Remember a couple of days ago, when I complained about the difficulty of writing reviews of popular/classic movies? Well, I've got to admit, I'm utterly blank at the prospect of writing about not only one of the greatest films of all time--notice I didn't say "zombie" films, or "horror" films--but a landmark of the genre as well; when one thinks of a cinematic zombie today, chances are it's Romero's version that springs to mind. What am I gonna do?
Because I'll level with you: I honestly don't know what I can say that would bring anything fresh and new to the table. (I can, however, recommend Kim Paffenroth's GOSPELS OF THE LIVING DEAD: GEORGE ROMERO'S VISIONS OF HELL ON EARTH, a Bram Stoker Award-winning look at the series.) I don't think any horror film released in the last forty years has generated the same amount of academic study as NIGHT has, and I'm not sure I'm the man for that particular task, anyway; what am I going to do, tell you Romero's choice to cast an African-American in the lead--a practical decision, incidentally, than an artistic one--gained potency following the assassination of Martin Luther King? Well, duh.
In times like this I tend to go the autobiographical route, maybe giving a little insight into how these films impacted my life. But despite the film's legendary status, and the fact that it was filmed roughly an hour and a half from where I grew up, I didn't see it until I was probably sixteen or so, a fact that I'm rather ashamed to admit. I believe it was at an all-night horror fest with Joe Sidor (see THE EVIL DEAD's entry), where I also saw THE EXORCIST and the first two TEXAS CHAINSAWs for the the first time (in case you're wondering, yes, I didn't get a late start on the horror genre; it's a long, ugly story I'll probably share eventually, but not today). Liked the film a lot then, learned to love in the ensuing years. I'm willing to bet my experience was no different from a lot of my readers'.
So, if you catch me at a con sometime, or swing by the Movies when I'm working, ask me and I'll happily discuss the movie's merits with you. I just think our time with this blog is better spent with lesser known works. But before I go to shit on somebody else's hard work, I want to mention three things:
1. The movie is great. I wouldn't call it flawless, but it holds up well and I don't think time has done anything to dampen its effectiveness.
2. This blog, and others like it, wouldn't be here without it.
3. I'd personally like to invite Matt Groening to kiss my ass for declaring this movie "lame" on the Season 4 TREEHOUSE OF HORROR DVD commentary. Groening, who's milked the dessicated carcass of THE SIMPSONS for nigh on fifteen years now with the dispassionate avarice of a millionaire's great-nephew, is certainly entitled to his opinion, but the arrogant and disrespectful way his dismissed NIGHT on that track REALLY pissed me off.
Romero's been in the press lately, thanks to the impending release of his latest zombie film, DIARY OF THE DEAD. If you want a little further insight into how the man ticks, I've included links below. There is a little overlap of information, but both are must-reads for zombie fans.
The New York Times article is here.
The AV Club article is here.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
DAY 99--TOXIC ZOMBIES
TOXIC ZOMBIES--perhaps better known under the far cooler title BLOODEATERS or in its Video Nasty incarnation as FOREST OF FEAR--is the sole cinematic contribution of writer/producer/director Charles McCrann. This 1980 effort attempts to cover the same territory as George Romero, both thematically (well, it has zombies, anyway) and geographically, having been shot in western Pennsylvania. As someone who's grown up in the same region, I've always been fond of movies that've been filmed there, even if they're not particularly successful (case in point: John Russo's MIDNIGHT, which didn't work much as a horror film, except where it captured the bleak serenity of the area). But despite the familiar terrain, TOXIC ZOMBIES did little to engage or sustain my interest, thanks to an unbelievably amateurish cast and a general lack of filmmaking savvy.
The movie's premise is simple: a band of hippies gets doused in pesticide when their marijuana crop is dusted by a vaguely-defined federal agency (led by MARTIN's John Amplas, who's wasted here in a generic bad guy role). Turned into zombie-like maniacs, the toxic hippies roam the wilderness of the Keystone State looking for victims, which the screenplay is all too happy to provide. What promises to be a backyard version of I DRINK YOUR BLOOD never gets a chance to materialize; McCrann never gives us an opportunity to get to know the hippies, sketching them in the same broad strokes as your average slasher-film fodder, lessening any impact of their transformation (BLOOD at least tried to wring some tragedy, albeit exploitive, out of its situation). Once the hippies have started hunting humans, they're rendered as one-dimensional as possible, a vehicle to set up shallow scenes of gore. The victims, intended and otherwise, don't fare much better, as they're either unlikable (like the husband and father who dashes into the woods at the first glimpse of a zombie attack, leaving his wife behind) or just not credible as real human beings, due to a mixture of poor dialogue and equally subpar acting.
