Forgotten Toons: Sam & Max- Freelance Police

As a kid, I never played many of the great adventure games like 'Full Throttle,' 'Day of the Tentacle' or 'Monkey Island.'  In spite of that, I loved the show I'm talking about today.  It was a strange, irreverent thing that amused my young mind.  Then someone cancelled it far too early!  How dare you stunt my freakish development like that!  Just for that, I'm going to induct this show on the page right now.  Check out...

The show was a spin-off of the video games, but you don't need to know that.  The pair are freelance police aka private detectives.  They solve really weird crimes or just do whatever they feel like.  That's pretty much it.

Seriously, this show is great.  The series broke the 4th Wall on occasion and just generally felt wacky.  In the last episode, they look at their 'previous adventures' while they are awaiting their deaths at the hand of their enemies.  The bad guys come back, see them watching clips on a projection screen and re-capture them!  At one point, they build a giant robot and do the only natural thing: move to Japan to fight monsters.  Another episode features a device setting free an evil version of Howdy-Doody (although obviously not called that).   In one of my favorite episodes, they hound a food inspector into re-certifying their favorite food: a Glazed MacGuffin.  Subtle, huh?

Watch this show already.  Unlike a lot of these shows I highlight, this actually has a DVD release.  If you like bizarre, esoteric cartoons like Animaniacs and Freakazoid, you'll love this show.  If you don't, well, we have ways of making you buy the DVD...

Up next, a cartoon action-adventure that was cancelled in mid-story.  Will the waters be less dark in the future?  Stay tuned...

P0wned by Lambert: Nirvana (1997)

Another Lambert film, you ask?  Yes, why not?  I mean, the appeal of this movie is simple: Christopher Lambert as a computer hacker.  That right there is a hook!  As one of my friends- and a fellow member- pointed out when I told him about this movie, "I don't think Lambert even knows how to use a computer."  While I have no verification on that fact, it's a pretty easy thing to imagine.  Will this be a a rare case (not that one) of casting being overcome with good writing or will it be like when they cast Harrison Ford as a Internet Technology Expert in Firewall?  Another question to ask yourself is this- 'Just how popular was Frank Miller in France?'  The reason for that question will be clear as this review progresses.  The film involves the real world, the cyber world and just about everything in between.  If nothing else, I can't see how this film can end up being dull!  Get out your face-covering, cyber-helmets for my review of...

The film opens with a man walking into a room and running into a woman.  He explains that he has a feeling of deja vu.  Unfortunately, he doesn't get to say '...all over again' since a man in a mohawk shows up and shoots him.  The scene resets and he realizes that he's been in the room before.  This time, however, he pulls his gun out and kills the man before he can be taken out.  After this, we meet our hero (Lambert) and learn that he creates complicated computer programs for a nameless, faceless company.  Aren't they all?  Unfortunately, he's discovered that there is an abberation in his programming.  The 'man' from before is actually part of a program that has become self-aware and doesn't want to live in a cycle of death and rebirth.  Why?  Sounds fun to me.  Lambert goes 'off the grid' to help the program, joining forces with a hacker that has robot eyes.  Oh, the Six-Million Dollar Man finally got his degree!  Comedy ensues as Lambert guides the program through the virtual world.  At one point, he tells him that the assassin will be a garishly-dressed man, prompting the program to shoot 'a man' in a leopard-skin jacket.  As it turns out, he was actually a tourist.  Confusion ensues as we see the woman from the beginning in both the real world and the virtual one.  You aren't going all 'David Lynch' on me, are you?

Okay, I'll be honest with you- I stopped following this movie about forty-five minutes in.  I wasn't asleep or anything- it just became confusing as hell!  The narrative would split between Lambert running around strange environments, the 'program' running through *different* strange environments and, on occasion, Lambert in a strange environment talking to the 'program' in a strange environment.  Near the end, Lambert logs into the computer world- you're not helping!  In lieu of trying to explain the intricacy of the technological lingo used here, enjoy this series of screenshots using a style this film blatantly stole from the comic book 'Sin City...'

This movie is a confusing pile of confusion!  The plot is so un-focused and scattershot that it makes it hard to follow.  We can't just follow one guy- we have to follow two of them.  On top of that, they are constantly moving from place to place; different places at that!  This is not aided by the weird use of chroma key effects in the virtual world.  Yes, because I need you to disorient me more!  The acting is not that bad, although some of the supporting actors play their parts a bit too over-the-top for my taste.  It creates a comedic tone at times which just feels odd.  The color distortion and wash-out effects seem really out of place here.  Like in a lot of films, it's just done to make the film look different.  News flash: you've cast Christopher Lambert as a computer hacker- that's different enough!  On the plus side, this movie is not insultingly-bad like Narcosys.  Although that's like saying that A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell was not as bad as Actium Maximus: War of the Alien Dinosaurs though.  Is that really the standard I want to set?  Yes.

Next up, can a tale of human organ harvesting be funny?  One obscure film thinks so.  Stay tuned...

