Shocktober Revisited: More Brains and Swallowed Souls

editor's note: this was originally posted in November of 2011.
 
 I finally caught up on some horror documentaries, specifically More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead and Swallowed Souls: The Making of Evil Dead 2. The former you might have heard of; the latter is more incentive to pick up Lionsgate's 25th Anniversary Edition of Sam Raimi's splatter classic.

 Dan O'Bannon fans will be elated and disappointed while watching More Brains - the film reunites most of the surviving cast and crew members (including the special effects artist fired halfway through the film), but until the very end, O'Bannon - who passed in 2009 - is absent from the oral history of Return of the Living Dead. There's a lot of talking about O'Bannon, often in conflicting narratives (he was too demanding, too aloof; he was easy to work with and open to suggestions), but only in the closing moments does the writer / director have a chance to speak to the film's cult status. In what was his final interview, O'Bannon is candid about the audience embrace of the film and its legacy, and makes a knowing comment about "if I die tomorrow" before the film goes to credits.

 The story of the making of Return of the Living Dead from John Russo (producer / writer of Night of the Living Dead)'s original pitch to the decision of Hemdale Films to hire Dan O'Bannon to write and direct the film as a horror comedy, from casting to premieres, is an affair filled with gossip, contradictory stories, and debates about whether Clu Gulager really threw a can at the director in a fit of rage. I'm tempted to share anecdotes from the cast, or to mention the ongoing bad blood between the production designer (William Stout) and first make-up effects (William Munns) over the inadequate zombie masks and "headless zombie" appliance. The memories are sometimes contentious, sometimes defensive, but always entertaining. More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead is well worth the time of fans of Return of the Living Dead.

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 Meanwhile, I'd like to thank a video store in the mall that will go unnamed until later this week for erroneously placing two copies of the 25th Anniversary Blu-Ray of Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn the weekend before the disc is actually released (it comes out tomorrow). I've bemoaned the endless re-releasing of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films on DVD before, and we're seeing the first instance of "double-dipping" in high definition for the trilogy. As Anchor Bay closes (or whatever is going on with Anchor Bay) and their catalog is divvied up by Image Entertainment and Lionsgate, we're likely to see another release of The Evil Dead before long, and I find it hard to believe that Universal's underwhelming "Screwhead Edition" of Army of Darkness is the be-all-end-all of HD releases.

 But for now, let's look at the Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn 25th Anniversary double-dip. As a sucker for supplements, I must admit the list of extras seemed very promising - collections of featurette's about the casing, effects, conception, direction, and filming. When I put the disc in, I didn't realize that all of these individually listed extras were part of one 98 minute documentary, Swallowed Souls. It's reminiscent of segments of Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, and is broken into chapters complete with claymation vignettes to bridge them.

 Like More Brains, the primary element lacking in Swallowed Souls is the presence of Sam Raimi. It's not as though his presence isn't felt, because the "making of" footage shot by Greg Nicotero features young Sam Raimi in abundance, but he's noticeably absent from the proceedings. On the other hand, the doc features an abundance of newly shot interviews with Bruce Campbell, who speaks candidly about Evil Dead 2 and shares stories I don't think I've heard anywhere, including in If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor. Swallowed Souls also prominently features the rest of the leads of Evil Dead 2: Sarah Berry (Annie), Dan Hicks (Jake), Kassie Wesley (Bobbi Joe), Richard Dormeier (Ed) and Ted Raimi (Possessed Henrietta). Hearing their perspective on making the film is in and of itself a treat - many of them had no idea what they were in for.

 The entire makeup effects team, including Mark Shostrom (From Beyond, A Nightmare one Elm Street Part 2) and the first time in years that I've seen all three members of KNB (Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, and Howard Berger) on camera talking about a project they worked on together*. Their camcorder footage, which documents the conception of Evil Dead 2's effects all the way through the film's production, are a treasure trove of unseen footage from Wadesboro, North Carolina in 1986. They gleefully exploit their creations and play around with camera tricks, mimicking Raimi's "evil force" camera shots.

 So here's where it gets tough - do you want to drop another $14 for Evil Dead 2 to see an admittedly great "making of" documentary? If you still have the Anchor Bay disc, you'll notice that The Gore the Merrier is still included, the commentary is still included, and I'm not sure that the picture is that much different. The price is fair so if you don't already have Evil Dead 2 on Blu-Ray this is a no-brainer, but wary double dippers are going to have to ask themselves if the making of justifies buying the film again. I will say that if it were released on its own, Swallowed Souls would be worth picking up in the same way as Halloween: 25 Years of Terror or His Name was Jason are. Evil Dead fans, prepare yourselves for the impending moral quandary. I don't regret it, but I also have the added bonus of picking the disc up early...


 * Since Kurtzman moved on to create his own production company, it's common just to see Nicotero and Berger appearing in "making of" documentaries that KNB did makeup effects for.

Shocktober Revisited: Cronos

Review originally appeared in 2011.

When I reviewed Let the Right One In in 2009, I brought up four really great vampire movies (of which Let the Right One In would be a fifth): Martin, Near Dark, Nosferatu, and Shadow of the Vampire. It's time to add another film to that list; Guillermo del Toro's directorial debut, Cronos. Like the other films listed, Cronos is a non-traditional vampire tale, a story centered around immortality with a price, one that touches briefly on addiction and centers - as many of del Toro's finest films do - around a child.

The girl in question, Aurora Gris (Tamara Shanath), lives with her grandparents: Grandmother Mercedes (Margarita Isabel) and Grandfather Jesus (Federico Luppi). Jesus Gris owns an antiques shop, and he brings his inquisitive granddaughter along while the store is open. One day, he discovers a small, scarab-like mechanical device inside of a statue of an angel. The following day, Angel de la Guardia (Ron Perlman) arrives to buy the statue for his uncle (Claudio Brook). The device, it seems, was created by an alchemist (Mario Iván Martínez) in 1535, and was lost after his death in a bank collapse - in 1937.

Jesus is surprised that the device attaches itself to his skin, drawing blood, and immediately removes the Cronos device - until he notices that its brief contact to his skin removed years of aging from his life. He begins, to the chagrin of Aurora, to continue using the device, developing a taste for blood - needed to power the device - and becoming addicted to the inevitable transformation the scarab brings him. Unfortunately, De la Guardia is perfectly aware that the device should have been in the statue, knows what the Cronos device can do, and sends Angel to find Jesus at any cost.

At the risk of spoiling anything else, I'm going to stop there; viewers watching Cronos benefit best from the least amount of spoilers possible. Guillermo del Toro makes the best of his low budget and tells an intimate, disturbing fairy tale about losing a member of one's family without necessarily losing them (again, I'm trying to avoid spoilers) while making the best of his bilingual cast (Perlman speaks almost entirely in English, save for a few intentionally bad lines in Spanish). The effects are particularly impressive: del Toro gives us glimpses inside of the Cronos device, hinting at an insect-like creature that lives inside and perhaps(?) facilitates Jesus' transformation.

The film is going to appeal to Guillermo del Toro fans who gravitate towards The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, rather than the grand scale Blade II or Hellboy films. This is not to say both won't find something to enjoy in his first film; traces of del Toro's later films exist throughout Cronos, both thematically and in imagery he's drawn towards. It stands proudly alongside his later work, but also fits in nicely with the atypical vampire films listed in the first paragraph. It also shares a connective tissue with another film, one released a decade before, by an equally well regarded "cult" director.

(Semi-spoilers ahead) Criterion released Cronos on the same day they issued a Blu-Ray upgrade for Videodrome, and its hardly a coincidence: late in Cronos, there's a moment that mirrors Cronenberg's 1983 film where the protagonist reaches into his stomach, feeling past his old skin and discovering his "new flesh." The parallels, even though they may end differently (Cronos opts for closing imagery similar to Nosferatu's and one that would be used later in Shadow of the Vampire), almost certainly left an impression on the Criterion team, and their simultaneous release allows audiences to discover intertextuality where they would not think to look otherwise.

