Pumpkinhead - 1988
see link for writing team credits
Directed by Stan Winston
On the subject of anger and vengeance, Buddha said, "Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at another; you are the one who gets burned." In a genre (and let's face it; a society) that so often takes vengeance as a given, even a virtue, Pumpkinhead is a film that seems to embrace this lesson from Buddha. In creating an object lesson on this theme, it throws some curveballs at us that stymie common genre expectations, but ultimately leads to an atypically poignant conclusion.
The other thing that Pumpkinhead embraces is kick-ass monster craft. The film was directed by Stan Winston, who is best known as the legendary make-up and animatronic effects wizard involved in The Terminator, Aliens, Predator and much, much more. As such, the titular beastie, Pumpkinhead is bizarre and menacing, and goes through an evolution that demonstrates the film's thematic core.
Once upon a time in the Appalachian hills just north of Los Angeles, a widowed and taciturn farmer (Lance Henriksen) lives with his sensitive and quick-witted son. Early scenes establish the affection between them, so you just know it's going to end poorly for at least one of them. Meanwhile, we're introduced to a group of young people on their way out to a weekend of dirt bikes and doin' it at a mountain cabin, and because they're young people headed into the woods, you just know that it's going to end poorly for several-if-not-all of them, but especially the greasy dickweasel drinking and driving the Trans Am.
Our ill-fated parties come into contact at the ramshackle general store plopped next to a ribbon of California concrete. Through an awkward convolution, our farmer and general store operator, Ed Harley, leaves his beloved son at the store while he runs home to pick up some feed for the grandpappy of the dirt-caked hillbilly family. Two of the young people decide they can't wait five more minutes to get to their cabin (despite covering the last 50 miles in about 20 seconds) and break out the dirt bikes for some totally radical shenanigans, dude.
Engines rev. Dog bolts. Boy chases. Bikes jump. One misses. One doesn't. Billy is down.
This scene is key. Where most horror films would make all the young city folk crass and indifferent to justify what's coming later, here they make a genuine (if inadequate) effort to get help. They try to help him. They run into the store, but there's no phone to be found (nor indeed any outward indication that the roadside shack is connected to any utility services). Eventually they leave one friend with Billy to wait for help after the previously mentioned dickweasel who hit him splits from the scene because he already has a DUII on his record. At the cabin, they even try to call emergency services, but dickweasel rips the cord out of the wall and locks his friend in the closet. What's so "key" about this is that most of the young people are trying to help. Only the DUII greaseball is demonstrably evil, and possibly his weak, enabling girlfriend.
Finally, Ed gets back and finds his son, battered but still alive. The young person who stuck around tries to explain that it was an accident, receiving only a hateful glare from Ed in response. Rather than attempting to get help for his boy, Ed simply takes him home, as is standard behavior for horror movies. The boy expires and Ed is awash in sorrow and rage.
So he bundles up the boy and puts him in his truck and sets out to find the witch woman of local legend to get satisfaction one way or another... like you do.
In a crumbling shack deep in the swamp (you know, that swamp up on Black Ridge), Ed finds the witch woman who sends him to a lost cemetery to dig something up, and the ritual is performed. The something rises, and a commitment has been made to the path of vengeance.
What follows should be a fairly rote elimination of young people, and to a large extent that does happen, but then something else happens. With each death, Ed feels pain, and quickly comes to realize that he is hurting people who don't deserve to die, as well as hurting himself. He tries to get the witch woman to take it back, but that's really not how witches work, now is it? He has literally unleashed the beast, and it won't stop until it's done.
Along the way, the son from the hillbilly family gets involved (it was he who told Ed where to find the witch) and like Ed, tries to save the remaining young people out of remorse for his role in summoning the Pumpkinhead demon.
With each death, Ed feels more pain and becomes more savage. He eventually realizes that Pumpkinhead feels his pain, and another encounter with the demon demonstrates that it is transforming into him, and he into it. The solution, at this point, is pretty obvious, especially for a man who has little left to live for.
The incident is over, but the legend lives on through this tragedy, and the groundwork for a franchise has been laid. If you hadn't heard of Pumpkinhead before, you will be even more surprised to learn that there have indeed been a series of films made with the monster.
So, is it good? Well, as discussed, its twists on standard fare both make it an odd watch, yet provide some of its most satisfying considerations. It doesn't simply glory in setting up "good guys" and "bad guys." Ed is absolutely our protagonist (rather than the traditional vacationing young folk), and he is given a powerful cause for his pain and anger, but the way he reacts is a mistake that hurts innocents as well as himself. The young people are generally more thoughtful and caring than the typical slasher meat. Yeah, one is a complete and absolute colostomy sack in belted 80s jeans who arguably "deserved" what he got, by horror movie standards. His girlfriend was an accessory and his brother was simply irresponsible, but the other 3 were essentially innocent, and they didn't all survive. Okay, the witch is definitely going to Hell and she knows it, but she didn't really do anything that Ed didn't ask for and she did try to warn him.
That's vengeance for you. It's really pretty easy to justify doing wrong things when motivated by anger, but that doesn't make them not wrong things.
Stan Winston was definitely a better monster maker than he was a director. He clearly learned a thing or two from James Cameron about the use of black and blue palette, and stuck with it. The acting ranges from Henriksen-reliable to it's-a-good-thing-they're-pretty, but let's face it, that's not what we're here for. The monster parts are cool, and THAT is what we're here for. Pumpkinhead is kind of an odd design, but hey, he's a demon. How do I know they're not weird creatures with crazy-ass shoulder bones? The witch's swamp shack and the graveyard full of pumpkins were particularly well-designed and creepily beautiful set-pieces. In the end, it's an uneven but satisfying monster movie with a little something unexpected; a soul.
There are two key things to know about Tales from the Crypt presents: Demon Knight. One is that it is pretty much an extended episode of Tales from the Crypt, the 1989-1996 TV series based on the premise of the EC horror comics from the 50s. The other is that it's not like an episode of the TV show, because it's an R-rated movie. So, on the one hand, we get the same winkingly humorous approach to the self-aware monster tale and the pun-ishingly corny framing sequences with The Cryptkeeper, and on the other hand we get a few gratuitous boob shots, more intense violence and a higher caliber of practical creature effects (no CGI for us, baby!).
Once The Cryptkeeper is done with the introductory formalities, the tale opens on a car chase that ends with a ridiculously over-sized explosion. Our chaser is Billy Zane; that charming bald guy from lots of things. Our chasee, William Sadler; that really serious guy from lots of things. Oh yeah, Demon Knight is SO 90s; managing to work in Thomas Hayden Church (from Wings), Charles Fleischer (from Roger Rabbit), CCH Pounder (from everything) and Jada Pinkett (from marrying Will Smith). Even John Larroquette (Night Court) makes a cameo appearance.
So we've got our chase dynamic and just enough mystery to get things rolling. Brayker (Sadler) staggers away from the wreck looking for another car, or failing that, a place to lay low. This ends up being the only hotel in a tiny town, which seems an exceedingly obvious choice for someone trying to lay low, but whatever; the $#!+'s gotta go down somewhere, right? Meanwhile, Zane's character passes himself off to the police as some kind of apparent bounty hunter, despite offering neither credentials nor a name. He wants what Brayker has, and clearly will stop at nothing to get it.
Thus, the hotel becomes the primary setting for their conflict to play out. Along the way, other fairly inconsequential subplots are established, but they serve to create character dynamics for the rest of the cast. It's thin stuff and reliant on stock archetypes, but between you and me, it's a lot more than a lot of other horror movies bother to do (see yesterday's blargicle on Don't Blink). In a fairly well-broadcast switcheroo, it turns out that Brayker is our more-or-less "good guy" and Zane's "Collector" is a demon sent to steal an artifact of holy power from his keeping. Naturally, all Hell breaks loose.
The story offers few surprises and no scares whatsoever, but it's actually a pretty fun time. Key to one's enjoyment is an appreciation for ooky, goopy monsters and over-the-top action. As it happens, I have that appreciation. For example, the primary means of killing most demons is to shoot them in the eye. It's my theory that this plot point came about solely because the effects crew had a cool, splattery effect so they just went with what worked.
