What Lisa And The Snarkalecs Watched Last Night #73: Flying Monkeys (dir by Robert Grasmere)

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, the Snarkalecs and I watched a SyFy original movie called Flying Monkeys.

Why Were We Watching It?

Because that’s what we do! Every Saturday night, the Snarkalecs get on twitter and watch a SyFy movie together. Add to that, the minute that we saw that the film was called Flying Monkeys, we knew we had to watch it and try to come up with as many bad monkey pun as possible.

What Was It About?

It all takes place in the little town of Gale, Kansas. (Named, I assume, after Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz.) Joan (Maika Monroe) is upset because her dad is late to her high school graduation. So, Dad says sorry by buying her a pet monkey. He’s a cute little monkey and Joan names him Skippy.

What Joan and her Dad don’t realize is that Skippy is a demon monkey and, whenever the sun goes down, he sprouts wings, flies around the town, and kills people. Even worse, it turns out that every time somebody shoots Skippy, this causes Skippy to reproduce and multiply. Since everyone in the town of Gale shoots Skippy at least once or twice, there are soon hundreds of killer flying monkeys all over the place.

Luckily, two demon hunters from China manage to get to Kansas in record time but then … well, let’s just say that, as far as demon hunting is concerned, they were both definitely overrated.

What Worked?

As far as I’m concerned, almost the entire film worked. Seriously, how can you not enjoy something this ludicrous? The makers of Flying Monkeys knew exactly what they were doing and it looks like they had a good time doing it.

Plus, Skippy was so cute!

Seriously, how can you not love a film featuring a killer named Skippy?

What Did Not Work?

The film spent a lot of time building up these two demon hunters from China but, once they showed up, they both turned out to be pretty useless. I understand that was probably the point but still, it felt like the only reason they existed was to pad out the film’s running time.

“OH MY GOD! Just like me!” Moments

Towards the end of the film, Skippy attempts to attack Sonya (Electa Avellan, best known for being one of the Babysitter Twins in Grindhouse) in the shower and Sonya reacts by literally running all the way to the other side of town while clad only in a towel. At the time, we all pointed out how gratuitous this whole scene was.

After the movie ended, I took a nice, long, relaxing shower. It was only after I had stepped out of the shower and turned off the water that I realized 1) just how hard it was raining outside and 2) that I couldn’t remember if my car windows were open.

The idea of my car getting flooded so panicked me that, despite being clad in only a towel, I ran outside to make sure my windows were up. Long story short, my windows were closed, I got even more wet, and I learned that, sometimes, you just have to go outside wearing a towel.

Lessons Learned

Don’t mess with Skippy.

Film Review: The Last Exorcism Part II (dir. by Ed Gass-Donnelly)

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Though it was dismissed by a lot of critics and remains underrated to this day, The Last Exorcism is one of the best horror films of the past four years. Featuring an excellent lead performance from Patrick Fabian and an intelligent, thought-provoking plot, The Last Exorcism was both a very creepy horror movie and a surprisingly effective character study. It even managed to be effective despite being an example of a “found footage” horror movie.

The Last Exorcism‘s sequel — the unimaginatively titled The Last Exorcism Part II — was released this weekend. Like a lot of people, I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting much from the sequel. The first film’s success was such a surprise that I doubted that the sequel could come close to matching it.

To a certain extent, I was right. The sequel is nowhere near as good as the first film. However, that said, The Last Exorcism Part II is still an above average horror film.

Wisely abandoning the whole found footage format, The Last Exorcism Part II begins with Nell (played, again, by Ashley Bell) as the only survivor from the previous film. After escaping the cult that previously attempted to sacrifice her, Nell finds herself put into group home in New Orleans. The group home is run by Frank Merle (Muse Watson), a friendly (if vaguely threatening) man who encourages Nell to try to move on from her traumatic past. With Frank’s help, Nell starts to recover. She gets a job working as a motel maid, makes friends with some of the other girls at the home, and she even starts to flirt with shy Chris (Spencer Treat Clark).

Everything seems to going so well for Nell.

Or is it?

Despite her claim that she no longer believes that she was ever possessed, Nell still finds herself being watched by menacing, masked figures who pop up on random street corners. She still receives mysterious phone calls. She’s still haunted by visions of her dead father walking through the dark hallways of the group home. Nell is still having nightmares where she’s seduced by an unseen creature and her roommate and new best friend Gwen (Julia Garner) still seems to be oddly amused by any type of human suffering.

