From Zombos' Closet

Movie Review: Dollface (2014) Not a Pretty Picture

Zombos Says: Awful

Sadly, Breaking Glass Pictures is perpetuating the horror of Tommy Faircloth's Dollface (aka Dorchester's Revenge: The Return of Crinoline Head) by unfettering it from the festival circuit. Which is not a benefit for discerning horror fans. Case in point: cut every scene with Debbie Rochon and you wouldn't notice she's missing (neither would the story); or eliminate the interminable, witless dialog that wastes most of the movie's time and you'd probably ask for it back because, without it, you clearly see the misfire of maybe-it's-a-slasher, maybe-it's-a-parody, or maybe--and this is what I think-- the director and the actors had no clue which direction to take this sequel to Faircloth's Crinoline Head (1995) so they winged it along for an excruciatingly scares-less and humorless ride, botched by all the ad libitum blathering and the monotonous pacing and editing. Whoever the people are who gave this a 7.6 rating on IMDb, and the critics who keep referring to this as a classic 1980s style slasher in tone, they must either be nuts, friends of the director, or want to keep getting screeners.

Dollface is simply not smart enough to be bad, and not good enough to watch, even if, as one blogging critic made note of Faircloth's recommendation, you see it with a buzz on. A full-blown drunken stupor wouldn't help this turkey from getting roasted. The acting? It's passable and hints that, given more hand's on direction and an actual script, would have been much better. The drag queens getting lost while driving to a show and then getting stranded in the woods when their car breaks down? Oh my lord, this was the movie that should have been! Imagine drag queens squared off against a slasher maniac! Or trying to run away in terror wearing high heels! The script would write itself, for heaven's sake.

Instead, we get a little repartee between them, a little teasing screen time with them preening in costume--yes, they're still late and lost in getting to that show-- and then they're quickly sliced and diced off camera. Not much happens in frame anyway, so why bother adding more visual efx gags that require more prep? With the most entertaining characters eliminated, we return to the college ones waiting for their turn at being sliced and diced. With them, you really, really, want them to get killed quickly. 

The one thing director Faircloth gets right is the seemingly endless school daze we experience as Professor Paul Donner (Jason Vail) tells his class about Dorchester Stewart, the little mother's boy (Andrew Wicklum) who cannibalized his mom after she died suddenly. Kids. Go figure. Yes, I'm being sarcastic, but watching this scene will remind you of your own school haze and daze and energy-displacement professors slowing everything down to a crawl. Stewart grows up and turns into the serial killer known as Crinoline Head. The professor relates his experience with the sordid affair. Slowly. And more slowly. With an echo. It's impossible that any college class with a professor like that would be so bright and chipper. And attentive. Another reason why I think the actors are better than what's in the can.

A stream-screener was provided for this review. After this, I'm sure I won't be offered many more of them.

Pressbook: The Night the World Exploded (1957)

I included the double bill sheet with this pressbook for The Night the World Exploded. I can't say I'd hold much hope for it being a good movie, since it was paired with The Giant Claw. And disaster movies on a budget just don't provide the oomph big budget disaster movies do. Pretty good idea, though, of having "Element 112" blowing things up as it's exposed to air. 

Mexican Lobby Card: Tarzan En Lucha A Muerte (?)

I don't know which screen Tarzan this Mexican lobby card is referring to. My guess is it's for the 1960s Tarzan television series (starring Ron Ely).

Movie Review: Fantastic Four (2015)

The Fantastic Four Face Their Greatest Foes -- The Director and Writers of
Fantastic Four 2015!

Brought to you in all its mind-blowing tragedy by Zombos and Company

Embellished by JM Cozzoli
Lettered by Typepad

"The poster is wrong. Change isn't coming for the Fantastic Four," I said to Zombos.

"You are taking this way too personally, you know," he replied. "It is only a reboot of a reboot, once more into the breach and popcorn bucket, after all. Just look at that mugshot poster. Dreadful. One expects them to break into a West Side Story song at any moment."

I started humming the theme from West Side Story. I imagined Ben Grimm  and Victor Von Doom squaring off in a choreographed dance of battle. If only this movie were that clever.

But it isn't. It's contrite. It's tedious. It's misguided. It's not the Fantastic Four, the superheroes that helped usher in the Silver Age of comic books. I was grievously disappointed with Rise of the Silver Surfer in 2007, but this is worse. This wounds my comic book fan soul deeply. 