Impossibly-Cool Cover Art: Evil in the Deep

It's nice to step away from Jaws rip-offs for a bit, although this one is still weird.  If you like your art 'busy,' this is for you...

That's way too much for one poster!  You've got an explosion, a shark, a helicopter, a boat and, oh yeah, a guy with a shark a couple feet from his face!  I probably should focus on that, huh?

Up next, how many guns can one poster handle?  You'll find out when you see this baby!  Stay tuned...

Video Bava: Changeling 2 (aka Until Death)

After the last two films from the Lamberto Bava quadrilogy of TV films, my expectations are not high.  (Demons 3:) The Ogre was terrible.  Graveyard Disturbance was a stupid film that makes no sense.  On the plus side, this film can't possibly be any worse...could it?  

Well, I won't leave you in too much suspense here- this movie is not good.  It's not God awful, but it's not good.  If you want to see just how not good it is, read on further.  This movie is known by a couple different names, including Until Death and Changeling 2.  All of you film nerds will know this as the movie that shattered the working relationship between Lucio Fulci and Dardano Sacchetti (basically, the latter did it without the former and they stopped working together).  

For everyone else, Sacchetti was the man who wrote (at least partly) Beyond the Door II, City of the Living Dead and The Beyond.  In a nutshell, this film is a freaky, horror version of The Postman Always Rings Twice.  Of course, this one was made for TV, so there's really no violence, sex or nudity.  

There is more freaky content than you might think, but still not that much. 

 Now that you expect almost nothing good, you're ready for the review.  Get out your maggot-covered meat for my review of...

The film begins with a couple driving out in the rain in a truck.  They stop in the woods and the man gets out.  The woman is pregnant, but goes out with him anyways.  As it turns out, the pair killed the woman's husband and are going to bury his body.  While the man goes back for a shovel, the corpse has one last bit of life in it and pulls off her earring.  This ends when the man returns and bludgeons the body to death...more.  

The movie jumps ahead 8 years to show that life has gone on.  Yes, I'm sure that nothing interesting happened in the last 2,600+ days!  The kid who was the spawn of the woman and the dead man has weird dreams about a zombie rising from the water.  Never mind that the kid never actually met his father or anything.  The couple run a fishing company/bed and breakfast, since you can do that in small, Italian towns.  The woman shamelessly flirts with all of the men in the restaurant, a fact that he has no problems with.  What a loving relationship these two share!  

The new-husband is suspicious because the town's only Cop asks her if the dead-husband is still away.  Yes, now you pick the time to ask this!  One night, the couple's arguing/sex is interrupted by a man arriving in from the rain.  He rang just once, so that's not good news...

After staying for the night, the man quickly acquaints himself with the whole family.  Well, the husband still doesn't trust him.  How crazy of you not to trust the guy who came out of nowhere, knows things about your family and clearly has an ulterior motive!  

The wife has flashes of seeing him as her husband, despite the fact that he's a dead-ringer for the guy from Supernatural and the husband was a dead-ringer for a young Michael Chiklis.  They're like twins!  The kid likes him because he fixes up the swing outside, since kids only need one action to decide everything.  The man works in the kitchen during lunch and gets the new-husband upset when the cop remarks that his cooking reminds him of the dead-husband's.  I know that you're not as clever as you think, movie!  

The new-husband continues to be an abusive jerk, even going so far as to hit the wife on occasion.  He even forces the wife to have sex with him, although she does not complain about what he does- just how he does it.  On second thought, you guys deserve each other!  

The film sort of meanders for a bit, so let's just move on.  The kid sees more visions, even seeing the zombie break through his wall.  That's cool, but it amounts to nothing.

As the film comes towards it conclusion, it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  We get more random flashes of the man as the dead-husband.  

Hey, do you actually want to explain any of this?  The husband finally gets tired of this whole affair and leaves.  Oddly, the movie makes very little out of this.  When the woman tells the kid that the only father he's ever known has gone, he says 'good.'  Burn!  

Speaking of burning, the house starts to burn down.  Yeah, don't ask me to explain it.  The ghost of her husband/the new guy taunts/scolds her for a bit.  It's confusing because the film alternates between showing the new guy, the dead husband and the new guy again.  

By the way, he waits until after they have sex to scold/condemn her.  At one point, he goes to walk into the lake with the son in his arms.  The woman begs him not to...so he doesn't.  He threatens to kill her, but...doesn't.  Eventually, she exits the house and runs off with the son.  The End.

This movie just hurts.  I wish that this movie would have been good, but it's not.  The third time is usually the charm with things.  Evidently, that's not a universal rule.  The film has potential enough, but just meanders about for far too long.  I get that they were going for a Hitchcock-style tone here- they just fail.  If they had maintained a consistent approach to the whole thing, it might have worked.  Sadly, they pad the hell out of this movie with false events, dreams and other crap.  The make-up related to the zombie dreams is great and you can see the quality work of Bava here.  Unfortunately, the limitations of the story make this whole thing to be entirely pointless.  If the zombie had actually risen up and killed somebody, I could deal with all of this silliness- it doesn't.  The ending is a mess that just makes you wish that anything leading up to it had amounted to anything.  You tried way too hard in the end and not enough everywhere else, Lamberto.  If this had been a real film and not a made-for-TV debacle, it might have been something to see.  As it is, it's a big mess that takes too long to do, well nothing.  Here's hoping for luck when it comes to Dinner with a Vampire.  See you in October, film that will probably disappoint me like everything else.

