mango (Ray Young) and close friend Johnny (Robert Dix), a psycho who gets extremely nutty during a full moon. Glen and Liz travel to Arizona to take possession of the castle, but the Count and crew are not ready to vacate. After all, they have a full basement of nubile your lasses chained up in the basement to drain. Imprisoning the young couple, the blood drinkers prepare for a sacrifice to the Moon god Luna, and one way or another, they intend to keep their desert home.

One of the things that's nice about this film is that the title helps answer an age old question, how do you get blood from a stone? Apparently, from the stones that make up Dracula's Arizona castle (which was really a Castle shaped ranch in California). It also raises quite a few though. Like "What happened to Dracula's pointed teeth?", "How did the terror of Transylvania get to the sun-drenched climes of Arizona?", and "John Carradine, why?" Unfortunately, none of these other questions get answered. While Blood of Dracula's Castle is not one of Adamson's greater efforts, it is a highly entertaining film. Despite the fact that the transfer I watched (from Mill Creek's Undead: Vampire Collection) was scratched and flawed beyond belief, I was completely entertained by the silliness that unfolded for ninety minutes. I can't say that it was a well made film, but it was a film that seemed aware that it would be good for a laugh. That goes a long way in my book.

Topping my list of the film's enjoyable bit would have to be the performance of Alexander D'Arcy. The Egyptian born actor was nearing the end of his career which began in 1927 with a small role in The Garden of Allah. IMDB describes D'Arcy as playing "oily types", and that pretty much sums the Count. With a pencil thin mustache, slicked back hair, and a smile that would make Mitt Romney weep, D'Arcy oozes his way through the film as Townsend/Dracula, and I loved every moment. His companion, the Countess, was originally a role intended for Jayne Mansfield, but when the actress passed, it went to Paula Raymond. Paula has appeared in many Noir films such as City that Never Sleeps, but her acting career was derailed in 1962 when her nose was severed in a car accident. After extensive plastic surgery, she returned to acting, but if her appearance in Blood of Dracula's Castle is any indication, she never reclaimed her former beauty (she did have nice gams though).

John Carradine is a delight as George the butler. If there's something that just about any film could use, it's a Carradine. John gets deeply hammy waxing poetic about the moon god, and playing off hothead Robert Dix, he gets a number of great moments. Dix was also an acting veteran having appeared in films such as Sam Fuller's Forty Guns and Forbidden Planet. The cast is brilliant until you arrive at the protagonists. Gene Otis Shayne, whose last credit was 'Dancer' on The Monkees, and Jennifer Bishop, one of the original Hee Haw Honeys, are easily the worst part of Blood of Dracula's Castle. They try hard to muster up some charisma, but are easily overshadowed by the veterans. If these two characters could have been more realized, the entire flick could have overcome some of the cinematic flaws with the complete, quirky spin on the monster team-ups like House of Frankenstein.

Some people have said that Al Adamson is an acquired taste. I don't know who these folks are that need time to ease into something as awesome as Al. His films are the kind that make me long for a Drive-in Theater playing double features culled from his career. Blood of Dracula's Castle is far from a perfect film. The story wanders all over the map (and varies according to what cut you watch), the lead actors are lame to the point of tragedy, and the film making never rises above standard. However, there's a ton of heart in this film. There's a lot of fun to be had while watching it, and there is such a thing as that long cliched beast the "so bad it's good" film. For horror fans and cult cinema junkies, Blood of Dracula's Castle is an excellent way to spend ninety minutes. If you're one of the high minded film snobby types, then Adamson's movies were never for you in the first place. For the rest of us, there's dozens out there for our enjoyment, and Blood of Dracula's Castle is a great place to start, or continue, an Al Adamson movie addiction.

Bugg Rating

And if you want to take a hit off the Al, you can do it right here. That's right, the whole film is embedded below. So check it out and let me know what you think!

Throne of Blood (1957) Mifune Watches the Throne (Without Kanye's Help)

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:00:00 +0000

When I set out to present a month of movies with 'blood' drenched titles for National Blood Donation Month, I didn't consider it would also be an injection of films that have been on my mind to watch for sometime. A couple days back, I viewed my very first Jean Rollin movie Lips of Blood, and while today's director, Akira Kurosawa, was not unknown to me, I had seen as much as the next guy. That is if the next guy watched The Seven Samurai to see how The Magnificent Seven and Battle Beyond the Stars stack up as remakes. What I didn't know going into today's selection, 1957's Throne of Blood, was that it was a remake of sorts. It seems that at its core Kurosawa's movie has something to do with a play written by some joker called William Shakespeare. More on that later. Right now, I'm trying to get a damn spot out. So check out the synopsis and I'll be back to talk more on the double (double, toil and trouble).

Washizu (Toshiro Mifune) and Miki (Minoru Chiaki) are two warriors in the service of the Great Lord Tsuzuki who rules from his fortified castle in thick of the Spider Web forest. On their way to report to him, they encounter an evil spirit in the woods that foretells their future. The spirit says that Washizu is destined to rule of over Spider Web Castle while his friend Miki would become a great general and his son would someday sit on the throne. After Washizu relays this knowledge to his wife Asaji (Isizu Yamada), she seeks for him to take destiny in his own hands. When the Great Lord visits Washizu's garrison, Asaji drugs the leader's guards and convinces her husband to murder Tsuzuki. After Washizu forces the spirit's predictions to come true, he becomes Great Lord of Spider Web Castle, but he also begins to go helplessly mad in the face of his actions.

If you haven't surmised it from my wan attempts at humor at the end of the first paragraph of the synopsis, Throne of Blood is a version of Willie Shakespeare's MacBeth. While there are a number of liberties taken with the Bard of Avon's play, many hail Throne of Blood as the greatest film adaptation of the play, and it has even been reported that it was a favorite of literary great T.S. Elliot. Kurosawa's taut adaptation gains much of its strength from long, lingering shots of the actors which hammer home the emotional resonance of their actions. The greatest example comes when Washizu dispatches the Great Lord. While the warrior, spear in hand, goes to do the dirty deed, the camera doesn't follow him. Instead it lingers on Isizu Yamada's Asaji, the Lady Macbeth if you will, and the look of intense anticipation of the murder goes much further than seeing the act would have done. The film is chock full of moments like these that enhance what might otherwise be a familiar and common tale of the lust for power.

It's almost impossible to think about Kurosawa without thinking about his frequent leading man Toshiro Mifune. Over the course of their careers, they made sixteen films together in one of the most fruitful actor-director partnerships of all time. Throne of Blood was their tenth collaboration, and the two could not have been more in synch. They really had to be. In the final scene, Washizu is pelted with arrows, and Kurosawa used real archers with only Mifune's motions to remind the shooters which way he would move next. Now that is trust in your director. Mifune gives a powerhouse performance, but it really comes alive as Washizu unravels. The madness in his eyes seems clear as day, and it is a sight to behold. Just as stunning is the performance given by Isizu Yamada. She truly got to the heart of the treacherous nature of her character and proves that Asaji is no woman to cross. While all the actors give solid performances, the film belonged to Mifune and Yamada. A special mention should also go to Chieko Naniwa as the evil wood spirit. With only a couple intensely unnerving scenes, he imparted everything that comes after with a sense of dread that three witches around a cauldron could only dream of brewing up.

Kurosawa never did anything small, and Throne of Blood was no exception. Building his sets atop Mt. Fuji because, "it has precisely the stunted landscape that I wanted. And it is usually foggy. I had decided that I wanted lots of fog for this film.", he makes the setting just as compelling as the scenario. That may be why Throne of Blood is such as wonderful film. Top to bottom, it is a story in full with every shot, scene, and nuance bringing something into the film's events. There is no wasted time or filler. At a tight hundred minutes, Kurosawa tells Shakespeare's tale of the doomed Prince of Denmark with incredible precision, an emotional depth, and a masterwork of film making. Now I must get back to this spot. Does anyone have any club soda? Will that take blood off a throne? Well, if I find out, you'll hear all about it when we reconvene here in a day or two as National Blood Donation Month continues!

Bugg Rating

Lips of Blood (1975): The Blood Keeps on Rollin(g)

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Over the course of a film career that spanned almost fifty years, French auteur Jean Rollin made no less than six films with the word 'Vampire' in the title. That's not even counting how many others, like today's film, concerned bloodsuckers. However this month is all about the life giving liquid, and Rollin only made one film with that substance in the title, 1975's Levres de sang a.k.a Lips of Blood. Surprisingly, while I know of Rollin by reputation, this is the first time I've seen one of his films. I'm not sure what I expected. I had heard that Rollin marries the words of the French New Wave, erotica, and horror in equal, though often baffling, proportions. I also knew that Lips of Blood was released stateside in a X Rated format under the title Suck Me, Vampire, which is certainly a direct title but doesn't lead one to wax poetic about the erotic. Thankfully, the version I watched was the French cut, and while it still carried plenty of full frontal female nudity, it also detailed a story about childhood innocence all wrapped up in a surrealist's vision of vampires.

While attending a party for a perfume company. Frederic (Jean-Loup Philippe) spots the new advertising poster for the fragrance. In it, a picture of a ruined castle makes him flash back to lost memories of his childhood. As a young boy, he got lost in the castle meeting up with a teenage girl who protected him through the night before sending him back to his mother. In his innocent 12 year old way, Frederic fell in love with the young girl who he never saw again. Now, twenty years later and spurred on by the appearance of the picture, Frederic desires to find the castle again. His mother denies they were ever there, and mysterious people begin to follow him trying to keep him away from the truth. Meanwhile, Frederic releases four nubile young vampires from their coffins and they act as his protectors. The young girl, Jennifer (Annie Belle) begins to appear to him in visions, and as he draws closer to finding her, he discovers that his own family has hidden a secret of vampirism in the past.

Delicately filmed, Lips of Blood definitely speaks to the French New Wave with interesting visuals and a surrealist quality layered into the impressionistic story. It also brought my mind back to the films of George Melies with a still, silent film quality. While on the surface Rollin has made a erotic vampire tale, the irony of that is that the film is more about the lost innocence of childhood. When Frederic was a child, he fell in love with a vampire, a young girl shunned from the community, without a second thought. As an adult, he longed to recapture the innocence of youth. Because of the family secret, his mother wishes to deny her son his childhood, but eventually he finds he way back to the innocence. The end of the film finds him literally stripped of the trappings of modern life, and his plans from there include a fantastic, imaginative future that seems to hard to believe, at least from the view of an adult. To a child, it would seem like a blissful utopia. Rollin once said, "My childhood was wonderful, and my reflections of it are very romantic, sweet and utterly transfigured. Like recalling one's first love, 20 years later." This leads me to believe that Lips of Blood is an extremely personal film with Rollin looking back with misty eyes on his youth.

Jean-Loup Philippe, who stars as Frederic, co-wrote Lips of Blood with Jean Rollin, and it would become Jean-Loup's first leading role and most recognizable part. The actor gives a stunning performance that sees him shed layers of emotion as his character's revelations erupt. Annie Belle, best known among horror fans as Lisa in House on the Edge of the Park, oozes a strange,androgynous sexuality that doesn't seem crude or salacious. Through she has only a small number of scenes, Natalie Perrey makes a large impression on the film as Frederic's mother. It's also interesting to look into her career. While she appeared in a large number of films as an actress, her largest amount of film work came as a script supervisor. Over the course of her career, she would also do editing, direct, work in the production department, write two films, and even work on costumes in one. It's fascinating to see someone whose life revolved around film and have such a wildly varied career.

While Lips of Blood was my first film by Jean Rollin, it certainly won't be the last. Like a more artistically minded version of Jess Franco, Rollin filled this film with erotic visions but without an indelicate overtone. Rollin's film also turns the vampire myth on its ear. While some characters have reason to fear the vampires, Frederic does not. He sees something innocent in his first love even if she is a bloodsucking ghoul. Lips of Blood was a beautiful looking film with big ideas being talked about, and it stays away from horror cliche while firmly pulling from the genre's core. That about wraps it up for today's entry in Blood Donation Month. I hope everyone is enjoying my exploration of these bloody films, and I'll see you back here in a day or two for another film about the Roy Hud (blame the cockney rhyming slang dictionary for that one).

Bugg Rating

Blood Games (1990):A Real American Pastime,Vengence

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Since it's National Blood Donation Month and I'm picking movies with a sanguine connection, I couldn't resist checking out Blood Games, a rape-revenge flick that has balls... baseballs I mean. The Australians always have a way at cutting to the core of things, and they might not have ever hit it on the head more accurately than with their re-titling of Blood Games as Baseball Bimbos in Hillbilly Hell. That evocative title lets you now everything you need to know about the film. There will be hicks, tits, shotguns, sub-Roadhouse level redneck wisdom, and the great American pastime. In short, Blood Games is an exploitation goldmine, and there's nuggets in there big enough to make a Kanye West necklace with. This is definitely an under-seen, under-appreciated gem, and I'm proud to make it the next selection in Blood Donation Month. So sit back and relax while I tell you about a time when men struck out and women struck back... with bats and guns and buses.

