Review - Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983); AKA "Raiders Impossible"

Back in the 80's, there was a movie production company called Cannon Films. They were kind of like the low budget little brother to the bigger Hollywood studios, and anything Tinseltown could do, Cannon could do better!(but not really) They mostly imitated whatever trend was popular at the time. For example, Stallone and Rambo drew "First Blood", but Cannon had Chuck Norris "Missing in Action." For every "Dirty Harry", there was a crappier "Death Wish" sequel.....and so on. It's no surprise that when "Raiders of the Lost Ark" became a box office smash and introduced us to Indiana Jones, Cannon jumped on the adventure bandwagon with 1983's "Treasure of the Four Crowns" The lost ark might have had Nazi face melting, but Four Crowns had laser head explosions blasting at you in "Wondervision 3-D"...now top that Indy!

Snakes...why did it have to be snakes....in 3-D?

The big boys had Harrison Ford, but Cannon had Tony Anthony as J.T. Striker. (they named him Striker because B.J. Ballsmasher was unavailable)He's a treasure hunter and soldier of fortune whose quest has him putting together a team of thieves to steal some magic crowns from an evil cult leader named Brother Jonas. The good guys have one crown.....one was destroyed centuries ago....so that leaves two for our heroes to nab. The museum wants the remaining two crowns in their collection because legend has it that they contain a power that can either cure the world of all disease or unleash an unholy force that will put Hell right smack on Earth!

Indiana had bigger balls......


But Striker's balls were on fire!

The heist section in the third act is where "Crowns" really shines. Doctor Jones had to pass through booby trapped passages with spikes, arrows, and self destructing temples to get the golden idol....ha....a piece of cake compared to what Striker's party must overcome. Their only advantage is that the cult is being distracted from crown security by their annual recruitment ceremony, so this gives them easy access to the chamber where the treasure is being stored. Once inside the chamber they must cross a pressure sensitive floor, an electric gate in the middle of the room, laser alarm beams, and a booby trapped pedestal. How are they supposed to pull this off when they can't even touch the fucking floor? Each of the team members comes with a unique skill. There's Rick the climbing expert, Liz the trapeze artist, and Socrates the circus strong man. During the planning stages they figure out that there is just a precious few feet of safe space close to the ceiling that will allow them to bypass the security. It's actually a pretty cool sequence, and they did it years before Tom Cruise dangled on wires in "Mission Impossible."

Striker on wires during the "impossible" mission...

Of course there is a price to be paid for disturbing the treasure and using it for evil purposes. The climactic climax unleashes hellfire on all the bad guys.....and some of the good guys as well! Now FX wise......some of it is not that impressive. You can clearly see things floating around on visible wires and Cannon didn't have the budget that Paramount had with "Raiders." But, if you were able to see this in 3-D with all the crap popping off the screen, you would have been entertained. 3-D can make a bad movie enjoyable (see the Friday the 13th part 3-D dvd), and when you have a stuntman with duel flame throwers slathering fire all over the place, that's pretty damn awesome....third dimension or not!

Punishment for disturbing the crowns...

Striker and the duel flame of doom.....


an evil cult leader who just can't win!

Now I'll freely admit that "Raiders" is the far superior film, but this is an entertaining slice of lowball cinema. It was directed by Italian director Ferdinando Baldi, who was responsible for quite a few spaghetti westerns back in the day. As far as the musical score goes, it has the honor of being done by the legendary maestro Ennio Morricone. That alone gives it high marks in my books! I wish there was easier access to this film for those who might be interested. Unfortunately all I have is a bootleg VHS copy and I could'nt believe that it still played after sitting in a garage for twenty years. Perhaps a new Indiana Jones film could see the leather jacketed hero rescuing "Treasure of the Four Crowns" from the vault of video obscurity doom! Hell, it couldn't be any worse than his last adventure.

Liz agrees and gives "Crowns" the thumbs up!

Think you're safe in your home? Think again! - THEM (2006)

My dad called me the other day to touch base and talk about what's been going on in his world. The tone in his voice was a little off.....something was not right. All my life I've known him to be a fairly cocky individual who seemed to be able to handle any situation life throws at him, but during this conversation he sounded disturbed. He told me that he recently left his home to get some things from the store......no big deal.......just gone for about an hour, but when he came back he discovered that his home had been invaded.......and the intruders were still there! Luckily, his return scared off the guilty party and they took off leaving him to deal with the wreckage. The thieves took over twenty thousand dollars worth of valuables from my father and left the house ransacked. I'm thankful he survived unharmed and that the criminals were only after material things, but what if they weren't? What if they were only motivated by the thrill of invading another person's life and home? This brings me to 2006's "THEM"....a great little French chiller that will have you double checking your doors and windows and proudly posting that ADT sign in your yard.



Directed by David Moreau...."THEM" is the tale of Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) and her lover Lucas (Michael Cohen) who just want to settle down and have a relaxing weekend at their remote country home. After dinner and a little television, the couple call it an evening and go to bed for a nice long sleep. Their slumber is short lived after Clementine wakes up to strange noises coming from downstairs. Lucas goes to investigate and finds the television turned back on, their car out front is running, and headlights are blaring through the windows at him. After realizing that they are not alone and the house is surrounded by multiple assailants, Lucas accidentally injures himself and retreats upstairs to be with Clementine. The couple barricade themselves in their bedroom and attempt to formulate a plan to deal with THEM. Are they robbers?.....Are they murderers? The answer will definitely surprise you.

