Movie Scum

Let me just start off by saying how thankful I am that there is not another colon before the ‘Ghost Protocol’ subtitle. I think that would irritate me beyond belief, potentially to the point of not even doing a review at all. Whew. Crisis averted. Now as far as big-budget action franchises go, Mission: Impossible has always been all over the place for me (and a lot of folk by the ratings and reviews). The first had its moments but was decried by some for its handling of establish characters from the TV series. I didn’t care about that so much but it had long stretches of nothing that my 14-year-old brain didn’t like. M:I 2 was much the same but with far too little talky parts and far too many random explosions and whiplash-inducing edits. M:I 3 I rather liked but I’ve only ever seen that once, on TNT or something, at 3 in the morning. So I’m not too qualified to make a firm declaration on that one. As Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol got underway at the helm of Brad Bird (y...

Look, I’m not ashamed to admit that I spent deflated U.S. currency to see this big-budget teenage soap opera in theaters. Well, no, I am a bit ashamed. But that won’t deter me from finishing up the series that has pained my sensibilities for years now. Bella and Jacob are all grown-up, Edward is technically still a creepy old man, and no one ever seemed to ponder whether or not a vampire can knock-up an awkward teenage girl. Now, the world knows the truth as Breaking Dawn: Part I attempts to lay the old vampire-human sex myth to rest once and for all and so the women in the house can get their fix for pale vamp-y boy or ripped, shirtless wolf-y boy.

Written by: PBF The Summer of Massacre will arrive on DVD and Blu-Ray on January 10th 2012 via Breaking Glass Pictures. It is 5 stories so bloody; so full of carnage that it is apparently in the Guinness Book of World records for highest body count recorded in a film. I am too lazy to verify that, so, you know, go ahead and Google or Wikipedia that. Whichever one you use to tell you what to believe. You ever wanted to know what it would be like if Clive Barker took mescaline and then made a film? Joe Castro provides us with a pretty good guess. This film is ultra violent about 98.7% of the time. We have 5 chapters of dizzying images, ear piercing sounds and nonsensical industrial house music, and blood flowing like urine from a pissing contest atop Mt. Everest. I mean if something or someone could bleed, they did, as if their lives depended on it (!).

To prepare for the upcoming "Epic Finchercast," I revisited Alien 3, or Alien Cubed if you so prefer, since I haven't seen it since the early 90s after its debut on HBO. Since I was but maybe 10 or 11 at the time, I cannot hold myself too accountable for my disdain for this film since of course, at the time, I had not yet experienced Se7en, Zodiac, or Social Network. On the surface, Alien Cubed is a decent follow-up to the Alien saga. When viewed with the rest of director David Fincher's body of work, this was just the beginning. The main consternation of Alien 3 seems to be around the death of Newt and Hicks. Now, I love Aliens (and Michael Biehn) just as much as the next guy and at the time I was sad to see them perish off-camera in rather rudimentary ways. But as the crew's ship crash lands onto a Company-owned maximum-security prison/iron works/whatever, this time I began to see why that decision was made. Hicks was basically incapacitated and Newt, while...

Written by: Tabitha Johnson So the choice has been made: ‘Team Edward.’ Bella Swan ( Kristen Stewart ) made the decision to be with Edward ( Robert Pattinson ) until death do they part, as per an ironic moment at the altar. Breaking Dawn: Part I covers the wedding, the honeymoon, and the pregnancy as result of their marital bliss. Oh yeah, and there’s a pack of werewolves that want to destroy their unborn child that they consider an abomination. If the first movies were about abstinence, this is a pro-life film if there ever was one.

You might have noticed that it was over a year ago that I reviewed the first and third parts of the Twilight soap opera, err … saga, but not this one. That isn’t by accident nor is it entirely due to my extreme laziness. As much as I kind of liked Eclipse and was sort of okay with Twilight , this movie did absolutely nothing for me to the extent that I wished to rewatch and review it. Yet, the gap in reviews for the series has constantly bugged me and with a forthcoming review for the newest installment (hopefully not by myself), I figured I would suffer for the loyal fan or two that we still have and watch New Moon . And I hate myself for it.