Babe and the Ballgirls are a traveling exposition baseball team. Along with their coach, Midnight (Ross Hagan), they travel from town to town playing local teams while the coach makes large wagers on the team to pay off their mounting debts. In one small town, they run into a bit of trouble. The losing team of hicks doesn't take too kindly to being beaten by a group of gals, and town boss Mino Collins (Ken Carpenter) doesn't want to pay up on a thousand dollar bet. Midnight and Mino rumble in a barroom bathroom, and Mino pays off the debt. However, it has taken too long for the coach to get back to his team. Midnight's daughter Babe (Laura Albert) and one of the other girls go to look for him. Instead they find Roy Collins (Gregory Scott Cummins), Mino's son, and his best friend Holt (Don Dowe) who try and rape the girls. When Midnight shows up, he gets stabbed helping the girls and Roy gets shot in the leg. Trying to escape town, the team boards their bus head out quickly, but Roy and Holt shoot the bus off the road resulting in Roy getting crushed to death. Mino takes no small offence at the death of his boy, and soon the town forms a posse to go after the girls and kill them one by one.

If you were sitting with me right now, Blood Games would be all I want to talk about. From the quotable lines (Mino drops bon mots like "There is no such thing as pain." and "You're fucking with the devil now boy.) to the gratuitous shower scene, slow motion action sequences, and the mere existence of George "Buck" Flower in this flick, I could ramble on about this one like Tarantino on speed. So I apologize if the synopsis ran a little long. I'd also talk at length about director Tanya Rosenberg, I have no idea who she is. She only directed one film. She's not listed or talked about anywhere. It's like she appeared, dropped this exploitation gem on us, and disappeared like some kind of cult film fairy. It amazes me that this rape-revenge flick (there is a full blown rape later in the film) came about in the early 90s, well past the heyday of such fare. It's almost unfair to call this a 90s film. The French cut panties, big hair, and neon colors the girls wear places this movie squarely in the pre-grunge era when the 80s were still stubbornly leaving their mark in a new decade.

One of the big things that Blood Games has over other wrathful women film is that there's not one woman in peril, there's nine of them (and the coach, but he's only in danger long enough to get killed). Laura Albert, as team leader Babe, is the film's center, and she holds the surviving girls together as they escape into the dense woods surrounding the town. Albert is one of the only girls who appeared in movies both before and after Blood Games though now it seems she finds most of her work doing stunts on Batman Begins, Pineapple Express, and this year's Oscar nominated film The Artist. The other standout among the gals is Donna, Shelley Abblett in her one film role. Abblett delivers one of the film's most memorable lines, "I have been pushed around by men my whole life, and I'm sick of it.", a war-cry for vengeance seeking gals everywhere. While few of the girls ever did any acting or went on to do anymore, I found each of their performances enjoyable.

Veteran actor/director Ross Hagen does a fine job as Midnight, the team's coach, but sadly his role is minimal at best. Gregory Scott Cummins (Stone Cold, Phantom of the Mall) also has a small part as Roy, the sore loser, but he impresses with rampant dickery and a certain Kevin Sorbo-esque look. He also has one of the best arm wrestling scenes this side of Hands of Steel though instead of snakes it's done over candles. More impressive is Ken Carpenter as the town bossman Mino. Carpenter, who would later appear in Hellraiser: Hell on Earth as the Camera cinobite, gives a great tough guy perfromance, and his fight with Ross Hagan in the bathroom with his pants around his ankles is surely one for the books. Don Dowe, a character actor still working today, also turns in a fine performance as Holt, the dumbest of the hunters and Roy's best friend. Something about him made me think about Bill Fagerbakke as Dauber on Coach, Except, you know, more rapey. That beings us to the film's final delight George "Buck" Flower who appeared here under the name Ernest Wall, a screen name he only used once. I hope each and every one of you knows who Flower is and can imagine how good he'd be as a hillbilly named Vern. He also has one of my favorite exchanges in the film. Holt says, "Vern, you can't beat your own meat." to which Vern replies, "I can beat it better than you can." Comedy gold.

I've seen some speculation that Blood Games was intended to be a parody of female vengeance flicks, but I saw no trace of anything that could point to that. While there are certainly some funny moments, intentional and unintentional, Blood Games doesn't seem like it was supposed to be played for laughs. Like a mash-up of I Spit on Your Grave, Deliverance, and a sports film (some say A League of Their Own, but apart from girls playing ball I fail to see a correlation), Blood Games is indeed one of the best exploitation movies of the last twenty five years. Right now it's playing on Netflix Instant Watch, and I can't recommend this enough. If you like your exploitation violent, sexy, and down and dirty with a giant dollop of 80s on the top, then you really can't afford to miss this one. This film starts with a baseball game, and it is a crackerjack. When it comes to cult fare like this, I really don't care if I ever come back. I got to root, root, root for the gals to win, and the ones that die, it is a shame, but this flick gets One-Two-Three (and a half) Buggs to count for the old Blood Game.

Bugg Rating

A Taste of Blood (1967): Drinking Causes a Different Thirst

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:37:00 +0000

When it comes to films with the word 'Blood' in the title, you couldn't go wrong picking one from the catalog of Herschell Gordon Lewis, the one and true Godfather of Gore. After directing a number of nudist films in the early 60s, Lewis splattered his way onto the horror scene with the revolutionary film Blood Feast. The tale of a caterer cannibalizing teenage girls for an Egyptian feast was the bloodiest film to ever grace the silver screen, and, single-handedly, Lewis changed the the landscape of modern horror. He also made people think that when H.G. Lewis says blood, he means it. He once again went for the hemoglobin in 1965 with Color Me Blood Red, an entertaining film about an artist collecting human samples for his special red paint. His most massive undertaking in the bloody realm is 1967's A Taste of Blood. It's Lewis, as the modern pulp filmmaker, making his attempt at bringing the Dracula legend into the 60s.

Bill Rogers stars as Miami businessman John Stone. He receives a mysterious package declaring him the sole heir to a European fortune that includes Carfax Abby. To celebrate his new-found fortune, he toasts his ancestors with the two bottles of Brandy included with the declaration of his inheritance. Little does he know that the alcohol contains the essence of his real antecedent Dracula. By drinking the liquor, it mixed with John's blood and turned him into vampire, sleeping by day and shying from crosses. John feels compelled to avenge his progenitor, and he begins to track down and kill off the descendants of the group that killed Dracula. Meanwhile, Dr. Howard Helsing, a descendant of Van Helsing (Otto Schlessinger) is on John's trail, and he intends to put an end to Dracula's legacy once and for all. Along the way, there's plenty of stabbings, bloodletting, and a ripping good throat ripping that will please any classic gorehound.

It's been said that H.G. Lewis considered A Taste of Blood his masterpiece, and it's easy to see why. Taking from the classic horror movies, Lewis moved the character of Dracula into the 20th century without bringing the cape and bat trapping with him. However, what screenwriter Donald Stanford also didn't bring along for the ride is continuity from either the Dracula film or novel. Take for example one of John Stone's victims, Sherri Morris. Supposedly the descendants of Quincy Morris, the Texan died at the end of the novel (and the few movie versions which include him) a single man. This is just one such example, but the film is chock full of mistakes for the Dracula nerd like myself to tear apart. Taken on its own value, A Taste of Blood is easily the most expansive movie that Lewis ever made, both in its running time, nearly two hours, and its scope. Lewis is perhaps the most tranformative figure in bringing horror out of the age of black & white and into the era where blood runs red, and this marriage of old and cutting edge points to how horror would progress, a genre always looking to push the barriers but aware of its past.

The acting in A Taste of Blood is exactly what fans of H.G. Lewis' films have come to expect. Generally, it's pretty bad. Bill Rogers, who had previously appeared in films such as Love Goddess of Blood Island and Shanty Tramp, sometimes has his character John Stone described as mild-mannered. However, even before Stone gets turned into Dracula's avenger, he seems totally smarmy and sleazy. With his patronizing tone toward his ditsy wife Helene (first time actress Elizabeth Wilkinson) and overtones toward his assistant Vivian (Gail Janis), Stone seemed to be characterized as an opportunistic businessman with scant scruples. So it seems natural he wouldn't question his surprise inheritance or the instruction to drink the bottles of brandy. William Kerwin, a Lewis regular from Two Thousand Maniacs and Blood Feast, appears here as Stone's suspicious friend, and Lewis also appears himself as a British sailor. The majority of the film belongs to Rogers alone, and while I felt like his performance was solid, the entire picture could have been elevated by some measure of pathos coming from John Stone. He doesn't battle his vampirism or seem regretful of the murders he's caused. I suppose he is supposed to be overwhelmed with his ancestor's spirit, but it allows the film to march forward without conflict until Howard Helsing shows up in the films last act.

While A Taste of Blood succeeds in bringing an original idea to modern Dracula lore, but the execution could have used a little help. If the film had been tightened up by 15 or 20 minutes, the script gone over to ensure that everything made sense, and some more emotion put into the John Stone character, A Taste of Blood could have been a truly great example of how to modernize the vampire myth. As it stands, like 1958's The Return of Dracula and Hammer film's misguided Dracula 1972 A.D., A Taste of Blood missed the mark and left ol' Drac steel feeling peckish. While Lewis might have felt this was his masterwork, an honor I would bestow on Two Thousand Maniacs or Blood Feast, it lacked a cohesive enough story to impress. What it did have was plenty of trademark H.G. Lewis gore. The price of admission is worth it to marvel in the prehistoric practical effects, and if you've never seen an H.G. Lewis film, this would be a fine place to start. It might not deliver on all fronts, but it definitely gives you enough of a taste to whet your appetite for more of the Godfather of Gore.

Bugg Rating

Blood Creek (2009) Blood Donation Month Begins with Schumacher's Blood Magic Nazi (Nipples Not Included)

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 04:40:00 +0000

Hello folks, and welcome to the first review of 2012. As you may have noticed from the Lair's new duds, I'm celebrating National Blood Donation Month this January. Every movie I talk about this month will either have 'Blood' (or a derivation thereof) in the title or have some other equally sanguine connection, but I'm also going to put my money where my mouth is. Sometime this month I'll be going to donate blood, something I've never done before. The Red Cross appointed January National Blood Donation Month in 1970, and I think it's a great way to start the year by giving a bit of yourself after the gluttony of the holiday season. So along with enjoying a month-long tribute to the ooey-gooey red stuff, I hope that some of you consider heading down to the blood bank and parting with a pint. Now enough of this seriousness. We have a Joel Schumacher movie to talk about today.

Ol' Joel has gotten a pretty bad rep these days, and if I put nipples on Batman, I'd expect to have one myself. It's easy to forget that Schumacher also directed The Lost Boys, Flatliners, and, my personal favorite, Falling Down without an accessory nipple to be found. Even so, I've put off seeing his 2009 return to horror, Blood Creek. However, I was pleasantly surprised by Schumacher's most straight forward foray into the horror genre. Blood Creek stars future Man of Steel Superman Henry Cavill as every-man paramedic Evan Marshall. Evan is haunted by the disappearance of his brother Victor (Prison Break's Dominic Purcell) during a West Virginia camping trip they shared. When Victor unexpectedly returns one night, Evan follows him without question back into the countryside on a quest for revenge. Victor's captors turn out to be prisoners of a greater evil, Richard Wirth (Micheal Fassbender), a blood magic practicing Nazi who has harassed the power of a Nordic rune buried under a barn. With the ability to raise the dead to do his bidding and a desire to develop a third eye during the coming lunar eclipse, Wirth stalks the brothers looking for a final blood sacrifice.

If the plot of Blood Creek sounds convoluted and loaded with mythos, it is to an extent, but, from the first few minutes of the film which introduce how Wirth came to the farm family, the film kicks off and never lets up. While there are several expository scenes to stitch together the suspense and horror sequences, Schumacher keeps the film's pace at a breakneck speed. Even so, the characters still feel fully rounded. Apart from the one or two most minor characters, it seems that the script and actors pulled the material far above the stock slasher material it could have become. The only hindrance to the film's success is some dodgy CGI special effects. Thankfully the worst of these moments doesn't come until the very end of the film. While it left me with a sort of sour taste in my mouth, had it been placed earlier, I surely would have been pulled right out of the film. The greatest benefit that the film has is the base script. While I understand that Schumacher made a number of changes to the screenplay, then called Town Creek by David Kajganich, they seem to have worked out making Blood Creek one of the most successful, original modern slasher films.

The linchpin that the film hangs on is the two main performances. Henry Cavill is an actor I've enjoyed ever since his turn on Showtime's The Tudors. Before I watched Blood Creek, I was a bit hesitant about his casting as Superman in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel. Having seen him in a more action oriented role that also delved into the pathos of his character, I'm really ready to see what he does as the last son of Krypton. Cavill infuses his character in Blood Creek with a real presence played out through subtle actions and a real sense of an internal life. There is an innocence to his character, and it makes for a perfect counterpoint to Fassbender's Nazi Wirth. Fassbender, known for his roles in 300 and X-Men: First Class, is more darkly evil here than I've seen him play before. While he's hidden beneath layers of makeup (and m.i.a. from the proceedings until halfway through the film after the short prologue), he makes a hell of an impression once he gets going. Fassbender makes such a thing as a warlock, Third Reich loving, blood drinking, zombie controlling, serial killer seem utterly believable. These two performances are what really make Blood Creek rise above the level of middling modern horror.

