Review: Evilspeak (dir. by Eric Weston)

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I first came across Evilspeak a few months ago when I was browsing through the selection of used DVDs at the Movie Trading Company in Plano, Texas. Why did I feel so compelled to buy this movie that I had previously never heard of? Of course, a lot of it was due to the fact that Evilspeak was a horror movie. I have to admit that the vagueness of the title intrigued me. I’ve long been planning on writing the ultimate slasher film and giving it the similarly vague title of Deathurge. It also helped that the Evilspeak DVD was released by Anchor Bay and that it only cost $1.99.

A few nights ago, I sat down and watched Evilspeak for the first time. It turned out to be, in many ways, typical of the horror films that were released in the early 80s. (Evilspeak came out in 1981.) However, thanks to a strong lead performance from Clint Howard and a few surprisingly dark touches on the part of director Eric Weston, Evilspeak turns out to be an oddly compelling little horror film.

Evilspeak opens with a lengthy prologue in which we see a Satanist named Esteban beheaded, along with several of his followers, by the Spanish Inquisition. Jump forward several hundred years to a soccer game being played by teams representing two separate military academies. The players are all typical jocks except for one pudgy, awkward fellow named Stanley Coopersmith (played by a very young Clint Howard). Coopersmith manages to lose the game for his team. The team’s angry response establishes that 1) this is not the 1st game that Coopersmith has lost and 2) all of his teammates are apparently psychotic. His fellow players complain to their coach about Coopersmith’s lack of ability. The coach replies that school policy requires that Coopersmith be allowed to play but if Coopersmith were to suffer some sort of injury (hint, hint) then they wouldn’t have to worry about school policy. Seriously, has anything good ever come from soccer?

In many ways, Stanley Coopersmith might seem typical of the horror movie pariahs who always seem to end up asking Satan to kill their peers. However, there are a few things that set Stanley apart.

First of all, he has one of the best last names in film history. Coopersmith. Just say it five times straight and see if it doesn’t get stuck in your head. I’ve known plenty of Coopers and more than a few Smiths but I’ve never known a Coopersmith. At first, I thought that maybe Stanley had one of those really cool hyphenated names and I was instantly jealous. I’ve always wished my mom had done that when she got married so I could introduce myself as “Lisa Marie Marchi-Bowman.” Of course, it’s probably for the best that she didn’t because if she had, I would have become obsessed with finding a mate with a hyphenated last name of his own just to see how long I could eventually make my last name. But I digress. Even though the film clearly establishes that there is not hyphen in Coopersmith, it’s still a great name. When Stanley’s classmates insist on calling him “Cooperdick,” it just makes them all the more loathsome because not only are the insulting Stanley but they’re failing to recognize the beauty of a good name.

The other thing that sets Stanley apart from other movie outcasts is that he actually looks like an outcast. He’s not a teen idol wearing a bad wig and prop glasses. This is largely because Stanley Coopersmith is played by Clint Howard (as opposed to Ron Howard). Pudgy with visible acne and a somewhat whiny voice, Clint Howard transforms Stanley Coopersmith into every kid that you ever felt sorry for but never dared to befriend. Watching the movie, you feel sorry for Stanley but you never quite like him. You’re on his side because every other character in the movie appears to be subhuman.

The film follows Stanley as he is continually attacked and humiliated by basically everyone else in the entire movie. Now, as someone who did time at more than one Catholic school, I have personally experienced the fact that private schools really are a world of their own. That said, however, Evilspeak’s military academy appears to be less a school and more some sort of elaborate and sadistic sociological experiment. Seriously, is there anyone at this school who isn’t obsessed with tormenting Stanley? (Actually, Stanley does have one friend but he’s kinda useless.)

Of course, one of the school’s problems might be that it has apparently been built on land that was once owned by — you guessed it — Esteban! As the film opens, Coopersmith has found himself assigned to clean up the school’s chapel as part of a “punishment detail.” While doing this, Coopersmith happens to stumble upon Esteban’s tomb and, in that tomb, he finds a lot of candles, what appears to be a fetus in a jar, and a black book that happens to have a Satanic symbol on the cover. Intrigued, Coopersmith steals the book despite the fact that it’s written in Latin.

Luckily, this school has a computer! Admittedly, Evilspeak came out four years before I was born so perhaps I’m not capable of understanding what the world was like in the early 80s. Still, I’m always amazed to see the awe that computers were apparently regarded with back then. Apparently, at the time, a personal computer was the ultimate elite status symbol. All one needed to rule the world apparently was one bulky computer. Fortunately, Coopersmith doesn’t want to rule the world. He just wants to read his book. He does this by typing the latin phrases into the computer and magically getting an English translation in response. Thanks to his magic computer, Coopersmith discovers that the book was written by Esteban and that Esteban worshipped Satan.

Coopersmith, of course, is amazed to discover this but we, the viewers are not. After all, we’ve already sat through the entire prologue. Unfortunately, it takes Coopersmith almost the entire movie to catch up to where we are from the beginning. Fortunately, Clint Howard gives a good enough performance to keep the movie vaguely interesting even when it starts to drag.

