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Movies (Bad)

The Lone Ranger (2013)
No Happy Trails for You Here

Lone Ranger Remake Movie
Zombos Says: Where have all the heroes gone?

Finally, there’s one glorious moment where the Lone Ranger gallops across the town’s rooftops on his white horse, Silver, as the rousing William Tell overture kicks in. One moment. It’s exciting, thrilling, and fleeting, except for the loud soundtrack, which continues well past its purpose.

I don’t understand Hollywood’s creative-mangling; its keenness for techno-virtuosity and loud breakage, and deaf ear for a logically plotted and dramatically characterized narrative to carry it. All these sound and fury moments have become repetitious and only pander to audiences gorged on sugar but who have forgotten what sweet really tastes like. How ironic is it that as the movies get BIGGER, they play smaller.

Two misguided moments have Tonto first taking a shovel to John Reid’s head for a cheap chuckle–he’s the future Lone Ranger, played by Armie Hammer–and then dragging his head through road apples for another kiddie-quality grin. I’m dumbfounded. I don’t know why this script etiquette of writing antagonistic relationships between buddy-characters who actually got along swimmingly in their original incarnations  is now always part of Hollywood’s re-imagining process. It undermines the intrinsic nature of why the original series works. The abysmal Wild Wild West remake with Will Smith and Kevin Kline is another sad example of this lazy scripting staple. Note to Hollywood: maybe try finding comedy through the characters and not artificially by dumbing them down with rehashed pratfall situations and trumped up relationships in EVERY movie.

By now you should get a good sense of how much I feel this movie fails its promise. I’ll go a step further and even say it stinks. I realize “stinks” is not a Pulitzer Prize worthy word for a reviewer to use, but it best sums up the failure of yet another expensive franchise reboot that deserves better than Gore Verbinski’s beautifully directed but gaseous, blockbuster-less, movie.

Its failed ideas include another brothel-madame-with-a-quirky-twist–Helena Bonham Carter doing her standard weird woman role accompanied by an ivory leg holding an amazingly accurate shotgun; then there’s a varmint (William Fichtner) who likes to eat people’s hearts raw; then there are his evil but comedic henchmen, a la Pirates of the Caribbean, with feminine dress-up habits and especially grimy appearances; and, of course, there’s Johnny Depp’s Tonto providing his patented greasepaint antics like wearing a bird cage on his head, or feeding his dead-bird-hat, or speaking to a horse that likes to sit in trees and transcend gravity at opportune moments when that ability is most needed for the action.

And that action isn’t bad, just pointless because it’s devoid of any emotional punch when every character is written as fiberboard instead of oak, and consigned to doing familiar shticks in a strikingly colorless frontier. This story is cynical when it needs to be sincere, and Tonto and the Lone Ranger are caricatures when they need to be heroes. The U.S. Cavalry is present to fire off their Gatling Guns. Native Americans are present to be massacred by those guns. The power-hungry railroad tycoon wannabe (Tom Wilkinson) is here to be overbearingly power-hungry, although Wilkinson does have a knack for such dastardly roles.

Perhaps this movie didn’t start out poorly? Perhaps the “memos” mori and apparent overhanding rewrites pounded the original story’s whole grain into mush? When John Reid holds up John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government as his bible you get the sense this young and idealistic, newly minted, attorney is in for a letdown, forcing him to become the legendary masked lawman to realize the justice he seeks. The letdown comes, but it’s buried under a ton of screeching metal and loose storylines that don’t fortify his transformation. When Tonto’s bizarre behavior is explained by a compelling backstory, it comes at a time we can’t appreciate it; it’s lost in the loud bangs and rush to blow things up with lots of dynamite.

And the biggest letdown is for us, the fans of the Western and Cowboy genres. That’s Western, as in not the Caribbean.

Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)
When a Chainsaw is Not Enough

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ZC Rating: Fair

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Here are some of the takeaways for me after seeing Texas Chainsaw 3D: make sure to read important letters left to you by dead relatives before you move into their mansions; don’t jump in open caskets in graves in cemeteries you’re not familiar with; women went bare tummy, wore tight jeans held up by wide belts, and traveled in VW mystery machines in the 1990s; stay away from meat packing facilities that have been shut for over 20 years and still have electricity and machinery in perfect running order; don’t look through your cell phone camera when walking in strange hallways filled with dead things; and finally, don’t pay for 3D when 2D sucks just as much.

Now that I’ve gotten those takeaways off my chest, I do have a few nagging questions after seeing the movie, too. For one, why doesn’t the sheriff shoot? For another, why does Heather stay?

There are a lot of things in Texas Chainsaw 3D that irked me; the gore factor is high and palpable (or pulpable, to be more descriptive) without that freakish energy powering up from the drive-in trashy grit and hillbilly inbred insanity the original sparks with.

Another disappointment is how the promises made during the opening scenes highlighting the original’s backstory go unfulfilled. A baby girl is taken after the Sawyer family is killed by local vigilantes fed up with all the Sawyer craziness bringing attention to the small town of Newt, Texas. That girl grows up to be emo Heather (Alexandra Daddario), who creates morbid art from bones, likes slicing meat at the supermarket she works at, and dresses for a different time period than this movie’s situated in.

Or maybe I’m confused. Is she twenty-something or near-forty-something? What time period does this movie take place in anyway?

The creatively commercial, but ill-advised, use of a cell phone would place everything in the present, but Heather’s sexy bare tummy throughout the movie, and the beat-up Scooby Doo-style VW van (it’s like 1974 all over again), and the hitchhiker pickup scene (people still pick up total strangers?) are retro-fits to another decade. Doing the math while basing the total on the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre of 1974 starting point, Heather is either nearing 40 but looks smashingly nubile for her age, or she’s really in her early twenties and a Dr. Who type time-warp bubble allows a modern and over-priced cell phone to co-exist with her in the 1990s.

