http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Sun, 4 Feb 2007 09:56:28 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/02/04/095628.php Matt BradshawThis is a searing indictment of man's inhumanity to man displayed amidst the turmoil of the age-old conflict of man against nature. No, wait. My bad. It's about motherf***ing snakes on a motherf***ing plane. The sheer simplicity of the film's concept is its greatest strength. Snakes On A Plane is its own built-in excuse. Whenever something preposterous happens, the viewer just shrugs and says, "Hey, it's Snakes On A Plane. If I wanted gritty realism I'd have rented Mean Girls." Historically, the film recalls not just the airline disaster movies of the seventies, but also the nature gone amok genre from the same period, represented by Frogs, Fer de Lance (snakes on a submarine, if you will), and a seemingly forgotten tale of bats going bats in a subterranean complex called Chosen Survivors, to name but a few.Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips ) witnesses a mob hit on Daniel Hayes, a prominent prosecuting attorney from Los Angeles. Hayes has been laboring to put mobster Edward Kim behind bars, but for his troubles Hayes is beaten to death with a baseball bat. Sean is taken into protective custody by FBI Agent Neville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson), and arrangements are made for Sean to fly to California under FBI protection to testify against Kim. Why exactly he needs to fly to California to testify about a murder that occurred in Hawaii is not mentioned, but hey, it's Snakes On A Plane. If I wanted a lecture on legal jurisdiction I'd rent High Noon. The FBI sets up a decoy private jet, while actually transporting Sean on a commercial 747. All the other passengers are forced to travel coach as Flynn has commandeered the first class section for his passenger. Kim's goons are not fooled, though, and they manage to get a large container filled with poisonous snakes from all over the world stowed in the luggage section. The flowered leis the passengers are given have been treated with snake pheromones, making those slithery bastards all the more aggressive.Screen time is split between the live snakes and their more energetic but far less convincing digital stand-ins. Once the vipers are loose, the plot rarely takes a second to breathe with snakes putting the hurt on the passengers at a breakneck pace. Even the heartiest of souls will cringe when they see the "snake on snake violence" as some poor schmuck just tries to take a leak. These cold-blooded belly-crawlers present not only an immediate threat to the passengers and crew, they also play hell with wiring and ventilation. Sean is relatively safe in the first class compartment, but he doesn't need to be bitten if the snakes can bring the entire plane down into the Pacific. One might ask why Kim would go to all this trouble. Surely a small, but powerful explosive could do the job more efficiently. True, the plan is as convoluted as anything the worst James Bond villain could concoct, but hey, it's Snakes On a Plane. If I wanted realistic plotting I'd rent Capote.The film's simplicity carries over into its use of characterization. Everyone in the movie has a personality that can be summed up in a few words: arrogant rap artist, bubble headed socialite, snotty British guy, etc. Even our hero, Agent Flynn, is a career cop with a failed marriage, and flight attendant Claire Miller (Julianna Margulies) is making her last flight before leaving the job. Introducing the characters as they board the plane is also a convenient shortcut, which will seem familiar to anyone who has ever seen The Love Boat.In the months prior to Snakes' theatrical release, there was buzz on this flick all over the Internet. Not since The Blair Witch Project has a film's online promotion campaign so threatened to outshine the film itself. A catchy, no-BS title, a fast paced script, and the involvement of Samuel L. Jackson, and you've got one good time at the movies. The film performs the difficult task of being predictable without being boring, and of being preposterous without insulting the viewer's intelligence. Video59127@blogcritics.org Sun, 4 Feb 2007 09:56:28 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/02/02/171059.php Matt BradshawThis is the third film in the Marvel Animated Features line to be released by Lionsgate Films, following in the wake of Ultimate Avengers and Ultimate Avengers 2. Never having had a big time live action incarnation -- or even a particularly notable animated one -- Iron Man lacks the immediate name recognition of Spider-man, X-Men, or some of the other leaders of the Marvel Comics pantheon. I'm sure all that will change once the big budget Iron Man film starring Robert Downey, Jr. hits screens in summer 2008, but for the moment, this direct-to-DVD animated feature is old Shell Head's chance to shine (with the aid of a little Turtle Wax).Billionaire industrialist Tony Stark has been channeling a lot of his company's funds into a pet project in China. He hopes to literally raise a long buried city, though