Fortunately, after Coopersmith gets his translation, the action starts to pick up a bit. For one thing, the book is stolen by the headmaster’s secretary (who, in an amusingly odd moment, smiles to herself as she listens to the headmaster paddling Coopersmith in his office). For another thing, Coopersmith decides to get back at his enemies by conducting a black mass. He does this by turning on his computer (which has now somehow been moved down to the tomb) and asking what he needs for a black mass. Naturally enough, the computer tells him because it’s a computer and it knows everything.

But before Coopersmith can perform his black mass, he still has to be humiliated a few hundred more times by his classmates. He also has to deal with a drunk janitor (played by R.G. Armstrong). On top of that, he adopts a puppy. Unfortunately, since Coopersmith is the school outcast, that also means that the puppy is fair game too. After one night of heavy drinking, Coopersmith’s classmates (led by a kid named Bubba, so you know he’s evil) find his hideaway in the tomb and, for reasons that don’t quite make sense, they sacrifice his puppy.

(At this point, I was wondering if maybe it would turn out that the military academy was actually an insane asylum. I mean, seriously — on which level of Hell is this place located?)

Meanwhile, you remember that sadistic secretary that stole Coopersmith’s book? Well, for whatever reason, she is obsessed with trying to pry that Satanic symbol off the cover. Unfortunately, since she’s the only prominent female in an early 80s horror movie, this can only mean that she’s destined to meet a bloody end while taking a shower. Which, in this movie’s best known scene, is exactly what happens. However, she doesn’t meet her end at the hands of a knife-wielding psycho. Instead, she’s attacked and ripped to pieces by a bunch of rampaging pigs. And yes, the whole thing is faintly ludicrous and yes, the low-budget gore effects are undeniably crude, but it’s still an undeniably effective sequence. Perhaps its due to the fact that pigs, in general, are filthy. Don’t even get me started on pigs. However, it must also be admitted that, though his direction is often time uninspired, Eric Weston shows an undeniable talent for capturing chaos. I am not ashamed to admit that I had pig-related nightmares after seeing this movie.

Following the death of the secretary, the book mysteriously reappears in Esteban’s tomb. Coopersmith finds it the next morning along with the corpse of his puppy. Obviously, this is all it takes for Coopersmith (with the help of his computer) to carry out his black mass and to finally take his revenge.

Of course, the whole point of a Nerd-With-Powers movie is the finale where that nerd takes vengeance on his tormentors. If this scene is pulled off with even the slightest amount of panache, it can make up for almost everything that’s come before it. The prom inferno from Carrie pretty much set the standard by which all others are judged. Personally, it’s hard for me to think of any movie that could improve on the final house party massacre in The Rage: Carrie 2. After all, how can you top a blinded Rachel Blanchard accidentally shooting the oldest Home Improvement kid in the balls with a spear gun?

Evilspeak doesn’t quite reach those heights in its finale but it’s still pretty effective. If nothing else, the sight of Clint Howard wielding a sword while flying above his tormentors is a lot more effective than you might think. Over the next few minutes, spikes are drilled into foreheads, heads are chopped off, hearts are ripped out of chests, and those pigs show up again. The gore effects here are undeniably crude but oddly effective. This sequence (along with the previous pig shower attack) actually inspired a few nightmares the night after I saw Evilspeak.

In the end, Evilspeak is an odd little movie. While the plot should be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a horror film, there’s a real nastiness at the core of Evilspeak that distinguishes it from other genre offerings that came out during the same period. At times, Evilspeak almost feels like an Italian film which is probably why I found it to be so oddly compelling.

The Evilspeak DVD features a commentary track featuring both Clint Howard and the film’s director. I always feel some trepidation before listening to a commentary track. Too often, the track turns out to just be some jerk explaining how he financed the film for two hours while commenting not at all on the action on-screen. (For the most part, if a commentary track features any anecdote that begins with, “We had the same lawyer…” you know you’re in trouble.) However, the Evilspeak track is surprisingly enjoyable. Clint Howard comes across as a surprisingly likable, levelheaded guy and its interesting to contrast his odd wholesomeness with the action onscreen.

In the end, Evilspeak may be a piece of junk but it’s an enjoyable piece of junk.

A Second Review of The Losers (dir. by Sylvain White)

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Usually, I’m not a big fan of action movies. If you see me in the audience of an action movie, it means that I’m either 1) on a date with a guy who really doesn’t care if I’m bored out of my skull, 2) the movie is actually a film with action as opposed to an action film, or 3) there’s absolutely nothing else playing. It was because of that third reason that yesterday afternoon, I could be found at the Regal Keystone, watching The Losers.

Surprisingly enough, however, I ended up enjoying The Losers.

Why?

Six words: Idris Elba, Jason Patric, and teddy bear.

