Purging John Carpenter

Warning - This post is rife with spoilers!

 

I'm a big fan of the Purge movies, and am looking forward to seeing the newest one, Election Day.  When I watched the first film, I remember thinking, "This is the most John Carpenter-like film I've seen of the new John Carpenter wannabes."  I thought the same thing about the even-better sequel.  They carry on Carpenter's great strengths - pounding synth scores and completely batshit-insane, yet brilliantly simple, central concepts.  On reflection, though, I realized it wasn't just the music or the stories that reminded me of Carpenter films... They're actually remarkably step-by-step remakes, with new titles. 

Consider:

Assault on Precinct 13 - A traumatized man seeks shelter inside a fortified station which comes under waves of attacks from subhuman gang members. There is a focus on race relations as the black captain and the white convict must cooperate to survive, gaining mutual respect in the process.

The Purge - A traumatized man seeks shelter inside a fortified home which comes under waves of attacks from subhuman Young Republicans. There is a focus on race relations as the white family must decide whether to sacrifice the black victim to save themselves.  

In neither movie do we learn much of anything about the primary target - He's simply there as a magnet to draw down the wrath of the horde.  Assault gives us a middle-class Average White Guy, who attracts the gang's attention by shooting one of their members in anger over the death of his daughter.  We don't know who he is, why he was there, and he's virtually mute for the rest of the film.  The Purge is even simpler - We're given zip about the main target except that he's a black man of lower social class, and presumably that's all that's needed to make him a target for the rich kid psychopaths.  

 

The interesting thing is the total inversion of the villains. In Assault, it's two working class men defending the middle class against the zombie-like attacks of a subhuman street gang - Characterless, near-mindless killing machines that are invading the safe neighborhoods. In Purge, it's wealthy people with consciences defending the lower class and themselves from the psychotic attacks of... their own young. Assault fears the street gangs consuming the working class, Purge fears the upper class consuming itself and the lower class both.  It's a testament to the times and the decades between the films that there simply is no middle class in the Purge movies.  Everyone is either the wealthy or the working poor or homeless. 

Also diverging are the final messages - Assault is ultimately a much more positive film, despite its grimness.  In Assault, the black guy and the white guy, the hardworking policeman and the "gentleman criminal", come together in understanding and realize that their values are far closer than the creatures they're fighting.  When Bishop insists that Napoleon not be chained, and that they walk out to meet the dawn together, it's a triumphant moment.  The values of hardworking decency have been defended, and even though Napoleon is going back to jail, you understand that the day is won for civilization, for the moment.

Purge is very similar in structure - The black man sides with the white family and in the end, saves those who sheltered him.  The victorious survivors walk out to meet the new day in an almost identical ending scene, except... in Purge-Land, there is no victory.  The chasm between the wealthy family and the poor guy remains, and now the wealthy family realizes the depth of the hate and loathing and jealousy that their own "kind" have for them also.  They've survived the night, but they're living in a nest of people who all want to kill them, just because they're perceived to have a little bit more than the next wealthiest household.  There's no real victory, and only a thin veneer of icy smiles and cocktail parties will cover the seething violence that's being held in check until the next Purge Night.

They make for a fascinating comparison, back to back.  If time and interest permit, look for a follow-up post to this on the virtually identical storylines of The Purge 2: Anarchy and Escape from New York.

Doc Savage - Skull Island

My Rating: See Below

After King Kong's deadly fall from the Empire State Building, Doc and crew are contracted to remove the body, leading Doc to narrate the account of his first encounter with the giant ape.  Many years before Doc was "Doc", he and his father discovered Skull Island and King Kong while searching for his lost grandfather, Stormalong Savage.

In recent years, writer & fan Will Murray has brought Doc Savage & crew back to life in the form of newly released adventures "written in the style of Lester Dent".  I'll get back to that point in a moment because I had some issues with the writing, but first up, HEY, it's Doc Savage meeting King Kong!

It's the most natural pairing of pulp fiction era characters ever, really, given that Doc's headquarters was the Empire State Building's top floor(s), a 30's-style setup that nicely predated the Baxter Building.  The book kicks off just after Kong's death drop, as Doc and his men arrive on the scene.  While Renny coordinates the massive engineering task of removing a giant ape from the street, Doc sadly recognizes Kong from an earlier encounter, and the story segues into the classic "fireside chat" motif as Doc gathers his friends and tells the story of his first encounter with Kong.

Doc wasn't Doc yet, though he'd already picked up the nickname - Instead, we get the adventure of a 20 year old Clark Savage Jr. on an ocean voyage with his domineering father, the man who shaped Doc's entire life by having him raised by scientists.  The two Savages are looking for Doc's grandfather, the amusingly-named Stormalong Savage, who was presumed lost at sea.  In the course of their search, they butt up against a vicious tribe of headhunters, discover Skull Island and Kong, and fight dinosaurs and natives all the way to a blood-curdling climax.

So, that's the plot.  I've been looking forward to this book for some time, ever since reading about it in Famous Monsters magazine, and was delighted when it became available on audio. And overall, it's a win, though there were some elements I wasn't crazy about.  First and foremost would be its prequel status - It isn't really a Doc book, per se, it's more of a "Young James Bond"-style story.  The Fabulous Five are absent except from the wrapping chapters, and Doc isn't quite the character that fans are familiar with.  Young Doc is still the superman, but he's both brasher and more obedient, usually following his father's orders instead of commanding the adventure himself.  He's also a hell of a lot more ruthless about killing, and we get intimations throughout the story of how and why Doc will eventually eschew guns and lethal force, as well as a few excellent moments where key bits of Doc canon are first established.  So, my hopes of reading a full-bore "Doc & the Fabulous Five on Skull Island" story were somewhat disappointed.