It’s a wonder they didn’t manage to shoehorn in a plot-use for Michelob, with Heather rolling a cold, wet one across her bare stomach while she’s meeting up with the family lawyer (Richard Riehle) in the bar; or at any other time since she never wears a shirt completely buttoned or large enough to cover her mid-section.

Oh, right, about Leatherface…time-warping, sexist clothing, and product positioning aside.

Jed (Dan Yeager), who still wears his polyester clothes from the 1970s, hasn’t aged at all. Sequels will do that to you. Like the equally ageless Jason in 2009’s Friday the 13th reboot, Jed now has a whole bunch of rooms and hallways to tenderize and skewer his victims in. We see the curious and grisly furnishings while an unwise sheriff holds his gun and cell phone prominently in front of him as he walks through the “catacombs” to his doom.

Spoiler? Are you kidding? How long you been watching horror movies?

Jed’s den of iniquity lies beneath the southern mansion Heather has inherited, deep in the heart of Newt, Texas; and behind the metal door (amazing how Heather’s grandmother made sure she installed another metal door), waiting with meat mallet at the ready, is Leatherface—and a closet full of chainsaws. The best scene showing context and portent has Jed playing like a cowboy holstering up for his showdown with the bad folk that killed his kin. Now we know what happens when you take Leatherface’s chainsaw away: he gets another one.

And he wields it with grisly skill, slicing through torsos, ankles, wrists, chests, and various other body parts not moving out of the way fast enough. An extended face-removal with carefully positioned foot-twitching gave me nightmares. Having Leatherface stitch on a new face (which, curiously, looks like any of his older faces) through his cheeks with a large needle—under what I suspect are very unsterile conditions—in closeup, is not very cheerful, either.

Other critics of Texas Chainsaw 3D appear torn between the semi-humanization of Leatherface as he squares off against the bad guys, and the lack of zest he displays in not lopping off limbs during the carnival festivities as he chases Heather up a Ferris Wheel. One critic even derides the tossing of the chainsaw at the sheriff (and into the 3D audience) as laughable, but Jed’s got a whole closet full of them, so why not?

As for humanization and restraint, both are in keeping with the character’s motivations. As for me, I’m torn over how Heather, after seeing her friends horribly butchered, still considers Jed family, and the sheriff’s decision to let the crazy homicidal son of a bitch keep living, and why Dr. Who never show’s up to solve the temporal paradox of director John Luessenhop’s screwed up timeline.

If Texas Chainsaw 3D is any indication of what we can expect from Hollywood in their treatment (mistreatment?) of classic horror movie reboots, I want to travel back in time myself before it’s too late.

In the meantime, watch John Dies at the End instead.

Resident Evil, Retribution (2012)
Once More Unto the Breach

Resident evil retributionZombos Says: Fair

Zombos was waiting for me to answer him. He’d been away in Europe with the family for most of the summer –the peace and quiet with them gone were my vacation– and now, with the spirit of Autumn winds soon to rise, he had returned with all his blustery piquance intact. Or maybe it was just too much starch in his collar. My fault.

“I still say it was okay,” I reiterated and, ignoring him, continued to write my review. He returned to chewing on his candy corn Oreos and sipping his hot chocolate, making sure to be as noisy as possible just to irritate me.  I focused on my task nonetheless in spite of him.

Speaking of irritation, with five Resident Evil movies bolstering the franchise, I’m surprised each iteration boils down to this: run!, fire guns!, run!, drop-kick!, hustle!, fire bigger guns!, roll!, evade [insert your choice here:  zombies, bad guys, clones, mutants]!, dodge explosions!, run!, walk fast!, run!, say something obvious!, look concerned!, race around in a car!, keep running!, keep firing guns!, and leave off with a boffo ending that promises more than each entry has yet to deliver. Except for maybe next time, since Resident Evil: Retribution leaves off with a boffo ending that squeezes every ounce of CGI mutant mayhem and zombie Armageddon into its dire landscape.

When the ending came I looked at my watch. I couldn’t believe the movie had ended. At just under an hour and a half, everything flies by with video game-like music and hustle and bustle, but without the involvement. There are endless fighting rituals with giant axe-wielding mutants, hungry zombies, and clones of people who were characters in the other movie entries. Alice (Milla Jovovich) wields big guns (no metaphor intended: she does wield BIG guns) as always, and she shoots them endlessly as always, and she acts perturbed as always, taking a licking but rebounding as she always does.

And still I find myself coming back for more. Maybe it’s my hope the next sequel will break the T-Virus mold and not be homogeneous like its predecessor.

Bingbing_liProviding additional eye-candy is Ada Wong (Bingbing Li), who looks and dresses like she’s ready to slay, but you will have to watch The Forbidden Kingdom to fully appreciate what she is capable of bringing since it’s missing here.

Ada is working for Wesker (Shawn Roberts) as he channels a Max Headroom ambiance in his gloating, floating presence on large monitor screens. Formerly known as Wesker-the-Alice-Hating-Bad-Guy, he’s now teaming up with her to save what’s left of humanity. (Seeing what’s left, I’m not sure why he’s going to all the bother.)

Oh, but that’s the next movie, sorry, I was getting ahead of myself.

This movie isall about freeing Alice from the nefarious Umbrella Corporation’s underwater facility in the Arctic, where they test scenarios of their manufactured virus contagions spreading across populations. There’s Tokyo, New York, Moscow, and even suburban-ville, spread out like a super-sized Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s holodeck.

