Even after having seen Sam Raimi's directorial debut, The Evil Dead, a few times, I still have to wonder where it got its reputation as being "the ultimate experience in grueling horror."
Oh yeah. Now I remember. It actually says that in the closing credits. (It's a quote from Stephen King, who really should have known better.) Too bad there's not much evidence to support that statement to be found in the movie that precedes it.
Granted, that's a pretty harsh statement. After all, it was a zero-budget effort slapped together over the course of years by a ragtag group of childhood buddies, including Raimi and Bruce Campbell, and they try to compensate for their lack of cash and experience with much energy and ingenuity. But energy and ingenuity can only cover up so many seams, and The Evil Dead shows more seams than a baseball tossed underhand by a Little Leaguer.
Campbell stars in the first of three frantic turns as Ashley--"Ash" to his friends--in this little story of several friends who go to a remote cabin for the weekend, only to find that the previous guests at the cabin, an archeologist and his wife, have accidentally turned demonic forces loose in the woods by reading pages from the Necronomicon, the legendary "Book of the Dead." Of course, the demons are still loose in the woods, and they start trying to pick off the friends one by one--via possession, attacking trees and good old-fashioned violence. Who will die? Who will survive?
The acting is mostly weak--to be expected, given the mostly amatuer cast--with the notable exception of Campbell, who flings himself about with abandon (I think he flies through the same shelving unit at least twice) and shows hints of the charisma that would lead him through a lengthy as a B-movie actor in genre fun like Bubba Ho-Tep and at least three TV series. The story is okay, but it's let down by the homemade special effects, which veer from the nasty (blood spurting in all directions) to the downright stupid (milk and oatmeal oozing from the sleeve of one of the possessed weekenders--was that what Sam was having
for breakfast that morning?). There are also some really weird scenes, too, like the one where one of the women in the group is raped not IN the forest, but BY the forest. (Can't say I'd ever seen that one before...)
None of this is helped by the fact that it's all played deadly serious. If it had been done tongue-in-cheek, the cheapness of the production not only could have been forgiven, but embraced as part of the fun. While other low-budget horror films have played it straight and succeeded--Night of the Living Dead comes immediately to mind, as does Halloween--they played off their budgetary restrictions with more style.
I feel bad being so mean to The Evil Dead--like I'm kicking a asthmatic puppy or something. It was a nice try by some game by some amateurs who would go on to do much better work, but it's only interesting in that particular context. Take by itself as a horror film, it just doesn't stand the tests of time, talent and sloppy gore. It may have impressed Stephen King, or maybe he was just giving a hand to some crazy kids who made a movie out of virtually nothing and deserved a break. Either way, The Evil Dead doesn't live up to its reputation.
The next movie in the series, though, more than makes up for its lackluster predecessor: Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn is essentially a remake of this movie, but with a better budget, even more energy and lots of laughs--intentional ones, for that matter.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Review: Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957/59)
Friends and acquaintances often ask me, "What's your favorite movie?" I don't just have one, because I'm way too greedy to limit my love to just one film--I have a whole list. Some of the titles are obvious classics, like Citizen Kane or City Lights. Some are more modern critical hits, like Pulp Fiction. Still others are foreign landmarks, like Pandora's Box or Ran.
Buy whenever I get to Plan 9 from Outer Space, the listener invariably stops me and says," Wait, wait, wait...have you lost your damn mind? You can't be serious."
But I am. Plan 9 from Outer Space is one of my all-time favorite movies. And I'm not the least ashamed to admit it.
I'm not arguing that Plan 9 from Outer Space is a good movie. It's not. In fact, it's a very, very bad movie. But it's not the worst movie ever made. There are many more movies made by much more talented directors, writers and actors that have entertained me far less than Plan 9 does. However, since it sprang from the fevered brain of writer/director Edward D. Wood, Jr.--who had already crafted memorable bombs like Glen or Glenda?, a sensitive plea for understanding for transvestites (Wood was one in real life); Jail Bait, a hard-boiled crime thriller; and Bride of the Monster, a science-fiction monster show starring Bela Lugosi and Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson--Plan 9 from Outer Space may well be the most incompetent movie ever made.
The basic idea of the story is a good one: Aliens land in a graveyard and try to take over the world by reanimating the dead and attacking the living. (A similar story was used for the only-marginally-better Invisible Invaders, released the same year as Plan 9, which had been shot a couple of years earlier.) It's the execution, on all levels, that elevates Plan 9 so far above all of the merely mediocre sci-fi/horror movies produced in the 1950s.
This movie goes wrong with the first lines of narration, delivered by faux psychic Criswell: "Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends: Future events such as these will affect you in the future." Much of the dialogue is similarly overblown, with much philosophising about life, death, science, outer space and war. The basic intelligence of human beings is even questioned: "...Because all you of Earth are idiots!" bellows the provacatively named Eros, played by the even more provocatively named Dudley Manlove, at airline pilot Jeff (Gregory Walcott, the only one who gives even the semblance of a professional performance in this movie), who spots a flying saucer while trying to bring his commercial airliner in for a safe landing one morning and subsequently winds up involved in intrigue involving the military, the undead and the extraterrestrial.