Idris Elba. Oh God, where to start? I think Idris Elba may be one of the best actors working today. If you’ve seen him in The Wire then you’ve seen him as an intimidator. (And, admit it, The Wire was never as good after Stringer Bell got killed.) If you’ve seen him on The Office than you know that Elba can also be unexpectedly funny. In the Losers, Elba gets to be both scary and funny at the same time. (And incredibly sexy though I doubt that’s going to be a big selling point for this film’s target audience.) Idris Elba manages to look convincing while both blowing things up and, during one of the film’s many postmodern moments, commenting, “Wow, this is sleazy.”

Elba plays Rocque, the second-in-command of a paramilitary group known as the Losers. Much like the A-Team and the Expendables (both of which will be coming along later this year), the Losers are betrayed by their government and wrong declared dead. They — a glowering Elba included — find themselves stranded in Bolivia where they pass the time working in a doll factory, betting on cockfights, and plotting vengeance against Max.

Who is Max? This question is at the center of The Losers and it’s never really answered (perhaps it will be in the sequel). It’s insinuated throughout the film that he’s involved with the CIA, that he’s a terrorist, or that he’s just a patriotic businessman. Of course, the answer is that Max is actually Jason Patric (a.k.a. the son of Father Damien Karras).

I have to admit that, in the past, Patric has never really impressed me much as an actor. In the past, he’s always seemed a bit stiff and humorless. Patric plays Max as a man who is not only a comic book villain but who is totally aware of it as well. You can tell that Max is having a lot of fun being evil and that Patric is having fun playing evil. Patric’s over-the-top but compelling villainy let’s the audience know that this movie has no pretensions beyond entertainment. It makes both Patric and the film enjoyable to watch.

And this leads us to the teddy bear.

At the start of the movie, the Losers are rescuing a bunch of children who are being held hostage by some random bad guy in Bolivia. As they load the thankful children into a waiting helicopter, an angelic little boy attempts to hand over his teddy bear as a thank you gift.

“No,” Col. Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) replies, “you keep it. It will bring you luck.”

The angelic child smiles and clutching his teddy bear, he goes into the helicopter. The helicopter then lifts up into the air and promptly explodes. As the Losers stare at the burning wreckage, the camera zooms in on the only thing that apparently wasn’t incinerated in the explosion.

Yes, it’s the teddy bear.

And as soon as I saw that, I knew that the Losers was going to work. I soon as I saw that teddy bear, I knew that this was a film that felt no shame at being a work of pure pulp fiction. In this age when every studio film is trying to feel independent and when most filmmakers would be too self-consciously hip to actually do something as shameless as show that little bear among the wreckage, the Losers went for it. The Losers said, “We don’t care if it’s an obvious move and thoroughly illogical for a teddy bear to survive — with just a few burns — an explosion that so totally incinerated 25 people that not a single body part is seen among the wreckage. We’re showing the damn bear!”

That’s when the Losers won me over.

A few more random thoughts on The Losers:

1) As Arleigh pointed out in his review, one of the film’s biggest strengths is the chemistry of the Losers themselves. As opposed to most ensemble action films, all of the Losers are given clearly definable personalities, all of them are given something important to do, and most importantly, you believe that these guys would actually choose to hang out together. When one of the Losers is eventually revealed to be a traitor, you feel the entire group’s shock and pain. This adds an extra layer to the film that, for whatever reason, I suspect we won’t be seeing with The A-Team.

2) The Losers is yet another film that demonstrates the importance of not only walking in slow motion but having something to throw to the side while doing so. It just looks incredibly cool on-screen though people tend to get annoyed when you attempt to do the same thing in real life.

3) Throughout the movie, we are continually told that The Losers are waging war on the CIA and the American establishment in general. The audience I was with loved this. Once again, this validates my theory that the best reflection of the times can usually be found in contemporary pulp.

4) Zoe Saldana is in this film too as a mysterious woman who helps the Losers track down Max. In the style of Carrie-Ann Moss and the Girl with the dragon tattoo, she gets a chance to kick a lot of ass and I have to admit that I found this so inspiring that, once I got home, I stripped down to my undies, stood in front of my bedroom mirror, and attempted to execute a few flying kicks of my own. The lesson I learned from this is that I’m not Zoe Saldana. That and, regardless of how soft the carpet is, it still hurts when you end up falling flat on your ass.

In the end, The Loser is the perfect definition of stupid fun. I’ll take stupidly fun over funny stupidity any day.

10 Reasons Why I Hated Avatar

Posted on April 21, 2010 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(The opinions in this review are mine and mine alone. They reflect the feelings of Lisa Marie Bowman and not the feelings of any other editor on this site. To prove that the opinions below are solely mine, check out this very positive review of Avatar that was posted on this very site last December.)

In case you didn’t already know this from my previous reviews, I’m going to confess something here. I hated Avatar. It was probably my least favorite film of 2009. How much did I hate Avatar? Well, I didn’t care much for The Hurt Locker either but I still cheered when it won best picture because it meant that Avatar didn’t.

