31 Days of Halloween: The Love Witch

2016, Anna Biller (Viva) -- download

(i really should finish the 2019 posts before the 2020 posts begin, not ignoring that 2020 was one long horror movie unto itself)

Sometimes the Top Lists lie, and boy, did they on this one.

In pitch, this sounded like a great movie. It's stylized like a 60s/70s schlock witchy-poo movie about a murderous but lovely witch trying to find love. Few men survive her standards. On the outside the movie is rather stylish and well executed, doing an incredible job of being set in the past and the present all at once. But once the shine of the gimmick goes dull, it's just boring as fucking hell.

Elaine, the lovely young witch is heading to San Fran, after the mysterious death of her husband. Mysterious, but pretty obvious she did it. Elaine wants to find Love, and performs rituals (icky wimmin magic) not only to draw needy, clingy, requiring to be murdered men toward her but also a police detective, who starts to catch on, while also falling for Elaine. Oh noes!

As I said already, the movie is stylish, but in some ways that while obviously intentional are grating AF. It almost felt like they were drawing upon the clueless ineptitude of The Room or seeking to intonate a porn movie, but maybe after it was edited for prime time viewing. But despite the fun aspects of the period styling (clothing, attitudes, colours, hairstyles) all the (again, probably intentional) z-grade acting and directing choices ended up being more off-putting than fun.  So, no thanks.

3 Short Paragraphs: Silent Hill: Revelation

2012, Michael J. Bassett (Solomon) -- download

A room crowded with decaying medical equipment and skewed, decaying nurses. Sexy nurses, in tight short uniforms like those worn in mockery on Halloween but further marred by a lack of faces. The statuesque creatures have only twisted, distorted fleshy globes above their... low cut fleshy globes.  Strapped to a gurney, Kit Harrington (yes, Jon Snow) struggles in silence. For if he makes a sound, the contorted nurse creatures will attack. And thus Sharon/Heather has to free him with as little sound as possible. All whispered demands, all cutting of leather straps, all grunting in pain causes the nurses to snap into action, swinging blades and giant cartoon syringes.

This is the kind of scene that again makes up the sequel to the video game movie, Silent Hill. We have elements from the video game(s) mixed with classic horror suspense, the kind that provides false tension as we know both characters have to survive a certain amount of time before their clocks run out. They are more compelling for their set design and decently done practical special effects. The nurses, just begging to be reproduced by booth bunnies at a horror con, are creepy, sexily well done as is the rest of the Silent Hill world, that other dimension created in response to the town founders' evil acts. But plots are tenuous and distracting in the this movie, and thus easily dispensed with.

If anything, these movies are ones where Sean Bean is a survivor. The first has him chasing his wife into the town as she becomes trapped in the Otherworld while trying to deciper her (adopted) daughter's trauma. In this movie, he has been running from his daughter's legacy while hiding all circumstances around her mother's disappearance. Again, he ends up chasing his loved one into the mists but (oddly) lives again, to perhaps be the protagonist of the next movie? Now that Sharon has absorbed her other half, the extracted nasty essence of the burned witch child Alessa, I am not sure what is keeping the dark Otherworld burning but it must be, for what would Bean be staying behind in?

Bad Movie: Werewolf: The Beast Among Us

2012, Louis Morneau -- download

Aaargh, I don't know why I like them, I just do.  You know, those bad straight-to-DVD (for as long as the term has a lifespan) genre movies produced purely for the world multi-market distribution system. Someone, somewhere is willing to pump money into a movie (but only so much money) knowing they will make it back via the various avenues where people don't always full consider what they are getting themselves into, such as the inflight movie or hotel chain pay-for-view.  And of course, there is the genre cable station who doesn't like to spend much on movies.  Much to the chagrin of movie snobs everywhere the flick have been made for as long as there was a "straight to ..." market and will continue.

My usual fare is the Disaster or Science Gone Wrong flick. Throw a meteor at the earth, crack the core in two or develop a weather tracking system that actually freezes New York under a glacier and I am tempted.  Considering the blockbuster versions of these movies are usually not very well made, how much worse can the mockbuster (sub-genre of what I am talking about) be ?  Much much worse is the answer. I am less tolerant of other genres, such as slasher horror or even swords & sorcery (look! a movie starring LARPers!) but every so often something about the plot (?!?) attracts me.

