10/9/14 (Part One): Nothing Divided By Four is Still Nothing

Tags

31 Days of Halloween, Adam Green, Adam Rifkin, AJ Bowen, anthology films, bad movies, Chillerama, cinema, Deathication, Detroit Rock City, drive-in fare, Eric Roberts, film reviews, films, horror, horror films, horror-comedies, I Was a Teenage Werebear, Joe Lynch, Kane Hodder, Knights of Badassdom, Lin Shaye, low-budget films, Mel Brooks, monster movies, Movies, multiple directors, multiple writers, parodies, Ray Wise, Richard Riehle, Ron Jeremy, satire, scatological humor, terrible films, The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, Tim Sullivan, Wadzilla, writer-director, Zom-B-Movie, zombies

I have absolutely nothing against offensive, abhorrent, socially-unacceptable humor: after all, I was raised on a steady diet of Mel Brooks, Troma, South Park and Italo-splatter films, so stuff like that is part of my cinematic DNA. When done well (and fearlessly), crude, rude humor can be a powerful tool, cutting through societal niceties in a way that allows filmmakers to make honest, pointed commentary about the less-than-perfect world we live in. Racism, sexism, gender politics, religion: these are but a few of the hot-button topics that fearlessly unflinching comedy can often handle in more powerful ways than more dramatic works. All this is by way of saying that I’m most definitely neither a prude nor an easily-outraged mouthpiece for the censorship of deviant ideas.

That being said, the multi-director horror anthology Chillerama (2011) is a complete and total piece of shit, a waste of both time and resources that manages to entertain for a scant 20 minutes out of an astoundingly painful two hour running time. This was a film that managed to lose me early, yet irritated me so profoundly that I was determined to sit through its wretched excesses in order to see how much more irritated I could become. This towering testament to scatological humor in all of its nasty, sticky excesses is both lazy and stupid, too cheaply made to be effective, too sloppily conceived to be entertaining and too needlessly offensive to be anything more than the foot-stomping tantrum of a collection of filmmakers that must, surely, fancy themselves more clever than they really are. Ultimately, my overall impression of the film can be summed up in one tidy, little declaration: I was not amused.

By their very nature, cinematic horror anthologies are always pretty safe bets for entertainment: the stories usually aren’t very long, so they don’t wear out their welcome, and they usually feature punchy twists and plenty of surprises to keep the audience guessing. In the past, I’ve watched anthologies where the current tale failed to grab me, yet my anticipation for upcoming stories would pull me through the rough patches. No such luck in Chillerama: as each fetid tale unfolded, I was only left with the sinking suspicion that each subsequent short would only be worse than the preceding one. In a feeling that Dante could certainly understand, I had abandoned all hope after entering the miraculous world of Chillerama.

Here’s what we get with this lovely little anthology film: a wrap-around segment involving horny zombies fucking and eating everything that moves at a drive-in movie theater (Zom-B-Movie, directed by Joe Lynch); a take-off on ’50s monster movies featuring a sperm that grows to the size of a house (Wadzilla, directed by and starring Adam Rifkin); a parody of ’60s surf-flicks that equates homosexuality with lycanthoropy (I Was a Teenage Werebear, directed by Tim Sullivan); an intermingling of Anne Frank and Universal Studios (The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, directed by Adam Green); and a “hilarious” send-up of scat films (Deathication, directed by Joe Lynch under the “hilarious” pseudonym, Fernando Phagabeefy).

From a purely conceptual-level, there’s no reason Chillerama shouldn’t have worked. The capsule descriptions for each short promise, at the very least, that they’ll be anything but boring. On their own rights, each of the film’s writers/directors have plenty of individual merits: Rifkin wrote and directed the ’90s cult classics The Invisible Maniac (1990) and The Dark Backward (1991), before going on to make more mainstream films like Detroit Rock City (1999) and Night At the Golden Eagle (2001); Sullivan was involved with the low-budget ’80s cult classic The Deadly Spawn (1983) and went on to write/direct the effective chiller Driftwood (2006); Green is the creator of the Hatchet series, one of the more interesting, effective modern horror franchises, as well as the subtly effective Frozen (2010); and Lynch directed the long-delayed but well-reviewed Knights of Badassdom (2013). The film features appearances from such genre greats as Ray Wise, Lin Shaye, Eric Roberts, Kane Hodder, Richard Riehle and AJ Bowen. And, most importantly, each short only clocks in at about 20-odd minutes. With all of these factors involved, what are the chances that Chillerama ends up being utterly and completely worthless? Unfortunately, the chances end up being pretty damn good.

As already mentioned above, there are a nearly limitless range of issues that help to scuttle the film but if I had to pick out my personal reason for this massive trainwreck, I lay the blame fully at the feet of the film’s lowest-common denominator obsession with scatology in all of its wonderful forms. Despite any pretensions otherwise, the entire point of “Wadzilla” becomes the final bit where the colossal sperm is blown-up and proceeds to coat the entire city with about 10,000 gallons of jizz: if you really enjoy seeing actors getting doused with buckets of fake spooge, this will, undoubtedly, be your Citizen Kane (1941). Any salient points that “I Was a Teenage Werebear” makes regarding homophobia are obliterated by things such as the forced rape of a character via baseball bat and ridiculously sub-Troma gore effects. “The Diary of Anne Frankenstein” comes out head-and-shoulders above the others simply by virtue of featuring actual jokes: despite being a little rough around the edges, it’s virtually a masterpiece compared to the others. “Deathication” is a minutes-long goof that features truly nauseating depictions of scat-play (staged, I’m hoping) and was the only short I had to fast-forward through: I like shit in films to be off-screen, thanks very much, although I’ve always laughed at Spud’s little “accident” in Trainspotting (1996). The wrap-around story, “Zom-B-Movie,” gets a big kick out of equating pseudo-pornographic humping with extreme gore, delighting in moments like a zombie plucking out an eyeball and “servicing” the hole or a wife zombie ripping off and eating her husband zombie’s penis. This particular short’s only grain of ingenuity comes from the fact that the blood in the segment is depicted as neon-blue fluid, like the inside of a Glo-stick. To be honest, it’s a simple concept that’s light-years beyond anything else in the film, “Diary of Anne Frankenstein” notwithstanding.