Most of my friends and family loved Avatar and, I’m proud to say, that none of them have allowed our difference of opinion to effect our relationship. Indeed, most Avatar fans have been very tolerant of my dissenting views. However, there’s always an exception. From the 1st time I ever openly admitted to disliking Avatar, I have had to deal with a small but vocal group of people who not only disagree but apparently feel that I’ve committed a crime against humanity. So, why bring it up now? Because on Thursday, Avatar is going to be released on DVD and Blu-ray. In honor of that event, here are 10 reason why I personally hated Avatar.

1) Ironically enough, most people who love Avatar will probably agree with the majority of my criticisms. They’ll argue that yes, the story is predictable and yes, James Cameron is heavy-handed as both a writer and a director but none of that matters because of all the brilliant visual effects. They’ll argue that Cameron made a whole different world, Pandora, come to life. To a certain extent, they’re right. Cameron does manage to make Pandora believable and wow, Pandora certainly turns out to be a boring planet. Seriously, does that jungle cover the entire freaking planet? However, regardless of my personal feelings about Pandora, James Cameron is hardly the 1st director to make an alien world believable. Peter Jackson did it with his Lord of the Rings trilogy and the same can, arguably, be said of the Narnia films. Even earlier, Mario Bava did it with Planet of the Vampires and he did it with a lot less money. Of course, none of these films were in 3-D but so what? Just because the mundane appears to be inches in front of your nose doesn’t make it any less mundane.

2) Speaking of mundane, wouldn’t you be let down if, when you first met the members of a totally alien race, they all turned out to be a bunch of movie stereotypes? The Na’vi appear to have developed their entire culture as the result of a steady diet of Hollywood westerns, New Age self-help books, and some 16 year-old’s half-assed understanding of what it means to be a Pagan. I remember when I first saw Avatar, it was impossible for me not to compare it unfavorably with District 9, a film that addressed many of the same themes and issues as Avatar but did it with a much lower budget and a much more intelligent script. This was especially evident when one compares Avatar’s Na’vi with District 9’s prawns. While the prawns were believable as both individual characters and as representatives of a totally alien race, the Na’vi are essentially the reflections of James Cameron’s sophomoric noble savage fantasies.

3) District 9 wasn’t the only great science fiction film to come out in 2009. There was also Moon, which featured a great performance by Sam Rockwell and excellent direction from Duncan Jones. When /Film asked Jones for his opinion of Avatar, Jones replied, “…at which point in the film did you have any doubt what was going to happen next?” It’s a good question.

In all honesty, I’m a horror girl. I haven’t seen much science fiction and therefore, I’m not as well acquainted with the genre’s clichés as I am with horror. However, I can still say that, at no point, did anything that happened in Avatar take me by surprise.

Of course, some of my favorite movies were (and are) very predictable. Georges Polti argued that there were really only 36 basic plots available to use in fiction so its understandable that you’re going to come across the same one used several times. However, a predictable plot can be forgiven if maybe that plot features at least a few interesting characters or maybe an occasional unexpected line of dialogue. Avatar, however, can’t even manage this. Our hero is an impulsive man of action. The villains are all evil because … well, they just are. In the manner of most oppressed races in American film, the Na’vi are noble savages who require a white guy to come save them. The only lines of dialogue that I remember are the ones that made me roll my eyes. I’m talking about stuff like a bunch of 22nd century marines being greeted with “You’re not in Kansas anymore.” Well, that and “I see you,” which was apparently included in the script so that it could serve as the title of a syrupy theme song.

4) Strangely enough, even though the movie took absolutely no narrative risks, it was still full of plot holes and things that just didn’t make much sense.

For instance, why does Quaritich promise to give Jake back his legs (“your real ones”)? I mean, does Quaritich have them sitting in a freezer somewhere?

As part of his deal with Quaritich, Jake agrees to make videos about the Na’vi. Oddly enough, it appears that he’s still making the videos even after he turns against Quaritich and you have to wonder exactly why. Also, Jake records many of these videos in an isolated, apparently one-room outpost occupied by him and two other scientists yet the scientists are later shocked and outraged when told that Jake was making the videos. Okay, what did they think he was doing all that time? Were they just not listening to what he was saying?

What exactly was the backstory of Sigourney Weaver’s character and when exactly did she join Sully in the Na’vi camp? And why were the Na’vi willing to let her into their tribe when they would only grudgingly accepted Sully even after the Goddess selected him? I mean, if Weaver already had such a great relationship with the Na’vi, it seems like she could have saved a lot of time by just taking Sully straight to them. (Editor’s Note: According to the comments below, this issue actually was addressed in the film. — LMB)

Sully, after the final battle, decides to stay on Pandora and he might as well since the Tree of Souls (good God!) transferred his soul into his Na’vi body. But what’s in it for Max and Norm? We seem them at the end (though really, Norm should be dead) standing there pointing guns at all the humans that are leaving. Norm, at least, could still probably hang out in his avatar but what about Max? Why is Max, who has had nothing to do with Na’vi, so quick to join the revolution?