There is also the issue of Will Murray's writing style.  In a nutshell, he takes ten pages to tell what Lester Dent could tell in one.  This may be the result of trying to serve a modern audience that's more accustomed to getting character insights and inner turmoil than the original pulp fans, but whatever the case, I thought it was a little unnecessarily long... The first half is a bit of a slog as you travel around the Indian Ocean watching young Doc tinker with his machinegun pistol and get repeatedly shut down by his bossy dad, who is the very archetype of the cold, commanding military father.  Dent, by contrast, would have taken the crew straight to Skull Island, probably in a flaming dirigible that was collapsing under them.

The audiobook is also read in an "old time radio" voice.  This is fun but distracting at times, and becomes a little wearing over the course of the book as EVERYTHING is read as if it was a case of life or death!!  Radio shows were a half hour, so the effect gets a little overwhelming in an eight hour book.  It IS enjoyable and the action scenes are downright terrific, it just gets a bit much after a while.

My final demerit is the role of Kong - He overshadows the island but isn't in the book very much, and his final encounter is disappointing.  The story winds up to a dynamite conclusion that's action from start to finish, but Kong's role is minor where I'd hoped for something more involving (In truth, it reminded me of Bane from Dark Knight Rises - a powerful presence through the first part of the story that fades out by the end).

Despite these caveats, it was still a whale of a good time - Doc gets to try on his Tarzan swings, Doc fights raptors, there are several classic "Doc is more human than human" moments, and a certain explosive rescue scene is easily Indiana Jones' level of awesome.  It's hard to give such mixed reactions one single rating, so I'll split it up:

As a fun adventure book: 7/10  (Action, dinosaurs, headhunters, what more could you ask?)

As an intro to Doc: 3/10 (The personality differences, the lack of experience, the absence of the Five... all these make it a very un-Doc-like Doc story.  The cues and motifs tucked throughout that resonate for longtime fans will be completely overlooked by new readers)

As a Kong story: 5/10 (Good atmosphere but limited use of Kong)

As an audio presentation: 4/10 (The radio-style reading was enjoyable to a point, but just got tiring after a while)

Despite my somewhat-mixed comments, I would still recommend it, as it is an intriguing look into what Doc's younger life was like, what his relationship with his family was like, and for Pete's sake, it's a new Doc Savage novel!  We need more!  Even 80 years later, the Doc Savage creed is still worth living by:

Let me strive every moment of my life, to make myself better and better,
to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it.
Let me think of the right and lend all my assistance to those who need it,
with no regard for anything but justice.
Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage.
Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and my associates in everything I say and do.
Let me do right to all, and wrong no man.

You're Next

NetFlix 4/5
IMDB 6.6/10
My Rating: 7/10

When shy Erin joins her new boyfriend at a family reunion to commemorate his parents' anniversary, the tense gathering is horrifically interrupted by a gang of masked invaders who brutalize the celebrants ... until someone starts fighting back.


MAJOR kudos for this one! I'd read tons of excellent magazine reviews praising this movie up and down, but I kept putting off watching it because the concept just didn't grab me... It sounds bleak, grim, and non-fun, and I was confused by some of the descriptions of this as a comedy-horror. Well, it is, but only in the way that Evil Dead 2 is. What it really is, though, is a marvelous deconstruction and reconstruction of a slasher/giallo film - It's like watching a modern take on Black Christmas as directed by 70's John Carpenter from a script written by Joss Whedon. In other words, really clever and really well put-together. It's also stuffed to the gills with sneaky little homages to classic horror of the past, with wink-winks to Halloween, Black Christmas, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and even Night of the Living Dead.

The basic plot is this - All the scions of a wealthy 1%er family are getting together for their parents' anniversary, for the first time in years. The setting is excellent. It's a HUGE, classic Tudor-style mansion out in the boonies, and the fact that its these folks' vacation house only underscores the class tensions in the film. They're your basic clan of wealthy WASPS, classic Mitt Romney supporters, and the father even works for a defense contractor. Also, they all pretty much hate each other in typical passive-aggressive family ways, and this is their first big chance for everyone to bring home their various SOs to meet each other. This produces some funny scenes as old-money yuppies are forced to mingle with gothoid girlfriends, artsy students, etc.

Artsy boyfriend of family daughter: "I make films. My last film was a documentary that aired at the Underground Film Festival in Toronto."
Fratboy eldest son: "Underground? What, do you mean you ... watch the movies in a cave or something?"

We also get introduced to our heroine Erin, a working class Australian girl in the states for college. Soon enough, however, things turn very dark as the isolated family is besieged by a group of mystery killers in animal masks, who are creepy as fuck:

I loved the direction and style of this movie. It's all very slow, creeping, handheld camera long shots, very much in the style of Halloween or Black Christmas. In fact, the Black Christmas nods are all over it, as it's obvious that at least some of the killers have already gotten into the immense house and it plays much like the sorority house in BC - A huge, mostly empty building where we keep getting killer POV shots as masked figures quietly wander the halls and watch the family cook, chat, and sleep.