a group of Chinese terrorists, fearing the return of an ancient emperor known as The Mandarin, attack the excavation. Stark's friend and overseer of the project, James Rhodes, is taken hostage, and Stark is injured during a rescue attempt. With Rhodes' help, Stark builds a high tech suit of armor with advanced weaponry, and the two manage to escape. Upon returning to the U.S., Rhodes learns that the armor he and Stark built together was only a crude version of a project Stark has been working on for some time. In a secret area of Stark Industries there are dozens of similar suits, each designed for a specific purpose. This is fortunate, as the raising of the Chinese city has awakened four superhumanly strong creatures, each mastering one of four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. They travel to the four corners of the earth in search of the five rings that will raise The Mandarin from the dead. Stark realizes that this is his fault, and perhaps the only one who can stop these creatures is Iron Man.The back story receives a much needed revamping. In the comics, Iron Man's origins were in Vietnam in the early 1960s, and his amazing armor was built with those miracles of modern technology known as transistors. You didn't see it much, but I bet the suit had an 8-track player too. According to an interview on the disk, the idea was to use a mystical adversary to counter Stark's advanced technology. While a sound theory, the elemental villains do little to grab my imagination, and the fact that their faces never change expression doesn't help either. The Mandarin is an imposing enough character, but he's saved for the film's climax. The film does a good job of incorporating terrorist leader Wong Chu and The Mandarin, two characters from the comics, but I think a high tech villain along the lines of The Crimson Dynamo or The Titanium Man would have been a better match for Iron Man. Characterization is often flat, particularly with Wong Chu, whose emot-o-meter is stuck on jerk-face. This can be attributed, in a large part, to the unremarkable voice talent, though I did like that Marc Worden reprised his role as Tony Stark/Iron Man from the Ultimate Avengers features.In the plus column, the action scenes work very well. The elementals may not make for interesting characters, but in a mindlessly fun super hero brawl they get the job done. Iron Man's battle with The Mandarin's servants in a live volcano is a real standout, and the climactic showdown with The Mandarin himself does not disappoint. When I first saw Stark in the familiar red and gold armor I got a fanboy chill down my spine. The film mostly uses traditional 2-D animation, though the elementals and Iron Man himself are rendered using 3-D computer animation. The design of the Iron Man character lends itself well to this process and it works quite effectively.I enjoyed The Invincible Iron Man, though not nearly as much as I had hoped to. Perhaps a sequel not bogged down by the origin story will be more to my liking. Video59076@blogcritics.org Fri, 2 Feb 2007 17:10:59 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/09/17/093219.php Matt BradshawBased on a novel by Thomas Tryon, The Other was an early entry in the creepy little kids sub-genre that dominated horror movies and novels in the 1970s. On a more personal note, I remember it scaring the hell out of me when I saw it on television as a kid, and its recent release on DVD represented my first chance to see the film in several decades.The setting is rural Connecticut in 1935. Niles and Holland Perry (played by Chris and Martin Udvarnoky in their only film appearance) are living on the family farm with their mother and extended family. Diana Muldaur, veteran of two generations of Star Treks, plays the twins' mother. She remains traumatized from an event sometime in the past, leaving her emotionally distant and unable to fulfill her duties as mother, though for a bed-ridden depressive, her hair and makeup are oddly perfect.With their mother emotionally absent, Niles has bonded with his Aunt Ada. The two are fond of playing The Game, which Ada believes to be an exercise in imagination, but Niles regards as something more. While playing The Game he seems to find himself in the body of a bird flying overhead, and he uses it to learn a trick being performed by a carnival magician. Niles compulsively carries a small tin box containing a ring that should have been buried with his late father and a mysterious little item wrapped in cloth. Director Robert Mulligan obviously wanted the viewer to remember the box because it is constantly heard rattling around whenever Niles is onscreen. Niles is apparently the only one of the pair born with a conscience, with Holland usually getting both of them in trouble. When bad things start to happen like the twins' tattletale cousin being "accidentally" impaled on a pitchfork, Hollands true nature becomes evident.As one might expect, the creep-o-meter didn't go nearly as high as it did when I nine. The acting is consistent with the style of TV melodrama from the period, which is probably why I incorrectly assumed