Look, here’s the thing: I didn’t hate Chillerama because it was offensive, scatalogical and stupid…I hated the film because it was all of these things AND poorly-made, sloppy, lazy and mean-spirited. There are plenty of ultra-low budget horror films out there that try their hardest, despite their limitations: Chillerama ain’t one of ’em. At the very least, it looks like the cast were all having a great time, so that must count for something (poor Lin Shaye even appears in two separate shorts, bless her heart). Sprinkled throughout the film are little inklings of the production it could have been, had anyone involved cared to make anything more than a tasteless goof. More than anything, Chillerama strikes me as a classic case of wasted potential, not least since it completely squanders the first gay-themed anthology short that I’ve seen in, quite possibly, forever. I mean, c’mon: the damn film squanders Ray fuckin’ Wise, for god’s sake…how do they live with themselves?

Ultimately, I haven’t felt as let-down by a film as I have by Chillerama in quite some time. Even though I enjoy the individual filmmakers’ work, to a greater or lesser degree (I actually really like Green’s films, especially the vastly under-rated Frozen), this was nothing but a complete disappointment. If you’re so inclined, check out Green’s short, which manages to hit some nearly Mel Brooksian levels of absurdity, mostly thanks to a truly inspired performance by Joel David Moore as a very stupid Hitler. Other than that (relative) high-point, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to recommend Chillerama. If you want an intentionally bad movie, go watch Sharknado (2013): at least that has a totally wacked-out Tara Reid to recommend it…all Chillerama features are a bunch of bored jokesters playing chicken with the audience. My advice? Don’t take the bet.

6/22/14: It Came From Space! (Circa 1983 or Thereabouts)

Tags

alien impregnation, alien invasion, aliens, Almost Human, Anthony Amaral III, B-movies, body horror, cinema, directorial debut, drive-in fare, extreme violence, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Friday the 13th, friendships, gory films, Graham Skipper, Hobo With a Shotgun, horror, horror films, horror movies, Jami Tennille, Joe Begos, John Ethier, lights in the sky, low-budget films, missing friends, Movies, period-piece, psycho killers, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, science-fiction, set in the 1980's, slasher films, The House of the Devil, UFOs, Vanessa Leigh, violent, writer-director

It’s not much of a secret that modern horror productions seem to be particularly enamored with the 1980s. Whether filmmakers are crafting straight-up remakes of popular ’80s titles or crafting films that are, basically, homages to ’80s horror, such as Gutterballs (2008), The House of the Devil (2009) or Hobo With a Shotgun (2011), the decade between Friday the 13th (1980) and Puppet Master (1989) certainly seems to be fertile soil, as of late. My theory on the reasoning behind this is pretty simple: as the folks who grew up on ’80s horror get older and move into positions where they can begin to create their own content (directors and writers, for sure, but I’m thinking specifically of producers and studios, here), it’s only natural for them to return to the stuff that first fired them up as kids. Whereas previous generations might have been influenced by weekly serials, ’60s-’70s pop-culture/societal issues and the Cold War, the generation of filmmakers who came of age in the ’80s were influenced by their own particular set of issues and found comfort in their own “new” subgenres, such as slasher films and graphic sci-fi/horror combos like Creature (1985) and The Fly (1986). When it finally came time for the “children of VHS” to make their own films, it shouldn’t be surprising that they returned to their formative era: once the folks who grew up in the ’90s begin to take over, we should be seeing lots of rebooted ’90s properties (there’s already a Scream TV series in the works, so the cycle appears to have begun a little early). Life, as Stephen King so eloquently put it, is such a wheel that it always, in the end, comes round to the same place again.

One-man wrecking crew, Joe Begos, is a little young to comfortably fit within my above theory (he was born in 1987, making him a good decade younger than his “peers”) but he fits the bill so perfectly that he must be an old soul. The writer-director-producer-cinematographer-camera operator behind Almost Human (2013) announced his entry to the world of feature filmmaking with a sci-fi horror movie that could have fit perfectly within the ’80s, sandwiched somewhere between Xtro (1983) and The Hidden (1987). Far from being just a clever approximation of a bygone decade, however, Begos’ film manages to combine all of the necessary ingredients (rudimentary acting, gory practical effects, plenty of action sequences, goopy makeup, intense violence) with a loopy sense of energy and comes up with something that’s suitably rough but just endearing enough to make you want to write Begos’ name on your Trapper Keeper. If ever there were a new genre filmmaker to watch, this guy might just be it.