And that’s not even taking into consideration the voodoo priestess who follows Nell up and down the streets of New Orleans…

As opposed to the first film, The Last Exorcism Part II is a pretty conventional horror film. Whereas the first film kept you constantly wondering whether Nell was actually possessed and made some surprisingly intelligent observations regarding the battle between faith and reason, The Last Exorcism Part II never gives you any reason to doubt that both the demon and the possession are real. Whereas The Last Exorcism was a horror film that could be appreciated even by people who hated horror films, The Last Exorcism Part II is pretty much a film for horror fans only.

Fortunately, I happen to be a horror fan and I was pleasantly surprised by The Last Exorcism Part II. While director Ed Gass-Donnelly shows little interest in rewriting the rules of the horror, he also shows that he can effectively work within the conventions of the genre. He even uses the PG-13 rating to the film’s advantage, making up for the lack of gore by emphasizing the otherworldly atmosphere of New Orleans.

It also helps that Ashley Bell returns in the role of Nell. As is typical of other possession movies (like the Exorcist, to cite an obvious example), the demon inside Nell can just as easily be taken as a metaphor for Nell’s emerging sexuality. Ashley Bell gives a performance that walks a perfect line between innocence and carnality. Much as Patrick Fabian’s performance elevated the first film, Bell’s performance elevates the second.

That said, The Last Exorcism Part II is ultimately the type of film where people tend to spend a lot of time wandering around dark hallways in the middle of the night without ever bothering to turn on a light. It’s up to each individual member of the audience to decide whether they’re going to demand to know why nobody turns on the lights or whether they’re simply going to enjoy waiting for the inevitable “jump” scene that we all know is coming. If the audience is willing to set aside logic and enjoy a movie for what it is, then they are the ideal audience for a film like this one.

Perhaps not surprisingly, The Last Exorcism Part II has not received a lot of critical praise. The film was not screened for critic prior to release and now that it has been released, it has a 15% overall rating over at Rotten Tomatoes. However, you could have guessed that without me even telling you. Everyone knew that the professional critics were going to hate The Last Exorcism Part II. This is the type of film that most critics feel almost duty-bound to condemn. This is also the type of film that reminds us of just how little the critical consensus really matters. When judged on its own (admittedly limited) terms,The Last Exorcism Part II is an effective and creepy film. It’s the epitome of a fun and occasionally stupid horror film, the type of movie you want to see with a group of friends who enjoy jumping at things that go bump in the night.

A Blast From The Past: Duck and Cover

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s face facts. We live in a scary world and it’s not getting any safer. However, before we all give up on the future, maybe we should take a look at the past. With that in mind, it’s my pleasure to share the 1951 educational short film Duck and Cover.

Seriously, if Bert the Turtle can survive then I think there might be hope for us all…

This is the epitome of one of those things that simply has to be seen to be believed. That said, if I was a child in the 50s, I think Duck and Cover would have provided me with some comfort. After all, Bert is just so cute and the Duck and Cover song is kinda catchy.

The SPM Trilogy Revisited : “Slumber Party Massacre III”

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

What the heck, let’s wrap this up, shall we?

While the appearance of Slumber Party II may have surprised some being that it came five years after the original, it’s safe to say that when Roger Corman unleashed Slumber Party Massacre III on the direct-to-video market in 1990, nobody was shocked in the least.

Shot primarily at one beach location and one residential home for exteriors, and with all the interiors being filmed at Corman’s Venice, California studio, the third installment in the SPM series cost a grand total of $350,000 and took somewhere in the neighborhood of one week to get “in the can,” as the saying goes, so yeah — it’s cheap , quick stuff we’re talking about here.

That being said, that certainly doesn’t mean it’s bad. What starts as a pretty bog-standard tale of stereotypical SoCal bimbo Diane (Brandi Burkett) and her friends ( a crew that features a few young-at-the-time ladies, such as Hope Marie Carlton, Maria Ford, and Keely Christian, whose faces — and other parts — you may recognize from similar early-90s “slasher”/sexploitation fare) playing volleyball at the beach and then returning to Diane’s parents’ place for a weekend slumber party, where they are set upon, in turn, by their prankster-ish boyfriends, a voyeuristic “nosy neighbor” type, a mute Albino creepy dude, and finally a pyscho killer with a power drill, actually morphs somewhere along the way into a flick with a pretty wickedly sadistic, even black-hearted, sense of humor — with a pretty heavy dose of the misogyny you’ve come to expect from these things thrown in, of course.