I’m sure a lot of this is because scenes were edited out and I know that Cameron has a reputation for reinserting those scenes once his movies come out on DVD and blu-ray. Well, more power to him.

5) The film suffers from a really bad case of the white man’s burden disease. This is another one of those films where a caucasian character befriends an oppressed minority and, with remarkably little dissent, manages to appoint himself as the leader of that minority. It’s a fantasy, one in which members of the bourgeoisie (like James Cameron) can live out their childhood fantasies of being outlaws without having to worry about (unlike actual “outlaws,”) being punished for taking their stand.

Once again, it’s hard not to compare Avatar with District 9. Both of them feature lead characters who are transformed into aliens. The difference is that, with the exception of one brief scene, Jake Sully accomplishes the transformation rather easily and quickly becomes the best Na’vi there is while in District 9, poor Sharlto Copley is terrified by the process and, even though it does lead to him understanding the prawns (and ironically, learning how to show a little humanity), the movie never pretends that Copley isn’t losing his own individuality in the process of transforming.

6) The lead character is named Jake Sully. Did James Cameron get frustrated and just use a Random Generic Movie Hero Name Generator to come up with that? I wonder if Nick Sully was Cameron’s 2nd choice. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with either name. It’s just that it feels so generic. Of course, the leader character is going to be named Jake and, of course, he’s not going to be an intellectual and, of course, Sigourney Weaver’s going to spend the whole movie making sarcastic comments about how stupid he is. Speaking of which…

7) Sigourney plays Dr. Grace Augustine. Her character and her performance are typical of a rather annoying Hollywood tradition, that of portraying any “strong” female as a total and complete bitch. If you want the audience to know they’re supposed to take a woman seriously, have that woman spend the entire movie pissed off about something, as if the only way a woman can be strong is by sacrificing anything that might make her unique. Now, there’s a lot I could say about why, from a cultural perspective, American movies often seem to be so conflicted about how to portray any woman who is neither an Eve nor a Lillith. But in the case of Avatar, its hard not to feel that it comes down to screenwriter Cameron’s inability to make any of his characters interesting unless something nearby is exploding.

8 ) And while we’re on the subject of misunderstood women…okay, let’s say you discover a planet and this planet is a lush, beautiful paradise. Why the Hell would you then call it Pandora? Yes, I understand that newly discovered planets are usually named after mythological figures. But there’s still usually some sort of vague logic behind the names. For instance, Mars was named after the God of War because of its red hue. Venus was often considered to be the most beautiful star in the sky. Mercury has the fastest orbit. Jupiter’s the biggest planet. Pluto (before it got downgraded) was considered the darkest and coldest of the planets. Pandora, however, was the woman who opened up the jar that released everything terrible, evil, and destructive into the world. Why would anyone name a planet after her? It’s possible, of course, that all the good names were taken. Of course, it’s also possible that this is just another example of how thuddingly obvious Avatar is in its symbolism and subtext.

9) Speaking of obvious, what about the villain played by Stephen Lang? More specifically, what about that accent? It’s true that Cameron doesn’t exactly encourage his villains to be subtle. Just check out Billy Zane in Titanic. Zane, however, at least appeared to be having a little fun at his director’s expense. He, alone among the cast, seemed to realize that Titanic was a silly melodrama and so he gave something of a silly performance. It’s no great secret that it’s often more important to have a good villain than to have a good hero. A good villain usually has some sort of motivation beyond just being the villain. This is something that Cameron has never seemed to be able to grasp. Whenever I see a military figure show up in a James Cameron movie, I get the same feeling that I get whenever a preacher shows up in a Stephen King novel. Automatically I know that they’re going to turn out to be evil and I find myself dreading having to even waste the time with the “shocking” discovery of that evil.

10) Perhaps most importantly, this is a movie that wants to preach peace but celebrate war. Avatar contains all the trendy environmental messages that you’d expect from a Hollywood film but — even though director Cameron seems to be in a state of denial about it — the film’s heart is with its villanous soldiers. Much as how Titanic, for all the rhetoric about the passengers in third class, was really only interested in portraying the lives (and deaths) of those in first class, Avatar spends a lot of time talking about trees but is much more interested in blowing them up with the destruction of the Home Tree serving as the money shot.

To be honest, I don’t mind a little hypocrisy when it comes to movies. Most exploitation films celebrate hypocrisy. The filmmakers knew it and, for the most part, the audiences knew it. The fact that a movie like Child Bride could be advertised as “an important movie every parent must see!” became something of a shared joke between the filmmaker and his audience. Rather than being hypocritical, the exploitation filmmaker is simply inviting his audience to join in a conspiracy against the forces of dullness.