Set in 1987, Almost Human kicks off in sci-fi high-gear with our terrified protagonist, Seth (Graham Skipper, looking like a slightly doughy Daniel Radcliffe), rushing to the cabin of best friend Mark (Josh Ethier) and his wife, Jen (Vanessa Leigh). Seth has just watched as mutual friend Rob was sucked up into the sky, via a shaft of blue light, and the event has him a little unsettled…actually, he’s in a complete panic but why split hairs? Mark is a burly, Brawny Towel-kind of a dude, so he doesn’t seem too ruffled over Seth’s jibber-jabber. Too bad, since Seth is absolutely right: there’s something otherworldly out there and it sucks Mark straight up into the sky, leaving his terrified wife and buddy standing around as the air is filled with intense screeching and blinding, flashing lights. Smash-cut to the title, white letters on a severe, black background and you might be forgiven for thinking you’d booted up the VCR instead of the Blu-Ray.

Two years later and Seth has been cleared as a suspect but nothing else has really gone right for him: Mark and Rob never turned up, Jen moved on to a new guy, Clyde (Anthony Amaral III) and Seth is prone to headaches, nose bleeds and a generally shitty lifestyle. After two years of relative “peace,” however, things have started to happen again: power outages have become common-place again and folks have been seeing weird lights in the sky. Something appears to be brewing and a pair of unfortunate hunters stumble, literally, right into the middle of everything when they happen upon Mark’s naked body in the middle of the woods. Mark seems to be alive but doesn’t seem quite right (he appears to be covered in amniotic fluid which, for a grown, naked man is usually a dead giveaway that shit is not, in face, okay): his eyes look weird, he seems to be in shock and doesn’t say much more than “Jen,” over and over. He also ends up killing the two hunters with his bare hands, which is probably as good an indicator as any that the Mark we now see ain’t the Mark we once knew.

After taking some clothes and a rifle, Mark proceeds into town, cutting a bloody swath through anyone unlucky enough to confront him. His goal appears to be some kind of reconciliation with his former wife but to what end? As Seth finally reconnects with Jen, the two are forced to team up against a truly otherworldly force: you see, Mark is finally home but he’s both a lot less and a lot more than he used to be. What exactly does he want? Why, he just wants what anybody wants: he wants to start a family with the person he loves, that’s all. Unfortunately, Mark’s notions of fatherhood are more in line with Alien (1979) than Leave It To Beaver, leading to a desperate, all-in fight to save humanity from an evil, insidious force from beyond the stars…a force that, like a shark, knows only a few imperatives: eat…procreate…repeat. Can Seth and Jen survive? Can any of us?

From the above description, one could be forgiven for believing that Almost Human is a pretty traditional Alien/Xtro clone about an alien creature that uses humans for feeding and breeding: in reality, the film is actually much closer to a traditional slasher film dolled-up in sci-fi trappings. This actually allows Begos to do two different things: he can create a more traditional slasher, right down to the emphasis on varied methods of death, and he can throw in enough body-horror/sci-fi ickiness to make sure that this doesn’t just read like a Friday the 13th clone. How’s it work out? Pretty damn nicely, to be honest. The slasher elements are strong and well-done, if not particularly inventive (axes, close-range shotguns, scissors and knives all get workouts) but they’re given an additional shot in the arm by the sci-fi elements. While this definitely helps reign the film’s budget in (Begos, like other low-budget horror filmmakers, has learned that the cheapest villains are always the ones who look the most like us, even if they’re filled with aliens/ghosts/mystery juice/a dose of the crazies), the mixture is good enough that it never feels like a cop-out. Indeed, Bego’s sci-fi elements lead to some of the film’s strongest, strangest scenes such as the ooky “pod people” and Mark’s attempted rape/impregnation of Jen via nasty alien tube thingamabopper. Too many scenes of Mark trooping around with a glare and an ax and we get a pretty generic “dead teenager” film: too much outer space mumbo-jumbo and we get the equivalent of one of Corman’s micro-budget ’80s sci-fi curiosities (many of which were the Asylum/Syfy films of their era, as it was). It’s to Begos’ immense credit that the film always feels perfectly balanced: it always feels like a cheaply made B-movie but never feels awkward or disposable.

From a filmmaking standpoint, Almost Human can be hit-or-miss but most of the issues can be chalked up to “first-time filmmaker jitters” or any of the woes normally associated with micro-budget productions: the acting is pretty iffy, the sound mix is absolutely awful (when will low-budget filmmakers ever learn that sound is too fucking important to be handled by whoever has a free hand?) and some of the plot developments felt completely arbitrary, even for a low-budget horror film. That being said, Almost Human never feels sub-standard and is never difficult to watch: whatever minor flaws the film may have, Begos’ cinematography and the film’s editing style aren’t two of them. I’ve seen plenty of low-budget horror films that are practically painful to sit through: wildly inconsistent acting, poor lighting, crappy camera-work, lame scripts and ridiculous CGI effects. While Begos’ film isn’t a masterpiece, it also doesn’t fall prey to any of these potential deal breakers. The acting may be rough but it’s consistently rough, which makes it a lot harder to notice, ironically enough. The lighting and cinematography are good, as are the practical effects (truth be told, the effects work is actually very good, budget notwithstanding) and the script is solid, if less than spectacular.

