From the depths of shot-on-video obscurity surfaces REANIMATOR ACADEMY, a 1992 feature from the late, unlamented Cinema Home Video, who spawned oodles of crappy horror tapes in the early nineties, each with the shelf life of a Hostess Pudding Pie. This one, directed by Judith Priest (in all likelihood a pseudonym for executive producer David DeCoteau), attempts to recreate Stuart Gordon's classic on a hundred-dollar budget, filtering it through a sub-PORKY's college/party flick sensibility. The resulting film, unsurprisingly, is a certified disaster.
Jeffrey Combs-lookalike Edgar Allan Lovecraft (puh-leeze!) is a member of the Delta Epsilon Delta frat house (that's DED, by the way, as in Ded Heads, the nickname for all the frat brothers). Instead of explaining how a labcoat-wearing nerd got into the party-heartiest frat on campus--an initiation that had to've made collegiate history, no doubt--Edgar develops a reanimation serum that he uses on the decapitated head of a car accident victim, transforming it into a barely-articulate dummy named Fred the Head. A stand-up comedian before he died--get it? A stand-up comic who can't stand up! Ha!--Fred's a huge hit at the frat parties, knockin' 'em dead with his barrage of sub-vaudevillian one-liners. (Now, fraternities are not especially well known for their refined senses of humor, but I doubt even they would enjoy Fred's cornball jokes.) But the fun comes to an abrupt halt when a pair of cartoonish gangsters recruit Edgar against his will to revive the corpse of their favorite working girl, Hot Lips.
As I'm sure you can tell, REANIMATOR ACADEMY is anemic and ludicrous, a film that's almost funny in its unfunnyness. Yet despite its dimestore production values and slapdash direction, there's something vaguely engaging about it. Not in a so-bad-it's-good way, but more from a fascination that a movie can be this monumentally terrible and still be watchable. The humor, lousy as it often is, is relatively harmless, braindead trifle that doesn't take itself seriously; though when Edgar reanimates Hot Lips she suffers from Shrew Syndrome, a condition that turns any undead female into a raving, screeching bitch. Equally unfunny as the rest of the picture, this running gag has a faint whiff of misogyny that makes the last half rather unpleasant and stamps out the tiny iota of fun it has going for it. Shifting into a FRANKENHOOKER steal, Hot Lips embarks on a penny-saver killing spree, decapitating every man(nequin) that crosses her path.
Obviously, there's very little about REANIMATOR ACADEMY worth recommending (how can you, with a film so cheap its end credits are a reprise of the opening titles?), but I do want to point out Benton Jennings as the dimwitted mob henchman; a glimmer of acting talent shines through the crappy material he 's forced to work with, and the fact that he went on to a decent career in Hollywood proves that handheld video garbage isn't always a career black hole.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
DAY 141--ZOMBIE PLANET
Films from the micro-budgeted, shot-on-video camp usually fall into viewers' disdain, and for good reason. While most of us--at least I can, anyway--overlook such pitfalls as shoddy production values or non-professional actors in the hopes of finding an unearthed gem, too many of them fail due to a lack of imagination and creative thrust. So when an indie movie comes along that tries to be more than just a backyard flick I try to cut it some slack--which makes watching George Bonilla's ZOMBIE PLANET doubly frustrating, since it believes an overextended running time is all that's required in making an epic.
This Kentucky-based 2004 effort reveals its limited budget in its opening shot, a cheesy digital effect introducing an unnamed southern city in flames, yet still makes a go of establishing the apocalyptic near-future of a society ravaged by disease. Bonilla does an adequate job of achieving an end-of-the-world setting on a tight budget, but chooses to populate it with a staggeringly bland and uninteresting cast (props to Bonilla for assembling a surprising number of actors, even if they're not exactly skilled thespians). Worse yet, the living dead take a backseat to the exploits of long-haired badass T.K. Kane (Frank Farhat, looking more like a Harlequin cover model than the Snake Plisken type the script believes him to be) who gets mixed up in a war between two camps of survivors. The end result plays like a third-rate WALKER, TEXAS RANGER episode tossed in with some MAD MAX-inspired misfits.