Unfortunately, Avatar is not an exploitation film. If Avatar was simply a B-movie, none of the my previous complaints would matter. They would add to the film’s rogue charm. Avatar, however, is too expensive to be considered an exploitation film. And James Cameron, as he proved when he went ballistic over Kenneth Turan’s negative review of Titanic and as he has continued to prove with his recent comments regarding global warming, does not have the sensibility of a B-movie maker. Arguably, he once did. This is a man who, after all, did the special effects for Galaxy of Terror and made his directorial debut with Piranha II. The Terminator was a great B-movie, right down to the accusations of plagiarism from Harlan Ellison. However, as he’s become the most financially succesful director in history, Cameron has lost that B-movie sensibility.

In other words, James Cameron takes himself seriously now and that, ultimately, is the main reason I hated Avatar. It just takes itself too damn seriously.

Yes, I’ve read quite a few favorable reviews that have argued that Avatar‘s sole purpose is to entertain and that people like me who occasionally expect unique characters and an interesting story should just lie back and enjoy it. I’ve seen the term “popcorn epic” used in quite a few reviews.

I’m sorry but I’m not buying it. If Avatar was truly setting out to be a “popcorn epic,” than I’d be a lot more willing to cut it some slack. However, when the script contains lines about how on Earth, humans have “destroyed all the green,” and when the villains are accused of launching a “shock and awe” campaign, it’s ludicrous to then argue that Avatar isn’t setting itself up to be judged by a higher standard.

It becomes hard to escape the fact that Cameron, regardless of how well he handles the special effects, has essentially made a stupid movie about deep issues.

As I said before, the majority of the people I know love Avatar. I don’t hold it against them or think any less of them because, ultimately, movies are a subjective experience. Whether or not a movie is good has less to do with the actual movie and more to do with the person watching it.

It would be nice to have the same courtesy extended to me . Since I first revealed my opinion of Avatar on a non-Avatar related message board, I have found myself frequently attacked by little fanboys who apparently cannot handle the fact that one human being didn’t enjoy Avatar. I’ve been told that, as a female, I can’t be expected to understand Avatar. I’ve been accused of being “unimaginative,” “a snob,” “a bitch,” and my personal favorite “the type of cunt who cried at the end of the Blind Side.”

I realize the risk I’m taking by openly admitting my dislike of Avatar but then again, movies are supposed to inspire conversation and not just pavlovian agreement. So, in conclusion, I’ll just admit that yes, I am female and yes, I did cry at the end of The Blind Side, and yes, I hated Avatar.

Review: Rats: Night of Terror (dir. by Bruno Mattei)

Posted on April 15, 2010 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Can one scene make an otherwise thoroughly useless movie worth seeing?

That’s the question that I’m pondering right now as I attempt to write this review of 1984‘s Rats: Night of Terror.

Rats: Night of Terror opens in the 23rd century. As the result of a nuclear war, Earth has been transformed into a barbaric wasteland. While the majority of humankind has retreated underground, small bands of scavengers occasionally get dressed up like a New Order tribute band before coming to the surface and driving around on their motorcycles. The movie follows one group of survivors as they scavenge for food, come across a deserted ghost town, and eventually end up getting attacked by hundreds of rats.

For the most part, that’s the movie. None of the characters are all that memorable and the so-called rats appear to be bored. For the most part, the film wouldn’t even be worth reviewing except for the Scene. After 90 minutes of languid mayhem, Rats: Night of Terror comes up with one scene that manages to be odd, brilliant, and numbingly stupid all at the same time. The Scene simply has to be seen to be believed.

Director Bruno Mattei often said that Rats: Night of Terror was his personal favorite out of the countless number of exploitation films that he directed. While it’s generally agreed that Mattei was responsible for making some of the worst films in history, I’ve always had a sneaky admiration for him. It’s hard not to love someone who defies the odds while pursuing his dream. Mattei’s dream was to make movies and he never let a thing like budget or talent to stand in his way. While Mattei is best known for taking over the direction of Zombi 3 after Lucio Fulci walked off the set, he was a prolific director who dabbled in every genre. Rats: Night of Terror is his contribution to the post-apocalyptic genre.

For a brief period in the 1980s, Italian exploitation filmmakers moved away from cannibals, gialli, and zombies and instead concentrated on making movies about post-apocalyptic bikers. For the most part, I’ve never been a huge fan of these Italian versions of The Road. There’s an overwhelming blandness to them. If the underlying goal of Italian exploitation cinema was to make movies that could pass for American studio productions, then the postapocalyptic genre is the closest the Italians came to accomplishing that goal. As opposed to the zombie films or the gialli, the only thing that was obviously Italian about the majority of these films was George Eastman.

Rats: Night of Terror, strangely enough, does not feature George Eastman. What it does feature is a lot of gerbils. We’re continually told, throughout the movie, that these gerbils are actually rats but no, they’re gerbils and they’re pretty obviously not only gerbils but cute gerbils too!

