To say that I’m not a big Jonah Hill fan would be an understatement. The characters he has played on film have ranged from annoyingly nebbish to downright obnoxious. An almost irrational rage builds up in me whenever I see a trailer with him in it either as a supporting cast member or one of the leads. To my surprise when I saw the red band trailer of his upcoming R-rated comedy, The Sitter, the rage I was feeling petered out the more I watched the trailer.
The Sitter stars Jonah Hill and is directed by one David Gordon Green who also made the hilarious Pineapple Express and also one of the creators of the HBO comedy series, Eastbound & Down. Unfortunately, Green also directed the very unfunny comedy earlier in 2011 called Your Highness. Here’s to hoping that The Sitter is more of the very hilarious kind and not the unfunny that was his latest comedy film this year.
From what I could tell in the trailer this film looks almost like a remake of the 80’s comedy, Adventures in Babysitting starring Elisabeth Shue. That was a funny film and if Jonah Hill and Green can deliver the raunchiness and laughs then I have a feeling The Sitter may just be worth a look-see.
It seems that every film lover owns at least one of those box sets of public domain films that Oak Creek Entertainment puts out. You know which ones I mean — the box sets usually have about 50 to 100 movies crammed onto 12 discs and always have titles like “Astounding Adventure Classics.” Most of the time, you’ll recognize one or two of the movies included (usually Night of the Living Dead) and you’ll end up buying it because they only cost like 6 bucks and that’s pretty good for 50 movies, even if you already know most of those movies are going to suck. I own several of these box sets, including 50 Chilling Classics.
I’ve recently decided to write a review for every single film that I have in my collection and I figured, what better place to start than with the often-forgotten and ignored public domain films that can be found in 50 Chilling Classics? So, let’s get things started by reviewing a little public domain film from Wisconsin called The Alpha Incident.
Made in 1977, The Alpha Incident tells us what happens when a train, carrying a deadly virus brought back from Mars, makes a stop over at a small country train station. It seems that Hank (played by George “Buck” Flower, who giggles a lot) had taken it upon himself to inspect that deadly cargo and has accidentally released it into the atmosphere. The train station, and the five people trapped inside, are quarantined by the U.S. government. Trapped in the station are the increasingly crazed Hank, the cold Dr. Sorenson (Stafford Morgan), gruff bully Jack (John F. Goff), neurotic secretary Jenny (Carol Irene Newell), and the shy station agent, Charlie (Ralph Meeker, who was the best-known actor in the cast). The five are told to wait while American scientists try to find a cure for the virus. Under no circumstances can they 1) leave the station and 2) fall asleep because, the minute they do, the virus will cause their brain to literally explode out of the back of their head. For the rest of the film (which, honestly, would probably have worked better as a play), the five fight among themselves, wonder if they’re infected, and above all else, struggle to stay awake.
The Alpha Incident was directed by Bill Rebane, an independent filmmaker who is based up in Wisconsin. Apparently, Rebane’s unique cinematic vision has won him a cult following among fans of low-budget horror and sci-fi films. One term that I’ve often seen used to describe him is “the Ed Wood of Wisconsin.” On the basis of the Alpha Incident, I don’t know if that’s a fair comparison. Yes, the film does drag at time and the editing pretty much defines the term “ragged” but the movie still held my interest and not in a solely “what the fuck am I watching?” sort of way. Yes, the performances are uneven, ranging from histrionic (George “Buck” Flower and John F. Goff) to boring (Stafford Morgan) to adequate (Ralph Meeker) to surprisingly good (Carol Irene Newell) but the characters themselves aren’t the usual stereotypes and, while the dialogue is often a bit clunky, the film’s story is an interesting one and the ending is just so wonderfully cynical and downbeat. With it’s portrayal of common people trying to survive the mistakes of a faceless government, The Alpha Incident is so wonderfully 70s that I it made me want to go to a club, tell my companions, “I’m going to powder my nose,” and then snort someone else’s cocaine.
Like many of the best B-movies, The Alpha Incident was made with more ambition than skill but it’s still a film that, if you truly appreciate the low-budget exploitation movies of the 70s, is more than worth seeing.