Shocktober Revisited: Four Reasons to Remake Obscure Horror Films

Welcome to another installment of Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium. Tonight I'll have a few preamble-ish comments, followed by what I hope will be a brief addressing of a question I posed long ago: "why are studios remaking such random horror movies?"

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One blogorium reader was kind enough to point out to me that the spaces do count in that "140 characters max" on Twitter, which renders my little experiment moot. It also proves to me that I could in no way give you reasonable feedback on movies using that ridiculous site.

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To be honest, I understand why the remake happens. I don't necessarily like it, but rather than harp on its downsides - as the Cap'n usually does - I thought I'd take the opportunity to look at the pluses of this trend, because there are a few.

Big name remakes make enough sense; repackage a title that's well enough culturally recognized (your Friday the 13ths, Nightmare on Elm Streets, Halloweens, Texas Chain Saw Massacres, and so on), throw in a dispensable cast of Abercrombie and Fitch models-turned-CW-stars, and pay lip service to the "classic" original producers know their target audience doesn't watch because it's "dated" and "stupid", and voila - big box office pay off. I get that.

We've moved in a different direction, though: one you get past the "top tier" remakes, rather than simply go for the comparably well known second tier movies (your Critters, Phantasm, The Exorcist*), studios are jumping for lesser known "cult" films. In the past seven years, we've seen The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left, Prom Night, Terror Train, Black Christmas, April Fool's Day, My Bloody Valentine, It's Alive, The Crazies, The House on Sorority Row, The Stepfather, The Fog, The Wicker Man, The Toolbox Murders, and When a Stranger Calls.

Not exactly part of the cultural zeitgeist, I'd say. Horror aficionados? Sure, but hardly the kind of movie everybody knows immediately. I can say "Freddy Krueger" and people who haven't seen A Nightmare on Elm Street. If I say "The Tall Man", it's 75/25 against, but I guarantee you most people couldn't name the killer in most of the above slasher films. In fact, I'm willing to bet that a solid 2nd-tier title like Creepshow is mostly unknown to the masses.

So why turn to such obscure films for remakes? Name recognition falls off steeply after The Last House on the Left, so let's look at four other reasons (besides "it's cheap"):

1. The Days of Video Store familiarity are almost at a close - meaning that the era of familiarity with "cult" horror films, or even more obscure titles like The Crazies, The Stepfather, and The House on Sorority Row are coming to an end. The DVD market, also winding down, is so packed with releases of "cult" horror films (not to mention Blu-Ray reissues, as Blue Underground has been devoting themselves to) that it's very easy for these once-recognizable films to lose shelf space.

That wasn't really the case in the golden age of VHS. Speaking strictly from personal experience, Carbonated Video and Video Bar had rows of horror films with lurid cover art, facing forward so that you always knew what it was you were in for. Go to Best Buy and try that. Their horror section (at least here) is packed in tightly between the end of "Drama" and the beginning of "Boxed Sets", with every movie scrunched together, spine forward. Unless you know what you're looking for, it's up to the title of the movie to do the work for you, and while I might think about looking twice at something called Bloodsucking Freaks or Gore Met: Zombie Chef from Hell, I never missed those titles at the video store.


2. Attention Spans are Getting Shorter and the Market is Getting Larger - It's very, VERY easy to find a dozen horror titles from the last year you've never heard of. Seriously, now that DVD distribution can get every zero-budget slasher / zombie movie a review on the major web sites, the older films get lost in the shuffle, no matter how revered they are. The frequency of releases and the relative obscurity of some of the titles even makes me mistake a movie like Street Trash for a movie like Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl, chronology-wise.

When I have to remind people that a movie from last year - The House of the Devil - even exists, imagine how tricky it is to keep the horror neophyte abreast on The Burning. Or jeez, Visiting Hours, which I don't even like that much! There are simply too many horror movies that somehow never made it to DVD that should, because the VHS copies are getting harder to find. However, if a studio remakes the film, we get to reason number #3

3. The Original Film Gets Its Day in the Sun - Oh sure, it may not be for very long, but consider the fact that until The Stepfather remake was on its way to theatres that you couldn't get a copy of the original on DVD. There was an out-of-print copy of the sequel, but the very fact that a remake was happening ushered the release of both Terry O'Quinn Stepfather films in special editions, which might have eventually happened, but until that point had not.

The same applies for The House on Sorority Row (albeit several months later), Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine (in an uncut version to boot), The Gate, Child's Play**, The Crazies on Blu-Ray, and (I would imagine) is coming for Piranha, Suspiria, Patrick, The Brood, I Spit on Your Grave, Maniac, Fright Night, and Night of the Demons.

Even if you aren't planning on seeing the remakes (and I think I've seen two in the last year - Friday the 13th Shit Coffin and My Bloody Valentine 3-D), it was nice to be able to pick up the originals on DVD and Blu-Ray in something a little better than "bargain bin" editions. In fact, this leads me to my final point, one that might seem tangentially related, but -

4. Other, Lesser Known, Horror Films are Also Being Released "Just in Case" - There may be no plans to remake Night of the Creeps, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, Maniac Cop, Two Evil Eyes, Silent Night, Deadly Night, or Monster Squad, but they've been slowly but surely coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray in between releases of movies that are being remade. As much as might might seem annoying, the remake mania opened up the market for older, "cult", titles to get their own special editions, on the off-chance somebody decides to option them. How else do you explain video nasties like Cannibal Holocaust getting a two-disc edition, or Faces of Death on Blu-Ray(!)?

This gives me hope for those films yet to be available. I talk a LOT about Terrorvision, but considering how many movies that are much worse are already on DVD, it's a crying shame that such a twisted movie is only on VHS. Or The House of Long Shadows, which maybe isn't a great movie, but has Vincent Price, John Carradine, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee together on-screen. That's not on DVD, but Uncle Sam is coming out on Blu-Ray. Look, I can understand City of the Living Dead on Blu-Ray, but Uncle Sam??? Really? And we can't even get a standard definition copy of Terrorvision?

But I digress. The point is, that with all of these remakes in the pipeline, as much ire as it raises, and the slow push to get "every movie out on DVD", I can look forward to eventually seeing these and many other lost "cult" horror films on shelves, however briefly. Then I have to contend with their remakes eating up space, but the option will be there for a while. And smaller companies like Severin or Blue Underground or Synapse or Dark Sky will continue to release other movies, possibly with remakes in mind, but possibly not. As long as I'm not obliged to see the new version, it's really a win-win

So there you have it, the "silver lining" to the remake madness. If I have to put up with continual announcements about this-or-that beloved rarity being churned out for a quick buck in order to have a proper copy at home, so be it. It could be worse: they could not be greedy and just bury the original films to we can never see them again...

* I realize some of you are going to take umbrage to my suggestion that The Exorcist is in any way "second tier", you have to admit that the fact nobody is even trying to remake it when The Evil Dead continues to be a viable remake is odd. I intentionally left out Hellraiser, as it apparently is the subject of ongoing remake attempts.
** While, technically speaking, there is no Child's Play remake yet, its existence figures prominently in the special edition dvd and Blu-Ray commentary tracks.

Shocktober Review Revisited: The House of the Devil

Closing out our week of horror (and of horrors involving rolling blackouts), I finally watched The House of the Devil, and I'm glad I did. Alternately, I wish I hadn't. Allow me to explain.

The House of the Devil is a great horror film. It's the kind of film that from moment one fills you with a pervasive dread for the horrible thing you know is coming. Writer / Director / Editor Ti West does such a great job of milking that tension, of letting it build and build that at a certain point I found myself saying "no, don't go up there. just don't do it.", because that's how great this movie is at preparing you for the worst. Nothing good can happen in this film, no matter how innocuous it seems at times.