for many years that this was a made-for-TV movie. Typical of this is Mrs. Rowe, the old biddy from next door who runs afoul of the twins' mischief. She is played ridiculously over the top, reminding me of Una O'Conner's comic relief character in Bride of Frankenstein. This kind of silliness makes it harder to appreciate Mrs. Rowe's ultimate fate. The twins, particularly Niles, are played with often nauseating sweetness (when Niles asked his Aunt Ada for a butterfly kiss I nearly hurled). Most importantly, though, I can now see that the big twist late in the film is obviously telegraphed early on.Still, this is a movie worth seeking out. The Other represents the more subtle horror of its time. Gore and exploding heads have their place, but this movie scares more with what it implies than what it actually shows. Video53003@blogcritics.org Sun, 17 Sep 2006 09:32:19 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/09/05/084057.php Matt BradshawFor as long as there have been horror movies the question has been asked: should the terror be merely suggested or should filmmakers “go for the grossout,” as Stephen King put it? While there is certainly room at the table for both quiet and extreme horror, the 1958 film, Curse of the Demon makes a valid argument for the former.The opening shots set the mood beautifully. We see a car hurtling down a lonely stretch of road in the middle of the night, trees forming eerie silhouettes in the headlights. The driver, a tense, nervous looking man, is Professor Henry Harrington and he’s on his way to see Dr. Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis), the leader of a demonic cult. Though details are left delightfully vague, Harrington begs Karswell to stop what he has put into motion.Some things are easier to start than stop, as Karswell points out, and before the night is out Harrington is slaughtered by a gigantic, spike-headed, bat-winged demon that could easily have sprung from the pen of H.P. Lovecraft. Soon our hero enters the fray in the form of Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews). Holden arrives in England where he is to take part in a seminar debunking allegedly supernatural phenomena. Chief on his schedule is an expose of Karswell’s demonic cult, a project he had been working on with Harrington.Holden meets, and begins falling for, Harrington’s niece Joanna (Peggy Cummins). Joanna insists Karswell has somehow caused her uncle’s death. Holden scoffs. In fact, he does a lot of scoffing in this movie. He is a scientist and believes there is a rational explanation for everything.While doing some research at a London museum, Holden is visited by Karswell. Despite Karswell’s request, Holden refuses to call off his expose. Karswell slips Holden a parchment bearing runic symbols, and the plot is off and running. Holden refuses to believe the parchment has marked him for death at the hands of the same creature that killed Harrington, but evidence to the contrary begins to mount, and we’re soon on our way to a confrontation between the worlds of logic and the supernatural.A lot of what happens in this movie happens below the surface, and not just the supernatural elements. The verbal sparring between Holden and Karswell works particularly well. For the most part they maintain a believable façade of cordiality to one another, despite the fact that we know -- as do they -- that they will soon be at one another’s throat. Only at the points where one of the characters has angered the other to the point of an outburst do we see the true nature of their relationship.Tourneur’s use of subtlety is masterful. One of the film’s highlights is Holden’s journey through the woods at night near Karswell’s estate. As the date of Holden’s predicted death approaches, the demon comes closer and closer to manifesting. We don’t see the creature yet, but a hovering cloud of angry smoke follows Holden and we see the footprints of some monstrously huge creature forming in the ground.Tourneur never intended to show the demon, and the slimy beastie we see in the movie was added at the studio’s insistence. A lot has been said over the years about how the inclusion of a visible, tangible creature ruined Tourneur’s original idea, which was to leave the viewer with a sense of uncertainty as to whether anything supernatural had actually occurred. The last 45 years, however, has seen more graphic depictions of cinematic horror than you can shake a gratuitously severed limb at. The demon that was foisted upon Tourneur’s film is shown sparingly, leaving far more to the imagination than would a film made today. In light of this, Night/Curse of the Demon is in some ways truer to Tourneur’s vision today than it was when it was originally released.Not only does Curse of the Demon bear up well 49 years after its initial arrival in theatres, but it has never looked as good on the small screen. Columbia Tri-Star’s DVD presentation presents a crisp picture with only minor specs and scratches. Unfortunately, the film is so sharp, the wire dragging the rune parchment that is supposedly trying to escape on its own is painfully clear.The film is