As a brief case in point, instead of the standard bathtub-electrocution with either a hair dryer or toaster, in SPM III one of the nubile young co-eds is dispatched in the tub by means of a vibrator gone haywire! Nasty stuff, to be sure, but clearly not something that takes itself too terribly seriously while it’s dishing out its feminist-unfriendly — hell, female-unfriendly — goods.

As with the previous two entries in this series, Corman again opted for an all-female writing and directing team here in order, one would assume, to help deflect any criticism this one might bet from the usual quarters (not that very many people were paying attention by this point), with those duties falling to Catherine Cyran (one of his regular screenwriters at the time) and Sally Mattison (a semi-veteran of Hollywood’s low-budget fringes best known for her work as a producer), respectively, and while it’s fair to say that this film is the most “seems-like-it-coulda-been-directed-by-a-man-ish” of the bunch, given that it ups the ante a bit in terms of its misogyny and plays it much “straighter,” if you will, than its predecessors in terms of sticking to the standard and much-maligned slasher formula, at the end of the day it’s still a pretty tongue-in-cheek affair that’s just a bit more self-indulgent and gratuitous in terms of the T&A and overall mean-spiritedness.

To their absolute, credit, though, Mattison and Cyran, while carrying over the blatant phallo-centrism of the whole power drill thing, at least decide to throw in a bit of “whodunit?”-style mystery into the proceedings vis a vis their killer’s identity. Yes, folks, for the first time in a Slumber Party Massacre movie, the psycho might actually have some motivation for his murder spree here!

Or, ya know, he might turn out to be just some random stranger after all. I guess I won’t “spoil” anything in case you haven’t actually seen it. I will say, however, that the mystery angle isn’t a particularly involving one — but hell, at least it’s there. We’ve already firmly established that “take what you can get” is the order of business with these things, haven’t we? The same — ahem! — “philosophy” applies here.

All in all, though, you do get the sense that everyone involved here is giving it their best go on what they’ve got — which admittedly isn’t much in terms of time, talent, and money — but I’d rather watch so-called “D-listers” actually try than “A-listers” sleepwalking through yet another mega-budget production any day of the week. Slumber Party Massacre III may not be particularly ambitious stuff by any stretch, but it’s put together and performed by people who gave an honest day’s effort at the office. That’s worth a little something right there, and after the absolute clusterfuck of wanna-be “trippy-ness” in the second flick, the “return to roots” sensibility in this one is very welcome indeed.

As always, the third and final outing (to date) in the SPM “oeuvre” is available on DVD from Shout! Factory packed together with its older celluloid sisters in a two-disc set under the heading “The Slumber Party Massacre Collection,” part of the “Roger Corman’s Cult Classics” series. It’s presented full-frame with 2.0 stereo sound — and while if there’s been any remastering done with either it’s certainly minimal, the whole thing looks and sounds generally decent enough. Extras include a good little “making-of” featurette, a feature-length commentary with director Mattison, the original trailer, a few trailers for other titles in the Corman series, a poster and still gallery, and a liner notes booklet by Slumber Party Massacre fanatic/filmmaker Jason Paul Collum. A very comprehensive package well worth your time.

Look, who are we kidding? This isn’t a movie out to set the world on fire — hell, it’s not even out to set the DTV slasher world on fire. It’s there to give two distinct parties their money’s worth — Roger Corman and you, the viewer. It manages to deliver on both fronts, even if just barely. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily worthy of a ton of respect, but it’s not worthy of any sort of scorn, either. Don’t expect too damn much, and you’ll walk away satisfied.

Not, I suppose, that anyone who might be inclined to “expect much” as far as their entertainment choices go is even watching this in the first place.

What Lisa Watched Last Night #72: The 85th Annual Academy Awards

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I had a little party. Me, my boyfriend, my sister, my best friend, and my 7,000 followers on twitter got together to watch the 85th Annual Academy Awards.

Why Were We Watching It?

If you love movies then the Oscars are like the Super Bowl. Seriously, how could I not watch it?

What Was It About?

It was about the best of times and the worst of times. It was about self-promotion, self-congratulation, and Michelle Obama. It was about whether or not Seth McFarlane would self-destruct. It was about rooting for the underdog and checking out who was wearing what. It was the Oscars and, for 210 minutes, the nation sat entranced.

What Worked?

Brave won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film! Seriously, that one award pretty much made the entire night for me. Actually, there were a lot of good winners last night: Ang Lee for Best Director, Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor, Paperman for Best Animated Short Film, and Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress. I was especially happy to see both Lawrence and Anne Hathaway win because, for whatever reason, these two actresses have recently had to deal with some of the most petty criticism that I’ve ever seen.

