10/18/14 (Part One): Run, Rabbit, Run!

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31 Days of Halloween, Bill Moseley, cheerleaders, Chris Hardwick, Dennis Fimple, derivative, Dr. Satan, dysfunctional family, Erin Daniels, feature-film debut, Halloween, Harrison Young, horror, horror films, horror movies, House of 1000 Corpses, insane families, Jennifer Jostyn, Karen Black, Matthew McGrory, Rainn Wilson, Rob Zombie, Robert Mukes, Sheri Moon Zombie, Sid Haig, the Firefly family, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Tobe Hooper, Tom Towles, torture, Walter Phelan, Walton Goggins, William Bassett, writer-director, zombies

As a teenage metal-head who just happened to be obsessed with horror films, White Zombie was pretty much the perfect band: ultra-heavy, groovy, brutal and a visual spectacle that relied heavily on shock imagery and schlock culture, I was a fan from the moment I laid ears on them. I followed the band religiously until they broke up before the turn of the 2000s, at which point frontman Rob Zombie decided to go the “solo” route, continuing to churn out the same brand of industrialized rock minus the feel of an actual band. While I’ve always felt that the solo stuff was a pale imitation of the band era, my rationale has always been “A little is better than nothing” and I continued to check out Zombie’s output, albeit with slightly less enthusiasm than before.

When Zombie announced that he would be turning his attention to films, I was immediately intrigued, given his lifelong dedication to all things horror. His resulting debut, House of 1000 Corpses (2003) ended up being delayed for several years, although I can still recall how excited I was to finally get a chance to see the film in theaters. At the time, I was completely blown away: the film was vibrant, entertaining, gory and as sick as they come, with some phenomenal performances from genre vets like Bill Moseley and Sid Haig. I remember being so impressed with the film that I ended up seeing it a couple of times in the theater, a relative rarity for someone who usually has a “one and done” mentality about seeing films on the big screen.

Over the years, I’ve returned to House of 1000 Corpses periodically, although I must admit that it’s been some time since I really paid attention to the film: it had become so familiar, over time, that I had a tendency to just let it play in the background, only focusing on it during any of the numerous setpieces. When it came time to plan this year’s Halloween viewings, I decided to re-screen both House of 1000 Corpses and its direct sequel, The Devil’s Rejects (2005), and actually pay attention, this time. Similar to my re-evaluations of formerly beloved films, I wanted to see if House of 1000 Corpses stood the test of time or whether it would end up receiving a Clerks (1994)-style drubbing from someone who had “moved on,” so to speak. As might be expected, I found that my impression of House of 1000 Corpses changed significantly after this viewing: while there’s still a lot of the film that I enjoy, it’s pretty impossible to see Zombie’s debut as anything other than a thinly veiled, white-trash re-imagining of Tobe Hooper’s gonzo The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). Suffice to say, the bloom had definitely come off the rose.

In many ways, House of 1000 Corpses plays like a more hyperactive, pop-culture savvy and polished mash-up of Hooper’s first two Chainsaw films. From the first movie, we get the crazy killer family, creepy farmhouse setting, big guy with a mask and sledgehammer and an insane dinner scene. From the second film, we get the lurid, cotton-candy-colored visuals, Bill Moseley revisiting his iconic Chop-Top character and loads of over-the-top gore, much of it ruthlessly tongue in cheek. While this relentless referencing of Hooper’s original material seemed easier to accept when the film first came out, there’s something about the whole business that I found rather tedious, this time around, like watching a particular rerun of a TV show for the umpteenth time.

Plot-wise, Zombie’s film is pretty old hat: two couples (Chris Hardwick and Erin Daniels as one pair, the Office’s Rainn Wilson and Jennifer Jostyn as the other) stop off at a bizarre roadside attraction, Captain Spaulding’s Museum of Monsters and Madmen, and learn about local legend, Dr. Satan. After finding out that the medical madman was reportedly hung from a nearby tree, the group of thrill-seekers get a map from the good Captain (brought to gloriously filthy life by the always awesome Sid Haig) and decide to check it out for themselves. Unless this is your first rodeo, you’re probably going to realize what a truly terrible idea this is, hopefully quicker than our lunk-headed heroes do.