presented in two versions. Night of the Demon is the original British version, and runs 95 minutes, while Curse of the Demon, the American release version, was trimmed to 82 minutes. The only extras are trailers for The Bride and Fright Night. Video52445@blogcritics.org Tue, 5 Sep 2006 08:40:57 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/08/29/040747.php Matt BradshawGrave of the Vampire (a.k.a. Seed of Terror) is a low budget gem from a time when cinematic vampires were migrating from the storm-shrouded castles of Europe into contemporary society. The gothic Hammer style vampire had fallen out of favor, giving way to the likes of Count Yorga, Barnabas Collins, and Blacula. Even Hammer itself brought their trademark monster Count Dracula into modern times with Dracula A.D. 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula. While largely a forgotten film, Grave of the Vampire has been a personal favorite for years and deserves to be better known.Two young lovers, Leslie Hollander and her boyfriend Paul, leave a fraternity party for some quiet time together. Since their destination is a fog shrouded cemetery in the middle of the night, it's easy to predict that things will not end well for the pair. While Leslie and Paul make love in the back seat of Paul's car, we see the lid of a nearby crypt creak open, and Caleb Croft crawls out into the open air for the first time in three years. We later learn that Croft was a serial rapist and murderer who died while being pursued by police, but Croft is just one of the names used over the centuries by a vampire originally known as Charles Croydon. Croft rips the car door from its hinges and, bearing his fangs, drains the blood from Paul. Croft then drags the hysterical Leslie into a nearby open grave and rapes her.Leslie survives the attack and soon learns she is pregnant. She is overjoyed at the thought of having Paul's child, but when she learns the newborn infant will only drink blood and not milk, the identity of the father becomes apparent. The child, named James, grows to adulthood with a fierce desire to destroy the creature that assaulted his mother and ultimately brought about her early death. James tracks the creature to an American University where he is teaching a class on the occult under the name of Adrian Lockwood. To confirm that Lockwood and Croft are one and the same, James enrolls in Lockwood's class. Two of James' classmates, Anita and Anne, have eyes for James, but Anita also suspects Lockwood's true nature and seeks a relationship with the Professor to assure her own immortality.Few would argue that Grave of the Vampire is a masterpiece. Much of the dialogue is overwrought. Anne's discussion with James of their blossoming relationship, for example, is so flowery as to induce hay fever. Most of the actors are at least competent with the notable exception of William Smith as James – who comes off as a complete stump, except during the film's climax in which he overemotes to the point of embarrassment. The role called for a degree of subtlety Smith lacked.One of the film's greatest strengths is the performance of Michael Pataki as Caleb Croft/Charles Croydon. His dialogue is just as over the top as everyone else's, but he makes it work, coming off as an immortal fiend with a God complex. Kitty Vallacher also gives a strong performance as Leslie, showing equal strength as both a shrieking victim and a strong-willed and protective mother. The opening scene in the graveyard sets a creepy ambiance, which holds throughout the picture. Grave of the Vampire may not be a masterpiece, but as a drive-in era horror flick, it's one of the best of its kind.The vampire as serial rapist scenario is, to the best of my knowledge, unique to this film. The sexuality of vampires is a subject that has been beaten to death, but since the relationship between vampire and victim involves close physical contact, penetration, and an exchange of fluids, one need not be a student of Freud to see the obvious. Rape/revenge films were not uncommon in the 1970s, so the mixing of this theme with the vampire genre is not so hard to imagine. Still, Croft/Croydon's status as a rapist serves its purpose by making a time worn movie monster all the more horrific for a modern audience, and the scene in which Leslie is assaulted, though not graphic, is very disturbing.While I'm grateful Alpha Video has made this obscure title widely available, the condition of the print is abominable. The movie is presented in fullscreen, and suffers from gatefloat during the first few reels, causing the picture to bounce up and down. The color is badly washed out. A scene in which Anne finds a raw half-eaten steak, showing the viewer James still retains at least part of his vampiric nature, is rendered meaningless because the degraded print makes the meat appear cooked. Several jump cuts seem to indicate Alpha's Video's version of the film is culled from an edited TV print. Both Video Search of Miami and Sinister Cinema carry the film, but I haven't seen either of those versions and can not comment on their quality or completeness.In any case, Grave of the