2/28/15 (Part Three): Dying a Thousand Deaths

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Brendan Hood, British films, British horror, Charlie Anson, Christina Cole, cinema, creatures, Dario Piana, death, dying, fear, film reviews, films, George Dillon, Harvesters, horror-fantasy, Ian Stone, Jaime Murray, Michael Dixon, Michael Feast, Mike Vogel, Movies, reincarnation, set in England, special-effects extravaganza, Stan Winston, The Deaths of Ian Stone, violent films

While ambition is a necessary part of success, too much ambition can be a dangerous drug. Take Dario Piana’s The Deaths of Ian Stone (2007), for example: until the film sags under the weight of its own ambitions, it’s a weird, unsettling and fairly unique take on those tired, old “normal person pursued by unknown forces” tropes. Proudly straining against the constraints of its budget, Piana’s film makes expert use of producer Stan Winston’s legendary effects studio, giving the film some extra oomph in the production department. As Brendan Hood’s script keeps springing “surprise” twists and revelations on us, however, the film gradually becomes bloated and unwieldy, taking on the characteristics of the first film in a series, even as the story works towards a self-contained conclusion. It’s quite the pity: until the film stumbles in the second half, it has all the makings of a real sleeper.

Our titular hero, Ian Stone (Under the Dome’s Mike Vogel), appears to have a bit of a problem: every day, he’s pursued by mysterious, monstrous forces and killed, only to be “reborn” into a different life (hockey player, office drone, taxi driver, drug addict, etc). There’s no explanation for anything: he sees many of the same people in each “reality,” including Jenny (Christina Cole), who appears to be his girlfriend; Medea (Jaime Murray), who ALSO appears to be his girlfriend; a sinister hockey referee (George Dillon); and a mysterious man (Michael Feast), who seems to know more about Ian’s situation than our poor protagonist does. Time and time again, we witness Ian attempt to escape from the shadowy monsters that pursue him, only to be brutally killed, time and time again. As he “jumps” from one reality to the next, however, Ian gradually comes to piece together more and more of the mystery. In the process, he’ll learn what the monsters are, who Jenny and Medea really are and, more importantly, who HE really is. Will Ian be able to put a stop to the terrifying events or is he doomed to keep dying, over and over, for all eternity?

Up until the point where Piana and Hood drop the bomb about Ian’s true identity, The Deaths of Ian Stone is a compact, weird and intriguing little film. The various death setpieces are nothing spectacular but all come with an appropriate amount of tension and a handful of genuinely creepy moments. At times, the film recalls Jacob’s Ladder (1990) in the way that it seems to blend the real and the possibly illusory with equal aplomb. Vogel makes a great protagonist and the effects, courtesy of Stan Winston’s team, are nicely realized. For the first 45 minutes or so, the film seems to be setting us up for some kind of alternate reality/parallel timeframe situation and it’s a lot of fun trying to figure out how the various pieces are going to fit.

Once the film springs the “twist” on us, however, it becomes a different kind of film entirely, something closer to Spawn (1997), perhaps, with various elements from Terminator 2 (1991), Highlander (1986) and The Matrix (1999) thrown in, for good measure. It’s not necessarily that the reveal, itself, is bad (it’s not great but it’s not a critical wound, either): it’s the fact that the twist opens the film up and seeks to expand it just as the actual movie is beginning to gear down. It has the effect of making everything past the midpoint seem rushed and truncated, as if Piana was trying to cram two hours of plot development into 40 minutes of film. The twist also turns the film into something of an action movie, which not only deflates the tension to a considerable degree, but also shows off the budgetary shortfalls to a distressing degree: too often, intense action sequences in low-budget genre films come across as clumsy and cheesy, two issues which certainly plague the film’s back-half.

Think of it as the equivalent of trying to hand-write a large sign without properly planning it out: initially, the letters, words and phrases are all spaced beautifully but things get gradually more cramped, crabbed and illegible as the sign-maker runs out of space…words go at odd angles, things end up in margins and odd abbreviations are used to try to conserve space. This, in a way, is exactly what happens to The Deaths of Ian Stone: as the film becomes more complicated and time ticks down, characterization and plot development get more and more truncated to the point where it all begins to take on a kind of shorthand: the bad guys dress just like the leather-clad baddies in The Matrix, ergo, they must be bad. A particular character needs to act heroic, ergo, they act heroic, even if it plays at odds with what we’ve learned. It’s frustrating precisely because it’s so easy to see how this could have worked: an additional 30 minutes here, a few more scenes there, a slower pace over there…while the midpoint twist is the anchor that weighs the film down, it’s death by a thousand cuts that kills it, not drowning.