Along the way, they end up picking up a hitchhiker (the director’s wife, Sheri Moon), who leads them to her family’s home after their car appears to get a flat. Once at the homestead, our intrepid young people meet the rest of the clan: Otis (Bill Moseley), the insane “leader” who’s one part Charles Manson, one part Ed Gein; the hulking, mute Tiny (Matthew McGrory), this film’s stand-in for TCM’s Leatherface; obscene, obnoxious and massively irritating Grampa Hugo (Dennis Fimple in a truly disgusting performance); silent, bearskin-bedecked Rufus Junior (Robert Mukes) and the resolutely over-the-top Mother Firefly (genre legend Karen Black, shoveling up scenery as fast as she can chew). Faster than you can say “These folks seem a little odd,” the Fireflys manage to capture our poor couples and subject them to some very disturbing, sick tortures (poor Dwight Shrute ends up getting the worst of it, bringing a disturbing new meaning to the term “merman”), before deciding that their “guests” should get their wish after all: they’re finally going to meet Dr. Satan, even if it’s the last thing they do.

If anything, Zombie’s debut is a pretty great representation of the term “sensory-overload.” For the most part, absolutely anything and everything is thrown at the screen, in the hopes that at least some of it will stick: fake commercials and infomercials, fake horror-movie hosts and their programs, zombies, evil doctors, murdered cheerleaders, Manson-style cult stuff, rudimentary Satanism, demons, creepy graveyards, underground bunkers, graphic amputations and surgical mayhem, deranged talent shows, sub-Tarantino “obscene but clever” dialogue, video game references and, of course, the ubiquitous Texas Chainsaw Massacre nods at every turn. When the film works, such as in the nonsensical but visually arresting Dr. Satan scenes, it’s still a full-throttle nightmare, full of fever-dream logic, crazy visuals and truly nasty gore scenes.

Just as often, however, Zombie seems more than content to simply remind viewers of Hooper’s (much better) original films. Tiny is a pretty weak patch on Leatherface, to be honest, and nothing about the Fireflys’ stereotypically “scary” house is one-tenth as affecting as anything in Hooper’s debut. Zombie’s version of the “wear somebody’s face” bit from TCM 2 is disturbing but nowhere near as upsetting as Hooper’s and Moseley, dynamic as he is, still isn’t doing anything more challenging than combining the characters of the Cook and Chop-Top into one cohesive maniac.

Lest it seem like my recent viewing of the film turned me against it, let me say that I still found it fast-paced, entertaining and endlessly interesting but it’s become rather impossible to ignore the movie’s huge debt to Hooper’s films. At the time of its release, many critics disparaged Zombie’s debut as nothing more than a horror movie “greatest hits” collection, gathering together disparate setpieces and characters from other films and dumping them into a generic “crazy family” story. At the time, I was loath to agree but my perspective now seem much more in line with these original critics, albeit qualified by my (general) enjoyment of the movie.

There are plenty of truly fantastic moments in the film, scenes that still pack as much of a punch today as they did a decade ago: the long, quiet shot as Otis prepares to shoot the deputy is still the greatest thing that Zombie has ever put on film, bar none, and the Dr. Satan scenes are wonderfully goofy, even if they occasionally seem to belong to a Resident Evil film. Sig Haig is awesome (as always), as is Moseley and it’s an absolute hoot to see Rainn Wilson in something like this. When the film takes a moment to calm down, Zombie is able to come up with some pretty great atmosphere: the graveyard scene, with the victims dressed in pink bunny costumes, is the perfect combination of eerie and outrageous, as is the evocative scene where Jerry and Denise are lowered into Dr. Satan’s lair.

Ultimately, my biggest issue with the film ends up being that it doesn’t do enough to stand on its own two feet: in many ways, it feels as if Zombie’s sole intention was to create his own, modern version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a feat which he mostly pulls off. The problem, of course, is that we’ve already seen that movie, just like we’ve already seen its sequel…how much use do we really have for yet another version of the same story, albeit one with a glossier, more post-modern edge?