Up next, our second Lambert film of September is just as weird as the last one.  Lambert plays a computer hacker, so all bets are off.  Stay tuned...

Lost in Translation: Tootsie

After a short break, we're back with Poland, a country that would probably be really mad at me if they actually knew who I was.  Today's film is a comedy classic...

...eww.  I mean, that's not really what the movie is like, guys!  It's like they saw the 'mirror scene' from Silence of the Lambs and just used that!

Up next, let's give France one more try at a Schwarzenegger film.  This time, it's one of his most famous action films ever.  Stay tuned...

Labor Death: High Plains Invaders

Today is all about the working man.  There are so many films about working people, from Repo Man to Men at Work.  Yeah, I'm not going to talk about those movies.  Instead, let's talk about a movie where working men are attacked by spider aliens from space.  That's much more fitting, don't you think?  This Syfy Channel picture stars James Marsters, a man who has tried to rebound from the success of Buffy and Angel.  How well has that gone, you ask?  Well, he's appeared in British shows like Torchwood and, well, this movie.  Fun fact: he's from California, but he spoke with a British accent on Buffy.  As such, he has gotten a lot of work in England.  You guys wrote the Magna Carta, but can't figure out when someone is faking your accent?  So yeah, aliens attack some cowboys- enjoy.  Get out your super-powerful sticks of dynamite for my review of...

The film begins with a man arriving at his home after a tough day working in a mine.  While his wife is inside, an unseen monster attacks and kills him.  The woman arrives & sees her husband's barely-there head and screams.  Unlike a lot of these Syfy sequels, this sort of affects the plot- kind of.  After the titles, we see a hanging being set-up in the middle of a town.  They're low on nails, but the General Store owner will not give them any until they pay.  By the way, this sub-plot goes nowhere- I'm shocked!  The gallows are for a famous train-robber (Marsters) who is not looking forward to the event.  After some more stalling and exposition, we see the event about to occur when an alien shows up.  Man, how many times do I get to write that line?  Seriously, this thing makes short work out of most of the townsfolk, since their bullets do nothing.  Of course, they still fire about 5,000 into the damn thing.  Persistence is not always a virtue!  Marsters manages to get away from the gallows and rallies the remaining people to...well, hide.  Seriously, they hide in the sheriff's building for a while until they can formulate a strategy.  All that's left are Marsters, the General Store owner, the Sheriff, a lady bounty hunter, the wife from the beginning, a local scientist and a lady doctor who only exists to support a bad sub-plot.  Yay?

After we get to meet another Poor Bastard of Cinema (induction coming soon), they figure that the only way to kill the thing is with dynamite.  They sneak out, grab the stuff and throw it into a hole that the alien spider-thing is digging in the ground.  If you ever wanted to see someone jump ahead of a rigged explosion, this is your movie!  It really is the kind of thing they could have fixed in editing, but, oh well.  Unfortunately, the celebration is short-lived as more of them show up.  We get some decent CG effects in the form of a spaceship arriving and dropping hundreds of the things into the mountains.  A couple questions and comments here.  First, they blatant stole the spaceship from E.T.  Secondly, why doesn't the thing just drop them into town, as opposed to putting them miles and miles away?  Did you come all the way from outer space just to be incompetent?  Marsters stays behind with the Sheriff and the General Store owner while they send the others away.  About thirty seconds, they ride back later, saying that the town is surrounded.  Okay, what was the point of sending them away?  A small group of aliens are in town now, digging up...something.  The film will eventually explain it, but I won't bother you with it now.  Since the movie needs to be 90 minutes, the entire scene of them setting up the dynamite, rigging it and setting it off.  Have you guys heard of the word 'montage?'

Despite taking out a group of the aliens, things are still not going well.  The group eventually figures out why the aliens are here.  To fuel their spaceship for the ride home, they need Uranium.  As it turns out, the scientist has been digging up a material that is refined into the stuff.  Fun fact: Uranium was only mined in this time period in the Czech Republic!  The bounty hunter and another convict character (who was so important that he missed 3/4 of the film) decide that they can make some money off of the stuff, despite the discoverer pointing out that there is in fact no market for it.  Silly logic, you have no place here!  They go to leave, but the aliens show up again.  In a sub-plot that really has no point, the bounty hunter tries to out-gun the alien, only to be shot.  Marsters, however, has better luck when he acts very slowly and kills it.  The remaining heroes (Marsters, the lady doctor, the scientist) set up a plan to lure the creatures to one location and blow them up. Unfortunately, the fuse to the dynamite was damaged when the scientist was shot, so he has to sacrifice himself.  The other two ride off as an actually-decent explosion ends the lives of the alien invaders.  After that, the movie just ends abruptly.  Okay then.