Paul W. S. Anderson moves Alice across this changing, but recognizable, landscape as she tries to escape it to reach the surface, while a rescue team descends to help her. You know the drill: the rescue team ends up needing rescue by Alice as she takes charge. There’s a toss-away submarine-breaking-the-ice-moment–which echoes Ice Station Zebra‘s climax–but it leads to a drawn out brawl between Alice and a super-charged Rain (Michelle Rodriguez) and Jill (Sienna Guillory). Spot animations highlight broken bones as blows hit home, visual information snippets like you would find in a computer game.

The plot is clever, but everything else is typical Resident Evilmovies’ pacing and mayhem. I’m stymied how all this action, noise, and bloodshed doesn’t generate the expected tension or intensity it should. There’s a definite style to this franchise, but it doesn’t hold dramatic weight. The de riguer zombies line up to be knocked down, mutants provide side-tracking annoyances, and the emotional moment when a young girl mistakes Alice for her mother (her mother was an Alice clone) are smoothed over to pave the way for more action which soon numbs our attention given to it.

Anderson’s gimmicky opening credit sequence showing the attack on the Arcadia freighter (where the previous movie left us) in slow motion reverse, then normal speed forward, is a good example of why this franchise is always fun to watch but is not yet memorable. Perhaps if he stops playing with the characters and the scenery, and starts playing the game in the next movie, it will be.

Dark Shadows (2012)
No Dark, No Shadows

ScreenHunter_16 May. 14 11.02

Zombos Says: Fair

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Up until that big letter “M” appears on screen (trust me, you can’t miss it), Tim Burton and Seth Grahame-Smith’s incarnation of Dark Shadows broods deeply in its Gothic sensibility of ill-considered trysting and vengeful witchcraft. Then it falls apart, leaving Johnny Depp’s Barnabus Collins a floundering vampire fish out of suitable waters. With strikingly lifeless humor (“gonzo comedy” Burton? Really?), no serious bedevilment to beguile us, no involving supernatural romance to entrance us, and no fully realized characters to relate to, this amalgam of familial oddities and cobbled scenes such as Barnabus carrying an umbrella and wearing dark sunglasses in the sunlight, Barnabus calling Alice Cooper the ugliest woman he’s ever seen, Barnabus showing much more energy for revitalizing his family’s fishery business instead of wooing the reincarnation of his lost love, Josette DuPres, for whom he had jumped off a cliff to kill himself after she plunged first, and Barnabus mesmerized by a lava lamp filled with bobbing red wax, well, it all amounts to a perfect example of what “stupid creative license” is all about.

The costumes are pretty, the Collinwood Mansion divine–it has more substance than anyone living in it–and Depp’s performance is perfectly primed for chilling connivance, but none of these are knitted into a continuous thread: there is no clever campy humor, no attunement to 1970s grooviness, and no seriously despairing cursed vampire to propel the story’s purpose. Burton shows us everything but Grahame-Smith tells us nothing. Whatever Gothic horror romance the original television series had in its rich storylines, none of it shows up here. If you’re a fan of the original series, you probably won’t like this lackluster interpretation; if you’re new to Dark Shadows you won’t find enough to understand why the original was so important to horror fans and the genre.  Simply put, nothing is added, but much is taken away.

And then there’s the werewolf.

It pops in at the end with a quick explanation, just to spice up the showdown between Barnabus and Angelique (Eva Green). She’s the saucy witch who cursed him back in the 1700s because he refused to love her. She’s still around, running the Angel Bay Fishery that put the Collins’s out of business. Their battle, the movie’s ending, is as well envisioned as the movie’s beginning, before that big “M” I mentioned before appears, to lead us into the interminable middle portion of churning indecisiveness, wasting the talents of Jackie Earle Haley as Willie Loomis and Bella Heathcote as Victoria Winters.

The story has Barnabus accidentally dug up and freed from his iron coffin where Angelique entombed him. He makes his way back to Collinwood Manor, after putting the bite on a vanload of hippies, and finds his former home is now rundown and its inhabitants in the same condition. There’s matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) who keeps her knitting in a secret room; Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), who, although she was hired to treat young David Collins’ (Gulliver McGrath) delusion of seeing the ghost of his mother, three years later she’s a failure and seems to do nothing but drink a lot and sponge off the Collins clan (so I wonder why she’s still at Collinwood); Roger Collins (Jonny Lee Miller), is the ne’er-do-well of the family; and tuned-out, groovin’ to the music, is Carolyn Stoddard (Chloe Grave Moretz) who hates her family and wants to move to New York just to spite Elizabeth.

Carolyn’s the one Barnabus turns to for advice on how to woo Victoria in such modern times (1972). A centuries old vampire seeking advice from an ill-behaved and spoiled girl isn’t very funny. She also gives advice on who Barnabus should have for entertainment at his Grand Ball, the event he wants to throw to flaunt the rebirth of Collinwood to the townspeople of Collinsport. She recommends Alice Cooper. Sure, why not? When you’ve got nothing in the script that works, Alice Cooper’s a sure bet to pad some minutes around.

The money to refurbish Collinwood to its former glory is revealed by Barnabus the night he returns: stairs underneath the fireplace lead through a mirrored passageway to a treasure room. As Barnabus leads the way carrying a lantern, Elizabeth sees the lantern reflected in the mirrors, but not Barnabus. (A similar scene can be found in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday.) Realizing Barnabus is actually who he says he is, Elizabeth keeps his secret. The banter he has with the Collins clan when he shows up at breakfast for the first time is as colorless as his pasty face. Dr. Hoffman sobers up enough to become suspicious and hypnotizes Barnabus to learn the truth. Of course, with Barnabus dressed and looking like Nosferatu, it’s not a stretch for them or us.

Ghosts do roam the halls of Collinwood Manor.  If only the spirits of Gothic mystery and romance roamed there as well. But there’s no ghost of a chance for that in this movie.