While my re-evaluation of House of 1000 Corpses didn’t end up damning it to the basement, ala Clerks, it certainly managed to knock the film down a few pegs in my mind. That, of course, is why it’s so important to continually revisit films like this: as we grow and change, as viewers, so, too, do our relationships with these films grow and change. I’m definitely not the same person today as I was eleven years ago and my experience with the film only serves to drive that home. While it may be fun to stop in and visit the Fireflys, from time to time, I’m pretty sure that I won’t be spending much time there. There’s a reason why Hooper’s original is such an amazing film, a reason that Zombie’s re-do can’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

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10/5/14: The Boy Who Cried “Martian!”

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'80s films, 31 Days of Halloween, alien invaders, Bud Cort, child heroes, childhood fears, cinema, Eaten Alive, film reviews, films, Hunter Carson, Invaders From Mars, James Karen, Karen Black, Laraine Newman, Louise Fletcher, martians, Movies, Poltergeist, remakes, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, set in the 1980's, Spielberg, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Funhouse, Timothy Bottoms, Tobe Hooper

Despite beginning his career with ultra-gritty, low-budget chillers like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Eaten Alive (1977) and The Funhouse (1981), horror auteur Tobe Hooper quickly moved into an odd, mid-’80s phase that saw him tackle bigger budget, more mainstream fare such as the smash-hit, Spielberg-produced Poltergeist (1982), the bizarre space vampire/sci-fi shocker Lifeforce (1985), a remake of the ’50s-era sci-fi classic, Invaders From Mars (1986) and a more expensive, candy-colored sequel to his debut, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). Since that time, Hooper’s career has been all over the place, although he hasn’t managed to return (as of yet, at least) to either his ’70s-era glory days or his inscrutable ’80s output. While none of his ’80s films, with the exception of Poltergeist, ever made much of a splash (indeed, his ’80s era Canon films actually helped to nail the lid on that studio’s coffin), they’re all infinitely better than the “paint-by-numbers” TV productions and Poverty Row genre pics that would dominate his ’90s-’00s filmography.

Of his ’80s-era films, Invaders From Mars is easily the slightest entry on Hooper’s resume. While Lifeforce wasn’t entirely successful, it was completely audacious, which certainly must count for something. Most critics and fans seem to detest The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 but I’ve never understood the derision or hate that gets heaped on that film: it may not be the same type of movie as the original but it’s a pretty genius production, in its own right, and handily slots into the series’ original mythology before subsequent sequels would scatter the storyline to the four winds. Poltergeist, of course, is almost universally revered, although the conventional wisdom has always been that Spielberg had as big a hand in the production as Hooper did (anyone familiar with films like Eaten Alive and The Funhouse, however, will see plenty of parallels in Poltergeist: Spielberg may have been a presence on the set…he is Spielberg, after all…but the film doesn’t feel like it was his, alone). Of these films, then, only Invaders From Mars seems to stick out like a sore thumb. Lacking the sheer, nutty verve of his other ’80s films, Hooper’s take on the ’50s sci-fi staple isn’t a bad film but it does feel slight and unnecessary, which certainly isn’t a particularly strong recommendation. More than anything, however, Invaders From Mars strikes me as a definite product of its era: unlike classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or even The Funhouse, Hooper’s Invaders has not aged particularly well.

One rainy night, young David Gardner (Hunter Carson) happens to see some sort of alien spaceship descend from the skies and land somewhere over the hills behind his house. David’s a bit of a space buff, so his parents don’t entirely (or at all) believe his story about the UFO but his dutiful father, George (Timothy Bottoms), nonetheless goes over to check it out. Next morning, Mr. Gardner is acting extremely odd: he seems emotionless and robotic, is walking around with one slipper as if it’s the most normal thing in the world and has a strange mark on the back of his neck. David is instantly suspicious of his father but the situation gets even worse after his mother takes a walk with George in the hills (after she finishes washing the dishes, of course): the following morning, she’s equally listless and strange, although she also appears to have developed an appetite for raw hamburger. Something, clearly, is going on.