This movie is actually decent, but there's not a lot to say about it.  The plot is alright, but does nothing all that unique.  The idea of a group of people fending off a monster/demons/aliens who attack is nothing new.  Furthermore, this movie doesn't break with conventions in any real way.  Casting Marsters as a criminal is a step in the right direction, but he's still the nicest guy in the movie.  Furthermore, he's a retired criminal who feels bad for his actions and actually turned himself in.  You might as well just make him a priest!  In the movie's defense, the effects are actually pretty good.  As you can see in the shots, they're not Avatar-level, but they really do beat out stuff like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.  It's an odd standard I have, but just deal with it!  Unlike a lot of the stuff here, it's not utter shit.  It's a decent popcorn flick that doesn't try to be any more than it is.  Mediocrity, eh?  Compared to stuff like The Gardener or Wild Zero, I'll take it!

Next up, I tackle the third out of Lamberto Bava's four TV films.  Will this Hitchcock-style film be better than The Ogre and Graveyard Disturbance?  Stay tuned...

VHS For The Win: Madonna...A Case of Blood Ambition

In the 1980s, Madonna was one of the biggest musical acts, as opposed to an old lady with freaky, vein-popping arms.  As such, this film was made...

So a woman has sex with a man while a robot-faced poster sits in the background.  Kinky girl...

Next up, demons come from Hell, but end up in Antarctica?  I'm sure that there's a good reason for this.  Stay tuned...

Anthologicious: Tales from the Darkside- The Movie

How must it feel to only be known as a film that was supposed to be a different one?  After two Creepshow films, Savini, Romero and King really wanted to make a third film.  Unfortunately, fate had aligned against them and it was not to be.  As we know, some jack-ass company would make a third Creepshow film- which sucked big time!  Thanks to some finagling, the third film could be made...but not under the old name.  The film was a collection of tales planned for the third film, but lumped together under the auspices of being a film version of the show Tales from the Darkside.  As a side-note, why do they always put 'The Movie' into the titles of these things?  News Flash: if I'm seeing it in theaters, it's a damn movie!  Anyways, this film features three stand-alone stories wrapped up in a framing device.  It makes for one nice, simple package of terror.  Will it live up to the standard set by Creepshow (and, to a lesser extent, Creepshow 2)?  Get out your ancient Greek porn scroll for my review of...

Before the actual stories begin, we get our wrap-around story.  A woman (Blondie's Deborah Harry) is a witch who has kept a kid in her prison/kitchen to eat.  She prepares to, um, prepare him when he distracts her with a tale from her favorite book- Tales from the Darkside.  It is called 'Lot 249'...

The tale revolves around a nerdy guy (a pre-Fargo Steve Buscemi), his roommate (a pre-Hollow Man 2 Christian Slater) and that guy's friend (nobody all that famous).  The nerd lost some sort of scholarship to the last guy, thanks to the ministrations of Slater's sister (a pre-everything Julianne Moore).  He gets Lot 249, which is a mummy that he can control.  He uses it to kill both of his enemies, but doesn't count on Slater figuring it all out.  Slater ties him up and forces him to give up the scroll that controls the Mummy.  As for the Mummy, it gets taken down by an electric carving knife.  Oh, how I wish that they had used it on the thing from Ancient Evil!  Buscemi leaves, but we learn that he switched the Mummy's scroll with that of a porn-tale written for Alexander the Great.  In the end, Moore and the friend show up as Mummies themselves (thanks to their treatments before death) and kill Slater.

The kid buys more time by telling the tale 'The Cat From Hell.'  This involves an old man (Puppetmaster's William Hickey) hiring a Mafia hitman (Mr. Nanny's David Johansen) to kill...his cat.  As he explains, it killed his sister, her friend and his butler, although there's no evidence on his side.  It's all because the man's company made a toxin that was tested on cats before being given to humans.  The hitman is dubious about this, but the $50,000 changes his mind.  While the old man is away, the cat proves to be a thorn in the man's side. It constantly attacks him and runs away, forcing him to go through his arsenal of weaponry.  At one point, he actually shoots at it, but the bullet misses.  Don't ask me- they wrote it!  It eventually kills him at midnight (as it always does) and freaks out the old man when he returns.  The damaged clock rings midnight again as the cat kills the old man and leaves.

Time is running out for our hero, so he gets desperate and tells a love story called 'Lover's Vow.'  It tells the tale of an artist (James Remar), who is fired by his agent (Robert Klein) and decides to get drunk.  As he is exited out by the bartender, a demonic-looking creature kills the man with him and threatens our hero.  He makes a vow not to speak about what he saw, so the thing leaves.  As he turns the corner, he runs into a woman (Rae Dawn Chong) and romance ensues.  After a bit of a time-jump, we learn that the woman has helped him reach success and given him two kids.  For no clear reason, he feels the need to tell the story of the monster attacking him.  This triggers the woman to transform into the monster, revealing that she loved him, but he broke the vow.  She kills him and the story ends.