Vampire is past due for restoration and a high quality DVD release. Are you listening Anchor Bay, or perhaps Dark Sky Films? Video52158@blogcritics.org Tue, 29 Aug 2006 04:07:47 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/08/28/075831.php Matt BradshawOf all the mythical childhood icons, the Tooth Fairy is the hardest to pin down visually. Bunnies are easy enough to visualize, and Santa has pretty much every retailer in the Western Hemisphere working as his PR agent. As a child I would visualize the Tooth Fairy as a variation on the Disney rendition of Peter Pan's Tinkerbell. The restraining order I received from Disney's legal department put a stop to that, effectively bringing my childhood to an end at the tender age of thirty-seven. To realign my visualization of the Tooth Fairy, the Disney folks sent along an eight by ten of Bea Arthur in a leotard, tutu, and wings. I have not been quite right since.The Tooth Fairy we meet in this film is quite a different take on the character. More of a witch than a fairy, she's riddled with tumors and murders children. Try to take that away from me, Disney!Peter Campbell (Lochlyn Munroe) is fixing up an old country home into a bed and breakfast with the aid of hunky young handyman Bobby (Jesse Hutch). Peter's former fiance Darcy (Chandra West) and her daughter Pamela (Nicole Munoz) come to visit for the weekend. Pamela makes friends with a little girl named Emma (Jianna Ballard) that no one else can see. Emma warns Pamela about the evil witch that used to live in the house and was known for taking the local children's last baby tooth and delivering gory lawn and garden tool death in return. She places the children's teeth in her magic music box, condemning their souls to wander the earth. After a spill on her bicycle, Pamela loses her last baby tooth and becomes a target for the witch.The Tooth Fairy doesn't seem quite as selective as the legend would lead folks to believe. She starts whacking characters left and right -- starting with Bobby who telegraphs his own demise when he says he can get that old wood chipper working again -- then working her way through the cast. Genre vet P.J. Soles plays Mrs. MacDonald the next door neighbor who gives Peter and Darcy the secret to defeating the witch, and Peter's freeloading rock star wannabe pal Cole is played by Steve Bacic who played the pre-blue-furred Hank McCoy in X2.Now, I've seen a lot of bad movies in my day. A film can go wrong in just about any area, but The Tooth Fairy commits probably the worst sin a film can commit: it's cripplingly mediocre. Nothing is cringe-inducingly bad, which would at least make it memorable. Instead we have a cluster of reasonably talented actors playing some not terribly interesting characters in a film I really find it hard to care about. Further whittling away at the film's credibility are a series of missteps, including an ultra dorky dinner montage sequence with cheesy pseudo pop music on the soundtrack, the fact that Darcy's near rape experience is practically ignored, and perhaps worst of all the use of one of film and television's most cliched lines used by an estranged couple, "we always did make a good team." Come on, people, who the hell says that?The clunky use of expository dialogue trades believability for brevity. Pamela describes Peter as, "Peter Campbell. He and my mom used to be engaged. He was a doctor then. Now he quit. He just writes short stories." And when Stephanie (Carrie Fleming) introduces herself to Peter she tells him, "I used to dance down at the Grease Monkey in town, but I've saved up enough to retire from show biz so I'm going to veterinary college." To reinforce this she spots some humming birds and recites the Latin name for their species. Characterization that has been distilled into concentrated pill form does things to my gastrointestinal tract that one doctor told me was reminiscent of the Ebola virus.Add to it all an historically inaccurate interpretation of the Salem witch phenomenon, and you've got another direct to DVD film that needs to be purged from your Netflix queue. Video52115@blogcritics.org Mon, 28 Aug 2006 07:58:31 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/08/23/172210.php Matt BradshawAmy Roberts has some issues. Hospitals terrify her, thanks to a childhood trauma, as does commitment. When her live-in boyfriend Nick gets down on one knee to propose, she coldly asks him if they can discuss this later.On the way home from work that day, Nick and Amy's car is side-swiped at an intersection. Nick's leg is badly broken and he is taken away by some sinister looking ambulance attendants. Amy is not allowed to accompany him, and the attendants seem to have forgotten to tell her to what hospital they're taking Nick. Lucas, the driver of the other vehicle, is unharmed, but his sister is taken away under similarly nefarious circumstances. When she can't locate Nick at any area hospitals, Amy and Lucas go to the police, but are turned away on the rather nonsensical assumption that it's all a prank.Meanwhile, Nick finds himself in a hospital being cared for by several beautiful but