After the last creatively bankrupt installment of this franchise, it’s no wonder that the Weinstein boys decided to go back to the drawing board and reboot the Michael Myers saga with Rob Zombie‘s version of Halloween . Or is it a remake? Or a re-imagining? Much like the most recent Nightmare on Elm Street film, I was confused as to the point of it all. Are we trying to fill in needless backstory about Myers and his upbringing? Are we updating the tale for a more contemporary potty-mouthed audience? Does anyone have a clue at this point?

I was quite disappointed when Attack the Block did not receive a proper screening anywhere close to the Movie Scum headquarters, especially after hearing so much advance acclaim from the gazillion festivals and select screenings it had. Yet, the film is now in reach at your local Redbox or Blockbuster and I highly recommend a viewing for many of the same reasons given before: this is flat out a fun movie experience. Think back to when we (proverbially speaking of course) were kids and there were globs of adolescent empowerment films about kids saving the day while the adults were just sitting on their thumbs. Writer and director Joe Cornish is clearly a member of that generation as the best description I can give of this film is The Goonies meets Alien . Set in a not-so-nice part of downtown London, our core cast consists of a gaggle of delinquent youths, some legitimately of the tougher sort, some not. The gang, led by Moses(!) ( John Boyega ) holds up the meek and defenseless...

Way back in Episode 20 as we discussed movies based on true events, PBF brought up Zodiac saying it was well-directed, well-acted, and quite engrossing in spite of its lengthy runtime. Now, having seen the movie, I agree with all points above. And that is my review. Good night! Well, I might be able to get into a bit more detail. Centered around the Zodiac killings of the late 1960s in California, the David Fincher directed thriller is more based on the act of catching a killer through monotonous investigation rather than the murders themselves. This is quite remarkable even considering that the Zodiac murders could have merely been a blip on the radar if not for the killer taunting the police and news reporters with letters, phone calls, and bloody pieces of fabric. For anyone watching this expecting another Se7en out of Fincher, you will be horribly disappointed as this is the least straight-forward serial killer movie I have seen in quite a while. The thing that is truly eng...

Written by: PBF George: A Zombie Intervention (or George’s Intervention ) comes to us via Breaking Glass Pictures. It’s quite an interesting take on the genre, but poorly executed. The film opens with an educational film shown to school children. The opening was actually quite clever. It serves as exposition to us, and is meant to teach children the facts about zombies. Zombies have become members of society. So much so that there is a zombie technical support line. There are spores in the air that humans inhale. The spores lie dormant until the human dies. The spores then wake up and keep the brain functioning thus turning the human into a zombie. Not mindless Romero zombies. Rather, they simply remain their former selves, and are self aware that they are the undead. Unlike your typical film zombies, shooting them in the head does not kill them. It only makes them brain dead which turns them into the standard flesh seeking walkers. They only way to kill a zombie in this univers...

October may be over but sadly I still have a few more of these movies to suffer through. After watching Halloween: Resurrection , I began to yearn for the unoriginal simplicity of H20 or the complete and utter nonsense of Parts 5 and 6. Resurrection is the worst type of horror movie: it offers nothing of value to the franchise or the genre as a whole and it all around sucks complete ass. This movie (among others no doubt) is why horror films are seen as cheap, disposable, and worthless. In fact, there aren’t any better adjectives to describe this monstrosity.

Halloween: H20 holds a special distinction for being the only DVD I own from a different country. I’m not really sure why I bought it on a trip to Germany over ten years ago since I cannot play it on a normal DVD player and my German is so shoddy now that I would need the dub track. But regardless, I have it on German DVD. I figured starting out the review with a random anecdote would be fine since this is more a technically-competent but superfluous anecdote than a real film in the Halloween series.