Demon Knight reminded me most of the Tarantino/Rodriguez joint From Dusk 'Til Dawn, which actually came out a year later. Now, Demon Knight didn't have the budget or talent that From Dusk 'Til Dawn had, but it shares a similar sense of self-indulgent fun surrounding a small group defending themselves against a diabolical onslaught.
Billy Zane is the real standout here, infusing The Collector with swagger and menacing cool. The film would have benefited from more of his character.
I can't really fault Demon Knight for being less than a triple-A movie when it so clearly embraces its B-movie identity. Yes, it's goofy. Yes, the characters are thin. Yes, it's full of plot holes and questionable choices, but those would only get in the way of the movie being exactly what it set out to be.
I do have one bitter little complaint, but it applies directly to the final conflict, and thus constitutes a MAJOR spoiler. Therefore, if you're starting to think you might like to check out Demon Knight (and if you've read this far and have at all thought that it sounded like your kind of thing, you really should), please skip the next paragraph for now.
SPOILER!
In the final confrontation between The Collector and Jeryline, when she sips from the Key and he attempts to seduce her, it seemed SO OBVIOUS that she would kiss him and spit the blood down his throat. This, in fact, would have been freaking awesome. So when she finally ends up simply spitting it on his face, which she had plenty of opportunities to do during his soliloquizing, it was just a little bit of a disappointment -- alleviated somewhat by his dramatic meltdown. I almost feel like they had planned for a kiss, but being the super AIDS-conscious mid-90s, ended up opting for a more toned-down attack than the sensual swapping of bodily fluids. I have no evidence to support this, and it may simply have been the missed opportunity of a team writing a franchise entry rather than uniquely expressed vision. Ah, sigh...
IT'S OKAY, YOU CAN COME BACK NOW.
All that being said, I enjoyed Demon Knight, but I wasn't blown away by it. The story was simple but satisfying. The performances were not particularly naturalistic, but that wasn't the kind of movie this was. In fact, Sadler gave the most restrained performance, and he was actually a tad dull. Zane nibbled a little scenery, but he really shone. Jada Pinkett got to play a little range and was much less hammy than a lot of her other performances (last week's Gotham premiere comes to mind).
The effects are definitely the product of another era, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's all rubber suits and KY Jelly, but it's my personal opinion that those merely enhance the sense of fun. For example, the original Evil Dead films were so obvious in the effects, yet they were mad hot fun. The recent re-moot (re-make/re-boot/moot point) was off-puttingly realistic, dour.and joyless. Demon Knight definitely strikes much closer to original Evil Dead territory.
There you have it. If you're planning a fun kind of horror movie night, consider making it a Demon Knight.
This is a grouping that could, just as easily include the Tarantino/Rodriguez joint, From Dusk 'til Dawn. It has monsters in Mexico, Americans in trouble over their heads, and what the hell, an ancient pyramid. So do these films, except unlike From Dusk 'Til Dawn, which I now consider a modern classic, you're much less likely to have heard of either of these, and that's where I step in. I am, after all, here to help.
The Ruins - 2008
Written by Scott B Smith
Directed by Carter Smith
The Ruins is, in many ways, a fairly typical horror movie. Take a group of not-particularly-likeable college students on vacation and kill them off in an isolated location. What makes it a little scarier and a little more interesting than that formula usually is are a few little twists and variationsalong the way.
Things start out not-very-promisingly, with two college couples vacationing in a fairly secure and homogenized Mexican resort. I've never been able to figure out whether horror movies deliberately make these characters unpleasant so that we won't care when they start getting killed off, or if they're simply trying to present members of their target viewing demographic in an identifiable way, and it's merely high school and college-aged human beings that suck in a more general sense. Nevertheless, we get to meet them and learn that they're spoiled and arrogant. They meet Matthias, a German traveler who's less frivolous, but no more charismatic. He's planning to join his brother at an archaeological dig at a previously unknown pyramid in the jungle and invites them to get away from the resort and see something real. And thus our stage is set, although, frankly, not very intriguingly so far.
The next day (after some interpersonal drama), their little group has to overpay a driver to take them anywhere near the site, then hike the rest of the way in. They find a pyramid covered with vines, and no apparent sign of Matthias' brother and associates. The moment they approach the pyramid, they're surrounded by a group of natives, waving guns and arrows, and shouting at them in their tribal tongue, so their intentions are difficult to ascertain under the circumstances, but clearly all is not what it appears. Misunderstandings go from bad to worse, and someone ends up getting shot. The vacationers retreat up the pyramid, where the natives are unable, or unwilling to follow.
So, obviously there is something about the pyramid that scares the natives, and we have a group of young people who are destined to get killed off one by one. We, as film-goers, have been here before. But it's in the how that things get interesting, but that's also where the secrets are. It's ordinarily my practice to spoil movies as little as possible. Unfortunately, with The Ruins, to explain what's good about it requires me to spoil that a little bit, so this is your fair warning; skip the rest of the article if you don't want spoilers.
Atop the pyramid, our group of imperiled white kids find signs that Matthias' brother and team have been there, but disappeared, and probably in a hurry. Deep inside a shaft in the pyramid, they can hear the occasional ringing of a cell phone, despite the fact that none of the rest of them have been able to get service. What becomes evident to us long before it becomes obvious to the characters is what kind of threat the pyramid contains.
Going into the movie, I had no idea what the menace was, and I feared that it might be a giant snake. It's not a giant snake. It's not an alligator. It's not a cult or a mummy or a ghost, although up until their descent into the pyramid, it could have been almost anything. What it is, instead, is the vines themselves. They're aggressive, but most terrifyingly, they act as a contagion, getting into human bodies and growing rapidly beneath the skin. This gives The Ruins its most disturbing element, because it's not a matter of vines jumping out and simply strangling their victims, but infecting them, and leaving the humans living in terror and desperately struggling to find a way out of their grisly fate. It's far more gruesome to try to extract a vine growing under your friend's skin -- or your own -- than to merely be strangled by one. That's where The Ruins becomes something cleverer than it initially represented itself to be. If the writer had actually bothered to flesh out his plot and characters more deeply, this could have been a truly great horror movie rather than merely a surprisingly decent one.
There now, I didn't spoil as much as I thought I'd have to. So, The Ruins doesn't have good characters. That may not matter in ways, because you get to look forward to them dying. However, if they had been better characters, the horror of what they go through would be even harder hitting. The story isn't remotely original (vacationing young people get picked off), and while that might be semi-unavoidable given the conventions of the genre, a little bit of cleverness could have gone a long way here. Why did they have to be vacuous college kids (other than that also being the film's key demographic)? Why not the initial archeological team, or urban Mexicans enjoying their own country, or missionaries, or smugglers, or Hondurans emigrating to America, or, or OR...? The fact is, they could have come up with a hundred different back stories (and yes, I know the real reason they're all pretty young white people) for their leads, but instead they offered us an effortless reprise of what we've seen over and over already. Perhaps I'm being too hard on them here, given that The Ruins came out before The Cabin in the Woods, which did a pretty good job of stripping down the "5 isolated young people get killed" horror movie trope. What The Ruins did RIGHT, however, was the fear, the desperation, the skin-crawling dread and the deeply unnerving viscera, and for that, it definitely deserves a nod, because after all, it IS a horror movie.
Monsters - 2010
Written & Directed by Gareth Edwards
Monsters is a small story set against a big backdrop.
The backdrop is pure sci-fi, in which a meteor has fallen to Earth, giving rise to a plague of giant monsters (think massive glowing octopods that can walk on land) throughout northern Mexico. Due to this "infection," the United States has bombed the area heavily, and built a "border fence" that would be the stuff of conservatives' wettest dreams.
The small story is about a photojournalist in Central America trying to get some money shots of the monsters and otherwise chronicling this crazy new chapter of the human experience. His rich and powerful publisher obliges him to get the publisher's bleeding heart, do-gooder daughter home to America. We follow them through the difficulties of bureaucracy and the unregulated marketplace as they attempt to make their way home past the Infected Zone, discovering new truths about life in a war zone, the nature of monsters, themselves and each other.
Like Cloverfield, Monsters attempts to focus on the human side of a giant monster situation. However, unlike Cloverfield, it doesn't devolve into a jump-scare exercise in killing off cast members. What we get instead is the experience of two people, who initially start out with a bad impressions, getting to know each other and developing the beginnings of credible feelings for the other. In many ways, it bears a closer resemblance to old fashioned romance movies than, say, Godzilla. That shouldn't be a turn-off, however, if it's something a little bigger that you're looking for. There's still plenty of tension and high adventure at work here. They still have to survive the dangers of the Infected Zone and the American borderlands beyond The Wall.