This one?  It was the idea of a motley crue of werewolf hunters that brought me in.  The grizzled leader in the duster & wide-brimmed hat, the steampunk woman with a flame thrower, the guy pretending to be Dracula and that guy and that other guy !  Ensemble casts are the in-thing now.  They are the skilled hunters of the supernatural but unfortunately, we never actually see their skill as they fail to capture or kill the beast.  Seriously, we don't even get a preamble where we are presented with their accomplishments.  Unless you count the drunken tale of how his horse ended up with only two legs.

Apparently, this movie was originally slotted to be a follow-up to the Benicio del Toro The Wolfman, where Universal was rebooting its classic monster stable.  This really cannot be seen as a followup or even mockbuster of anything, unless you count Van Helsing, because the heros both wear floppy hats and leather dusters.  It's just a boring, low budget vehicle for a European (shot in Bavaria!) practical effects school (how gross can you make the corpses?) with bad acting, swiss cheese script and terrible pacing.  And that's all I can recall even though it was only a week ago.

3 Short Paragraphs: Creature

2011, Fred Andrews -- netflix

Picture it: three men of varying ages are hanging out, eating chili and pie, drinking beers and coctails, and playing Lovecraft-inspired boardgames.  In a fit of inspiration they search for a little televideo-based background material in a similar vein to the games that they're playing.  But nothing "old ones-ish" is to be found (and Old Dogs was off the table).  They struggle through the "horror" category, not finding anything even remotely satisfying, so the rubber-suited alien poster of Creature is chosen.

Only it's a bait and switch.  It's the 1985 poster but it's a 2011 cabin-in-the-woods, redneck swamp monster movie.  At least we still got a rubber suit. To be perfectly honest, we weren't paying full or even really partial attention to this movie.  We were gaming, so we had our priorities straight.  A stupid direct-to-video horror movie shouldn't require you to pay attention, but this one surprisingly expected you to.  It made very little sense, starting with an opening full-frontal sequence that lead into an albino crocodile attack.  It was quite obviously croc water, I'm not certain why she decided to go for a swim.

We're introduced to the cabin-in-the-woods kids, the usual group of girls and guys paired up and ready to fornicate in the woods, but first a pit-stop at the ramshackle gas bar with requisite creepy fuckers (Sid Haig!), a scene so cliche and satirized so perfectly in the recent Cabin In The Woods, that it's pretty much self-parodying now.  They get to the cabin, wisely decide to camp outside of it, and then begin a-drinkin' and a-sexin'.  Alas, a monster has emerged from the darkness to punish them for their lascivious ways, but then it turns out one of the kids is the monster and Sid Haig is his dad and... I don't really know what the hell happened in this film. Don't watch this film.  Go read the wikipedia entry and save yourself the time.

Days of Halloween Redux: Night of the Demons

2009, Adam Gierasch -- download

This is a remake of the 1988 demon summoning movie, one whose cover you have probably seen on all your mom & pop video store shelves in an age past.  If I think hard enough, it was probably one that my brother brought home that I snubbed my nose at.  I was not fond of the shtick of horror movies where monsters ran around killing the half-dressed, all horny teenager set, and yet I have seen so many.  But definitely there is an entire crowd that appreciates the nostalgic contribution this one (and its two sequels) had to the horror movie canon, for the remake is truly a labor of love.

Short plot description? New Orleans Halloween party set in a house where it was said a demon summoning went wrong and the hostess hung herself rather than be possessed by the summoned.  Here we are decades later and the local party girl has rented the empty place for her Halloween night event.  And to the party, she has invited the big boobed bimbos who are to be our main characters.  And their boyfriends and a few incidental characters.  They find the corpses of the afore mentioned demon summoners and through typical accident, start the summoning all over again.

Its actually somewhat a cute movie, wearing its homage and the heritage of its makers on its sleeve.  The movie is by the people you see at all the horror cons, the collection of 20sumthins and 30sumthins who love scream queens, splashing blood and monster makeup.  One of the stars cut her teeth on Freedy vs Jason while a background actor (Linnea Quigley) is from the original, while Edward Furlong is sad and tired looking and almost playing his real age.  The demons are over the top, top-of-their-class makeup effects and the protagonists actually respond in somewhat logical manners.  This is not good horror but definitely worth a Halloween movie night marathon.