One of the undead is The Old Man, "played" by Bela Lugosi in unrelated footage Wood shot just before Lugosi died and repurposed for this movie. It's sad to see the once-great horror icon frail and obviously ill. It's even more sad to see him toddle off screen, grief-stricken (or so narrator Criswell tell us) because of the death of his wife (TV horror hostess Vampira, a.k.a. Maila Nurmi, who refused to speak any dialogue--good for her) and run over by a car (with an obviously fake scream and screeching of tires, and a freeze frame that holds Lugosi's shadow on screen even while the car is supposedly running him down). There are other shots of Lugosi inserted, but much use is made of a supposed "look-alike" stand in (played by Wood's wife's chiropractor)--who doesn't look a thing like Lugosi.
There are bad decisions and inconsistencies everywhere. The funeral for the old man's wife takes place at sundown. When Lugosi walks off, the gravediggers start their work, at which point, Criswell tells us, strange things begin to happen. We immediately cut to Jeff in his airplane (and the most unconvincing cockpit set ever)--at sunrise. And then we cut back to the gravediggers still working. (Did they dig all night?) Shots go from night to day back to night again. The flying saucers are plastic models held up by very visible strings. (They also cast shadows on outer space.) Tor Johnson plays the lead detective investigating the murders of the gravediggers (who get torn up Vampira, even though shots of her are obviously in a studio while shots of them are obviously are on location), but his dialogue is nearly unintelligible due to his thick Swedish accent. In the graveyard, grass is made of paper and tombstones are cardboard (and knocked over easily). Stock footage is used liberally.
I could go on and on, but you get the point: Plan 9 from Outer Space is one lousy movie. Yet every time I see it, I find myself wildly entertained by the whole ungainly mess, and I appreciate all the good movies I've seen that much more. I also appreciate the passion with which Wood approached his "craft." Maybe he wasn't competent as a writer, director or actor, but he got his "vision" up on the silver screen for all to see.
Ed Wood got to live his dreams, such as they were. And how many of us can say that?
Buy whenever I get to Plan 9 from Outer Space, the listener invariably stops me and says," Wait, wait, wait...have you lost your damn mind? You can't be serious."
But I am. Plan 9 from Outer Space is one of my all-time favorite movies. And I'm not the least ashamed to admit it.
I'm not arguing that Plan 9 from Outer Space is a good movie. It's not. In fact, it's a very, very bad movie. But it's not the worst movie ever made. There are many more movies made by much more talented directors, writers and actors that have entertained me far less than Plan 9 does. However, since it sprang from the fevered brain of writer/director Edward D. Wood, Jr.--who had already crafted memorable bombs like Glen or Glenda?, a sensitive plea for understanding for transvestites (Wood was one in real life); Jail Bait, a hard-boiled crime thriller; and Bride of the Monster, a science-fiction monster show starring Bela Lugosi and Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson--Plan 9 from Outer Space may well be the most incompetent movie ever made.
The basic idea of the story is a good one: Aliens land in a graveyard and try to take over the world by reanimating the dead and attacking the living. (A similar story was used for the only-marginally-better Invisible Invaders, released the same year as Plan 9, which had been shot a couple of years earlier.) It's the execution, on all levels, that elevates Plan 9 so far above all of the merely mediocre sci-fi/horror movies produced in the 1950s.
This movie goes wrong with the first lines of narration, delivered by faux psychic Criswell: "Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends: Future events such as these will affect you in the future." Much of the dialogue is similarly overblown, with much philosophising about life, death, science, outer space and war. The basic intelligence of human beings is even questioned: "...Because all you of Earth are idiots!" bellows the provacatively named Eros, played by the even more provocatively named Dudley Manlove, at airline pilot Jeff (Gregory Walcott, the only one who gives even the semblance of a professional performance in this movie), who spots a flying saucer while trying to bring his commercial airliner in for a safe landing one morning and subsequently winds up involved in intrigue involving the military, the undead and the extraterrestrial.
One of the undead is The Old Man, "played" by Bela Lugosi in unrelated footage Wood shot just before Lugosi died and repurposed for this movie. It's sad to see the once-great horror icon frail and obviously ill. It's even more sad to see him toddle off screen, grief-stricken (or so narrator Criswell tell us) because of the death of his wife (TV horror hostess Vampira, a.k.a. Maila Nurmi, who refused to speak any dialogue--good for her) and run over by a car (with an obviously fake scream and screeching of tires, and a freeze frame that holds Lugosi's shadow on screen even while the car is supposedly running him down). There are other shots of Lugosi inserted, but much use is made of a supposed "look-alike" stand in (played by Wood's wife's chiropractor)--who doesn't look a thing like Lugosi.
There are bad decisions and inconsistencies everywhere. The funeral for the old man's wife takes place at sundown. When Lugosi walks off, the gravediggers start their work, at which point, Criswell tells us, strange things begin to happen. We immediately cut to Jeff in his airplane (and the most unconvincing cockpit set ever)--at sunrise. And then we cut back to the gravediggers still working. (Did they dig all night?) Shots go from night to day back to night again. The flying saucers are plastic models held up by very visible strings. (They also cast shadows on outer space.) Tor Johnson plays the lead detective investigating the murders of the gravediggers (who get torn up Vampira, even though shots of her are obviously in a studio while shots of them are obviously are on location), but his dialogue is nearly unintelligible due to his thick Swedish accent. In the graveyard, grass is made of paper and tombstones are cardboard (and knocked over easily). Stock footage is used liberally.