This neccesarily wouldn't be bad, except most of this film's two-hour length is devoted to long-winded expository speeches, peppered liberally with flashbacks that provide even more unneeded backstory and hallucinations that serve no purpose. Bonilla attempts to break up the talk with several fight sequences, though they're so laughably choreographed and lacking in immediacy that they quickly become just as tiresome. The zombies make for a better adversary than the pitiful band of human villains Bonilla's put together (a group of chuckleheads as fearsome as a playground bully), yet they're mishandled as well as they spew ridiculous dialogue and fist-fight (?); the few traditional zombie attack scenes Bonilla does provide are as limp and pedestrian as the rest of the film.
After dragging its feet for most of its duration, ZOMBIE PLANET ends with an open-ended climax, setting up the sequel (entitled ADAM'S REVENGE). While not intentionally a cheap ploy to double-dip the audience--the initial cut ran long enough that cutting into two parts seemed feasible--Bonilla would've been well advised to trim the excess fat that made the movie so long in the first place; though not without its flaws, it would've been at least a tighter mess, and had a better shot of capturing the viewer's attention.
This Kentucky-based 2004 effort reveals its limited budget in its opening shot, a cheesy digital effect introducing an unnamed southern city in flames, yet still makes a go of establishing the apocalyptic near-future of a society ravaged by disease. Bonilla does an adequate job of achieving an end-of-the-world setting on a tight budget, but chooses to populate it with a staggeringly bland and uninteresting cast (props to Bonilla for assembling a surprising number of actors, even if they're not exactly skilled thespians). Worse yet, the living dead take a backseat to the exploits of long-haired badass T.K. Kane (Frank Farhat, looking more like a Harlequin cover model than the Snake Plisken type the script believes him to be) who gets mixed up in a war between two camps of survivors. The end result plays like a third-rate WALKER, TEXAS RANGER episode tossed in with some MAD MAX-inspired misfits.
This neccesarily wouldn't be bad, except most of this film's two-hour length is devoted to long-winded expository speeches, peppered liberally with flashbacks that provide even more unneeded backstory and hallucinations that serve no purpose. Bonilla attempts to break up the talk with several fight sequences, though they're so laughably choreographed and lacking in immediacy that they quickly become just as tiresome. The zombies make for a better adversary than the pitiful band of human villains Bonilla's put together (a group of chuckleheads as fearsome as a playground bully), yet they're mishandled as well as they spew ridiculous dialogue and fist-fight (?); the few traditional zombie attack scenes Bonilla does provide are as limp and pedestrian as the rest of the film.
After dragging its feet for most of its duration, ZOMBIE PLANET ends with an open-ended climax, setting up the sequel (entitled ADAM'S REVENGE). While not intentionally a cheap ploy to double-dip the audience--the initial cut ran long enough that cutting into two parts seemed feasible--Bonilla would've been well advised to trim the excess fat that made the movie so long in the first place; though not without its flaws, it would've been at least a tighter mess, and had a better shot of capturing the viewer's attention.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
DAY 140--HALF LIFE
HALF LIFE, a 2005 short from writer/director Jeremy Breslau, is a well-shot but ultimately anemic film about a fraternity pledge who must procure a corpse's finger as part of his initiation. Nothing new there, but the setting--a forensic center's body farm in the middle of the woods--promises a few chills. Too bad the brightly-lit exteriors lack atmosphere, and the action too slow, to really be effective.
The story's climax also drops the ball, its potentially frightening situation dampened by the asshole frat members' bickering and its truncated, ambiguous conclusion. Maybe if Breslau would've gotten us a little closer to the zombies, or given them more to do, this short could've been better.
The story's climax also drops the ball, its potentially frightening situation dampened by the asshole frat members' bickering and its truncated, ambiguous conclusion. Maybe if Breslau would've gotten us a little closer to the zombies, or given them more to do, this short could've been better.
DAY 139--ZOMBIE HONEYMOON
Horror fans generally get bent out of shape whenever mainstream culture co-opts our beloved tropes, like the recent glut of watered-down J-Horror remakes (how cheap are they making these things anyway, if the failures of ONE MISSED CALL, THE EYE, and SHUTTER aren't enough to deter Hollywood?). Arthouse and indie directors have been known to use the practice as well, and sometimes the results are fascinating (Michael Almereyda's NADJA comes to mind). Or, as in the case of Dave Gebroe's ZOMBIE HONEYMOON, it drags elements of the genre kicking and screaming into the realm of pretentious, navel-gazing cinema.