obviously evil nurses. They draw blood from Nick and two other patients with uncomfortable frequency, and are evasive when answering Nick's questions.Amy is a school teacher and Melissa, one of her students, has been drawing pictures of the creatures she's been seeing in her nightmares. These creatures bear a strong resemblance to the ones Amy begins to see in real life. Seemingly normal people will inexplicably morph into nightmarish hellspawn. When Amy asks Melissa for help, Melissa tells her Nick can be found at St. Rosemary's, a hospital that burned to the ground decades earlier amidst rumors of satanic shenanigans.I've seen a lot of direct-to-DVD horror flicks lately. These films can be a chore to sit through, but that's the price you pay for being a horror completist. I had some hope for Room 6. The cast is quite competent. Amy is played by Christine Taylor who played Marcia in the Brady Bunch movies. While she seems to have escaped the typecasting suffered by the original Brady cast, my 'Marcia, Marcia, Marcia' alarm goes off every time I see her. Jerry O'Connell, who has come a long way from being the fat kid in Stand By Me, plays Lucas. Even the smaller roles are peppered with familiar faces. Nick's fellow patients at St. Rosemary's include John Billingsley, probably best known for his portrayal of Dr. Phlox on four seasons of Enterprise, and Jack Riley, who has made a career of being a patient, having played Elliot Carlin on The Bob Newhart Show and St. Elsewhere. And, though you won't recognize him without the hockey mask, longtime Friday the 13th star Kane Hodder appears as a homeless demon.What cripples the film is not the cast but the script. Amy repeatedly sees people turning into demons. These visions seem to be randomly inserted to keep the scares coming, but other than shock value they add nothing to the story and soon become tiresome. The idea of getting help from the police is dismissed too quickly to be believable. Apparently police involvement didn't fit in with the sceenwriters' plans, so the idea is ignored via a flimsy plot device. On principal I have nothing against such things, but the naked lesbian nurse foursome (I am not making that up) just seems forced and out of place.Characters are drawn with a ridiculously broad brush. Melissa's white trash mother is irritatingly over the top, and the Catholic priest from whom Amy seeks counsel is nauseatingly angelic -- at least until he turns into a demon. The notion that a priest in this day and age would address an adult nearly his own age as “my child” is laughable.The worst is saved for the end. The film's climax is a slap in the face to anyone who dedicated 94 minutes to sitting through Room 6. While the ending theoretically explains away the disjointed nature of the film, it is a cop out of the worst kind, and one of the horror genre's worst cliches.I suggest viewers skip Room 6 and rent Jacob's Ladder, a film with a similar plot that has the advantage of being infinitely more watchable. Video51916@blogcritics.org Wed, 23 Aug 2006 17:22:10 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/08/23/011936.php Matt Bradshaw Wow. Um, OK. This is... or rather that is... Wow.This was my first Mexican wrestler/monster movie. I've read about the genre and seen clips here and there, but this was my first chance to partake, and I must say I was truly not prepared. In strictly clinical terms, it's pretty whacked. Santo, the Man in the Silver Mask, is one of Mexico's greatest wrestlers, and has starred in countless films, often alongside his fellow Luchador Blue Demon. In this adventure, Dr. Bruno Halder, a recently deceased scientist, is returned to the land of the living by his hunchbacked midget assistant and a small army of green-faced zombies. The good doctor wants revenge against Santo and Blue Demon for some reason or other. To accomplish this he creates an evil duplicate of Blue Demon and revives a pantheon of classic movie monsters to do his bidding. The monsters themselves are a wonder to behold. Frankenstein (sic) sports the classic Universal Monsters look with a bad case of bed-head and facial hair presumably to add a Latin look to the creature. The vampire (not sure why they shied away from calling him Dracula) strongly resembles the John Carradine take on Stoker's character, despite a pair of ridiculously oversized bat ears. The mummy looks like an emaciated old dude who has had a tragic accident with a very large roll of gauze, while the wolf-man is little more than a befanged man with an overgrown beard. The Cyclops bears a slight resemblance to the Ray Harryhausen creation of the same name from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, but swap the awe-inspiring stop motion animation for a big guy in a foam rubber suit. There's also some little bug-eyed guy with an exposed brain running around Halder's lab. Halder's master plan is never made clear. He sends his creatures out to do away with Santo. They engage our hero in pro-wrestling style fisticuffs, get their asses kicked, and return to Halder's lair... Repeatedly. Now and then the monsters prey upon random innocents. The order