3 Short Paragraphs: Resident Evil: Retribution

2012, Paul WS Anderson (Event Horizon, AVP, DOA) -- cinema

Yes, this definitely joins my list of bad movies that I will probably watch again.  I must admit up front to being a fan of the series having again watched them all to catch up for this one.  Its funny because watching them again, I am always reminded how bad the acting and plots are, which I always seem to forget in the times between.  They are a zombie series based on video games but so very lacking in zombie staples.  These are video game zombies, where they become fodder for the sub-machine guns, as opposed to being slow moving terrifying antagonists for those incapable of defending themselves.  It also lends a little to my love for post-apocalypse, the third in the series ending the world and setting the stage for the rest -- a world that has been destroyed by both the monsters unleashed and the havoc the virus wreaks on the environment.  Not that the movies care about any of this, beyond the third.

In the last movie, we were all gathered on a ship off the coast of LA.  Alice just freed all the people stored inside the ship, who were emerging onto the deck, dazed and confused.  In the distance we can see a flock of attack Ospreys converging on the freighter.  This movie starts with quite the lovely reverse-film credit sequence that sums up how the last movie leads into this one.  You see, they could start the movie right at this sequence with her defending the newly released pawns and defeating the whirly bird armada.  But no, each movie now must begin with Alice naked-but-for-a-sheet-of-paper so we must rush through this early footage of her being defeated.   Her rescue of everyone in the last movie was all for naught.  Seriously, these movies are not about the human and zombie fodder, they are all about Milla / Alice.

So, again Alice is escaping an Umbrella underground facility dressed only in the Aeon Flux outfit (paper sheets don't stand up to gunfire) Umbrella gave her to wear.  This time there is a twist as  the facility is under water, not underground !!  Plot summary: fight way to surface through various staged environments representing Moscow, NYC, the suburbs from Dawn of the Dead and Tokyo.  Along the way she will meet other characters from the video games acted in astoundingly bad fashion as well as clones of characters from previous movies, good clones and bad clones, again acted oh so sweetly bad. With each movie, less sense is made, all condensing down into a handful of beautifully choreographed combat sequences.  Anderson does know how to craft a lovely gunfight scene and probably feels beholden to stitch some sort of loose plot together to hold the scenes.  Besides, I would probably watch Milla just play golf.

6 Short Paragraphs: The Raid: Redemption & Lockout

2011, Gareth Evans -- cinema
2012, James Mather, Stephen St Leger -- cinema

Double bill ! Kent's take here.

Maybe it was my mood, maybe it was the movie but unlike Kent, I didn't much care for The Raid: Redemption.  There was the hint of a movie I should love, a small movie, a movie in a closed environment with a very tight focus.  Unfortunately, that focus was about beating the crap out of each other without much concern for the why's or who-cares.  I was expecting a slight rendition of Assault on Precinct 13 or maybe even a building-related human-only version of La Horde, a french zombie movie set in a urban project tower controlled by criminals.  But the trappings of cops raiding the building owned by bad guys was almost a pretense.  It really did not mean much to the plot.

As you probably know, I am completely fine with bare bones plots as long as they are focused on the goal.  If this movie had been only about a group of cops raiding a building to arrest the crime lord and did the floor-by-floor battle, I would have been fine.  But no, they eliminated most of the cops right off the bat and we get stuck with the melodrama between a couple of good cops and a couple of bad cops each with their own idea of why they are raiding the building. But even that decently attractive plot thread is overshadowed by the pounding on each other.  Yeah, I am sure all the mixed martial arts guys were dribbling in their pants over the combat scenes but I found myself just being bored after a few rounds.  The cliche of knocking down one guy, onto the next until a circle completes and the first guy gets back up, just got tired tired  tired.  Or maybe I was tired.  The few times where he (and really, there is one focused character, the survivor) actually took out a foe in two hits, I cheered.  The boss battle seemed like someone was pumping quarters in to no end.  Yes, dated analogy.  Hitting respawn better?

Also... redemption?  There is no redemption.  There may be a turn of events but its all circumstantial and not about redemption at all.  In the end, after all the cops are dead and the last lone hero escapes the building, we are left with the clear idea that it was all for naught -- another crime lord will control the building and lone hero will lead the assault in the sequel.  And there will be a sequel; these movies are often made as if the writer was already eager to write that movie and this was an inconvenience.  Evans may have had a hint of style, I will give him that, but he was also trapped by the melodrama that this genre seems to like to cling to.  Tortured hero, crooked cop and familial connections are common enough, but to be frank I like them when they are even more over the top, so I can get a sense they would end up as part of a cheese-fest for another theatre's double-bill, another night.