After the story, the kid reveals that he has one story with a happy ending.  It's his own, as he manages to escape, knock the woman into her instruments of torture and shove her in the oven.  He even breaks the Fourth Wall the film ends.  Thanks for that, Joey Lawrence's brother.

This movie is actually pretty good.  The framing device is interesting enough, although it could have played a bit more for laughs.  I mean, it's such a campy premise, but it's played straight until the end.  As for the three tales, they're good, but a bit uneven.  'Lot 249' has a strong beginning and middle, but falters a bit at the end.  They salvage it a bit with the finale, but it's not quite enough.  'The Cat From Hell' has an interesting premise, but has to be a bit forced to work convincingly.  They only really give the cat powers in the end, so it makes the hitman look pretty incompetent as a whole.  I get what they were going for, but they don't quite pull it off.  'Lover's Vow' is just odd.  The monster is great, then the story meanders for a bit before wrapping up.  It's not terrible, but it's a very uneven thing.  The actual film itself wraps up neatly enough and finally nails the right tone.  If you like horror anthologies, check this one out.  It just celebrated it's 20th Anniversary this year, so give it a try.  Hell, check out the show too.

Up next, I celebrate Labor Day with a look at a town full of hard-working laborers that run into some trouble.  Of course, by trouble, I mean alien spider robots.  Stay tuned...
      

Blockbuster Trash: Ancient Evil- Scream of the Mummy

Another David DeCoteau film, huh?  Yeah, the guy's got a twenty-plus year career, so it's no wonder that I run into another one.  In fact, it's one of two films this month in a series.  Oddly, the second one is not directed by DeCoteau.  Unfortunately, this one is.  The film involves, well, a mummy being brought to life.  Since it's a film by DeCoteau, it also features numerous, pointless scenes of men shirtless.  Of course, 'the truth remains to be seen' folks.  Since this is low-budget, they have about three locations, ten people in the cast and almost no CG.  It's also one of the few films involving mummies and/or their lure that didn't show people in Egypt/Mexico/The Yucatan.  Remember that stupid Italian movie Dawn of the Mummy?  They shot on location in Egypt.  Hell, even that dull Fulci movie about a gem from Egypt had scenes shot there!  So now that the bar is set appropriately-low, let's check out the film.  Get out your deus ex machina bracelet for my review of...

The movie begins with a teacher talking to her students about a mummy brought in from Mexico.  See- I told you!  They talk about the lore a bit, but it's mostly just filler.  We get to see our cast of nobodies and, boy, are they ever generic.  We get nerdy guy (who's definitely not evil), jock guy, other jock guy, black guy, nerdy redhead, the blond and the teacher.  The latter's role is so small that it barely even merits a mention.  We get to see that the nerdy guy is weird and awkward here too.  That should go without saying, but, whatever.  We get some random banter between the characters to establish their motivations and all that, but, again, it's mostly just filler.  What's important is that the jock guy steals the amulet off of the mummy as a gift for the blond.  She's impressed, but also a bit miffed at his theft.  He still gets a date with her, so infer from that what you will.  That night, the teacher is looking into the mummy lore a bit more before leaving for the night.  The nerdy guy shows up and awakens the mummy, leading to it killing her in a throat slitting with very little blood.  You can't even give me decent gore, huh?  How sad.

After all of that, we get more banter between our heroes, who have since split up into their respective dorm rooms.  Basically, the three guys (minus the nerd) are whining about being stuck inside, since some unseen guard may catch them if they do anything.  This sub-plot amounts to nothing, by the way.  Eventually, Jock Guy decides to throw a party in the main building and invites Blond Girl to go with him.  The rest of them get upset when they find out about this, although they mostly just bitch about it.  Meanwhile, the mummy is loose and has hidden the teacher's body on the slab.  Nobody ever uncovers it for the obvious 'reveal shot,' so why include this?  The pair are inside the building and uncover the mess left behind by Nerdy Guy when looking for information, but do nothing about it.  Aftetr more wandering around and padding, the mummy finally kills Blond Girl.  Wow, I called her as the 'Final Girl,' so it shows what I know!  We get even more padding as the rest of the group

The blood finally begins to flow in this movie, although it's another case of far too little, far too late.  Jock Guy gets killed by the mummy, but only after some long, lingering shots of his abdomen.  We get it, David!  The rest of the cast just about gets offed in the successive time, leading us with just Nerdy Redhead, Other Jock Guy and Nerdy Guy.  The latter has revealed his evil plan: to sacrifice a virgin and bring about the end of the world.  The movie has made a point about saying that the Redhead is a virgin, so she's the obvious victim.  By the way, watch for the cameo by her boyfriend that's so important he dies off-camera!  Other Jock Guy is left to stop Nerdy Guy from carrying out his goal.  It's just a shame that he's too busy being choked by the mummy.  By the way, Nerdy Guy is doing the ceremony because he's a descendant of the ancient Mayan priests.  The only thing whiter than you is the actual color itself, so I find that a bit dubious.  After a lot of stalling and posturing, our hero smashes the amulet, causing Nerdy Guy to loose control of the mummy.  It slashes him in the back and just sort of dies, setting up The End.  Hurray for that!