Where it really gets going, though, is when the killers start picking off the family and it becomes obvious that heroine Erin is WAY more than anyone expected. Erin isn't just a blue collar toughgirl, she was raised by a family of crazy survivalists in the Australian outback and someone on IMDB accurately described her as Crocodile Dundee's daughter. This is the film at its most Whedon-esque, because the bulk of the film is the crazy ongoing battles between the attacking killers and this absolutely vicious Buffy who keeps turning the tables on them.

It's absolutely loaded with, "Fuck YEAH!" moments for longtime horror fans, as Erin is absolutely NOT the girl who will stick a knife in an attacker and then turn and walk away, assuming he's dead...

Most of the black humor is in the second half and it's very Evil Dead in style. Some people complained that it was a jarring tonal shift, but I found it fun and enjoyable, mostly because if it had just been a straight horror all the way through, it wouldn't have been nearly as unusual or distinctive. We've all seen so many of these "home invasion by masked killers" films now that it's a real joy to see one where you end up not knowing WHO is really the biggest threat... It really does play out like the "Scream" guys accidentally picked on Buffy (or more accurately, Faith) by mistake.

Pacific Rim

IMDB 7.9/10
My Rating: 7/10

When giant monsters start appearing in the Pacific ocean and destroying cities, humanity must band together and fight back with giant piloted robots. 

I love giant monster movies.  Ever since the days of Godzilla and Ultraman, the kaiju genre has been my thing, so the idea of a big budget, all-original robots vs monsters movie has always been high on my wish list.  And Pacific Rim is clearly a labor of love by a fellow fan of Toho's creations... which is why it pains me to not *quite* be able to give it the glowing review I'd like to.  Nonetheless, it's a marvelous film and thus far is the only summer movie that's actually been able to motivate me to the theater - Man of Steel and Star Trek and Iron Man 3 are more, "Wait for it on DVD" for me, whereas Lone Ranger is strictly, "I'll watch this when I'm forced to on a long plane flight."

In Pacific Rim, giant monsters are attacking the world.  One after another, they are popping out of a dimensional gate under the Pacific and laying waste to civilization.  Humans build giant robos called Jaegers to fight them off, and our hero is a former hotshot Jaeger pilot who inevitably had his fall from grace and now seeks redemption.  That's about all of the plot I can reveal without spoilers, but that's also about all the plot there is - Don't be expecting a complex storyline because, like the classic kaiju pics of old, it's basically, "Giant Robot, Giant Monster, FIGHT!"

Overall, I'd probably give this one a B+  -  It's an A+ for big screen spectacle, a B for cool robots and beasties, a C for characters, an A for homages and wink-wink moments, and a C for action scenes. The action scenes were my biggest complaint. As advertised, they were better than Transformers, yes, but where Transformers got an F for utter failure, Pacific Rim just gets a C because at least 1/3 to 1/2 of the time, it was impossible to tell what the hell was going on. Wall-to-wall CGI, everything is moving, everything has a million moving parts, the camera is flying all over the place, and it's all happening in raging seas at night in the rain. When you could see what was happening, it was totally awesome, and some of the fights kicked ass all over because of how great they looked when there was actual lighting and visual coherence, but others (specifically the opening fight and the big battle in the bay later, AND the climax) were just gibberish overload to me - a screen full of moving pixels that I tuned out of and just ended up waiting until the scene settled down enough to see who had won. In this respect, Pacific Rim was a big step down from last year's Avengers, which also had a metric fuckton of CGI at the end but it was all lit and staged so well that I never once had any problem telling what was happening or visually understanding what I was seeing. When it's completely impossible to follow what's happening on screen, something has been done wrong.

Example - Here is a Godzilla fight at night:

 

You can clearly see what is happening and clearly see what each monster looks like, and have no problem following the action.

By contrast, this is what half the fight scenes in Pacific Rim looked like:

The above is much harder to follow in motion, too. The experience is like - Lots of rain, Lightning. A flash of claw. Something blows up. Splashing everywhere. Brief glimpses of monster parts. That gets me to my other big complaint, which is that you never get to see the monsters for shit. Some of the designs looked cool, but as is the modern way, they're usually way too overdone with too many opening mouth parts and arms and you never, ever are allowed a good look at any of them.

Typical Godzilla movie monster view:

Typical Pacific Rim monster view:

It's all the more frustrating because when they do the action scenes good, they're REALLY good. Some in-city fight scenes are way cool, and when they let you see what's actually happening, there are some great moments and many big fist-pumping, "HOO-RAH!" cheers for the giant robots. It ticks me off because this could have been an A-level movie if they had resisted giving in to "Too much moving CGI shit" overload.

Other negative points are smaller. The ending is the next biggest one, as it's basically a scene-for-scene reshoot of the ending of one of LAST summer's big blockbuster flicks. The two leads are not very interesting. Virtually everyone is a stereotype cliche.

That's all the bad stuff.

NOW, the good stuff is that it's a freaking overwhelming cinematic experience. Despite the visual overload, when it rocks, it ROCKS. It's a big budget giant monster movie and that alone is cause for celebration. The Jaegers are cool and at least somewhat different - Again, the designs are overcomplicated such that we never get a good look at any of them, but at least they are visually distinctive unlike the Transformers. My favorite was the battered, heavy-metal low tech Cherno, a Russian robot piloted by Ivan Drago and Brigitte Nielson.