Clementine.....just taking a little peek at THEM

The film runs at a brisk pace clocking in at just about 77 minutes. Believe me when I tell you that after the initial set up......no time is wasted in delivering thrill after thrill. The couple's house is almost like a character itself. It's huge and partly under construction, which gives us eerie moments including a cat and mouse chase through a labyrinth like attic adorned with hanging plastic sheets. Clem and Lucas are smart heroes and easy to root for. They know it's better to cut their losses and run instead of trying to defend the house against overwhelming odds. I hate it when characters do stupid things that make me yell at the screen in frustration! (see 08's The Strangers...where two people in a similar situation have their backs to the wall with a loaded shotgun and still fuck it up!) You only have two characters in this story so you need to be able to side with them and hope they survive the night.

Lucas to Clementine..."you go first darling"

I'm a first time home owner and I can tell you it's a beautiful feeling of accomplishment. My home is my sanctuary.......it's where I live......relax.....and build memories in. I never want to go through the experience of having my sanctuary violated. Hopefully for me.....it only happens in the movies.

Combing the Streets of Sin - Hardcore (1979)

Hardcore porn and religious beliefs don’t usually mix, and for good reason. They’re diametrically opposite in every regard; so when the worlds of sex and God clash, it can be quite shocking. At least it was for Jack VanDorn(George C. Scott), a Midwestern businessman whose daughter goes missing while on a church-sponsored outing. VanDorn hires a private detective to find her, and when he does, it’s in about the worst place anyone would want their daughter to be. It turns out she ran away to go into the porn industry, and VanDorn sets off to get her back. As I mentioned, he’s a deeply religious man, and you would think he wouldn’t have the fortitude to sink into the seedy underbelly of depravity and sin, but you would be wrong. He’s a man on a mission, and putting up with the filth he finds along the way is a small price to pay to make sure his daughter is safe.

VanDorn starts his journey in a way you would expect him to, by blindly asking questions to anyone with their tits hanging out. And also as you would expect, that doesn’t get him very far. He spends a lot of time getting acquainted with various massage parlors and nudie bars, and at first, his frustration is written all over his face. He knows he doesn’t belong is places like this, but what else can he do? The police didn’t lift a finger to help, and the detective he hired turned out to be just as useless. After getting his face slammed into the side of a car, he decides to take a more stealthy approach by pretending to be an adult film producer. He has a photo of one of the guys who was in a movie with his daughter, so he holds auditions to try and catch the dirty bastard and get her whereabouts from him. But one clue only leads to another, and another, and yet another. His search seems to be getting him nowhere until he finds a hooker who might know where she is. He pays her to help him look, and one thing leads to another, and he eventually finds out she’s begun appearing in snuff films. But will he find her? And if he does, what then?

There are definitely a lot of naked bodies in this film, but it doesn’t show anything very explicit. That’s not the point. We can all guess the kind of things that go on where VanDorn is occupying his time, and we see glimpses of it everywhere. But the story doesn’t dwell on such things. It’s more about VanDorn’s relentless journey into a foreign world; a world he has no knowledge of, but still he trudges though it, hoping to find the light at the end of the tunnel. The frustration previously on his face slowly turns into a calm determination, and while his religious background will always be a part of him, he knows sticking to a moral high ground will only hurt his chances of finding his daughter. It’s a role that could easily lean too far one way or the other. Playing the pissed off father too heavily could throw any sympathy toward the character out the window. On the other hand, portraying VanDorn as too hopeless and lost would make the progress in his search seem unbelievable. Luckily, George C. Scott is a god among men, and he balances the two personality traits with the ease of a tightrope walker. He’s equal parts enraged yet calm, vengeful but still vulnerable, and his performance is as good as anything he’s ever done.





Hardcore is the second feature from director Paul Schrader, and he handles the material with the same balance that George C. Scott brings to Jack VanDorn. There are some disgusting people in this film, but not everyone is shown as such. For instance, the hooker that VanDorn enlists in his search seems to be a good person, and it’s nice to see the film be more even-handed in its portrayal of its characters. There seems to be a thread linking a lot of the films I’ve talked about recently; stories focused more on the pursuer instead of the pursued, and I think this angle really helps carry interest through to the end. And in this instance, taking the journey solely with VanDorn allowed me to feel his pain every step of the way. I think the ending was a little rushed, and could have used about 20 more minutes to really make the impact Schrader was going for, but again, the journey was what engaged me, not the outcome. And it’s a journey I’d recommend you take as soon as possible.


( Sorry, but I couldn't find a trailer on Youtube for this film, and the dvd doesn't even have one on it. If anyone can find an embeddable link to one, let me know...)

Sweet, Sweet Comeuppance - Witchfinder General (1968)

That's quite the tagline at the bottom. Thumbs up from me.

I love watching movies where royal assholes get what’s coming to them. I really do. There’s something about knowing the entire movie is building to one singular moment, and in that moment, the dick who’s been walking around like king shit for an hour and a half finds out why he shouldn’t have been quite so dickish to everyone. The Witchfinder General just happens to feature one such dick. His name is Matthew Hopkins(Vincent Price in a fantastic role), and he’s a witch hunter. His entire existence is based on finding people to torture and murder in the name of God’s divine retribution. Nothing good can come out of it, however, because we all know what happens to dicks like him.




Apparently, Hopkins has been doing his religious crusade for a long time, and he has it down to a science. First, visit some town where the people can be manipulated into believing there is evil among them(sometimes they already have someone in mind). Next, create a panic by singling out the particular person, and get everyone to hate their guts. The final step is to tell everyone the only way to save their town is to burn the evildoer at the stake. Oh, and while he’s at it, he takes advantage of any maid or servant who’s unlucky enough to have to enter his bedroom. I told you he’s a dick. But the reason he’s able to get away with his shit is because everyone always believes he’s working for the Lord, and who would go against that? I’ll tell you who.