I also appreciated the fact that Quentin Tarantino, upon winning Best Original Screenplay, managed to spend his entire speech basically patting himself on the back while pretending to thank his cast. It may not be remembered as the most classy speech in the history of the Oscars but it definitely served to remind us of why we love Quentin.

As host, Seth McFarlane was such a mixed bag that I’ve included him under both things that worked and things that didn’t work. McFarlane started out surprisingly strong. Unlike a lot of female critics, I wasn’t offended by The Boob Song and I thought it was actually a pretty clever parody of McFarlane’s public image. (The joke was clearly meant to be on McFarlane and not the actresses mentioned in the song.) Unfortunately, as the show went on, McFarlane occasionally seemed to be determined to live up to that parody.

Oddly enough, I really enjoyed Lincoln when I saw it but yet I still found myself happy to see it lose in so many categories. I think it’s probably because Lincoln was so aggressively hyped and so many self-important Oscar pundits (like Sasha Stone) declared that Lincoln was the best film of the year before they had even seen it. It was hard not to resent the condescending tone that was taken by many of Lincoln‘s online supporters. Plus, it’s always fun to root for the underdog. It’s hard not to suspect that if Ben Affleck had actually been nominated for Best Director then Steven Spielberg and his film might have actually won big last night. But by snubbing Affleck, the Academy cast Steven Spielberg and Lincoln in the role of Goliath.

On one final petty note, I was happy to see Jennifer Lawrence win because I know her victory probably annoyed the editors of Awards Daily.

What Did Not Work?

I could have done without Michelle Obama showing up to present Best Picture. Yes, I know that Hollywood loves the Obamas but seriously, it felt rather Orwellian to have the First Lady suddenly pop up on TV and tell us why movies are so important. The fact that she appeared with a few random soldiers behind her just added to the creepy vibe.

The much hyped Bond tribute turned out to be a bit of a bust, didn’t it?

The audience, which never seemed to be that excited about the prospect of Seth McFarlane in the first place, seemed to turn more and more against him as the show progressed. As a result, once the Oscars hit the 120 minute mark, Seth started to come across as being a bit desperate to get a reaction — any reaction — from the audience.

Daniel Day-Lewis gave a good acceptance speech and all but surely I’m not the only viewer who was curious to hear what Joaquin Phoenix would have said if he had won.

In the end, the show just felt a little bit too bland for my tastes. Unlike last year, there was nothing truly unexpected. There were no hints of eccentricity. No one showed up wearing anything awful. Nobody made a fool of themselves while accepting their Oscar. In short, the show was just forgettable.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

When Jennifer Lawrence fell on the way to accept her award, that was definitely an “Oh my God! Just like me!” moment. Seriously, I loved her dress but, from the minute I saw it, I knew she was going to have a hard time getting up to the podium.

Lessons Learned

Award shows are a lot more fun when things go wrong.

Film Review: Mr. Freedom (dir by William Klein)

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Mr. Freedom, William Klein’s 1968 political satire, is a strange one.

The film opens with a riot in the inner city. A scowling Southern sheriff (played by John Abbey) goes into his apartment and, when he comes back out, he’s transformed into Mr. Freedom, a patriotic super hero whose is costumed in a red, white, and blue football uniform. Mr. Freedom proceeds to invade a black household where, while firing two guns, he sings his theme song.

“F-R-Double E-Double D-OM! FREEDDOM!”

That’s right, he misspelled freedom.

It turns out that Mr. Freedom works for Freedom, Inc. His boss is Dr. Freedom (played by Donald Pleasance) who communicates with Mr. Freedom via a flickering TV screen. Dr. Freedom is concerned that France is on the verge of turning communist and he sends Mr. Freedom to Paris in order to “win the hearts and minds” of the French.

William Klein, himself, was an American expatriate who lived in France and is best known for being both a fashion photographer and a documentarian. His view of America is epitomized by the sight of Mr. Freedom (wearing a gigantic cowboy hat) wandering around Paris and assaulting random tourists. With the help of a prostitute played by Delphine Seyrig, Mr. Freedom attempts to rally the French to the side of freedom and to defeat the schemes of Red China Man. When the French don’t prove enthusiastic enough, Mr. Freedom responds by making plans to blow the country up.