I’d like to say that director Piana shows a lot of promise here, since he does, but it’s also telling to note that his follow-up, the direct-to-video Lost Boys: The Thirst (2010), is a completely wretched waste of film that seems like a surefire albatross for any burgeoning career. At this point, there doesn’t seem to be anything new on the Italian director’s resume, indicating that my initial impression was on-the-nose. If Piana does decide to tackle genre filmmaking again, here’s to hoping that he builds from his successes on The Deaths of Ian Stone, while avoiding the disaster that was (to this point) his final film. While it’s never boring or terrible, it also doesn’t live up to its full potential: sometimes, simpler really is better.

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10/25/14 (Part Two): Wolfman’s Got Nards!

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'80s films, 31 Days of Halloween, Adam Carl, Andrew Gower, Ashley Bank, auteur theory, Bradford May, Brent Chalem, Carl Thibault, co-writers, Count Dracula, creature feature, cult classic, Dracula, Duncan Regehr, favorite films, fighting monsters, Film auteurs, Frankenstein's monster, Fred Dekker, horror films, horror-comedies, influential films, Jack Gwillim, Jason Hervey, kids in peril, kids vs monsters, kids' movies, Leonardo Cimino, Mary Ellen Trainor, Michael Faustino, Michael MacKay, monster hunters, Monster Squad, Night of the Creeps, Robby Kiger, Ryan Lambert, scrappy kids, set in the 1980's, Shane Black, special-effects extravaganza, Stan Winston, Stephen Macht, the Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Monster Squad, The Mummy, the Wolfman, Tom Noonan, Tom Woodruff Jr., Universal monster movies, Van Helsi, Van Helsing, writer-director, young adult films

At the risk of sounding like a complete grump (“Please get off my lawn, if you don’t mind too terribly”), kids/young adult movies were a lot better in the ’80s. I know, I know…everything was better back in the day, right? Far from being a knee-jerk condemnation of anything new and au courant, however, I actually have some solid reasoning behind my opinion (mixed with plenty of good, old-fashioned personal prejudices, of course). Sure, there was plenty of awful, commercial, soulless bullshit out there, just like there always is, but there was also a pretty unbeatable string of absolute classics that came out between 1981 and 1987: Time Bandits (1981), E.T. (1982), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), Gremlins (1984), The Goonies (1985), Explorers (1985), Fright Night (1985), Labyrinth (1986), Stand By Me (1986), The Gate (1987), The Lost Boys (1987) and, of course, Fred Dekker’s amazing The Monster Squad (1987).

If there’s one commonality that these decidedly disparate films share, it would have to be the understanding that children are neither angelic cherubs nor empty vessels for adult motivations: like adults, kids have their own personalities, foibles, quirks, ways of talking and notions of “good vs evil.” The best kids’ movies, as far as I’m concerned, are the ones that allow children to be genuine and act like real kids: they swear like sailors, use non politically correct language, think the opposite sex is completely gross (up until the moment those hormones kick in), are smarter than we give them credit for and think that adults who talk down to them are dumb-asses. The very best kids’ movies don’t sugarcoat or sanitize everything: there have to be real stakes because that’s the way life really is. Think back to films like E.T. and The Goonies: despite their status as “kids’ movies,” both films feature genuinely scary, dangerous moments. The aforementioned ’80s kids’ films all feature death as a very real consequence, which makes them successful as both kids’ movies AND genre films. As far as I’m concerned, the very-best kids’ movies, just like the very best animated films and cartoons, should be able to be appreciated by adults, as well. Dumbing down entertainment does no one any favors.

All of this, of course, is a roundabout way of saying that The Monster Squad is one of the most kickass films in the long and legendary history of the modern cinema. This is pure opinion, of course, but I’m also fairly sure that it could be proven scientifically, if necessary. I can’t actually recall the first time I saw the film, although I’m fairly positive I was no older than my early teens, if that. Since that time, however, I’ve fondly returned to Dekker and scribe-supreme Shane Black’s ode to growing up in the era of Famous Monsters of Filmland and Fangoria magazines time and time again. Like the best films of that era, I never get tired of re-visiting the movie: each time, it’s like taking a little trip back to my childhood, a time when monsters were real, adults were lame and kids had all the answers, even if no one was asking them the questions.

Kicking-off with a supremely fun setpiece set “100 years in the past,” we’re introduced to that most famous of monster hunters, Abraham van Helsing (Jack Gwillim), as he and his “freedom fighters” attempt to rid the world of vampires and monsters. “They blew it,” as the on-screen text tells us, but we already knew that: otherwise, what would be the point?