This movie is crap- pure and simple.  It's a mummy film where the thing looks dumb, is clearly fat and just stabs everyone.  The cast is about ten people and they clearly couldn't afford more than their tiny number of locations.  The direction is alright, but nothing special.  It bears another mention of just how much exposed male torso there is in this movie.  I mean, is it really a secret about David DeCoteau and his personal longings.  For all the flack that Bryan Singer has gotten over the years for hiring good-looking, male actors for his *alleged* side-interests, DeCoteau is pretty shameless about it.  Considering that the one shirtless guy from Witches of the Caribbean was bad enough, imagine three or four of them and you've got the leads for this movie.  Is it too much to ask for the movie to have more than two major roles for women?  On top of that, one of them dies very early and the other is made out to clearly not be a sex symbol in any way.  As for the actual movie, it's dull, shoddy and does nothing interesting.  If you want to see a fat mummy wrestle with a Twilight-wannabe, this is your movie.  For everyone else, don't bother.

Up next, a horror anthology film that has gone overlooked for nearly 20 years.  As a bonus, it was almost another film entirely!  Stay tuned...

Impossibly-Retitled Cover Art: Flight of the Living Dead

A lot of you might remember this direct-to-DVD film from a few years back.  Fans of the site will know that I was not much of a fan.  For those who don't, here's a refresher...

Yeah, it's another pretender to the throne of Romero's famous series (see August's reviews for more).  Even so, the premise could have worked well enough.

What many of you might not know, however, is that this is actually the second title that this movie had...

Yes, this is the same movie, just with a confusing, pun title and an even worse tagline.  Flight was meant to be an improvement, I guess.  If only they had improved more...

WTF France?!?: Metamorphosis (2008)

The French are a strange lot.  For example, they helped us fight our war for independence that was done under the auspices of 'religious freedom.'  In modern day France, they've been trying to ban any sign of Muslims or their cultural heritage.  They founded the idea of existentialism, which places more value on ideas than objects.  Today, France is one of the major commerical countries in the world.  It's this odd dichotomy that leads me into today's film: Metamorphosis.  It's a French vampire film that manages to have one really awesome part to it, but otherwise be disappointing.  How can a movie be both good and bad at the same time?  Well, the French pull it off!  The film finally gives us one thing that we've secretly been wanting to see.  What is that?  You'll have to wait and see like I did.  I can tell you that it stars Corey Sevier and Christopher Lambert and offers a very *different* look at a historical villain.  Confusingly, the movie is a French production, but set in Hungary and filmed in English.  My brain hurts.  Will more parts of me hurt?  Get out your holy spear for my review of...

The story begins with a man (Lambert) going to his brother's funeral.  He's upset because his brother is supposed to be buried in the family castle.  He only gets more upset when they put a stake through his heart!  One scene later, he is digging up his brother to bury him properly when he gets attacked in his car.  Say good-bye to Christopher for the next forty-five minutes!  The main plot involves a trio of young people (including Sevier) going into Hungary since the Corey is writing a book on Elizabeth Bathory.  I should mention the long, pretentious narration in the beginning about that and the scene where she is taken away from her daughter (also named Elizabeth).  Why are the other two people there?  Um, just because, I guess.  They run into a woman named Elizabeth, who I'm sure is totally not related to that girl from before.  Sevier falls for her right away, ending up in bed with her within a day.  They end up at a church where crosses tend to vibrate around her.  Hmm, that's not a good sign, is it?  The next day, they drive towards the castle, only to get into a car accident.  Everybody is fine, however, and the journey continues on foot.  This is actually a very important scene for later, but not for the reason you might think.

As the story progresses, things get more strange...but are still dull.  I just can't muster up any interest for these characters- I'm sorry.  They end up going to the castle with a priest, a nun and a Russian couple.  Worst punch-line ever!  Before the trip, however, Elizabeth leaves without so much as a real note.  It's just a note about 'walking into the light' or something that's written in lipstick.  On the road, they get chased by wolves.  Wow, this seems random.  The things stop chasing them when they hear a strange noise.  In the castle, the group experience some sort of time loop.  No, they never really explain this.  The group gets split up and attacked by an unseen person.  This leads to the only good part of the movie..