And although McCrann manages to work in a few gruesome scenes, the movie trudges along at too slowly a pace for them to have much of an effect. There's no energy, no tension, either within the story or between characters, so there's nothing that really propels the film other than the numbers in the corners of the screenplay's pages. Most viewers will probably fast-forward through most of the ennui to get to those one or two interesting gore scenes, if not shut it off altogether.
From what I could gather about McCrann, he was a financial executive and film buff who made TOXIC ZOMBIES presumably for his own amusement. Since he never made another film, it's hard to say if he hadn't enjoyed the experience, or felt the film was a failure (from a business end I don't think so, since it had a healthy run on cable), or had simply achieved his dream and that was that. Sadly, McCrann perished during the World Trade Center attacks of September 11th, so we'll never know if his directorial chops ever got the chance to develop.
The movie's premise is simple: a band of hippies gets doused in pesticide when their marijuana crop is dusted by a vaguely-defined federal agency (led by MARTIN's John Amplas, who's wasted here in a generic bad guy role). Turned into zombie-like maniacs, the toxic hippies roam the wilderness of the Keystone State looking for victims, which the screenplay is all too happy to provide. What promises to be a backyard version of I DRINK YOUR BLOOD never gets a chance to materialize; McCrann never gives us an opportunity to get to know the hippies, sketching them in the same broad strokes as your average slasher-film fodder, lessening any impact of their transformation (BLOOD at least tried to wring some tragedy, albeit exploitive, out of its situation). Once the hippies have started hunting humans, they're rendered as one-dimensional as possible, a vehicle to set up shallow scenes of gore. The victims, intended and otherwise, don't fare much better, as they're either unlikable (like the husband and father who dashes into the woods at the first glimpse of a zombie attack, leaving his wife behind) or just not credible as real human beings, due to a mixture of poor dialogue and equally subpar acting.
And although McCrann manages to work in a few gruesome scenes, the movie trudges along at too slowly a pace for them to have much of an effect. There's no energy, no tension, either within the story or between characters, so there's nothing that really propels the film other than the numbers in the corners of the screenplay's pages. Most viewers will probably fast-forward through most of the ennui to get to those one or two interesting gore scenes, if not shut it off altogether.
From what I could gather about McCrann, he was a financial executive and film buff who made TOXIC ZOMBIES presumably for his own amusement. Since he never made another film, it's hard to say if he hadn't enjoyed the experience, or felt the film was a failure (from a business end I don't think so, since it had a healthy run on cable), or had simply achieved his dream and that was that. Sadly, McCrann perished during the World Trade Center attacks of September 11th, so we'll never know if his directorial chops ever got the chance to develop.
DAY 98--THE EVIL DEAD
I think this one's going to be tough, gang.
If previous entries are any indication, the hardest reviews to write so far have been movies that are either extremely well-known (I feel kinda stupid telling you guys about movies you're familiar with) or that are really good (I can't explain it, but it's much harder for me to sing praise--not that it's harder for me to enjoy a movie, but I find it incredibly challenging to extol a film without sounding like sycophantic, sound bite-generating critics like Gene Shalit). So given that today's entry--Sam Raimi's 1981 cult classic THE EVIL DEAD--matches both criteria, I'm afraid this review's going be pretty tough going. We'll at least be able to skip the standard plot synopsis.
Like a lot of genre fans, THE EVIL DEAD made quite an impression upon me the ifrst time I saw it. I was over at my good friend Kevin's--astute readers may remember him from the RE-ANIMATOR review--and I recall thinking the first half-hour was extraordinarily slow . . . but I also had a feeling that the impending payoff was going to be well worth the investment. Well, we all know how that one turned out, and I must say the combination of unrelenting grue and kinetic camerawork reduced me to a happy li'l puddle of jelly. (Kevin, on the other hand, had unexpected company drop in just after the infamous "tree scene"--much to his relief, I'm sure--and the memory of their bemused, slightly uncomfortable reaction was just as much fun as the film itself. Not as much fun as watching BLUE VELVET with my grandparents, but fun nonetheless.) A year or two later, this would be the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, my buddy Joe Sidor had lent me his VHS copy and I must've played that sucker thirty times, memorizing every single detail. It was easily among my three favorite horror flicks, coming on the heels of the aforementioned RE-ANIMATOR and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.