Plus the film is bloody. While there's a bit of CGI grue that brings down the average, there was plenty enough of the sanguine vita being spilled to please my inner gorehound. While there are some rough spots, Blood Creek is a film from a Hollywood director who clearly knows what he's doing, and he had enough sense to leave the nipples out of it. I hope you enjoyed this first post in National Blood Donation Month, and I have lots of interesting titles in store all month long. It should be a bloody good time for all, and hopefully I won't turn into Gene Shalit due to all the half ass wordplay. Well if that happens, you're sure to see my giant mustache here first. So join me back here all January and see what happens.

Bugg Rating

Spiderhole (2010): Don't Pop A Squat; It Might Pop Back

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 23:52:00 +0000

After all the holiday fare of the last month, I felt like looking at a film that was far removed from seasonal tidings, and I couldn't have got much further removed. Devoid of any kind of joy, including perhaps enjoyment, 2010's Spiderhole definitely will not have sugar plums dancing in your head. It may have visions of Saw tapping about though. By definition, a spider hole either refers to the home of a trapdoor spider or a military foxhole big enough for one, such as the one Saddam Hussein was famously caught inside. I assume that the writers meant to inspire images of the arachnid and not the infamous last stand of the Iraqi dictator. I have to assume they went with the inspired title instead of the more direct Dead Squatters because they didn't want people to think their film was about zombies pooping in the woods. In this case, perhaps the unwanted attention might have been a good thing.

British art school students Molly, Zoe, Luke, and Toby (Emma Griffiths Malin, Amy Noble, Ruben-Henry Biggs, George Maguire) are tired of paying rent and utilities and the like. Instead they decide to find somewhere to squat, essentially take over an unoccupied building and declare residency (a feat which is apparently fairly easy to achieve in England), a practice that has fallen out of favor, but once was rife in the London artistic community. Finding an enormous mansion, the four-some move in, get drunk, have sex, and generally don't do a lot to insure their safety in their new home. In the morning, where there had been only wooden doors before, they find steel doors bolted and welded shut. It doesn't take them long to figure out that someone else is in the house. That someone is a crazed doctor with sketchy motives, but a clear desire to remove legs, hands, eyes, and hearts. As the group gets split up and picked off, the survivors begin to realize there is something in the house even worse than the deranged doc.

There is easily as much tension in Spiderhole as you just experienced reading that synopsis. Which is to say, none. With predictable twists and turns (the group turns on each other, one of them almost gets away only to be caught again, they find their fate emotionally devastating), writer-director Daniel Simpson clearly expresses himself as a fan of horror, but instead of breaking new ground, Simpson treads the same water already crossed in films like the aforementioned Saw and Eli Roth's Hostel. The "scares" are so predictable that I amused myself though a good half of the flick by divining what was going to come next. Most of the time, I was right on the money. Though I didn't predict the film's final, throwaway twist, the rest of the film was paint-by-numbers torture pr0n lite. However, the film itself is artfully shot with more than a few flashes of real movie making skill. Simpson, working with experienced cinematographer Vinit Borrison, clearly made some interesting choices, but they weren't enough to save the preposterously trite plot.

With only the four squatters and the villainous doctor to populate the film, thankfully, the acting was Spiderhole's strong suit. Emma Griffiths Malin, who plays the lead role of hypochondriac Molly, is a good grounding force for the film, but like all the other characters, she seems a tad too whiny and annoying to really latch onto. First time actress Amy Noble, who suffers from the same unlikable character, gives the standout performance as Zoe, and I'll admit that it doesn't hurt a bit that she's quite fetching. Ruben-Henry Biggs is infinitely loathe-able as the wishy-washy Luke, and George Maguire revs up his ego to play the de facto group leader, and house picker, Toby. While I think that every actor did as much as they could with what they were given, the problem is that they were all written as unlikable or annoying. In a film like this, I need to give half a crap about the characters or when they get sent off to meet their fate it means diddly. Spiderhole has a whole lot of diddly (squat?) going on.

Spiderhole is making its way to American shores by way of IFC films, which lately has really expanded its buying power in the horror world. A couple of weeks ago I looked at Grave Encounters, also an IFC Films product, and I liked it very much. Spiderhole actually reads at points like a less entertaining, less imaginative version of that film. While I highly support IFC giving first time and indie directors distribution deals, I do think they should keep a tight eye on quality control. I would not have been at all surprised if I found this playing on SyFy, but if I tuned into the channel that claimed to be "Always on, Slightly off" and saw this flick, I'd feel like that "slightly" might need an adjustment up. Spiderhole really misses the mark, and not just with the tired story line. It violates the cardinal rule of horror films. It has to be scary. Even a jaded ol' Bugg like me knows a real scare when he sees one, but as far as I can tell, all the frights in Spiderhole must have bugged out.

Bugg Rating

The Nutcracker: The Untold Story (2010) May It Never Be Told Again

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:00:00 +0000

When I think about The Nutcracker, my mind goes back to my primary school years where I recall several ballet performances designed to be cultural for young minds. The ballet, originally performed in 1892, features several memorable tunes from Tchaikovsky and tells the tale of a young girl caught up in a war between Gingerbread men and Rats on Christmas Eve. Though the ballet bored me to tears, that's what I think of anytime I hear "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies". Now, I might only think about how the director of Tango & Cash ingrained in my mind the memory of John Turturro with giant pointy teeth, a singing Albert Einstein, and, that most Christmassy of topics, The Holocaust. When Emily of The Deadly Doll's House picked this for my part in the December Christmas Swap, she told me that The Nutcracker: The Untold Story (known as the Nutcracker 3-D when it was in theaters) was a special kind of bad. Never in a jillion Festivuses would I have thought that The Nutcracker could be taken from something so primally yawn inducing to something that literally kept my enraptured with its awfulness. For her part, Emily got the easy end of the deal watching the Holiday flavored guymance Love, Actually (and yes, actually that was my pick.), but I got something special, an untold story, and I'm here to tell you all about it.

Elle Fanning, younger sister of Dakota and current star of the Matt Damon Zoo purchasing picture, stars as Mary (because obviously she doesn't look like a Clara) a young girl in 1920s Vienna. On Christmas Eve, her Godfather Uncle Albert (Nathan Lane as a thinly veiled Einstein) comes to babysit when Mom and Dad (Richard E. Grant? What's next? Eggnog & I?) go out for the evening. He brings presents of a dollhouse featuring some strange dolls and a Nutcracker for Mary. After some kerfuffle with her brother breaking the doll, Albert sings a song about imagination and reality set to one of Pyotr Ilyich's tunes. At night, the Nutcracker comes to life, and it's revealed that he's a boy trapped in a Nutcracker's body (who prefers to be called NC) who is a Prince of an alternate dimension where he's battling The Rat King (John Turturro with buck teeth and an upturned nose). Mary must help the Prince regain his kingdom before The Rat king can round up all the toys and burn them in ovens to block out the sun.

So yeah, it's pretty much like the 1892 version, but spiced up for a new generation. Wait. Did I say spiced up? I meant made into a total ball of reindeer droppings. I really don't know where to start or end with this thing so let me start off with some numbers. The Nutcracker: The Untold Story cost 90 million dollars to make. In it's domestic run it made 195 thousand dollars and then only 16 million overseas. I'm not sure who decided that a spectacle movie like this should be in the hands of Andrey Konchalovski, aforementioned director of Tango & Cash, but they were wrong...so, so wrong. Konchalovski penned the screenplay so I guess he thought kids were clamoring for a Shindler's List, but for Christmas, and with the E=MC squared guy. They also want the Nutcracker, excuse me, NC, to have zany pals like a Jamaican guy that can't stop drumming, an Opera clown, and a monkey in a suit. Oh, how the kids love Opera clowns and rejects from an open casting call for Hellboy. I hope they also love when things are filmed to jump out at the audience, but now, in its 2-D form no longer work because The Untold Story is all about telling the story with moments like those.

I suppose when you're making a 90 million dollar 3-D movie about The Nutcracker, you can get some people to do some crazy things. I can see Elle Fanning being in this. She was 10. It was a good job to get. Fine. She's probably the most tolerable character, but I can't for the life of me figure out why her 1920's girl dresses like a 1980's Madonna. For actors like Turturro, Grant, and Lane, I'm sure the paychecks were signed in all the right places. Grant has precious little to do except be an inconsiderate father with a William Holden mustache, and Russian actress Yuiya Vysotskaya makes zero impression in either her role as the Mother or the Snow Fairy. Lane is actually pretty entertaining to watch even though his character is entirely out of place. Turturro, however, is god awful. Looking like a plastic surgery accident crossed with Draco Malfoy, Turturro takes it so far over the top the performance actually plummets to its death before the credits roll. The only thing more disturbing then Turturro is British actress Frances de la Tour as the thoroughly disgusting and ambisexual Rat Queen.

To say that The Nutcracker: The Untold Story is one of the strangest and worst children's movies I've ever seen would be an understatement. It is clearly one of the worst films I have ever seen. From stem to stern, there is nothing defensible about this flick. Well, except that it's so incredibly terrible that it must be seen to be believed. I'm not talking so bad it's good bad. I'm talking so bad you will lose a little faith in the art of motion pictures. So bad you'll want to put coal in the stockings of everyone involved in the film. You'll want to ensure they never get to eat anything but fruit cake for the rest of their lives to pay for their trespasses. Then, after maybe a day or two, you'll come out of it, and like Emily did to me, you'll want someone else to see it. You'll want to put someone else through The Untold Story. So if you know someone who's been really naughty this year, then tell them all about this amazing version of The Nutcracker they just have to see!

Bugg Rating

Infinite Santa 8000: The Interview and Christmas Giveaway!

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:35:00 +0000

A few weeks back I got a chance to talk about Michael Neel's film The Drive In Horror Show, but Mr. Neel also has another project that is near and dear to my heart, the Infinite Santa 8000 web series. Last year's 13 episode arc saw cybrog Santa reawaken in a post-apocalyptic future and have to deal with mutants, killers, and mad scientists. All of this without a single plate of cookies. Now Neel and Co. are hard at work getting ready for the next installment in the Infinite Santa. So I sat down and talked to the director and got him to pony up a couple of prize packs. So read on to find out what's in store for robo-Claus, and then check at the end to find out how to win a sack full of goodies!

T L Bugg: Infinite Santa 8000 was your first animated project, but you started out in documentary film making. Can you tell me a little bit about how you made that leap from non-fiction to fiction projects?

Michael Neel: Well, I studied film at Vassar College and did some animation there, some stop motion, as a cinematographer and assistant animator. It was crazy. I interned at an animation studio right after I got out of college and thought I might get into it, but it's--- It's just really rough. It's kind of different the way we do it, but stop motion is just so time consuming. So I kind of fell into documentaries for years because that's what pays around Boston. I did a documentary with Greg Anton who co-created Drive In Horror Show with me, and together we decided to try to get out of documentaries and make a horror film. Because even with the best documentaries, it's hard to get an audience. So we figured horror would be a good way to go. I mean, there aren't any romantic comedy conventions. The Horror audience is known to be supportive and, if they like something, to give it a life of its own.

So when we were done with Drive In Horror Show, we didn't have any distribution, and we were trying to figure out how to get it out. While we were waiting and trying to figure it out, we wanted to do something that people could see, like instantly. So we thought, well, let's do a web series. In Drive In Horror Show we had two skeleton customers that complained about everything, and when we did it, I thought it was the stupidest thing we'd done, by far. We were like, this is never going to work, but it's become one of people's favorite things. So of Infinite Santa, I said, well, let's try and do the stupidest stuff we can. I've always wanted to do a Christmas...something. I've always loved the genre, and it comes around every year so there's always a market. I don't know where it all really came from, but Greg came up with this huge back-story about these characters. We kind of fleshed it out, and the scripts came pretty quickly so we just started doing it.

I don't know when we decided it would be animated. The two guys that did a lot of the art and effects for Drive In Horror Show (Ed. Nick Flanagan and Jeff O'Brian) are both tattooists who have tattooed me and Greg and bunch, so we knew they could do it, but I think we had pretty low expectations at first because we really hadn't done anything like this before. This was nothing like what I had done in my stop motion days at all, but once we saw how good the art was and fed it all into the computer to see what we could do with the lighting. Because it's all in there like a little set, and it adds an extra level. I think Greg and I were both shocked with the production value that we could get. We never thought it would turn out like it did. We've been very pleasantly surprised.

TLB: So Infinite Santa ended up as a thirteen part web series. Did you always have a plan of where it would begin and end as the ending is a bit unresolved?

MN: This has always been planned to be Part 1 of a 3 part arc. The idea was to do these first 13 and see where else we could take it. We'd love to do the next ones, but we needed to make sure there was going to be enough support for it. The format was definitely, you know, Greg, when we first started writing, the only thing I said was that every one should end up as a cliffhanger like the old serials. Because we really wanted people to come back and watch them week after week. Now they're all up together and you want people to want to see the next one, but especially for the people who watched them as they came out, we wanted them to really want to see that next episode. For out early fans, they really told us that.