The Raven (2012)
Quote This Critic: Nevermore!

the Raven movie

Zombos Says: Fair

After the promising opening moments of James McTiegue’s The Raven are spent with anxious constables rushing to find slashed bodies in a locked room, and the entrance of Inspector Fields (Luke Evans), who approaches the conundrum like Auguste Dupin, John Cusack’s Edgar Allan Poe chews the scenery with his superficial temper tantrums and clumsy gyrations, pulled by contrivance instead of subtextual motivations. For god’s sake, didn’t Cusack and the writers know Poe was a tortured soul with layers of spiritual complexity? Where’s the empty pit of isolation and the breadth of despair he suffered through his boozing and melancholy? Yelling the word “f*ck” is not a suitable drama substitute. If only the real Poe could have lent a hand. I’m sure his dialog would have been richer and more sensible, and his suspense would have been palpable as well as plausible.

Plausibility is a good place to start since this movie adds little of it to tie its sensational events together. A wonderful premise brimming with potential limps instead from indecisive contextual stability as it purloins stock slasher and serial killer tidbits, piecemeal, without understanding their cumulative effect. It’s almost like Saw in gruesomeness scale–the strikingly gory pendulum slice and dice on the rotund Rufus Griswold (John Warnaby)–then restrains its visual assault like Horrors of the Black Museum, then jumps from left to right to be similar to Se7en’s broader cat and mouse conceit. Each staged execution of Poe’s devilish demises by the villain is handled like a fast-food order without condiments, even if imaginatively far-fetched clues propel Poe and Fields one step closer to finding who that killer is and his motive; both of which appear on script cue out of thin air for the denoument’s wrap-up, without any explicit or implied discernment along the way to prepare us for the revelation. It just happens.

Leading up to this, Poe rants, raves, throws his ego all around, sulks, and looks for his next drink–until his mind clears enough to recognize the clues being left behind; Fields, emotionless, analytical, dissects the problem methodically until he develops brain freeze, allowing Poe’s now clear mind to take the lead; the blustery Captain Hamilton (Brendan Gleeson) hates Poe–who wants to marry Hamilton’s daughter–until the captain becomes conciliatory and friend to Poe to help solve anothe clue, even though it’s Poe’s stories that have buried his daughter alive and all of them desperately trying to find her. Hamilton’s daughter Emily (Alice Eve) loves Poe, but aside from an out of place allusion about him giving good head, made during an overly long and lifeless romantic interlude, why she would like a destitute, alcoholic, and egotistical ass such as Poe is portrayed is not clear. Her wispy and cold presence in every scene blends into the upholstery much of the time, so unless Poe is infatuated with sitting on her, I’m at a loss to understand the attraction they have. Even when she’s clawing at the coffin she’s buried in, she’s as cold as a corpse already.

Then there are the vexing facts in the case of the uneven interior lighting from scene to scene. We go from moody interiors correctly matched with their dim gaslight and oil lamp sources to spectrums of bright white, impossible to be produced by the lamplight available, sandwiched between a few suitably bleak, mist-shrouded exteriors: a memorable chase under a gray sky and through a foggy, barren, forest brings to mind The Fall of the House of Usher.

Not much else is memorable except for the murder by pendulum. Its intensity is surprising given the duller deliveries of the subsequent murders. I’m not sure if practical effects were united with digital, but watching that enormous blade slice through Griswold’s belly, him screaming, it cutting deeper with each notch of its giant gears rolling into place, all that blood and glistening chunks of visceral meat splashing wildly, and the blade finally bisecting Griswold into two lifeless parts as it comes to rest, stuck into the wooden table between them, is breathtakingly disturbing, but oddly out of place here. I wondered how the villain managed to build such an immense, clockwork precise contraption by himself. Poe even remarks he hadn’t imagined the counterweight to be so large when he sees it.

I’m torn myself between loving and hating it, given the rest of this movie.

The Ward (2010)
Not Sure Which Floor It’s On

Zombos Says: Fair

All the ingredients are here for a scary ghost story: there’s a tragic mystery to solve; people disappearing all around; the doom of being locked in with a malevolent spirit; and the vexing problem that no one believes you. John Carpenter can’t seem to put them in the right order to provide suspense or mounting terror in The Ward, a surprisingly dull effort from a director who should know better. Gregory Nicotero’s stalking ghost is not scary, only perfunctory, like he was doing a Face Off contest entry. He should know better, too. Amber Heard as Kristen is believable and fiesty, but it’s the movie that isn’t. As for the other characters, they’re window mannequins for dressing the story, but being well worn over, they hold little interest. No one broke a bead of sweat in this movie, onscreen or off, and that’s certainly not conducive to good horror drama, especially when it takes place in a mental ward.

It’s 1966. Kristen runs through the woods in a slip and sneakers to a farmhouse and sets it ablaze. The police take her to North Bend Psychiatric Hospital. Maybe that’s where she escaped from. She suffers from sudden flashbacks  involving a young girl bound in shackles, locked in the basement of a farmhouse, sexually assaulted by a brutish figure. Kristen doesn’t seem to have any memory beyond knowing her own name. She’s told to take her medications and behave. This isn’t One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) or Shock Treatment (1964): the orderlies and Dr. Stringer (Jared Harris) are stern but they really do want to help her with their shock treatments and little pill cup dosages. If you’ve seen any stuck-in-a-mental-ward movies, you already know all the tricks she pulls to keep from swallowing her pills. Carpenter has seen them, too. He even cracks out the old chestnut of an air-vent big enough for Kristen to shimmy through in one of her escape attempts, the metal grille of which is conveniently fastened by flat-head screws a handy penny can open.