I could go on and on, but you get the point: Plan 9 from Outer Space is one lousy movie. Yet every time I see it, I find myself wildly entertained by the whole ungainly mess, and I appreciate all the good movies I've seen that much more. I also appreciate the passion with which Wood approached his "craft." Maybe he wasn't competent as a writer, director or actor, but he got his "vision" up on the silver screen for all to see.
Ed Wood got to live his dreams, such as they were. And how many of us can say that?
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Review: The Night Strangler (1973)
Successful horror films usually have sequels. Even made-for-TV horror films aren't immune: When The Night Stalker set ratings records in January 1972, a followup was almost immediately put into motion, with Darren McGavin returning as rumpled, abrasive reporter Carl Kolchak, Simon Oakland as his frustrated editor, Tony Vincenzo, Richard Matheson writing the script and Dan Curtis producing (and directing this time as well)--all elements that helped make The Night Stalker an instant classic.
So why isn't the sequel, The Night Strangler, anywhere near as good?
Maybe familiarity breeds contempt. Both movies have similar storylines. In The Night Stalker, Kolchak investigates a series of murders in Las Vegas that turn out to have been committed by an vampire. In The Night Strangler, Vincenzo is in a bar in Seattle drinking milk (it's all his stomach can take anymore) when he hears a loud, familiar voice: Kolchak, trying to get somebody to believe the vampire story and hire him--goals which turn out to be at odds with one another. Vincenzo then makes two huge mistakes: He hires Kolchak (maybe he feels guilty about what happened in Vegas?), and he assigns Kolchak to investigate the murder of a young exotic dancer whose throat was crushed and had a small amount of blood drawn from the base of her skull. Kolchak finds out (with the help of a researcher played by Wally Cox, in his last movie before dying of a heart attack at 49) that the murderer has been doing this in the city every 21 years since 1889. Hmmm...an immortal, superstrong maniac killing beautiful women for their blood? Haven't we heard this one before?
Maybe the monster is too obscure, if the method isn't. Matheson used the legend of the Count St. Germain, who was said to have remained youthful and vigorous well into old age, as the basis for the killer in The Night Strangler. So even he apparently looks like a rotting corpse (we don't see his true face until the very end, which no doubt saved the production on makeup costs), it's not like the boogeyman is something recognizable, like a vampire, werewolf or zombie. Still, Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman from The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman) gives a cool, calm, restrained performance as the killer, who must prepare his "elixer of life" in a certain amount of time or he'll return to his true age. And since he plans on continuing to "perfect" his formula--and killing women--Kolchak does what he can to break the cycle--even if it may cost him his life.
Maybe Dan Curtis isn't as good a director as John Llewllyn Moxie. He's not. His directoral style is rigid and lacking spark, which doesn't help much when Matheson's script has a good deal more comedy in it (especially between Kolchak and Vincenzo) than the original had. At least he has a great cast to carry it off, including Scott Brady, Jo Ann Pflugg (as an belly dancer who helps Carl when a couple of her co-workers get killed), Al Lewis ("Grampa Munster" as a homeless drunk), Margaret Hamilton and John Carradine in an especially funny (if small) part as the newspaper's conservative publisher who takes a dim view of Kolchak's sensationalistic style.
Or maybe it's just the nature of sequels to be pale imitations of their predecessors. That doesn't make The Night Strangler a bad movie--it's got a good sense of humor and a great cast; there are scary moments, especially at the conclusion, set in the underground remains of Old Seattle; and it was more than popular enough to spawn a weekly series, which unfortunately lasted only one season (1974/75).
Maybe The Night Strangler isn't a must-see like The Night Stalker. But it has its moments. More than anything, it lets us spend more time with McGavin's Carl Kolchak, who is, in his own way, as distinctive a character as Peter Falk's Columbo. And that's a bit of fun.
So why isn't the sequel, The Night Strangler, anywhere near as good?
Maybe familiarity breeds contempt. Both movies have similar storylines. In The Night Stalker, Kolchak investigates a series of murders in Las Vegas that turn out to have been committed by an vampire. In The Night Strangler, Vincenzo is in a bar in Seattle drinking milk (it's all his stomach can take anymore) when he hears a loud, familiar voice: Kolchak, trying to get somebody to believe the vampire story and hire him--goals which turn out to be at odds with one another. Vincenzo then makes two huge mistakes: He hires Kolchak (maybe he feels guilty about what happened in Vegas?), and he assigns Kolchak to investigate the murder of a young exotic dancer whose throat was crushed and had a small amount of blood drawn from the base of her skull. Kolchak finds out (with the help of a researcher played by Wally Cox, in his last movie before dying of a heart attack at 49) that the murderer has been doing this in the city every 21 years since 1889. Hmmm...an immortal, superstrong maniac killing beautiful women for their blood? Haven't we heard this one before?
Maybe the monster is too obscure, if the method isn't. Matheson used the legend of the Count St. Germain, who was said to have remained youthful and vigorous well into old age, as the basis for the killer in The Night Strangler. So even he apparently looks like a rotting corpse (we don't see his true face until the very end, which no doubt saved the production on makeup costs), it's not like the boogeyman is something recognizable, like a vampire, werewolf or zombie. Still, Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman from The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman) gives a cool, calm, restrained performance as the killer, who must prepare his "elixer of life" in a certain amount of time or he'll return to his true age. And since he plans on continuing to "perfect" his formula--and killing women--Kolchak does what he can to break the cycle--even if it may cost him his life.