I realize that I'm being kind of non-specific about the things that they go through, and I'll be honest with you, the story is pretty uncomplicated. As I understand it, the story was outlined, and the scenes themselves are heavily improvised. This really puts the moments of humanity in the spotlight, with all the fear and danger feeding those moments, rather than being fed by them per our ordinary expectations for a monster movie.
Speaking of other giant monster movies, writer & director Gareth Edwards was hired off of Monsters to direct 2014's revival of Godzilla, with two-hundred times the budget. In addition to writing and directing Monsters, Edwards also served as his own Director of Photography, Production Designer and Visual Effects artist, using a store bought laptop and retail effects software. Well, the film is gorgeous, and the effects are used sparingly, in service to the narrative. Adolescent cases looking for mass destruction are going to feel betrayed by Monsters. Then they're going to get angry and better when they realize that Monsters is better than them. But that's not you, is it? You, my friend, appreciate a thoughtful tale of humanity and the beauty of well-photographed wilds and ruination with a high-concept wrinkle that both evokes and eschews obvious allegory. For all the grand scale of its premise, perhaps the biggest surprise of Monsters is what a well-made and beautifully small film that it is.
The American President. He (or she, just hang on) is committed to protecting the nation from all enemies foreign, domestic or supernatural, right? We are assured that the Pentagon has considered plans for a Zombie Apocalypse, but if the movies are to be believed (and why wouldn't they be?) this is not the first time that the President has had to deal with the Undead Un-American Activities. Many of our greatest presidents have faced down some of our most classic monsters already, and they did not shirk their responsibilities.
What with the internet being the hotbed for "This + That" nerdistry and wannamemes that it is, there are as many spawns of this idea as a hot bed is wont to bring forth, especially with zombies. There is zombie every-damn-thing on the internet. Go on, think of a word, add zombie to it and Google. Yup, there it is. Zombie Pool, both billiards and swimming. Zombie Ice Cream. Zombie Pope. As such, I'm not addressing every damn variation on this theme, but simply hitting some of the bigger cinematic moments in American Presidents versus Classic Monsters. Fanfic (and there's puh-lenty) need not apply.
I was surprised to discover that this was a June release, because it has the key ingredients of a May movie; specifically traditional monsters, a forgettable story, B-list effects and double cheese. That's not to say that it's bad, mind you. I often have more fun with May movies than I do with, say, the July ones. They're frequently more fun, and AL:VH is certainly that.
The film doesn't so much posit an alternate timeline as a secret history. Lincoln, in his youth, had a run in with some pretty vicious vampires, which led him to a night job as a slayer of the undead while he pursued his legal and political career by day. He trains with a mentor hunter in the finer points of axe-handling, which you just know is gonna end poorly for the mentor yet motivationally for Honest Abe. This comes in handy, since there is a much larger vampire threat with endangers the future of American freedom... or something.
The movie makes more than a token effort to fit the vampires in around the events of Lincoln's life. Sure, whenever you shake a tree like this, four score and seven history nerds fall out to tell why nuh-uh, but for a movie that tell you in its title that it gives not one shit about such fussbudgets, it's more faithful than it needs to be.
The action is slick and cool. Lincoln is a reluctant badass, much as history holds him to be... plus, you know, the axe. Lincoln wields it like a kung fu artist and it provides a unique visual profile to what might otherwise have been some pretty rote violence. The not-terribly-memorable villain is played by an Englishman, because ALL the villains are played by Englishmen nowadays. The narrative takes itself seriously internally, but it is fully aware that you won't.
Really, the weakest thing about it is that I've seen it twice and I still don't remember the full core story. I think that's probably because it was pulled along more by the chronology of Lincoln's life (lives being less tightly structured than stories) rather than by A-to-B narrative tropes.
It's good mindless fun that won't fill you up or weigh you down.
This movie has every excuse to be terrible, and there's certainly no denying the bargain basement production values, but despite all the obvious shortcomings, it's really rather funny thanks to its script and performers. I can only assume it was conceived as a low-budget satire on the idea of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, being released straight-to-video within months of the bigger-budgeted film. Where Lincoln takes itself remarkably seriously, FDR takes absolutely NOTHING seriously, and that is its trump card.
As a younger man, Franklin Roosevelt was good at everything and so beloved by everyone that his massive ego was merely another beloved characteristic. And then he was attacked by a werewolf, and werewolf bites cause polio, dontcha know? In a sight gag that will recur throughout the movie, FDR's legs are reduced to wildly quivering children's legs. That sets the "story" into motion, and establishes the level and premise for much of the movie's humor. As FDR, Barry "Brad" Bostwick is an over-the-top caricature of the manly man of bygone days. He drinks hard, he laughs hard at his own jokes, and he's predominantly concerned with how the polio will affect his "cack." After the werewolf attack, he's more determined than ever to become President.
Little does he know at the time, but the werewolf was a German agent. It seems that all the Axis powers are werewolves, and werewolves Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini chat with each other on the phone like teenage girls while making their plans for world conquest. Fortunately, FDR is a take-charge kind of leader, and takes point on the D-day invasion with his armored and machine gun-enabled wheelchair.
In case I've been too subtle, this is not a delicate comedy of manners. It's crude in as many ways as possible, but there's an ounce of brain under the hood of it all, as opposed to, say, just another Wayans movie. My personal favorite joke comes from a left-field cribbing of Bon Jovi lyrics in a campaign meeting FDR has with a struggling constituent. Some people will be put off by some of the humor which comes across as racist or sexist, but there are enough instances that expose enough awareness to suggest that what they are really mocking is not races and sexes, but racists and sexists.
For a movie that didn't need to accomplish much to attain "so bad it's good" low-low-budget and expectations status, it really seemed to me that FDR: American Badass! delivered more than it needed to, and much more cleverly than is likely to be appreciated.
Bruce Campbell is a sad old man in a nursing home. He drifts in and out of awareness, and isn't sure he cares. He also may or may not be Elvis.
Ossie Davis is his best friend in the nursing home. He also may or may not be JFK.
Together they become aware of an entity that haunts the nursing home by night, sucking the life energy out of the home's defenseless residents. He definitely IS an Egyptian mummy!
Jack and Elvis have to push themselves to their limits to confront the mummy and free the souls of their friends. While it takes the obvious guise of a monster movie, much of what makes Bubba Ho-Tep so good is the way it uses these recontextualized horror tropes to consider issues of age, ability and respect. The majority of monster movies are about impulsive young people who don't think about what they're doing. Jack and Elvis aren't like that. They don't run screaming like a bunch of ninnies. They face their enemy fully accepting that they will likely die. It's not about survival for them. They're past that point. It's about being useful, having value, and dedicating their lives to doing something with meaning. They continue to EARN respect, even if no one gives it to them anymore.
Must-see if you appreciate the way that Bruce Campbell can turn just about any line into something hilarious and cool. Easily one of the best mummy movies ever, which isn't really saying that much.
See also: JFK vs zombies in Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Yeah, you could just as easily put Independence Day in this slot, but Mars Attacks! is the better movie by far. They're essentially the same movie, but ID takes itself completely seriously, which makes it all the more ridiculous. Mars Attacks! however, is based on a fan favorite trading card series from the 1960s and takes very little seriously. ID wants you to care about the outcome. MA! gives you credit for already knowing that the human have to win in the end, so it doesn't really matter if it's a silly victory. That approach is woven throughout the movie. ID teases you with its aliens and insists that they're badass and scary even after it's been revealed that they're cheesy and dopey. MA!'s aliens fully embrace their anachronistic origins and simply play their required role. This all frees up MA! to be more creative and fun while essentially doing the same things.
It's an ensemble cast, and just happens to include Jack Nicholson in two roles, one of whom is the President. While one might initially question the judgment of casting Nicholson in two roles when he is always so clearly Nicholson, Mars Attacks! reminds you that it couldn't possibly matter. The film is full of recognizable faces and at no point does it matter if they embody the role with transcendent gravitas. It's more like an episode of the Love Boat. It's just fun to have them there because they're them, and them being them is a convenient shorthand to who they're playing. There's no extra exposition required, which again, frees up MA! to be the silly fun that it is.