In the here and now, we meet our two main protagonists: Sean (Andrew Gower) and Patrick (Robby Kiger). They’re the kind of kids who are totally obsessed with all things monster and horror-related: they get sent to the principal after they’re caught drawing monsters in class and even have their own “official” monster club: the Monster Squad. The other member of their group is Horace (Brent Chalem), the wise-beyond-his-years outcast who gets saddled with “fat kid” by school bullies E.J. (Jason Hervey) and Derek (Adam Carl) and is pushed around so much that he’s always just one pivot away from a pratfall. The worm turns, however, when E.J. bullies Horace once too many times and incurs the wrath of Rudy (Ryan Lambert), the resident “bad kid.” Rudy’s in junior high, wears a leather jacket, smokes cigarettes, peeps on girls through bedroom windows with binoculars and doesn’t take kindly to bullies: the triumphant scene where he forces E.J. to eat Horace’s candy bar off the ground sets the stage for what’s to come…these misfits are about to shine!

But where would a Monster Squad be without monsters to fight? Luckily (or unluckily), the gang is going to have plenty of monsters to take a swing at. Seems that ol’ Count Dracula (Duncan Regehr) has hatched a plot to take over the world with the help of some old cronies: Frankenstein’s monster (Tom Noonan), the Wolfman (Carl Thibault), the Gillman (Tom Woodruff Jr.) and the Mummy (Michael MacKay). When the adults around them, including Sean’s policeman father, Del (Stephen Macht), fail to connect the dots on the bigger scheme, it’s up to The Monster Squad to stop Drac’s plot. Lucky for them, they just happen to have their hands on Van Helsing’s diary, which might have a tip or two on how to stop the unholy fiends. Unluckily for them, however, Dracula is on to them and will stop at nothing until all impediments to his progress have been destroyed, be it man, woman or child. Things are about to get awful hairy but never fear…the Monster Squad is on the case!

From start to finish, Dekker’s The Monster Squad is just about the most fun someone could have at the cinema, especially if you happen to be a horror fanatic likes yours truly. The cast is phenomenal, highlighted by totally fist-pumping performances by Chalem and Lambert as, respectively, Horace and Rudy. Horace, in particular, is a totally awesome character: he’s a completely three-dimensional character who’s the furthest thing from the odious “fat kid” stereotype in youth movies. In fact, Horace’s progression from picked-on outsider to ass-kicker is subtle because he already kicks ass when we first meet him…by the end, he’s just received enough self-assurance to be proud about it. One of the greatest parts of this film (or any film, for that matter) is the epic moment where Horace’s former bullies look on in admiration as he helps mop up the monsters. “Hey, fat kid…good job,” says E.J., looking suitably awed. Horace’s response? “My name (cocking his shotgun) is Horace!” If you don’t jump up from your seat, cheering, you were probably never young, to begin with.

As I mentioned earlier, the kids in The Monster Squad actually look and sound like real kids: they swear, discuss “wolf dork” as the reason for the Wolfman wearing pants (which leads to the legendary moment where Sean tells Horace to kick the Wolfman “in the nards.” Horace complains that he “doesn’t have them,” before being proven wrong once he actually kicks him and the monster doubles over in pain. “Wolfman’s got nards!,” Horace triumphantly proclaims, as if he just discovered the cure for cancer), say “Bogus” a lot, roll their eyes at authority figures and are casually cruel and sexist. They’re pretty much the furthest thing from sanitized “Disney” versions of kids and are all the more indelible for it.

Despite having only three films under his belt (Night of the Creeps (1986), The Monster Squad and RoboCop 3 (1993), Fred Dekker is easily one of my favorite filmmakers in the entire world. Night of the Creeps is an absolutely perfect ’80s B-movie (one of the film’s best jokes is even repeated in The Monster Squad, as Del notes that dead bodies don’t walk around, only for us to witness the Mummy doing just that), as is The Monster Squad: I must admit to remembering nothing whatsoever about RoboCop 3 but I’m willing to wager that must have been pretty swell, as well, if Dekker was involved. For my money, he’s one of the most successful, effortless combiners of horror and comedy in the business. Dekker also populates his films with dynamic, fascinating characters, whether main or supporting: no one in a Dekker film is just cannon-fodder, regardless of how much or little screen-time they get.