I love that there are no "jump" scares. Not one. And there are plenty of opportunities for them. There are two that come close, but both of them are "jumps" for characters, because by the time you realize what it is they're reacting to, the dread's kicked back in. I have to think that part of this is because of the "gimmick" of The House of the Devil, if you want to call it that.

The film is a throwback to the very early 80s, like before all the neon day-glo colors were pervasive and when it seemed reasonable to still have feathered hair and jean jackets. If it helps, think Friday the 13th part 2 instead of Part 4. But Ti West isn't making a "wink wink" movie set in the 1980s; The House of the Devil plays it straight. The creepy music, the camera angles, set design, lighting, a perfectly constructed montage in the middle of the film. Even the grain, which I must assume was at least partially digitally added, is reminiscent of low budget movies of the era (like Splatter University).

More importantly, West understands that The House of the Devil needs to look like a film of that period, so he films it appropriately. Long takes, slow push ins and pull outs, trickery with lighting. Beyond that, The House of the Devil does what The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake failed to do: the cast looks like they belong in the period. There's nothing about Jessica Biel and Eric Balfour tooling around in bell bottoms that says "oh, it's actually the 1970s and not just let's play dress up," but West manages to get it spot on in casting.

Central to this is Jocelin Donahue as Samantha; there's something about her that's reminiscent of a young Karen Allen (or even Jessica Harper in Suspiria), but she looks like she lives and breathes in that time period. It doesn't look like the A&F models dropped into horror films that I mentioned the other day. Donahue's Samantha is a character that feels organic to the film, and not imposed on a time frame. It doesn't hurt that she's not very well known, nor a most of the small cast (save for three, and I'll get to them in a second), but nobody sticks out like "oh, 2009 playing dress up in 1982."

Samantha is a college student in a nondescript northeastern town in a not specific early 80s setting. She's trying to get an apartment, but can't afford to pay the first month's rent, and decides to respond to an ad that says "Baby $itter Wanted." The house is out in the middle of the country, and Mr. and Mrs. Ulman aren't exactly forthright about what they want her to do, but the money is too good to pass up. All she has to do is stay in the house until midnight with an old woman who is (mostly) unseen. But then little inconsistencies start adding up, and before too long, it's very clear to Samantha that something is very wrong in this house...

If there's anything that wouldn't clearly fool audiences into thinking The House of the Devil wasn't a "lost" film from the 1980s, it's the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Ulman, played by Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov. You may not recognize the names, but check out their filmographies and you'll see more than a few movies you've watched. (To a lesser degree, Dee Wallace appears very early in the film, but it's possible that you might catch it on tv after the title sequence and miss her entirely) That Noonan was in Wolfen in 1981 and Woronov in Eating Raoul in 1982 would make it a little tricky to reconcile the clear age differences in The House of the Devil, but it doesn't matter because they're so creepy in the film.

And that's a big component here. It's exactly why I wish I hadn't seen The House of the Devil alone and late at night. Seriously, not since The Haunting have I been so unnerved by watching a film by myself. The film is just creepy, because you just know something awful is coming, but West is so good at drawing it out, slowly, patiently, that the audience is freaking out long before things get twisted. And make no mistake, they do; the camera style switches to a much more fluid, hand held approach for that point, but I wouldn't dream of spoiling the last ten minutes of the film. It's pitch perfect, including the ending, which restores dread in a way that carries on well after the credits finish rolling.

I guess there might be some nitpickers in the IMDB "Goofs" page that'll go after a few tiny anachronisms early in the movie (yes, I noticed the very 2007 SUV in the background too, get over it), but once the film really gets going at the Ulman's house, you stop caring about little crap like that. The story is too unnerving, as you sit anticipating the awful thing that happens when the lunar eclipse finally comes, to bother with things like "that phone wouldn't blah blah."

Horror fans looking for an honest to goodness creepy film that builds atmosphere over cheap trickery and avoids gore for as long as it possibly can should run - not walk - to buy The House of the Devil. That's right, I said BUY it. You don't need to waffle around and rent it, because if you're the kind of person that reacted when I compared this film to The Haunting, you know I mean business. I wish that somehow The House of the Devil could have traded places with Paranormal Activity, so that it did crazy business and ushered in an era of really good serious horror films, instead of more "found footage" garbage.

Hopefully, this movie is going to have a crazy good life as a "cult" film on cable, where viewers will come in sometime in the first twenty minutes or so and think they're watching a movie from the 80s. It does its job well enough that you could.

Watch The House of the Devil. Post haste. I'll be giving away a copy of the dvd at the Oscar party. Sorry, the VHS copy is mine. And for the record, I had the same kind of walkman that Samantha uses in the film. It only fast-forwarded, never rewound, and the tape usually got stuck, even if you pressed the "Stop/Eject" button hard enough. I also had those earphones. Man, I miss those earphones...

Retro Review: Battle Royale

 Everybody is talking about The Hunger Games, a movie that I can feel comfortable reporting comes out this Friday. I can't confirm that, but I have a hunch. And when I say "everybody," I mean one person I know and every entertainment program on television, nearly every store that sells books, music (it has a soundtrack), and any website that wants to piggyback on this manufactured "phenomenon."

 Look, I'm sure that The Hunger Games will do very well (because its target audience was told it would do very well while they're waiting for the next Twilight movie which, by the way, is also now part of a fake "feud" designed to sell teen magazines) in the way that John Carter did not, largely for the same reasons: one movie has been announced as the next "must see" movie and the other was deemed a "failure" with the likes of Ishtar and Heaven's Gate before anyone had seen either film. It's how these things go, and to be honest, I'm not really interested in seeing John Carter or The Hunger Games. They might both be great movies or they might blow chunks and I'm not going to know. I also haven't read The Hunger Games trilogy or any of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars novels.

 To be fair, I haven't read Koushun Takami's Battle Royale, which Kinji Fukasaku adapted into a feature in 2000. I'm not sure that it falls into the "Young Adult" category of fiction or not, but it's certainly a "dystopian" novel, which I was told (on NPR) is "all the rage" and the "new 'vampire'" for teenagers. Fair enough, because when I found out what The Hunger Games was about, the first question I had was "so it's Battle Royale?" The answer, I learned, was "kind of."

 Despite the last few paragraphs, this is not going to be a comparison of The Hunger Games and Battle Royale. Today is probably the first time that a mass audience in America even knew that Battle Royale was a film. The DVD and Blu-Ray sets released by Anchor Bay represent the first official release of Battle Royale or its unfortunate sequel in the United States. For the last twelve years, the film has been available, usually through imports or suspicious looking copies, and I'm going to guess as the internet developed, probably online somewhere.

 In 2000, Battle Royale was a film of mythic proportions. I was in college, and the film was unofficially "banned" in the U.S. because of the subject matter: a dystopian future where high school students were forced to fight to the death on an abandoned island. There could be one survivor, or everybody died. It was too close to the Columbine massacre, and no American studio wanted to touch Fukasaku's film for fear of the backlash that would follow. As a result, Battle Royale was immediately taboo; it was a film we were not allowed to see, that was being withheld from audiences in the states. That's how it felt to us, in a world where it wasn't a click away, where Amazon and imported DVDs and region free players weren't as accessible as they are now.

 The premise had my attention. The "forbidden" nature increased my desire to see the film. Eventually I purchased a VHS copy of a copy of a dupe of a DVD from overseas. That was probably early 2001, and then I could see what the brouhaha was all about.

 If Battle Royale had been a lousy movie, or had simply been just about some cheap thrills for the sake of titillating gorehounds, it wouldn't mean anything that it took twelve years to be able to buy it in a "Big Box" retail store. The good news was - and is - that Battle Royale is an effective, dark, thrilling, and yes, gory, examination of human nature in extreme situations. It's an inversion of The Most Dangerous Game, where everyone is the hunter AND the hunted.