The penny comes from another patient, Zoey (Laura-Leigh), a girl so regressed she acts like a child, sucking her thumb, her hair in ponytails, and clutching a small stuffed animal. The other patients, oddly there are only three more–Iris (Lyndsy Fonseca), Sarah (Danielle Panabaker), and Emily (Mamie Gummer)–are frightened by the ghost of Alice (Jillian Kramer), a former patient now prowling the halls looking to punish them. “Why?” is the driving question that Carpenter’s fabricated mental ward with few patients to treat, mostly empty hallways, and with a surprisingly small staff to ignore Kristen’s concerns and fears, will eventually be revealed.

Once you get past the shock-drop opening before the credits roll, when Tammy is dispatched during a dark and stormy night by Alice, the remaining actions and terrors build in preposterous leaps and bounds, although the ending provides the explanation for this. Once explained, however, the red herring-ish opening scene becomes contextually improbable (and if I weren’t so polite, I’d even say nonsensical.) Clearly its only purpose is a contrived jolt, effective, but meaningless. the explanation confuses more than it clarifies, making the logic-bending events leading up to it even less plausible. I can’t really tell you why because that would be a major spoiler; but should you see this movie to the ending, think about Kristen’s companions throughout, their physical presence around the ward, the aside deadends each of them reaches when Alice comes calling, then ask yourself how any of it can be pieced together realistically for the story’s sake. Any one of Hanna-Barbera’s Scooby Doo cartoons make more sense than this script.

As for me, I’m asking why Carpenter insists on repeating past mistakes. His eye’s better than this. His story-sense is better than this. When the dramatic opening credits, animated in splintering glass shards reflecting images as they fly through space, trumps the movie itself, I can’t fathom how you wouldn’t have questions to ask here.

Underworld Awakening (2012)
Should Have Slept More

Zombos Says: Fair

Too Loud, with murkiness obliterating screen detail, with laughable post-production 3D, with lazy art direction, Underworld: Awakening is a disappointing sequel to Underworld: Evolution.

Kate Beckinsale’s Selene is on autopilot as she evades humans and lycans, kills humans and lycans, and evades them some more. In a script rework off of Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Selene is put on ice, experimented on, thawed out, and royally pissed because David (Theo James) is missing in action. Replace clones with one offspring named Eve (India Eisley)–no, really, she’s named Eve– and add nefarious Andigen Corp run by evil, and near comatose, Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea) hatching a dark plan just as nefarious as Resident Evil‘s Umbrella Corp, then see Selene run, kick high, land gracefully, and run some more. With her seemingly inexhaustible automatic handguns firing away at everything in motion, I began to wonder just how stupid those lycans were as they jumped, howling in rage, into her hail of bullets again and again.

Lost in this iteration of the Underworld series is just that, the gothically moody underworld. Much of the action takes place above ground at Andigen, or on the dark city streets, where lycans chase Selene, car-hopping their way closer and closer to her van, close enough so she can shoot their brains out. Again.

While she’s not pointing those handguns–now they spit out a gazillion bullets per second–she’s pouting, waiting for the story to catch up with her. The open montage–two actually–at the beginning, rushes the backstory to bring us up to speed, then rushes us by the pre-story, where Andigen and Dr. Lane purge the world of vampires and lycans. Or are they?

Directors Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein must have watched too many video games, trying to emulate their exhiliration by steam-rolling the opener and much of the movie with monster-fighting-monster scenes.  Had they actually played those games, then maybe we’d get more drama and suspense in the breathing spaces between all that huffing and puffing. Too many directors and too many writers (more than a handful) add up to a rote actioner that never forgets its CGI. Huge lycan towering over Selene? Its here. Two-fisted gun fire to blow out the bottom of a descending elevator? It’s here. Thin Selina piroueting and gliding in tight leather, looking sleak and sexy as she deals death and destruction in rapid motion to screeching music and loud booms? It’s here.

Selene’s discovery of a vampire coven provides the only visually interesting moment when a call to action brings the immense, wrought iron, candle-dripped candelabra down from the ceiling to retrieve their weapons cached within. This moment of gothic surprise is brief, and not even the coven lair’s dripping stonework sustains enough fashion sense reminiscent of the earlier Underworld movies.

Given the vapid approach taken with Underworld: Awakening, I recommend they slap Twilight and Underworld together with a cat fight between Selene and Bella, otherwise this series is kaput.

Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965)
By Professor Kinema

frankenstein meets the space monster

by Professor Kinema

Since the name, as well as the basic premise, of Frankenstein was in the public domain, it turned up in film titles generally synonymous with the word "Monster." Throughout the classic Universal series the name was alternately given to the descendants (sons, daughters, grandchildren, and distant relatives) of the original mad doctor/creator as well as to the undying creature itself. It was also a name familiar enough to attract moviegoers. This would seem to explain why Frankenstein (in name only) turned up in Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster.

frankenstein meets the space monster
In this film, Frankenstein is a robotic astronaut–an Astrobot–named Col Frank Saunders (Robert Reilly). The generic sounding "Space Monster" proves to be a caged beast doing the bidding of pseudo-humanoid aliens. Since these aliens have a mega destructive plan for Earthlings, they all could be considered Space Monsters. Their plan also involves kidnapping a a number of nubile women to be used as breeding stock. Hopefully, their offspring wouldn't inherit the obviously poorly fitted skullcaps that adorn the male aliens' heads.

Frankie
The alien invaders have names like Princess Marcuzan (referred to only as 'Princess') and Nadir (a name that could appropriately mean "the pits?"). The Frankenstein/robot element functions ultimately as the hero and savior, in a truly surreal combination of characters and plot elements, topped of with genuinely horrendous and amateurish makeup work, setting the scene for a cultish film. It's all presented '…in Futurama,' to boot.

Frankenstein_Meets_The_Space_Monster_Bimbo
At the end of the trailer for Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, an announcer states it's "…in Futurama," but the only other mention of Futurama turns up in the opening credits as "Futurama Entertainment Corporation Presents." The end credits mention "Interiors Photographed at Seneca Studios, Hempstead, New York." The exteriors were lensed in Puerto Rico.