While the star dude is a charisma-free plank whose job in the movie is to fill screen space while standing around with his shirt off in every possible scene, pretty much everyone around him manages to be likable and interesting. There's Maverick, of course, and Grizzled Veteran. Idris Elba does a terrific job of showing what a great James Bond he would make. Ron Perlman is hilarious in a cameo part. Even normally hideously unlikable Burn Gorman (of Torchwood, otherwise known as Rat-Face) seems to be having fun playing Blimey Codswallop, the most overdone foreign scientist ever. In fact, the two geek scientists were the best part of the movie, IMO - Whenever we went back to them bickering in their lab filled with equation-covered chalkboards, they were always a hoot. They also checkmarked many geek references, including a nod to Buckaroo Banzai. There was a lot of this stuff in the movie and it was always cool - Moves from a Toho kaiju film, a line from War of the Worlds, a name reference here and there, etc. In general, the whole thing showed a huge love of the genre and I commend them for it.

Verdict - I really wish I could give this an unqualified cheer because when it works, it works REALLY WELL. Also, my demerits probably would not make any difference to the videogame generation who are already used to having two million things moving around on the screen, and see that as normal. For myself, the problem was driven home when I later that same evening watched an episode of Wild Wild West about a mad scientist who was creating explosive robot duplicates of the heroes to kill the president. It had a Frankenstein lab, killer robots, a huge fencing scene, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, various fights, etc, and I never once found myself in the situation of tuning out because I couldn't follow what was happening, or just having to twiddle my thumbs and wait until the scene was over so I could see who won. It's the main drag on an otherwise fucking awesome movie.

7/10

Worth seeing in the theater? Yes.
Worth buying on Blu-Ray? Yes.
Worth buying the toys? Definitely yes, if only to see what the monsters actually looked like.

I want a Cherno on my desk to face off with my Baragon.

The Norliss Tapes (1973)

NetFlix 2.9/5
IMDB 6.5/10
My Rating: 7.5/10

I haven't featured a guest review in a while, so I thought it was time for another - Especially since I've been so incredibly busy lately with work and the KFP web comic that I haven't had time to keep up with the movie reviews as I'd like.  This KFP guest review comes to you from my friend Joel Schama, and he managed to pick one of my favorite 70's made-for-TV horror flicks to kick off with.  I'll drop in a few comments of my own, and put my commentary in green...  and now, over to Joel!

The Norliss Tapes, circa 1973, directed and produced by William F. Nolan of Dark Shadows fame (and directed by my childhood favorite, Dan Curtis!), is a Night Gallery meets Kolchak: The Night Stalker pastiche. The story begins with David Norliss (Roy Thinnes) being unable to even begin a book he has been commissioned to write one year prior. Following David’s disappearance, his publisher finds stacks of tapes upon which David recorded the events of his investigation. Hoping these will provide clues as to Norliss’s whereabouts, his publisher begins to listen to the first tape.

The story unfolds following David’s descent into the realm of attempting to debunk certain paranormal activities, only to find himself within a situation that his skeptical mind finds most difficult to believe. Norliss’s character narrates the film throughout, juxtaposed with scenes of the actual events. Much in the same way Kolchak: The Night Stalker presents itself.

(The key...and unfortunate... difference for me between this and Night Stalker is in the main characters. Norliss Tapes was a terrific movie but it never had the cultural impact of Night Stalker, and I put a lot of that down to Norliss vs Kolchak - Roy Thinnes gives a good performance in a fairly dry and serious role, and that's his problem.  Kolchak the character was one of horror's all-time greats.  He was a loud, raucous, scenery-chewing loser you just had to cheer for, and IMO that made him a lot more fun to watch than Norliss, alas...)

In his attempt to debunk the occult, his research leads him to a wealthy widow (played by Angie Dickinson) who believes her husband no longer resides within the crypt within which his body was entombed. Her husband’s final wish was to be buried with the scarab ring of Osiris; a ring bought from an antique dealer specializing in the occult, which he believed would help grant immortality. Left only with Norliss’s tapes, his publisher continues to search for reasons for David’s disappearance.

Throughout the movie, the widow Ellen’s undead husband is seen only by his victims; victims later found by the sheriff (Claude Akins) to have a pale pallor, the explanation of which can only be attributed to the complete and total lack of blood!

The scarab purchased by Ellen’s husband, it is later shown, was for the purpose of allowing him to rise from the dead in order to finish his sculpture of Sargoth. By combining the blood of his victims with the clay, the Sargoth would gain entrance into our world and grant him immortality. Or so he believes.

(And just as an addendum, I saw this when it first aired, when I was only a wee little 7 year old Kentucky Fried Popcorn.  It scared me senseless.  One of my most frightening memories of the film was the underground tunnel lair of our vampire, which was strewn with the pale corpses of his victims - Heady stuff for a TV movie!)

We, as viewers, are left at the end not knowing what really happened to David Norliss, or what was to come after the Sargoth was brought forth into our dimension. However, if you enjoy 70’s made for television horror movies, and don’t mind an ambiguous ending, then this is one you must not miss.  

Ask me for my favorite 70's TV horror films and you'll get a list of three - Night Stalker, Norliss Tapes, and Spectre.  There were plenty of other good ones, but those are the Big Three to my mind, and every one is something I can watch again and again and still enjoy.  In fact, I think I'll go dig out my DVD of this now...

T.A.G. - The Assassination Game

NetFlix Not Available
DVD Purchase HERE for $8
IMDB 5.8/10
My Rating: 7/10

A campus newspaper reporter is drawn into a college game of TAG by his attraction to one of the players.  Through her, he becomes immersed in the world of play-killers and spies, until the two of them stumble into the path of a deranged murderer stalking the gamers.