 42 students from class 3-B in Japan, some time after a massive economic and cultural collapse, are headed out on a field trip. Normally they can't be bothered to go to class - they're openly hostile to teachers, show no respect for authority, and generally act like teenagers. But in this Japan, the government developed a system to keep this problem in check: The Battle Royale Act. After being gassed on the bus, the students wake up in an abandoned school with two strangers. They're wearing metal collars they can't remove, and before they can process what's happening, armed soldiers storm into the classroom, along with Mr. Kitano (Takeshi "Beat" Kitano), their old teacher.

 He explains to them they have been selected at random to participate in Battle Royale, belittles them for being insolent brats, and kills two of the students (one to demonstrate how the collar explodes by remote control and the other because she wouldn't stop talking). This is not a joke, despite the bubbly instructor on the video Kitano wants them to watch. The 40 remaining students (plus two "transfers") are given a bag with food, supplies, and one weapon (ranging anywhere from a machine gun to the lid of a pot), and sent out onto the abandoned island. If they don't kill each other off until one survivor remains in three days, they all die.

 That's a schlocky enough gimmick to keep most people engaged, but Battle Royale goes beyond simply satisfying our urge for carnage: the film becomes a microcosm of societal responses to traumatic situations. When forced to fight each other to the death, the students don't immediately go after each other in a free for all. Their schoolyard relationships are magnified: cliques band together with different strategies and old grudges and crushes are manipulated, sometimes to unexpected advantages. Not everyone wants to kill: a group of girls hole up in a lighthouse in the hope that they can wait it out, and the computer savvy, anarcho-leaning outsiders formulate a plan to disrupt the BR system and even construct a suicide bomb to drive into the school.

 Meanwhile, the transfer students arrived with very different agendas: one volunteered in the hope of killing as many people as possible (indicated on-screen by their student number and name, plus the remaining number of contestants). The other has a history with BR and a lingering question he needs answered, as well as a strategy to beat the system. All he has to do is avoid being killed and finding himself in the "danger zone," areas of the island that cause the collars to automatically explode.

 There are a few flashbacks scattered throughout Battle Royale, providing some depth to why some of the teenage boys and girls do what they do and who they target. It explains some of the jealousies and misunderstandings that lead to tragic results, and the atmosphere of mistrust also causes some of the students to act in ways they'll immediately regret. The film succeeds both in being violent escapism but also as a study of teenage behavior pushed to an extreme degree. The ending may be a little unbelievable, even when you factor in a surprise motivation for Kitano, a man whose own children hate him. If it stumbles a little at the end, I don't mind too much. That, and I do as much as I can to pretend Battle Royale II: Requiem doesn't exist. It's the sequel that continues the story, largely in the wrong ways, and that fails to add anything to the world hinted at in the first film.

 There is an interesting side note that comes from watching Battle Royale again: based on the opening of the film, BR is something covered breathlessly by this future Japanese media. Throngs of reporters and cameras crowd in on the truck carrying the winner of the previous Battle Royale, trying to get information about the survivor of this imposed massacre. What do they get? A smile. It's a potent and disturbing way to open the film, but the concept of media coverage never figures into Battle Royale again. There's no indication that the games are televised or that people are following along at home. Other than Mr. Kitano's daily briefings, there's virtually no communication between the people running the game and the "contestants," let alone the outside world.

 I had forgotten that incongruity, but watching the film again it's clear that the prologue is either abandoned or simply was not considered relevant to Fukasaku or his son (who adapted the screenplay). That element was developed further in the film Series 7: The Contenders, a satire of reality television released in 2001. Battle Royale is successful perhaps because it doesn't even attempt to comment on the rise of reality television or media coverage beyond that opening, but I had forgotten how minute of a factor it is in the actual movie. In the end, I don't think it matters all that much. Eleven years after seeing that washed out VHS copy, I was still enthralled watching Battle Royale on Blu-Ray*. It still holds up, and now hopefully everybody will see what they've been missing all this time.


 * I don't actually have the Anchor Bay release - the Blu-Ray I have is the Arrow Films UK release from 2010, which is region free. It has the first film in its theatrical and director's cut versions, plus a disc of extras. It's basically what was released in the U.S. recently, but without the sequel. I don't miss it.

Four Reasons I am not Seeing The Phantom Menace in 3-D

 To put this to rest once and for all, because people really seem to think that I am or would be considering going to see Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace in 3-D... soon. That should be number one, in fact:

 1. I Don't Even Care Enough to Know When It Opens - According to the button on my desk, it's February 10th. Next weekend. I did not know that, despite what feels like a constant barrage of advertisements trying to trick anyone into seeing The Phantom Menace again.

 2. Wait, Why is There a Button on Your Desk? - Hey, I decide what merits a "reason" here, not you. The button, which is heart shaped an professes the love that one droid has for another (in this particular case, C-3P0 for R2-D2), is on my desk because when we went to see The Muppets, one of my friends found the fact that Lucasfilm was tacitly admitting what we've all known for years. In fact, they put it on a button and then put the $3 it cost towards charity. This is the pin. But since any opportunity to sell Star Wars merchandise, even for a good cause like children, is also an opportunity to plug something nobody cares about, there's a paper insert mentioning The Phantom Menace in 3-D. It happens to open next weekend.

 3. So You Just Mentioned AGAIN for No Good Reason When It Opens - Hey, who runs this Blogorium? Me or you? Look, four times is enough for Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace; that's the number of times I PAID to see it in theatres in the summer of 1999. That does not count the numerous instances of watching parts of it while on break, watching parts of it on VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, on television, or the time spent to find, download, and watch The Phantom Edit, which it turns out really wasn't that much better. A polished turd is still a turd.

 4. It Sure Sounds Like You've Seen The Phantom Menace a lot Already - Yes, it does. I have, and every single time it's a gigantic waste of my time. But I kept going back, thinking "hey, maybe this time it won't slap me around and then bore the living shit out of me before I turn it off in disgust," because I've watched the Mr. Plinkett dissections so many times that you can't even use The Phantom Menace to prove the points he makes. That's how stilted and lifeless that movie is. It's more entertaining watching someone else point out the idiot lapses in logic in The Phantom Menace than seeing them happen firsthand.

 I don't watch The Clone Wars, I don't care about Red Tails, and The People vs. George Lucas felt like a lot of spent energy over something nobody seems to care about any more. Everybody knows The Phantom Menace sucks, even little kids. Your kids don't want to see The Phantom Menace any more than you want to take them to it because it's "Star Wars" and in another three years you can see A New Hope, the movie you'd actually like to see converted to 3-D for no good reason. In the meantime, you have to sit through the shitty prequels again and marvel at how flat, boring CGI backgrounds look even more phony in the third dimension. You can pretend that a Pod Racer flying at you makes up for the... well, anything. It doesn't, and you know it doesn't.

 Oh well, I guess it beats going to see Titanic in 3-D, which is also happening soon, I think. I never saw that one in the first place, so at least people might believe me when I say I'm not going to see that one. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to put on my "robot love" button and NOT watch the Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace that's in the Blu-Ray boxed set behind me. Because that is something that is not going to happen. Right now.

One More 2011 Post for Kicks: My Favorite Fancy Schmancy Discs of Last Year

 When I started the Blogorium over on another social media site several years ago, I eventually became an early adopter of Blu-Ray. At the time, I worked at a used book store that sold video games and systems and I was able to purchase an 80gb PS3, partially for the games but mostly for the shiny new discs that beat HD-DVD in the "successor to DVD" format war. I wanted to upgrade TVs from the old standby 17" (?) set I had (and its twin, a loaner from a friend who moved) and eventually did pick up that HDTV monstrosity (it's in storage now for various reasons).

 At the time, I was gently mocked by friends for taking such an interest in a "niche" market for home entertainment, to the point that I jokingly referred to all Blu-Ray and HDTV posts as being "fancy schmancy." Now that most of the world seems to be catching up (because Blu-Ray discs are often cheaper than their DVD counterparts and you don't have to get rid of your DVDs with a BD player), I haven't used the term in a while.