But the format, writing and making these three minute shorts is a different kind of animal than doing something bigger, and it did allow us to grow and kind of figure it out as we went. With each one being so small, we were learning by doing, big time.

TLB: So you've been gearing up to start work on the next portion of the Infinite Santa saga. I’ve heard some talk about Evil Easter Bunny vs. Santa. So what can you tell me about it? Does it pick up when the last series left off?

MN: No, unfortunately. I know some people have asked for it. We thought about condensing the stories into an half hour and then doing a movie, but the format doesn't really lend itself to that. Then we thought about doing Santa's back-story as a movie, but we want to keep that how we wrote it for the web. So actually this next portion will be set 100 years after the web series, so the same characters are around, but there have been some changes. For the careful viewer, there are maybe some clues as to what's been going on. We don't want to give too much away because we think of this as a timeline with 6000 years of history.. or, I don't really want to say when Santa was created, but this whole world was changed by something between now and the year 8000. I don't know if that answers your question it was kind of meandering I think.

The Evil Easter Bunny is a part of the marketing of it, and he's a character in the next installment but definitely not the only one. Santa and Martha are living on their own, and they get found by Shakleton again so things take off from there. The Evil Easter Bunny is by far the most formidable opponent that Santa has faced so far, and there are a lot more robots in this one. We felt like in the web series we introduced a lot of weapons and mutants we didn't get to pay off. They just come in and then they leave. Part of it was that in the script it called for a ton of mutants, and then we got them and we had no idea how cool they'd be. So we're paying better attention to that this time.

Aside from that, there are bigger action scenes, Santa has a new sleigh, new weapons, all this cool stuff. So we just tried to push as much as we can. One thing we found with the first web series was every time we did something really silly with the design, like Santa's chopper with the candy cane handlebars or the snowflake throwing stars, people love things like that. So we tried to put as much of that into the sequel as we can.

TLB: So when can we hopefully expect to see this new adventure from Santa?

MN: Hopefully a year, maybe longer...

TLB: So Hopefully Christmas 2012

MN: Hopefully, but maybe Christmas 2013. We'll definitely keep people posted. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook and stuff and we'll make sure we let people know how it's going.

TLB: Sounds great. Well while I've got you here I thought I'd ask you a bit about your favorite Christmas movies. Let's leave horror out of it for a moment and just talk straight up Christmas movies.

MN: Well, my favorite by far is Christmas Vacation. Hands down. It's just so good. My family and I watch it every year. I think I can quote over half of it. There's a line from it that actually subliminally got into Drive In Horror Show. In "The Meat Man", the Dad character says, "It's a quality item." which is something Randy Quaid says in Christmas Vacation. A friend of mine pointed it out to me, and I think they're absolutely right. That's where that came from.

I like A Christmas Story, but I haven't seen it quite enough to fall in love with it as much as everybody else. I like Elf a lot. I haven't seen Miracle on 34th Street in a long time, but I remember liking it. Does Die Hard count? I'd say those are the big ones. Oh, and It's a Wonderful Life. That's just flawless.

TLB: Alright, well how about Holiday Horror? What do you like there?

MN: For my money my favorites are Christmas Evil, Jack Frost, Black Christmas, and Santa's Slay. All of different reasons. Jack Frost is one of those movies. It's so cheap. So cheap, but I just love it. It's so low budget and they got creative with how to do things. I was just watching the clip of the woman who gets tied up to the Christmas tree. It's so obviously fake arms just swinging around and the lights being loosely tightened around her neck. So goofy, but it really works. As an independent filmmaker it's really inspiring.

I want to thank Michael Neel for sitting down and giving me the inside story on Infinite Santa's future, and now I want to make a few of you thank him as well. If you haven't seen Infinite Santa 8000, then click over to Mr. Neel's site or look them up on YouTube to check them out. Or maybe win one in the Christmas giveaway!

Contest Entry and Rules

Here's what you get as a prize:

1- Infinite Santa Poster signed by Michael Neel

1- Infinite Santa DVD containing all 13 episodes

A Pack of Infinite Santa Cards suitable for sending next Christmas!

A Drive In Horror Show Soundtrack & DVD of Music Videos

Plus Two more contestants will get a copy of the DVD!

How Do You Get it?

Easy peasy lemon squeezie. Just leave a comment here, on this post, with your e-mail and the name of your favorite Christmas movie. That's it. The contest runs from now until New Years day when I will pick three names at random out of a Santa hat. The first name picked will get the mondo prize pack I listed up top, and the other two will get a copy of the Infinite Santa DVD. Contest is open to residents of the US of A because I'm too cheap to spring for international postage, and only one entry per person please.

Female Trouble (1974): Christmas Was Never So Divine

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:12:00 +0000

All right, I'll admit right off that talking about John Waters' Female Trouble as a Christmas movie might be a stretch rivaled only by straining fabric of Divine's outfits in this film. However, Christmas does have something to do with kicking off the events of the film, and clearly John Waters has an affinity for the holiday. He wrote an extensive tribute to the holiday in his book Crackpot, has issued a Christmas CD compilation with tracks like "Here Comes Fatty Claus" and "Santa Was a Black Man", and has been known to tour with a one man Christmas show that "puts the X in Xmas". Waters was once even quoted as saying, "If you don't have yourself a merry little Christmas, you might as well kill yourself." I suppose if you don't get what you want for Christmas, then you merely have to run away from home, get raped, become a career criminal / fashion model, and end up in the electric chair. This is John Waters' Christmas after all.

Dawn Davenport (Divine) is a juvenile delinquent, one of the trashy girls at high school with her bouffant hairdo and bad attitude. On Christmas morning, when her parents don't deliver the Cha Cha heels she asked for, Dawn runs away from home and starts hitchhiking. She gets picked up, gets raped, and nine months later her daughter Taffy is born. Making her way in the world, Dawn goes from being a waitress to a go-go dancer before falling into petty crime and prostitution. Dawn marries a hairdresser named Gator (Michael Potter), but their relationship comes unraveled thanks to the interference of teenage Taffy (Mink Stole) and the fact that Gator likes to read magazines while penetrating Dawn with tools. The owners of Gator's salon, The Dashers (David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pierce), invite Dawn into a world of modeling. Crime modeling that is. They believe that "crime equals beauty" and the pair intend to push Dawn further and further down a criminal path. Hooking Dawn on "liquid eyeliner" (read:heroin), the Dashers drive Dawn to new heights of criminality and art.

Female Trouble was Waters' follow-up to Pink Flamingos, and the story contained in Female Trouble doesn't seem that far removed from Flamingo's quest for "The Filthiest Person Alive". Waters again populates his film with the collection of freaks, weirdos, and ne're-do-wells one would expect in his films. While the film clearly belongs to Divine, the supporting cast is magnificent. Mink Stole shines as Dawn's daughter Taffy. With her slapdash make-up and rebellious teen/little girl attitude, Stole provides an excellent counterpoint to Divine's over the top insanity. Edith Massey, a Waters regular best known for her role as Edie the Egg Lady in Flamingos, is all thrashing weirdness as Aunt Ida, Dawn's acid throwing rival who ends up as a one handed prisoner in a giant birdcage. David Lochary, who I wish had appeared in more films before his death in 1977, plays the artistically devious photographer with great aplomb. While all the actors hold their own, only Lochary seems like a real match for Divine.

Now onto the Divine one himself... or herself. I suppose both would be in order here. While Divine spends most of his time in tight dresses and sky high wigs, he also makes a rare appearance in Female Trouble as a man. In fact, he appears as the man who rapes Dawn Davenport. So when Dawn later tells her rapist to "fuck himself", it appears he already had. (Divine would appear onscreen in male clothes only two more times, in Hairspray and his only all male movie role, Trouble in Mind, co-starring Kris Kristofferson.) Dawn Davenport is the kind of character that only Divine could have brought to life. Waters wrote movies that went beyond the scope and scale of good taste, and Divine could bring the larger than life grandeur needed for a character that equates the electric chair with the Academy Award. Their pairing was a perfect one, and while Waters is held up as a paragon of cult film and Indie film in general, I hope that Divine's memory is not diminished to just kitsch. As good as Waters' films were, they were built on the performances and Divine's presence most of all.

The main theme of Female Trouble is the quest for fame and adulation at any cost. Dawn Davenport doesn't have any respect for her parents, her child, the law, or society in general. However, by the end of the film she is deeply concerned with the message she leaves behind for her "fans" as she is electrocuted. This brought to mind much that is rampant in the media today. More often than not, bad behavior only serves to increase celebrity. Take for example Kim Kardashian. While her mother is married to a famous athlete, Kim has made no discernible contribution to society for which she should be awarded celebrity. Oh wait, I forgot. She was in a home made porn and has a big booty. My mistake. I don't mean to pick on Kim, (Okay, maybe I do a bit.) but she makes a good example. While Kim's actions aren't tantamount to gunning down a live audience, they do prove that acting badly gets attention. Even after all these years, Manson still holds a token of celebrity among some people, and Charlie might have been on John's mind during Female Trouble as well. The "crime is beauty" idea came from discussions Waters had when he visited Manson family member "Tex" Watson in jail.

So Christmas, yep, there's nothing like watching Divine cut the hand off The Egg Lady to get yourself in the mood for the festive holiday. Okay, so it wasn't the most Chrissmassy movie around, but who can resist watching Divine throw a fit under her Christmas tree because of Cha Cha heels. I know I can't, and if you can, well your heart needs some Grinch sized growth. In the days leading up to the holiday, I've got some more festive titles lined up, but it was a real holiday treat for me to get to review this John Waters film. Somehow I've managed to get into year four without ever talking about one of the King of Trash's features, and every time I watch one I remember what a great gift they are to cult film lovers. So this season, when everyone else turns their thoughts to Baby Jesus, I encourage everyone to check out Female Trouble, leave the religious trappings behind, and turn your holiday into something Divine.

Bugg Rating

The famous Cha Cha Heels Scene

Santa Claus (1959): Satan. Santa. St. Nick. Old Nick.

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:15:00 +0000

When it comes to Christmas films, there are some pretty weird ones out there. I should know. I've spent every December for the last three years digging around for them. While other films revel in the dichotomy between the holiday and their subject matter, what sets today's feature apart is someone actually thought this freak show was appropriate for children. Of course those folks were the same fine people that brought you several Santo Mexican wrestling movies, Night of the Bloody Apes, and The Aztec Mummy vs. the Humanoid Robot. You know, the classics. So come along with me to find out all about the children that Santa keeps captive, how Lucifer will stop at nothing to foil Santa, and where Merlin the Magician fits into all of this. Okay, that last part I may not be able to deliver on as I couldn't quite figure that out.

As the movie begins, Santa (Jose Elias Moreno) is preparing for Christmas. In order to know what children all over the world want for Christmas... well, maybe not all over the world (Sorry, Canada, Australia, Philippines, and Greenland. No toys for you.), he has a few kid helpers that live with him to help him out. I suppose the elves couldn't just do a little research for him. Meanwhile, in Hell, (There's something I never assumed I'd say in a Christmas movie review.) Lucifer dispatches Pitch (Jose Luis Aguirre), a minor devil, to turn all the children of the world evil and thus defeat Santa. By all the children of the world, apparently Satan means five kids, three of which were pretty much evil little shits in the first place. The other two kids are Billy, a rich brat who gets things he wants but misses his parent's love, and Lupita (Lupita Quezadas), a poor girl who desperately wants a doll. With the help of Merlin, who lives with Santa in a space castle along with the children, Santa must avoid Pitch's traps to stop him if he is to deliver presents to all the world's children.

I'm not sure if that synopsis simplifies the plot of Santa Claus or makes it more complex. The film, drenched in startling Eastmancolor, is a strange a peculiar ride, and if it was filmed ten years later, I would have blamed it on the drugs. However, I can come up with no obvious scapegoat to blame this film on. Far and away more bizarre than the more well known Santa Claus vs. The Martians, director Rene Cardona, who helmed no less than six Luchador movies, trades in Santo for Santa, but he keeps the bizarre nonsense that makes the masked wrestler movies work so well. How do letters get to Santa in space? Through a special tube, naturally. How does Santa get all the kids of the world to go to sleep? That's why he's got Merlin hanging around. How many children does Santa keep in his castle and where do they come from? Ok, so they didn't answer all the questions, but they did manage to fit in some copyright infringement on Disney (Santa says, "A dream is a wish your heart makes.") that somehow slipped by Uncle Walt. I also have to mention that Santa has a computer that talks with lips. Yeah, human like lips. So creepy.

Creepy is the order of the day after all. Jose Elias Moreno's Santa literally wont stop laughing, and he's only out creepied by an animatronic version of Santa in a department store window. Everything Moreno does makes Santa come off stranger and stranger. I mean he approves a kid's wish list that includes a machine gun. Jose Luis Aguirre is all mincing energy as the devil Pitch. As if Santa wasn't odd enough, Pitch romps around trying to corrupt a handful of children and his ultimate plan involves trapping Santa in a tree. None of which really add up to that much deviltry. There's not much to say about Merlin as played by Armando Arriola, but the character's appearance here is the second strangest place I've ever seen the wizard. (Sorry, Armando, but the title still belongs to Ringo Star's Merlin in Son of Dracula.) The only redeeming performance in the film comes from Lupita Quezadas as the poor girl who wants a doll. She's so heartrendingly sad looking I feel like before she filmed every scene they must have taken away every doll she ever owned. Strangely, she gives the film an emotional center that shines despite the bizarre goings-on, something I never would have expected to find here.