Nicholson's President oozes with transparent people-pleasing charm. His triteness is summed up with the go-to refrain for late 20th century naivete, "Can't we all just... get along?" shortly before he learned the hard way that the Martians have not come all this way to... get along.
See also: President Colbert vs aliens in Monsters vs. Aliens
Death Race 2000 is one of that select class of 70s exploitation films that manages to have it both ways. It's a brutal satire that gets away with just being brutal if that's the way you watch it. The premise presages the like of The Running Man, The Hunger Games or CBS's Survivor, where a cross-country race in which hapless victims of automotive homicide are scored for points, all of this in a bread-and-circuses effort to distract from the corruption of the government. The racers are all over-the-top personalities a la Hanna Barbera's Wacky Races, professional fake wrestling or "Real" "Housewives."
Under the surface of all these goings-on there's the political machinations of the president, and the underground movement to overthrow him. One of the most successful racers, Frankenstein played by David Carradine, is sympathetic to the cause. He's seen and been the worst of the best and the best of the worst.
In the interest of full disclosure, Frankenstein is not a Frankenstein's monster. He's just a man who survived a disfiguring accident and earned the moniker for his appearance. Nevertheless, it was too golden an opportunity to round out the roster of classic monsters faced by presidents.
Death Race 2000 was a midnight movie classic that has now attained the status of just plain classic. The satire is still bitingly timely, which says a whole lot of bad things about the ground we've covered in the past 40 years.
Obama vs Zombie image from the internet, no rights or credit claimed
Including this kind of makes me want to kick my own ass, but now that I'm aware of it, my sense of fairness demands that I include it.
Monster High is a series of toys from Mattel, with webisodes, TV specials, movies and video games that advertise, er, tell their story. If you haven't heard of it, it's probably because you're not a tween girl or a parent sentenced to raising one.
Oh yeah... the premise takes a bunch of anorexic teenage prostitutes with vacant gazes and dresses them in monster-themed fetish gear. So it's like everything bad about monster team-up cartoons, mashed up with the negative-sum standards of the kind of pre-teen girls whose terrible parents have taught them "shopping" as a value system.
A TV series about twenty-somethings sharing a house, who also happen to be a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf. Based on a British series of the same name. Why haven't I listed the British series? Simply to irritate the kind of people who complain about American things based on British things.
I haven't seen it yet, so I really have nothing more to add.
Monster Brawl- 2011
Written & Directed by Jesse Thomas Cook
Featuring: Frankenstein's monster, a mummy, a swamp monster, a werewolf, zombies, a cyclops, a witch and a vampire
Monster Brawl is forcing me to reassess the standards by which I have judged every other monster mash-up. As bad as many of the movies have been, Monster Brawl is starting to make them look a little better. Like Gingerdead Man vs Evil Bong, it's trying to cash in on that so-bad-its-good camp value, but unlike the original so-bad-they're good movies like Plan 9 from Outer Space, it just never tries to be good. It aims as low as it can aim while still getting out of bed, and it still fails. The premise is simple -- too simple. It takes 8 monsters and pits them against each other in 5 paired wrestling matches, and that is all. There is no story whatsoever. It's presented like televised pro-wrestling, and makes pro-wrestling look better in comparison. LOCAL pro-wrestling. Many of the performers are indeed wrestlers, including those in non-combatant roles. So, you know, you've got all those acting chops on display. The fights are uninspired. The entire thing lacks any sort of energy. To call the directing amateurish would be a slander upon amateurs. The word "amateur" implies that one does something for the love of it. Monster Brawl is directed as though Jesse Thomas Cook wants to make monsters look boring and wrestling look stupid. It's the only logical assumption given the finished product. Perhaps the saddest element of all is the primary non-wrestler participant; Kids in the Hall's Dave Foley doing a bored impression of Howard Cosell. Dave, you're better than this. I hope the money they didn't put on the screen is putting his kids through college or something. It would be the only positive thing to come out of this drooling tribute to brain death.
ParaNorman - 2012
Written by Chris Butler
Directed by Chris Butler & Sam Fell
Featuring: ghosts, a witch, the accursed dead
Norman is a kid with a fixation on zombies. His room is covered with them. He pores over old movies and even makes his own. It might seem a little excessive that he'd be so interested in the undead, except for the fact that Norman also sees ghosts; all around him, almost all the time. Now, for Norman's parents and pretty much everyone else that doesn't believe him, it seems disturbingly excessive, and Norman finds himself pretty isolated at school. What was already a difficult situation for him becomes even worse when a local loon takes a particular interest in him, insisting that he is responsible for keeping the town safe from a witch's curse.
While it's a little bit of a stretch to include ParaNorman as a Monster Mash-Up in the crossover sense, that's the nice thing about writing my own articles, I can include my favorite movies if I want to. ParaNorman is a love letter to horror movies in the way that Hotel Transylvania is a cross between fan-fic and a slam book. The ghosts, witch and not-exactly-zombies are all part of his world, and all part of a sensitive, mature and hilarious narrative for kids and grown-ups alike.
Read the whole article about ParaNorman (and Frankeweenie) here: Separated at Death?
The Cabin in the Woods - 2012
Written by Drew Goddard & Joss Whedon
Directed by Drew Goddard
Featuring: a little bit of everything
Five young people take a weekend trip to a... spa in Fresno -- no wait, that doesn't make sense ... oh right -- a cabin in the woods on an ill-fated trip as they have done since time immemorial (or at least the 70s -- young people have such bad memories). What's different about this outing is that it's aware of all those other doomed weekends, and it's aware that YOU'RE aware, and aware that you're aware that IT'S aware. So the first act plays along with the tropes, the second act bends them, and the third act goes meta and all Hell breaks loose. That's where ALL the monsters are hiding. If I'm being dodgy, it's because I just want you to see it for yourself.
Frankenweenie - 2012
see link for writing credits
Directed by Tim Burton
Featuring: Frankenstein's dog, Vampire cat, Were-rat, a Gamera-esque giant turtle & more
A kid named Victor Frankenstein loses his dog in an accident and decides to bring it back to life. He succeeds, and things go well for him for a while. Eventually, the kids from school find out and they all want their dead pets back too. This goes... less well, and the results are monstrous.
Frankenweenie was a cute enough film, but it felt to me like it was Tim Burton trying to do Tim Burton, and the whole thing went down a kind of Malkovich rabbit-hole of recycled self-reference. Obviously it stomps all over Hotel Transylvania like the box turtle turned Gamera, but it can't measure up to the extraordinary ParaNorman.
Underworld: Awakening - 2012
see link for writing team
Directed by Mans Marlind & Bjorn Stein
Featuring vampires, werewolves, and something new
Following Underworld's flashback episode in Rise of the Lycans, the series goes back to the future, skipping over most of the established mythos and jumping to a time where the vampires and lycans have been exposed to the world and are hunted by humans living in a virtual police state. Selene escapes from a science lab where she has been kept in hibernation while humans experimented on her. Once free, she tours the new world while keeping a step ahead of the various interests and agendas of which this new world is comprised. As it turns out, she has a daughter with her own blend of powers, and it's up to Selene to rescue her from those dirty, rotten scientists. The narrative is certainly more compelling than in Rise, and new ideas are injected, but it always seems limiting when a series jumps into the future. I suppose it's assumed that at 40, Beckinsale isn't going to be able to rock the skin-tight dominatrix gear indefinitely. Rumor is that a fifth film will start to shift the focus to Selene & Michael's daughter.
Monsters Anonymous - 2012
Song by Kevin Hearn
Hotel Transylvania - 2012
Written by Peter Baynham & Robert Smigel
Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky
Featuring: a little bit of everything
Curse my sense of fairness! I have bashed Hotel Transylvania in the past despite the fact that I hadn't seen it, simply because it had Adam Sandler playing the voice of Dracula (and lots of other castings that place celebrity over quality), and I was prepared to do the same again, but my nagging conscience talked me into giving it a chance just in case it wasn't as bad as I had assumed.
Stupid conscience.