Ultimately, as a life-long horror fan, it was impossible for me not to be suitably impressed by Begos’ feature-film debut. While the film was far from perfect, it also revealed a genuine love of the genre and an inherent ability that speaks extremely well for future projects (Begos interned with Stuart Gordon, which may go a long way towards explaining not only the younger filmmaker’s “older” aesthetic but also his affinity for nasty effects work). Begos may have been all of three years old when the ’80s slid into the ’90s but his aesthetic (both visually and thematically) is strictly old-school video store. When a 27-year-old writer/director includes a credit listing for a “Fake Shemp” in his debut film, let’s just say that it’s pretty obvious his head (and heart) is in the right place. Anyone who grew up in the era of direct-to-VHS shockers, low-budget slashers and ultra-gory sci-fi chillers should find something to like about Begos’ Almost Human. If you require the relentless polish and shine of “modern,” CGI-endowed horror films, however, look elsewhere: Begos ain’t for you. For me, however, I’m gonna be sure to keep the kid in my sights: after all, if Almost Human is the first lap, I can’t wait to see how this race progresses.

6/5/14 (Part Two): Way Beyond Overdrive

Tags

AC/DC, B-movies, bad films, bad movies, based on a short story, cinema, comet, directorial debut, drive-in fare, Ellen McElduff, Emilio Estevez, Film, film reviews, films, Giancarlo Esposito, Green Goblin, hard-rock soundtrack, horror films, ice cream truck, John Short, Laura Harrington, living machines, Maximum Overdrive, Movies, Night of the Creeps, Pat Hingle, rocket launcher, sci-fi, science-fiction, set in the 1980's, Stephen King, terrible films, truck stop, trucks, Who Made Who, writer-director, Yeardley Smith

There’s a bit of a stigma attached to filmed adaptations of Stephen King novels/stories, something that almost approaches urban legend: with very few exceptions, movies made out of King’s catalog aren’t very good. There are, as mentioned, some pretty popular exceptions, such as Rob Reiner’s adaptation of Stand By Me (1986) and Darabont’s The Green Mile (1999). For the most part, however, King adaptations never seem to get it right, either treating the source material slavishly or managing to completely bungle the tone. By the mid-’80s, King decided to take matters into his own hands, end the curse and write/direct a film version of his short story, “Trucks.” The result could have been the definitive King adaptation: after all, who better to get into the mind of the Master of Horror than the master, himself? The end result, of course, was a bit different: Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive (1986) is not only one of the worst King adaptations of all time, it’s also one of the worst films of its era. The lesson is blazingly clear: while prose and screenwriting may look awfully similar, they’re two very different beasts and being a master of one means nothing whatsoever in regards to the other. It also makes another point painfully clear: being a best-selling author makes one about as qualified to direct a feature-length film as being a world-class gymnast.

After a short intro sets up the scenario (Earth has passed into the tail of a rogue comet and will remain there for the next eight days), King jumps us right into the action, which makes the biggest flaw of the film all too clear: it’s unrelentingly stupid. King makes an appearance as a bug-eyed yokel who stares stupidly as an electronic marquee-sign changes to read “Fuck you” and an ATM flashes him the message, “You’re an asshole.” As King pops his eyes out (cuz he’s “comically surprised,” dontcha know?) and leans into the camera, he relates the classic line,” Sugarbuns, come look at this: the machine called me an asshole!” Cue AC/DC’s “Who Made Who,” roll the opening credits and give your soul to the movie gods: it’ll gets worse from here.

Like the short story upon which it’s based, Maximum Overdrive concerns a very Kingish scenario: the aforementioned comet has, for some reason, caused all of the machines on Earth to “come to life” and act independently. This means that vehicles drive themselves around, soda machines spit out cans like ammunition, electric carving knives cut through the air as if propelled by invisible hands, drawbridges raise and lower themselves and ATMs call people “asshole.” For the next eight days, humans are no longer the masters of their own technology: machines are mad as hell and they won’t take it any more! After we see a bunch of this chaos in action, including a slapstick scene involving an animate drawbridge and a truck full of watermelons, we finally settle into the truck stop that will form the setting for the remainder of the film. Once there, we meet the usual group of colorful characters: ex-con turned short-order cook, Bill (Emilio Estevez); his sleazy, obnoxious boss, Bubba Hendershot (Pat Hingle); ridiculously melodramatic waitress, Wanda June (Ellen McElduff); truck stop attendants (and fellow ex-cons) Duncan (J.C. Quinn), Joe (Pat Miller) and Brad (Leon Rippy) and random videogame player Giancarlo Esposito (otherwise known as Gus Fring on Breaking Bad).

In short order, as the machines begin to take over the outside world, the small band of survivors are joined by others: newlyweds Curtis (John Short) and Connie (the Simpsons’ Yeardley Smith); hitch-hiker Brett (Laura Harrington) and the sleazy bible salesman that gave her a ride (and tried to feel her up), as well as Duncan’s adorable Little League uniform-adorned son, Deke (Deke Holter). Deke makes his way to the truck stop after surviving a harrowing attack at the diamond that begins innocently enough, with an insane soda machine pelting his coach in the crotch with high-speed cans (Q: What’s funnier than multiple soda cans to the crotch? A: If you’re Stephen King, nothing.) and ends horribly, with said soda machine putting a can through his coach’s head. Yikes: talk about the adverse health affects of sugary beverages!

Once this motley crew all converge on the truck stop, a rampaging group of driverless semi-trucks, led by a particularly nasty toy company truck with a Green Goblin head, pen them in, encircling the truck stop and running over anyone who dares to break free. Anyone familiar with the source material will know that these trucks may be all-powerful (the original story was called “Trucks,” after all) but that they still need a little human touch when it comes to gassing up. In King’s original story, this aspect led to a bleak finale where humanity becomes enslaved to their new mechanical overlords. This time around, however, it’s all rocket launchers, “witty” one-liners (a character actually utters the line “Eat my shorts.” For real. I would not lie to you.) and good ol’ human gumption as Billy leads the survivors in one last, ultimate push against the deadly trucks. I won’t give anything away but let’s just say that “Who Made Who” makes another appearance and that song always brings the party.