Santa Claus is not a movie I would show a kid. That is unless I wanted to threaten them that creepy Santa will kidnap them, keep them in a castle, and have his personal wizard put them to sleep anytime he wants. (Strangely,Jerry Sandusky thinks this sounds great.) I can imagine that a good number of baby boomers who saw this as a kid had a nightmare about a ceaselessly chuckling Santa sucking them up into space and feeding them to a compute. Honestly, I might have a nightmare or two about that thing. For cult movie fans, Santa Claus is a must see because there is absolutely nothing out there quite like it. Luckily, it's really easy to get a copy. For those of you with Netflix, it's on Instant Watch, but for those without, you're not left without. This baby is in the public domain, and there's a pretty nice copy over on Internet Archive you can download or, more conveniently, you can just stream it from where I've embedded it below. I can't believe that I waited this long to catch up with this one, and it definitely belongs on the 'NICE' list... okay, maybe the 'WEIRD but NICE' list, like the kid who wanted the machine gun.

Bugg Rating

Troll Hunter (2010): Not Just For Dispatching Internet Nuisances Anymore

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:06:00 +0000

While today's film doesn't have any connection to the impending Christmas holidays, some of the chilly action does take place in the snowy climes of Norway and, like Santa, it does concern the stuff of fairy tales. If I just spoiled the whole "Santa isn't real" thing for you my apologies, but I think I can make it up for you by wrapping this review in bright paper and bows. It certainly deserves it because it is quite a gift. For fantasy and science fiction fans and horror buffs alike, Troll Hunter (a.k.a Trolljegeren) is one of the best examples of how to use the found footage formula since Cannibal Holocaust pioneered the style. As the film invites you into its world, it delicately balances the actual and the fantastical through the lens of a very real camera, and it ends up being something, well, for lack of a better term, magical.

Thomas, Kalle, and Johanna (Glenn Erland Tosterud, Tomas Alf Larsen, Johanna Morck) are a team of documentary film makers who think they have a lead on a string of mysterious bear killings. They track down Hans (Otto Jespersen), a hunter they believe is poaching the bears, but they soon learn that Hans has a more mysterious secret. He's a troll hunter dispatched by the Norwegian government to control rampaging trolls responsible for killing cattle and tourists, destroying property, and cause earthquakes. Agreeing to let the film crew follow him as long as they follow his every direction (and as long as they aren't believers in God and Jesus. Trolls can smell that kind of thing), they journey across the Norway to hunt down the trolls. As they get deeper into the country, Hans begins to believe something is happening to the trolls, and whatever it is will endanger them all.

Found footage is one of those tricky genres that sometimes works (Paranormal Activity) and sometimes doesn't (Diary of the Dead). When it's done right, the style can immerse the viewer in the world and add an extra layer of believability to some rather otherworldly goings-on. Director Andre Ovredal, whose only previous credit is 2000's poorly received Future Murder, hits the perfect pitch in Troll Hunter. As an audience, I found myself swept up in the proceedings just as the "documentary crew" is swept into Hans' world. The CG creatures are expertly inserted, and Ovredal uses their appearances to create tension, to astound the viewer, and to provide both laughs and scares. Not only is the Norwegian countryside beautifully filmed (making it the 'N' country I want to visit most after seeing New Zealand's giant bug); the trolls look like natural residents. The fact that the film works in Scandinavian folklore such as Three Billy Goats Gruff only serve to enhance the cultural ties and add a layer of winking realism.

As far as the monsters can take the film, it would fall apart like a troll exposed to sunlight if not for a couple of strong performances. Otto Jespersen is the real revelation here. The Norwegian comedian is perfectly cast, and he reminded me a great deal of a heartier Christopher Lee. Jerpersen delivers his lines with a flat matter-of-fact delivery that lends itself to dry comedy as well as deadly seriousness. Of the documentarians, only Glenn Erland Tosterud as leader Thomas makes an impression as his is the only one of them with a dynamic character. Tomas Alf Larsen and Johanna Morck do fine jobs, but neither of their characters stand out. I must also mention Urmila Berg-Domaas as the second camera operator Malica. She's barely in the film so I can't really comment on her performance, but her character leads to the only sticking point in the film.

When she is introduced she's asked if she was a Christian and believed in God and Jesus, and she replies that she is a Muslim. The Troll Hunter shrugs it off saying he doesn't know what might happen. Part of the tenets of Islam is the belief in Jesus as a messenger of God and certainly Muslims believe in an all powerful god, Allah. It is unclear why this inconsistency was included or if it was meant to refer to cultural differences between Norwegians and Muslims, Norway's fastest growing minority group. Nothing else ever comes of the character being Muslim, but I feel like that dialog was intentionally placed but it's unclear what writer/director Ovredal was trying to say. Of course,Troll Hunter also seems to be stridently anti-Christian as well. The one Christian character ends up getting dispatched messily and Hans lures in the trolls with Gospel music and the spuriously obtained blood of a Christian man. Clearly Ovredal is no big fan of organized religion, but he also revels in the legends and lore of Norway's early years. All I know is that, as an Atheist, if trolls invade, I'm going to church. Not to get religion, but to appear as a lesser snack.

The fact that the film's message remains a bit hazy is actually fine. Troll Hunter works best as a fantasy romp, and getting bogged down in possible cultural minutia only diminishes the amount of fun this film is. It's definitely a film I will go back to time and time again, and it's one that I can't wait to share with friends. Troll Hunter is one of my favorite films I've seen in some time. It's on Netflix Instant Watch right now. So take the time to make it one of yours.

Bugg Rating

Dead End (2003): Over The Hills and Through the Woods to Grandmother's House We Die

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:48:00 +0000

There are many horrors associated with the holiday season. There's killer elves and ax wielding Santas, endless lines in the stores, the traffic on the roads, or the terror of trying to mail something. That's not to mention the constant ringing of bells, the endless din of carols rerecorded by a bevy of today's pop stars, and the barrage of weak, uninspired television specials that premiere year after year. The biggest horror for most people may well be one of the holiday's main occasions, the family gathering. It's an event that is often fraught with mysterious relations, long distance travel to keep feuding relatives separated, and, if you're really lucky, someone will get drunk and start a fight. Hmm, maybe I'm just talking about The Lair's last office party. At some point in December it all runs together in a Nog fueled haze. Anyhow, for the characters in today's film, the horror isn't in the holiday gathering; it's in the getting there that turns into a massive Dead End.

The Harrington family, father Frank (Ray Wise), mother Laura (Lin Shayne), brother Richard (Mick Caine), sister Marion (Alexandra Holden) and her boyfriend Billy (Brad Miller), are on their way to Grandma Harrington's house on Christmas Eve. Driving late at night, Frank decides to take a shortcut to keep himself awake and interested in driving. Instead, Frank falls asleep at the wheel only to be jolted awake by Marion seconds before they would have had a head on collision. While recovering from the shock, Frank sees a woman in white standing along the road with a baby, and in the spirit of the season, picks her up. Things really start going bad from there, the woman in white is carrying a dead baby, Billy disappears and shows back up as a heap of bones and flesh on the asphalt, and no matter how far or fast they drive they can't seem to get anywhere. Trapped in an endless forest on a lonely road, the family is picked off one by one, and their only suspect is the woman in white and the driver-less black hearse that takes each of them away.

It's going to be a little tricky discussing Dead End without talking about the film's last five minutes. In those 300 seconds, everything that has happened in the film feels like it should be looked at differently. Then, in the credits, a short clip realigns the film once more. As I don't want to spoil the film, I won't get any more specific, but I will say that the first ending pissed me off and the second confused me. Now to go back to the main portion of the film. Clearly directors Fabrice Canepa and Jean-Babtiste Andrea wanted to say something about the horrors of family in the context of people getting mysteriously mutilated. Dad turns out to have been a cheater, as does Mom (even the paternity of one of the kids comes into question). Richard is a pothead who can't stop jerking off even on the way to Grandma's. Marion is pregnant. Dad turns violent. Mom loses her mind. You know, Christmas.

The plot of the film is so basic that Dead End really is an actor's film. With only three of four locales in the film, with the majority of time spent in their SUV, there's little other than the performances to watch. Thankfully, they are worth watching. Wise, who I always love (especially his turn as Satan on Reaper), is pitch perfect. Wise's Frank goes from irritable to emotional to all the way to flat out crazy, and every step along the way. There's a ton of dark humor in the film, and Mick Caine's Richard provides much of the smirking laughs. When his character leaves the action, there's a hole the film never quite fills.Veteran actress Lin Shayne, who many will instantly remember as the landlady from Kingpin, has had a varied career and will soon play Eleanor Roosevelt in FDR: American Badass! (starring Barry Bostwick as the titular badass and, yep, Ray Wise as Gen. MacArthur) In Dead End she plays the repressed wife who harbors an awful secret perfectly, and that's more than can be said of the film's weak link Alexandra Holden. When her character goes catatonic, I just didn't buy it. Especially with the path her character takes later in the film. Knowing the ending it makes a bit more sense, but not enough upon reflection.

That's really what troubles me about Dead End. It's not a film that can be taken on surface value, but then the film makers chose to change what it might mean in retrospect not once, but twice, and neither time is ultimately satisfying. While Dead End is well acted on the whole, it lacks an emotional punch at the end to bring it all together. While the film comes in like a lion, it goes out squeaking around for cheese. As a Christmas adjacent film (I hesitate to call it related. Die Hard has more holiday references), it does examine a portion of the holidays that often gets ignored in the horror genre. The only films I could compare it to are the 2008 French film A Christmas Tale and the 1995 Thanksgiving themed Home for the Holidays, but with more gore, less drama, yet the same amount of familial dysfunction. So the next time you're dreading the ride to a holiday gathering, look at it this way, the chances are you wont get caught up in a supernatural time vortex where everyone dies... probably. You might wish it, but just like Dead End, it's not as fun as it looks.

Bugg Rating

Ectovember: Grave Encounters on a Ghostwatch

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 14:54:00 +0000

Last week when I was talking about House of Bones, I mentioned a couple other films that shared a similar plot line, a ghost hunting TV show gets more than they expected. Those films were the punningly titled Grave Encounters from Tribeca Films and Ghost Watch which originally aired on BBC1. In the last week, I caught up with both of these, and with only one week left in Ectovember, I thought I would talk about them both. They present two very interesting and different views of ghost hunting shows, British and American views on the supernatural, and how best to utilize a limited budget. I'll go ahead and say right up front that these are the two finest examples of the ghost hunter horror films that I have encountered, and both of them mine the television concept effectively and with precision.

Grave Encounters is set up like a found footage film with a tacked on beginning featuring a producer who has been sent a tape of a proposed series called, you guessed it, Grave Encounters. Lance Preston (Sean Rogerson) leads his team of paranormal investigators into Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, a site where supernatural phenomena has been reported for years. The hospital has a history of murder, lobotomies, and insanity ingrained into it, but the team is more fascinated by how creepy the place will look on camera. After being locked in for the night, they soon find that the hospital offers up much more than an eerie locale. As one of the team goes missing, the others are menaced by ever growing ghostly activity which forces them into breaking down the chained door they entered through, but behind they find only more halls. As endless night stretches on, Lance and the crew begin to surrender their bodies and their minds to whatever evil lurks in the hospital walls.

Without a doubt, Grave Encounters sets its sights on two particular paranormal shows, Ghost Adventures and Paranormal State. Lance's show intro for Grave Encounters is nearly a verbatim melding between those two shows' preamble. (For the record, Adventures is silly fun while State is among the worst that the paranormal reality genre has to offer.) Throughout, writer/ directors The Viscous Brothers (Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz) absolutely nail the patterns of speech used in ghost hunting shows as well as correct use of terminology and actions. I completely believed that the characters responded in the way their real life counterparts would in the same situation, with a mixture of fear, intrigue, steady unremitting disbelief, and the absolute need to put everything on tape. The movie goes for almost an hour before a big scare happens, creating tension throughout the first hour with small happenings and good old fashioned personal conflict between the characters. When the effects work finally intrudes, that is where the film stumbles somewhat. With a larger budget, the effects would have felt much cleaner and less forced, but I do have to give it up to them for showing something and not taking the cop out Blair Witch route.

Despite the occasionally hamfisted effects, Grave Encounters is really a movie that hinges on the actors. Most of the weight in this regard is taken on by Sean Rogerson as Lance. Sean does a heck of a job drawing the audience in with his as he succumbs to horror and madness, but by the end of the film, he took it a bit over the top for me. However, his performance can be seen as a perfect example the decent into Lovecraftian insanity, and it is very telling that his only link to normalcy comes through the lens of a camera. I was equally impressed by Mackenzie Gray as the "psychic" Houston. I would be hard pressed to believe that this character was not based on debunked British psychic Derek Acorah. His performance was highly entertaining, and I really liked that his character was a self aware charlatan but when shit went down he stuck to his shtick in hopes that it would save him. Merwin Mondesir, Ashleigh Gryzko, and Juan Riedinger all give effective performances to round out the team, and no one really felt like they didn't carry their weight.