 People seem to be moving more and more into the "all digital" direction, to the point that a younger co-worker derisively said to me "Blu-Ray is for noobs!" I laughed out loud, because that doesn't make any sense, especially coming from someone who never knew an analog world. I'm not articulating this well, but I think anybody who has been following the development of home media for the last... let's just say thirty years is far from being a "noob" on the subject. Maybe I'm the opposite - the fuddy duddy who still likes to have a tangible copy of something, an actual library of film, music, and books. I have plenty of digital copies and songs on iTunes (no e-reader to speak of), but there's something to be said for having friends over and giving them time to look through your shelves in the down time.

 We've also established that I'm a "supplement junkie," and you don't get those kinds of extras with a digital copy. I get most people could care less about commentary tracks or making of documentaries or retrospectives, but it's not a coincidence that I buy Criterion discs that have lots of contextualizing extras about the films. To me, that's as interesting as the film itself - watch the second disc of The Battle of Algiers (if it's the DVD, the second and third discs) and then watch the film again. The all digital, just the movie world of cloud technology isn't totally for me just yet. It has its purpose, but it doesn't replace a shelf full of quality releases.

 Speaking of quality releases, I think that was the point of this whole post... I must have gotten lost back there somewhere. Oh well, let's skip to the chase. The following are some of the most interesting discs I picked up in 2011. Not all of them were released in 2011 (I'm guessing with the imports anyway) but it's my list so you'll live. When possible, I'm going to put up links where you can buy them, because several are titles you probably didn't know you could buy and are already available.

 For starters, let's look at this:

 A Nightmare on Elm Street Collection - In the US, we got the first Nightmare on Elm Street on Blu-Ray released in time for the shitty remake in 2010. Last October, we got a double feature of 2 and 3 on one disc... and that's it. Not the worst deal, necessarily - two of the best entries in the series and... well, Freddy's Revenge. Still, it's not like we can replace our boxed set yet, right?

 Not true, gang - Amazon.co.uk had an October 2011 release of the entire series on Blu-Ray. The five disc set replicates the individual release of the first film and then doubles up 2/3, 4/5, and 6/7, with a bonus disc of new extras, including episodes of Freddy's Nightmares, the anthology-ish series that you can only see if you're patient enough to watch Chiller for a week.

 (Oh, Freddy vs. Jason fanatics are admittedly SOL, but that's not really a Nightmare film anyway. Wait... are there Freddy vs. Jason fanatics?)

 Additionally, each of the BD discs has all of the interview clips from the seventh disc of the Nightmare on Elm Street DVD set, but without having to navigate the "labyrinth" to find them. Even though we're dealing with two films per disc, I have to say that all of the sequels look very good in high definition. This set will probably come out in the US (let's hope by next October) but if you've got a Freddy fix, the whole thing is available now. Most importantly, it's REGION FREE, meaning that all of the movies are going to play on any BD player you have here in the states.

  Payback - also region free and available on Amazon's UK site, the release of Payback overseas improves the existing BD release here by including both versions of the film (the US release only has the director's cut) plus all of the extras from both original discs. Whether you like one version or the other, it's got something for all Payback fans, so you can watch it whenever you like, however you like. Let's hope Point Blank makes the leap to high definition in 2012...

 Taxi Driver - Everything included from all the various versions of the DVD, plus the Criterion laserdisc commentary with Scorsese, at a very reasonable price. What's not to like?

 Citizen Kane (Ultimate SomethingorOther Edition) - Best Buy has a two-disc version with Kane and The Battle for Citizen Kane, which is nice, but the super fancy schmancy edition (for a few dollars more) also includes RKO 281 and The Magnificent Ambersons. If you want to quibble, only Citizen Kane is a BD disc, but it's a nice set that encompasses all things Kane with the added bonus of the only version of The Magnificent Ambersons we're ever going to get included as a bonus. The film looks fantastic, by the way.

 Battle Royale - I know Anchor Bay is releasing BR next week on Blu-Ray, but Arrow Films beat them to the punch in the UK with a region free set of the theatrical cut, the director's cut, and an additional disc of extras for what amounted to $35 at the end of 2010. As I didn't get it until 2011, I'm counting it - it also doesn't include Battle Royale II, which is a very nice thing for Arrow to do. That would only sully the experience. I opted for the super fancy, now out-of-print Limited Edition, which came with some other fun stuff, but you can still get the three disc version for a reasonable price.

 The Lord of the Rings Extended Editions  - Is it maybe a pain to switch out the discs? I guess. Are the "appendices" just DVDs? Well, yes. Will I take this over the "theatrical" Blu-Ray set? Any day. The movies look better, all of the extras are intact, and the extra documentaries from the "Limited Editions" are included for good measure. It's an impressive package, all things considered.

 The Twilight Zone - I finally have all five seasons on Blu-Ray, and it's more than worth your while to pick the sets up. Yes, you can watch the episodes on Netflix, and they look pretty spiffy. The sets are packed to the gills with everything a TZ fanatic like the Cap'n could possibly want to see, hear, or know. I didn't think a series would catapult past Battlestar Galactica's complete set, but The Twilight Zone on Blu-Ray did it in spades.

 Blue Velvet - on Blu-Ray, with an hour of long thought lost footage, restored and fancy schmancy-ed by David Lynch.

 I couldn't narrow down the Criterion selections, so here's just a sampling of what they kicked our collective asses with this year: Kiss Me Deadly, Three Colors, The Great Dictator, The Killing / Killer's Kiss, Island of Lost Souls, The Music Room, 12 Angry Men, Cul-De-Sac, Blow Out, Carlos, The Phantom Carriage, and Sweet Smell of Success. That's not counting the HD upgrades to Beauty and the Beast, Orpheus, The Naked Kiss, Shock Corridor, Rushmore, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Dazed and Confused, The Double Life of Veronique, Army of Shadows, Le Cercle Rouge, The Battle of Algiers, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, Solaris, Diabolique, Smiles of a Summer Night, or Fanny and Alexander. To name a few.

 Special kudos also go to Lionsgate for slowly but surely releasing Miramax films in a way that doesn't suck (*coughEchoBridgecough*), including Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Cop Land, Trainspotting, The Others, Mimic (in a Director's Cut!), Heavenly Creatures, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Amelie. It's too bad Echo Bridge got From Dusk Till Dawn with all the Children of the Corn and Hellraiser sequels, because unless you want to see what happens when FDtD looks like when crammed onto a disc with both of its sequels and the documentary Full Tilt Boogie, you won't be seeing it on Blu-Ray (unless Criterion gets it... knocks on wood*). Oh sure, it's ten bucks, and that's three dollars more than just From Dusk Till Dawn on Blu-Ray (no, seriously), but it looks like crap. Trust me; someone bought it for me and I looked at all four movies on the disc. From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter probably looks the best of the three of them. Technically they're all watchable quality, but it's a missed opportunity to be damned sure when you see that Lionsgate is releasing HD versions with all of the extras from the DVD versions. Echo Bridge? Not so much.


Finally, I must admit that while nobody else seems to care for them, I was quite impressed in having everything together in the Stanley Kubrick Limited Edition Collection and I also bought the nine disc Star Wars Saga. I watched most of the extras and some of the movies. Guess which ones (okay, one) I haven't put in... Hint: It's EPISODE ONE THE PHANTOM MENACE. I won't be buying the 3D Blu-Ray Set, even if I have a 3D TV at that point. I'm also not going to see The Phantom Menace in 3D. You don't need to believe me because I know that's true.

 And I'm out of steam... there were more, but I'll get to them another time.

* This is not as crazy as it sounds - I still have the Miramax DVD set of the Three Colors Trilogy, and Criterion picked up the rights to that...

Blogorium Quick Hits: More Brains and Swallowed Souls

 Over the weekend I finally caught up on some horror documentaries, specifically More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead and Swallowed Souls: The Making of Evil Dead 2. The former you might have heard of; the latter is more incentive to pick up Lionsgate's 25th Anniversary Edition of Sam Raimi's splatter classic.