At the beginning of his career, a young James Karen plays Dr. Adam Steele. This is his premier feature film. Staying primarily a TV and stage actor he would go on to appear in over 80 movies (to date) including Poltergeist, and The Return of the Living Dead (Parts I & II), and also be a spokesman for Pathmark.

frankenstein meets the space monsterFrankenstein Meets the Space Monster was initially released on a double bill with Curse of the VooDoo. Space Shield Eye Protectors were given to lucky first-run patrons (as long as supplies lasted). Presumably these eye protectors could also be used to protect the eyes from any VooDoo Curses. The film had several re-releases, turning up with titles like Duel of the Space Monsters, Frankenstein Meets the Spacemen, Marte Invade a Puerto Rico and Mars Attacks Puerto Rico (and not Hempstead, NY?). The only mention these space monsters are from Mars is found in the shot of a newspaper headline, which reads, "Earth Scientists Warn of Martian Threat."

A four page promo feature of Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster turned up in Famous Monsters of Filmland #39, June 1966. The article states this film was chosen as the lead-off film at the (prestigious) 1965 Science Fiction Film Festival in Trieste.

frankenstein meets the space monsterAn archival print exists in the Museum of Modern Art's film collection. A short article in the New York Times, January 1, 2010, states, "The impaired cognition of New Year's Weekend make's it an ideal time to encounter Robert Gaffney's enjoyable, goofy drive-in movie here in an improbable screening at the Museum of Modern Art."

It was the final entry in the museum's series titled Nuts and Bolts: Machine Made Man in Films From the Collection.

Mesa of Lost Women (1953)


Mesa_of_lost_women

Zombos Says: Poor (but hilarity abounds)

Leering dwarf faces keep intercutting at inappropriate times, producing an effect not unlike the subliminals inTerror in the Haunted House. The spider women, with the notable exception of Tarantella, all dress like extras in She. Adding to the Woodian confusion, if you look quickly enough, you will see Mona McKinnon (Plan 9) and Dolores Fuller (Glen or Glenda?, Jailbait) among them. (Bad Movie Report)

There are movies that act like ridicule magnets. Anyone who has watched enough television or eaten too much popcorn at the cinema can easily name at least one special instance of ignominy felt from being spectator to a cinematic catastrophe, or feeling resentful from having time, better spent elsewhere, sinfully squandered and ticket money regrettably wasted.

Then again, there are people like our neighbor, Paul Hollstenwall.

“Wasn’t that a hoot,” said Paul, pulling up the collar of his raincoat and pulling down the brim of his hat.

No, wait a minute, I was only imagining he was standing in front of a sleazy theater. I adjusted my mental eyesight better. After watching the movie he brought over, Ron Ormand’s Mesa of Lost Women, I needed to do a lot of adjustment. We were in Zombos’ library and Paul was sitting on my left, dressed in his usual brown tweed sport coat, faded jeans, and worn Pumas. Zombos was sitting on my right and—wait, where’d he get off to?

“More like a howler,” I told Paul. “I’m not sure what jarring close-ups of leering dwarves, non-speaking hoochie cooch-dressed women, and a hairy spider with eight legs that doesn’t move them–the legs I mean–much, has to do with the title. No, wait, come to think of it, just about everybody was lost most of the time, including me and Jackie Coogan as the mad scientist Dr. Aranya, hanging out in a cave and doing what I’m still not sure of.”

“He was mutating spiders into giants and mutating women with his spider venom,” supplied Paul.

“Why? And why were those women and dwarves constantly underfoot? It doesn’t make sense.”

“He’s a mad scientist. What’s to make sense? Don’t they always mutate, create, or destroy things in horror and sci-fi movies? Because they’re crazy, I mean. The movie’s definitely a double-biller for a drive-in, so adding some feminine pulchritude kept eyes peeled on the screen more than Aranya or loopy Dr. Masterson (Harmon Stevens) would have.

Paul had a point. And he actually used the word pulchritude in a sentence.

“What surprises me is how good the cinematography is compared to the rest,” I said.

“That is because the directors of photography were too good for this dreck,” said Zombos, entering the library. “Ice cold mint juleps should be arriving just about…now.”

The bell on the library’s dumbwaiter buzzed. I headed over and extracted the drinks. Chef Machiavelli’s mint juleps would have even satisfied Tennessee Williams.

“The photography,” continued Zombos, “was done by Karl Struss and Gilbert Warrenton. More than adequate for this otherwise incompetent opus.” He took the glass I handed to him and sat down on my right. “All that desert photography made me thirsty.” He took a sip then continued.

“Judicious use of dissolves, wipes, and recall the first meeting between Dr. Masterson and Aranya in the cave laboratory. That set was the size of a walk-in closet. Yet look at how they moved our view left to right, from in front of the lone lab table. It gave depth and liveliness to a tight and narrow space.”

“Shame they couldn’t clip the cantina scene with Tarantella (Tandra Quinn) doing her endless tarantella,” I quipped.

“No!” Paul said. “She’s so dark and mysterious. Don’t forget she’s really a spiderized woman.”

“Well, she certainly had the legs for it, even if only two of them. Now, maybe you can tell me what Masterson going all loopy and weird was about?”

“He goes dopey after Aranya injects him with a drug,” said Paul, “to stop him from interfering with Aranya’s nefarious work—”

“—Making dwarves and spiderized woman. Okay then, what about the cantina scene? He shows up, sits down with a couple of perfect strangers, watches Tarantella dance—how’d she get there in the first place?—and dance. And dance some more. Said spiderwoman glares at him while he talks to the couple, a man and woman who don’t know him from Adam. And he talks, and talks some more. And then they
leave the cantina. He insists on them all taking a plane ride, with a little persuasion from his gun, the plane engine catches fire and conveniently they all crash land on Aranya’s mesa.” I stopped to take a breadth.