Ghostwatch takes a slightly different angle on the found footage film by presenting itself on television as a live spectacle. Host Micheal Parkinson and Sarah Greene invite viewers to join them as they investigate a home in Northolt, London reported to be the most haunted home in England. They present both photographic and audio evidence backing up the claims of Pamela Early (Brid Brennon) and her daughters Kim and Suzanne (Michelle and Cerise Wesson) who have been troubled by a spirit that the young girls call "Pipes". While Parkinson and paranormal researcher Dr. Pescoe (Gillian Bevan) remain in the studio to take calls and analyse the evidence, Sarah joins the family in their home where strange happenings slowly begin to unfold. At first it seems like it might only be the work of the daughters creating a hoax, but as the night wears on, the spirit begins to strengthen, affecting the family, the studio, and even the viewers at home.

Airing October 31st, 1992 on BBC1, Ghostwatch was preceded a short title sequence indicating the writer's name and that it was part of the dramatic Screen One series, but many viewers missed that entirely and assumed that the events unfolding on the screen were real. To stem some of the panic they expected to cause, director Lesley Manning had included a number where people could call into to the "show" and share their own ghost stories. When viewers called in, they were let in on the fact they show was fictional. However, the phone lines remained so clogged many couldn't get through, and Ghost Watch created a mini-War of the World's style hysteria. As such, BBC has never repeated the program, and it was only released on VHS years ago. (Thankfully it's in its entirety on Google video and linked below.) What also made the program especially believable was that Parkinson and Greene were respected British television personalities. Parkinson was a venerated journalist and Greene a children's television presenter. (In sort of a twist Yvette Fielding, host of Most Haunted, which clearly based the format of its live events ten years later off Ghostwatch, also started out in kid's TV.) The natural reactions of all the actors, both playing themselves and characters, really sell the whole affair.

Where Ghostwatch really shines is where Grave Encounters faltered, the effects. Ghostwatch chose to keep it subtle with vague images that happen and then are gone in a blink of an eye. I had the advantage of being able to watch scenes over and over, but I can imagine that many home viewers were disturbed by things they thought they might have seen. The director did a great job integrating the ghostly presence into the film. In one instance a scene is looked over three times by Parkinson and the Doctor to determine if a presence has appeared. In the first run, there is something in the frame. In the second, nothing is there, and in the third, there is a vague notion of a shape. A later instance showcases a full body apparition which disappears in the split second it takes for the camera to swing back around. Keeping it subtle (while still paying off and showing something) made Ghostwatch incredibly effective and believable. The only drawback that Ghostwatch has is its pacing. Having to keep in the context of live television often made it feel like it lost steam throwing back and forth between the studio and the haunted home.

One of the main differences between Ghostwatch and Grave Encounters is the cultural gap between North American and European view of the supernatural. In a recent poll over 70% of British respondents said they believe in ghosts. By comparison, the North American figure lingers around or below 50%. Grave Encounters works against the disbelief. The paranormal team is presented as a group of skeptics who are more concerned about making money than actually finding a ghost. Some of them even continue to deny far past the point of reason as a means of coping with the strain. The cast of Ghostwatch however seems eager to believe and have genuine concern for the family being haunted. When it looks like it is a hoax, the investigators genuinely seem crushed. I attribute the differing opinions on the supernatural to the dominance of religion in societal norms, and while North Americans predominately define themselves as Christians, attendance in churches across England and Europe as a whole are at an all-time low.

While neither Ghostwatch and Grave Encounters get it perfectly right, both films are very enjoyable watches. Hopefully someday, Ghostwatch will get an actual North American DVD release, but until then, i highly encourage folks to check it out online. With its television format, it is easily watched in chunks for your viewing pleasure. Grave Encounters, while not "the scariest movie since The Ring" as claimed by The New York Times, is a tense little actor's film with some really interesting supernatural elements. If you can forgive the first stumbling effects shot, you're in for a genuinely scary ride. I'm really interested to see what the next project for The Vicious Brothers will be as Grave Encounters is a hell of a film debut. Well, that wraps it up for Ectovember. I hope you enjoyed my look at haunted cinema (though it descended into ghost hunter territory), and come on back next month for more cult, horror, and genre goodies for the holiday season!

Bugg Rating
Grave Encounters

Ghost Watch

Ghost Watch in it's entirety! Woot!

Here's the trailer for Grave Encounters. Sadly the trailer spoils one of the film's big money shots.

Thankskilling (2009): The Bugg Gobbles Up Turkey Day

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 17:21:00 +0000

There's basically two movies to talk about if you want to broach Thanksgiving horror. (Unless you count Eli Roth's fake trailers in Grindhouse for Thanksgiving.) There's 1972's Blood Freak, which isn't really about Turkey Day, but it does feature a biker being turned into a killer turkey with an appetite for drug dealers. Then there's the 2009 low budget effort Thankskilling. While I've never got my hands on the former, I've avoided the later for the last two years as, frankly, it sounded stupid. Well, I finally watched it, and I wasn't at all wrong. Thankskilling is stupid, stupid like a fox. With a killer puppet turkey running around spouting one liners and a script that wants to be Troma-like but can't quite manage, Thankskilling may just be the antidote for the family Thanksgiving dinner.

Seeing as this is a poultry based slasher, there's precious little to synopsize. The movie starts off with a pre-title sequence wherein the film's killer turkey makes his first appearance while offing a large breasted pilgrim (Mature porn star Wanda Lust). Cut to present day, and five college students are on their way home for Thanksgiving break. After the nerd tells them the legend of Thankskilling, the Gruesome Gobbler begins to stalk the teens. Their only hope is the vast collection of books about Turkeys that one of their fathers owns, but before they can stop it, the turkey rapes, murders, and bastes a swath of blood wherever he goes.

Making a movie on a shoestring budget is no easy task even in this shot-on-video era. Thankskilling is one of the better looking movies to come out of this movement, and it's plain to see that every penny of the $3000 dollar budget is onscreen. The problem is the chasm from the films they seem to want to make, and the one they did. While the film opens on a naked breast, this is the last bit of sleaze you get in the film, and the violence is watered down to practically nothing as well. Director Jordan Downey clearly wants to follow in the footsteps of Lloyd Kaufman, but a fairly tame tale of a wisecracking turkey isn't going to do the job. The turkey puppet, voiced by Downey, is clearly the best part of the film (and the scene where it shares a cup of coffee with a man in a turkey suit is hilarious visually if nothing else.), and the wisecracks took me right back to the days of my youth before funny Freddy Kruger wasn't infinitely irritating.

Perhaps the greatest strength of Thankskilling is its brevity. Running just barely over an hour, it's an easy watch, and it contains enough decent jokes to make the experience worthwhile. It also might be better if you're slightly sleepy from too much turkey. Someone test that theory out and get back to me on it. Right now Thankskilling is available for Instant Watch on Netflix, and while it is an incredibly flawed movie, I still encourage folks to check it out. After all, there's only so many times you can watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving or Miracle on 34th Street, and no one is ready for A Christmas Story quite yet. So after bottling up all that rage at your family gathering, come home and queue this one up. It may be a turkey about a turkey killing some turkeys, but it's not a bad way to spend a holiday evening.

Before I go, I want to take an opportunity to thank all my readers. No matter if you're celebrating Turkey day or one of my readers from around the world, I thank each and every one of you who make the Lair one of your favorite places for Cult, Horror, and Genre reviews.

Bugg Rating

The Deadly Doll/ LBL Thanksgiving Swap Has Been a Baaaaad Boy (Bubby)

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:22:00 +0000

It’s been a couple of months since last Emily of the Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense and I got a chance to do a film swap, but after our recent meet up at Horrorhound Weekend, I really wanted to get back to our film exchange. After swapping around a few ideas, we settled on a Thanksgiving-ish theme, "Movies We Are Thankful For". For my part, I gave her Alice’s Restaurant, Arthur Penn’s 1969 adaptation of Arlo Guthrie’s eighteen and a half minute song featuring hippy Thanksgiving, courtroom hijinx, and a rousing lesson in draft dodging. Click on over to Deadly Doll’s to see why Alice’s makes me thankful, and what Emily thought about it, but first Emily's pick, Bad Boy Bubby, an Australian movie that's perfect for the whole family at the holidays. It has to be family friendly. Well, that is if your family is really into incest or torturing the family cat. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me give Emily a chance to set up her thankful selection...

"I can't officially argue that Bad Boy Bubby is an appropriate Thanksgiving movie--for starters, it takes place in Australia, where turkey is probably replaced with emu for all I know--but it's certainly a film that I'm THANKFUL for. It's cheating of course, but still: this 1993 independent black comedy is one of those movies that just make me happy to WATCH MOVIES, and thankful that there will always be artists who can take chances onscreen.

So sure, there's incest, animal violence, sexual harassment, and surprisingly grisly murder, but somehow all of these acts work in harmony to create a weirdly sweet coming of age tale not just about a boy growing up, but about a man discovering the world and all of its gifts. Pizza! Cats! Love! Duct Tape! Aren’t we all thankful these things exist? Set it to a bizarro spoken-word-rock score and bam! We’ve got something that celebrates the essence of this fine and tasty holiday far more appropriately than giant balloon animals."

To say that Bad Bob Bubby doesn’t start off as your typical Turkey Day affair is possibly the greatest understatement since the settlers told the Indians that those blankets looked fine to them. The first thirty minutes of the film are some of the most excruciating cinema I’ve ever managed to watch. I would have had an easier time watching Salo, Cannibal Holocaust, and Martyrs on three screens simultaneously. Thirty five year old Bubby (Nicolas Hope) has never set foot outside the walls of the dingy apartment he calls home. His domineering mother (Claire Benito) beats him, molests him, and threatens him with poison air and a vengeful God. When Bubby’s not having sex with Mom, he delights in torturing cats, squishing roaches, and other assorted grossness. His world is turned upside down when his father returns home, and it’s not too long before Bubby goes on a parental killing spree.

It’s a half hour of some of the most abject darkness I have ever sat through, but somehow director Rolf de Heer almost manages to overcome the film’s setup in the next hour and half. After offing the folks, Bubby goes out into the world. There he discovers music, pizza, cunnilingus, rock and roll, atheism, pain, love, and finally happiness. Over the course of Bubby’s transformation, de Heer used 35 separate cinematographers to capture each of the new experiences, and each one adds a pair of fresh eyes to the proceedings. Through Bubby, who later takes on the persona ‘Pop’, is a difficult character to relate to or fully like, his childlike wonder of the world is an amazing thing to behold. Perhaps the easiest shorthand to describe the film would be to say it is Being There by way of Eraserhead with a healthy dose of black Aussie humor thrown in to boot.

The jillion dollar question though is do I share the same feelings as Emily about this movie? Well, in some ways it does make me thankful. Anyone who watches the first half-hour will be glad for two reasons. First, it didn’t happen to them (presumably), and secondly, they never have to watch it again. While I found Bad Boy interesting and through provoking, I feel like de Heer might have veered too much into the shock factor during the first act. It left a long hole to dig out of, and with Bubby’s actions later in the film still remaining despicable, the redemptive part of the film feels a bit hollow. I do share the sentiment that de Heer made a brave film, and certainly it is not intended for every audience. Had Emily not picked this film for me to watch, I’m not so certain that I would have hung in there past the kitty violence (of which there was more than I ever want to see again), but ultimately I’m glad I did.

That being said, I, for one, am glad I get to get up in the morning on Thanksgiving Day, turn on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and enjoy the crap out of the giant balloons, Broadway dance numbers, and a special appearance by the Rockettes. I can’t imagine part of me would rather be watching a challenging, but exploitative, art film. So on that point, Emily and I diverge. What I am most thankful for today is the Deadly Doll. From our monthly (or semi-monthly) swaps to our face to face meetings, it’s always a pleasure to butt heads (and occasionally agree) with her. I’m always glad to have a friend that will make me try and wrap my brain around cinema like Bad Boy Bubby, and one who will watch Alice’s Restaurant in good humor (though I thought she would check out the song as well). That’s all for this Pilgrim’s progress for today. Check back later in the week as I gobble up a Turkey Day semi-classic.

Bugg Rating

It Came From Yesterday (2011): Jeff Waltrowski's Killer Serial Tribute Brings The Past to the Future

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:36:00 +0000

One of the reasons I started The Lair (the one and only, accept no substitutions), was to throw the spotlight on some of my favorite films, and over three years ago, I got around to one of my all time favorites, Jeff Waltrowski's Project: Valkyrie. In that film Jim Cranston, a deadbeat who owes money to the mob, finds helpful hero robot Valkyrie while going through boxes of inventions belonging to his grandfather, Professor Jack Cranston. He keeps the robot, but to make some quick cash, sells off a serum that causes the rise of the Fourth Reich. Thankfully, Valkyrie gets Jim into gear and they stop the rise of the mutant Neo-Nazis. Imagine my surprise when six months after my original review, Mr. Waltrowski commented on my post and teased a prequel to Project: Valkyrie featuring the adventures of Professor Jack Cranston. As I followed the production of It Came from Yesterday, I was very impressed the the scope of production that Jeff was undertaking. He planned to film the entirety of his movie on green screen, a risk that could either really pay off, stumble over itself, or just create infinite comparisons to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. In the end, It Came From Yesterday captures a mixture of the past, present, and future, with mixed results.