Richard Marshall is a soldier who just returned to his hometown while on leave. He meets up with the local priest and his niece, who Marshall is engaged to. They all have a dandy night, and when morning comes, Marshall has to go back to soldiering and whatnot. Before he leaves, his future uncle tells him to be on the lookout for one Matthew Hopkins(the dick), as they’re expecting him shortly. He says ok, and off he goes. Sure enough, not long after he’s on his way, he sees Hopkins and lets him know he’s still expected at the church. It’s a very pleasant exchange, and Marshall bids him good day. Dammit. You already know Hopkins is an asshole, because the movie opens with a lynching, and him presiding over the joyous occasion. You’ll feel like screaming at Marshall to shank Hopkins in the back, but that’s not to be. At least not at the fifteen-minute mark.




Once Hopkins arrives at Marshall’s hometown, he quickly starts his dirty shit with the locals. He accuses the priest, of all people, of practicing witchcraft. Everyone gets all uppity, and soon enough he’s killed and Marshall’s fiancé raped by Hopkins. I'm reminded just how awesome Monty Python and the Holy Grail was with the whole witch-burning bit. It’s pretty much the same here, but there’s no funny dialogue or fake noses, just plain ol' murder. At this point, you should grab a stopwatch and count down the minutes until Hopkins’s ass becomes grass. It’s a fun exercise, and lets you savor every stupid thing that comes out of his mouth, because you know he only has about an hour left to live. For his next genius move, he decides to capture and try Marshall’s fiancé in the hopes of him doing something foolish to save her. The plot thickens, and so forth and so on. You don’t need to know any more, but just remember: Hopkins is a dick, and dicks never prosper.

Michael Bay, or Damien Thorn? You Be the Judge.

Having just watched the teaser trailer for Transformers 2, I felt it necessary to talk about it before my brain liquefies itself for fear of further misuse. As I've shown before, action movies can both thrill and invest your emotions. But sometimes, the thinking man gets too uppity, and someone has to bring balance back to the world. Enter Damien Thorn Michael Bay. With his beady little eyes and seasoned bartender looks, he might deceive you at first. Maybe he's just here to entertain, you might think. But that would be a fatal mistake on your part. With no bones about it, his only goal is the retrieval of your $10.00 and re-appropriating your higher brain functions.

One of these does not belong with the other.

Back when I had the misfortune of sitting through the first Transformers film, I realized a deep truth: Michael Bay just doesn't give a shit. Despite anything I might say, his colonoscopies movies make an ass-load of money. It must have something to do with him catering to a certain, um, set of people. Surely, masturbation jokes while three-story-tall robots are hiding from a kid's parents in the middle of a fucking street has its place. But what kind of place is that? Probably the same place Jeffrey Dahmer and Hitler spend their weekends, but I can't verify my information. I'd honestly rather watch a Roland Emmerich marathon. That's a dirty lie, but still. My point is, Mr. Bartender takes everything that makes an action movie great, and promptly uses his martini shaker to mix a concoction of aqua-blue explosions and, well, more aqua-blue explosions. But now, there's also metal shit flying around during the explosions, and someone screams "Ahhhhh! Watch out!!!!"

"Does my face make me look douchey?"

I guess I can't complain too much, because his dirty bartender tricks won't dupe me out of my money any more. I mix my own drinks, thank you very much, and they usually involve a language he's probably never heard of. In closing, I hope everyone who buys Michael Bay's shit realizes that you're paying for the brand, not the actual contents of the bottle.

More Action at its Finest - Spartan (2004)

I figured I'd keep the action ball rolling, so here I am with Spartan, a 2004 feature directed by David Mamet and starring Val Kilmer. Kilmer plays an operative tasked with finding the President's daughter, who's been kidnapped by traffickers. Believe me, I know how this sounds - like a Van Damme movie or something, right? Ah, but this is David Mamet we're talking about, so c'mon, you know the film is going to have a lot going for it. It's not a mindless dude film with loads of retarded action and paper-thin plot. Again, this is Mamet. The characters are great, and I can tell you with some certainty that you won't believe some of the shit that happens here. I'll just say that Mamet isn't afraid to buck some archetypes in favor of making a more believable and grounded story.




Spartan shares some similarities with the last film I talked about, Taken. They both deal with kidnappings, and they each have a sole hero taking on a bunch of bad guys. They're also similarly smart about the way they tell the story; all the events are shown through the hero's eyes, and the audience is left to wonder what's happening to the girl in distress. Is she alright? Is she bleeding from a gaping hole in her head? The heroes don't know, and neither do we. But the similarities between the two films end there. Where Taken is a more intimate story about a father and daughter, Spartan is more concerned with international affairs. Kilmer's operative is but a pawn in a larger game, and the simple task of finding and retrieving the target is harder than he first thought. Eventually, he finds that he has to go outside the rank and file of his command structure to actually do some good, so he enlists the aid of certain for-hire people and friends in low places.

Kilmer really shines here, and his character, Scott, isn't the typical loose-cannon agent that is usually required to push like movies forward. Instead, he's used to the structure of his agency, and it's only when that agency totally fails him that he feels the need to go it alone. It's more realistic than you're probably used to. He's not Superman, and he can't dodge bullets. He moves quietly and with precision. He only does what's necessary, and sometimes that means there won't be a mansion full of evildoers' carcasses stacked in a corner. But what Spartan may lack in total body count, it fully makes up for with an intelligent script and a logical string of events that would satisfy anyone looking for more from their entertainment than just guns and explosions. Some heinous shit happens that probably wouldn't fly in a more high profile action movie, and it has to do with characters, not over-the-top violence.




I think this film was severely overlooked, and even I wasn't really aware of it until recently. But that's just how it goes with stuff like this. If you were to ask a random person at a theater who David Mamet is, they'd probably have no idea. His films generally aren't the ones that get the water cooler talk going, if you know what I mean. I think you do. And I also think, since we're all on the same wave-length here, that you'll do the right thing and check Spartan out. It's worthy of your time, for a couple of reasons. For starters, it goes against the grain in a lot of respects, and keeps you fully engrossed by changing things up a bit. Also, it's great to see Val Kilmer again. He hasn't done much of note since Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and even though this came before Shane Black's film, I still miss him in these kinds of roles. Give Spartan a go, you won't regret it.