My thoughts were racing alongside the snail-pace of this movie--

--If you dare do another origin story, I'll blow my brains out. We got it, get it, and don't need it anymore. Ditto with Spidey--

 

--Can you please crack open a goddamn Fantastic Four comic book? Just the Kirby and Lee issues will do if -- NOT the ULTIMATE series! --you're pressed for time. Note the use of COLORs and CHARACTER INTERPLAY and the ENERGY shown. I know this is hard to believe, but Batman's the gloom and doom guy. Most other superheroes live in a brighter, even chipper, albeit still troubled, world--which always seems to be going toward the apocalyptic, oddly enough--

 

--So, you want me to believe that the most important thing for Dr. Doom and Reed Richards, and just about everyone else in this movie, is finding another dimension. Sticking to this one too demanding for you? It's a hell of a stretch that Richards just happens to have the same itch for dimension hopping that everyone else has, and BAMM! he hooks up with like-minded folk to help complete the dimension hopping project. Wow. Most comic books have more of a plot line than this--

--Why, after taking us to another dimension, are we still in the same one with another gloomy story, gloomy character angst abounding, and insufferably gloomy lighting and color-muting in every freaking scene? I overheard a couple, leaving ahead of me after the early bird showing, say how awful this movie is. They thought the first movie was better. I agree, somewhat, but I'd stop short declaring this movie is awful. It's just misguided. And if you took out the Fantastic Four it would even be okay-- 

But it's a movie about the Fantastic Four and that's what's wrong here. So many issues, so many storylines, so many worlds to visit, yet, once again, we watch Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell)--

"You hesitated there. I bet you were tempted to write Tony Kibles and Bits, were you not?" said Zombos, standing over my shoulder like Uatu the Watcher. 

"No, I certainly was not going to be so unprofessional and take a cheap shot like...well, yeah, okay, I was tempted. But I fought it and won, okay," I said in defense.

--in the same story we've seen before, now rehashed with younger characters for the Young Adult market, with zero camera chemistry between them.  So one immediately wonders how good a team they would really be. Doom is more even more anti-social this time, but he's AGAIN imbued with cosmic powers and an alien skin that mimics his actual (and quite technologically lethal) armor in the comic books. It's amazing how Iron Man and every other superhero and villain can get away with wearing a costume or body armor, but Doom's just pegged by Hollywood to forever wear an apologetic and organic suit every time.

He's AGAIN ready to destroy, destroy, destroy. This time he's got a nifty Scanners' ability to blow up heads, which he does a lot. Great summer family movie idea there. Hey, let's give him green-glowing eyes and have him pop heads with splots of blood and gore. He just doesn't use his head-popping power on the FF because, well, then the movie would be over. But everybody else is fair game, okay?

"Yes, but the Thing's (Jamie Bell) rocky start is rather good one, do you not think so? He really looks like a thing this time," said Zombos.

"Sure, for a horror movie, if you think spending most of the movie in a rock pile is super, then I suppose so. Not much clobbering time for the Thing or anyone else for that matter, except for the studio's tacked on battle at the end with Doom in the rock and energy dimension. So Ben Grimm is very very grim all through the movie, gets his rocky start, then mopes some more while we wait for Reed Richards (Miles Teller) to come out of his forced exile and lead the future team he abandoned. Meanwhile Sue Storm (Kate Mara) and Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) come to grips with their powers while the military schmoozes them for tactical engagements. More than two-thirds of the movie is spent on them finding the dimension, then finding themselves, and we don't even get the satisfaction of seeing Richards grow up and take charge. He's caught like a limp noodle. He doesn't come to his senses and return to his friends, he's forced to come back. If I were the Thing I would've bounded him to silly-putty."

"So, what is your point?" asked Zombos.

"My point is "why?" This scripted character angst works for Batman. He had to confront his demons and win. There's a stronger family dynamic going on in the Fantastic Four. This movie misses all that and focuses on Batman-esque motifs when it needed to riff on what makes the Fantastic Four fantastic. Like their powers, not Jessica Alba."

"But they have their powers in this movie," said Zombos.

"Yes, sort of. But they can't control them this time around. It's torture watching Reed Richards in this movie. It's like a scene out of the Saw series. I can imagine how many kids whose parents took them to see this movie are now checking under their beds at night. The FF's powers are a problem when they never were, so we spend lots of time watching them cope. Except for Ben Grimm, the Thing. His metamorphosis immediately makes him an outsider. He has a legitimate reason to be unhappy and angry and pissed off. Instead, he just mopes around his rock pile, the most herculean creature in Area 51, and takes orders from the military to break things. Talk about script logic."

"Well, then, let us talk about script logic," said Zombos. 