Let's rewind to the early 80's, 1982 to be exact.  Back then, one of the raging controversies of the nation was WHAT to do about these satanic, suicide-provoking, heavy metal-infested role-playing games that were becoming so popular.  TV newscasters and sermonizers predictably freaked the fuck out and warned of impending social collapse if your kid was playing tabletop D&D with his buddies in the spare room - Never mind that you'd think it would be a parent's dream-come-true if their teen opted to stay home and do something that didn't involve drinking, drugs, or stoplight racing.  For a period of several years, we were bombarded with continual negative press regarding D&D, with the media seizing on every possible scare story to drum it it into a national issue.  Rona Jaffe's infamous "Mazes and Monsters" was an onerous example.  Today it's rightly considered a laughingstock by the RPG community, and looked back at much as we view Reefer Madness, but at the time people actually took this nonsense seriously.  In fact, I still attribute one of my earliest anti-religious jolts to a sermon I sat through where the preacher was ranting about the "satanic ills" of D&D while waving a copy of the Monster Manual in the air, howling, "There are DEMONS and WITCHES in here!"

Well, yes, but the same is true of Grimm's Fairy Tales, and for the same reason.

I vividly recall looking at the guy and thinking, "If this minister is so utterly, demonstrably clueless about what he considers a driving moral issue, WHY are we sitting here listening to him tell us how to live every Sunday?"  More potently, it was an example of just how stupid one can look if they get exercised about something that they have no understanding of.  I realize this is heavy stuff for a movie review, but it plays into why I enjoyed TAG so much at the time.

Alongside D&D, we also played a lot of Killer, one of the first live-action RPGs, in both high school and college.  Killer involved each player receiving the name of another player, their target, who they then had to stalk and "kill" with a toy gun until there was only one champion left.  As one can imagine, this was a blast.  TAG riffs on this concept with a group of college students cheerfully playing assassins. And while one of the players does go off the deep end, TAG was unusual at the time for portraying the players not as unstable, needy, friendless misfits, but rather as just ordinary kids looking for a little excitement.  This was so refreshing that I loved the movie to death, and it still remains a personal favorite of mine today.

The movie centers around a college newspaper reporter of the cigar-smoking, Chandler-reading, hopelessly romantic variety who has a mysterious encounter with Linda Hamilton, a player in TAG.  Ahh, Linda...

Linda Hamilton has never BEEN more gorgeous than she is in this movie, and she's able to convey a sort of sultry, film noir, femme fatale vibe that is far beyond her years.  She's just another player, a psych major who's looking for a fun time after hours, and our hero joins up with her because A) he is hopelessly smitten, and B) he is looking for a story for his newspaper.  This leads him, and the viewers, into the game world of TAG and we get to meet a lot of wildly varying players and the bizarro gamemaster who runs the show.  Speaking of, he's hilarious and steals his scenes effectively.  Anyone who's ever played a Killer-type game will recognize this guy immediately:

Our other main character is Gersh, the reigning TAG champion, played by Bruce Abbott (Yep, the Re-Animator guy) in his first starring role.  When an attempted shower assassination goes badly for him, our man Gersh goes off the deep end and begins taking his gaming way too seriously... murdering one student player after another and marking them off his "Kill" list until the inevitable face-off with Linda and Bruce.  Thankfully, it isn't played off as another god-awful "Gaming makes you unbalanced" message-movie - It's pretty obvious that Gersh is not all there from the start, and the game simply gives him a method for his madness.  The second half of the film is basically an 80's slasher with guns instead of knives as Gersh kills his way through the cast.

So why do I love it so much?  It was written and directed by genre legend Nick Castle, for starters, and the acting and dialog crackle with unusual energy and spice for a low budget flick.  You'll genuinely  like the characters and no one is there just to be a victim, a bimbo, or a hero.  Also, viewed from today's vantage point, it's a fascinating time capsule of college life before the days of cell phones, internet, and other electronica. Concerts, live action games, hanging around the student activity buildings, smoking cigars in dorm rooms... TAG gives us a microcosmic peek into the world of yesteryear's 20-something. After the college gun crimes of the past ten years, this is one movie that will never, EVER be remade today, so let's appreciate it for what it is - A look at a more innocent time when college students shooting each other was fodder for action-packed escapist adventure instead of the routine evening news.

PS - Special mention must be made of the opening credits sequence.  Most low budget flicks of the time were content with a simple credit roll, but this wasn't enough for Nick Castle and so we get an extended, swanky parody of a Bond opening, complete with rubber dart guns and LOTS of feathered hair (Skip ahead to the 1min, 50sec marker if you want to jump straight to the music):

The Innkeepers

NetFlix 2.7/5
IMDB 5.6/10
My Rating: 8/10

Two minimum wage, 20-something employees face the last weekend of operation at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, a historic establishment that is closing its doors.  Their bored hours are spent doing amateur ghosthunting, until disturbing things begin going bump in the night.

First off, I must say that I absolutely loved this movie - I adored every minute of it and enjoyed the characters, the plot, and definitely the style of direction.  That said, I seem to be in the minority - A lot of viewers, especially younger ones, absolutely hate the film and thus its low IMDB score.  Even more puzzling is the dislike among reviewers I otherwise tend to agree with, like Emily over at Deadly Dolls, who was hoping it would be another House of the Devil.  That seems to be a common refrain - Fans of Ti West, the director, loved HOTD and want another HOTD, and this is not that and thus they are disappointed.    I enjoyed HOTD too, but I liked Innkeepers better.