Pure and simple, this movie is an unadulterated mess. Coming six years after the sloppy fifth film, the Halloween series had certainly seen its better days as it changes hands to yet another production company, this time the genre upstart Dimension Films. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers also is notable for being one of the most awkwardly put together films courtesy of studio or dumbass filmmaker interference and even spawned its own alternate cut which ran rampant on VHS many years ago as the “Producers’ Cut.” Just like any relationship, this movie has a lot of baggage. And I have a love/hate relationship with it.

1989 should have been a big year for horror fans with the release of Halloween 5 , Nightmare on Elm Street 5 , and Friday the 13th Part 8 all together. Yet, since the late 80s marked the decline of the slasher genre, it should stand to reason that all of these films were garbage in one way or another. Similar to Nightmare 5 , I have never had any fondness for Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers which I previously dismissed as just another empty cash-grab. Perhaps since it has been easily ten or so years since seeing this one or because I know there is some horrid crap to come, I came out of my viewing of this film with a newfound appreciation for it. It’s still rather terrible though.

At this point, the Paranormal Activity series is almost critic-proof since it is dirt-cheap to produce, brings in fists full of dollars and is generally well-received by audiences. With the departure of the Saw franchise last year, October needed another big, R-rated series to take its place to win over the hard earned cash of horror-loving moviegoers. I said in the review of PA2: “It is pretty safe to say that if you liked the first PA, you will probably like this one too.” Amend that to say the first two PA films and you have my excerpt for Parnormal Activity 3 . That isn’t a bad thing … unless you really hated the preceding films. The formula for these stories are pretty simple: a family experiences some traumatic experience leading to the dominant male of the household placing a camera, or cameras, around the house to document something or another. This film sets up the loving family of Julie, mother of Katie and Kristi, and her boyfriend Dennis who conveniently is a wedding p...

In the world of slasher sequels, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is still pretty highly regarded. It doesn’t come close to the original but that’s not surprising especially after the previous sequels in the franchise. Part II was apparently made to up the gore and body count that the first was sorely not lacking. The all-around awful part III was apparently created to kill the Halloween name altogether. Fortunately, it did not succeed because then Danielle Harris would not be who she is today (for better or worse) and we would be denied arguably the best sequel in this quite uneven franchise.

Despite seeing all the other movies in the franchise multiple times, I had never seen the Friday the 13th: A New Beginning of the Halloween series, Halloween III: Season of the Witch . Sure, I could deny that is because Michael Myers is absent in this installment but that would not be exactly accurate. Yet, over the years I have heard time and time again that this film would have a much better reputation if it did not have Halloween in the title. That may in fact be true. But it is still a shitty movie.

It was about fifteen years ago that I saw the most recent film based on the novel Celle qui n’était plus by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. I remembered the basic gist of the tale but not much else. Now, having seen the 1955 French thriller Diabolique (or Les Diaboliques), even without remembering much I can safely say the 1996 Americanized remake was far less effective than this version. There is a reason this is a highly regarded film in general. Christina Delassalle (Véra Clouzot) is in a tough situation. She runs a young boy’s boarding school with her husband Michel (Paul Meurisse) whose stern and controlling demeanor makes him hated by all including his wife. Michel harbors much resentment for Christina and she for him with his abusive and cheating mannerisms. After eight years together, Christina reaches the point where she wants Michel gone one way or another. She schemes with her closest companion Nicole (Simone Signoret), also Michel’s former mistress, and develop a f...

Largely thanks to John Carpenter‘s original Halloween , the 80s were chock full of slasher flicks taking place everywhere from summer camps to sorority houses and everywhere in between with a collection of mostly bland, forgettable murderers. Everyone seems to remember this era fondly even though the sad reality dictates that most of these films are pretty bad with a few notable exceptions sticking out here and there. With the title, heroine, and villain notwithstanding, Halloween II would be more of the former than the latter.