To tell you the truth, it wasn't quite as bad as I feared, but in a year that saw THREE undead-themed animated features, it is definitely the one that should have been run out of town with pitchforks and torches. Adam Sandler is, indeed, as truly awful as I feared. In fact, since he and I are close in age, I have made a pledge to take better care of my health, simply so that I may one day live in a world that no longer has Adam Sandler in it. Unfortunately, he's in almost every scene of the movie, so even in the brief moments of respite, the Sandler Brand of stupidity pervades. Dracula is the same kind of a-hole that Sandler plays in all his films. He's a selfish, petty and manipulative liar (but still a "good" guy, really!), then "learns" a schmaltzy and hollow "lesson" (as a result of hurting others) which makes him feel bad, so it's totally okay and he promises he'll never be an a-hole again, this time. So that gets all over the story about a Dracula that's over-protective of his daughter and caught up in a snowball of lies. There's also a whole element of the story that hinges on the "zing" of love at first sight (which can never happen again), which is just stupidly wrong and irresponsible to be putting in a story that so strongly wears its intention to convey lessons to children. Worse yet, that "zing" element leads to a musical number with a rapping Dracula. Yeah, I said "rapping Dracula" in a 2012 movie. That's what we're dealing with here.
So, Sandler; bad. Story; stupid and full of lies. Jokes, barely approach humor, but at least there's a lot of them! Voice casting; terrrrrbile. Art & animation; ah, now here we have a truly mixed bag. The art is pretty basic CGI fare with everything looking like plastic. It's even lit like a sit-com rather than a monster classic, which just seems like a hugely wasted opportunity. The animation is energetic and fluid, however. If Pixar is the modern analogue to classic Disney, and most of the other studios are competing to be the Warner Brothers in the pack, then Hotel Transylvania is the MGM of the later 50s and 60s. It's uninspired slapstick with nothing much else to offer. It's a shame, really. Director Genndy Tartakovsky has been responsible for some truly clever & stylish projects in the past (Star Wars: Clone Wars, Samurai Jack, etc.) but it feels like this one got away from him thanks to producers (including Sandler) who know less about doing his job than he does. Perhaps I'm being unfair. Starting with a screenplay by guys behind Borat and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, I suppose there was only so much anyone could have done with it. Where a truly good movie for children and families (Pixar, Disney, Laika) will deal with universal themes that resonate for kids and adults alike, and pepper it with humor borne out of story and character, Hotel Transylvania is one of those that separates its audience, with the dumb stuff getting a pass because it's for kids (who are assumed to be at least as dumb) and winking/smirking gags thrown in for the adults who got dragged along.
Here's the part where I play fair. Kevin James as Frankenstein (Frankenstein's Monster, really, but you try and tell 'em) was not one of the worst things about the movie. Now, Ian McShane or Jonathan Banks would have been brilliant but I'm just working with what's here. He has a monologue about monsters toward the end which actually has some emotional content and he sells it. The character designs strike me as lazy, but they're not bad, per se. They're varied and graphical. There is a lot of fan service for monster buffs like myself. One of the biggest heartbreaks occurs during the credits, which use what appears to be concept art in the background The concept art is GORGEOUS and suggests the potential for a MUCH better movie, which was then strangled in its crib by jealous godparents.
Featuring: a gingerbread cookie possessed by the spirit of Gary Busey's teeth and a... an... evil bong
So, first of all, yes, these are things that actually exist and furthermore, each have 3 movies under their respective belts -- and then they crossed over. Gingerdead Man was once a serial killer who was electrocuted and cremated, and then his mother scattered his ashes in a wheat field, which I guess is how his spirit made it into a gingerbread cookie. Then the cookie started stabbing people. Meanwhile, some college kids ordered a bong on Ebay and it turned out to speak like a stereotypical "sassy black woman" and also, you know, evil. When people smoke from the Evil Bong (AKA "Eebee") they are sucked into "the Bong World" where their fantasies become real... and then try to kill them.
You want to know how I know all of this without having ever watched either series until the crossover? Because the crossover spends about half of its running time flashing back to all six of its predecessors. In fact, it spends so much time with exposition that it runs out of time to actually do anything. By the time both baddies are on the loose, the protagonists have to quickly smoke their way into the Bong World to escape the Gingerdead Man. He follows them in. Then someone tells them how to get out, and they get out. That's about it, discounting all the weird and unpleasant characters..
It's evident that GMvsEB is trying to tap that low-budget "so bad it's good" market, but it becomes so self-consciously bad that it ends up being so bad it's bad. Bad. SO bad. Even the gratuitous boobs are bad. It's not only an insult to pot heads, it's a slander upon low budget horror and even to monster mash-ups, which as we've just seen here, is a pretty low bar to slide under.
I, Frankenstein - 2014
Written & Directed by Stuart Beattie
from the Comic Book by Kevin Grevioux
I. Frankenstein doesn't ask much from us, but what it does ask is that we accept a few conceits that might seem silly. If we can accept these things, then everything is going to be just fine and the movie will throw a bunch of entertainment at our faces. If, for some reason, we decide that we're more interested in finding things to complain about, then the movie will hand us that instead.
The premise we're asked to accept is that Frankenstein's Monster lived. That shouldn't be too hard. We've been accepting that premise for more than 70 years now. Then, upon interring his creator's body in the family plot, the monster is attacked by demons intent on his capture. Okay, that's a new twist. Before you can take a deep breath and come to peace with this twist, there's another -- gargoyles swoop in and finish off the demons, then reveal themselves in human form. They are essentially angels in earthbound form, fighting the eternal battle in this mortal realm. Okay, that's a lot to take in. You thought this was going to be a Frankenstein movie, and much of it still is, but the machinery that makes it run relies heavily on this good gargoyles vs evil demons premise, and if you can't get with that, you're not going to experience the fun there is to be had.
See, I, Frankenstein comes from a lot of the same people behind the Underworld films, including being adapted from a comic book written by Kevin Grevioux who played a werewolf in at least two of them. That heritage shows. I,F bears many similarities to Underworld, with the eternal battle between two armies (neither of which is to be trusted) and a strange creation caught between them. All of this is terribly stylish, taking place during a seemingly endless night, with lots of moody posturing. Bill Nighy shows up to seethe and menace, thus completing the family resemblance.
As in the early Universal crossovers, Frankenstein's journal is central to the plot and the reckless pursuit of life beyond death. After going into hiding for 200 years, the monster, bearing the name Adam, has returned to the civilized world, taking the battle back to the demons who never stopped looking for him. This also brings him back to the attention of the gargoyles. Behind the scenes, the demons have been researching the science of reanimation, and the latest pawn in their employ is a supermodel-hot scientist (because movies). When Adam gets a look at their operation, he discovers racks and racks of dead bodies, just waiting to be reanimated. So the question becomes, what exactly is the plan with all those bodies, because that just can't be good, and how is Adam going to stop said plan with the armies of Heaven and Hell both riding his ass? The answer is a whole bunch of blazing action with frequent bouts of slo-mo.
Like many of the monster mash-ups, we can ask if it's silly or if it's fun, and the answer to both (as it often is) is yes. I am kind of getting the feeling that these producers would score a little more fan appreciation if they didn't take their silliness quite SO seriously.
Featuring: Vampires, Frankenstein's Monsters, Dorian Gray, demon possession and a Werewolf (so far!)
Penny Dreadful is faithful to its namesake inspiration, the penny dreadful pulp fiction leaflets of Victorian England, combining sex, horror and operatic melodrama. In concept, the series might bring images of Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to mind. It weaves characters and situations from various Gothic horrors together into a single narrative, but it does so in its own way. Specifically, we get pieces of Shelley's Frankenstein, Stoker's Dracula and Wilde's Dorian Gray, amongst other nods to the era.
The unifying narrative concerns the efforts of Mina Harker's father, Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton) and her childhood best friend, Vanessa (Eva Green) in their efforts to track her down and rescue her from the vampires who have captured her. Toward this end, they have enlisted the aid of a haunted but ambitious young doctor, Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) and a Buffalo Bill-wannabe sharpshooter from a wild west show, Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett). Each of the characters has their own plot-threads to sew, and they often snag upon Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney). It makes for a pretty full plate, and the producers don't appear to be in any rush to clean it, even going back to the buffet for extra helpings before they've finished what they have.