Christopher Lambert as a vampire!  This is just genius casting!  He shows up and kills the Russian couple, but takes time to enjoy it.  He even mocks the guy for not shooting him in the heart when he had the chance.  Oh yeah, he can also set crosses on fire like in Bram Stoker's Dracula- I still don't know how that works.  He kills the girl and the best friend character, but relishes killing Sevier.  Fortunately, Elizabeth shows up and explains everything.  You see, she is Bathory's daughter- no shit- and became a vampire to kill the husband's family line.  They have a silly kung-fu fight, but she loses.  He tries to kill the priest, but he escapes by praying, having a light shine on him and teleporting away.  No, really.  He has a face-off again with Sevier and beats up Elizabeth some more.  Finally, he gets killed by Sevier in a cop-out scene.  Boo, movie!  After this, Sevier nearly dies as he crawls towards the light, so Elizabeth bites him.  He wakes up...in the field by the crash site from before.  Explain, movie!  As it turns out, the trio died in the crash, so Elizabeth goes to Limbo to bring him back.  Yes, the entire third act took place in Limbo.  On second thought, don't explain movie!  Sevier tries to save the group, but history repeats itself.  He is not happy about being a vampire, but will learn to accept it.  In the Epilogue, the pair get picked up by a man who knows that they're vampires.  Um, okay.

This movie is really not good.  It tries to do a whole lot right, but really falters.  For one thing, the whole movie should have been about Christopher Lambert as a vampire.  I mean, was anything else here more interesting?  The love story wasn't.  The haunted house angle wasn't.  The vague Satanic/vampiric sub-plots really added nothing.  Much like Communion, the film is really only notable for one section.  Unlike that film, I didn't know what to expect, so the trippy stuff with Lambert was surprising.  The most animated I've ever seen him was either in Mean Guns or Absolon, so this one was a surprise.  I want to tell you how awesome this movie is, but it's really only the 20 minutes or so that feature Lambert.  The biggest problem though is that none of this really makes any sense.  So, Elizabeth Bathory was just driven crazy by her husband, so her daughter grew up to adulthood, became a vampire and started killing the husband's whole line?  I can sort of buy that part, but what about the whole 'limbo' thing?  How does that even relate to vampire movies?  What is going on?  If you think I'm confused by this whole thing, just check out Lambert's reaction to the final product...

Up next, Blockbuster Trash brings us the second David DeCoteau film in Mondo Bizarro's history.  Will it be less gay and, you know, actually good?  Stay tuned...

One Quick Note: Dracula 1972 A.D. Postponed

Unfortunately, poor planning and some technical issues have prevented my review of Dracula 1972 A.D. 

Basically, I got it as part of this 4 Movies on 2 Discs set from Target.  Lo and behold, my version has two copies of Disc 1 and no Disc 2. 

So it's mostly the dick who packed it wrong, but also my fault for not checking that first and/or allowing myself to rent a copy.  My bad.  It probably won't happen again.

Stock Footage Hell: Jail Bait (1954)

It's been a while since I picked on Ed Wood, so let's get right down to it!

Jail Bait is one of his more forgotten films, although it is in one of the box sets, and rightfully-so.  It's very stock and not all that funny.  Even so, it has one of Ed's craziest uses of stock footage...

A pair of thieves (a pro and a novice) rob a theater after a show.  Apparently to 'establish the setting,' we have to see the film's entire act.  As Crow T. Robot once said 'They're establishing the hell out of that place!'  To put it simply, they're running a 'minstrel (read: old timey racism) show.'  Finally, a segment that also works with Great Moments in Race Relations! 

Of course, Ed didn't film this part.  No, he just lifted from a full-on 'minstrel' film called Yes Sir, Mr. Bones. 

Why?  Does it help the plot in any way?  No.  The answer is simple: racism was popular and this five-minutes or so helped the film reach it's time quota.  That's Ed Wood for you!

Up next, it's one thing to see a cheap use of stock footage.  It's another thing to see it twice- by the same director no less!  Stay tuned...

Lost and Found: Tarzan & The Golden Lion

The Story

In 1923, Tarzan tales were still the rage.  Edgar Rice Burroughs was cranking out stories left and right & films did well in theaters.  A slew of men played the role, including Johnny Weismueller.  In this case, we are talking about James Pierce, a former Hoosier turned actor.  The silent movie was a hit for RKO, but disappeared for many years.  Would it be found?

Was It Found?                                                                                                   

Yes, but not soon enough.  While he had a fruitful career, Pierce apparently put a lot of effort into finding this film.  Sadly, he died in 1983 (otherwise a good year) before any good news would come.  That good news, you ask?  Sometime in the 1990s, a full copy of the film was found in a closet in a French Mental Asylum.  No, really.  Don't ask me how it got there, but I'll take it.

Significance

First and foremost, it's a film that represents an era and style of film-making.  Secondly, Pierce would go on to be the voice of Tarzan on the radio, plus he'd play part in the classic Flash Gordon serials featuring Buster Crabb.  There is another thing you should know too.  This movie features an early performance by Boris Karloff- playing a native named Owala!  Awk-ward.

Next up, a Japanese movie literally ends up being buried away.  How did it come to this?  Stay tuned...