The situation continues at school, as David overhears his much-detested teacher, Mrs. McKeltch (Louise Fletcher) discussing some sort of secret plans with an equally suspicious police officer, plans which somehow also involve David’s father. David flees his sinister teacher and lands straight in the arms of school nurse, Linda (genre vet Karen Black). Linda doesn’t quite believe David, either, but she’s noticed that something seems to be going on and is determined to get to the bottom of it. “It,” of course, is an evil plan by Martians to invade the earth, a plan which only David and Linda seemed equipped to stop. With time running out and the whole town seemingly under alien control, David and Linda must risk their own lives and freedom in a desperate bid to repel the intruders and restore order to their formerly sleepy little town.

For the most part, Hooper’s version of Invaders From Mars is no better or worse than most similarly constructed/plotted sci-fi films. The creature designs, courtesy of legendary effects artist Stan Winston, are pretty excellent, although it’s a little distracting that the Supreme Martian Leader is a dead-ringer for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s Krang: since Krang debuted sometime in 1987/88, I’m more than willing to wager that the character might have been influenced by Hooper’s film. On the other hands, many of the films other effects are absolutely awful, including some of the worst laser effects ever put to film. The musical score is thoroughly generic, although there are some nifty elements to the cinematography: in particular, the spaceship scenes are extremely well-done and favorably compare to similar scenes in Spielberg’s iconic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

As with the technical side of the film, the acting in Invaders From Mars is equally hit-or-miss. Carson actually does a great job as David: he’s believable and only rarely irritating, two qualities that seem rather rare for ’80s-era child actors. The part where David calls the Martian leader “dickbrain” is pretty great, as it directly recalls the way that the kids speak in other ’80s films like Spielberg’s ET (1982) or Richard Donner’s The Goonies (1985). I also got a big kick out of character actor Bud Cort’s turn as Dr. Weinstein: the bit where he tries to talk sensibly to the Martians is just a hairbreadth away from greatness. On the flip side, Louise Fletcher is astoundingly terrible as Mrs. McKeltch, while Karen Black becomes tedious by the film’s final reel, reduced to no more than a living, breathing, running bag of scream. She begins the film strong but devolves into wet paste, which seems like a terribly shabby way to treat the scream queen.

Of all of these issues, however, none bother me quite so much as the obnoxious ending. Without giving (much) away, suffice to say that anyone who’s familiar with Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980) will know exactly what I’m talking about. These kinds of endings always strike me as cheap, ridiculous cop-outs and it ends up being a severely deflating way to finish the film. Whatever good will had been built up by the final scene was largely squandered with one of those endings that seems designed to elicit nothing more than forehead slapping and audience groaning.

Despite my problems with the movie, however, I would still rather watch something genuine, if a bit clumsy, than something that feels like a carbon-copy of a million other films. When the film works, it’s a rousing, entertaining throwback to a time when effects were still mostly practical and kids’ movies (I still feel that this is aimed at slightly younger audiences) could feel dangerous and high stakes without seeming completely age inappropriate. It’s telling that my warm feelings once the film ended were largely nostalgia-based: while the film itself was fun, it reminded me pretty explicitly of my own youth, which really increased my appreciation of the finished product. Had I not grown up in this era, however, I wonder if I would find Invaders From Mars quite as charming? Despite its good qualities, I’m pretty sure that this won’t supplant TCM 2 as my go-to ’80s Hooper film, although it practically begs for a future double-feature with the original.

 

10/4/14 (Part Two): You Know…That One Guy

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31 Days of Halloween, Ariel Gade, Barry Bostwick, Blast Vegas, cinema, Eric Price, film reviews, films, high school trauma, horror-comedies, ice cream cone, insane asylums, Jack Perez, Janie Haddad, Karen Black, Kevin Corrigan, Leo Fitzpatrick, Lucy Davis, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, mental breakdown, Movies, revenge, Ryan A. Levin, Sheriff Walt, small town life, Some Guy Who Kills People

Sometimes, my initial assumptions about a film can be way off base. Take Jack Perez’s Some Guy Who Kills People (2011), for example. Based on the title, the presence of always-funny character actor Kevin Corrigan and Perez’s previous films like Monster Island (2004), Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (2009) and Blast Vegas (2013), I was expecting the film to be a goofy horror-comedy, maybe something along the lines of Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010) or the like. Instead, Some Guy…ended up being a fairly serious film with occasional surreal touches and played out sort of like a non-rape-oriented version of Clint Eastwood’s Sudden Impact (1983) with a male protagonist. In other words, I was way off base.