If things get overwrought, well, they're supposed to. If some of the sex seems gratuitous, it's part of the show, folks. Penny Dreadful makes no secret of its Grand Guignol roots. Quite the opposite, in fact, it brandishes them, making the Grand Guignol theater a major crossroads for story elements. Where Penny Dreadful could stand to learn a few things from the bloody melodramas, however, is in getting to the point. There is a tendency to draw things out much longer than is necessary. I get that this is a Showtime drama, and we're expecting a little more depth of character, but there were many places where redundancy and delayed revelations became irritating. A bottle episode just before the first season finale had me barking at the TV like a ginned-up groundling, and a major reveal in the finale had been fairly evident (to me, at least) since the first or second episode. At least I got to chuckle at the allusions along the way.
That's not a big complaint, mind you, but it's a noticeable source of annoyance. Obviously I wasn't too put-off, given that I binge watched the entire first season in one sitting. I'm sure to be back for more. I fully expect a mummy to turn up ere long
So what, if anything, have we learned?
Well, first I learned that watching a bunch of Frankenstein movies will give me really weird dreams. Then I learned that watching Godzilla movies for a week will make me want to roar at challenges when I get the upper hand.
But about the odd little library of The Monster Mash-Ups, I learned a few things too. I learned to be careful what we wish for; that a cool idea won't necessary lead to a cool reality unless you take the time, effort and creativity to make it good. I learned that entertainment products that poach public domain characters that others have made popular most often shows a fundamental misallocation of priorities. I learned just how little respect there is for the intelligence of children by Hollywood, and even worse, that there are a whole lot of parents who respect it even less, since they willingly throw their kids to these wolves. Sadder still, I learned that some people will get nostalgic over ANYTHING, no matter how bad, indicating a frightening lack of personal growth. I learned that the best way to pay homage to the things that one loved as a child is to respect them, but not to overly revere them, and the best results will come from building a new mythology of one's own that taps into what we loved, but repurposes it for the different world we live in now.
Like Dr Frankenstein making his monster, we can choose useful pieces of the past and stitch them together with care, or we can take a haphazard approach, throwing any old brain into the creature. A beast with a great heart can be a creation of horrible beauty, but one with a discount brain is just going to end badly for everyone.
Monsters and monster mash-ups really started to make a comeback in the 21st century. I believe that Buffy played a large role in this. It may not have been the most statistically successful show, but it was dramatically influential on the next generation of film & television writers, and particularly upon the geek arts fan base. Your traditionally male fantasy & sci-fi crowd dismissed it as girl stuff or wrote it off as lacking the grim-browed seriousness they demanded at the time, but in our post-broadcast digital media era where binge-viewing is becoming the norm, holders of the platinum geek card now know better than to underrate the power of the Whedonverse. I would go so far as to claim that the ever-deepening long-form narrative of Buffy and Angel made shows like Lost possible, and therefore much of what we expect from televised drama today.
Of course, it sure didn't hurt that the technology capable of bringing the fantastical to life was improving at an exponential rate. In a very short amount of time, we've seen the spawning of an environment where even the slightest flaw in the illusion triggers self-righteous nerd-rage, so one has to question what we've really gained.
A DiC Entertainment animated musical about monsters that aren't scary anymore (probably because of all the terrible cartoons made about them), based on the name of that song you hate.
Do I even need to say it? 'Cause I'm certainly not going to watch it.
Featuring: Godzilla, Baragon, Mothra & King Ghidorah
I've never been a hardcore Godzilla fan in the past. I didn't often seek them out but made a point to watch them when I stumbled across one here or there. So if you, like I, have been baffled by the continuity of the overarching Godzilla saga, that's because there really isn't one. Different eras have a certain loose connectivity, but overall, it just really hasn't mattered. In Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, that point is made somewhat clearer. It overlooks everything but the original 1954 movie, so when Godzilla rises again, he hasn't been seen in almost 50 years. The other monsters, Baragon, Mothra and King Ghidorah are all new, per this continuity. They're now legendary guardians of Japan, summoned from their ten thousand year slumber beneath all-but-forgotten shrines.
The effects are certainly updated, but not as much as you might think. I don't think there's any CGI here, or if there is, it's really just to add effects (atomic breath, etc.) to a more refined version of the same kind of effects that they used for, well, almost 50 years. The monsters are still sweaty dudes in rubber suits. There's less use of miniatures except where direct interaction is required. Instead, outdoor scenes are shot on location and edited together with the hot monster on monster action. It mostly works. The increased realism just makes things like Ghidorah's heads thrashing around, Baragon crawling on his knees and Mothra's slow, rigid wings stand out all the more starkly.
Also needing some updating is the writing and acting. Cornball nostalgia is one thing. Modern cornball is just cornball. I don't mean it to sound that bad. It's still a lot of fun and it does look pretty good most of the time. The fights are kind of brutal, with monsters sinking their teeth into each other and some definitive destruction. Also, because they're not beholden to any particular continuity, they don't cheap out on the conclusion. Giant Monsters All-Out Attack mostly lives up to its name.
Underworld - 2003
Written by Danny McBride (No, sadly, not that Danny McBride)
Directed by Len Wiseman
Featuring vampires, werewolves (lycans) and a hybrid vampire/lycan
Underworld pays homage to the classic movie monsters with an updated mythology and stylish execution. Kate Beckinsale is the perpetually leather-and-latex-clad vampire, Selene. It's her job to fight the werewolves (here known as "lycans" and not beholden to full moons) in the centuries-old war between the two species of night-dwellers. She stumbles onto a Lycan plot to create a hybrid vampire/werewolf, which throws the internal politics of both clans into chaos, especially when she falls in love with the hybrid and learns that all is not as she has been told in this clan rivalry. There are some pretty clever ideas at work here and the creators build a suitably re-imagined world for these warring factions to inhabit. The lycans are well designed, as is everything, and the action is as slick as the raindrops beading off Beckinsale's shiny hiney. Bill Nighy makes full use of his fangs to really chew the scenery in a tonally appropriate way. It takes itself ridiculously seriously, but I never felt that it expected me to.
Freddy vs. Jason - 2003
Written by Damian Shannon & Mark Swift
Directed by Ronny Yu
Featuring a disfigured homicidal maniac who's already dead and a disfigured homicidal maniac who cannot die
It seems that Freddy just can't get his kill on like he used to. The teens of Elm Street have been shielded from his memory, and just don't fear him anymore. So he tricks Jason into doing a little stabbing on his behalf, just to prime the pump for a comeback, as it were. The film seems to hinge, in part, upon the idea that making kids ignorant is an effective defense against fear, which strikes me as wrong, but obviously no one is here for the subtext. Worse, however, is the misogyny, much of which falls upon Katharine Isabelle's character (she discovers the mangled body of her apparently abusive boyfriend, then gets murdered herself while she's being raped). Speaking of rape, Freddy seems much more rapey here than I recall him being in the original Nightmare films. Where once it was his backstory, it now seems to occupy more of his thoughts... and menace.
But you did come for the bloody fan service, and FvJ delivers that. Jason eventually figures out that he's been manipulated and the two master slashers turn their attention to each other. Jason takes a beating in Freddy's nightmare world, and Freddy takes a beating in Jason's physical world. The end seemingly calls back the end of King King vs Godzilla with an uncertain outcome and one figure swimming away. All in all, what can one expect from a trashy monument to trashy fun?
Van Helsing - 2004
Written and Directed by Stephen Sommers
Featuring: Dracula & his brides, Frankenstein's monster, werewolves, Mr. Hyde, some creepy little troll things and vampire demon babies
I'll let you in on a little secret. A large part of the motivation behind this article was to show Van Helsing in its proper context. It is, after all, a Universal monster mash-up; a fact which has been overlooked by rage-nerds from all across the internet. Is it silly? Sure, but that's its legacy too. Have you SEEN House of Dracula? Well Ihave now. Silly can be a whole lot of FUN, and "fun" is the lightning-charged heart of Van Helsing.
Wolverine plays Van Helsing, who is to the Catholic church what James Bond is to MI-6, right down to the unlikely gadgets that prove surprisingly handy. In the opening, he pursues Mr. Hyde (as in Dr. Jekyl and...) through Paris, bound to bring him in dead or alive. His next assignment is Transylvania, where he's sent to assist a gypsy woman (Kate Beckinsale in leather pants, natch) who represents the last in a bloodline committed to ending Dracula's reign of terror. There's really quite a lot going on in this movie. Tense moments of exposition bridge action-packed set pieces. They team up with Frankenstein's monster, which is a really fantastic character/creature design.
