Movie Scum

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

Perhaps it was just presumptuous of M. Night Shyamalan to promote his upcoming adaptation of the Avatar: The Last Airbender tv series at the end of The Happening on a little girl's backpack.

I typically see a lot of movies with my kids that I don't review here. That's not entirely out of laziness but more due to being uncomfortable critiquing something that was not necessarily designed for me. At some point for everyone though, you must step out of your comfort zone and do the right thing. For me, that point was taking my 4-year-old to see The Smurfs and hating it so badly that I must ward off any reasonable human being from seeing it. I'm not quite sure what irritates me the most: that I paid $15 for the two of us to see it, that it literally felt like the longest 90 minutes ever, or that I just indirectly contributed to the already announced sequel. Much like a good chunk of our readership (at least I assume), The Smurfs were one of those childhood staples that were always around, whether on TV, on the racks of the video store, or on the shelves at the local Toys'R'us. Truth be told though, I could've cared less about a Smurfs movie because it

It’s a universal truth that we’ve all had bosses, or superiors if you’d like, that deserve to be taken out back and eliminated in one way or another. I suppose that is the sad truth of growing up, becoming an adult, and dealing with bullshit day in and day out. Horrible Bosses is not the first film that addresses these frustrations of the workplace. In fact, the template (for me that is) of aggravating employment is and will probably always be Office Space. Director Seth Gordon and his team of writers don’t pull off the malicious nature of inter-office politics to the same success but damn if they didn’t create a film I believe will be highly regarded for some time. It is unfair though to outright compare Bosses to Office Space. Similar themes exist but the crux of the movie is wildly different since no one actually wanted to kill Bill Lumbergh. Nick ( Jason Bateman ) is practically a yes-man who comes to work early and stays late thinking he is in for a big promotion. Kurt ( Ja

Written by: PBF Ghost from the Machine (or Phasma Ex Machina) is writer/director Matt Osterman ’s feature film debut. It had a budget of $25,000. If my review doesn’t give you a clue how good the film is, maybe this will: Universal Pictures is remaking it already. Cody ( Sasha Andreev ) and his younger brother James ( Max Hauser ) lost their parents due to a car accident. Cody is riddled with guilt as he blames himself. He dropped out of college, does not have a job and is living off of the insurance money from the accident. He becomes obsessed with the thought of getting his parents back and spends most of his time and money constructing an electrical device. In a nutshell, Cody basically believes that there is a shortage of a certain type of energy between our world and the other side. He believes that if he can supply this energy there would be no separation and he can then be reunited with his parents. This has caused him to in effect neglect James, whom he is supposed to b

Written by: PBF The Coffin , directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham will be released on DVD August 31, via Breaking Glass Pictures. It is based on a Thai ritual. The ritual involves a person who wishes to “cheat death and end bad luck” being sealed in a coffin and a funeral being performed over them. This is done in large groups. People claim to have gone into a coffin with Cancer and come out only to be given a clean bill of health on their next doctor visit. Some people believe in it and others believe it is hogwash. Su (Karen Mok) is a young woman who left Bangkok and Jack, to whom she was going to marry. She hasn’t told anyone that she has lung cancer. She goes to Thailand to be part of a mass funeral. Soon after participating (possibly even on her way home from it as the movie suggests) she is involved in a serious car accident. She escapes with only bruises, but learns that she no longer has cancer. While recuperating, she is given some terrible news and begins to have disturbing

I will admit that I did not have entirely good expectations going into this one. Our own #pbf referred to this as garbage, and he has not seen THE third film in this series. I had seen a few positive reviews for THE Final Destinatio n though so I figured maybe it was an acquired taste, much like Mountain Dew: Live Wire. Oh, dear God was I wrong. So, so wrong … I knew in THE first ten minutes of this film that it would be given THE “honorable” crap category. THE other seventy minutes were merely confirmation that I can judge a stupid movie by its even stupider fucking cover.