Maybe Dan Curtis isn't as good a director as John Llewllyn Moxie. He's not. His directoral style is rigid and lacking spark, which doesn't help much when Matheson's script has a good deal more comedy in it (especially between Kolchak and Vincenzo) than the original had. At least he has a great cast to carry it off, including Scott Brady, Jo Ann Pflugg (as an belly dancer who helps Carl when a couple of her co-workers get killed), Al Lewis ("Grampa Munster" as a homeless drunk), Margaret Hamilton and John Carradine in an especially funny (if small) part as the newspaper's conservative publisher who takes a dim view of Kolchak's sensationalistic style.
Or maybe it's just the nature of sequels to be pale imitations of their predecessors. That doesn't make The Night Strangler a bad movie--it's got a good sense of humor and a great cast; there are scary moments, especially at the conclusion, set in the underground remains of Old Seattle; and it was more than popular enough to spawn a weekly series, which unfortunately lasted only one season (1974/75).
Maybe The Night Strangler isn't a must-see like The Night Stalker. But it has its moments. More than anything, it lets us spend more time with McGavin's Carl Kolchak, who is, in his own way, as distinctive a character as Peter Falk's Columbo. And that's a bit of fun.
Review: The Night Stalker (1972)
To put it as politely as possible, most made-for-TV horror films are just not good. They're derivative, lifting their storylines and monsters from their big-screen contemporaries. (Example: The Horror at 37,000 Feet combines elements from The Exorcist and Airport.) They're dull. They have tight budgets and restrictions imposed by network censors and concerned advertisers. Good ones are few and far between.
But for every rule, there is, naturally, an exception--in this case, The Night Stalker.
Darren McGavin finds the role of a lifetime as Carl Kolchak, a washed-up, rundown crime reporter for a Las Vegas newspaper who is underwhelmed at his latest assignment: The murder of a young woman who, it turns out, died of shock from massive blood loss. Two more victims turn up soon after, exhibiting the same massive blood loss. Kolchak sees a pattern, even though his hardass editor, Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) considers it pure speculation and refuses to run the story.
Turns out Kolchak is correct--all three murders are connected. What's more, the medical examiner (Larry Linville) says that saliva was found in the wounds on the throats of all three women. Kolchak thinks it's "some nut who thinks he's a vampire," but the authorities refuse to believe it. Even Carl's friend, FBI guy Bernie Jenks (Ralph Meeker), tells him to lay off. But the murders continue, and the cops even corner the killer a couple of times, only to have him tear through the boys in blue like they were mannequins, even when they shoot him at close range. When the FBI determines that the suspect is 89-year-old Janos Skorzeny (Barry Atwater), wanted for a string of unexplained deaths going back at least 30 years, it becomes obvious--to Kolchak, at least--that this may not be "some nut who thinks he's a vampire," but an honest-to-goodness, actual vampire.
Based on a then-unpublished novel by Jeff Rice, himself a former Las Vegas reporter, and adapted for TV by Richard Matheson, author of numerous horror novels, short stories and screenplays, The Night Stalker takes a fantastic situation--a vampire on the loose--out of the fog-shouded streets and gloomy castles of classic horror films and integrates it into a contemporary situation--the hunt for a serial killer in a major modern American city. There is humor in the movie, especially in the arguments between Kolchak and Vincenzo, but the vampire is treated seriously.
And unromantically. He's a modern vampire in some ways--he drives a car, rents a house and uses disguises to slip into hospitals and steal plasma--but there's nothing suave, sexy or refined about Atwater's performance--he doesn't even have a single line of dialogue (unless you count snarls and hisses, which I don't). He is, simply put, an animal on the hunt; his hunting is ground Las Vegas, his prey the women there.
It doesn't hurt that producer Dan Curtis (who had produced the soap opera Dark Shadows and directed its big-screen incarnation) and director John Llewellyn Moxey (who had made City of the Dead a decade earlier) shows a steady hand, treating the material with an almost documentary level of respect. It also doesn't hurt to have an amazing veteran cast: McGavin (who played Mike Hammer on TV), Meeker (who also once played Mike Hammer), Oakland (the psychiatrist at the end of Psycho), Kent Smith (Cat People), Claude Akins, Elisha Cook Jr. and Carol Lynley (as Kolchak's girlfriend). And there's a terrific, jazzy score by Robert Cobert (who wrote the theme for Dark Shadows).
The Night Stalker was, when it was initially broadcast in January of 1972, the highest-rated TV movie of all time--with good reason. Not only is The Night Stalker the best made-for-TV horror film ever, but one of the best made-for-TV movies of any genre, period. It was popular enough to spawn a sequel--The Night Strangler, broadcast the next year--and a short-lived weekly series. That series inspired Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, and has further inspired a "reimagined" series this year, which actually plays like a recast X-Files (they're reporters instead of FBI agents) without any of the humor of the original and was dropped into the time slot opposite CSI and The Apprentice. (Why not run this new Night Stalker in the middle of the night? I think more people would see it.)
Skip the "reimagined" version. This is the only Night Stalker you need.
But for every rule, there is, naturally, an exception--in this case, The Night Stalker.
Darren McGavin finds the role of a lifetime as Carl Kolchak, a washed-up, rundown crime reporter for a Las Vegas newspaper who is underwhelmed at his latest assignment: The murder of a young woman who, it turns out, died of shock from massive blood loss. Two more victims turn up soon after, exhibiting the same massive blood loss. Kolchak sees a pattern, even though his hardass editor, Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) considers it pure speculation and refuses to run the story.