In fact, the whole movie is packed with great designs for costumes, monsters, gadgets and places. Are some of the CGI effects imperfect? So what? They serve their purpose. Zip it, whiners. Van Helsing packs a TON of effects for a May release. It's not supposed to look like a July movie. The fact is, the effects are fine and they move the story and action along the way they need to. Van Helsing is exactly what it means to be, and that's a roller coaster tribute to Universal's monster mash-ups that actually has more story and indulgent thrills for today's less patient audiences. Perhaps its greatest fault is expecting joyless geeks to catch the wink.
Hellboy - 2004
Written by Guillermo del Toro
from the Comics by Mike Mignola
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Featuring: demons, a gill man, a clockwork assassin, a reanimated corpse, a demon-infused Rasputin & the Old Ones
In the interest of full disclosure, there wasn't much chance of me disliking Hellboy, being a fan of the comic since before it came out (I saw Mignola's sketchbook at a con, so neener), but if it had betrayed the source material, I totally could have turned on it as well. With Guillermo del Toro at the helm, there was really very little cause for concern.
During WWII, Allied soldiers interrupt a bizarre team of Nazi operatives amid a strange occult ritual. When the smoke has settled, they discover that the ritual had some effect, although it's unclear whether it was the desired effect. A bright red demon child with a giant stone hand was pulled into our world, whom they dub "Hellboy." Hellboy is raised by Dr Bruttenholm ("Broom"), the paranormal scientist on the team, and as he grows, he goes to work in pretty much the only way he could; serving the Bureau for Paranormal Research & Defense as their number one monster puncher.
Decades later, the Nazi operatives are still active. Serving the Reich was really just a conduit for their true plans; bringing about the end of the world for their Lovecraftian god. It turns out that Hellboy has a role to play in their plans, but he's really not the "destiny" type.
Hellboy's world is filled with all kinds of creatures drawn from literature and legend, and he's right at home in the middle of it with his teammates; gill-man Abe Sabien, and Liz Sherman who starts more fires than the one in Hellboy's heart.
Dark Horse Comics originated the crossing-over of the Aliens and Predator franchises, which then spread back to the cinematic worlds despite some pretty major ret-conning. Predators come to modern day Earth, activating an Alien-stocked ritual hunting ground in a pyramid under the Antarctic ice. A human expedition from Weyland-Yutani Corp makes the mistake of getting in the way, so, death. It's thin and corny without a thought in its head, but it's a reasonably fan-pleasing affair from the guy behind the Resident Evil films. Hold that, back up a little. It's pleasing for the fans that just want to see Aliens and Predators unleashing violence. It offers little of the dramatic tension of the original Ridley Scott Alien, but then so little else has.
Godzilla: Final Wars - 2004
Written by Isao Kiriyama & Ryuhei Kitamura
Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura
Featuring: ALL of the giant monsters
What a difference three years makes! Someone at Toho evidently had the same thoughts that I had about Giant Monsters All-Out Attack." Final Wars still uses location footage, but far more extensive use of miniatures to put the mass back in "mass destruction." But let me rewind a moment...
Final Wars is indeed the final Godzilla movie from Toho. They vowed not to make another for at least ten years, and they haven't. I understand they even filled in the pool they used to shoot water scenes, so if and when they come back, it seems pretty clear that they are going to have to have retooled their production line.
The film takes place in an alternate universe. I guess they'd really all have to, but at least in the past they've been presented in a real-world-dealing-with-unreal-monsters framework. Where All-Out Attack chose to ignore all but the first movie, Final Wars embraces the legacy. In the continuity here, Godzilla first appeared in 1954, then continued to return along with most of the other monsters. It's non-specific about which movies and stories are continuity, but the idea that the monsters from all previous films existed in some form or another is more the point. It's paying tribute to the totality of Toho history before it closes the book on them -- and whoa baby, close the book it does.
As a reaction to the regular appearance of kaiju, the world has united to form the Earth Defense Force, many of whom are also mutated humans with increased strength and speed. They fend off the monsters with a giant drill-tipped flying submarine and springboard-enhanced karate poses. Oh yeah, Final Wars borrows a bit from the Ultraman types of shows that Godzilla inspired. The non-monster parts are much more action-packed in their own right, with acrobatic combat, sword fights and a motorcycle chase that would make Tom Cruise jealous. Where the human drama failed to live up to the scale of the rest of the movie in All-out, Final Wars pushes it way, way over the top. It's cornier than ever, but it works, even if there's too much of it in the third act.
So here in this alternative future, aliens suddenly appear to offer their friendship in a totally-not-suspicious way. It's essentially an updating of the story from Destroy All Monsters only with humans that actually do something. I'm sure this is hardly a coincidence, since Destroy was originally intended to be a "final" Godzilla movie for director Ishiro Honda. The Xillians, as they're known (because of course their true name would be too hard for we feeble humans to speak) took away the monsters as a gesture of good will, but when their true faces are revealed (literally) they unleash them on the world with nothing powerful enough to stop them. Except Godzilla. Destroy All Monsters' big third act throw-down featured all the monsters against King Ghidorah, which seemed kind of lame because they all just gang-rushed him. It made Godzilla look not-so-impressive and resulted in an overly brief fight. Final Wars gets the sides right. Godzilla fights EVERYONE, including making fast work of the weak-sauce American Godzilla wannabe (not to mention the Sydney Opera House). And they're not kidding about "final" either. Many of the opposing monsters get impaled or decapitated, and the final final showdown between our boy G and a super-mega new Kaizer Ghidorah occurs in the ruins of a place that can't strictly be called Tokyo any longer.
I don't know how any Godzilla fan could be disappointed with Final Wars, but birds gotta fly and nerds gotta bitch. It's an insane, over-the-top, all-action, self-serious-but-totally-silly music video of leather-posing wire-fu and rubber suited monster mashing, and it delivers. This is all I could have wanted (and more) to close out 50 years with the King of Monsters.
If Freddy Kreuger and Jason Vorhees are monsters, then isn't the Joker too? I say, sure, why not?
The Batman vs Dracula is a feature length animated feature from the "The Batman" period of animated Batman adventures. Which means it's not as good as the original Batman cartoons from the 90s, but it's still pretty good for a second-string team. The premise is pretty simple. Joker and Penguin break out of Arkham and race for a treasure stash in Gotham Cemetery. Penguin breaks into the wrong tomb and inadvertently raises Dracula from dusty death, and Dracula makes it his business to turn Gotham into a city of the undead. Batman disapproves of this business plan.
In Dracula, he has met a fellow bat man who is more than his match as a combatant -- 'scuse me, comBATant -- but then Batman is more than just a fighter, isn't he? Joker finally turns up at the tomb and gets himself vamped, which gives him some good scenes, but it's really not his film. Penguin serves in the Renfield role and Vicki Vale gets stuck with Mina Harker duty. The vampires are brutal and creepy, with a strong Nosferatu influence. They present a viable threat on a mass scale. That's what really sells the movie and makes it work as both a vampire tale and a Batman story worthy of the longer form treatment.
Evolution picks up immediately after the original Underworld, following up on its semi-cliffhanger conclusion. The last surviving vampire elder is back, and more powerful than expected. More of the history behind the "immortal" species of vampires and werewolves is revealed in what essentially amounts to a chase movie. Selene & Michael flee the powerful Marcus, expanding our view of their world and encountering new characters from whom it is made, including the immortal father of both clans. Totally satisfying follow-up to the first with more monochromatically stylish violence.
Requiem rides the coattails of the first AvP's "BOO!" ending without really continuing the story. An alien-infected Predator crashes into a remote American mountain town, and then there's death.
At least I assume those noises were death, because almost the entirety of Requiem takes place in the dark. The woods at night. The sewer at night. Powerless buildings at night. It's not scary, it's just hard to see. It really undermines the fan service, and without the fan service, there's nothing left. See that picture? That's what happens when an Alien gestates in a Predator. That's the best part of the whole movie, and now you know.
Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man look back on their lives and relationship.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army - 2008
Written by Guillermo del Toro
from the Comic by Mike Mignola
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Featuring: a demon, a gill-man, tooth fairies, an elemental, faeries, trolls, magical robots, an angel of death and plenty of god-knows-what
Hellboy and friends are back for more, and more is what they get. This sequel is overflowing with all manner of weirdness, and a surprising amount of beauty. As much as I liked the first, I really prefer The Golden Army.