But--and I'm afraid of losing any genre cred I may have earned with you people with this--I'm finding that the movie doesn't hold up as well as those other two. Even the sequel, which is really just a remake with more meat on its bones, seems to affect me less and less on subsequent viewings.
I'm not sure why that is. I don't really think it's the film itself--there's an almost palpable energy running throughout the proceedings, an unmistakable passion for the act of filmmaking that overrides any deficits in craft, and even those are minimal. The godawful climactic stop-motion effects aside, Raimi demonstrates a remarkable amount of skill in his debut feature; it's not much of a stretch to imagine him helming the most expensive movie of all time some twenty-five years later.
Or perhaps it's the so-called geek contingent. I'm not knocking anyone who loves the movie or its follow-ups, but THE EVIL DEAD has achieved a certain amount of ubiquity in horror circles. Thanks to Raimi's transition into a blockbuster director and Bruce Campbell's ascension to the top of the cult-film heroes list, even people that don't consider themselves hardcore horror fans (or people who think the genre began with HALLOWEEN back in 1978) love this flick. Hell, you can find a chainsaw-handed Ash on T-shirts at Wal-Mart, fer chrissakes. Is that my problem, then? That THE EVIL DEAD has emerged from beyond mere geekdom into mainstream culture? (Maybe not mainstream, but Bruce Campbell is doing Old Spice commercials, and I'm sure his history as Ash, or at least his SPIDERMAN cameos, are responsible for his landing the gig.) The surge of bile that rockets up my throat whenever I think of the upcoming remake tells me I might be on the right track.
Regardless of how I feel, or will feel in the future, THE EVIL DEAD is what it is. I'm sure as hell not going to convince the readership of this blog that it's not one of the ass-kickingest movies of all time. It is, I really believe that. I've just lost much of my initial enthusiasm, and I think that adrenaline rush is what makes the movie so damn fun. I suppose thirty viewings in three months can do that to any film, be it cult classic, cinematic masterpiece, or plain ol' guilty pleasure.
There. That wasn't so hard.
(YouTube wouldn't let me embed the trailer, so how 'bout Joe Bob Briggs hosting its cable television premiere?)
If previous entries are any indication, the hardest reviews to write so far have been movies that are either extremely well-known (I feel kinda stupid telling you guys about movies you're familiar with) or that are really good (I can't explain it, but it's much harder for me to sing praise--not that it's harder for me to enjoy a movie, but I find it incredibly challenging to extol a film without sounding like sycophantic, sound bite-generating critics like Gene Shalit). So given that today's entry--Sam Raimi's 1981 cult classic THE EVIL DEAD--matches both criteria, I'm afraid this review's going be pretty tough going. We'll at least be able to skip the standard plot synopsis.
Like a lot of genre fans, THE EVIL DEAD made quite an impression upon me the ifrst time I saw it. I was over at my good friend Kevin's--astute readers may remember him from the RE-ANIMATOR review--and I recall thinking the first half-hour was extraordinarily slow . . . but I also had a feeling that the impending payoff was going to be well worth the investment. Well, we all know how that one turned out, and I must say the combination of unrelenting grue and kinetic camerawork reduced me to a happy li'l puddle of jelly. (Kevin, on the other hand, had unexpected company drop in just after the infamous "tree scene"--much to his relief, I'm sure--and the memory of their bemused, slightly uncomfortable reaction was just as much fun as the film itself. Not as much fun as watching BLUE VELVET with my grandparents, but fun nonetheless.) A year or two later, this would be the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, my buddy Joe Sidor had lent me his VHS copy and I must've played that sucker thirty times, memorizing every single detail. It was easily among my three favorite horror flicks, coming on the heels of the aforementioned RE-ANIMATOR and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.
But--and I'm afraid of losing any genre cred I may have earned with you people with this--I'm finding that the movie doesn't hold up as well as those other two. Even the sequel, which is really just a remake with more meat on its bones, seems to affect me less and less on subsequent viewings.
I'm not sure why that is. I don't really think it's the film itself--there's an almost palpable energy running throughout the proceedings, an unmistakable passion for the act of filmmaking that overrides any deficits in craft, and even those are minimal. The godawful climactic stop-motion effects aside, Raimi demonstrates a remarkable amount of skill in his debut feature; it's not much of a stretch to imagine him helming the most expensive movie of all time some twenty-five years later.