Turns out Kolchak is correct--all three murders are connected. What's more, the medical examiner (Larry Linville) says that saliva was found in the wounds on the throats of all three women. Kolchak thinks it's "some nut who thinks he's a vampire," but the authorities refuse to believe it. Even Carl's friend, FBI guy Bernie Jenks (Ralph Meeker), tells him to lay off. But the murders continue, and the cops even corner the killer a couple of times, only to have him tear through the boys in blue like they were mannequins, even when they shoot him at close range. When the FBI determines that the suspect is 89-year-old Janos Skorzeny (Barry Atwater), wanted for a string of unexplained deaths going back at least 30 years, it becomes obvious--to Kolchak, at least--that this may not be "some nut who thinks he's a vampire," but an honest-to-goodness, actual vampire.
Based on a then-unpublished novel by Jeff Rice, himself a former Las Vegas reporter, and adapted for TV by Richard Matheson, author of numerous horror novels, short stories and screenplays, The Night Stalker takes a fantastic situation--a vampire on the loose--out of the fog-shouded streets and gloomy castles of classic horror films and integrates it into a contemporary situation--the hunt for a serial killer in a major modern American city. There is humor in the movie, especially in the arguments between Kolchak and Vincenzo, but the vampire is treated seriously.
And unromantically. He's a modern vampire in some ways--he drives a car, rents a house and uses disguises to slip into hospitals and steal plasma--but there's nothing suave, sexy or refined about Atwater's performance--he doesn't even have a single line of dialogue (unless you count snarls and hisses, which I don't). He is, simply put, an animal on the hunt; his hunting is ground Las Vegas, his prey the women there.
It doesn't hurt that producer Dan Curtis (who had produced the soap opera Dark Shadows and directed its big-screen incarnation) and director John Llewellyn Moxey (who had made City of the Dead a decade earlier) shows a steady hand, treating the material with an almost documentary level of respect. It also doesn't hurt to have an amazing veteran cast: McGavin (who played Mike Hammer on TV), Meeker (who also once played Mike Hammer), Oakland (the psychiatrist at the end of Psycho), Kent Smith (Cat People), Claude Akins, Elisha Cook Jr. and Carol Lynley (as Kolchak's girlfriend). And there's a terrific, jazzy score by Robert Cobert (who wrote the theme for Dark Shadows).
The Night Stalker was, when it was initially broadcast in January of 1972, the highest-rated TV movie of all time--with good reason. Not only is The Night Stalker the best made-for-TV horror film ever, but one of the best made-for-TV movies of any genre, period. It was popular enough to spawn a sequel--The Night Strangler, broadcast the next year--and a short-lived weekly series. That series inspired Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, and has further inspired a "reimagined" series this year, which actually plays like a recast X-Files (they're reporters instead of FBI agents) without any of the humor of the original and was dropped into the time slot opposite CSI and The Apprentice. (Why not run this new Night Stalker in the middle of the night? I think more people would see it.)
Skip the "reimagined" version. This is the only Night Stalker you need.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Review: The Fog (2005)
Generally speaking, remakes are a bad idea. Why? Because most remakes tackle movies that were just fine in the first place and thus didn't need to be remade at all. Example: Did we need a remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? Depends. Did you like the original? Many people did. But did we get a remake anyway? Of course we did.
Many people liked John Carpenter's The Fog, too. Some of them are close friends of mine. I liked parts of it--the opening with John Houseman telling stories around a campfire is brilliant and evocative, while the shots of dark figures moving through the fog are enough to give you nightmares. But there was a lot about it that didn't make sense, like why the ghosts waited 100 years to exact their revenge (when everybody they wanted to exact revenge on was long since as dead as they were), why they chose to kill some people but not others (i.e., all the recognizable names in the cast), and why, at the end of the movie, they go away again.
The new remake of The Fog, produced by Carpenter and Debra Hill (who also produced the original) and directed by Rupert Wainwright (best known for Stigmata and a whole lot of music videos), tries to answer those questions, but instead raises even more--namely, "Why bother to remake a movie if you can't really improve on the original?" and "Creativity in Hollywood really is dead, isn't it?"
On scenic Antonio Island off the coast of Oregon, a statue is about to be dedicated to the four men responsible for founding the town, where Nick (Tom Welling) operates a fishing boat with his "Gilligan," Spooner (DeRay Davis), and Stevie (Selma Blair) owns and DJs at a radio station in a lighthouse on the coast. In the prologue, we see those four founding fathers rowing away from a ship, the Elizabeth Dane, that has been set afire by the four. One of the men accidentally drops a heavy bag over the side--a bag that, back in the present day, Nick's boat anchor snags and rips open, which holds valuable personal items from the passengers of the Elizabeth Dane. That's enough to rouse the still-angry spirits to come back to land and whoops some living ass.
That night, while Nick is picking up his ex-girlfriend, Elizabeth (Maggie Grace)--funny that she has the same first name as that ship, huh?--hitchhiking along a dark road (they wind up back at his place and have the least erotic shower sex ever), Spooner has taken the boat out with a buddy and a couple of girls. Then the badly CGI'd fog rolls in--which we see from the fog's point of view (FogCam?)--and very bad things start to happen. Father Malone (Adrian Hough) seems to have a clue about what's going on, but he's way too drunk to help. The next morning, Stevie's son, Andy (Cole Heppell), finds a silver hairbrush washed up on the beach, just as an old man had found a pocketwatch the day before--think they came from that bag of booty?