of the scenes seems almost arbitrary, and rearranging them would probably not alter the film in the slightest. For some of the U.S. import versions of these movies Santo was renamed Samson, but Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos retains the original Spanish soundtrack. The disk includes English subtitles, but the DVD menus are entirely in Spanish. My unfamiliarity with the language required some trial and error before I could find the subtitles. Frankly, the movie probably works better without them, adding an additional layer of confusion to an already incomprehensible movie. It's interesting to note that even though this film was made as recently as 1968, it apes much of its style from the Universal monster classics of the 1930s and 1940s. It's silly as hell to be sure, but after a fairly slow couple of reels, the pace rarely falters. A few beers certainly couldn't hurt, but even sober Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos is a fun experience and worth seeking out. Video51893@blogcritics.org Wed, 23 Aug 2006 01:19:36 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/07/25/091613.php Matt BradshawSifting through every horror film that comes out -- or even a good chunk of them -- is like fishing a wedding ring out of a septic tank. You have to swim through a lot of crap to find that little piece of gold. Leif Jonker's Darkness is indeed that piece of gold, and considering the number of crappy films I've seen lately, its presence in my DVD player is a truly wonderful thing.The plot is sheer simplicity. A vampire named Liven is slaughtering everyone who crosses his path in a small American town. His victims rise from the dead with a powerful thirst of their own, and soon there are vampires everywhere. A young man named Tobe has lost his family to the vampire plague, and now his only desire is to destroy Liven. Tobe soon joins forces with other survivors and they find themselves on a path to one of the goriest climaxes in the history of horror cinema.Darkness accomplishes the seemingly impossible by making vampires scary again. These are not the aristocratic goth chic vamps of the Anne Rice books or the action movie villains from the Blade movies. The undead of Darkness are more like the pack-hunting animalistic vampires of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. There are no fangs or capes here, just the walking dead with a raw, animalistic thirst. Jonker's vampires are not above using weapons to bring down their prey, and while I'm sure a stake could kill them, a bullet through the heart does the job just as well.This is a remarkable film for a number of reasons. Pre-dating the no-budget success of Kevin Smith's Clerks by a year, Darkness sprang from a similarly impoverished budget in 1993. Darkness started life as a film with a 19-year-old director who recruited friends as cast and crew (the age range of the players, with one or two exceptions, is limited to late teens to early twenties). Furthermore, the film was never intended to be shown to the general public. It was created as a feature-length demo to show to potential investors, much like Sam Raimi's Within the Woods was used to raise funds to produce The Evil Dead. While Clerks went on to become a more or less mainstream success, Darkness became something of an underground film. The fact that it is now available in such a mainstream establishment as Best Buy is quite astounding.The acting ranges from fair to poor and the film never looks slick by any stretch, but that's not the point. The raw look is one of the film's greatest charms. The soft, grainy 8-millimeter image enhances the dreamlike quality of the film, much the same way as black and white photography does. You're not so much watching a movie as you are experiencing a nightmare. The simple but effective synthesizer score usually consists of a melancholy dirge that loops continually, not unlike the kind of music you would hear in a horror-based computer game.Not all the gore effects work as well as they might -- there's a chainsaw to the hand gag that really shows Jonker's reach exceeding his grasp -- but the sheer volume and enthusiasm of the gore forgives a lot. The Evil Dead influence is especially obvious when our heroes are doused in the blood of the vampires they dispatch. The red stuff is just everywhere in this movie, and it's done with style.This two-disk DVD set represents The Vampire Version of the film. Jonker has finally been able to make the final cut that budgetary limitations didn't permit back in the early nineties. The image has been digitally remastered, and there are some great side by side comparisons on the disk to show just how profound the difference is. Jonker's original release version of the film, transferred to video from film via a camcorder and a projector in his kitchen, is included on the second disk. There are also several audio commentaries and sundry extras to keep you busy for awhile.A real triumph of talent, enthusiasm, and perseverance over budget, and one of the best horror films I've seen in quite a while. Video50742@blogcritics.org Tue, 25 Jul 2006 09:16:13 EDT