Since beginning this year’s Monster Scum marathon, I have had a blast catching up on old favorites and learning about classic movies that I had never seen before. I figured though that even though my viewing list is fashioned from the IMDb Top Horror Movie list, I would come across a film I either didn’t get or just didn’t like. Given that this is my first time viewing James Whale‘s original cinematic telling of Frankenstein, I can appreciate its impact on film and specifically monster movies, but this one just didn’t gel for me. Even having not read the original novel by Mary Shelley (though I’m sure I have the Cliff Notes version somewhere), the story of Frankenstein has been told so many times either in film or television or homaged elsewhere, it’s impossible not to know the genesis of the Monster. Henry Frankenstein (why not Victor?), the mad scientist who has a serious God complex and creates a being that ends up destroying its creator is nothing new even without seeing the ...

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: in a small town, weird things start happening as the townsfolk who look seemingly normal turn into emotionless robots with only a few becoming aware of the differences. No, it’s not the plot to The Faculty. Despite the 1955 short story by Jack Finney and four movies based off of it (one of which we even covered last year), I have not seen any version of this tale but it seems so common because it has been remade and homaged (or in the case of The Faculty almost blatantly ripped off) countless times over the years. Yet, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a short and creepy thriller even though everything seems cliched by now. Doctor Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) returns home to Santa Mira, California with reports that most of the town wanted to see him for undisclosed reasons. Now though, everyone seems to be healthy and normal aside from the little boy who is almost mincemeat after running into the street trying to escape his mother...

It wasn’t until the past seven or eight years that I first saw The Exorcist. Back in probably 1999 or 2000, I bought a DVD with the intention on catching up with one of horror’s most renowned films but I didn’t get around to it until many years later when the random urge struck one night as I sat alone at home. Needless to say, the movie creeped me the hell out and even watching it today still invokes a strong sense of unease. It isn’t the “scariest” film in terms of jump-scares but William Friedkin‘s classic tale is still as unsettling today as I’m sure it was almost forty years ago. As I remarked when I reviewed this film’s sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic some time ago, I haven’t watched the original in some time. Of course the basic summary of the movie still stuck out as well as the priest who defenestrates himself but Exorcist excels just like the other classics I’ve covered like Halloween because we are not immediately thrust into the conflict. Friedkin (and writer William ...

Confession time: I’ve never seen King Kong, neither the original or the remakes. Still, the 50ish-foot gorilla is one of those legendary cinematic figures like Darth Vader or Freddy Kruger with a legacy that everyone knows even if you have not seen any of their films. Honestly, I can’t say I was expecting much out of Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack‘s tale of a captive beast gone wild in the streets of New York even though it still has a very positive rating. But holy crap was it really good! Beginning as I figure most early movies are (kind of stilted and stodgy), cryptic movie director Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) is about to set sail to an unknown island to film a “picture!” When his crew fails to turn up a young, attractive woman to star in the production, Denham goes out and recruits the shoplifter Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) to play the love interest with no questions asked. After they’ve embarked, Denham tells the captain and his right-hand man Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) o...

I know. I’ve already reviewed Scream 4 once before. It was hardly an impartial review though since it had been eleven years since the premiere of the preceding movie and it was not too thorough since I banged it out after a midnight showing opening day before going to work. But, since it was just released on DVD and Blu-ray this week, why not take another look? Beginning with a dizzying number of “opening” sequences, Scream 4 sets the action back in Woodsboro as Sidney (Neve Campbell) has returned on a book signing tour and reunited with Dewey (David Arquette) and Gale (Courteney Cox) who are now married. Dewey is now the Sheriff, Gale is retired from reporting and unsuccessfully trying to write a fiction novel, and Sidney is the proverbial black cat who is constantly followed by death and despair. The mayhem starts up again as Sidney’s cousin Jill (Emma Roberts) and her friend Kirby (Hayden Panettiere) watch as their neighbor is savagely (and I mean savagely!) butchered by Ghost...