One of The Monster Squad’s secret weapons, of course, is screenwriter Shane Black.  Beginning with his script for Lethal Weapon (1987), Black has been responsible for some of the best, smartest and most interesting action scripts in the business: he wrote The Last Boy Scout (1991), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), all of which flip the genre on its head in some interesting, fun ways. Co-scripting with Dekker, Black comes up with one of his best, tightest scripts: the film is full of not only great scenes but plenty of awesome dialogue, as well. There’s a great moment where Rudy tries to kick in the door of a locked church, only to be told, “Don’t kick the church: it’s religious.” His response? “It’s locked, is what it is.” Classic. There’s also a really great, subtle moment where the kids remark that the “Scary German Guy” (Leonardo Cimino) who helps them translate Van Helsing’s diary must know a a lot about monsters. “I suppose that I do,” he replies wistfully, as the camera lingers on his concentration-camp tattoo. It’s the kind of real moment that happens all too little in most kids’ movies: The Monster Squad is full of them, however, and all of that credit is due to a tremendously good script.

Ultimately, even after studiously looking for flaws, I can only find minor quibbles with The Monster Squad: despite being designed by Stan Winston, none of the monsters are really a patch on the originals (the Mummy, in particular, is rather scrawny) and the film can also, upon occasion, get a little silly. It is a kids’ film, after all, so at least some measure of silliness is to be expected. For the most part, however, The Monster Squad, like Night of the Creeps, is just about as flawless as they come: action-packed, full of great humor and a real love letter to the Golden Age of Monsters, Fred Dekker’s film is an unmitigated classic. If there were any justice in this world, The Monster Squad’s promise of further adventures would have been fulfilled ten-fold. As it stands, however, we’ll just have to settle for what we got: one of the very best kids’ movies of all time.

 

3/25/14: If Wishes Were Horses, They’d Eat Your Face

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Andrew Divoff, Angus Scrimm, cinema, djinn, djinns, film reviews, films, gory films, Greg Nicotero, Harry Manfredini, horror, horror films, horror franchises, horror-fantasy, Kane Hodder, Movies, Nightmare on Elm St., practical effects, Robert Englund, Robert Kurtzman, SFX, special effects, special-effects extravaganza, Stan Winston, Tammy Lauren, Ted Raimi, Tom Savini, Tony Todd, violent, Wes Craven, wishes, Wishmaster

In some ways, I like to equate watching films with eating. Sometimes, I’m really in the mood for a complex, sprawling, four-course meal: at those times, nothing less than the twistiest, most difficult foreign film will do. Other times, I want a good, hearty steak and look towards any of the numerous “classics” that I’ve re-watched enough to memorize the dialogue. There are times when I want a little lighter fare: those are always good opportunities for a music documentary, a slapstick comedy or an old musical. At certain times, however, there’s really nothing that will hit the spot better than junk food: gimme the cinematic equivalent of a Ho-Ho, from time to time, and I’m a happy boy. On those occasions when I want to turn my brain off, kick my feet up and satisfy my horror jones, there really isn’t much finer than the first Wishmaster, a snack-pack of goodness that I’ve been enjoying for nearly 20 years.

Right off the bat, it helps to know one very important thing about Wishmaster: the film series began as the labor of love of Robert Kurtzman, one of the premiere special effects/make-up guys in the industry. Along with Greg Nicotero (any horror fan worth his salt should recognize this name immediately) and Howard Berger, he formed KNB EFX Group in the late ’80s. Naming all of Kurtzman’s projects would require its own separate blog entry but we’ll list a few that folks might recognize: Evil Dead 2, Phantasm 2, From Beyond, Predator, Tremors, Cabin Fever, Misery, Army of Darkness, Pulp Fiction, From Dusk Til Dawn, Scream, Boogie Nights, The Green Mile, Hulk…basically, if it was released in the past 28 years, Kurtzman probably had a hand in the makeup, effects work or both.

As with other directorial efforts by special-effects experts, specifically Stan Winston’s Pumpkinhead and Tom Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead, the focus in Wishmaster is squarely on the astoundingly gory, over-the-top special effects, most of which are jaw-dropping…sometimes literally. The nifty hat trick here is that Kurtzman has taken an entirely serviceable idea for a B-horror film and tricked it out with an immaculate, shiny coat of candy-apple-red primer. As mentioned earlier, this is pretty much the epitome of junk food: delicious but nearly devoid of any actual nutrients. Wishmaster is like an amusement-park thrill ride: a blast to sit through but essentially incapable of changing your overall world view.