Unlike a lot of left-wing films, which celebrate the American establishment by pretending to attack it, Mr. Freedom is sincere in its politics. It’s obvious that William Klein set out to make the most anti-American film that he could and he succeeded. Mr. Freedom is an irredeemable character. When the film begins, Mr. Freedom is quickly established as being an idiot and, at the end of the film, he has somehow become an even bigger idiot. Perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of people over at the imdb have compared Mr. Freedom’s quest to conquer France to America’s current policy towards the Middle East.

If you’ve read some of my previous reviews, you would be justified in expecting that this is where I would condemn Mr. Freedom for being heavy-handed and tediously left-wing. After all, I’m the girl who condemned Avatar for being predictable environmental propaganda. And yes, I did find Mr. Freedom to be heavy-handed but I actually enjoyed it.

Even if you didn’t know that William Klein was an award-winning photographer both before and after he started making films, you would be able to guess it after taking one look at Mr. Freedom. The film’s narrative is undeniably uneven but visually, it’s a feast for the eyes. From the costumes worn by Mr. Freedom and his disciples to the design of Mr. Freedom’s secret headquarters, the screen is full of bold, primary colors and Klein shows a taste and appreciation for the bizarre that makes it easier to deal with the film’s moments of peachiness. Perhaps my favorite scene in the film involves Mr. Freedom confronting Red China Man. Red China Man, it turns out, is a gigantic dragon-shaped balloon.

See Mr. Freedom.

There’s nothing else like it.

Quick Review: Silver Linings Playbook (dir. by David O. Russell)

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Leonard Wilson

In Silver Linings Playbook, Pat Solitano (formerly Pat Peoples in the novel written by Matthew Quick, played by Bradley Cooper) is recently released from a mental hospital to the care of his parents. Obsessed over reclaiming the love of his ex-wife, Nikki, he sets out on exercising and reading books to become better when he sees her again. Working under the notion that positivity, mixed with great effort can lead to a Silver Lining, he uses this new outlook to focus on his goal. Of couse, this doesn’t happen without some hiccups. There’s one key scene in the film where he asks his parents where his wedding tape is, and starts tearing through boxes around the house searching for it. With Led Zeppelin’s “What Is And What Should Never Be” blasting in the background as everything escalated, I had an Anton Ego Ratatouille moment.

My mom had this thing where she’d shift from High to Low. Some days would be quiet, but if the wrong word or event happened, she’d explode either into a fit of activity or anger. We would be sometimes careful to not trigger this – “set her off”, she would say. My clearest memory is of having Alice in Chains’ “Don’t Follow” turned up really loud on the family stereo (and on repeat by her request) as she proceeded to break various objects in her bedroom. She isn’t the only one in the family who has that happen with her. My cousin has this thing where at night she has to check all of the burners on the stove at least 2 times before she’s satisfied they’re fine and off. She says she knows everything’s correct the first time, but says she needs to be sure.

We all have our quirks. When people burp around me, I feel compelled to say “Bless You”. It’s only right.

So, sitting in the theatre and watching Silver Linings Playbook, it all felt very familiar to me. The great thing -and possibly the problem near the very end – about it is that the film isn’t completely A Beautiful Mind in it’s sense of seriousness. I’ll admit I found myself smiling and laughing through a lot of it, just as much as I winced during Pat’s trouble spots. As he returns home, he finds his father (Robert DeNiro in a fine performance) already skeptical about him, but content that he has his son back to watch the Philadelphia Eagles games and to be his lucky charm. After being invited to dinner by one of his friends, Pat meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), who seems to be just as different as he is and he discovers that she’s been in contact with Nikki. She’ll help send word to her about how he’s doing (because a restraining order keeps him from doing so), if he will help her perform in a dance contest. This ends up starting a good friendship between the two and we start to find that Pat is doing better as things progress.

Director David O’Russell keeps the story centered on the two leads. Both Cooper and Lawrence are energetic and have this really great chemistry between them that makes it feel like they had a lot of fun working on this movie. What’s better is that there isn’t a single person in the supporting cast that doesn’t feel like (to me, anyway) that they were miscast or out of step. They could make a tv series with this cast, and it would be watchable. O’Russell also changes the nature of the story in his adaptation, making the dance sequence itself a major focus on the growth between Tiffany and Pat (and by extension, the family and friends). He also eliminates a side story where Pat’s mom leaves his father because of the Dad’s obsessive nature with the Eagles, choosing to replace it with some more heartfelt and/or moments between DeNiro and Cooper (who coindentially worked together in Limitless). I felt it tightened up the story overall.