Or perhaps it's the so-called geek contingent. I'm not knocking anyone who loves the movie or its follow-ups, but THE EVIL DEAD has achieved a certain amount of ubiquity in horror circles. Thanks to Raimi's transition into a blockbuster director and Bruce Campbell's ascension to the top of the cult-film heroes list, even people that don't consider themselves hardcore horror fans (or people who think the genre began with HALLOWEEN back in 1978) love this flick. Hell, you can find a chainsaw-handed Ash on T-shirts at Wal-Mart, fer chrissakes. Is that my problem, then? That THE EVIL DEAD has emerged from beyond mere geekdom into mainstream culture? (Maybe not mainstream, but Bruce Campbell is doing Old Spice commercials, and I'm sure his history as Ash, or at least his SPIDERMAN cameos, are responsible for his landing the gig.) The surge of bile that rockets up my throat whenever I think of the upcoming remake tells me I might be on the right track.
Regardless of how I feel, or will feel in the future, THE EVIL DEAD is what it is. I'm sure as hell not going to convince the readership of this blog that it's not one of the ass-kickingest movies of all time. It is, I really believe that. I've just lost much of my initial enthusiasm, and I think that adrenaline rush is what makes the movie so damn fun. I suppose thirty viewings in three months can do that to any film, be it cult classic, cinematic masterpiece, or plain ol' guilty pleasure.
There. That wasn't so hard.
(YouTube wouldn't let me embed the trailer, so how 'bout Joe Bob Briggs hosting its cable television premiere?)
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
DAY 97--DEAD HEAT
Mark Goldblatt, a well-renowned film editor who's worked on everything from PIRANHA to SHOWGIRLS, made his directorial debut with this 1988 release. Taking the premise of the noir classic D.O.A. to its (il)logical extreme, DEAD HEAT also added a darkly humorous twist to the burgeoning buddy-cop genre (no surprise, given that screenwriter Terry Black's brother is LETHAL WEAPON scribe Shane Black). I'd never bothered to see this one, considering its ghastly reputation as being both unfunny and unscary (non-scary? whatever), so when I finally did check it out a few years ago--and only because it was part of a six-disc set of zombie films from Anchor Bay I'd picked up--I went in with zero expectations.
My initial reaction, I was pleasantly surprised. Yet subsequent viewings proved that ultimately it's a mediocre endeavor with a few inspired bursts.
Treat Williams (as Roger Mortis, ho-ho, in a dry, understated performance that probably would've worked better in a straight action vehicle) and Joe Piscopo (as obnoxious as you'd expect, but intolerably so) are a pair of L.A. detectives investigating a ring of armed robberies perpetrated by thieves apparently impervious to bullets. While following up a lead, Williams in killed by an unknown assailant and is brought back to life thanks to an oversized contraption in the research facility they're looking into. Can Williams solve his own murder before he rots away?
The biggest obstacle DEAD HEAT faces is a hole-ridden storyline--the apparatus that revives Williams is never really explained, and most of the villains' motivations are vaguely defined at best--that comes up a few degrees shy of engaging. The B-level budget can be felt all too plainly in most of the action sequences (the exception being the scene in which Williams and Piscopo square off in a Chinese restaurant against a horde of reanimated entrees, including a ambulatory liver and a rampaging side of beef, which makes up in originality what it sorely lacks in logic). All too often the humor is forced, most often in the form of Piscopo's tired, '80s-sitcom gags.
Still, with a supporting cast that includes such genre favorites as Robert Picardo, Darren McGavin, and Vincent Price, it's hard to be completely turned off. Steve Johnson sneaks in a few interesting FX moments, and at 85 minutes at least has the decency to be brief.
If you prefer the likes of Joel Silver and Richard Donner over George Romero, you'll probably enjoy this.
My initial reaction, I was pleasantly surprised. Yet subsequent viewings proved that ultimately it's a mediocre endeavor with a few inspired bursts.
Treat Williams (as Roger Mortis, ho-ho, in a dry, understated performance that probably would've worked better in a straight action vehicle) and Joe Piscopo (as obnoxious as you'd expect, but intolerably so) are a pair of L.A. detectives investigating a ring of armed robberies perpetrated by thieves apparently impervious to bullets. While following up a lead, Williams in killed by an unknown assailant and is brought back to life thanks to an oversized contraption in the research facility they're looking into. Can Williams solve his own murder before he rots away?