Presented by Showtime, this 2004 film opens with a newlywed couple (played by Tracy Coogan and Graham Sibley) bursting out of the chapel and hopping into their tin can-trailing car. We're supposed to feel exuberant over these two beautiful young people embarking on a new life together, but they're introduced as such obnoxious loudmouths that I was weary with their company within the first few minutes. It doesn't get better when we follow them to their honeymoon getaway--15 minutes with this pair and I was wishing I was back in that abandoned hospital with those jokers from THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING.
Their marital bliss is short-lived when hubby is attacked on the beach by a zombie (a scene which begins with much potential as the zombie slowly emerges from the sea, then fizzles out with no flair and no payoff, as arbitrary a plot-starter as I've ever seen), who pukes black bile into his throat and turns him into the living dead. From there it's an oh-so-tedious ordeal as Coogan tries to cope with her spouse's condition, as she watches him do really disgusting things like eat steak with gluttonous abandon--somebody tell Gebroe that vegan outrage makes for poor drama. Sibley hits all the required bases: he eats human flesh, yet we never see him actually procure his victims, nor do we see him wrestle with his affliction; Coogan weeps and moans plenty, but I felt that it was for her own inconvenience than empathy for her husband. Gebroe's obviously more interested in how his characters deal with being undead than reveling in visceral thrills, though their interaction is so talky and dull that it's difficult to feel anything at all for these uninteresting people.
There's way too many "relationship" films involving the living dead that are better than ZOMBIE HONEYMOON--like MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK, ba-zing!--for you to waste your time with this drivel.
Presented by Showtime, this 2004 film opens with a newlywed couple (played by Tracy Coogan and Graham Sibley) bursting out of the chapel and hopping into their tin can-trailing car. We're supposed to feel exuberant over these two beautiful young people embarking on a new life together, but they're introduced as such obnoxious loudmouths that I was weary with their company within the first few minutes. It doesn't get better when we follow them to their honeymoon getaway--15 minutes with this pair and I was wishing I was back in that abandoned hospital with those jokers from THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING.
Their marital bliss is short-lived when hubby is attacked on the beach by a zombie (a scene which begins with much potential as the zombie slowly emerges from the sea, then fizzles out with no flair and no payoff, as arbitrary a plot-starter as I've ever seen), who pukes black bile into his throat and turns him into the living dead. From there it's an oh-so-tedious ordeal as Coogan tries to cope with her spouse's condition, as she watches him do really disgusting things like eat steak with gluttonous abandon--somebody tell Gebroe that vegan outrage makes for poor drama. Sibley hits all the required bases: he eats human flesh, yet we never see him actually procure his victims, nor do we see him wrestle with his affliction; Coogan weeps and moans plenty, but I felt that it was for her own inconvenience than empathy for her husband. Gebroe's obviously more interested in how his characters deal with being undead than reveling in visceral thrills, though their interaction is so talky and dull that it's difficult to feel anything at all for these uninteresting people.
There's way too many "relationship" films involving the living dead that are better than ZOMBIE HONEYMOON--like MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK, ba-zing!--for you to waste your time with this drivel.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
DAY 138--THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING
So, the dead hate the living, do they? I suppose it's only fair, since I hated this sniveling, look-at-us-we-like-obscure-horror-flicks-and-that-makes-us-cool waste of time. Released in 2000 by Full Moon Pictures--yet doesn't feature miniature puppets, toys, or Tim Thomerson--Dave Parker's zombie flick should've been a rancid love letter to fans of Italian horror, but instead sucks all the fun from itself with its insufferable cast and boneheaded story.
THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING gets off on the wrong foot by revealing its prologue to be a segment of the film-within-a-film. (Can somebody please declare a moratorium on this practice, please? This is the same kind of unfair misdirection as someone having a bad dream or hallucination, and it's never done right.) A group of indie filmmakers have broken into an abandoned hospital to shoot a Fulci-lovin' zombie film and, after finding a weird coffin-liked mechanism within the bowels of the building, accidentally unleash a gaggle of zombies and their master into our world.