As far as a story goes, Wishmaster is pretty lean and mean: an opening inter-title explains that there were once men, angels and djinn. The djinn didn’t want to play nice, despite their ability to grant wishes, and were banished to the furthest regions to prevent their complete destruction of humankind, an event which they can bring about simply by granting the same person three separate wishes. Cut to Persia in the 1400s and we see all hell (quite literally) bust loose as a djinn grants a king’s second wish. Before the djinn can grant the king’s third wish and damn humanity to an eternity of servitude, a court magician imprisons the djinn in a gemstone. Cut to the present and a drunken accident at a dock has led to the discovery of the gem: the gem changes hands until it ends up with Alexandra (Tammy Lauren), our spunky heroine. As can be expected, the djinn is eventually released and goes on a wish-granting rampage, all the while trying to get back to Alex: if he can grant her three wishes, mankind can kiss its collected asses goodbye. Will Alex be able to save the world? Will she be forced to use her third wish? Will the djinn help them throw the craziest party in 600 years? As if you had to ask!

Let’s get one thing absolutely clear: Wishmaster will never win any awards for acting or its script but that’s not really why we’re here: we’re here because this thing is a party in a can. Decades before audiences thrilled to “in-on-the-joke” junk like Snakes On a Plane and Sharknado, we all had to make do with good, old-fashioned B-movies, films that took themselves at least seriously enough to avoid winking into oblivion. Wishmaster is a film with plenty of heart (all over the damn place, pretty much) and isn’t so terribly removed from the effects extravaganzas that Harryhausen created back in the day…just with a lot more viscera and exploded rib-cages, of course.

Although the film is jam-packed with eye-popping moments, it’s book-ended by its two biggest, most extravagant set-pieces: the opening Persian bloodbath and Beaumont’s (Robert Englund) climatic cocktail party. Both scenes are chock-full of the kind of explosive effects that would be the centerpiece of any other film: someone turns to crystal and shatters, spraying deadly shrapnel around the room; a skeleton rips itself from a man’s body and stands for a moment, pondering the chaos, before running off to cause some more; a collection of bronze and stone statues depicting warriors from various countries and eras comes to shuddering life, in a scene that directly references Harryhausen’s classic films, and massacres a group of armed mercenaries; someone is cut to pieces by living, levitating piano wires, etc etc…In truth, the two aforementioned scenes actually pack in more amazing special effects moments than at least four lesser horror films combined. Even better, the effects are almost all practical, lending the film yet another point of reference to classic films like Clash of the Titans and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

I’ve gone on and on about Wishmaster’s effects but what about the rest of the film? While it’s certainly not An Officer and a Gentleman, Wishmaster ends up being a pretty sturdily constructed affair. The film looks great, with a vibrant color palette that really lets the gore pop off the screen. In a nod to old-school horror fans, Friday the 13th’s Harry Manfredini handles the score and it’s a typically good one, even featuring a few pieces that directly recall the “adventurous” music from the aforementioned Harryhausen films. Wes Craven produced the film and, in many ways, it’s pretty comparable to the latter-day Nightmare on Elm Street films, particularly films like Parts 4 and 5, which tended to be more special-effects showcases than the earlier entries. The djinn even gets a massively ooky regeneration scene that manages to give both NOES and Hellraiser a run for their collective money.

The acting, as can be expected from B-movies, is rather hit or miss. Andrew Divoff is a complete revelation as the djinn, playing the villain with just the proper amount of smarmy charm, deadpan sarcasm and dead-eyed seriousness. His quipping never really gets old (although it will get more tedious over the next few films in the series) and I’m constantly surprised that he never became a more prominent face in the horror world, similar to co-star Robert Englund. Englund is quite good as the slimy Raymond Beaumont and it’s also nice to get cameos from a couple other familiar faces: Candyman’s Tony Todd and original Jason Kane Hodder make appearances as a bouncer and security guard, respectively. They don’t get to do much but it’s still nice to see them.

More problematic, unfortunately, is Tammy Lauren. As the lead, we get to spend an awful lot of time with Lauren and her progressively hysterical performance makes this a bit unpleasant, after a while. She’s alright for the first half of the film or so but she sets the controls for the heart of the sun after that and her overacting even begins to compete with the special effects, after a while. A lesser, but still noteworthy, issue is the rather lackluster ending: while necessary to paint the film out of its corner, it comes across as a real head-smacker and more than a little uneventful.

If you can look past the film’s small handful of problems, however, I can see absolutely no reason why any horror fan wouldn’t love this movie. Here, at the very beginning, we saw the groundwork being laid for a franchise that had the potential to rival Elm Street for prime real estate on the horror map. If the series ended up dropping the ball and limping off the sidelines way too soon (Part 2 is merely okay, whereas Parts 3 and 4 are completely execrable), that does nothing to take away from the achievement of this first edition.

Sometimes, I just want to kick back with an old friend and kill 90 minutes: whenever Wishmaster comes knocking at the door, I’m always ready to party.