There are a lot of reasons why Maximum Overdrive is a pretty awful film but most of them lead directly back to King, whether in his capacity as screenwriter or director. The script, by itself, is dreadful, full of wooden dialogue, zero characterization (Billy and Brett are a couple sorely because it says so right there on the printed page), a bafflingly inconsistent tone (extreme slapstick scenes sit right next to stuff that should cut deeper, such as the aforementioned Little League massacre) and completely arbitrary plot developments. The acting, aside from Estevez, who always manages to rise above the material, is consistently hysterical and over-the-top, none more so than the amazing creature that is Wanda June. For some bizarre reason, Ellen McElduff opts to bring her best Greek tragic acting style to the role, culminating in the scene where she rushes outside and repeatedly hollers, “You can’t! We made you!” at the trucks. She shakes her fists at the heavens, shouts til her veins pop out and even sinks to her knees: it’s a performance that absolutely befits King Oedipus but comes across as ludicrously OTT for a truck stop waitress. If this was an actual directorial/acting choice, it seems bizarre: if this was just an unchecked performance, it doesn’t say much about King’s command of the cast.

Similarly, longtime Simpsons’ voice actor Yeardley Smith (Lisa, among many, many others) makes an appearance here as Connie, one half of the nearly brain-dead duo of Curtis and Connie. Smith is so obnoxiously screechy, so whiny and just flat-out terrible, that she literally grinds the film to a halt whenever she makes an appearance. Forget the character’s motivations, which make not one whit of sense (at one point, Connie seems devastated by the destruction of their car: why treat the car as if it were a dead child?): it’s her obnoxious voice and/or personality that really come across like fingernails on chalkboard. Most of the other actors play their characters fairly broad (Pat Hingle is so damn devious as Bubba that he may as well have cloven hoofs) but McElduff and Smith deserve a special place in this film’s Hall of Shame.

Despite the massed silliness on display here (or perhaps because of it, who knows), Maximum Overdrive does possess a certain gonzo “so-bad-it’s-okay” charm that makes the film an easy watch (especially in a part environment). It will never be mistaken for anything approaching a good film (compare this with Fred Dekker’s Night of the Creeps, also from the same year, to see how to make a really great B-movie) but it certainly has its moments. The Green Goblin-faced truck is a pretty great adversary, even if it doesn’t get any lines or do much more than drive around and look menacing. There’s also a nicely realized gag involving a driverless ice-cream truck playing Roger Miller’s “King of the Road,” which easily amounts to the film’s most mature joke. As previously mentioned, Estevez is really good: he’s one of those actors who can keep my eyes glued to the screen even when he’s the only thing worth watching. I must also admit to throwing more than my fair share of devil-horns into the air during the film, as well: when the score consists entirely of AC/DC tunes (including “Hell’s Bells” and “Highway to Hell”), some headbanging must be expected, although their actual “score” contributions amount to little more than random guitar riffs that spring up during the film’s various action sequences. Regardless, no film can be truly worthless when AC/DC is involved.

Ultimately, your capacity to appreciate Maximum Overdrive will depend entirely on your tolerance for Z-grade schlock entertainment. While King’s directorial debut is sloppy, silly and nonsensical, it’s also propulsive and mercifully short. Pair this with another B-movie (as I did with Night of the Creeps) and you’re looking at a fairly amusing experience. Luckily for the world, King took the hint here and hasn’t returned to the director’s chair: although his first effort managed to cram a Simpson’s reference, flying watermelons, killer trucks and Pat Hingle into the same film, perhaps it’s better for us all if he just sticks to literature.

 

6/5/14 (Part One): Your Date’s Here!

Tags

1980's, aliens, Allan Kayser, B-movies, black-and-white cinematography, Bradster, Bruce Solomon, Christopher Romero, cinema, Corman University, cult classic, cult films, Cynthia Cronenberg, David Paymer, Det. Ray Cameron, Detective Landis, Dick MIller, drive-in fare, favorite films, film reviews, films, frat boys, fraternities, Fred Dekker, frozen bodies, horror films, horror references, horror-comedies, House, infections, Jason Lively, Jill Whitlow, killer slugs, meteor, Movies, Night of the Creeps, pledge week, pop culture references, Ray Cameron, Robert C. New, Robert Kino, Robert Kurtzman, Roger Corman, sci-fi, science-fiction, set in the 1950's, set in the 1980's, Sgt. Raimi, small town life, Steve Marshall, teenagers, The Monster Squad, Tom Atkins, unibrow, unibrows, wisecracking cops, writer-director, zombie frat boys, zombies

There’s a fine art that goes into making a truly fun, trashy B-horror film. If the film is too lo-fi, charmless and crude, it can be a chore to sit through. If the film is too goofy and self-aware, it can be overly silly and lightweight. Just right, however, like that proverbial porridge, and the mixture can be truly magical. I’ve had a big problem warming to modern-day B-films like Snakes on a Plane (2006) and Sharknado (2013), finding them to be way too self-aware and, quite frankly, overly obnoxious: shrill, unpleasant characters and ridiculously shoddy CGI don’t do much for me. For my money, I’ve always preferred B-movies from the ’80s, finding them to be warmer, more personable and less interested in self-reference than films from later eras. As someone who’s always appreciated practical effects, ’80s B-horror films provided plenty of memorable moments.