It Came from Yesterday begins with a preamble in which Jack Cranston (Waltrowski) and his older brother James (Nathan Hollabaugh) take on one last menace together, a race of invading bug people. In the end, James succumbs in order to defeat the menace, and Jack is propelled to take up his brother's fight for truth and justice. He forms the Electric Club, and along with his partners Buddy (Noel Ripka) and Penny (Nayli Russo), they defeat the world's menaces. When the bugman menace rears its ugly head again, Professor Jack must overcome the pain of his brother's death if he is to save the world once again.

I purposely kept the synopsis very short because there's precious few people who've gotten a chance to see It Came from Yesterday, and the film is filled with twists and turns (and at least one Easter Egg for Project: Valkyrie fans) that I don't want to spoil. As the film is focused on the past, let me start there. Waltrowski's film, like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, garners its inspiration from the movie serials of the 1930's and 1940's, but unlike those Lucus joints, It Came from Yesterday goes the extra mile patterning everything from themes to dialog off those films. That means that some of the lines sound forced, some of the social ideals are passé, and the situations are silly at best. Which means I loved all of that. Waltrowski clearly knows his source material and has great respect for it. There's also another part of the past showing up on screen as well. While most of the CG works and works well, sometimes so seamlessly that I had trouble seeing where the set decoration began and the CG ended, a few of the vehicle related shots looked like Bob the Builder was about to step on screen. Now these portions couldn't have accounted for more than 45 seconds of screen-time, so I'm kind of nitpicking, but the rest of it was so impressive that it momentarily jarred me out of the film.

Now let me move on to bigger, better, and more present parts of the film. Writer/ director/ artist/ producer /star Jeff Waltrowski impresses not only in his off screen role, but also in the expansion of Professor Jack, a minor player in Project: Valkyrie, into a full blown, heroic character. Noel Ripka also really shines as Buddy, Professor Jack's sweet but dumb sidekick. I rooted for him so hard that I almost wet myself. Nayli Russo's Penny was sadly underused, and I would have loved to see more of her. I could have also used more of Steve Foland's Samm Maxx, Professor Jack's benefactor. For one, he had the 1930's style patter down cold, but also there was something about his character that reminded me of Maxwell Lord from DC comics Justice League. Andrew Blood makes a great impression as Flyboy, and with only a limited amount of screen-time, he carved out a memorable and humorous character. While all of the players' characters were built out of stock archetypes, each brings something fun to the table without performing with a smirk or a wink. It Came from Yesterday is played straight, and by doing so, provides plenty of laughs.

Now onto the future. With the advent of digital cameras, indie filmmakers were free to film pretty much whenever and wherever they wanted. What Waltrowski did was break down the restrictions of location and budget. With CG technology hitting the home computer, there are no longer any restrictions on where and when a director can film because the setting can be placed in later. While I mentioned that a few scenes stumbled, the vast majority were astounding. There is an aerial dogfight scene that rivals anything in Sky Captain, and quite a number that come off with a Watchman-like brilliance. To sit back and imagine the labor or love that went into making It Came from Yesterday is astounding,and to consider that there's no studio or major effects house behind the film, is mind blowing. While it may not have been perfect, it truly shows off the future of film making in which there will be no restrictions beyond the artist's imagination.

It is my genuine hope that It Came From Yesterday is a film that I can recommend for you all to see in the future. Right now, it's looking for distribution after a four week premiere run in Waltrowski's hometown of Pittsburgh, and if I've seen an indie that deserves some company's attention, then it's this one. When it does reach the masses, I really feel like sci-fi fans and lovers of the classic serials will love what Waltrowski has done. While it might have "came from yesterday", it clearly has its eye on tomorrow, and I see great things in Waltrowski's future. (Hopefully some of them will include a return of a certain helpful robot.) Check out the trailer below for a sample of the film, and when I get more word on releases, I'll be the first to let you know.

Bugg Rating

Ectovember: House of Bones (2010): Ghost Hunters become the Ghost Hunted

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:30:00 +0000

More than a few times I've professed my love for ghost hunting shows here at the Lair. I have my favorites (Most Haunted), ones that make me chuckle (Ghost Adventures), and ones I can't stand (Ghost Lab). In between there's a plethora of other shows of varying degrees of mediocrity. So I've long looked for a horror movie that incorporated ghost hunting in an interesting way. While I've never gotten to see the crown jewel in this particular sub-genre,the 1991 BBC1 mockumentary Ghostwatch, I've sat through Haunting of Winchester Mansion and Death of a Ghost Hunter both of which I felt no compelling reason to write about. (I'm still holding out some hope for Grave Encounters (2011)) Today's ghost hunter flick is the first I've seen to both show the seedy underbelly of the paranormal show and give a satisfying, and often horrific, ride. The strangest thing is that it hails from the home of one of the premiere spiritualist shows, Ghost Hunters. That's right. You're about to be treated to something very scary, a SyFy movie I enjoy. House of Bones is thankfully not a horror/porn, a sequel to the Snoop Dogg flick, or a theme restaurant based on the Emily Deschanel. Instead, it's made for TV fare with a ton of potential, some decent scares, and, dare I say, a whole lot of spirit(s).

Corin Nemec (Mansquito, Parker Lewis Can't Lose) appears as Quentin French, the prissy, small ponytailed host of the paranormal show Sinister Sites. With the ratings beginning to fade, the network is demanding that the host get his hands dirty and actually join the ghost hunting team on an investigation. Meanwhile, in New Orleans (Really nearby Crowley, La. The one exterior city shot could have literally been anywhere.), the team is busy setting up for an investigation in the Wicker House, a home notorious for numerous murders and disappearances over the years. Despite the home's sordid past, lead investigators Tom (Ricky Wayne) and Greg (Marcus Lyle Brown) are non-believers more than willing to set up a shot or create evidence. In addition to the host joining the team, new addition Heather Burton (Charisma Carpenter), a psychic, and production assistant Bub (Kyle Clements) soon find that the house is indeed haunted. In Bub's case, he finds out the hard way. With actual evidence being captured, Tom gleefully disregards the team's safety in order to make exciting television, and soon they all find that the house itself is a presence and it will not let them leave.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this SyFy original is that they would air it in the first place. The entire premise of the film relies on the conceit that ghost hunting shows are bunk, full of actors scaring themselves, and actively engaged in fakery. With Ghost Hunters still pulling in a sizable viewership, it took a certain amount of balls to air a film that basically says the fans are stupid. The second most surprising thing is that the film is actually pretty good. While House of Bones initially relies on jumpy video cuts to create tension, director Jeffery Scott Lando lets those fade into the background and actually manages to come up with quite a few creepy visuals.Writer Anthony C. Ferrante has clearly watched a ton of the shows and gets his stuff right, and I do have to say his style is improved since the underwhelming Boo (2005). That's not to say that the film is not full of useless expository passages, inane dialog, and broad characterizations. After all, you can take the movie off of SyFy, but you can't take the SyFy out of the movie. What a cast and crew can do is make the best out of a fumbling script, and with House of Bones, they've done just that.

There were actually three things that drew me into watching House of Bones, the ghost hunting angle, the "New Orleans" setting, and Charisma Carpenter. While I am no huge fan of Buffy and Angel, I am quite the fan of Ms. Carpenter. Far and away, she's the best portion of this film, but her psychic character is totally underused. (The character is also roundly ignored. When a psychic spits up blood and tells me a house is possessed by malevolent spirits, well, I can guarantee there would be a Bugg size hole in the door pronto.) Ricky Wayne, who has recently landed roles in Real Steel, the Charlie's Angels tv series, and Burn Notice, impresses as the lead investigator. His character arc is the most dynamic, and Wayne pulls it off nicely. Marcus Lyle Brown is likable enough and the same can be said of Kyle Clements and Collin Galyean, who played the team tech guy, but neither became fleshed out characters. Top billed Corin Nemec is really not in more than 15 minutes of the film, and that is being entirely generous. As a group, the cast rises above the script, but not far, perhaps a Chris Angel street magic rise, but no further.

Looking at the film from a ghost believer's point of view, the characters come to believe that the house contains both intelligent (as in they will respond with some intelligence) and residual spirits (who appear or act without an awareness of our timeline). The most interesting concept is that the house itself is not only possessed, but it had been constructed as a means of storing and amplifying psychic energies. The same has been said of Winchester Mansion (which the aforementioned film borrowed a name, but not an actual setting from) built by Elsa Winchester to both protect herself from ghosts as well as focus their energy for Ouija and other means of communication. Again, someone knew their stuff. Sadly the things that bothered me most in the entire film were when the characters went to the basement, a place that would not exist in below sea level New Orleans, and when the spirit drives a cop car away. The first scene is just a personal pet peeve, but the second was so silly it almost took me entirely out of the film.

No matter what your feeling on ghosts or shows concerning them, I highly recommend no one go into this movie without knowing from whence it came. As far as SyFy films go, this is far and away one of the best I've ever seen. As a regular film, it rates below average which is the rating I'm going to give it. Even so, I had a great time watching it, and while much of that has to do with the cast, I can't underestimate some of the macabre creepiness that House of Bones manages to achieve. With another writer taking a pass over the script, a little bit more money in the budget, and perhaps a couple minor casting changes, House of Bones could have been a solid, quality entry into the supernatural genre. As it stands, House of Bones built something good upon a shaky foundation, and when your network can't even afford a proper amount of letters in their name, that's pretty damn impressive.

Bugg Rating

It Came From TCM: She (1965): Sexiest Pronoun Ever

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:56:00 +0000

If you've ever had the desire to see Peter Cushing do his best belly dancing, then you've come to the right place today. For I have for you guys the only film in which Count Dracula cut a Middle Eastern rug, the 1965 Hammer film She. Based on an 1887 novel by H. Rider Haggard, She first made its way to screen in 1899 as The Pillar of Fire. Over the next few years it would become one of the most remade films in formative cinematic history (proving unnecessary remakes have always been the stuff of the movies.) It was next made in 1911 with Marguerite Snow in the title role, then in 1917 a version was filmed for Fox, and in 1925 with the participation of Rider Haggard. Perhaps the most well known version is King Kong director Merian Cooper's She (1935) which transposes the action from Africa to the Arctic and is thoroughly appointed in the Art Deco style. It has been hailed as one of the best (and first) enjoyable "bad" movies, and the title character's look clearly influenced the design of Disney's evil queen in Snow White. A movie called She, bearing some of the character names, debuted in 1982, but it has little to no relation to the source material, and finally it was remade within recent memory (if anyone remembers, I certainly missed this one) in 2001. While I've seen most of these versions over the years, it wasn't until TCM, continuing their celebration of movie blondes, showed Hammer's She (I wish they had shown the sequel The Vengeance of She as well.) I finally caught up with the most lavish version ever put to film.

The story begins in Palestine of 1918, shortly after World War I had come to a close. Military men Professor Holly (Peter Cushing), Leo Vincey (John Richardson), and Holly's former manservant Job (Bernard Cribbins) are kicking back in a bar carousing and doing a little dancing. Leo is tempted away from the fun by a mysterious but beautiful woman, Ustane (Rosenda Monteros), and soon he gets knocked unconscious. Upon waking he is met with the even more beautiful woman Ayesha (Ursula Andress), the immortal queen of a lost civilization of Egyptians, also known as She or She-who-must-be-obeyed. She believes Leo is the reincarnation of her long lost love, and she tasks him to follow a map to her kingdom if he wishes to be with her. Convincing his two friends to come along in pursuit of great discoveries, the trio set out across the desert where they run out of supplies, are attacked by warring tribes, and at one time are nearly sacrificed. Finally reaching Ayesha's kingdom, Holly and Job become quite aware of the immortal queen's cruelty, but Leo is blind to his obsession's wickedness and his quest for undying love becomes his undoing.

When I first heard the phrase "She-who-must-be-obeyed", I thought for a minute that my wife, The Lady Bugg, must be around somewhere, but then I realized it was a movie and I could relax and think about how hot Ursula Andress was. And, oh, man, is she ever smoking hot in this film. Andress became an international sex symbol three years earlier when she rose from the ocean wearing a white bikini in the first James Bond movie, Dr. No. (Interestingly her voice in She was dubbed by actress Nikki Van der Zyl who also was her voice in Dr. No and would continue to dub voices for Bond movies for years.) Andress is radiantly beautiful as the wicked queen, especially so in her gold and feathered headdress, and it really comes as no wonder that a man would traipse across the desert to find her. In this early portion of her career, Andress' acting relies on her emotional core as we never hear her real voice. Everything is with the eyes, and from the relief of finding her lost love to the fury of betrayal , she channeled the character to perfection.