 Dan O'Bannon fans will be elated and disappointed while watching More Brains - the film reunites most of the surviving cast and crew members (including the special effects artist fired halfway through the film), but until the very end, O'Bannon - who passed in 2009 - is absent from the oral history of Return of the Living Dead. There's a lot of talking about O'Bannon, often in conflicting narratives (he was too demanding, too aloof; he was easy to work with and open to suggestions), but only in the closing moments does the writer / director have a chance to speak to the film's cult status. In what was his final interview, O'Bannon is candid about the audience embrace of the film and its legacy, and makes a knowing comment about "if I die tomorrow" before the film goes to credits.

 The story of the making of Return of the Living Dead from John Russo (producer / writer of Night of the Living Dead)'s original pitch to the decision of Hemdale Films to hire Dan O'Bannon to write and direct the film as a horror comedy, from casting to premieres, is an affair filled with gossip, contradictory stories, and debates about whether Clu Gulager really threw a can at the director in a fit of rage. I'm tempted to share anecdotes from the cast, or to mention the ongoing bad blood between the production designer (William Stout) and first make-up effects (William Munns) over the inadequate zombie masks and "headless zombie" appliance. The memories are sometimes contentious, sometimes defensive, but always entertaining. More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead is well worth the time of fans of Return of the Living Dead.

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 Meanwhile, I'd like to thank a video store in the mall that will go unnamed until later this week for erroneously placing two copies of the 25th Anniversary Blu-Ray of Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn the weekend before the disc is actually released (it comes out tomorrow). I've bemoaned the endless re-releasing of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films on DVD before, and we're seeing the first instance of "double-dipping" in high definition for the trilogy. As Anchor Bay closes (or whatever is going on with Anchor Bay) and their catalog is divvied up by Image Entertainment and Lionsgate, we're likely to see another release of The Evil Dead before long, and I find it hard to believe that Universal's underwhelming "Screwhead Edition" of Army of Darkness is the be-all-end-all of HD releases.

 But for now, let's look at the Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn 25th Anniversary double-dip. As a sucker for supplements, I must admit the list of extras seemed very promising - collections of featurette's about the casing, effects, conception, direction, and filming. When I put the disc in, I didn't realize that all of these individually listed extras were part of one 98 minute documentary, Swallowed Souls. It's reminiscent of segments of Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, and is broken into chapters complete with claymation vignettes to bridge them.

 Like More Brains, the primary element lacking in Swallowed Souls is the presence of Sam Raimi. It's not as though his presence isn't felt, because the "making of" footage shot by Greg Nicotero features young Sam Raimi in abundance, but he's noticeably absent from the proceedings. On the other hand, the doc features an abundance of newly shot interviews with Bruce Campbell, who speaks candidly about Evil Dead 2 and shares stories I don't think I've heard anywhere, including in If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor. Swallowed Souls also prominently features the rest of the leads of Evil Dead 2: Sarah Berry (Annie), Dan Hicks (Jake), Kassie Wesley (Bobbi Joe), Richard Dormeier (Ed) and Ted Raimi (Possessed Henrietta). Hearing their perspective on making the film is in and of itself a treat - many of them had no idea what they were in for.

 The entire makeup effects team, including Mark Shostrom (From Beyond, A Nightmare one Elm Street Part 2) and the first time in years that I've seen all three members of KNB (Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, and Howard Berger) on camera talking about a project they worked on together*. Their camcorder footage, which documents the conception of Evil Dead 2's effects all the way through the film's production, are a treasure trove of unseen footage from Wadesboro, North Carolina in 1986. They gleefully exploit their creations and play around with camera tricks, mimicking Raimi's "evil force" camera shots.

 So here's where it gets tough - do you want to drop another $14 for Evil Dead 2 to see an admittedly great "making of" documentary? If you still have the Anchor Bay disc, you'll notice that The Gore the Merrier is still included, the commentary is still included, and I'm not sure that the picture is that much different. The price is fair so if you don't already have Evil Dead 2 on Blu-Ray this is a no-brainer, but wary double dippers are going to have to ask themselves if the making of justifies buying the film again. I will say that if it were released on its own, Swallowed Souls would be worth picking up in the same way as Halloween: 25 Years of Terror or His Name was Jason are. Evil Dead fans, prepare yourselves for the impending moral quandary. I don't regret it, but I also have the added bonus of picking the disc up early...


 * Since Kurtzman moved on to create his own production company, it's common just to see Nicotero and Berger appearing in "making of" documentaries that KNB did makeup effects for.

News and Notes: Horror Edition

 Welcome to another edition of News and Notes, where the Cap'n catches up on a few things I've been noticing and felt were worth sharing.
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 Far be it from the Cap'n to neglect the fact that October means more horror releases, especially on Blu-Ray, and this year there are some doozies. For example, right now you can buy Basket Case, Frankenhooker, The Frighteners, The Others, The Bad Seed, The Last House on the Left, Torso, Dead Alive, Guillermo Del Toro's director's cut of Mimic, Herschel Gordon Lewis' Blood Trilogy (Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs, and Color Me Blood Red), The Hills Have Eyes, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Maniac Cop, Troll Hunter, The Phantom Carriage, Dark Night of the Scarecrow, and The Ward.

 That's right now. If that's not enough to fill up your queue, Attack the Block is coming next week, along with The House by the Cemetery and The Island of Lost Souls. If you're like me and feeling a bit industrious, you can shimmy on over to Amazon.co.uk and order the Nightmare on Elm Street Collection on Blu-Ray instead of waiting on a U.S. release next year. New Line figured it would be enough to leave Freddy fans with the existing first film on BD and a double feature of the best (Dream Warriors) and worst (Freddy's Revenge) Nightmare entries, the United Kingdom gets the whole shebang plus some new extras (including episodes of Freddy's Nightmares) in a Region Free package.

 Yes, that's Region Free as in "it will play on your PS3 / Blu-Ray player / etc." And so I'm not sounding like a commercial, in the interest of full disclosure I already ordered one which means I paid what was roughly $55 bucks with currency conversion. It won't even arrive for another week and a half at the soonest, but it's worth the hassle for me. If it's available and the same thing I'm going to see twelve months from now, I'll drop a little more for the privilege of having all the Nightmare flicks in one box again.

 I also put a little bit down for Arrow Film's Blu-Ray release of Day of the Dead, the much maligned third entry into Romero's "Dead" series. It's also region free, looks better than the Anchor Bay BD, and has something that no release of Day of the Dead has since VHS - the original audio track. For whatever reason, all of the Anchor Bay DVDs of Day of the Dead had slightly modified tracks that arbitrarily replaced profanity. Arrow Films found the original track and included it on the disc, along with new and old extras, a special effects commentary track (with the "N" and "B" of KNB plus two other crew members) in a really nice box that kicks the old BD all over the road. That I was able to find on the Amazon Marketplace for less than what a comparable set might sell for over here.

I'd considered Arrow's Dawn of the Dead, but the darned thing isn't Region Free, which makes it about as useful as the All the Boys Love Mandy Lane Blu-Ray I bought without reading carefully. Ah well, all the more incentive to seek out a Region Free Blu-Ray player down the line...

 Oh, and just so we don't leave out Amazon.ca, they have [Rec], [Rec]2, and Martyrs on Blu-Ray, which has my attention (although not my wallet.... yet). So there are plenty of options out there for a high definition Horror fanatic with an urge to splurge. Which would be me, but currently isn't: of the massive list above, I only have The Phantom Carriage and Troll Hunter. That Frighteners discs is really calling me though - both cuts and everything from that flipper disc special edition!

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 In order to make this a proper "News and Notes" and not just a "hey gang, this is what's coming on Blu-Ray" I must stress my disappointment in the walloping that the prequel to The Thing is taking. I had a more than passing interest in seeing the film, but the negative buzz is such that I just can't bring myself to waste $10 for something that disappointing. Damn. Well, there's always Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, and Piranha 3DD when that comes out.