Perhaps Scream (1996) was too successful at pointing out the foibles of the horror genre because many horror films that followed it seemed less like individual pieces than attempts at genre critique and re-invention. The true key to making a good B-movie is to set out to make a good film, period: trying to make a good “bad” film is a fool’s errand. As far as I’m concerned, some of the most honest, entertaining, funny and well-made B-horror films have come out of the extraordinarily fertile time-period between 1983-1989. No discussion of this era, as far as I’m concerned, could be complete without giving due props to one of its most interesting filmmakers: Fred Dekker. Dekker may not have the deep and extensive filmography of some of his peers but he bears the distinction of being directly responsible for three of the best B-horror films of the 1980s: he wrote the screenplay for the minor/Miner classic House (1986) and wrote/directed the unmitigated awesomeness that were Night of the Creeps (1986) and The Monster Squad (1987). Although Night of the Creeps may not be quite as well-known as The Monster Squad (Drac, Frank and Wolfie trump alien slugs, apparently), it’s every bit as good: fast-paced, endlessly clever, funny and genuinely creepy, Night of the Creeps is the epitome of classic drive-in fare.

After a spartan credits sequence which recalls the credits for Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) in its simplicity, we’re tossed into outer space for a truly gonzo opening: fleshy, pink aliens that look like combinations of Teletubbies and Xenomorphs run around a space ship, shooting cheesy lasers at each other, on-screen subtitles translating their gibberish-speak. An alien escapes, via pod, leading us straight to Sorority Row, circa 1959, where we get some great black and white cinematography, plenty of clever references to ’50s genre films, an escaped serial killer (with an ax), necking teens on Lovers’ Lane, alien slugs and a jilted ex-boyfriend/cop. A slashing axe smash cuts straight to Pledge Week, circa 1986, complete with vibrant color. The whole opening sequence has taken all of ten minutes of screen-time and the message is clear: we’re in the hands of a master, so kick back and enjoy the ride.

In short order, we meet our heroes: Chris (Jason Lively) is the typical 1980s “nice guy/shy nerd” while his best buddy, J.C. (Steve Marshall) is the typical “quirky, brash, smart-assed, outsider best friend with a heart of gold.” They’re freshmen at Corman University, where Chris pines for the lovely Cynthia (Jill Whitlow). She’s a Kappa Delta, however, and dating the president of the obnoxious Beta fraternity, Brad (Allan Kayser). What’s a nice guy to do besides try to pledge the Betas and win her heart? Since this is an ’80s-genre film, however, it’s never going to be that easy. After the Betas send wannabe-pledges Chris and J.C. to go steal a body from the campus medical lab, things really start to warm up: literally, as the cyrogenically-frozen body they steal (a body that astute viewers should remember from the opening) seems to come to life and wander about the campus. Looks like a job for Det. Ray Cameron (Tom Atkins), the jilted boyfriend from the opening, who’s now a “damaged,” hard-drinking cop with a catch-phrase (“Thrill me”) and enough ennui to choke the aristocracy.

As Det. Cameron tries to figure out how a 27-years-dead corpse just gets up and walks away, Chris and JC begin to notice strange things happening around campus. Soon, Corman University is in the grip of a full-bore alien-brain-slug invasion (another alien-brain-slug invasion? Geez…) and it’s up to our heroes, along with Cynthia and the cynical detective, to make it all right. What happens when the brain-slugs come upon an entire overturned bus full of frat boys, as well as one long-dead axe murderer? Well, let’s just say that all hell breaks loose and leave it at that. Love…duty…pledging…Bullwinkle Moose…brain slugs…alien bounty-hunters…it’s just another day at good ol’ Corman U!

If the opening featuring the Teletubbie-esque aliens was no giveaway, let me be a little more clear: Night of the Creeps has its tongue planted so firmly in its cheek that it pokes through the other side…and that’s a distinctly good thing. Not only is the script and dialogue genuinely funny (Det. Cameron is a hoot and J.C.’s wisecracks land more often than they miss) but the film possesses a level of self-awareness that manages to skip right past “easy, obnoxious references” (although there are plenty of those) and straight to the core of traditional B-horror/sci-fi films. Across the board, Night of the Creeps manages to nail its various targets quite ably: one of the best examples is the exceptionally broad, silly acting that characterizes the opening ’50s-era footage. While the performances would be eye-rolling in any other context, they’re a perfect fit for the kind of cheesy ’50s-sci-fi/drive-in fare that Dekker and crew are trying to reference. Likewise, the “present-day” stuff perfectly references various horror products from the ’80s without losing the cheerful, goofy tone of the earlier material. It’s a delicate balancing act but Night of the Creeps manages to not only reference but subtly comment on these different eras (the black and white cinematography is, of course, just more icing on the cake).

One of the most obvious in-jokes in the film, albeit a joke that’s revealed gradually, involves the names of the various characters. The film takes place at Corman University, which should be a pretty easy “get” for most casual fans. Beyond that, however, it becomes a bit of a free-for-all: James Carpenter “J.C.” Hooper…Chris Romero…Cynthia Cronenberg…Detective Landis…Sgt. Raimi…Det. Ray Cameron…it’s sort of a “greatest-hits” of ’70s-’80s genre greats. We even get the real thing, in a way, when Corman regular Dick Miller makes an appearance as Walter, the cop in charge of weapon lockup at Det. Cameron’s precinct (fans might remember that Miller’s character in the classic A Bucket of Blood (1959) was named Walter Paisley). The fan services bits like this are a nice touch and, although a bit heavy-handed later in the film (the scene where Chris and J.C.’s names are revealed is so on-the-nose that it spoils the gag just a little), give a nice sense of unity to the proceedings.