The biggest obstacle DEAD HEAT faces is a hole-ridden storyline--the apparatus that revives Williams is never really explained, and most of the villains' motivations are vaguely defined at best--that comes up a few degrees shy of engaging. The B-level budget can be felt all too plainly in most of the action sequences (the exception being the scene in which Williams and Piscopo square off in a Chinese restaurant against a horde of reanimated entrees, including a ambulatory liver and a rampaging side of beef, which makes up in originality what it sorely lacks in logic). All too often the humor is forced, most often in the form of Piscopo's tired, '80s-sitcom gags.
Still, with a supporting cast that includes such genre favorites as Robert Picardo, Darren McGavin, and Vincent Price, it's hard to be completely turned off. Steve Johnson sneaks in a few interesting FX moments, and at 85 minutes at least has the decency to be brief.
If you prefer the likes of Joel Silver and Richard Donner over George Romero, you'll probably enjoy this.
DAY 96--THE GHOUL
The first British horror film of the sound era, 1933's THE GHOUL was no doubt inspired by the returns on Universal's early fright films, in particular 1932's THE MUMMY, which shares a similar theme. Long thought to be lost, this film from director T. Hayes Hunter was recently released on DVD in a gorgeous pristine print; fans of DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN, etc. will undoubtedly want to check this one out (the film feels very much like an unearthed Universal feature), but even they will probably be disappointed when all is said and done.
Boris Karloff stars as a millionaire Egyptologist obsessed with the notion of an afterlife. The film begins with him on his deathbed, making the final arrangements of his immortality with his faithful manservant (Ernest Thesiger) and rejecting any Christian practices, lest his devotion to Anubis be compromised (this must've struck '30s audiences as incredible blasphemous; perhaps that's why Theisger pays a little lip service to the virtues of Christianity, espousing the "proper" views on religion--I doubt this scenario would've stood a chance with the Hays Code). Karloff insists on dying with the Eternal Light, a jewel stolen from an ancient Egyptian tomb that will grant everlasting life when offered to Anubis--which, conveniently enough, Karloff has a full-size statue of in his bedchamber--and will rise from the dead and take vengeance on anyone foolish enough to steal it. Fortunately for us viewers, everyone within a fifty-mile radius of him has an avaricious streak, so the jewel does turn up missing and Karloff arises as promised.
THE GHOUL does an excellent job of establishing mood with its use of shadow, and could carry a film on its atmosphere alone; too bad the story moves along too slowly, shifting into THE OLD DARK HOUSE mode as various characters move about, either searching for the jewel or trying to steal it back. Heavy on dialogue, these scenes do little to maintain--or generate, for that matter--any feeling of tension and wind up bogging down the film. There are a couple of points of interest that make up for such flaws, such as the ritual to Anubis in which Karloff carves ancient symbols into his chest as part of his offering (a somewhat shocking detail, given the time period) as well as Karloff himself, in a mute, expressive performance easily his best at that point, and maybe one of his best all around.
There is, however, the matter of the ending. I won't spoil it here, but I will say that if you're at all familiar in the SCOOBY-DOO tradition of plot resolution you won't be surprised. What bugged me most about the final moments of the film is that it contradicted all the supernatural elements of the story; I realize that the Ghoul of the title isn't Karloff but the one who stole the jewel, and it may have been added to offset some of the more sacrilegious elements of the story, but c'mon--if you're going to make a monster movie, let the damned monster be real.
Still, from a historical or film-scholar perspective, THE GHOUL remains a worthwhile entry.
Boris Karloff stars as a millionaire Egyptologist obsessed with the notion of an afterlife. The film begins with him on his deathbed, making the final arrangements of his immortality with his faithful manservant (Ernest Thesiger) and rejecting any Christian practices, lest his devotion to Anubis be compromised (this must've struck '30s audiences as incredible blasphemous; perhaps that's why Theisger pays a little lip service to the virtues of Christianity, espousing the "proper" views on religion--I doubt this scenario would've stood a chance with the Hays Code). Karloff insists on dying with the Eternal Light, a jewel stolen from an ancient Egyptian tomb that will grant everlasting life when offered to Anubis--which, conveniently enough, Karloff has a full-size statue of in his bedchamber--and will rise from the dead and take vengeance on anyone foolish enough to steal it. Fortunately for us viewers, everyone within a fifty-mile radius of him has an avaricious streak, so the jewel does turn up missing and Karloff arises as promised.