Five Movies: Alternate Cuts That Helped

 Yeah, I thought I might be talking about Star Wars this evening, too. But I'm not nearly far enough into the Blu-Ray set to do that, so you're just going to have to wait a little bit.In case that wasn't clear, yes I did get the Blu-Ray of the complete series for the extra three discs, which I've been poking through when I have time. I never said I wasn't going to; I just said I'd think about it. Go back and look for yourself. But I digress, let's take a look at Five Movies that benefited from revisionist directors, writers, producers, or actors.

I have, in the past, bagged on THX 1138, Aliens, Terminator 2, Donnie Darko, and The Exorcist for alternate versions (usually called "Director's Cuts") that remove ambiguity or clutter up the film with unnecessary subplots or sequences. This past week the cyclical outrage over changes to Star Wars again brought up the debate about whether the creative force behind a film has the right to alter their movie, or if the movie belongs to the audience.

 In some cases, these alternate versions are effective or even improve upon the film, with or without the participation of the original cast and crew. This was actually a harder list to put together than the "Theatrical Cuts I Prefer" counterpart. I ended up leaving out a lot of alternate versions; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has an interesting "extended" cut, as do Apocalypse Now and Touch of Evil. I've decided to leave them off not because I don't like them or, in some cases, prefer the alternate cuts. The "workprint" version of Alien 3 is the only alternate cut we're likely to see since David Fincher has no desire to revisit the film, so I'm leaving that out of the five, although it materially changes the experience of watching the film. Not having seen the theatrical cut of The New World, I don't want to compare the two necessarily, although the differences are by all accounts atmospheric in nature (as I understand it, Blood Simple is a similar situation). I opted to leave out The Lord of the Rings and Leon: The Professional, but freely admit I prefer the Extended Editions.

 To keep to the rules, these are five films that have been changed dramatically by revisiting footage, inserting or deleting material. One or two have subtle changes in visual effects, but all of them are as or more interesting because of the alterations.

 1. Brazil - What is frequently forgotten when looking at the battle over Brazil is that between the two extremes of Gilliam's cut and Universal's "Love Conquers All" cut is that they reached a compromise before the film was released in December of 1985. The theatrical cut of Brazil was twelve minutes shorter than Gilliam's original cut (details covered here, which also mention a fourth version of the film), and it wasn't until the Gilliam approved Criterion release of the film that fans were able to see his complete cut of Brazil. Taken in its full scope, I tend to appreciate the abrupt opening and better sense of absurdity in the world than in the American theatrical release.

 2. Payback - This is a point of contention between friends, because I am partial toward Brian Helgeland's "Director's Cut - Straight Up" Payback, many of them hate it. Payback was a film we were tremendously fond of in 1999, and it's no-nonsense, smart ass attitude was a huge component in seeing it three times in the theatres and many more times on video. I wasn't aware that Helgeland walked away from the film when he couldn't cut the film in a way palatable to Paramount, Warner Brothers, and Icon Productions (Mel Gibson's company). I had no idea that the explosions, the narration, and Kris Kristofferson weren't a part of his original conception of the film. That the ending was much bleaker.

 After Helgeland left, Gibson shot much of the new material himself and that's the Payback audiences saw in theatres. And I really like that Payback. In 2004, Gibson and Warner Brothers reached out to Helgeland to see if he wanted to put together his version of the film - a leaner, darker experience - and he took them up on it. The resulting film is a dialectical Rashomon to the theatrical cut: they tell roughly the same story in a similar way, but the execution is different. Helgeland's cut is more mean-spirited, more direct, and isn't as interested in moments beyond Porter getting his money back. Gibson is more ferocious, and a violent exchange with Deborah Kara Unger shifts their relationship into a more volatile state. Porter is less likable, less identifiable, and his situation ends the way it probably would have, the way he thought it would. I realize that I'm in the minority even liking the director's cut, but I think it's a fascinating contrast to the "audience friendly" version I was first enamored of.

 3. Kingdom of Heaven - Longer is not always better. Ridley Scott's extended cuts of Gladiator and Robin Hood, for example, don't improve anything (in the latter case, they just muddle things more). Kingdom of Heaven, on the other hand, benefits significantly from expanding from two-and-a-half hours to a little over three hours as a Director's Cut. The theatrical cut briskly moved along, undercutting the scope and depth of the Crusades. However, by reincorporating nearly 45 minutes of footage, Scott eases the choppy nature of the film and lets it breathe as a full-fledged epic. (See differences here, and they're significant changes) When I mention Kingdom of Heaven, I make a point to recommend the Director's Cut, because while the running time may shy people off of the film, the shorter cut isn't worth bothering with.

 4. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - As far as I know, the only way to see the alternate (referred to as Unrated) cut of Conquest is on Blu-Ray, but two changes shift the tone of the film significantly. Only the opening and closing were changed in 1972 (to secure a PG rating), and of the two the ending is more important. The brutal beating of a gorilla in the original opening sets the tone, but Caesar's post-riot speech at the end has been removed entirely. Instead of appealing for mercy, Caesar allows the humans to be beaten to death, and the bloodied apes are shown stacking the bodies of riot police officers. Gone is the implication that apes and humans could or should live side by side, which makes Battle for the Planet of the Apes (which also has an alternate Blu-Ray cut) a little more tenuous. The shift, however, is in keeping with the militant tone of the film.

 5. Blade Runner - I couldn't not put Blade Runner on this list. I really thought about leaving it off, because nearly everyone agrees that there's a stratospheric leap in quality from the Theatrical Cut to the "Final Cut" (named so because Scott was not actively involved in the already exisitng "Director's Cut"). Many of us grew up with the narration laden, expository heavy Theatrical Cut on VHS, and while it is what drew most to the world of Blade Runner, the 1992 "Director's Cut" really sparked a renewed interest in Ridley Scott's follow-up to Alien.

 Personally, I prefer the Final Cut, because it reflects changes Scott wanted to make but couldn't (he was working on Thelma and Louise). The differences between the DC and FC are not always evident, but are minor adjustments (the dove flying away, Zhora's death scene, the shift in one of Batty's demands to Tyrell) designed to make Blade Runner more cohesive. The most significant change is Deckard is no longer dreaming about the unicorn; he is shown to be awake the entire time. The Final Cut retains much of the ambiguity of the Director's Cut but has the polish and attention to detail Scott was unable to provide at the time. If I'm going to watch the film, nine times out of ten it's the Final Cut.

News and Notes: Technical Edition (with Books)

 - Let's start with why it doesn't matter that Starz decided not to continue its contract with Netflix. This news is being treated the same way that Netflix's split with Showtime (and the never-to-be HBO deal), but I for one am happy to hear this.

 Consistently, I've found that Starz content on Netflix tends to be the most egregious examples of "pulling a fast one" on streaming viewers. In an era where "full screen" means something very different than it did five years ago, Starz streaming movies and TV shows on Netflix were constantly shown as "letterboxed" 4x3 images. If you aren't quite sure what I mean, try watching a show like MTV's Jersey Shore on a widescreen TV. See how the black bars are still on the top and bottom of the screen, even though it doesn't fill out the left and right of your TV? This is a fake "widescreen" that only really worked on old television sets.

 MTV released their Jersey Shore DVDs in the same fashion, and Starz did it with everything I watched from them on Netflix. It's a lazy alternative to providing 16x9 enhanced content and it actually diminishes the size of the picture on your screen. While it might have been nice to watch newer Disney films on Netflix, it certainly wasn't worth the drop in picture size. Not in this day and age. Netflix is hurting, and more companies jumping ship isn't necessarily good news for them, but I avoided the "Starz" section of Instant Viewing like the plague after being burned repeatedly. Good riddance to bad rubbish, if you ask me.