Another element I enjoyed was the film’s use of music. Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” serves as a song that’s important to the story (in the same way that Kenny G’s “Songbird” was to the novel) and as I mentioned before, the Zeppelin song also worked. Alabama Shakes, which are a group new to me, also had a good song with “Always Alright”. The music of the film felt similar to Juno for me in a lot of ways.

The only problem I had with Silver Linings PlayBook, the only thing that didn’t work for me was the way the film ended. Dealing with something as serious as any kind of mental disorder, especially one where there are meds involved, it’s a serious thing. I’m not saying that one in Pat’s situation can’t be with anyone, far from it, but the film paints a picture at the end that everything will be just fine and simple. I don’t know I agree with that. Fine, perhaps, but certainly not simple. Granted, the story sets up such a social tapestry for Pat that if anything were to go wrong, he’d have people who would rally behind him. The ending just makes it seems that he no longer has any quirks and possibly robs an otherwise perfect from a bit of reality.

Overall, the Silver Linings Playbook is a feel good film that’s definitely worth seeing, with an ensemble cast that helps to elevate the great performances by both Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. The lack of a heavy-handed nature towards the issues with the main character help the comedic elements of it, but also stutter steps it at the very end for me.

What Lisa Marie and the Snarkalecs Watched Last Night #71: End of the World (dir by Steven R. Monroe)

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, the Snarkalecs and I watched the SyFy original movie, End of the World. For the next two hours, we literally dominated twitter as we shared our mutual, nearly obsessive love for this film. Soon, #EndOfTheWorld was a trending topic and, I’m happy to say, that ended up freaking out a lot of paranoid people who weren’t watching SyFy.

All in all, it was a pretty good night.

Why Were We Watching It?

Because that’s what the Snarkalecs do. We watch movies on SyFy and we usually get all snarky about them. However, it was difficult to be snarky about End of the World because the people who made End of The World were obviously very snarky themselves.

What Was It About?

The world’s being bombarded by chunks of electromagnetic space debris. Or something like that. Really, the important thing to know is that the world’s about to end and it’s up to two video store clerks (played by two titans of nerdy adorability, Greg Grunberg and Neil Grayston) to save it. Their solution involves breaking a sci-fi writer named Doc Brown (Brad Dourif) out of a mental asylum and Greg Grunberg working on a nuclear missile with a power drill.

However, to be honest, the plot is just a distraction. The storyline is mostly used as an excuse to make clever references to nearly ever science fiction movie ever made. Some of the references are obvious and some of them are a bit more subtle but, ultimately, they are what this movie is truly about.

What Worked?

It all worked.

Seriously, End of the World is the best film that I’ve ever seen on SyFy. It was a film that was obviously made by genre fans for genre fans and, as a result, it felt like a belated Valentine’s Day present from the SyFy network to its viewers.

As I previously mentioned, the entire film is basically a collection of references and homages to other science fiction films. While this is a technique that I’ve found cloying when used by other films, End of the World struck exactly the right tone. The references were appreciative without over going overboard and, even more importantly, they were cleverly deployed throughout the film. They moved the film forward and seemed to grow organically out of the action onscreen. As a result, even with all the references, the film itself never felt heavy-handed.

Greg Grunberg is one of those great actors who can perfectly sell both comedy and drama. His talents were on perfect display last night. Perhaps the best Grunberg line of the night was, “It’s a monologue! MONO!”

Brad Dourif didn’t have a lot of screentime but seriously, he was just adorable.

Really, the whole film was just adorable.

What Did Not Work?

It all worked.

“Oh my God! Just Like me!” Moments

Much like the character of Selena (Caroline Cave), I think Greg Grunberg’s pretty awesome.

Lessons Learned

The geeks shall inherit the Earth (but only after the Redheads are finished with it).

Film Review: Django Kill (dir. by Giulio Questi)

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Released in 1967 and directed by Giulio Questi, Django Kill is one of the essential spaghetti westerns.

The film opens with a man literally clawing his way out of a shallow grave. Played by Tomas Milian and known as the Stranger, the man is a Mexican outlaw who has been buried out in the middle of the desert. Two sympathetic Indians discover the Stranger and, while they nurse him back to health, he has several flashbacks that explain how he came to be buried alive.

The Stranger was a member of a gang of thieves who stole a cargo of gold. However, the Americans in the gang betrayed the Mexicans, gunning them down and fleeing with the gold. The Indians agree to help the Stranger find the rest of his gang on the condition that the Stranger tell them what it was like to be dead.