All would be well if this wasn't the single most annoying bunch of fucks ever let loose in a movie. From the bitchy sister of the eager yet self-absorbed director to the stoner DP, I was rooting for the undead to disembowel these losers from the very first frame. (Let's not forget the director's other sister, who I frequently mistook for his girlfriend, given their oh-so-tender moments together, or the pimpslap-worthy FX guy, who acts like Shaggy from SCOOBY-DOO crossed with a flighty drama queen.) These guys name-drop David Warbeck and Tom Savini as though it makes them smart and hip, though they're no different than the socially-retarded mouthbreathers standing in line behind you at Horrorfind weekend. (I hated these assholes, can you tell?)
Nor does it help that it takes nearly half the movie to get the zombies in gear, after endless scenes of pointless bickering, and when the action finally starts it's marred by rubbery zombie masks, unconvincing gore, and plodding execution. The crew behind the camera has more zombies among them, judging from the uniformly subpar writing, direction, and camerawork; now and then Parker will display an imaginative use of lighting or atmosphere, but for the most part his work is flat and uninspired.
After cribbing several shots from THE BEYOND (a move we're supposed to applaud, I'm sure, but it does nothing but reveal the film's dearth of imagination) Parker pulls an all-out steal of that movie's conclusion for his own ending. Are we supposed to high-five each other at this point? Yeah, we all loved Fulci's film, so if we wanted to see it again we'd pop it in the DVD player. Sadly, these moments rank as the movie's best.
THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING gets off on the wrong foot by revealing its prologue to be a segment of the film-within-a-film. (Can somebody please declare a moratorium on this practice, please? This is the same kind of unfair misdirection as someone having a bad dream or hallucination, and it's never done right.) A group of indie filmmakers have broken into an abandoned hospital to shoot a Fulci-lovin' zombie film and, after finding a weird coffin-liked mechanism within the bowels of the building, accidentally unleash a gaggle of zombies and their master into our world.
All would be well if this wasn't the single most annoying bunch of fucks ever let loose in a movie. From the bitchy sister of the eager yet self-absorbed director to the stoner DP, I was rooting for the undead to disembowel these losers from the very first frame. (Let's not forget the director's other sister, who I frequently mistook for his girlfriend, given their oh-so-tender moments together, or the pimpslap-worthy FX guy, who acts like Shaggy from SCOOBY-DOO crossed with a flighty drama queen.) These guys name-drop David Warbeck and Tom Savini as though it makes them smart and hip, though they're no different than the socially-retarded mouthbreathers standing in line behind you at Horrorfind weekend. (I hated these assholes, can you tell?)
Nor does it help that it takes nearly half the movie to get the zombies in gear, after endless scenes of pointless bickering, and when the action finally starts it's marred by rubbery zombie masks, unconvincing gore, and plodding execution. The crew behind the camera has more zombies among them, judging from the uniformly subpar writing, direction, and camerawork; now and then Parker will display an imaginative use of lighting or atmosphere, but for the most part his work is flat and uninspired.
After cribbing several shots from THE BEYOND (a move we're supposed to applaud, I'm sure, but it does nothing but reveal the film's dearth of imagination) Parker pulls an all-out steal of that movie's conclusion for his own ending. Are we supposed to high-five each other at this point? Yeah, we all loved Fulci's film, so if we wanted to see it again we'd pop it in the DVD player. Sadly, these moments rank as the movie's best.
Friday, March 21, 2008
DAY 137--INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN
Like many of his fellow titans of terror, Lon Chaney Jr. found himself in a career slump in the 1950's. With the days of Wolf Man and Mummy films for Universal behind him, Chaney found himself phoning in several performances in minor B productions. 1956's INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN is one of them, a crime thriller with a minimal horrific slant that echoes Chaney's previous MAN MADE MONSTER.