Okay, I am like supper giddy excited and dancing-around-my-house-in-my-underwear excited right now and that’s because a story I wrote has been accepted for publication so let me just repeat what I said when I learned the news: “Oh. My. God. YAY!” And then I pushed off my jeans and tossed my camisole and I started dancing around the house in my underwear and that’s where you came in and…
This is appears to be yet another one of those “So You Say You Want A Revolution” films from the late 60s. The 60s were a good time for freeze frames apparently.
I love any trailer that claims that the movie being advertised is about “what’s happening now…” It’s a line that just screams 1970s. Anyway, this is The Student Nurses which was directed by Stephanie Rothman, one of the first of the true Grindhouse feminists.
Student Nurses was a huge success so the next few years so a whole lot of different “Student” films. Hence, the Student Teachers. That clown at the end of this trailer freaks me out. By the way, Chuck Norris is apparently in this trailer.
5) The Two Faces Of Love (1972)
Of course, even as the grindhouse celebrated the strong women who became student nurses and student teachers, it was also celebrating the woman who found themselves trapped in rip-offs of Repulsion, like The Two Faces of Love.
Yesterday, I called into work because my asthma was acting up and, in order to pass the time, I watched Dylan Dog: Dead of Night. To be honest, I probably should have just risked having another asthma attack and spent 108 minutes at work, answering the phone. It would have been a more productive use of my day.
Dylan Dog is based (quite loosely) on the same Italian comic book that inspired one of the best Italian horror films of all time, Dellamorte Dellamore. Brandon Routh gives a charisma-free performance as Dylan Dog, a New Orleans-based private investigator who is hired by a mysterious woman (Anita Briem) to investigate the circumstances of her father’s death. It turns out her father was killed by a werewolf and fortunately, Dylan is apparently an expert on New Orleans’ supernatural underground, including the decadent vampires that are led by Taye Diggs (who, seriously, deserves better than this movie.)
Dylan Dog: Dead of Night plays less like a movie and more like a greatest hits collection of other, better movies (and tv shows). We get werewolves and vampires going to war, we get an athletic blonde woman doing karate moves on a bunch of vampires, and we get a lot of casual decadence being committed by vampires who speak with Southern accents that just drip molasses. Now, I love True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the shows that gave me the strength to survive a lot of hard times, and I’ve even got a girlcrush on Kate Beckinsale as a result of Underworld. But I’ve also got all of those wonderful shows on DVD. I can see them whenever I want. I didn’t spend $5.00 to rent Dylan Dog OnDemand just so I could see Dylan become the millionth film hero to walk in slow motion while firing two guns at the same time.
By all accounts, the film’s version of Dylan Dog has very little in common with the comic book version of Dylan Dog. It’s hard for me to say for sure because, while I’ve read and heard a lot about the Dylan Dog comic, I’ve never actually read it. Even if I could get my hands on a copy, it wouldn’t be much help since I’m not exactly fluent in Italian. This is what I assume to be true, strictly based on my own research:
1) The comic book Dylan Dog is a melancholy character who, despite dealing with the supernatural on a regular basis, also suffers from several irrational phobias of his own. The movie’s Dylan Dog is a blank-faced mannequin who utters useless quips and appears, in the tradition of American movie heroes, to have no fear.
2) The comic book Dylan Dog has an assistant who is a Groucho Marx imitator. The American Dylan Dog has an assistant who is a zombie. That assistant is well-played by Sam Huntington and he actually does have a few good moments but it’s still impossible to watch him and not wish he was a Groucho Marx imitator. (In the film’s defence, it appears that the Marx estate took legal action to prevent Groucho’s likeness from being used in the film.)
3) The comic book Dylan Dog lives in London. The movie Dylan Dog lives in New Orleans for absolutely no reason other than these movies always seem to be based in New Orleans. Seriously, New Orleans is one of the most overrated cities in America.
4) Finally, the comic book Dylan Dog is one of the most popular cult heroes in Europe. The movie Dylan Dog is the subject of one of the biggest cinematic flops of 2011.
It’s really hard to know what to say about a film like Dylan Dog other than the fact that it’s really, really bad. In fact, I’m tempted to call it the worst of 2011 so far but, after giving it a lot of thought, I decided that title still belongs to The Conspirator. Unlike The Conspirator, Dylan Dog isn’t a pompous film, it’s just a very, very lazy one.
I think the best thin to say in regards to Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is that it might inspire viewers to seek out and watch Dellamorte Dellamore. Now, that’s a film.
Through the Shattered Lens 