NeXT: The Battle for Script Logic! 

Movie Review: Harbinger Down (2015)

Zombos Says: Good

Harbinger Down is a good amorphous-glump-of-moving-terror monster romp in the vein of Leviathan, The Thing, and Slither. The practical special effects build a solid scare into the muck amok storyline, and I strongly disagree with flickfilosopher's summation of the"...cheap shoddiness of the practical FX this demo-reel flick is meant to show off." I give the effects a higher rating than that, as well as the movie overall, making me wonder why the same team that did them had their practical efx pulled from The Thing prequel in favor of the less than stellar GCI replacing it.  

The lean budget (a Kickstarter funded $384,181.00, according to Wikipedia) does show in the studio-bound, dry-docked, boat scenes, belied by a drunken-camera, woozing at the wrong times, making us conscious of all the mid-shots and close-ups constraining tight frames used to hide the lack of waves and weather. Acting and story hold watertight enough, aside from pesky horror tropes and the usual pacing and editing staleness seen in productions like this. Otherwise, some moody and scary horror moments, and a well-time, and dryly delivered, variation on the "we're going to need a bigger boat" conundrum, perk up the minimal plot and sets, creating sufficient appeal for its 82 minutes of run time .

Then there's Lance Henriksen. I'll admit I can never fault his acting and I'd pay good money just to watch him read cereal boxes out loud, melodramatically. He has a face only a camera could appreciate, and a presence that makes supporting cast members look better than they usually are. Is he given enough to do here? No. But it's more than his wasted appearance in Hollow's Grove. Instead of moving the story through him, Sadie (Camille Balsamo) and her fellow graduate classmates, along with her professor (Matt Winston), provide the direction the boat steers in and the desultory chit-chat while we wait for mayhem to ensue. 

Sailing with them are the Harbinger's scripted-go-to odd-ball crewmates including Svet (Milla Bjorn) and Big G (Winston James Francis). The chemistry between them almost happens: the story starts building a love interest--or sexual attraction--but then she's all KGB-big-knife-loving-sexy and he's just big and brutish-sexy--so the love doesn't bud between them. Instead they beat each other up before getting beat up by the monster. A wasted dynamic duo that also needed more to do with their relationship. 

The creature makes its entrance courtesy of a Soviet spacecraft lost years before. The craft's location beacon suddenly starts transmitting again --after all those lost years of inactivity--and the crabbing boat's mission to watch the effect of global warming on Whales (crabbing boat, whales--wild, right?) turns into a salvage operation pitting professor, students, and crew against each other while the monster turns them into human sushi. Just once I'd love to see everyone actually on the same page and in the same direction: fighting the monster in earnest. Hey, I can dream, can't I?

A little face time from Leviathan can be seen at one point, and a lot of tentacles make for a good slithering menace through the above and below decks. I was fooled with a scene that hinted at a more robust monster entrance by having it plop down a flight of stairs, but it never happened. That disappointed me. I was hoping for a little more playfulness with my (and our) expectations. Harbinger Down is more cut and dried in it's choices, though, retaining those common moments we see in movies like this. Not an entirely bad thing when handled well enough and Harbinger Down does handle it well enough for me to recommend you put this on your viewing list.

A courtesy stream-screener was provided for this review.

Monster Laffs: A&C Meet Frankenstein

Monster Laffs: Monster Rally Ballyhoo

Monster Laffs: Blood of the Vampire

Pressbook: Nightmare (1956)

There was a hypnosis craze? Anyway, this 11x17 inches pressbook for Nightmare is well done. Good illustrations and color choices make it pop. Hypnosis would figure prominently in other mysteries that followed later, including episodes of television's Columbo and The Avengers.

UK Pressbook: Fear in the Night (1972)

Here's the UK pressbook for Hammer's Fear in the Night, with Peter Cushing, Ralph Bates, Judy Geeson, and Joan Collins. I like Peter Cushing's comment in the Press Features that he wanted to be a cowboy like Tom Mix.

Mexican Lobby Card: Zombie Holocaust (1980)

Okay, I'm going to roast in hell for this one, but the contrast between the sex-sell and the horror-sell is too good to ignore. Feel free to add your own witty caption to this Mexican lobby card for (I believe) Zombie Holocaust.

Pressbook: Jungle Captive (1945)

Long time fiend from Zombos' Closet, Tony Rivers, often sighted prowling around the Classic Horror Film Board, strikes once again, with his pressbook scans for Jungle Captive, with Vicky Lane as the Ape Woman. The lobby ballyhoo and poster cut-outs must have been awesome to see.