The Stranger’s former gang, meanwhile, has arrived at a desolate town known as Unhappy Place. From the minute that the gang first rides into town, we know that there’s something sinister about Unhappy Place. A naked child stands in the middle of the street while another is used as a footrest by one of the adults. A distraught woman watches them from behind a barred window. A lame hedgehog drags itself across the dusty street. As soon as the gang stops at the local saloon, the locals see the gold that they’re carrying and, in a shockingly brutal scene, the townspeople lynch the outlaws.

While this is going on, the Stranger rides into town. Spotting the last living outlaw, the Stranger proceeds to gun him down. In one of the film’s more infamous scenes, when the townspeople learn that the Stranger is using gold bullets, they proceed to literally rip the outlaw to pieces in an effort to retrieve the golden bullets.

With the outlaws dead, the townspeople claim the gold for themselves. The Stranger, who was apparently more interested in revenge than getting the gold, stays in town and watches as things get increasingly weird.

How weird?

Well, how about the fact that the Stranger ends up having a romance with a crazy woman who spends her days trapped behind a locked door?

Or how about the fact that the Stranger finds himself in the middle of a power struggle between the townspeople and the flamboyantly homosexual Zorro (played, in grandly villainous fashion, by Roberto Camardiel) who rides into town with a gang of cowboys who are all dressed in black outfits with white embroidery? In another one of the film’s infamous scenes, Zorro and his cowboys kidnap and gang rape the son of the town’s saloonkeeper.

(A young Ray Lovelock, who would go on to be one of the best actors to regularly work in Italian exploitation plays the son.)

Or how about the scene where Zorro plays with a bunch of Civil War figures while arguing with his pet parrot? When Zorro offers the parrot a drink, the parrot replies, “I want more!”

Or, how about the fact that the Stranger, at one point, has to deal with several vampire bats while literally hanging from a cross?

Graphically violent and full of bizarre and disturbing imagery, Django Kill is one of the strangest westerns ever made and that strangeness keeps the film interesting even when the story doesn’t make much sense. While Django Kill may not be the masterpiece that several claim it to (the film runs on a bit long and the dubbing of the English language version was absolutely terrible), it’s still one of the most compulsively watchable films that I’ve ever seen. Just when you think the film can’t get any stranger, it does.

Django Kill was filmed under the title of If You Live, Shoot! However, in a move typical of Italian cinema, the film was retitled to take advantage of the popularity of Sergio Corbucci’s Django. The implication, of course, is that Tomas Milian is playing the same character here that Franco Nero played in Corbucci’s film. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Even in the crudely dubbed English version of the film, Milian is never referred to by name. Instead, he’s simply known as the Stranger and, appropriately enough, the film feels more like a surreal take on Sergio Leone’s Dollar trilogy as opposed to being a part of the Django series.

That said, regardless of whether it’s a legitimate Django film or not, Django Kill …. If You Live, Shoot! is more than worth watching. In fact, it’s essential for anyone who loves Italian exploitation films.

The SPM Trilogy Revisited : “Slumber Party Massacre II”

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

By 1987, I’m not sure that anyone was expecting Roger Corman to trot out a sequel to The Slumber Party Massacre. Sure, the movie had gained something of a cult following thanks to the VHS rental market (it did rather middling business at the box office upon its initial release), but it had been a few years and since most “slasher” sequels at the time tended to pop up within a year or two of the first flick (heck, that’s pretty much still the case), I think it’s pretty safe to say that the general feeling at the time was that SPM was a one-and-done deal.

We all should have known better, or course. When you’ve got an ultra-simple premise that can be filmed cheaply and quickly using just a couple of different locations, and the original turned a profit (however modest), then there’s no way Corman’s not gonna go back to that well at some point. And so it came to pass that, five years on from its progenitor, Slumber Party Massacre II saw the light of day.

Needless to say, times had changed in the half-decade between the two films. While not strictly a straight-to-video release since Corman was still pulling together limited theatrical runs for all his product at the time (mostly in the Southern California area), those were really just a clevver way to essentially pull “focus group” test audiences together (and have them pay for the privilege of being guinea pigs rather than vice-versa!) to make sure the end result more or less had the effect on folks that it was supposed to. Pretty much all the action for the second Slumber Party Massacre was going to be on home video, and ol’ Roger knew it — hence a smaller cast, fewer sets, and, I’m willing to bet, probably an even smaller budget (at least in terms of adjusted-for-inflation dollars). Heck, this thing even clocks in with a slightly shorter run time than its predecessor, if you can believe that, at a paltry 75 minutes!