Boris in Time: Frankenstein 1970

After all this time, this is only the second Boris Karloff movie I've talked about.  How did that happen, I wonder?  Regardless, I'm here with his last attempt at getting a paycheck thanks to Mary Shelley's work.  Obviously, Karloff is famous for playing Adam, so it only made sense to cast an older, crazier Karloff as the doctor himself.  Made in 1958, the film was originally going to be called Frankenstein 1960, but that didn't sound futuristic enough.  Fun fact: Karloff himself died in 1969.  Okay, that may not be as fun as I thought.  Anyhow, this film is another in a line of low-budget horror films shot on a sound stage in about a week.  Seriously, they made this in 8 days!  The movie gets points for playing with genre conventions early on, but loses them for falling into the same cliches later.  You can't have it both ways!  Can Karloff turn this nearly-forgotten film into gold like Frankenstein vs. The Space Monster or will it be on par with Frankenstein's Daughter?  Get out your personal atomic reactor for my review of...

The film begins with a long, black & white credit sequence that leads into a woman being chased slowly by a monster.  She runs into the lake for no good reason and it begins to choke her when...a director calls cut?  Yes, this one of those movies where people make movies.  Thanks for making it all confusing, guys!  After that, we get to meet Karloff as the last descendant of the Frankenstein line.  Considering how many sons, nephews, grand-daughters or cousins their have been, that's saying something!  For some reason, the movie production company is looking for a good, real location to shoot in.  The guy running the estate for Karloff gives them the right to shoot there, which Karloff is not fond of.  The irony, of course, is that this 'real' location is a sound stage itself!  A keen eye may also notice that this movie is often shot like a play, choosing to go with a wide-angle shot and show people entering and exiting.  The cast and crew of the film is oddly-small & only includes a Director, a Writer (his ex-wife), a Producer, a starlet, a Director of Photography and a giant who plays the monster.  I think porn movies have bigger crews than this!

As an 'actor,' Karloff's character does quite well.  How much is acting though?  As it turns out, he is doing some illicit experiments there and they grow dangerous.  He hypnotizes one of his helpers into giving up all of his organs, save for his eyes.  He makes an excuse for the man's absence, but it doesn't fly with his estate owner.  The man stops asking questions, however, allowing Karloff to create his monster, just without it's eyes.  That night, the Writer and the Producer have a fight, since the latter wants the former to get over her love for the Director (who actually lusts after the starlet).  Just like the pregnancy sub-plot in Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2, it goes nowhere when they kill the woman at the center of it.  Apparently, she dies from a heart attack, since the monster never touches her and Karloff just says that she died.  He makes an equally-implausible excuse for her absence, but, again, nobody really raises much of a fuss.  A lot of this middle-portion is eaten up by long sequences of Karloff in his lab.  I guess he doesn't have the same fear of these electrodes that Bela Lugosi had in Ed Wood.  In a move right of the Big Book of Sci-Fi Cliches, the scenes are narrated by Karloff apparently leaving himself notes.  Yes, explain to yourself what you are doing!

While scouting a shot for later, the Director of Photography is killed by the new monster.  This only works because his self-defense method is to just stand there and get killed off-screen.  If you want on-screen death, you should know better than to watch a film from 1958.  To make matters worse, his blood type is not a match, so his death is completely-pointless.  The police finally get called, but don't find anything.  They nearly spot a secret entrance to the lab, but Karloff closes it just in time.  Finally, his friend wants a full answer to everything, so Karloff takes him to the entrance and kills him with the monster.  The Director and Producer do their own investigation & find the D.P.'s lens on the floor.  This is enough evidence to call in the police, apparently, since they show up in the next scene.  They confront the monster in the lab, but it gets exposed to too much radiation and dies.  Karloff himself dies too, although I'm not sure why.  We learn the secret of why the monster was in a giant helmet the whole time too.  His face is...Karloff's face, just without the fake scars.  Damn you, Shamylan!  The End.

This movie is good, but doesn't do much to distinguish itself.  The whole idea of the plot- a movie being filmed in a house that contains a real experiment- is good, but they don't commit enough to it.  The first half of the movie makes use of it, but it quickly gets abandoned.  It's a shame, since this could have turned out as good as something like Shadow of the Vampire.  As a whole, the acting is not that good.  So many of the people are very stilted or just cliched.  Karloff is, well, Karloff.  Translation: he's great.  His narration in the 'film-within-a-film' bit reminds me a bit of his role that would come ten years later in Targets.  If you know the scene in question, you will know how much of a compliment that is!  I wish I could recommend this film more than I can.  Unfortunately, only genre fans or die-hard Karloff fans will really like this.  It's too stock to break out of the mold of these kinds of films.  If you qualify, give it a look.

Next up, let's keep up the combination of classic horror character and year with a Hammer film.  At least this one was listed as the right year!  Stay tuned....

Impossibly-Cool Cover Art: Deep Blood

Joe D'amato is a name synonymous with bad films.  Ironically, that's not even his name!  I guess it was only natural that he joined the party and ripped off Jaws too...

This...is just weird.  Either that shark is way too close to land or this cop parked his car in the ocean!  His non-reaction is what sells this though.

By the way, check out the shark with only one small row of teeth.  Someone never watched the Discovery Channel, I see.

Up next, we switch from a specific evil of the deep to a more general one.  Was this poster made in 3-D?  Stay tuned...