I’m sure I’m not the only person out there who has a strong phobia of rats. I can still remember when I was 12 years old and visiting my grandad’s farm in Arkansas. I was exploring an old barn with my older sister, Erin. The barn, which already smelled like death, was also full of hay and, within a few minutes of stepping inside, I stared to have trouble breathing. I stepped outside, used my inhaler, and leaned up against the barn’s wall. As I caught my breath, I heard a very distinct squeaking coming from inside the wall. I jumped away from the wall, spun around, and realized that I had been resting my head against a small hole. Staring contemptuously at me from inside that hole was a really ticked-off looking rat. No matter how many times I washed my hair that day (and, believe me, I washed and rewashed it a lot), I could not stop imagining the feeling of germ-ridden rodents running across the back of my head.

Ever since that day, whenever I’ve seen a rat in a movie (or, God forbid, real life), I’ve remembered that feeling and it still makes me shudder. It’s a reminder that, in the end, we’re all going to end being devoured by the same scavengers.

On the other hand, whenever I see a gerbil, I’m reminded of that episode of South Park where Mr. Garrison, attempting to get fired, makes Mr. Slave his new teaching assistant.

And whenever I see Rats: Night of Terror, I’m reminded of the Pandemic episodes of South Park because the gerbils in this film appear to be about as naturally aggressive as a bunch of guinea pigs dressed up like pirates.

Yes, Rats: Night of Terror has a lot going against it. The characters are boring, the rats are gerbils, and the director is Bruno Mattei. It would be easy to dismiss this film if not for the Scene. Oh, how I wish I could tell you something about the Scene without giving the whole thing away. I wish there was some way I could safely expand on just how weird and silly and oddly wonderful the Scene is.

Tell you what. My e-mail address is LisaMarieBowman@live.com. Or you can talk to me on twitter where I’m @LisaMarieBowman. If you’ve seen this movie or if you see the movie after reading this review, contact me and tell me what you thought when you saw the Scene. Seriously, it’s something that has to be discussed.

If you haven’t seen the film, I’ll give you a clue about the Scene. It happens at the end of the movie. It makes absolutely no sense and it is so extremely odd that it actually makes you wonder if maybe the entire film was meant to be somehow satiric. What’s especially odd is that most viewers usually guess what the Scene is going to be halfway through the film before then thinking, “No, no way. There’s no way that’s going to happen.”

So, to a return to the original question, can one scene make an entire film worth seeing?

In the case of Rats: Night of Terror, the answer is yes.

Review: Night of The Hunted (dir. by Jean Rollin)

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When, at that age of 22, I first saw Jean Rollin’s Night of the Hunted, I cried as much as the first time I saw Titanic at the age of 12. In both cases, the tears were inspired by a “doomed” love story. The main difference between the two films is that I don’t cry over Titanic anymore. But Night of Hunted still brings me to tears every time I see it.

The film opens with the image of a terrified young woman (Brigitte Lahaie) running through a dark forest until she eventually reaches a highway. She’s picked up by a young man (Vincent Gardere) who, being a guy, proceeds to take her back to his apartment in Paris. She confesses that she can’t remember who she is, why she was running, or even being picked up by the young man in the first place. Saying that she needs some sort of memory to fill the emptiness, she proceeds to make love to Gardere. Gardere, being a guy, doesn’t object.

However, he does make the mistake of later leaving Lahaie alone in the apartment afterwards. As soon as Gardere leaves, Lahaie forgets ever meeting him and why she’s even in the apartment in the first place. Even as she tries to figure out what’s going on, the apartment is visited by a doctor who tells Lahaie that she is his patient and that she needs to go with him to a “clinic” where he can treat her. No longer remembering her encounter with Gardere, Lahaie agrees.

Needless to say, the “clinic” turns out to be what Lahie was so desperately trying to escape just a few hours before. We learn that Lahie is merely one of several hundred people who, months earlier, were exposed to a biological warfare experiment gone wrong. Now, as a result, her brain is slowly dying one cell at a time. The clinic is actually a government-run prison where she and her fellow victims have been sent to be forgotten about and to eventually die. Lahie finds herself surrounded by men and women who, as they slowly lose everything that made them unique, revert back to their most primal instincts. While Gardere tries to find her, Lahie struggles to survive just one final night in both the clinic and in the prison of her own fading mind.

Director Jean Rollin is best known for his sexually-themed vampire films but the Night of the Hunted is not as huge a departure for him as it may first seem. One of Rollin’s reoccurring themes is the importance of our memories, no matter how idealized they may sometimes be and this theme is present in every frame of Night of the Hunted.

The lead role is played by Rollin’s frequent muse and collaborator, Brigitte Lahaie. Because the majority of Lahaie’s career has been spent making adult films, she’s never gotten the due she deserves as an actress. Playing a difficult role here, Lahaie is the movie’s greatest strength. She brings a real sincerity and empathy to her role and its impossible to imagine this movie working without her. If nothing else, this movie is a wonderful display of Lahaie’s often underrated talent.

Rollin made the film for very little money and used a cast made up almost entirely of nonprofessionals and French adult film veterans. So, yes the film does sometimes have a grainy look and the editing is definitely jagged. When the characters shoot at each other, it is obvious that they’re firing toy cap guns. To me, however, this works in the film’s favor. The raw quality of the film perfectly mirrors that constant fear and confusion that Lahaie and her fellow prisoners live in. No, the film is not technically perfect but a flawed masterpiece is preferable to uninspired technical perfection any day.