Right off the bat, we meet our protagonist, Ken Boyd (Kevin Corrigan). Ken is pretty much the definition of a schlub: he works at an ice cream parlor (part of his job entails wearing a ridiculous ice cream cone costume); only has one friend, co-worker, Irv (Leo Fitzpatrick); still lives at home with his mother (Karen Black), even though he’s in his mid-30s and has spent time in an insane asylum thanks to a mental breakdown and suicide attempt. He’s also plagued by recurring nightmares where he’s tied to a chair, tortured by a group of guys and doused in gasoline. Life, for Ken, is pretty much a continuous bummer.

One day, while working a birthday party in his ice cream cone get-up, Ken happens to run into one of the abusers from his nightmare. Ken fantasizes about putting a hatchet through the guy’s face and whatta ya know…the guy later turns up dead with a hatchet in his face. Seems a little suspicious but the town’s finest law enforcement officials are on the case: Sheriff Walt (Barry Bostwick), who’s also dating Ken’s mom, and Dept. Ernie (Eric Price), who’s so dumb that he makes Barney Fife look like a MENSA candidate.

In the meantime, Ken runs into the daughter that he never knew he had, 11-year-old whiz-kid Amy (Ariel Gade). Amy wants to get to know her dad, so he decides to (temporarily) move in with him. She also encourages Ken to break out of his shell and date Stephanie (Lucy Davis), the nice young woman who he previously met at the dead man’s birthday party. The bodies of Ken’s enemies continue to pile up around him, however, and it’s getting harder and harder for the Sheriff to keep making excuses. When Amy sneaks a peak at her dad’s coveted sketchbook, she sees some pretty dark drawings, including several that seem to prefigure the actual murders. Is Ken behind the murders, seeking to avenge unknown trauma from his high school years, or is there another, more sinister explanation?

In many ways, the underlying theme of Perez’s Some Guy Who Kills People can best be summed up by Sheriff Walt’s declaration that, “If thinking about killing a bunch of pricks made us guilty, we’d all be locked away for life.” He’s absolutely right: regardless of the specifics, I’m more than willing to wager that each and every one of us have wished grievous bodily injury to someone else, even if only from the safe constraints of our own imaginations. Humans thrive on wish-fulfillment: it gives us something to look forward to, even if our imagined goals are impossible, socially unacceptable or just plain stupid. Some Guys…works this angle to good effect, setting up a situation in which we witness bad people getting their comeuppance, similar to something like Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America (2011). Perez is nowhere near the filmmaker that Goldthwait is, however, and Some Guy…ends up being a much slighter, more inconsequential effort.

While there’s nothing about the film that really stands out, there’s also nothing about it that really screams “amateur hour,” either, although the film’s look can often be rather nondescript and I found child actor Ariel Gade to be rather annoying for much of the film. Corrigan is predictably good, however, even if he’s a much more restrained presence than he usually is and Bostwick’s performance really grew on me, even though his initial scenes were way too broad and silly: by the film’s conclusion, Bostwick has become sort of a Matlock/Columbo hybrid and he’s kind of great: Eric Price, however, is a complete non-entity as the dumb-as-dishwater deputy. British actress Davis, so great in the UK version of The Office and Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (2004), practically steals the show as the nice girl who’s sweet on a very damaged guy, although Karen Black is disappointing in a role that hits the sour zone between loony and checked-out.

Ultimately, Some Guy Who Kills People is a good, but not great, effort. The film moves quickly and is never particularly painful to watch, although it often feels a bit hackneyed and overly familiar. Fans of Kevin Corrigan (seriously: who doesn’t think this guy is one of the most under-rated actors in the biz?) should find this fun, although it definitely ranks as one of his lesser efforts. Nonetheless, there’s enough good stuff here to make Some Guy…a pretty decent way to kill 90 minutes.