Action at its Finest - Taken (2008)

Taken is everything you could ever ask for in an action movie. If you've seen District B-13, you know what the director, Pierre Morel, is capable of. I'd need to watch B-13 again to give specifics, but he injects the genre with a much needed freshness that only comes along once every five or so years. He frames fights in a such a way that you can see every single hit, and you know exactly what is happening at any given moment. The Bourne movies were great, but sometimes you couldn't tell what the hell was going on during the fight scenes. Not so with Taken. The attention to detail is incredible, and Morel is a rare example of foreign filmmakers making the leap to American film with no love lost.


The plot is nothing out of the ordinary: Liam Neeson is a retired government agent whose daughter decides to spend the summer abroad in Europe. Traffickers kidnap her, and it's up to him to find his daughter and exact vengeance upon those who stole her from him. It's been done before, but not to the precision that Taken demonstrates. The film doesn't waste a lot of time getting started, and once it does, the tension ratchets up and doesn't stoop to any of the bullshit that often plagues these types of movies.




Before the movie started, I was treated to a trailer of an upcoming movie called 12 Rounds. It stars John Cena as some police dude whose wife is kidnapped and nefarious things are planned - there's something to do with a bomb strapped to someone, there's lots of explosions and time is running out. It looks like an extremely low-rent version of Taken. That just goes to show that you can't have any ol' buff dude running around crying about his family and punching people in the face to make a successful film. Taken gives all the background information you need to know: Liam Neeson is a badass spy type, and you don't want to fuck with him. He spent his entire career protecting his country from evil, and a bunch of pimps aren't going to get away with taking what's dear to him without getting fucked in the face. And believe me, faces get fucked. I mentioned the framing of fight scenes earlier, and when you see it done right, it really makes a difference. There's no endless shaking of the camera to the point that everything is a giant blur of fists and blood. Instead, you know exactly what punches and blocks are executed the whole time, and the fights have an immediacy that is only equaled by the perfect distance the camera keeps from it.


And it bears mentioning just how goddamn awesome Liam Neeson is. At 56, you wouldn't know it from looking at him. He moves and behaves like someone in his early 40's, and his action sequences rival anything Matt Damon or Daniel Craig has ever done. It makes the fight scenes at the end of A Phantom Menace almost worth going back and watching, just to see him kick ass. Almost. Another thing this film nails is the stunt work, or lack thereof. There are no death-defying car leaps off of bridges to catch up to the bad guys. Everything Liam Neeson does is pretty much within the realm of reality. He goes from clue to clue until he gets the information he needs, and the people he intereacts with are nothing more than conduits; once he gets his information, there's no need to keep them alive. This movie is rated PG-13, but it's a pretty fucking hard PG-13. People are killed indiscrimenantly, and you'll find yourself shocked by what happens a lot of the time.




I don't think any more cajoling is necessary to get you to see this film. If you like action movies at all, this is a fucking MUST see. Death Sentence with Kevon Bacon is a movie in a similar vein, and the craftsmanship is the same in both offerings. There's no extraneous bullshit, no melodrama, no moral quandries about killing the bad guys. Everyone involved with the horrible human trafficking is fair game for a bullet to the head, and they get what they deserve. I can't stress enough how refreshing it is to watch something like this, and I can only hope it does well enough at the box office to encourage more films of the same quality to be green-lit. Stop reading right now, check your local listings, and go see Taken as soon as possible. As an action junkie, there's nothing else I can say to you except you're missing out on a great start to 2009 by not plunking down your 10 bucks for a great night's worth of entertainment.

Horror Movie Remakes - The Cash Cow's Tits Are Raw and Bleeding.

I just finished watching the Halloween remake by Rob Zombie, and I have some things to say. First and foremost: why? Why remake this? The first problem with it is the fact that it even tries to humanize Michael Meyers in any capacity. Yes, I see the angle Zombie was going for. He became a monster because his childhood was shitty. That, and he had no sense of right or wrong - more so than most people with shitty childhoods. The first half of the film is about just how shitty his was, and that's all fine and dandy. But the second half is about the super-human freak of nature he became, and yes, he is a fucking monster. He might as well have been a demon from hell, and the way the film tried to ground him in reality only served to make half of the movie pointless. Which half that is depends on what you found more interesting. Myself, I prefer Michael Meyers to be the personification of pure evil, and he definitely embodies that to perfection in both versions. And sure, there's tits and lots of killing. In fact, my favorite parts were when he was a perfect storm of death and destruction. But again, showing him as a child with a mother he seems to love and a sister he doesn't want to kill totally goes against everything his character stands for. The other thing the first half ruins is all the tension the original film got so right. It spends so much time building up Meyers the person that when he gets shot 3 times from close range with a .357 magnum and keeps going, well, I just don't see why this movie even bothered with the character setup.


But that movie alone isn't what I want to talk about. The word for today is "remake." And more importantly, the question I want to ask is why the fuck are there so many of them? We all know how fond Hollywood is of taking other people's work, putting American actors in place of whoever was there first, and sticking it in theaters to make some dough. But are you really aware of just how many remakes there are of horror movies alone? No? Good, because I'm going to tell you. My list is probably far from complete, but I think it will give you a pretty damn good indication of just how creatively void the people responsible for most of these are. There are some good remakes on the list, but I included every remake of a horror movie I could think of, good or not. The list is also in no particular order. I hope you're ready:


The Amityville Horror
Friday the 13th
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Fog
Halloween
Halloween 2
Last House on the Left
The Hills Have Eyes
The Hills Have Eyes 2
A Tale of Two Sisters ( The Uninvited )
Ringu ( The Ring )
Pulse ( Kairo )
Shutter
Ju-on ( The Grudge )
Ju-on 2 ( The Grudge 2 )
Dark Water
Dawn of the Dead
Prom Night
My Bloody Valentine ( 3D )
Let the Right One In
One Missed Call
When a Stranger Calls
Willard
Psycho
The Omen
Black Christmas
The Wicker Man
Premonition
The Hitcher
House of Wax
The Haunting
House on Haunted Hill
Thirteen Ghosts
Hellraiser
The Eye
Phone
A Nightmare on Elm Street
[REC] ( Quarantine )
Mirrors ( Into the Mirror )
Infection
The Birds
The Host
Long Weekend
Piranha ( 3D )
Poltergeist
Susperia
The Wolf Man


Holy fucking shit, that's 47 movies right there. And that's pretty much just what I could come up with on my own, plus a few I randomly checked up on, and sure enough, they were being remade. That's pretty goddamn bad when I can just randomly pick a horror movie out of thin air, and it's actually being done. I mean, seriously, this is fucking awful. Just look at all of this - this whole decade is full of mostly asstastic American ripoffs. It's really shameful in my eyes, and god knows how the studios dupe enough people over and over and over and over again to go see this horseshit. Can you name me one good, original horror movie to come out in the last 5 years from this country? And no, I won't let you count The Strangers, as that's pretty much based off of Ils (Them). So what the fuck? The latest taste of shit I got was when I watched the trailer of The Uninvited for the second time. Before doing so, I happened to skim through the synopsis, and what's this? Two sisters come back home from being in a mental hospital after their mother commits suicide, and creepy things happen? Dear God in Heaven, this day has finally arrived. Kim Jee-Woon's A Tale of Two Sisters has finally been remade, and now there's puke all over my keyboard. They didn't even have enough respect to keep its title. The Uninvited? Seriously? how about The Unoriginal, or The Unworthy? Do you know what I am right now? Uninterested.


And let me tell you another thing: Dario Argento and Alfred Hitchcock are off-fucking-limits. Period. Fuck whoever wants to touch anything directed by those two men. And Let the Right One In? The DVD for that damn movie hasn't even released yet, and this shit's already happening. Jesus, I think I just went blind in one eye. That just gave me an idea for an original horror movie, though. A man sees to many remade classics and goes blind. But instead of seeing nothing, his mind replays Psycho over and over, but its fucking Anne Heche instead of Janet Leigh. Oh, the nightmares that will inspire. And the argument that without these remakes, a lot of people wouldn't know about the originals is complete shit. Some of these movies aren't even 5 years old, so that's about all of that nonsense I want to hear.


We Americans need to get our fucking heads out of our asses and make some good horror movies again. Sam Raimi is trying, but he's only one man. One man who's going to show every dumbass suit buying up every license for every fucking film a thing or two. Drag Me to Hell is going to be awesome, and I can't wait to pay money to see it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, this weekend I'm going to go see The Uninvited Assfuck Fest for a review, but I'll be damned if I'm going to give them any money for raping me. I'm going to buy a ticket to Taken instead, and just go into a different theater. I'm still giving money to people I want to keep making movies, so I feel like Michael Meyers in a way - my conscience doesn't see the wrong in it.

THIS COUNTRY HAS LOST ITS SOUL.

One of the Best Classic Horror Films to Come Out in a LONG Time – The Orphanage (2007)

The classic haunted house movie has seen so many incarnations that it's almost impossible to count them all. A lot of them are utter crap, and it's only so often one comes along that doesn't adhere to the rules this sub-genre has set up for itself. If you've seen the trailer, I'm sure it looks a lot like every other haunted house movie you've ever seen, but believe me, it isn't. The story does share some superficial similarities -- a couple moving into an old, spacious house, a child who sees things no one else can see, a mystery that extends farther than initially believed, and even a séance. The difference here is that none of those examples are part of a checklist the filmmakers needed to get through in order to make a horror movie. They don’t feel like plot devices; everything that happens is believable and speaks to your emotions. There's a subtle grace to the way every scene was filmed, and the result is a movie that's beautiful to watch but heart aching to feel.


The story is about Laura and Carlos(Belén Rueda and Fernando Cayo), a couple with a seven-year-old child, Simón. The house they just moved into used to be the orphanage where Laura grew up, and they plan to turn it into a place for helping a few children with down syndrome. Simón is HIV positive, and his parents don’t want him to know about it yet. They give him pills daily, which seem to curb its effects. The thing that struck me most about this aspect of the story was how underplayed it was. There were no doctor or hospital visits, no melodrama; Simón had a disease, and that’s just the way it was. He was also adopted, and I didn’t feel it was anywhere near as important as him being HIV positive, but only because Laura comes from the same background. But I also would have reservations about telling a young child something like that too early, and I think Laura and Carlos were doing the right thing by keeping it from him for the time being. From the beginning, Simón has imaginary friends. And when he and Laura go down to the beach to check out a big cave, he starts talking to (seemingly) himself while inside the cave. She thinks nothing of it, since he’s been doing that sort of thing for a long time. However, Laura does shine the flashlight in the direction of his conversation, and of course, sees nothing. The foreshadowing says something different, but there are no false jump-scares here. In fact, this movie has literally zero jump-scares. Everything has a suitable build up of tension, so when something does happen, it’s that much more intense.


One day, Simón tells Laura about a game his “imaginary” friends play with him. They take something of his and hide it, and he has to find it. He wants to play the game with his mom, so they go all around the house, finding the various clues strewn about. When the clues lead to a locked drawer where Laura keeps Simón’s medical files, she yells at him to not touch anything in there. Apparently, though, a new invisible friend told Simón that he was adopted and was going to die, so he screams everything the friend told him back at his mom. I think that’s a hard thing for a kid to be told, and especially by someone that everyone else thinks doesn’t exist. Simón runs off, leaving Laura in stunned silence, and they don’t speak again until the next day. Like I mentioned before, I really think this story element was done in just the right way. Too much of it would lose the creeping tension, and too little would make it pointless. But here, their love is definitely shown as reciprocal. Even so, the burdens of his ailment and origin strain them both to the point where Simón lets Laura have it with all his bottled-up emotions. All of this is paramount, because what happens later hits even harder when you know the sad facts that surround Simón and his future.