Despite working with a miniscule budget, Rollin captures some haunting images in this film. Never has Paris looked as desolate as in this movie. One of Rollin’s trademarks has always been his own fascination with architecture and, as a result, the cold skyscraper where Lahaie is held prisoner almost becomes a character itself. I’ve always considered Jean Rollin to be horror cinema’s equivalent to Jean-Luc Godard and, with its images of a sterile city run by passionless autocrats, Night of the Hunted brings to mind Godard’s Alphaville.

The film’s most haunting image comes at the end and it is this image that brings tears to my eyes every time. Whatever flaws the film may have, Night of the Hunted has one of the best final shots in the history of cinema. Even if everything preceeding it had been worthless, this movie would be worth sitting through just for the stark beauty of the final shot. Night of the Hunted ends on a note that manages to be darkly sad and inspiringly romantic at the same time. It’s an ending that makes Night of the Hunted one of the most romantic films of all time.

Night of the Hunted was released in 1980 and, like the majority of Rollin’s films, was never released in the States. Redemption, however, has released it on DVD (which is how I first saw it in 2008.) While the transfer is undeniably rough, that actually gives the movie a documentary-like quality that works in its favor. The film is in French with English subtitles. As is so often the case with subtitles, a lot of the film’s nuance is sacrificed in translation. Fortunately, the combination of Rollin’s visual sense and Lahaie’s lead performance more than makes up for it.

Review: Conan the Barbarian Soundtrack (composed by Basil Poledouris)

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Arleigh

In 1982, maverick director John Milius wrote and directed a sword-and-sorcery epic based on Robert E. Howard’s pulp hero, Conan the Cimmerian. While Milius made several changes to the original character and his adventures to create a more accessible fantasy experience, Conan the Barbarian became a tremendous success and ushered in the Age of Schwarzenegger. With his charismatic leading man and a script filled with action and exotic locales, Milius now needed someone to compose a score worthy of the film’s mythic scale. His ultimate choice—composer Basil Poledouris—proved inspired.

Poledouris took an unconventional approach to scoring Conan the Barbarian. Rather than merely providing musical background to accompany scenes, he treated the score like an opera. Drawing from the influence of Richard Wagner and Carl Orff—particularly Orff’s Carmina Burana, which heavily inspired tracks like “Riddle of Steel/Riders of Doom” and “Battle of the Mounds”—Poledouris crafted a composition that could stand on its own as an operatic masterpiece. His use of leitmotifs to introduce and define characters echoed Wagner’s Ring Cycle. In “Riddle of Steel/Riders of Doom”, the intertwining themes of Conan and his nemesis Thulsa Doom are marked by pounding drums, crashing brass, and triumphant horns—a motif that returns with heightened intensity in “Battle of the Mounds.”

Another brilliant motif appears in the film’s introspective section—a more lyrical, meditative theme where Poledouris trades the martial power of drums and brass for a lighter, more emotional palette. This motif runs through a trio of tracks: “Theology/Civilization”, “The Wifeing”, and “The Leaving/The Search.” The first is a playful and airy piece that transitions seamlessly into the intimate and mournful middle section, culminating in a final movement that fuses both moods, reflecting Conan’s inner struggle and resolution in his quest for vengeance.

Other tracks contribute distinct emotional and narrative textures. “Gift of Fury” begins as a slow dirge following the destruction of Conan’s village, then swells to a dramatic crescendo that marks the end of his innocence and his descent into bondage. “The Kitchen/The Orgy” stands out for its complex duality—starting with Doom’s militaristic motif before morphing into a sensuous, decadent, and subtly discordant theme that embodies his contrasting nature: both disciplined and depraved. This piece showcases Poledouris’ deep understanding of the film’s characters and the psychological layers behind their actions.

Poledouris’ final score perfectly complements the film’s imagery and narrative while enhancing its dramatic weight. Even separated from the visuals, the symphonic and choral elements tell the story vividly—listeners can follow the emotional arc using only the liner notes. As a standalone work, it functions like a grand symphony; merged with Milius’ visuals, it achieves something transcendent.

Conan the Barbarian not only launched Arnold Schwarzenegger’s star power but also proved that sword-and-sorcery epics could be cinematic art. Milius’ decision to entrust Poledouris with the score would influence film composers for decades, demonstrating that a film’s music need not be a mere afterthought. To this day, Poledouris’ score remains his magnum opus and a benchmark for fantasy film music. Its influence can be heard as recently as Howard Shore’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, where Shore applied Poledouris’ Wagnerian leitmotif approach to weave his own operatic storytelling through music. Conan the Barbarian endures as a masterful collaboration between director and composer—a timeless work that will continue resonating long after its creators have passed into legend.

Below are videos of the only live concert conducted by Basil Poledouris of the Conan the Barbarian symphonic score.