Sick Girl
This one is directed by relative unknown Lucky McKee, who first got noticed for the rather interesting independent Frankenstein reimagining May. It's also notable for starring soft-porn diva Misty Mundae, who's more talented than a lot of people realize, both as an actress and a director. As for the story, it's a gross and humorous love story between two women and between a woman and a bug. Stylistically I find McKee's work rather derivative of Stuart Gordon, including his use of strong primary colors and a sort of nervous directorial perspective, but it all works well here. 9/10.
Pick Me Up
I just finished watching this latest entry in the series and I'm still conflicted about it. It's directed by Larry Cohen who's written and directed some amazing movies and some indescribably awful movies, ranging from the excellence of his script for Phone Booth to the quirky bizarreness of directing Q to the exquisite awfulness of It's Alive III: Island of the Alive and Full Moon High. Actually, I could probably write an article just on the bizarre films Cohen has made, starting with his trio of classic Blacksploitation films, Bone, Hell Up in Harlem and Black Caesar, then going on through his career alternating great serious thrillers with campy tongue-in-cheek horror disasters. The script was written by cult horror punk writer David Schow, whcih may or may not be a good thing. The premise is fairly clever - a serial killer who picks up and kills hitchhikers meets a hitchhiking serial killer. It's an idea which almost had to be made. The problem is that the film's only an hour long and the idea should have been a full-length movie. Plus it's directed like Cohen thought he was going to have two hours and then suddenly realized he only had one. It starts off great and then just suddenly ends in a conclusion that is abrupt, unsatisfying and features a twist I saw coming a mile away. The usually excellent Fairuza Balk is totally wasted as the victim the two killers fight over. She spends most of her screen time screaming. I wanted to see all three of the main characters explored a lot more, plus I wanted to know what the hell happened to the girl that both killers apparently just abandoned tied to a tree in the woods. These aren't the kinds of guys who would leave a loose end like that. There's a lot of potential here, but what it ends up as is just a mess. 6/10.
The next entry in the series is Haeckel's Tale which is directed by John McNaughton who has directed some excellent thrillers like Wild Things but isn't known for horror, except for the wretched The Borrower. But he's competent and he's working with an interesting Clive Barker story, so it might be good. Next up after that is Imprint directed by Japanese cult director Takeshi Miike, so it might be interesting.
Article comments
1 - Chris Beaumont
Showtime announced that they will not be airing the Miike episode. It will make its debut on DVD next Fall.
2 - Dave Nalle
Wow, when did they make that announcement? Any idea what they''re going to air instead? Considering the extreme nature of some of the episodes they've already aired I can't imagine that it's just the level of violence.
Dave