The family decides to have a party for the children who will be staying with them, but it doesn’t go as planned. Before the party starts, Simón gets into an argument with Laura and she ends up slapping him. She immediately regrets it, and tells him no one is forcing him to come down to mingle. That exchange ends up being the last she ever has with her son. A little ways into the party, she goes looking for him, but he’s nowhere to be found. Frantic searching turns into a full-fledged search party combing the beach and surrounding water for Simón, but he’s never seen again. Flash forward 6 months, and their search has turned into an obviously hopeless cause. Laura and Carlos have a whole room of the house dedicated to maps of the area, replete with news clippings and thumb tacks holding up various pieces of information, but at this point the chances of finding their son are virtually non-existent. The couple is shown attending a bereavement group, and it’s there that Laura confides her belief that ghosts are inhabiting her house, and it has something to do with Simón’s disappearance. There’s a very touching moment during the group session, where another mother describes seeing her daughter a year after her death. She explains that her appearance wasn’t a fearful one, but rather a source of comfort that her daughter was in a better place, and it greatly eased her suffering. There are plenty of scenes like this, and it’s one thing that elevates The Orphanage above most other modern horror offerings.


What follows is a journey of discovery not only about the fate of her son, but also that of her past. It’s up to her how far she’s willing to go to find out what happened, and the film conveys the sense that no matter the outcome, things will not turn out the way everyone wants. The director, Juan Antonio Bayona, displays a mastery of dramatic horror that few others even aspire to reach. His film does much more than just creep you out – it takes you to a place of such high anxiety and sympathy that it’s hard to not expect the same from every like-minded film you’ll see from now on. In a way, it reminds me of Don’t Look Now and The Devil's Backbone, both horror movies that cared more about its characters than scaring the shit out of you. I simply can’t express with words how much I love this film, and I suggest you immediately seek it out and experience it for yourself.

The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970)

One of the worst things that can happen to any film is to start out soaring high for the first half, only to crash and burn in the second, leaving the end as nothing more than a flaming pile of wreckage. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion falls into that unsavory category. The plot initially has promise, but once you get to that half-way mark and things start being uncovered, all that promise is rendered useless.


My problem isn't with the direction by Luciano Ercoli(he hasn't done much), the acting by Dagmar Lassander or any of the other cast members. It isn't with the editing or the music, which was done by the all-time great Ennio Morricone. Rather, the plot just caves in on itself. The film revolves around Minou(Lassander), the wife of some kind of deep sea diving engineer. One night while she's walking on a beach, a stranger assaults her and says that her husband is a murderer. The next day she's blackmailed by the same man, with an audio recording of her husband talking about the murder. If she wants to save him from the police, she'll have to comprimise herself mentally and physically with the unknown assailant/blackmailer. He doesn't want money, only her willful submission of body and mind. Or so he says. All he really does is fuck her once and walk around kinda creepily for a lot of the film.


I might have found a clue that foreshadows this film's inability to make good on its promises. From the back of the DVD case, "Dagmar Lassander stars as a repressed young wife whose traumatic sexual assault triggers a depraved obsession with her attacker." Sounds good, doesn't it? It has the making of a really perverse giallo, or so says the back cover. But once the movie is over, you realize she never had any remote attachment to her attacker except for her wanting him to leave her alone, which he won't do.

The spear-chucking pervert makes his first appearance. And no, she doesn't like it. Fuck you, DVD case.

I could see how in a better film, Minou could believably be attracted to the danger and violence she was given a taste of, but ultimately spared. But not in Lady Above Suspicion. If that truly was the intention, the filmmakers failed pretty miserably. But maybe it wasn't, and the DVD case is just lying right to my face. I guess I'll never know. But what really kills the cool start is when the clues start coming together to form a picture of a giant turd. For reasons I can't get into for fear of spoiling something already pretty rotten, I can't say why Minou becomes so confused. But I can say that she supposedly starts doubting her own memories because no one will believe what she tells them about her ordeal. But a problem arises in the way her character was written, because she's supposed to be a normal girl with no mental disorders. If some guy tried to assault me, only to blackmail me later into pleasuring him all night in his creepy incense-laden stinky pit of love rape, I sure as shit wouldn't agree when you told me I was dreaming it all up in my head. I'd tell you to get your head out of your ass and smell my freshly pillaged crotch, which should be all the evidence one would need to come to the correct conclusion. But she doesn't do that. Instead she cries about the guy being real and how she's not lying, she swears! Again, I'd be pissed at this point. It just seemed like her reactions were only played out to facilitate the plot instead of them coming from her personality or something that happened in her past.

Minou takes everyone's incredulous looks a bit too well. It's crotch-smelling time.

The DVD case also says there are "fiendish red herrings and mind warping twists." Um, ok, but not really. There's only one real case of a possible red herring, and then it's promptly never spoken of again.

What the fuck? Nazis with fashionable eyewear do not figure into the plot.

And the twist comes so out of left field it's ridiculous. I'd have never been able to guess how this film were to end, because it's some weird giallo deus ex machina type conclusion that just left me scratching my head. I guess my expectations were a bit too high for this film. I'd heard good things about it, and again, the synopsis sounded like it would be a sexy thriller that did some outlandish things. Nothing outlandish ever happened, though, and it ended on a more bizarre and silly note than I could ever come up with. Dagmar Lassander was fine as Minou, but she's definitely no Edwige Fenech, and she didn't really even get naked. I thought that was a staple of giallo, but oh well. I still have All the Colors of the Dark to watch, so I should be in good hands. This film really needed a pair of those.