While many of the jokes in Night of the Creeps are related to the horror/sci-fi genre, there’s still plenty of general hilarity to be found throughout. Whether it’s Cro-Magnon football bro Steve’s amazing unibrow (seriously: this piece of facial fuzz deserves its own end credit), the bathroom graffiti that enthusiastically affirms that “Stryper Rules!” (cuz, you know, they never did), Det. Cameron’s wisecracks (“Thrill me” never gets old and leads to a truly fist-raising finale) or Chris explaining his misidentification of a particular frat house as “It’s all Greek to me,” Night of the Creeps constantly moves from one great, funny moment to another. By the time we get to the iconic scene where Det. Cameron gives the girls of Kappa Delta the good/bad news (“The good news is your dates are here…bad news is, they’re dead”), Dekker’s script has proven itself time and time again.

The key thing to look for in B-movies like this is always going to be the “fun factor” and Night of the Creeps is consistently off-the-charts in this area. This is the kind of film that’s perfect for a rowdy get-together, a weekend trash-movie marathon or a drive-in in the heart of summertime. While the film doesn’t necessarily shy away from gooey special effects, it doesn’t wallow in them, either: the practical effects, which feature future KNB founder Robert Kurtzman, are pretty great (particularly the eye-popping bit where the long-dead axe murderer gets a new lease on life) but they never choke the life out of the film.

As a whole, almost everything in Night of the Creeps works spectacularly well. The acting is uniformly strong (although Jason Lively’s Chris is a bit of a wet blanket), the aforementioned effects work is great and the cinematography, by industry vet Robert. C. New (Prom Night (1980), The Borrower (1991), Rapture-palooza (2013)), is uniformly excellent. Indeed, Night of the Creeps has to be one of the best-looking, most vibrantly colored B-horror films to ever grace the silver screen. Truth be told, there really isn’t much not to like here, although the ridiculously stereotypical Asian janitor, Mr. Miner (Robert Kino), comes perilously close to being in rather poor taste: it’s no worse than many ’80s-era depictions of Asian characters (and quite a bit more gentle, to be honest) but feels completely out-of-place in the film’s good-natured universe. That notwithstanding, however, Night of the Creeps is one of the very best B-horror films to come out of the 1980s. Whether you’re looking for a great way to kill time or a great way to get the party started, Dekker’s Night of the Creeps has you covered. In fact, I’m inclined to call it the “Citizen Kane of alien-brain-slug/zombie frat boy” films. If you can find a better one, I’ll buy and eat a hat.

5/30/14 (Part One): Beware the Melty Man

Tags

'70s films, '70s-era, 1970's cinema, Alex Rebar, All Buy Mice Elf Film Festival, astronauts, B-movies, body horror, Burr DeBenning, cannibalism, cinema, drive-in fare, film reviews, films, horror, horror films, horror movie, Jonathan Demme, melting people, Movies, Myron Healey, Rick Baker, sci-fi, science-fiction, special effects, special-effects extravaganza, Steve West, Ted Nelson, The Incredible Melting Man, William Sachs, writer-director

While iconic villains are a vital component to horror films (particularly franchises), they’re also one of the most difficult aspects of a film to nail. Despite the exponential increase in the sheer number of horror films, we haven’t really added many “classic” villains to the roster since the ’80s: while characters like Laid to Rest’s (2009) ChromeSkull and Hatchet’s (2006) Victor Crowley have been in a few films, by this point, they’ve yet to achieve any sort of cultural resonance. One could argue that Leprechaun’s (1993) titular character counts, since he’s now been featured in seven different films (after all, Freddy only had a total of 9 films, including the recent reboot). As with ChromeSkull and Crowley, however, the Leprechaun never really made it to Buzz Bin status: he’s working-class but no hero. There have been many attempts to spawn a new horror icon, over the years, but very few ever end up taking off. One of the strangest of these attempts to craft a bit of zeitgeist came about in 1977 with The Incredible Melting Man, a B-movie with pretensions to immortality.

Despite some pretty impressive makeup effects by a young Rick Baker and a tagline that explicitly announced the filmmakers’ intentions (“The first new horror creature”), The Incredible Melting Man did not go on to spawn a franchise…or even a sequel, as it were. Whether audiences had a hard time associating with the gloopy titular monster or whether the (decidedly rough) production-quality put them off makes little difference. As it stands, The Incredible Melting Man is a complete failure at creating a lasting legacy but pretty successful as a goofy, gory popcorn film.

Astronaut Steve West (Alex Rebar) is part of an expedition to fly through the rings of Saturn when something goes wrong: his nose begins to bleed, things get fuzzy and he wakes up in a hospital. After removing his facial bandages, Steve notices something: he doesn’t look too hot. In fact, he seems to be rotting. This kinda ticks him off (wouldn’t it bother you?) and he pounds the table, apeman-style, before trashing the examination room. A nurse returns in time to get chased by Steve in a scene filmed with the kind of gauzy slo-mo that usually ended ’70s horror films, not began them. She crashes through a glass door (saved a second on opening it, I suppose), Steve’s right there and it’s “Good night, nurse!”