Directed by Jack Pollexfen, the film stars Chaney as Butcher Benton, an executed criminal brought back to life by electricity as part of a secret scientific experiment. Since the movie's presented as a DRAGNET-style docudrama (complete with just-the-facts narration by the unfortunately-named Lt. Dick Chasen), Chaney's resurrection is rushed through in spectacularly unspectacular fashion--just a quick zap of juice and voila, instant killing machine--so that Chaney can get down to the business of offing the cohorts who set him up. (For some reason the procedure also renders Chaney mute, saving the actor--who was in all likelihood thoroughly pickled during the shoot--the trouble of memorizing dialogue.)
Despite the science-fiction trappings, INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN plays like a straight crime melodrama, with Chaney's invincibility used as a gimmick. The action plays like any generic gangster picture (though I got a kick out of seeing Chaney tossing dummies from rooftops or down flights of stairs), though in a few instances Pollexfen works up a somewhat noirish look with the occasional use of light and shadow (as well as a few hardboiled dames). The performances are what you'd expect from a B quickie, with Chaney's the most unfortunate: an interchangeable set of expressions somewhere between Excedrin Headache #326 and a serious bout of constipation, conveying his anger with close-ups on his half-squinting eyes.
INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN has its moments, and in the right frame of mind can make for a pleasant time-killer, but it's still tough for someone who loved Chaney as Larry Talbot (or Lenny from OF MICE AND MEN) reduced to such drivel. It is, though, better than some of the truly abysmal work that would await him in the future.
Directed by Jack Pollexfen, the film stars Chaney as Butcher Benton, an executed criminal brought back to life by electricity as part of a secret scientific experiment. Since the movie's presented as a DRAGNET-style docudrama (complete with just-the-facts narration by the unfortunately-named Lt. Dick Chasen), Chaney's resurrection is rushed through in spectacularly unspectacular fashion--just a quick zap of juice and voila, instant killing machine--so that Chaney can get down to the business of offing the cohorts who set him up. (For some reason the procedure also renders Chaney mute, saving the actor--who was in all likelihood thoroughly pickled during the shoot--the trouble of memorizing dialogue.)
Despite the science-fiction trappings, INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN plays like a straight crime melodrama, with Chaney's invincibility used as a gimmick. The action plays like any generic gangster picture (though I got a kick out of seeing Chaney tossing dummies from rooftops or down flights of stairs), though in a few instances Pollexfen works up a somewhat noirish look with the occasional use of light and shadow (as well as a few hardboiled dames). The performances are what you'd expect from a B quickie, with Chaney's the most unfortunate: an interchangeable set of expressions somewhere between Excedrin Headache #326 and a serious bout of constipation, conveying his anger with close-ups on his half-squinting eyes.
INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN has its moments, and in the right frame of mind can make for a pleasant time-killer, but it's still tough for someone who loved Chaney as Larry Talbot (or Lenny from OF MICE AND MEN) reduced to such drivel. It is, though, better than some of the truly abysmal work that would await him in the future.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
DAY 136--GUY'S GUIDE TO ZOMBIES
We've covered 1950's-inspired zombie flicks here already, from the well-intentioned but flawed instructional video parody HOW TO SURVIVE A ZOMBIE ATTACK to Andrew Currie's wonderful FIDO. Today's entry, GUY'S GUIDE TO ZOMBIES, lampoons the Eisenhower-era newsreel in an attempt to inform you--the moral, upstanding American citizen--how to productively function in an increasingly zombie-friendly society.
This animated short from Daniel and Matthew Austin duplicates the look and sound of those vintage newsreels, complete with scratched film stock and a nostalgic hiss on the soundtrack. The humor is often clever, even if does touch on the usual topics (I liked the visual demonstration on how the zombie virus affects the human body), but it manages to cover a lot of ground and packs a remarkable amount of detail into each frame. One of the better shorts I've seen a while, both retro and zombie fans will dig it.
This animated short from Daniel and Matthew Austin duplicates the look and sound of those vintage newsreels, complete with scratched film stock and a nostalgic hiss on the soundtrack. The humor is often clever, even if does touch on the usual topics (I liked the visual demonstration on how the zombie virus affects the human body), but it manages to cover a lot of ground and packs a remarkable amount of detail into each frame. One of the better shorts I've seen a while, both retro and zombie fans will dig it.
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