Now, speaking of cheese, it was grand to see Felicia Jollygoodfellow bulked up for  a (and really, is there any other comparison) Snake Plisken role !!  Oh, I am sure I could find a few more action flicks in his IMDB listing but none more muscle bound than this one.  Rogue CIA operative framed for the murder of a friend slash coworker sent to sleep away his life in a cryogenic SuperMax prison... in SPACE !!  OK, low earth orbit but I just wanted to say, "in SPACE !!"  Hee.  This is a movie that really embraces the cheese factor it could only know it was going to emit.  Hell, it is another Luc Besson vehicle so I guess it's pretty much expected.

Yes, a prison in orbit filled with the lowest, nastiest most evil criminal element all frozen into scum-sicles.  Enter "the president's daughter" investigating the place for violations of human rights -- the scum-sicles seem to occasionally wake up crazier than before they went to sleep.  Oops.  But we get an even worse oopsy-daisy when a key interview candidate gets the upper hand and frees all his buddies, and his brother.  Joseph Gilgun dominated the scenery for me.  I know him better as the crassest character on Misfits but he is transformed into this cyberpunk, psycho irishman with an accent that probably was subtitled in the US.  Almost all the rest of the released criminals were set dressing in orange though the brother (Vincent Regan) does carry some dramatic weight of intelligence amidst all the brain-deads.

The movie is really just about Pearce cutting one liners while doing his best tough guy impression. He is skilled enough to know he can accomplish the goal (get the daughter, get out) and heroic enough to handle the no-win scenario.  We get cliche creative deaths, tit-for-tat between rogue & daughter and... well, we also get a lot of really badly done CGI.  It was as if they spent it all on something else (sets?  sure wasn't the script) and were left with early 2000s computer work.  And at the end, when we should get an exciting, over the top escape by parachuting from orbit (yes, you read that right) we get low-grade Star Wars (huh?  don't find key points, just blow the fucker up from a distance !!) and a rush to the "now we are safe on the ground and kissing" scene.  Wait, how did they get down and rescued by EMTs?  Did I blink?  But still, I laughed, I cringed, I enjoyed myself.  And woke up from the first movie.

3 short paragraphs: Skyline

2010, The Strause Brothers

The thoroughly enjoyable podcast "How Did This Get Made" first talked trash about this film a few month's back, and then had the chance to interview the film's producer (at the end of their "Wicker Man" episode). Without repeating everything they say there, let's first start with this is a terrible film.

An alien invasion happens shortly after an L.A. penthouse house party in a totally underpopulated apartment building. The stragglers from the party and their hosts are awoken with not just a massive hangover, but the threat of mass alien abduction. They witness huge clouds manifest underneath massive hovering ships, then thousands upon thousands of people hoovered upwards into the sky.

The film's protagonists (used loosely) spend a lot of time arguing amongst each other about whether to leave the building or just hide, eventually settling upon a plan to leave, being unable to do so, and returning to the same apartment. This happens at least twice, losing members along the way each time. It's very silly. There's poor characterization, almost nonexistent story, and the invariable sequel set-up. It does, however, look terrific. It's essentially a special effects showpiece and it's impressive (and actually watchable) in this regard, there's just a lot of laughable script getting in the way. In some respects it's a companion piece to the equally (and IMO unfortunately) maligned Battle: L.A..

3 paragraphs on: Swamp Thing

1982, Wes Craven - netflix

There are two things that surprise me about Wes Craven's modest adaptation of DC Comics' Swamp Thing character: 1) just how bad it is and 2) just how good it is. Visually it's a dire product of a low budget, of 1980's cheap effects, of at best A*Team-like action sequences, and of atrociously bad supporting actors. The Swamp Thing costume ages worse each time I see it, looking more like a rubber suit with each viewing (this would be my third ... or fourth). The thugs who work for Anton Arcane (Louis Jordan) are in full campy acting mode, they apparently didn't get the memo that it was supposed to be a serious action-fantasy-drama. Yet, the remainder of the cast, Jordan, Ray Wise, Adrienne Barbeau, Dick Durock, Reggie Batts all give the characters the same investment as they would in a John Carpenter flick. There's actually character behind these characters, personality and a connection with the events of the film.