After centuries inhabiting the hidden places in the world, the embittered prince of Faerie has treacherously laid claim to the throne, and the pieces of the crown that will empower him to control the Golden Army; a force of magical mechanical soldiers capable of destroying the world as we know it. His quest to gather the missing piece of the crown brings him to the attention of the BPRD and Hellboy. The search to understand his attack sends Hellboy into back-to-back outstanding set pieces; first delving into the Troll Market, where the creatures of myth do business under the noses of mankind, followed immediately by open combat with a giant elemental plant god, which is one of the most poignant battles you can imagine in such an wild and fantastical film. It's both thrilling and heartbreaking. And that's what makes me really love this movie. For all its high concepts and cartoonish violence, it has a tremendous amount of heart -- particularly in the nihilistic context of so many of our other big action films these days. Hellboy and Abe grapple with the concept of love like the outsiders they represent. Characters do bad things, but often for good reasons. This is not the mustache-twilring E-vil of the first movie's Nazi death-worshipers, and its willingness to love makes it lovable.
From the seedier side of the Victorian age comes this horror/comedy about the misadventures of two grave robbers. Professional ghoul Arthur (Dominic Monaghan) offers his confession about his career stealing and selling corpses. His sentence is death, one way or the other, but he steadfastly denies having ever committed murder; of which the priest hearing his tale (Ron Perlman) is skeptical. The story is delivered in vignettes, which apparently confuses some viewers, but you are not them, my friend, and you do not need your hand held. Arthur explains how he got pulled into the business, and how an unscrupulous doctor (with more societal respect) was able to blackmail him and his partner into taking more dangerous jobs for even less money than usual. That sends them to a crossroads where they unearth a woman's corpse wreathed in garlic, with a stake through her heart. Another high-risk job leads them into conflict with a rival -- and much more ruthless -- gang of ghouls; the House Murphy. That conflict comes to a peak when both Arthur & Willie and House Murphy compete to retrieve two crates of unusual corpses lost at sea.
I Sell the Dead is a wholly unique story, presented with a consistent flow of good humor. Arthur and Willie don't question much and they haven't seen the movies we've see, which just makes it funnier when we're in on the jokes that elude (and chase) them.
Twilight - 2008
Written by Who Freaking Cares
Directed by It Couldn't Possibly Matter
Featuring: Sort-of Werewolves and Not-really Vampires
"Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength and and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend." --Stephen King
They made four of these freakin' things but I'm only mentioning it once and that's simply to satisfy my own self-imposed sense of obligation. I'll watch Gingerdead Man vs Evil Bong, but I won't watch these. I'm sorry and you're welcome.
The completely unnecessary prequel that no one asked for. I can only assume that it was an excuse to bring the dead characters played by Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen back and remind us of things that we already knew about them. Due to its setting prior to Selene becoming a vampire, the similarly sassy English lassie Rhona Mitra fills the leather and latex cat suit. I suppose it might be satisfying for the fans who are all-in on the series mythology, but there's very little dramatic tension since we know how things are going to turn out 600 years later. While I never felt that the previous cared if I didn't take them seriously, Rise seemed to expect it. Looking back, I can only recall one stand-out action set piece, and it doesn't measure up to those than came before it.
Monsters vs Aliens - 2009
see link for writing team
Directed by Rob Letterman & Conrad Vernon
Featuring: a gill-man, a blob, a 50 foot woman, an insectoid mad scientist and a kind of squirrel/caterpillar giant monster thing... versus aliens
It's Susan Murphy's big day. She's primped, prepped and pumped to marry her beau, Derek, and so what if he told her that the honeymoon in Paris is cancelled so he can audition for a news anchor job in Fresno? They're a team, aren't they?
And that's when a meteorite lands on her.
Moments later, scuffed by unscratched, she returns to the church to get on with the first day of the rest of her life. She has that glow about her -- wait, not that glow, the other glow. The hit-by-a-meteor-and-absorbed-cosmic-power-and-don't-they-grow-up-so-fast-no-I-mean-REALLY-fast kind of glow. In a matter of seconds, she's a 50 foot woman, and not much longer after that, she's in the custody of the US government. Fade to black.
Susan wakes up in a giant, windowless facility and soon discovers that she's not alone. She shares this prison with gill-man otherwise known as the Missing Link, Dr Cockroach; a mad scientist who overdid the insect DNA, a brainless blue blob called BOB, and, oh yeah, Insectosaurus, a squirrel-bug-dinosaur kind of thing that towers over even Susan. They have all been collected by a super-ultra-secret military division and kept imprisoned so the world never has to deal with the inconvenient knowledge of their existence. And that's the way it's going to be... until an intergalactic tyrant shows up looking to collect the power from the meteorite that started everything for Susan.
Monsters vs Aliens is better than average work from Dreamworks Animation. Well, let me be more specific; the story is better than average. The animation is weirdly stilted at times. Characters frequently goosestep inappropriately. Things don't move dynamically but remain rigid. Character design and art direction really lack the kind of inspiration that would make MvA truly special. The most disturbing are the normal humans. I would guess that they're all built on the same skeletal frames, then basically draped with meat. It results in some mechanical movement taking place within slack, dangling flesh. I think the root of the problem is the split that the animators targeted between cartoony and realistic. They seem to be trying to have it both ways and end up having neither. Obviously not everyone cares as much about that kind of thing as I do.
I still really enjoy (have enjoyed and will enjoy again) Monsters vs Aliens. The story has heart. The characters you're supposed to like are actually likeable. Susan's personal breakthrough feels earned. There are some big laughs, and lots of little homages to monster movies of the past.
As crazy as the title sounds, it really does nothing to express how babblingly insane the film itself is. Right off the bat, it helps to think of this as a cartoon that just happens to have people acting it out. The characters are all over-the-top exaggerations, perhaps best expressed by the high school social clubs to which they belong, including Lolita fashionistas, a suicide obsessed "wrist-cutters" club, and a ganguro club trying to emulate African Americans to an offensively caricatured degree. The principal of the school dresses as a kabuki performer, and doubles as a mad scientist assisted by the school nurse at night. However nutty that all sounds, I can assure you that you really have not grasped the full madness of this film.
Everything plays out in the biggest, craziest possible way. Monami is the new girl in school. It turns out she's also a vampire who has set her sights on Mizushima. To seduce him (and draw him into her world) she gives him chocolate laced with her blood. Unfortunately, Mizushima already has a girlfriend; Keiko. When Keiko figures out what's going on, she confronts Monami which leads to her falling from the school's roof It just so happens that the Kabuki/mad scientist principal is also Keiko's father, and he and the nurse conduct one of their experiments on Keiko's body to bring her back to life. Thus she becomes the titular "Frankenstein Girl" to Monami's "Vampire Girl."
And so the stage is set, and it won't be done until the stage is mopped with a bucket of blood. I can't call it a good movie, but it's ridiculously entertaining -- and I do mean ridiculously.
In the Venn diagram of Universal Monster crossover fans and sufferers of OCD, House of The Wolf Man is where they overlap. A modern film made to look like the completion of the 1940s "House of..." films with a nerd-pleasing trilogy.
Sadly, I am unable to discuss it in any greater depth as I have not yet been able to see it.
Pumpkinhead - 1988
Once upon a time in the Appalachian hills just north of Los Angeles, a widowed and taciturn farmer (Lance Henriksen) lives with his sensitive and quick-witted son. Early scenes establish the affection between them, so you just know it's going to end poorly for at least one of them. Meanwhile, we're introduced to a group of young people on their way out to a weekend of dirt bikes and doin' it at a mountain cabin, and because they're young people headed into the woods, you just know that it's going to end poorly for several-if-not-all of them, but especially the greasy dickweasel drinking and driving the Trans Am.
Finally, Ed gets back and finds his son, battered but still alive. The young person who stuck around tries to explain that it was an accident, receiving only a hateful glare from Ed in response. Rather than attempting to get help for his boy, Ed simply takes him home, as is standard behavior for horror movies. The boy expires and Ed is awash in sorrow and rage.
The incident is over, but the legend lives on through this tragedy, and the groundwork for a franchise has been laid. If you hadn't heard of Pumpkinhead before, you will be even more surprised to learn that there have indeed been a series of films made with the monster.