Maybe what others miss is the retro-70's style of HOTD.  I loved it but I also found it a little distracting, in the sense that half my brain was marveling over their careful recreation of a grainy late 70's drive-in movie and paying less attention to the story.  Innkeepers eschews the retro look but proceeds in gloriously retro pace, which seems to be the other bone of internet contention.  One of the most common complaints on IMDB is, "It's so SLOOOOOOW."  Yes.  Yes, it is slow.  That's called, "Building tension and atmosphere", and not many movies bother with that anymore, much to their detriment.  Instead of giving us a pile of characters with 3 minutes of screen time and one breast flash each, and then burying us in chop-chop mayhem, Innkeepers spends most of its running time simply letting us follow the two main characters and get a feel for who they are, and care about them.  And what great characters they are!

Sara Paxton plays Claire, the heroine, and you already love her, you just don't know it yet.  Seriously, she was one of the most appealing horror film heroines I have seen in years, maybe decades...  This is not a case where you're just passing time until the annoying characters die.  You'll genuinely care for her and that makes the scary parts of the film a hundred times more fearful.  She and co-star Pat Healy also pull off the near-impossible in creating a pair of bored yoof-generation types that I didn't immediately want to kill.  Instead, you're drawn into the sheer pettiness of their lives - Both are undirected.  They don't know what they want to do.  They have no goals.  All they can think to do in their spare time is fritter it away.  Someone on another board pointed out that it was a theme of the movie that the Yankee Pedlar seemed to draw in "lost souls" like a vortex, and consume them, and I thought that was a clever observation.  They're the last employees running the hotel until the bitter end and this gives them impetus to hang on there when otherwise you'd hit the usual haunted house movie plot problem of, "Just leave the house!"  They could, but to be blunt, they don't really have anywhere else to go.

I am increasingly convinced that Ti West, the director, is one of the few directors left in Hollywood who knows how to properly pace a film.  Conversations are long takes that you're drawn into, not chopped up with 57 cuts to create faux-tension.  When a character walks cautiously down a spooky hall, the camera follow them slowly, tracking them for sustained tension instead of cutting every 3 seconds or, god forbid, spinning in circles around them as they walk.  This movie was the virtual antithesis of everything I've hated about the recent Doctor Who seasons for the simple reason that Ti West knows how to hold a camera still.  So basic, and yet so rare...  and for me it was a joy to be able to relax into the story and the personalities, without constantly being reminded of how clever the cameraman or director thought he was.

So, is it boring?  Well, it wasn't to me.  Other reviewers fuss that nothing happens until the last 20 minutes, but I viewed that time as investment in the atmosphere, of which Innkeepers has oodles.  I haven't run across many films that build this sort of nervousness so well.  It harkens back to movies like The Shining or The Fog, where "brooding" becomes a palpable thing.  And as for the last act, holy crap, I was on the edge of my seat!  My one real complaint is with the very final scene, or rather the "secret scene" - A bit that was rendered so subtly that I did not notice it on the first viewing, and found the ending rather generic.  Only after reading about it and following it with the director's commentary did I spot "the secret"... Probably a very unusual case of a director being TOO subtle.

In the end, I give this lots of love - It's one of the rare movies I want to go out and buy on blu-ray.  I wish badly that I'd held onto it and watched it on Halloween night, because it would have been a perfect Halloween treat.  If you can't handle slow movies, it's not for you.  But, if you're fond of older films and especially 40's-style haunted house pictures, I recommend it highly.  I haven't liked a ghost story this much since poor Eleanor met her fate in The Haunting in 1963.

American Horror Story

NetFlix 4.6/5
IMDB 8.4/10
My Rating: 9/10

A troubled family move into a notorious haunted house and soon face trials of their marital fidelity, loyalty, and sanity.  The house is very occupied...


American TV has produced some good horror series over these past years, from Supernatural to Fringe to Buffy, but all of these other shows relied on a secondary support mechanism - Fringe has CSI framework, Supernatural balances itself with comedy, and Buffy mixed comedy and teen angst.  American Horror Story, by contrast, is the most flat-out, pedal to the floor, uncompromising horror series in...  Well, I can't actually think of anything to compare it to, off the top of my head.

The plot is simple - A family in crisis pick the worst house to move into.  The husband had an affair and their marriage is hanging by a thread.  The sulky daughter is in permanent, "My life is a black room" mode.  Hopeful of patching their fractured family, they buy a house that's a steal on the real estate market, and soon find out it comes with a lot of unexpected baggage.  Scary neighbors, scarred visitors, something nasty in the basement, and a Gimp-suited stalker in the attic are only a few of the new abode's surprises.  As the story of the house begins to be told, it's horror piled on horror - A history of secret abortions, murders, perversions, illegal surgery, and enough lingering ghosts to populate the Overlook.  All of this tension pressures the already straining family and begins to twist them each to the breaking point.

Those of sensitive disposition should be warned, this is fairly racy for US TV.  The show doesn't flinch in its depictions of sexual kink, ghost rape, teen sex...  Hell, you name it, it's in there somewhere, interspersed with far more of Dylan McDermott's naked behind than I really needed to see.  Ladies may be happy that for once, it's a show that's equal opportunity gender flashing, though.