THE GHOUL does an excellent job of establishing mood with its use of shadow, and could carry a film on its atmosphere alone; too bad the story moves along too slowly, shifting into THE OLD DARK HOUSE mode as various characters move about, either searching for the jewel or trying to steal it back. Heavy on dialogue, these scenes do little to maintain--or generate, for that matter--any feeling of tension and wind up bogging down the film. There are a couple of points of interest that make up for such flaws, such as the ritual to Anubis in which Karloff carves ancient symbols into his chest as part of his offering (a somewhat shocking detail, given the time period) as well as Karloff himself, in a mute, expressive performance easily his best at that point, and maybe one of his best all around.
There is, however, the matter of the ending. I won't spoil it here, but I will say that if you're at all familiar in the SCOOBY-DOO tradition of plot resolution you won't be surprised. What bugged me most about the final moments of the film is that it contradicted all the supernatural elements of the story; I realize that the Ghoul of the title isn't Karloff but the one who stole the jewel, and it may have been added to offset some of the more sacrilegious elements of the story, but c'mon--if you're going to make a monster movie, let the damned monster be real.
Still, from a historical or film-scholar perspective, THE GHOUL remains a worthwhile entry.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
DAY 95--I WAS A TEENAGE ZOMBIE
Probably going to keep this one short, since John Elias Michalakis's I WAS A TEENAGE ZOMBIE (a 1987 teen-comedy wannabe masquerading as a horror flick) is a mostly one-note affair devoid of any laughs, shivers, and whatever emotion teen romances are supposed to elicit. I remember catching this one year ago, when I was a teenage zombie myself, and hitting the Stop button after half an hour or so, far from impressed by its feeble attempts at humor. And while lately I've surprised myself by being disproportionately kind to movies of my youth, the only nostalgia I had rewatching ZOMBIE was when I remembered the spot where I initially called it quits.
Our heroes are a band of chuckleheads straight out of the 1980's Teen Comedies home catalog, including the requisite jock, nerd, sensitive guy, bad-boy, and sub-Belushi slob. But despite being from different cliques, they're all great pals, goofing off in class (like jumping out a window during study hall, woo-hoo!) and hanging out over milkshakes at the malt shop (a real pack of party animals, they are). When they buy a bag of weed off Mussolini, the local dope dealer (the late Ignacio F. Iquino, in a performance not competent enough to be good, nor broad enough to be funny) they make the major faux pas of asking for a refund when the "product" turns out to be up to snuff. Now, I'm not a connoisseur of the herb, but I'm pretty sure "all sales final" is implied in most transactions, and Mussolini seems to agree. He attacks the boys, who accidentally kill him and dump his body into a river polluted with toxic waste, thus setting the story proper in motion as the zombified Mussolini terrorizes the boys.
You may be wondering--my wife certainly was, before bailing for more constructive endeavors like playing The Sims--about the TEENAGE portion of the title, since Iquino clearly left puberty 'round the Kennedy assassination. Well, he eventually gets one of the boys--nice-guy jock Dan, who cleaned his clock earlier with a baseball bat--so his friends naturally dump him in the same river to reanimate him. (I'd like to take a moment to tell my friends: if I'm ever killed by a zombie drug dealer, please don't bring me back as the same; just kick the dude's ass, okay?)
Slow, boring, and painfully devoid of anything resembling entertainment, I WAS A TEENAGE ZOMBIE skimps on the gore as much as the humor; though, with a budget that probably wouldn't have Supersized an extra value meal, I doubt there wasn't a lot in the FX department they could've done. The cast is uniformly bland, though the actor who played Dan (Michael Rubin) kinda resembles a young DeNiro, if Bobby lacked any dramatic chops, anyway. I'd suggest passing on this one, though it may be of interest if you enjoyed stuff like Greg Lamberson's SLIME CITY (Lamberson served as production manager on this one) or the output--I can't really call 'em films--of Tim Kincaid; the late-eighties marked the end of the 16mm era of NYC-lensed horror films, and I WAS A TEENAGE ZOMBIE was probably played a part in its demise.
(No trailer, but you can enjoy the movie's rape scene--I don't know about you, but it's not a teen-horror-comedy without violent rape.)