It was also very interesting to see Peter Cushing in a Hammer film that wasn't a horror flick, or at least not in the traditional sense. Holly is the grounded force in the film attempting to talk some reason into his young,love struck compatriot, and Cushing gives a tender performance especially his speech on age and immortality which encapsulates the film's meaning in a neat package without spoon-feeding it to the audience. It should be noted that Christopher Lee also appears here as Ayesha's high priest making this yet another Lee/Cushing/Hammer films collaboration. John Richardson, who some may recognize from One Million Years B.C. and Mario Bava's Black Sunday, does a fine job as the obsessed lover. There were several times I wanted to reach into the screen a smack his character for making dumb choices, which always makes me feel like an actor is doing his job. Speaking of those three letters,Bernard Cribbins appears as the biblically named Job, and he provides what little comic relief the film gives.Cribbins would go on to appear in several of the "Carry on.." films as well as making a memorable appearance in Hitchcock's Frenzy.

While none of the versions of She that I have seen are perfect, the Hammer version comes closest. She was the most lavish production Hammer had undertaken, and its budget became the high water mark for all their productions. Director Robert Day successfully widened the scope of Hammer's film making, and brought a dash of Laurence of Arabia to the proceedings. That being said, She moves at a glacial pace, and sometimes it gets bogged down in talk when it could have used a shot of action. The story at its core is one for the ages, as evidenced by the numerous versions and remakes, and even through the slow movement, it managed to keep me entertained and combined well with the well appointed sets.For fans of Hammer films, adventure movies, Lee, Cushing, and especially Andress, She is essential viewing, and if you won't take my word for it, She-who-must-be-obeyed might have a thing or two to say about it.

Bugg Rating

P.S. This is what I call a double feature!

I couldn't find a trailer, but here's a clip of She sedusing her He.

Spirits of the Dead(1968):Fondas,Fellini,& a Fistful of Poe

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:03:00 +0000

While Poe adaptations in the 60's belonged to Roger Corman and Vincent Price, today's film found three European auteurs getting down and dirty with the works of Edgar Allan. Each of them present a singular and innovative look into the work of the macabre writer, and through the film was distributed in the states by American International Pictures, it has little in common with the content or tone of AIP's other Poe offerings. It should be noted that for the purposes of this review I watched the French language version entitled Histoires Extraordinaires. This title comes from the first volume of Poe's short stories translated for a French audience by the poet Baudelaire, but when it was released in the States, it was saddled with title Spirits of the Dead, a reference to an 1927 poem of the same title by Poe. Of the two I much prefer the French title as it speaks directly to the type of tales the movie contains, stories of the extraordinary. As this film is divided into three segments with no connecting device (the American version contains narration by Vincent Price between the stories), I'm going to tackle each one individually.

First up is the Germanically titled Metzengerstein. Jane Fonda stars as Contessa Frederique de Metzengerstein, a decadent woman given to throwing grand parties filled with debauchery and sex. Next door lives the austere Baron Wilhelm Berlifitzing (Peter Fonda) who is in all ways the opposite of the Contessa. Living a quiet life, hunting and riding his horses, the Baron takes no part in his neighbor's grand lifestyle. One day while roaming in the forest separating their property, the Contessa becomes caught in a bear trap, but is freed when the Baron happens across her. Instantly smitten, the Contessa pursues the Baron, but being a moral man, he sees no future in their pairing. Lashing out, the Contessa sets the Baron's stables, containing his prized horses, on fire, and her unrequited love perishes trying to save his animals. Only one horse survives, a large black stallion that no one can control. The Contessa believes she can tame the horse, but its strong spirit, perhaps that of the Baron, becomes her undoing.

Metzengerstein was first published in 1832 in the Saturday Courier magazine, and was included in the 1864 publication of Baudelaire's translations. However the story it contains is very different than the one shown on screen. Director Roger Vadim had just completed filming on Barbarella when he was tasked with the project, and he chose to gender swap the main character from Poe's story to continue working with his previous film's star, Jane Fonda. He also injected the unrequited love story (and thank goodness it wasn't requited as Vadim cast her younger brother Peter Fonda in the role) in the place of the family rivalry of Poe's original tale. At its core, the story remains virtually the same. Both the film and the story concern one man (or woman) and their cavalier attitude toward life. As with most Poe stories, the evil are punished and we are lead to believe that the deceased have something to do with it from beyond the grave. Vadim successfully creates tension on the screen, and Jane Fonda, looking radiant, grabs the viewer with her dynamic performance.

The second tale is an adaptation of Poe's story William Wilson. Alain Delon stars as the titular character and the doppelganger who troubles his life. As the story begins, William convinces a priest to take his confession despite the fact that he is not Catholic, and he begins his tale by describing his experience at boarding school. Young William Wilson is clearly a little tyrant terrorizing all of his schoolmates, but when a new boy arrives with his same name, same face, and same manner, William's position is threatened. in the dead of the night, he attempts to strangle the new William Wilson, and for his troubles, they are both kicked out of school. Over the years, the other William Wilson always seems to be there to stop William Wilson just as he intends to do something violent,perverse, or deceptive. Finally unable to stand any further interference, William stabs his double to death, but soon finds his life in mortal jeopardy.

Published in the United States in a 1939 issue of Burton's Gentlemen's Magazine, William Wilson was the first of Poe's stories to be translated into French, making it's debut over two installments in the Parisian magazine La Quotidienne. For the film, director Louie Malle chose to emphasize William Wilson's cruel streak making him party to torture and attempted murder. Strangely, the straw that makes Wilson resolve to kill his double is being called out as a card sharp and having his fun giving a lady (Brigitte Bardot) lashes from his riders crop. (The Bardot character was completely made up in order for Malle, who introduced the world to Bardot in And God Created Women, to sex up the story.) After Vadim's rather reserved period piece, Malle's use of graphic nudity and violence allows the film as a whole to ramp up a level. However, the segment feels phoned in with Le Circe Rouge's Deleon providing the only solid portion of the film. The direction seems hasty at times, and Malle even admitted that William Wilson was the least personal of all his works. He allowed many changes to be made to appeal to mass audience in hopes it would help raise funds for his next picture, 1971's Murmur of the Heart.

The final segment of Spirits of the Dead is the most challenging and, on the surface, the least horrific of all three. However, I believe it would be the one to most appeal to Poe's wicked sensibilities. Terrence Stamp plays the titular character Toby Dammit, a British Shakespearean actor fallen on hard times due to his love affair with the bottle. In exchange for a Ferrari, he agrees to go to Italy to appear in a Western based on the return of Jesus Christ. Enduring a strange awards ceremony, Toby continues to have visions of a devilish child who he helped get back her white ball. Veering deeper into alcoholic paranoia and genuine insanity, Toby makes off with his prized car and drives with wild abandon straight into his undoing.

Toby Dammit is the only of the three tales that didn't retain Poe's original title, but it is also the segment that departs most from the source material. Poe's tale, Never Bet The Devil Your Head, is a satirical screed against morality tales and transcendentalism and was first published in 1841 in Graham Magazine. However, in the hands of Federico Fellini, Poe's story is twisted into a tale of addiction, the falseness of the entertainment industry, and artist's internal battle with demons. So in other words, the same sort of ground that the director looked at in 8 1/2 and throughout his career. The whole segment is a fevered dream, and it floats effortlessly between the absurd (Toby having his picture taken with his blond, lanky, pale stunt double who proudly states that he also doubled Tomas Milian.) to the intensely visual (Toby's wild ride, the disturbing visuals of the satanic, yet innocent, child.). In the end, Poe and Fellini come to the same conclusion in their stories, a person must have their wits about them or they are prone to lose their head. Where Poe's tale comes off like a wan joke, Fellini's film hits like a hard right. I should also mention that this is Stamp at his best, wild eyed and perfectly pitched.

While all three segments have their charms, Fellini clearly outshone the other tales. Vadim's segment lack a visual element beyond the flat, matter-of-fact shots, and Malle crafted a decent tale though it lacked spirit. Fellini chose to take Poe's tale as a launching point and then catapult the story into cosmic, philosophical territory. It should come as no surprise that while the entire film is hard to find, the Fellini segment has been split off and restored, and, in recent years, it has been hailed as a lost classic. Taken as a whole, Spirits of the Dead succeeds in giving an alternative to the heavily Gothic, dark castle Poe films of Roger Corman. Instead, Spirits of the Dead weaves Poe's morbid sensibility into the fabric of modern life, in the case of Fellini's Toby Dammit, and into the well lit Romantic and Victorian settings of Vadim and Malle. While none of the three segments give a perfect portrait of the brooding Baltimorian's stories, taken as one, they rank among this writer's favorite cinematic translations of Edgar Allan's work.

Bugg Rating

Megaforce (1982): Words About Deeds

noreply@blogger.com (T.L. Bugg) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:54:00 +0000

When you have a name like Ace Hunter, can you go wrong? Is there any chance at all you wont grow up to be the leader of a super secret international military organization tasked with keeping world peace? Perhaps as much chance as you not wearing your bleached blonde hair feathered with a powder blue bandanna in it, which is to say, no chance at all. If you happened to wonder, today's film features a character named Ace Hunter and he's all the things I mentioned above. He's also Barry "Brad Majors" Bostwick... in a skintight gold zipped jumpsuit. At this point, you're either highly tempted by the movie I'm teasing or you've already seen just about enough of Bostwick in his tighty whities in Rocky Horror. Before the later half departs, let me also mention that the film in question features missiles mounted on dirt bikes and dune buggies, Lt. Ilia from Star Trek: The Motion Picture with hair, Henry Silva in a Fidel Castro costume, and it goes by the name Megaforce. If that doesn't do it for you, then I don't know what will. Also possibly you are not a cult movie fan... or you're dead, make sure to consult your family doctor in either case.

The nation of Sadoun is under constant attack from Major Jorge Guerera (Henry Silva) and his band of mercenaries, but rather than start an international incident, Sadoun's President refuses to let his military chase Guerera across the border into the neighboring country. Sir Edward Byrne-White (Edward Mulhare), the distinguished looking British commander of Sardoun's forces, and Major Zara Benbhutto (Persis Khambatta), daughter of the President, know something must be done. They enlist the help of Megaforce, a super secret world organization supported by all free nations of the world to keep the peace. In other words, they're like the United Nations Peacekeeping force, but in place of blue helmets, they're more about lasers, missiles, flying motorcycles, and powder blue headbands. Rocking said headgear is Ace Hunter (Barry Bostwick), the tall, blonde, dashing leader of Megaforce. Hunter and Gurrera have a sordid history together, and both are ready to square off one last time. When Sadoun pulls their support from Megaforce, Hunter finds himself and his men trapped in a desert with no choice but to fight their way out.

I thought I had no youthful recollection of Megaforce until I saw the ad to the left bearing its "Deeds Not Words" slogan. I've got dozens of comics with this image plastered on the back, but somehow I never realized it was a movie. I thought it was a line of toys, perhaps confused by Kenner's war toys Mega Force, but while it had plenty of G.I. Joe trappings, it never made the miniature leap. (It did however make it to the Atari 2600, and again I don't know how I missed this one as a kid.) The movie itself starts out a little slow with the setup taking just a little too long to get around to Bostwick in his skintight gold jumpsuit. If you're not prepared to see as much if not more of Bostwick's ass than you did in Rocky Horror, then this is not the film for you. As soon as the actor strides onto the screen for the first time the movie really takes off, and from there it's really Bostwick's show. Sliding easily between tough guy, or as tough as you can be with bleached blonde feathered hair and a powder blue headband, and comedic tones, the actor seemed to get the memo on what kind of film he was in and clearly relished the part. Bostwick's Ace Hunter is Roger Moore's James Bond, G.I. Joe's Duke, and John Travolta's Stayin' Alive hair all wrapped up in one character, no easy feat.

Barry didn't do it all on his own though. While Henry Silva was woefully underused and Persis Khambatta, while quite lovely to look at, had less personality than when her Star Trek character was possessed by a rogue satellite, there were a number of minor roles that were quite entertaining. Micheal Beck (Xanadu, The Warriors) really entertains as Hunter's confidante Dallas, even if some of the dialog literally makes no sense. The Megaforce also benefited from performances by Ralph Wilcox (More American Graffiti, Seaquest 2032), George Furth (Blazing Saddles, Shampoo), and Anthony Pena (The Running Man). No one signs onto Megaforce for the incredible skill of the actors treading the boards, but instead the thick layer of cheese upon which everything is based. As I mentioned earlier, the movie is very much like a live action version of G.I. Joe with lots of explosions, lots of missile laden dune buggies, and not many people actually getting hit in all the fire. Suffice it to say, I found it delightfully entertaining.

There have been times in my life when I felt like I must have seen all the great cult films out there. There couldn't be anything that has eluded me for years, but then a title like Megaforce comes and smacks me across the grill. I can only compare Megaforce to cult classics like Hands of Steel or Golden Queen Commandos. It's the kind of film that's fun to watch alone, and it would be incredible to watch with a group of fun loving folks. Director Hal Needman, a stuntman by trade, had already directed both Smokey and the Bandit movies, Hooper, and Cannonball Run (and would go on to direct Run II, Rad, Body Slam, and Stroker Ace), but if anything seals the deal of Needman being one of the greatest genre film directors of the early '80's then it's Megaforce. No matter if you remember the film or this would be your first viewing, I highly recommend tracking down a copy. I could go on and extol the film further, but you really need to see it yourself. And, after all, Deeds Not Words.

Bugg Rating