“Did you notice how the pilot did not turn his steering wheel at all during the flight,” said Zombos. “He must have graduated from the Plan 9 school of method acting.”

I continued. “Now they’re all on the mesa, along with that giant spider that doesn’t move much, and assorted dwarves and pretty women who stand around like a chorus in a Greek tragedy, only they don’t say a word. We even see them, most of the time, standing a scant few feet away from everyone else, but everyone else doesn’t see them at all. Then Wu, the token Chinese guy, buys it in the woods. Of course he has to mutter a proverb or two before getting killed about being killed, which is why they needed him in the first place I guess. And I think the mesa set was even smaller than the lab.”

“Indeed,” added Zombos. “When the pilot takes out his penlight to light the way through the woods, everyone keeps moving back and forth through the same narrow path, holding hands.”

“Then more close-ups of grinning dwarves and pretty women ensemble standing around an arm’s length away while the pilot and the woman from the cantina hit it off by the campfire. Out of the blue he’s telling her what kind of woman he likes and they kiss.”

“At least much humor ensues with one fellow jumping TOWARD the nearly comatose giant spider when he sees it, and let us not
forget the effusive potential for derisive commentary throughout,” said Zombos.

“So,” I summed up, “we’ve got a music score that runs rampant from the get-go, ignoring the action on screen much of the time, a confusing triple bypass flashback going on between characters to tell an already incoherent story, and a crummy script that opens up a world of mirth in the viewing, not to mention some bizarre scene cutting and papier mache mise-en-scène. Oh, and I shouldn’t forget the ponderous Criswell-styled narration to aid in our understanding of this nonsense.”

“And deliciously potent mint juleps to make it all go down agreeably,” said Paul.

We all drank to that.

Dylan Dog, Dead of Night (2010)
No Bark or Bite

Zombos Says: Fair

It’s stupefying how movies can deviate so much from their original sources of inspiration. Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is a good example. The screaming doorbell, the Groucho character (I can understand dropping the Groucho character), and the London locale of the comic book series this movie is based on are gone. Replacing them is a New Orleans sticky gumshoe who looks amazingly like Brandon Routh, but acts like a cardboard standee of him, a threadbare plot that rolls up very much like True Blood and all that slick vampire jazz, and Marcus (Being Human‘s Sam Huntington), a lively sidekick turned lively zombie oozing all over the place for comic relief.

Even if the source material wasn’t ignored as much, the movie would still flatline. The story reeks of too many writers huddled around cups of warm coffee and piles of stale Danish, and director Kevin Munroe plays it straight and doughy. The quirkiness, the differential feel of weird sliding along zany, and Dylan Dog’s anti-establishment leaning is missing in action. This ‘nightmare investigator’ is plain as day, although he still dresses smartly in a red shirt and black jacket. He carries bigger guns, too.

At 250.00 dollars a day plus expenses, Dylan’s settled for taking photographs of cheating spouses. He lives in a cruddy office, drives a two-miles-from-the-dump Volkswagon Beetle, and wants to forget the lost love of his life, but can’t. He’s Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe rolled into one–Routh even provides unnecessary noir-appropriate voiceover–but without that chippy dialog or trenchcoat style to match it.

He’s shaken out of his career stupor by the daughter of a man mauled to death by an intruder in the Ryan Mansion. She got his “No pulse, no problem” business card from a priest, but Dylan brushes her off, telling her he’s out of that business. She insists, he resists, until his buddy Marcus is mauled to death by an intruder. A quick change of clothes into the red and black, and he’s back chasing monsters. And explaining ad nauseum about his paranormal business without cracking any inflectives. He explains New Orleans is chock full of vampires, werewolves, and zombies, and before he started chasing bedsheet bingo players he was the chief investigator appointed by the netherworld to maintain the peace. I would have liked to have seen that movie.

Now hot on the trail of the monster mauler, Dylan visits Vargus (Scott Leo Diggs) at the vampire nightclub Corpus, where the love of his life was murdered. He also visits the meat packing plant where the werewolves hang out. In between visits, he’s helping Marcus get used to his new zombie lifestyle that includes eating maggots served fresh on a bun (no pickles), and regular visits to Big Al’s Body Shop for replacement body parts.

Huntington plays his Being Human self, which I enjoy watching because it matches his physical presence well, but without enough writer support his zombie-angst filled interludes–including a zombie support-group meeting–stretch thin. There’s one good line. It comes just after Marcus wakes up undead, when he’s told “Good thing about being the living dead, no more jogging.”

While it’s no Maltese Falcon, the artifact at the center of the mayhem is the Heart of Belial. The owner of it gets to bring back a demon who will destroy everyone the owner doesn’t like. Or so the legend says. No one ever reads the fine print.

There is one good thing here, but it comes after seeing the movie, when you can read the Dylan Dog Italian comic book series by Tiziana Sclavi. Better yet, I’d recommend doing that instead of seeing this movie.

Red Riding Hood (2011)
Hoodwinks Audience

red riding hood movie

Zombos Says: Fair

“I still want my money back,” insisted Zombos. He gets like that when we see a movie he doesn’t like.

“Fine, then,” I relented. Here’s your six dollars. But I’m not paying for the popcorn and Junior Mints. You ate most of those anyway.” Zombos folded the money and pocketed it, then rushed back to the concession stand. Probably to buy more Junior Mints. While I waited
for him, I thought through my impressions of Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood.