One thing I dearly loved about the show was that it didn't tease its mysteries.  There is payoff to everything.  Series TV, especially in these post-X Files days, has developed the annoying habit of always dangling "The mystery that has no solution" to artificially hook viewers.  You've seen it a million times... Who is that shadowy man watching the heroes at the end of the episode?  What are the motives of the secret government agency shadowing our heroes?  Ugh.  I've reached the point where I just roll my eyes and tune out when these kind of elements are introduced, because I see them for what they are - Nothing.  Literally, nothing.  No great secret to be figured out, no complex backstory that will be revealed...  More often than not, they're just random, mysterious hooks tossed out by different writers desperate to grab a repeat audience.  AHS, by contrast, actually unnerved me by just how much it did reveal.  I kept thinking, "No, this is to soon to explain that.  You're letting all of the gas out of the tank too early!"  But that's the glory of the show - With a 12 episode run that actually ends, the pace never lets up and there's no fear of losing the mystery because this story will be told in full in one season.  Next year, it will be new characters and a new story.  This has the added benefit that no one is safe... No recurring characters means there's genuinely no telling who will live or die in a season.

The characters are brilliant too, though they're also my one single beef with the show - They are almost universally unlikable.  Connie Britton tries for sympathy as the wronged wife, but just seems too abrasive.  The husband is a lying sleaze, and anyone over 23 will want the whining daughter to die immediately.  I'd have hoped for at least one genuinely likable character to invest in and worry for, but as it is, their very fractured psyches contribute to the "I just can't relax with ANYONE!" atmosphere and keep viewers tense.  And the bad characters...  Well, they're delicious in their Grand Guignol creepiness, and rivet your attention using every trick from pity to pure lust.

So there's my review.  See it.  It's one of the best TV series to hit US television in 10 years, and it's a sheer joy to see such an uncompromising horror tale get a series run.  If I seem light on details, it's because I don't want to give anything away - The revelations come fast and bold and it's better to go in knowing as little of the plot twists as possible.  In my opinion, the AHS house takes a deserved place alongside the Overlook and Hill House as one of the scariest locales in screen horror, ever.

Tucker & Dale versus Evil

NetFlix 4.2/5
IMDB 7.6/10
My Rating: 7.5/10

A group of college kids go vacationing in the back country and encounter a pair of hillbillies who aren't what they seem.


OK, I've seen my first great movie of 2012.  Tucker & Dale versus Evil is several movies in one - A laugh-out-loud comedy, an 80's slasher horror, and a surprisingly thoughtful look at stereotypes and how they affect our judgement.  Did I just say that, seriously?  Let's get back to that later...  First, here's what we've got.

The same standard group of attractive college students found in every "Camp Massacre" horror film are heading out into the wild country for their vacation/Spring Break/whatever.  As they begin to leave civilization behind for the land of cash-only gas pumps, they encounter a pair of grungy looking hillbilly redneck types and almost immediately run afoul of them.

Horror fans will be on familiar ground here, and we're waiting for this to turn into another Deliverance or Hills have Eyes-type flick.  The thing is, T&D isn't that movie at all - Here, Tucker and Dale are our heroes!  The "evil" of the title comes in two forms, a sociopathic frat boy and the college kids' own stupidity.  Assuming immediately that Tucker & Dale are cannibal country people, the yoofs manage to bungle every encounter they have through their own fears and assumptions.  See, all T&D want is to relax and fish... They've just bought themselves a "vacation home" (A sinister looking cabin straight out of Evil Dead) and they're ready to kick back and drink beer in their boat for the whole weekend.  What they're decidedly not counting on is this:

The college bunch freak out every time they encounter Tuck & Dale.  When T&D save one of the girls from drowning during the inevitable late night skinnydipping, their innocent arm-waving and, "WE'VE GOT YOUR FRIEND!" shouts inspire terror in the kids, who assume the crazed wildmen have claimed their first victim and are crowing for more.  Panic and lunacy ensue as the yoofs convince themselves that they're being hunted by banjo-wielding killers.  Meanwhile, the rescued girl wakes up in T&D's rustic cabin and we're introduced to the star of the movie:

Alan Tudyk's Tucker is a great character - Smart, forthright, and confident - but it's Tyler Labine that really shines as the goofy, insecure, "Aww shucks" Dale, a big, round rolypoly of a guy who's a lot more like real rednecks than city dwellers would imagine after forty years of films about inbred country folk with one eye and seven chainsaws.  Dale has NO idea what to do with the college-educated, stunningly pretty girl in their cabin, and there are a lot of laughs as she wakes up expecting to be raped and murdered, while Dale is terrified that his sausage and eggs won't be up to her tastes.  The two strike up a rapport and from there on, the movie doesn't let up as it balances the surprisingly sincere relationship between T&D and their "captive" as the rest of the frat pack scheme to kill them.  Yes, kill them...  While most of the kids are terrified lemmings, their leader is the sort of sociopathic team captain  type that's going to grow up to be Gordon Gecko, totally convinced he is the hero of his own story and absolutely reveling in the chance to prove his manhood in this wilderness clash.  Jesse Moss's Chad is downright creepy, the sort of guy who thinks date rape drugs are the pinnacle of medical progress.  He also does a terrifying imitation of a young Tom Cruise, bringing a walking, talking "I'm SO cool" attitude that shows off just what an ass Cruise's characters usually are when the whole movie isn't revolving around trying to present them as the hero.