Our heroes are a band of chuckleheads straight out of the 1980's Teen Comedies home catalog, including the requisite jock, nerd, sensitive guy, bad-boy, and sub-Belushi slob. But despite being from different cliques, they're all great pals, goofing off in class (like jumping out a window during study hall, woo-hoo!) and hanging out over milkshakes at the malt shop (a real pack of party animals, they are). When they buy a bag of weed off Mussolini, the local dope dealer (the late Ignacio F. Iquino, in a performance not competent enough to be good, nor broad enough to be funny) they make the major faux pas of asking for a refund when the "product" turns out to be up to snuff. Now, I'm not a connoisseur of the herb, but I'm pretty sure "all sales final" is implied in most transactions, and Mussolini seems to agree. He attacks the boys, who accidentally kill him and dump his body into a river polluted with toxic waste, thus setting the story proper in motion as the zombified Mussolini terrorizes the boys.
You may be wondering--my wife certainly was, before bailing for more constructive endeavors like playing The Sims--about the TEENAGE portion of the title, since Iquino clearly left puberty 'round the Kennedy assassination. Well, he eventually gets one of the boys--nice-guy jock Dan, who cleaned his clock earlier with a baseball bat--so his friends naturally dump him in the same river to reanimate him. (I'd like to take a moment to tell my friends: if I'm ever killed by a zombie drug dealer, please don't bring me back as the same; just kick the dude's ass, okay?)
Slow, boring, and painfully devoid of anything resembling entertainment, I WAS A TEENAGE ZOMBIE skimps on the gore as much as the humor; though, with a budget that probably wouldn't have Supersized an extra value meal, I doubt there wasn't a lot in the FX department they could've done. The cast is uniformly bland, though the actor who played Dan (Michael Rubin) kinda resembles a young DeNiro, if Bobby lacked any dramatic chops, anyway. I'd suggest passing on this one, though it may be of interest if you enjoyed stuff like Greg Lamberson's SLIME CITY (Lamberson served as production manager on this one) or the output--I can't really call 'em films--of Tim Kincaid; the late-eighties marked the end of the 16mm era of NYC-lensed horror films, and I WAS A TEENAGE ZOMBIE was probably played a part in its demise.
(No trailer, but you can enjoy the movie's rape scene--I don't know about you, but it's not a teen-horror-comedy without violent rape.)
DAY 94--CADAVERELLA
Fairy tales have always been good fodder for horror films. With their extensive catalogue of atrocities committed by diabolical characters, it usually doesn't take much to transform a simple bedtime story into a bloodbath. Director Timothy Friend presents this 2007 zombified twist on the Cinderella tale, though so much of the original's premise goes undeveloped that the whole concept is little more than a gimmick.
Friend keeps the concept of a young girl named Cinder (Goth babe Megan Goddard) living with her stepmother--this time around, a stripper her father met on a business trip--and two stepsisters, but jettisons most of the rest. Her stepmom (Kieran Hunter, in one of four equally annoying roles) is a grating pain in the ass, but never forces Cinder into indentured servitude, nor does Cinder have any relationship to her stepsisters; Friend has a potentially unnerving pair of characters, two odd, mute girls who haven't aged since the prologue, but lets them go pretty much ignored. Cinder also has a couple of guys in her life, her parapalegic friend-with-benefits Justin, and Cash, a bad-boy biker type she lusts after, who's not only shagging her stepmom, but will be the one to kill her. (Let me take a moment to point out that Justin is a sweet, ingratiating character and really the only likable person in the cast, while Cash way too laughable to be the hard-ass the script needs him to be, with a crappy blond wig that makes him look like a male hustler. I mention this only because both roles were played by Ryan Seymour; how can an actor be good in one performance and thoroughly suck in the other? At least Hunter was consistently awful in all four of her parts. I'm guessing Seymour is simply just like Justin in real life.)
Goddard may be easy on the eyes, but she plays Cinder as such a selfish bitch that it's really difficult to care what happens to her. Thanks to a little occultic experimentation she meets up with the skull-faced Baron Samedi, her version of a fairy godmother, described as a combination of "Hugh Hefner, Satan, and a used car salesman," though lacking the various charisma of any, and it's his magic that will being Cinder back as a vengeance-hungry zombie. Played with a booming glee by Santiago Vasquez, Samedi has plenty of promise but brings little to the table other than a great maniacal laugh.