Though titled "Swamp Thing", it's Adrienne Barbeau that carries the picture, providing a tough, smart, resourceful, and drop-dead sexy (without being all sexy about it) Abigail Cable whom we follow as she arrives deep in the Louisiana swamps at an experimental and deceptively primitive research facility where Dr. Alec Holland and his sister are on the path to new breakthroughs in plant-based weaponry and science. But they have an adversary in Anton Arkane who will stop at nothing to steal their research, and does, killing Alec and his sister and fire bombing the lab. Abby escapes but in the bayou escape isn't so easy and Arkane's men, though all giggling fools, still seem to be around every corner. But Abby has a protector in the form of a hulking green plant-man who intervenes at every interception. It's Alec's spirit manifested into a supernatural, super-powerful being, his resurrection allowing Abby and Alec to explore their romantic connection that was snuffed out just as quickly as it was lit. But first, revenge. Swamp Thing fights a Pig Man. The end.

Swamp Thing works tremendously well in its human connections and character development, and fails tremendously when it strives for action and fantasy. Though I was never much of a fan of the comic book series, I'm acutely aware that it was largely a drama, with elements of fantasy, horror and romance throughout, but it rarely ever strove to be the same as its DC Comics contemporaries, and in turning Swamp Thing into a poor man's Lou Ferrigno, the film suffers over and over again, each time he's called upon to intervene. I would love to see someone like Guillermo Del Toro tackle the character with a modern effects budget. I'm sure an environmentalist bayou fantasy wouldn't be a commercial blockbuster but it could be a hell of a film.

3 Short Paragraphs: Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus

2010, Christopher Ray (honestly, do we care who directs these direct-to-video or direct-to-SyFy crap fests?) -- download

And then there is bad-B or C- or F or whatever the bottom of the scale is for bad movies. At least this one is done in the attempted feel of doing a bad movie for the sake of a bad movie, ala MegaShark vs Giant Octopus. But can I actually state out loud that some people do terrible movies on-purpose but still do them badly? This whole sub-genre discussion of being a bad movie but maybe "getting it" that the movie is terrible confounds me in the way that Uwe Boll still continues to make money. Do I love it, do I hate it, do I love to hate it?

This movie pales next to the terrible movie from which it may be considered a sequel. The first had bad special effects, terrible acting, incredibly cheap sets and an 80s pop singer (Debra Gibson) as scientist. This one has even worse special effects, terrible acting, a 90s TV star (Jaleel White aka Steve Urkel) and so much re-used footage the entire movie may have actually been about 20 minutes. But it lacks the glee the other had. You aren't giggling at how bad it is but sighing and rolling your eyes.

While I enjoyed its emergence, I hope the Z-grade creature feature mini-genre fades away. Bad movies going straight to DVD/OnDemand/NetFlix/NextParadigm are something that will always be with us but it's a waste of energy and money doing a bad attempt at a bad movie. And we will probably run out of washed up ex-stars; hell, even C Thomas Howell has successfully come back with a career.

3 Short Paragraphs: Drive Angry

2011, Patrick Lussier (actually the guy who did Dracula 2000) -- download

This movie, another in the long line of B- movies being made to pay off Nic's tax debt, was just made to have pithy quips made about it. It has the plot of a bad rip-off of Ghost Rider, Nic's usual over the top acting and the feel of a grindhouse flick. But by the gawds, I loved it.

No, it's not good good. It's schlocky B good, in the way that it was made with a love for the grindhouse genre without going the way of the tongue in cheek homage. It has violence and fan-service and gore and wild stunts that would have 17 year old boys yelling out loud in the theatre. But it had some stylish aspects that made me smile with glee.

William Fichtner as The Accountant, no not The Devil but big D's accountant, is played perfectly. The character is not done with campy evil but with an amoral (as in morality is not part of his makeup) sense of responsibility. Cage's Milton (really, will any B movie fans catch the reference?) escaped from Hell and while it may have been for admirable reasons, he still did what he should not have been able to do. And surprisingly, Billy Burke's evil devil worshiping Jonah King is just a bystander in the connection between The Accountant and Milton when he probably feels he is the true focus. The idea that Big D would actually not care much for baby murderers, considering he was setup to punish them, is another thoughtful aspect that made me smile.