They Don't Make 'Em Pt. 2 - Capricorn One (1978)

I have to agree with Sir Phobos on the fact that good sci-fi is hard to come by these days. Sure we have the most awesome FX money can buy, but more often than not, plot and character usually get chucked to the curb in favor of eye candy. That's where Lucas lost me with the prequel trilogy.....it sure looked pretty......but I didn't give a shit about any of those wooden characters. Just like a young lover of rock and roll music inevitably discovers the Beatles, film lovers have the luxury to go back and uncover some truly great genre treasures. Let me share one with you that's got everything good about sci-fi story telling.....and a whole lot more. My friends.....I happily present to you.......1978's Capricorn One. It's the story of three astronauts....Colonel Brubaker (James Brolin) Lieutenent Peter Willis (Sam Waterson) and Commander John Walker (O.J. Simpson) as they try to make history on NASA's first manned mission to Mars. But for these heroes, the dangers won't come from the vacuum of space....oh no....instead they will be tasked with trying to survive scorching deserts, poisonous snakes, black helicopters, and a conspiracy that could lead all the way to the White House. Can you say "Houston...we have a problem?"



It was discovered a little too late that a defect in the life support system would have killed the space travelers on the way to Mars, but now what is NASA supposed to do? A restart means failure.....and failure means that Uncle Sam is less likely to continue pumping dollars into the space program. They decide to do the only logical thing.......fake it. This keeps a historic dream alive in the public eye as well as keeping their wallets fat with funding. The plan is brilliant....send an empty spacecraft to the red planet.....tuck the astronauts away for a few months.....and broadcast the landmark moment of the first man on Mars from a fake studio set. There's only a couple of things that they didn't plan ahead for. What if our heroes aren't so excited to go along with the ruse? Also, what happens when the empty spacecraft is destroyed during re-entry to earth's atmosphere? Will the astronauts let themselves be sacraficed for the sake of the conspiracy? Hell no! The three of them make a jail break and the chase is on. With the bad guys in hot pursuit, only a nosy reporter (Elliott Gould) dangerously close to the truth can help expose the man behind the curtain and save the pilots' lives.

This movie is a rollercoaster ride that will have you behind the wheel of an out of control car....trying to survive the blistering sun of the desert....and hanging on to the wing of a cropduster during one of the films best sequences. Check out the great cast that includes names like Hal Holbrook, Karen Black, and even Telly Fucking Savalas......awesome! It's a little strange to watch O.J. pre-murder rap and all, but he doesn't really have a lot of screen time so don't let it distract you from this great popcorn flick.

O.J. as an astronaut on the run (he didn't do it)

Capricorn One doesn't rely on fancy effects. It has science, but it's the fiction the villains try to create that dazzles you. It's just a great piece of entertainment that you will appreciate for the action, characters, and great music from the Jerry Goldsmith orchestra. Still readily available on DVD for your viewing pleasure......jump on board and blast off!

They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To - Andromeda Strain (1971)

I miss the old days of science fiction. Stories didn't(and a lot of the time couldn't) depend on snazzy special effects and gross amounts of action to to keep you engrossed in the proceedings. A prime example of this would be 2001: A Space Odyssey, but you all know about that one. Instead, what I have for you here is a nice bit of 1971 hard sci-fi directed by Robert Wise, the man responsible for The Day the Earth Stood Still, Somebody Up There Likes Me, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and a lof of other really cool stuff. Seriously, he was one of the best directors working in the 1940's all the way through the late '70's.


Andromeda Strain is about a biological distaster unleashed on Earth when a satellite crashes in a small town in New Mexico, killing everyone in the immediate area. But there aren't any aggrandized scenes of catasrophic panic and death. This film is more centralized, and only deals with the few scientists and military personnel directly involved with what's going on. I label Andromeda Strain as "hard" sci-fi because it's very procedural in the way the scientists try to figure out what caused all the deaths, and a lot of the film simply shows them working in their labs doing experiments and the like. It's not a character piece, and you could say they aren't explored in any meaningful depth, but you'd be missing the point. This is what sci-fi used to be about; no hokey romantic melodrama about astronauts and their loved ones while they're trying to blow up an asteroid on a collision course toward Earth. And if you want comic relief, go watch that pile of trash movie instead(you know which one I'm alluding to, so I don't have to name it). Andromeda Strain is about very smart people doing very scientific things in an isolated location, but in the back of your mind you still get that there are far-reaching ramifications and a lot is at stake.


It's not that I don't like a lot of modern sci-fi, but they really just don't make them like this anymore. Nothing is dumbed down for the popcorn-chewing, text messaging mouth-breathers that frequent the cinema these days, and it's refreshing to go back and see how a true master of the genre handled material like this. While it may put off some viewers, the clinical nature of the film is what draws me in the most. Sure, technology has improved and the sets may look outdated for that reason alone, but the underlying fascination with science and problem solving never gets old.

Movie Review - The Keep (1983)

Film buffs usually know of director Michael Mann for two reasons. The first as being the creator of the classic television series Miami Vice and the second because he excelled at giving us some of the grittiest and just flat out awesome crime stories ever committed to film like 1995's Heat. But, if you take an earlier look at his career before all the cops and robbers hoop-lah, you'll come across a caper of a different sort. One that involves demons, spooky contact lenses, and lots of dead Nazis. Believe it or not....Michael Mann made a horror film. Though not as well done as some of his later work, 1983's The Keep is still an interesting attempt at supernatural storytelling.