A child’s imagination of fairy tale prettiness infuses everything. Clothes, people, the surrounding medieval forest, it’s all colorful, cheerful, and naively pretty. Clothes are clean and neat, people are clean and neat, and the village is clean and neat. No Dark Ages grunge or
malaise to be found here. Cindy Evans’ television series costuming (the way rustic villagers in Stargate SG-1 episodes are dressed, for example), reinforces this lightness. And although snow is falling and winter is upon them, no one is bundled up against the chill. No frosty-breath comes from mouths and the ladies’ bosoms are bared for spring, especially Valerie’s (Amanda Seyfried). When Grandmother (Julie Christie) gives her the red-hooded cloak, it’s a fashion statement, not a garment to wear because it’s cold.

The Village of Daggerhorn has been beset by a killer wolf for many years, yet the village is happy, a thriving place with everyone well-adjusted, immaculately groomed, and nattily attired. The forest is happy with its bright fields of flowers, and the village idiot is happy, and
as pretty and well groomed as everyone else. He doesn’t act too idiotic, either, just enough to be adorably off.

Father Auguste (Lukas Haas) is the only one who is dour and shows concern. He has sent for the witch and werewolf hunter Father
Solomon (Gary Oldman playing Gary Oldman). Father Solomon’s prior experience with a werewolf left him traveling around in an armored carriage with heavily armed guards. Arriving in the village, one guard, sitting atop the carriage, keeps aim with his crossbow, sweeping it back and forth as if he expects trouble any second. It looks pretty silly. Solomon also travels with a large, hollow, bronze elephant, with a door in one side. He locks people he doesn’t like in it and lights a fire underneath to torture them.

This is as medieval as it gets.

Before Father Solomon arrives, Valerie’s sister is killed by the wolf, sending the men off to hunt it down. They find a gray wolf, kill it, bring its head back, and show it to Father Solomon, claiming he’s not needed. He disagrees and gives them the standard rundown on
werewolfism. They ignore him and hold a rave party instead (or what would be the equivalent of one, I’d guess, for medieval times). The computerized werewolf shows up, chews up the scenery and townsfolk, and speaks to Valerie before he leaves. She notices his big brown human eyes as he tells her to run away with him or else he’ll put the bite on the entire village.

Valerie now has a difficult decision to make. Run away with the darkly handsome, tousle haired, woodcutter Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), or stay and marry the handsome, tousle haired blacksmith Henry (Max Irons), or run away with a real stud, the tousle haired werewolf with big brown eyes. There is no tension or suspense produced by her difficult decision: Hardwicke’s tone is non-committal, David Johnson’s story is vapid, and Seyfried’s performance is overshadowed by her hooded cloak. I had a more rewarding time at the concession stand making up my mind between Junior Mints and Reese’s Pieces.

The romance turns into a whodunit as Valerie stares into people’s eyes, wondering who (maybe whom?) the werewolf is. When the revelation comes it’s like an ending from an Agatha Christie mystery.

Come to think of it, I want my money back, too.

Skyline (2010)
Not Much to See

Zombos Says: Fair

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Here it is in a film cannister: if you’ve seen the trailer for Skyline, you’ve seen the most exciting part of this slimy-aliens-from-space pulp drama of Borg-like ( part machine, part organic, all regenerating),  Matrixy-looking, multi-tentacled creatures vacuuming up humanity through a sparkly blue light as easily as dust mites are sucked up an Oreck.

In this war of the worlds special effects opus of us losing against them big time, the kicker here is they want our brains, which they use like Energiser batteries to power either themselves or their machinery, or maybe it’s both. I will, with difficulty, refrain from making any dead battery jokes just because they’re attacking Los Angeles, but feel free to infer whatever you like, or even change the locale to suit your preference.

It looks like Independence Day, but it doesn’t have that movie’s patriotic enthusiasm or energetic characters; it looks like War of the Worlds (old and new versions), but it doesn’t have either of those movies’ overwhelming sense of decimation, growing futility, or soul-numbing despair; it even looks like 1954’s Target Earth, whose hunting mechanoids scour the city’s streets for survivors in hiding. With Skyline  mashing dramatic ingredients from many science fiction movies, the Brothers Strause fail to add any of their own sugar and spice to the familiar effects to make this more satisfying than the Coke and Reese’s Pieces I had while watching it.

I will pin much of the blame on the dialog: it’s stultifying.  None of the pretty people trapped in Terry’s (Donald Faison) penthouse speak in their own words. They bicker, they yell, but in stock, one-line sentences. Pick any two people and switch the dialog around; there would be no difference. The ugly aliens have more personality and they don’t talk.

As Los Angeles is vacuumed clean of residents, Terry’s house guests hide from the invaders with the blinds drawn. His automatic window blinds reminded me of the house shields in Forbidden Planet. They weren’t very effective either. There’s Jarrod (Eric Balfour), his girlfriend Elaine (Scottie Thompson), Terry’s girlfriend Candice (Brittany Daniel), and Terry’s personal assistant (emphasis on personal) Denise (Crystal Reed).

They disagree on whether to stay or make a run for it. Eventually they reluctantly run, but a giant alien stomps on their escape. Oliver (David Zayas), the concierge, comes to their rescue. He and Jarrod disagree on whether to stay or make a run for it. Much of the movie seems to be spent on everyone disagreeing on what to do next. A possible tension-mounting relationship between Candice, Denise, and cheating Terry is quickly stomped on, too.

They watch as the military shoots nukes at the motherships–over Los Angeles–but the blown apart ships regenerate.  A few soldiers are dropped by helicopter to fight the maruading aliens, but they lose. Jarrod takes Elaine up to the roof, hoping they can escape by helicopter. The aliens intervene and they are captured. We get to see inside the mothership, how nasty the aliens are, and the groan-inducing potential for a sequel. However, I’ll admit I do like the ending: it’s hokey but pure pulp science fiction in tone.

Skyline is a straight to DVD movie that somehow got a lot more money to add a lot more fiery special effects. Now that’s science fiction.