Before you know it, the fog rolls in again, people start dying and characters start running around trying to save other characters.
Does that sound exciting? Or scary? It's not. Everything happens slowly, there's no particular pattern to who gets killed by the ghosts in the fog--some have to walk out into the fog to get nailed, while the fog sneaks into nooks and crannies of houses and cars to nail others. Or not. The ghosts themselves can't make up their undead minds about what they are or how they do what they do: Sometimes you can drive right through them, other times they can stab you, burn you, strangle you, etc. There aren't any basic ground rules for the characters--or the audience--to wrap their noggins around.
None of the actors embarrass themselves, although most of the characters are so annoying, irritating or obnoxious that you kind of hope somebody reaches out from the fog to drag them away. (Only Stevie really avoids being an ass, but that could just be me cutting slack because of my longstanding crush on Selma Blair.) Much of the plot tracks closely with the 1980 original, aside from some touches lifted from Japanese horror films (the obsessive use--some would say overuse--of water as a supernatural element) and an ending that differs substabtially, but is even less satisfactory.
Most shockingly, though, the special effects are actually a step back from the original, where the fog looked natural and threatening and the figures in the fog were mostly silhouettes with hooks. Here, both the fog and the ghosts are rendered with the kind of lowest-level computer graphics you'd expect to find in a movie on the Sci-Fi Channel.
This new version of The Fog could have improved on or clarified what was muddled or off-key with the 1980 version. Instead, it makes us appreciate the original that much more.
Many people liked John Carpenter's The Fog, too. Some of them are close friends of mine. I liked parts of it--the opening with John Houseman telling stories around a campfire is brilliant and evocative, while the shots of dark figures moving through the fog are enough to give you nightmares. But there was a lot about it that didn't make sense, like why the ghosts waited 100 years to exact their revenge (when everybody they wanted to exact revenge on was long since as dead as they were), why they chose to kill some people but not others (i.e., all the recognizable names in the cast), and why, at the end of the movie, they go away again.
The new remake of The Fog, produced by Carpenter and Debra Hill (who also produced the original) and directed by Rupert Wainwright (best known for Stigmata and a whole lot of music videos), tries to answer those questions, but instead raises even more--namely, "Why bother to remake a movie if you can't really improve on the original?" and "Creativity in Hollywood really is dead, isn't it?"
On scenic Antonio Island off the coast of Oregon, a statue is about to be dedicated to the four men responsible for founding the town, where Nick (Tom Welling) operates a fishing boat with his "Gilligan," Spooner (DeRay Davis), and Stevie (Selma Blair) owns and DJs at a radio station in a lighthouse on the coast. In the prologue, we see those four founding fathers rowing away from a ship, the Elizabeth Dane, that has been set afire by the four. One of the men accidentally drops a heavy bag over the side--a bag that, back in the present day, Nick's boat anchor snags and rips open, which holds valuable personal items from the passengers of the Elizabeth Dane. That's enough to rouse the still-angry spirits to come back to land and whoops some living ass.
That night, while Nick is picking up his ex-girlfriend, Elizabeth (Maggie Grace)--funny that she has the same first name as that ship, huh?--hitchhiking along a dark road (they wind up back at his place and have the least erotic shower sex ever), Spooner has taken the boat out with a buddy and a couple of girls. Then the badly CGI'd fog rolls in--which we see from the fog's point of view (FogCam?)--and very bad things start to happen. Father Malone (Adrian Hough) seems to have a clue about what's going on, but he's way too drunk to help. The next morning, Stevie's son, Andy (Cole Heppell), finds a silver hairbrush washed up on the beach, just as an old man had found a pocketwatch the day before--think they came from that bag of booty?
Before you know it, the fog rolls in again, people start dying and characters start running around trying to save other characters.
Does that sound exciting? Or scary? It's not. Everything happens slowly, there's no particular pattern to who gets killed by the ghosts in the fog--some have to walk out into the fog to get nailed, while the fog sneaks into nooks and crannies of houses and cars to nail others. Or not. The ghosts themselves can't make up their undead minds about what they are or how they do what they do: Sometimes you can drive right through them, other times they can stab you, burn you, strangle you, etc. There aren't any basic ground rules for the characters--or the audience--to wrap their noggins around.
None of the actors embarrass themselves, although most of the characters are so annoying, irritating or obnoxious that you kind of hope somebody reaches out from the fog to drag them away. (Only Stevie really avoids being an ass, but that could just be me cutting slack because of my longstanding crush on Selma Blair.) Much of the plot tracks closely with the 1980 original, aside from some touches lifted from Japanese horror films (the obsessive use--some would say overuse--of water as a supernatural element) and an ending that differs substabtially, but is even less satisfactory.
Most shockingly, though, the special effects are actually a step back from the original, where the fog looked natural and threatening and the figures in the fog were mostly silhouettes with hooks. Here, both the fog and the ghosts are rendered with the kind of lowest-level computer graphics you'd expect to find in a movie on the Sci-Fi Channel.