Set during WWII, the plot has Captain Klaus(Jurgen Prochnow) and the German Wermacht dispatched to a remote village in Romania. The objective is to block the nearby mountain pass from allied forces and keep it under German control. They decide to make camp in an old citadel that overlooks the village despite warnings from the caretaker that no one must stay there. The caretaker gives no explanation as to why, nor does he explain the meaning of the hundreds of silver crosses that adorn the walls of the keep. It's Nazi business as usual until a couple of guards on the night watch decide to steal one of the silver crosses and then all hell breaks loose....



The greedy soldiers are found dead and mutiliated the next day with no evidence left at the scene except for a message carved into the wall in an ancient language that they cannot translate. Klaus's superior officer (Gabriel Byrne) believes it to be resistance from the villagers and has several of them executed. When more people in the camp turn up dead and the German command orders them to hold the fort....they enlist the help of a Jewish historian named Dr. Cuza (Ian Mckellen) and his daughter Eva. Both are awaiting their fates in a concentration camp so they are eager to get out and help solve the riddle of the keep. What they discover could destroy the world with an evil far greater than even Adolf Hitler could imagine. It seems that the keep was not built to ward off attackers....rather it was constructed to imprison a demon named Molasar and keep him from laying waste to mankind. There's also a mysterious stranger (Scott Glenn) who is compelled to travel many miles to reach the keep and confront Molasar. Is he going to join him........or send him back to hell?

Scott Glenn as the stranger...spooky contacts make him mysterious

As far as horror stories go....the set up for this one is excellent. The scenario of the Nazis asking the Jewish characters for help is an ironic twist. Unfortunately you can tell that there was a much bigger story here. I've heard that the original cut clocks in at four hours, but the theatrical run was only about ninety six minutes. It definately shows as there seems to be no build up in the action and things seem to rush to a speedy conclusion. Molasar was a pretty cool villain and the FX were unique at the time. A lot of Nazis were harmed during the making of the keep and you will delight in seeing every one of their heads explode and their bodies being torn asunder. I remember Molasar gracing the cover of Fangoria magazine back in the day and every kid I knew that loved horror films was chomping at the bit to see this one.

Molasar was banned from Heaven for illegal steroid use...



the wrath of Molasar...just another Nazi brick in the wall....

One of the strongest things this film has going for it is the appearance of a younger Ian Mckellen. We all know him now as Magneto....or Gandalf......so this was interesting to see him before he was famous. It's not his best acting job, but due to studio interference, we probably only see part of the whole performance. Another highlight is the music from Tangerine Dream. It gives the film an other-worldly feel that you normally would not get for a story set in WWII.

Ian Mckellen confronting evil with a flashlight and trusting Duracell

For those that are curious enough to investigate... The Keep is worth checking out. The hard part will be finding a copy to own or watch. There is no DVD and a decent VHS copy may cost you a hundred bucks. Who the hell watches VHS anymore???? Lucky for me a good samaritan had the whole film posted on youtube. It's definitely not the preferred method of getting my flick on, but sometimes you have to soldier on and hold the fort.

Today's Crazy Japanese Action Movie - Machine Girl (2008)

Machine Girl -- she's a girl with a machine gun on her arm. It's not a concept that should lose you in its translation to film. At least I hope not, because with a title and cover art like this, I think the filmmakers gave away the entire plot. If they had named it something like "Happy Fun Time School Girl Action" and just put bullet holes through the words, you'd be wondering what the fuck is going on. But no -- they went the spoilery route, so here we are with Machine Girl, a film about a Japanese schoolgirl who loses her arm in fierce, vengeance-minded combat and gets it replaced with a mini-turret. Alrighty then, sign me up for the next 2 hours, please.




Its George Lucas-sized budget is pushed to the limits within the first 3 minutes of the movie, and it's a good thing, because I don't know if heads being ripped apart by machine gun bullets will ever be shown with more realistic detail. The beginning of the movie isn't really the beginning, though, so I'll skip to where the plot actually starts. Her name's Ami Hyuga, and her brother was killed by some schoolyard bullies. The leader is the son of some yakuza dude, and in Ami's road to vengeance she finds this out and goes after the brutal sons of bitches that murdered her dear, sweet half-retarded brother.





In the process, she also finds out that she sucks at fighting yakuza, and gets chained up and her arm chopped by an anime-looking dude with a sword. I think he was the father of the kid who killed her brother, but whatever.




In her post one-limb state, she comes upon the help of a couple who also have an axe to grind with those dirty pirate yakuzas. There's something in the plot about Ami's family being hated for some reason, but I was too busy staring at her sexy stump to file those facts in my memory banks. Anyways, after some reluctance, they help her out by building her a machine gun that apparently doesn't attach to any of her nerve endings, but somehow still fires on command. Whatever, they convinced me because the guy had drawings of it on paper so it must be logical. So they go on about training her to use her miraculous new weapon of mass killing in the hope of taking down said pirate yakuzas. Some more stuff happens and then they get to the final showdown. I don't remember what happened in between, but it probably wasn't pretty. Ah, yes. Some bits are coming back to me now.




So they get to the final showdown, and guess what? Ami triumphs over dirty pirate yakuzas, and the world is full of sunshine and rainbows again. Or something. She wins, I remember that much. Machine Girl is somewhat of a difficult movie for me to recommend. It wears its aspirations on its sleave, or lack thereof -- sometimes to its benefit, but other times to a fault. The gore, provided by the aforementioned Lucas-sized budget, does what it does. Severed heads are puked on like I showed you above, and there's a fuck-ton of blood and guts all over the place. Not to mention there's a generous amount of Ami up-skirts. I sure as shit demanded that be included, so her white-pantied crotch is one thing I checked off my list. Machine Girl is not something I would plan a week in advance to watch, but if you ever find yourself with nothing to do for a couple of hours, pop it in and marvel at the metal spinning titties of this dirty pirate yakuza chick.

And here's a few minutes of the opening for your viewing pleasure:

I watched it in Japanese, but for my purposes, it's more fun this way.