My how the world has changed since the 1930s. I can only imagine the chagrin that theater patrons were treated to while watching Tod Browning‘s Freaks, otherwise known as awesome horror film #24 by the IMDb. Yet, watching this film several decades later takes most of the shock and awe out of these characters. Instead of being shunned by society and making a living by begging or doing parlor tricks, abnormal, or unique if you’d rather, people have been featured in movies, TV series, and hell … even reality shows. Oh well, I can’t blame the film for the sad state of popular media today. Poor Hans (Harry Earles) just can’t seem to catch a break. He is smitten with the beautiful Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), even though she stands about three feet taller than his dwarfish frame. After being given extravagant gifts by the foolhardy Hans, Cleopatra and her beau Hercules learn that Hans has received a large inheritance and Cleopatra strings him along until the two get hitched at one of the...

Originally published January 7, 2010 Surprisingly, I had been missing out on John Carpenter’s The Thing until a few years ago when a friend of mine turned me on to it. I thought it was a very effective movie and the DVD was great, featuring commentary by Carpenter and Kurt Russell as well as an in depth documentary on the making of the film. Sadly, my original DVD was not anamorphic so I had no desire to watch the film in recent years until I upgraded my disc to the re-release from a few years back. For some reason, I didn’t remember much from the film so it was almost like watching it for the first time all over again. A loose remake of the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, Carpenter’s version puts us in the middle of an Antartic research team who uncover a monstrous alien who has already devastated another research camp. As the being infiltrates the tight group of men, it takes their appearance and mannerisms leading them to doubt as to who is human and who is not. It is...

During my personal dark ages of movies, otherwise known as the mid 2000s, there were a host of films that demanded viewing that I casually disregarded. Some of those I have come to regret. Others I have not seen at all. One that I made a point to see though was Shaun of the Dead. There was something about the film that stood out to me as important enough to see in theaters even though I ended up seeing it alone in a showing of about six people. It was billed as the zom-rom-com (or zombie romantic comedy) but only two of those adjectives really fit. With numerous hints and winks to other zombie films and properties in general, Shaun of the Dead is a movie that is crafted so well and foreshadowed so effectively, I almost guarantee that you can watch it many times over and find something new to grin or chuckle about. Our lovable slacker Shaun (Simon Pegg) is an everyman with no ambitions, no drive, and no desire for anything other than playing video games with his pal Ed (Nick Frost)...

Without watching, and thinking of, the two back to back, it is easy to miss the similarities between John Carpenter’s Halloween and George Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead. Both were made by a bunch of amateur filmmakers on a minuscule price tag and both are highly regarded, not only in horror films, but in their respective sub-genres. Romero helped define the modern zombie as we know, and despise, it today. Previously, zombies were not autonomous flesh-eating beings, but pawns by some voodoo priest from some exotic locale. Now, zombie is not only a term for mindless folk enacting a set routine consistently (we’ll get to Shaun of the Dead soon enough) but also deadly slow (or fast depending on the movie) “people” out for blood by way of whatever reason is given or not. In fact, just like Halloween, the gist of the film (people trapped in a confined space battling deadies) has been done and done again to the point that it seems cliched. Night being the start, and to some extent th...

In the making-of documentary on my Halloween Blu-ray, John Carpenter remarked that Michael Myers’ signature mask reminded him of the mask worn by Christiane in Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux sans Visage), the French-language film by Georges Franju. The resemblance between the masks is uncanny but there are other similarities between these two great films. A few years previously, Christiane (Edith Scob), daughter of the renowned Docteur Génessier (Pierre Brasseur), was in a car accident that horribly mangled her face, leaving only her eyes intact. Christiane is secluded to the doctor’s estate after another young girl is found dead and Génessier identifies her as his “missing” daughter. Génessier has a wild notion (wild before the beauty of Face/Off that is) that a face can be transplanted from one person to another. With the guilt from causing the accident responsible for his daughter’s condition combined with his arrogance that he can actually succeed, Génessier and his assistant e...