We now meet Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) and Dr. Loring (Lisle Wilson) as they examine the nurse’s body. Ted knows a little about this situation, since he was Steve’s friend and was involved with the Saturn mission. He’s also the most laid-back, unflappable, milquetoast “hero” of all time: the scene where he describes to Dr. Loring how his wife, Judy (Ann Sweeny), is pregnant with their third child, after two previous miscarriages, has all of the emotional impact of a colonoscopy. Any “clues” he turns up along the way will be greeted with the mild distaste that one might express when finding caterpillars on the cabbages: Ted Nelson may be the “hero” in The Incredible Melting Man but the guy would be a zero just about anywhere else.

As poor Steve stomps around the countryside, leaving gloopy handprints here, a bit of his ear there (“Oh God…it’s his ear,” exclaims Ted, in a way that practically screams “Could I possibly have a refill on my glass of water, please, if it’s not too much of a bother?”) and dead bodies everywhere, Ted is forced to get General Perry (Myron Healey) involved. Together, Ted and the General set out to stop Steve’s killing spree, albeit for different reasons: the General wants all traces of this disaster dead and gone, while Ted only wants to help out his soupy buddy. It all comes to a head at some kind of a factory, where Ted’s friendship will be stretched to the limit and Steve will have to try, if only for a moment, to regain his basic humanity.

When The Incredible Melting Man is rough, it’s really rough. The acting is rudimentary, at best, with some performances being so howlingly terrible that they achieve a kind of gonzo spectacle. Alex Rebar, in particular, is awful: were he to stay “normal” throughout the film, the movie would actually be unwatchable, although getting buried in the melting man makeup restricts his performance to strictly physical, which works wonders. While Burr DeBenning is nowhere near as terrible, he manages to possess as much energy and life as a department-store mannequin (and not the ’80s kind, either). In the world of the over-actors, the under-actor is king and DeBenning rules his roost from a godly height. The musical score is also pretty ludicrous: the final pursuit in the factory is scored by some of the cheesiest wah-wah guitar possible, along with a pathetic rip-off of John Williams Jaws theme.

Among the shoddier filmmaking aspects are some genuinely “so-bad-it’s-great” moments. My personal favorite has to be the one where Steve steps on the fisherman’s sandwich. It’s the oddest, most awkward and just plain confounding scene in the entire film (which is saying a lot): for some reason, we get a close-up of a plastic “monster” foot (think Gwar) stomping awkwardly on a sandwich, as if the “actor” accidentally tripped and was immortalized on film. Another forehead-slapper would have to be Judy’s ridiculously horny mother and step-father, who stop for a little hanky-panky and orange picking in the middle of the night and get a nasty Steve-sized surprise: not only are the actors terrible (bested only by their avatar, Alex Rebar) but the situation makes no sense whatsoever.

Far from being a complete waste of film and time, however, The Incredible Melting Man is actually quite charming, believe it or not. It will never be accused of being a good film, mind you, but it’s a pretty great B-movie. The movie is definitely cheesy (and very, very soupy) but it’s also got a surprising amount of pathos wrapped up within the idiocy. Steve West, when he’s not talking, is a tremendously sympathetic creature and not so far removed from Frankenstein’s Monster or The Wolf Man. He’s a normal man, with normal friends and a normal life, who is completely destroyed by forces outside his command. He’s turned into a monster, hunted by the very government who facilitated his transformation and has his waning sense of humanity constantly appealed to by his former best friend. Steve West is no sadistic Freddy or Wishmaster: rather, he’s a pitiable creature who seems to take no joy in his mayhem. There’s one moment that perfectly illustrates the two halves of this character: after he’s turned into a completely horrifying, shambling mess, Steve looks down into a water-filled barrel, right at his reflection. As he stares, a drop of pus, like a tear, falls into the water, rippling the image. Say what you want but it’s a powerful, subtle moment that manages to perfectly blend pathos and ick factor: in other words, it’s a picture-perfect horror movie moment.

Too much can’t be said about Rick Baker’s phenomenal special effects, which really give the film a sense of identity. While the makeup starts off a tad bit rough, we’re in glorious hardcore mode once Steve really gets to rottin’. At first, I was wondering whether the version of the film I recently watched was censored: an early shot of the dead nurse seems surprisingly tame and cut-off and there’s some weird editing going on. Once we get to the shot of the fisherman’s body, however, complete with ripped-open ribcage and a severed head, it’s pretty clear that not much hit the cutting room floor. Truth be told, The Incredible Melting Man, as befits its moniker, gets severely goopy, so much so that it begins to resemble one of those extended Family Guy vomiting scenes. If your stomach isn’t fairly cast-iron, chances are that Steve’s melted-wax look is really going to rumble your guts: make it through enough of the film, however, and it kind of fades into the background, sort of like all the nudity in Showgirls (1995). For my part, some of the most stomach-churning stuff came from scenes like the one where an unsuspecting young girl puts her hand into a nice, sticky bit of Steve slop: the thought, alone, is undeniably gross but the practical effects make it even worse. Ditto for the final melting scene, which would be echoed a decade later in the gross-out classic Street Trash (1987). While Street Trash would plumb it for laughs, The Incredible Melting Man goes straight for the heart-strings, reminding us that the disgusting pile of wet, red something on the ground used to be a pretty average (if terribly hammy) dude.

While The Incredible Melting Man may not have succeeded in adding another indelible villain to the collective conscience, it ended up being a more than worthy B-movie. It’s not hard to imagine couples going to see this at the drive-in, covering their eyes whenever Steve shambles up into the camera-eye. For folks who grew up on this kind of sensational, B-movie fare, The Incredible Melting Man should more than fit the bill for a night of nostalgia. Just be sure to keep this one away from the dinner hour: for once, this is all about truth in advertising.