CADAVERELLA plays way too slow, plagued with horrid sound quality and lousy digital effects. Friend even takes time out of the film's meager 70 minutes to squeeze out a couple of unfunny TV parodies of soap operas and redneck used car lots. In short, he spends way too much time on crap he doesn't need, and squanders what little interesting tidbits he does find; before he takes her to the woods where he'll kill her, Cash takes Cinder to a rinky-dink bar that reminded me of Jacques's place in TWIN PEAKS. The sequence is nothing but special, but at one moment Cinder accidentally wanders into a room where a snuff movie is going to be shot, and is almost recruited into the shoot before Cash saves her (so he can off her himself, I guess). The moment is brief, but it showed flashes of sickening dread, and makes one wish that Friend had utilized it more.
When Cinder finally returns from her grave, she exacts her revenge in a predictably gory manner, including a killing spree on the bar patrons. The bloodshed is over-the-top, but Friend glosses over it in such a perfunctory manner you wonder why he'd bothered; the gorehounds who were patiently waiting are going to feel ripped off. And why does Cinder graphically dispatch a room full of total strangers, yet saves the least interesting death for the guy who knocked her off? Friend may have an answer, but I'd already shrugged this piece of junk off at the twenty-minute mark.
I never thought I'd say this, but you'd be better off with the classic Disney version. Or at least dig up a copy of the original tale, which offers far more dark enjoyment that this shitfest.
Friend keeps the concept of a young girl named Cinder (Goth babe Megan Goddard) living with her stepmother--this time around, a stripper her father met on a business trip--and two stepsisters, but jettisons most of the rest. Her stepmom (Kieran Hunter, in one of four equally annoying roles) is a grating pain in the ass, but never forces Cinder into indentured servitude, nor does Cinder have any relationship to her stepsisters; Friend has a potentially unnerving pair of characters, two odd, mute girls who haven't aged since the prologue, but lets them go pretty much ignored. Cinder also has a couple of guys in her life, her parapalegic friend-with-benefits Justin, and Cash, a bad-boy biker type she lusts after, who's not only shagging her stepmom, but will be the one to kill her. (Let me take a moment to point out that Justin is a sweet, ingratiating character and really the only likable person in the cast, while Cash way too laughable to be the hard-ass the script needs him to be, with a crappy blond wig that makes him look like a male hustler. I mention this only because both roles were played by Ryan Seymour; how can an actor be good in one performance and thoroughly suck in the other? At least Hunter was consistently awful in all four of her parts. I'm guessing Seymour is simply just like Justin in real life.)
Goddard may be easy on the eyes, but she plays Cinder as such a selfish bitch that it's really difficult to care what happens to her. Thanks to a little occultic experimentation she meets up with the skull-faced Baron Samedi, her version of a fairy godmother, described as a combination of "Hugh Hefner, Satan, and a used car salesman," though lacking the various charisma of any, and it's his magic that will being Cinder back as a vengeance-hungry zombie. Played with a booming glee by Santiago Vasquez, Samedi has plenty of promise but brings little to the table other than a great maniacal laugh.
CADAVERELLA plays way too slow, plagued with horrid sound quality and lousy digital effects. Friend even takes time out of the film's meager 70 minutes to squeeze out a couple of unfunny TV parodies of soap operas and redneck used car lots. In short, he spends way too much time on crap he doesn't need, and squanders what little interesting tidbits he does find; before he takes her to the woods where he'll kill her, Cash takes Cinder to a rinky-dink bar that reminded me of Jacques's place in TWIN PEAKS. The sequence is nothing but special, but at one moment Cinder accidentally wanders into a room where a snuff movie is going to be shot, and is almost recruited into the shoot before Cash saves her (so he can off her himself, I guess). The moment is brief, but it showed flashes of sickening dread, and makes one wish that Friend had utilized it more.
When Cinder finally returns from her grave, she exacts her revenge in a predictably gory manner, including a killing spree on the bar patrons. The bloodshed is over-the-top, but Friend glosses over it in such a perfunctory manner you wonder why he'd bothered; the gorehounds who were patiently waiting are going to feel ripped off. And why does Cinder graphically dispatch a room full of total strangers, yet saves the least interesting death for the guy who knocked her off? Friend may have an answer, but I'd already shrugged this piece of junk off at the twenty-minute mark.
I never thought I'd say this, but you'd be better off with the classic Disney version. Or at least dig up a copy of the original tale, which offers far more dark enjoyment that this shitfest.
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