This new version of The Fog could have improved on or clarified what was muddled or off-key with the 1980 version. Instead, it makes us appreciate the original that much more.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Review: The Ghost Ship (1943)
When you look at the title of this movie--The Ghost Ship--you might well assume that this is a supernatural thriller about a haunted sea vessel. And when you see the name "Val Lewton" attached as producer--responsible for such horror classics as I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People, you just know this is a supernatural thriller about a haunted sea vessel.
Both reasonable assumptions. But wrong.
Executives at RKO determined the often sensation titles of the movies Lewton would make, but Lewton determined the content. For The Ghost Ship, Lewton opted not to take the title literally, but use it as an opportunity to make a psychological thriller in which a ship isn't haunted by ghosts, but a flesh-and-blood man is consumed by his personal demons, making him a threat to all around him.
A young seaman, Tom (Russell Wade) ships out as third mate under Captain Will Stone (Richard Dix) who, unfortunately for everyone involved, is slowly going insane and bumping off anybody who crosses him, like a shipmate (Lawrence Tierney) who speaks out against the captain and is later "accidentally" crushed to death by an anchor chain. When Tom voices his suspicions about Captain Stone, he becomes the next target, and the rest of his shipmates (Including Calypso singer Sir Lancelot) won't help because...well, Stone is the captain, and on the sea, the captain's word is law unless Tom can prove that Stone is out of his mind.
Like all of Lewton's movies for RKO, The Ghost Ship has a moody look to it, with lots of low-key lighting and sweaty close-ups, especially of former silent film star Dix (whose name sounds like a modern male porn star pseudonym). His performance as Captain Stone is reserved and tense, rather than loud or flamboyant--no giggling psychotic here--making it all the more chilling. Mark Robson, who worked as editor on other Lewton movies before finally getting a shot at directing on The Seventh Victim, keeps things grim but well-paced, and there are a couple of good scares to be had: The murder of Tierney is harrowing, since the audience realizes his fate well before he does, and a later scene in which Wade must stay in his cabin despite the lock having been removed from the door is proof that a little paranoia goes a long way.
The key to enjoying The Ghost Ship is not to lower your expectations, but adjust them. If you come in looking for a solid psychological drama rather than a spook show, you'll enjoy The Ghost Ship, especially if you've ever suspected that your boss just isn't quite right in the head.
(Note:: This Ghost Ship isn't in any way related to either of the two much later movies with the same name (one released in 1980, the other in 2003). Both of those have actual ghosts on board. Both of them are very bad movies.)
Both reasonable assumptions. But wrong.
Executives at RKO determined the often sensation titles of the movies Lewton would make, but Lewton determined the content. For The Ghost Ship, Lewton opted not to take the title literally, but use it as an opportunity to make a psychological thriller in which a ship isn't haunted by ghosts, but a flesh-and-blood man is consumed by his personal demons, making him a threat to all around him.
A young seaman, Tom (Russell Wade) ships out as third mate under Captain Will Stone (Richard Dix) who, unfortunately for everyone involved, is slowly going insane and bumping off anybody who crosses him, like a shipmate (Lawrence Tierney) who speaks out against the captain and is later "accidentally" crushed to death by an anchor chain. When Tom voices his suspicions about Captain Stone, he becomes the next target, and the rest of his shipmates (Including Calypso singer Sir Lancelot) won't help because...well, Stone is the captain, and on the sea, the captain's word is law unless Tom can prove that Stone is out of his mind.
Like all of Lewton's movies for RKO, The Ghost Ship has a moody look to it, with lots of low-key lighting and sweaty close-ups, especially of former silent film star Dix (whose name sounds like a modern male porn star pseudonym). His performance as Captain Stone is reserved and tense, rather than loud or flamboyant--no giggling psychotic here--making it all the more chilling. Mark Robson, who worked as editor on other Lewton movies before finally getting a shot at directing on The Seventh Victim, keeps things grim but well-paced, and there are a couple of good scares to be had: The murder of Tierney is harrowing, since the audience realizes his fate well before he does, and a later scene in which Wade must stay in his cabin despite the lock having been removed from the door is proof that a little paranoia goes a long way.
The key to enjoying The Ghost Ship is not to lower your expectations, but adjust them. If you come in looking for a solid psychological drama rather than a spook show, you'll enjoy The Ghost Ship, especially if you've ever suspected that your boss just isn't quite right in the head.
(Note:: This Ghost Ship isn't in any way related to either of the two much later movies with the same name (one released in 1980, the other in 2003). Both of those have actual ghosts on board. Both of them are very bad movies.)
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Review: Waxworks (1924)
Like Weird Tales, Waxworks is an anthology horror film (i.e., a collection of short stories with a wraparound story holding them together) filtered through the distorted view of German Expressionism. This time around, the director is Paul Leni, who later emigrated to the United States, where he made The Cat and the Canary and The Man Who Laughs for Universal.
In addition to a highly respected director, Waxworks boasts an all-star cast of German actors, including Emil Jannings (later winner of the first Oscar for Best Actor for The Last Command), Werner Krauss (who played the title character in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and Conrad Veidt (who appeared in so many German--and later American--Expressionist films, like Caligari, Weird Tales and The Hands of Orlac).
A young writer (William Dieterle, who became a director himself and made RKO's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the big-screen adaptation of Steven Vincent Bene's The Devil and Daniel Webster) comes to a wax museum on a boardwalk, where the proprietor, who has a pretty daughter, asks the writer to pen stories based on each of three wax figures: Haroun-Al-Rashehid, the Caliph of Baghdad (Jannings), Ivan the Terrible (Veidt) and Spring-Heeled Jack, better known as Jack the Ripper (Krauss). We get to see the stories as they're written.