John Carpenter may not be churning out classics like Halloween any longer, but his arguably most famous film seems to have been the perfect storm of dedication, foolishness, ambition and talent that elude most films. Made on a tiny $300k budget (or about $1 million today), Halloween would go on to become one of the most financially successful independent pictures ever, not to mention the impact it made on filmmakers and movie-goers even thirty years later.

In late 1996 and 1997, Scream made horror movies, especially those featuring attractive TV stars, a hot commodity in Hollywood. Thus, it’s no surprise that in addition to two sequels to that film over the next three years, audiences were given similar films to existing franchises like Bride of Chucky and Halloween H20 as well as the hopeful launch of new franchises such as Urban Legend and this entry: the awkwardly titled I Know What You Did Last Summer. Written by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson (along with about a billion other properties in the late 90s), IKWYDLS was loosely based on a young adult novel that featured neither a killer Gorton’s fisherman nor witty Kevin-Williamson -ish banter between the main characters. I know this because I actually read that book … in sixth grade. Author Lois Duncan was reportedly quite unhappy with the movie. In fairness, she’s not the only one as even with the elements introduced by Scream closely adhered to, this film is commonly relegated t...

With George Lucas’ 13th revision of Star Wars hitting Blu-ray recently, I figured I should honor that somehow. But not with those reviews. That would be painstaking. If you read old reviews of Mel Brooks‘ Spaceballs , the consensus is that it came far too late to be an effective parody of those famed sci-fi films. Funny enough though, I saw Spaceballs likely when I was under six and didn’t see Star Wars until well into high school. Thus, the spoof aspect never really stuck out to me. That’s fine because that part is only moderately funny. Brooks’ film works best when it breaks the 4th wall and pokes fun at unrelenting merchandising of lunchboxes, flamethrowers, and toilet paper. I especially enjoy the one-off jokes such as the cross-eyed gunner Asshole or Mr. Rental. The cast is largely decent considering the unevenness of the story with John Candy, Brooks himself as two characters, and the lovely Daphne Zuniga as the standouts. Some laugh-out-loud moments exist but those are bur...

Written by: PBF First off, I have never read the graphic novel, so I swear to God, if you negate my review if this film wasn’t faithful to the source material, I will sick Kane Hodder on you. S cott Pilgrim vs. The World is 100% pure entertainment. Every fucking thing about it. From the comic booky words that fly on the screen, to the insanely clever script that is basically a group of well constructed lines stacked in order of hilarity that assemble a story. Visually, aurally, intellectually and otherwisely this film is extremely pleasing. It’s almost guerilla like in its blatant disregard for seamless scene transitions. Which, by the way, is awesome. Pretty much every scene or line is completely unexpected and hilarious. There literally is a laugh about every 1.5 seconds. I have accused Michael Cera of being repetitive in his characters. This is the first film in which even though he still employs some of the same traits, I did notice that he does actually distinguish his ...

Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star I’ve determined that Adam Sandler through his Happy Madison shingle is trying to make everyone hate him. I cannot fathom any other explanation for his recent output (see Jack & Jill below). I needn’t really say much because the crap speaks for itself. Even the trailer announcer sounds bored. Watch for it to hopefully tank this weekend, September 9. Abduction “Whatdya say we remake those Bourne movies with that kid from those, eh … Twilight movies? Yeah! No, not Robert Patterson (sic)! The other hunky one. Yeah. We just need to get a big director like Spike Lee! Oh, he’s not available. What about John Singleton? Yeah, that’s the stuff. And, uh, we’ll pack it with good actors like Alfred Molina and Sigourney Weaver! Big blockbusta on our hands!” – random movie exec. I’ll pass on this September 23. Real Steel Pop quiz, Hollywood hot shot! What do you get when you combine the Fighter/Rocky/any other boxing movie with Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots? U...