One thing about the SPM modus operandi that Corman didn’t change, though, was hiring a young, relatively fresh-outta-film-school woman to direct the thing, his hire in those case being one Deborah Brock, who also wrote the script.

To Brock’s credit, she tried to do something a little bit different — and, dare I say, maybe even a little bit more ambitious — than the average low-budget, essentially-DTV slasher sequel allows for with this movie. To her discredit, what she tried doesn’t exactly work. To wit:

Our story here centers around a young gal named Courtney (Crystal Bernard, who would go on to star on the long-running TV sitcom Wings), who just so happens to be the younger sister of the “final girl” from the first Slumber Party Massacre flick. Courtney fronts an all-girl rock band (gotta vary it up from the high school basketball team premise at least a little bit) that’s headed to a rental condo for weekend of fun n’ semi-naked games with their boyfriends. There’s just one problem, though — she’s also been suffering from horribly vivid nightmares involving things like refrigerated whole chickens coming to life and her friend’s acne boiling, pulsating, throbbing, and eventually exploding all over the place. The one constant in all of these bad dreams, though, is an unnamed “devil rocker” (he’s referred to in the credits only as the “Driller Killer” and is played by Atanas Ilitch, who looks more than just a bit like a young Andrew Dice Clay) who terrorizes Courtney and her gal pals with a murderously-retrofitted guitar that’s equipped with a long, uber- phallic (again) power-drill for a neck.

Needless to say, once the weekend revelries get going, things don’t go quite as planned, and Courtney, her fellow girl-group rockers, and their fellas are soon experiencing a very violent reduction in their numbers at the hands of the “driller killer,” who turns out to be very real indeed.

Or is he? And that, my friends, is the crux of Slumber Party II‘s problem in a nutshell (besides the fact that the “real” killings don’t start taking place until just after the halfway point of the flick). At first, the whole “is this the real life, is this just fantasy?” (sorry, Freddie!) gimmick is kinda neat, but it definitely starts to wear on the average viewer’s nerves after awhile, and Brock’s decision not to delineate in much of any way what’s actual from what isn’t ultimately makes for kind of a confusing experience. Still, you figure that in a genre this (for the most part) cut-and-dried, things are bound to make sense by the end, right?

Well, not so fast. Brock throws us not one, not two, but three rapid-fire concluding twists that never end up leaving us with a satisfactory explanation as to whether or not the events we’ve just witnessed “really” happened or not. When we finally learn that Courtney’s locked up in a loony bin, three distinct possibilities emerge — either it was all a dream-within-a-dream in her disturbed mind, or she killed all her friends and this “driller killer” is some alternate persona she’s created in order to absolve herself of any guilt, or it all actually happened, she survived, and the ordeal drove her over the brink. And when the “driller killer” pops up again right before the credits roll, this time in the sanitarium with Courtney, Brock doesn’t in the least bit clue us in as to whether he’s there in the flesh or only in her erstwhile heroine’s admittedly traumatized psyche.

Some folks might find this lack of anything even resembling a concrete resolution interesting, maybe even a bit exciting. Hell, we all like to think for ourselves, right? Unfortunately, Courtney and her cohorts are such a largely uninteresting lot that most of us can’t really be bothered to care all that much about solving this film’s wanna-be-mind-fucking puzzle. And the “driller killer” himself is so OTT, and stripped of any pretense of motivation for his murder n’ mayhem, that he never seems “real” enough to make the purported “mystery” all that involving. The whole thing rings both flat and hollow to this wannabe-critic, at the very least.

Like the other pics in this soon-to-be-concluded little mini-round-up we’re doing here, Slumber Party Massacre II is available on a two-DVD set from Shout! Factory entitled, appropriately enough, “The Slumber Party Massacre Collection,” which is part of their larger “Roger Corman’s Cult Classics” series. It’s sporting a nicely-remastered widescreen transfer, has good 2.0 stereo sound, and there are extras aplenty including a fairly comprehensive little “making-of” featurette, a full-length commentary from writer/director Brock, a poster and still image gallery, the original theatrical trailer, some trailers for other flicks in this series, and a liner notes booklet by SPM historian Jason Paul Collum. While I may not consider this a great movie by any means, this is certainly a great DVD package.

Still, ya know what? Flaws n’ all, I’d still go so far as to say that the film itself is at least worth a look. I do admire Brock for her willingness to break the mold and think outside of the usual slasher box. Her intentions for this flick strike me as being pretty solid, and as almost-innovative as her budget would allow for — she just fails in her execution. And let’s face it — a slasher movie that can’t execute properly is saddled with a problem it can never overcome.