Story One: Haroun disguises himself as a commoner to go out and make moves on the wife of a baker (player by the same actress playing the proprietor's daughter), while the baker (played by Dieterle), determined to prove his manhood and love to his bored wife, goes off to steal the Caliph's magic wishing ring, even if he has to hack off the Caliph's hand to do it....
Story Two: Ivan the Terrible delights in watching poisoned prisoners die in his own private torture chamber. He comes down to the chamber and looks from the prisoner's face to the hourglass counting the last moments of life with mounting anticipation until, when the prisoner expires at the same time the sands run out, Ivan's face is contorted with what can only be described as orgasmic ecstasy. The Czar's poison-maker expects to be killed himself by the mad czar, so he writes Ivan's name on an hourglass. Later, Ivan is asked to attend a wedding. He switches clothing with the father of the bride, thus getting Dad killed during an assassination attempt. Then he steals the bride and sends the groom to the torture chamber! What a freak! But then there's that hourglass with Ivan's name on it....
Story Three: The writer falls asleep and dreams that he and the proprietor's daughter are pursued by Spring-Heeled Jack through numerous Expressionist sets and shadows.
Leni wisely puts the humorous story of the Caliph up front, puts the longest story in the middle, and concludes with the most fantastic and nightmarish story. All of the sets are wonderfully distorted, each story contains an element of the fantastic (magic, madness and murder), and the actors all give it their best, most vigorous shot (especially Veidt, whose wide-eyed Ivan is fearsome).
Waxworks lingered for decades as a neglected movie, more rumor than classic, seen only in tattered, worn-out prints with only production stills and reviews of the day to attest to its alleged greatness. The print I first saw on videotape a few years ago was dark and truncated, making it difficult to truly appreciate the elaborate sets and energetic performances. A couple of years ago, though, Kino released a set of German Expressionist horror films, including Waxworks. The print was cleaned up and restored, making it easier to appreciate what Leni and the cast were going for and revealing a lost jewel of the silent era to horror film fiends everywhere.
Caligari and Nosferatu may get all of the attention when silent German horror films are discussed, but now Waxworks can properly join them as a topic well worth talking about--as a moody entertainment well worth examination and praise.
In addition to a highly respected director, Waxworks boasts an all-star cast of German actors, including Emil Jannings (later winner of the first Oscar for Best Actor for The Last Command), Werner Krauss (who played the title character in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and Conrad Veidt (who appeared in so many German--and later American--Expressionist films, like Caligari, Weird Tales and The Hands of Orlac).
A young writer (William Dieterle, who became a director himself and made RKO's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the big-screen adaptation of Steven Vincent Bene's The Devil and Daniel Webster) comes to a wax museum on a boardwalk, where the proprietor, who has a pretty daughter, asks the writer to pen stories based on each of three wax figures: Haroun-Al-Rashehid, the Caliph of Baghdad (Jannings), Ivan the Terrible (Veidt) and Spring-Heeled Jack, better known as Jack the Ripper (Krauss). We get to see the stories as they're written.
Story One: Haroun disguises himself as a commoner to go out and make moves on the wife of a baker (player by the same actress playing the proprietor's daughter), while the baker (played by Dieterle), determined to prove his manhood and love to his bored wife, goes off to steal the Caliph's magic wishing ring, even if he has to hack off the Caliph's hand to do it....
Story Two: Ivan the Terrible delights in watching poisoned prisoners die in his own private torture chamber. He comes down to the chamber and looks from the prisoner's face to the hourglass counting the last moments of life with mounting anticipation until, when the prisoner expires at the same time the sands run out, Ivan's face is contorted with what can only be described as orgasmic ecstasy. The Czar's poison-maker expects to be killed himself by the mad czar, so he writes Ivan's name on an hourglass. Later, Ivan is asked to attend a wedding. He switches clothing with the father of the bride, thus getting Dad killed during an assassination attempt. Then he steals the bride and sends the groom to the torture chamber! What a freak! But then there's that hourglass with Ivan's name on it....
Story Three: The writer falls asleep and dreams that he and the proprietor's daughter are pursued by Spring-Heeled Jack through numerous Expressionist sets and shadows.
Leni wisely puts the humorous story of the Caliph up front, puts the longest story in the middle, and concludes with the most fantastic and nightmarish story. All of the sets are wonderfully distorted, each story contains an element of the fantastic (magic, madness and murder), and the actors all give it their best, most vigorous shot (especially Veidt, whose wide-eyed Ivan is fearsome).
Waxworks lingered for decades as a neglected movie, more rumor than classic, seen only in tattered, worn-out prints with only production stills and reviews of the day to attest to its alleged greatness. The print I first saw on videotape a few years ago was dark and truncated, making it difficult to truly appreciate the elaborate sets and energetic performances. A couple of years ago, though, Kino released a set of German Expressionist horror films, including Waxworks. The print was cleaned up and restored, making it easier to appreciate what Leni and the cast were going for and revealing a lost jewel of the silent era to horror film fiends everywhere.
Caligari and Nosferatu may get all of the attention when silent German horror films are discussed, but now Waxworks can properly join them as a topic well worth talking about--as a moody entertainment well worth examination and praise.
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