Fortunately for T&D, most of the kids are as inept as they are frightened, and their repeatedly suicidal attempts to murder the unsuspecting hillbillies get funnier and funnier as their numbers drop and Tuck and Dale start freaking out over these 90210's hurling themselves into the woodchipper.  As the situation escalates, the conflict grows more direct and more intense - Tuck and Dale realize they're in a real fight, Chad goes right off the deep end, and eventually we get the most tense peace conference since Clinton tried to make Arafat play nice:

Aside from a lot of great jokes and some so-OTT-it's hilarious gore and a few genuinely horrifying moments late in the film, T&D vs Evil gives us a surprisingly thoughtful look at class warfare - The hicks are just good ole' boys, but they're intimidated by the brains and moneymaking potential of the city rich kids, while the yoofs have to literally be knocked over the head before they'll even consider that anyone in a beer cap might not be a cannibal.  Social insights are not unusual in horror films, but they're rare, and especially so in horror comedies.  The slow-dawning mutual respect and fondness between scary-yet-harmless Dale and psychology major Allison gives the movie a warm heart and a more enjoyable romance aspect than you'll see in a lot of 'serious' relationship films.  You can't help but cheer when goofball Dale charges to the rescue and right into the role of Movie Hero - It's like seeing John Candy finally flip out and kick ass.

Worth seeing.  Hell, worth buying - This will be the first DVD I've bought since Trick R Treat.

Come to the Stable (1949)

NetFlix N/A
YouTube Link
IMDB 7.2/10
My Rating: 9/10
Sincerity Factor: 10/10
Treacle Factor: 4/10

Two nuns from a French convent travel to New England to found a children's hospital, but their lack of money, connections, and local resources propels them into encounters with church officials, landowners, and mobsters.

Part of the Kentucky Fried Popcorn Christmas Review Series.

Here's a tragedy - A movie that's been virtually forgotten, yet which should really be a bone-fide holiday classic on par with the Wonderful Life titles that everyone knows by heart.   Come to the Stable hasn't seen a commercial release since a VHS tape in the 80's, and it now seems lost in the public domain wasteland - That's why I posted the YouTube link above, where the movie can be seen in its entirety.  It's also floating around the usual torrent networks, if one prefers that route.  It can be found in DVD form at a few small online companies, but those are just transfers from the VHS version repackaged on DVD.  Hopefully someone will get smart and release a proper restored DVD edition of this!   But this film is the epitome of what I try to do with Kentucky Fried Popcorn, which is to bring unknown to light.

The story is very simple - Our heroines are Sister Margaret and Sister Scholastica, two nuns come to the US after World War 2 to fulfill a promise made during the war.  They ran a children's hospital in France, and prayed as the armies converged on their town that the generals would let them evacuate their charges.  They did, the kids all escaped, and now the good sisters are determined to do right for their faith by founding a new children's hospital in the states. 

Unfortunately, they face a few not-insignificant problems - They have no money, no support from the local arch diocese, no land to build on, and are complete strangers to US life and customs.  Unless you have a heart of stone, however, you can't help but grin and cheer for them as they barrel from one encounter to the next, borrowing what they need, following their instincts and charming a den of gangsters.  The land they want is owned by a city mob boss who they must "convince" to donate it, and they're also unknowingly up against the neighboring landowner Robert Masen (left), a music composer who has no desire to have a noisy hospital bordering his idyllic country home retreat.

A lot of the fun of this is in the humor - It's a much funnier story than you'd expect and the cheery nuns put an upbeat spin on everyone they meet.  The humor hasn't dated in the least, too...  It's largely in the form of witty banter and the occasional bit of slapstick, and the whole film feels as fresh as if it had been filmed yesterday. 

But expect to get a little misty, too.  Even the hardest of Grinchy hearts are likely to tear up at couple of places, especially the ending.  It isn't a movie that hits you over the head with its morality, but it's perfectly balanced enough to make one reflect on our own ideas of what we think we deserve versus the needs of others.  Robert Masen isn't a bad guy at all - He is nothing like the Scroogey anti-Christmas misers of so many other films, he's just a fellow who wants a little peace in a quiet little home he worked hard for.  It makes the conflict of the film much more ambiguous and indeed, more relatable.

One factor I've had to deal with head-on during this holiday movie marathon was the issue of religion in Christmas films - Where it belongs, where it doesn't, and the many ways in which it can be presented well and presented terribly.  I am not a churchgoer, myself, and am prone to take issue with movies that wag their fingers at me or try to hit me over the head with their spiritual message.  For me, the reason Come to the Stable works is because it has equal meaning for believers and non-believers alike - The religious can look at it and see the hand of god moving events and touching hearts, and the non-religious can view it as a parable of human goodness, of ordinary people doing remarkable things and showing generosity beyond expectations.  Like the best films, it's open to interpretation and even though the church is the center of the story, there aren't any fluttering angels or divine interventions.  Ultimately, it boils down to the central question we all face - Do we jealously guard our own comfort, or sacrifice for those in need?

And on that note, this wraps up the Kentucky Fried Popcorn holiday movie blowout for this year!  I hope everyone has enjoyed this wacko change of pace from my usual cinematic selections - I certainly have, and I look forward to doing this again next year... Especially because of all the films I didn't have time to write up this time out, such as Rare Exports, One Magic Christmas, and that oddly spooky modern movie, The Polar Express.  Until then, Happy Holidays to all, and to all a marvelous New Year!