 - Speaking of "Full Screen," it makes me chuckle when I see stores (like one I will soon no longer be with) that still sell new DVDs with that moniker. Widescreen has slowly become the norm, and the pan-and-scan 4x3 discs are less and less desirable for customers. Many studios don't release new movies in "Full Screen" anymore, because it doesn't mean the same thing it used to. Not so long ago I would have to pay careful attention to the DVD cover of a movie I wanted to pick up in order not to buy one with a butchered "full" transfer.

 Every now and then, I put this video up, just to give folks a primer of what I mean by "pan-and-scan," because it doesn't just mean removing the black bars from the top and bottom of widescreen films:



  I often wonder what families who made the transition from standard TVs to widescreen TVs do with their collections of "Full Screen" DVDs when watching them. What probably happens is that they set their TV to automatically zoom in on the image so it fills the whole frame, creating an image twice as messy as the one shown above. Imagine taking a "Full Screen" image and then stretching it out even further to the left and right, because that's what probably happens. Yikes. I've seen it done before with VHS (hell, I did it once with the Star Wars Holiday Special) and if you really don't mind things looking messy, I guess it's watchable. But again, we were watching the Star Wars Holiday Special here, and mostly in fast-forward.

- Some time in the near future the Cap'n might have a book review up again. It's been a while, I know, but I've started reading Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror by Jason Zinoman. From the introduction, it certainly seems to be interested in Wes Craven, Sean Cunningham, George Romero, John Carpenter, Dan O'Bannon, and Brian de Palma and uses the William Castle produced, Roman Polanski directed Rosemary's Baby as the point at which Old Horror passed the torch to Modern Horror.

 I was a little nervous starting out because I have followed much of the history of Night of the Living Dead, The Last House on the Left, Halloween, and Alien, but the chapter on Rosemary's Baby already included an anecdote about Vincent Price I don't think I've seen anywhere to this point as well as a more balanced approach to Castle's involvement into bringing the picture to Paramount than is evident from Robert Evans' The Kid Stays in the Picture. The next chapter is about Hitchcock, particularly Psycho's oft cited influence on Modern Horror, and seems to be adding some nuance to the claims that it spawned the slasher films of the next two decades. Anyway, I'm clearly only starting the book, so I'll give it a proper review when I finish. I will say that it really makes me want to start working on a book idea I've had for years...

A Theory About Star Wars

 ...or really a theory about George Lucas, I suppose. Star Wars is, as usual, the method by which Lucas has chosen to again antagonize geeks everywhere. By now, most of you have heard about the change to Return of the Jedi where Darth Vader screams "Noooooo!" before throwing the Emperor deep into the Death Star, as well as a few other "adjustments" to the Original Trilogy* (and the Prequel Trilogy, but really, who cares about that?). Attentive internet geeks have been pitting George Lucas from 1988 against the George Lucas of today, once again desperately trying to appeal to the director / producer. That, or to once again make the argument that the guy is a money-grubbing hack. Or that other thing - the totally overboard reference to what Lucas is allegedly doing to your "childhood" that I cannot abide by repeating.

 At this point, it gets really old hearing about how angry people are at George Lucas and about documentaries like The People vs. George Lucas, etc. Every time the inevitable re-release of the film comes out, people swear they're being cheated and that "this is the last time you'll get MY money, George!" and then news comes out about changes and then the hyperbole kicks into high gear. Star Wars came out on DVD - but it was the Special Editions. Then Lucas released the Original Versions on DVD, but not anamorphically enhanced and with 2.0 stereo mixes (direct ports from the Laserdiscs) and that was ripping people off so of course they aren't going to buy it. Now the Blu-Rays are coming out and another series of alterations are in place and fans are shocked to discover that a man who has digitally altered every single film he's directed for DVD and Blu-Ray release once again took the opportunity for more tinkering.

 Here's the catch - I think he knows that you're going to complain. He also knows (as I do) that the calls for boycotts are no reflection of actual sales. They haven't been in the past - and I've worked in places that sold those movies and toys and I know for a fact that people continue to buy the versions of Star Wars they claim to loathe - and I strongly believe that other than grousing the internet community, Lucas knows exactly what he's doing. He doesn't even mind ruffling those feathers, because it helps his cause.

 Lucas has, once again, shrewdly concocted a way to keep everyone talking about Star Wars as the Blu-Ray release approaches. It's not enough to sell ad space and to make deals with Best Buy about exclusive this or yadda yadda that; despite what's said about the man, George Lucas knows how to get his audience passionate about Star Wars when it's time to have their wallets out. Whether the passion is positive or negative, I suspect he doesn't care, because here's what's going to happen: outraged fans are going to scream all the way up and down the internet about the classics being "butchered" again, swear that THIS TIME they won't be buying them, and then quietly ordering that nine disc boxed set off of Amazon so that the next time they see their friends, they can authoritatively rant with indignation.

 The changes we DO know about aren't the only changes, which may or may not be true - we know that puppet Yoda from The Phantom Menace is now digital, and that Obi-Wan's "dragon" noise is, *ahem* more suggestive, and that Ewoks blink now - but the earliest promise from Lucasfilm was of more "surprises" in the films. In order to be a properly incensed geek, that means purchasing the set (on the down-low, of course) in order to catalog the changes before someone else gets to it and then poring over every minute detail on chat boards.The people who yell the loudest online are almost always the first people to say to you "can you believe that Lucas did THIS and THIS???" at the first opportunity, usually before the average fan even noticed.

 So is this outrage surprising? No, not really. Is it fun to sit back and listen to? Yeah, it kind of is. If people really stuck to their guns and didn't buy this Blu-Ray set after rating it with one star on Amazon sight unseen, I'd be more impressed with the sturm and drang, but I don't see that happening. I've yet to decide if I'm going to pick it up or wait another year (*ahem*, thirty-fifth anniversary of A New Hope) for some other, cheaper, repackaging once this version is pulled from shelves (20th Century Fox, like Disney, will do that to drive up demand). I'd like to see those extra three discs of footage, and wouldn't mind watching the films in high definition, but it really depends on if I have a hundred dollars to spare in two weeks. I waited on The Lord of the Rings and that worked out well enough. Lucas has my passing attention, and he may well have my money, but I can't give him the outrage; just a passing glance and "Huh, this again?"




 * Actually, it's not even the Original Trilogy at this point. For a detailed examination of how the original films became the Special Editions and then the DVD editions, go here.

Geek Tuesday... for some reason.

 New release Tuesdays are usually a grab bag of fun new titles, back catalog releases / upgrades, and every now and then a out-of-left-field cult curveball. For a film geek, it's fun to scour "new release" lists to see what's coming out, so I can only imagine heads were exploding (Scanners style) this past Tuesday. Three extremely "geek friendly" DVDs / Blu-Rays dropped, each of which had a mixed reaction and not amazing box office numbers along for the ride. I've seen two of them, but not the other one (yet): Paul, Your Highness, and Super.


 If you haven't been following the Blogorium for long (and the Cap'n welcomes new arrivals), each film comes from a particular pedigree of nerd fandom: Paul is the "two geeks pick up an alien in the desert" film written by and starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), is directed by Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland), and also features Jason Bateman (Arrested Development), Sigourney Weaver (Alien), Seth Rogen (Pineapple Express), Jo Lo Truglio (The State), Kristen Wiig, and Bill Hader (both SNL). The film begins at the San Diego Comic Con and is packed with references to other geeky alien movies. I generally enjoyed Paul, but the film doesn't really pick up until Wiig's arrival in the film, mostly because Paul isn't so much of a character as he is Seth Rogen before she enters the narrative.


 Your Highness is David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls, George Washington)'s much anticipated follow-up to Pineapple Express, the film that moved Green from "indie filmmaker" to "mainstream sellout" in some eyes, but to many of us was a logical preamble to Eastbound and Down. Your Highness re-teamed Green with Danny McBride and James Franco along with Natalie Portman (Leon: The Professional), Justin Theroux (Mulholland Dr), Zooey Deschanel (500 Days of Summer), and was an ode to the sword and sorcery fantasy genre that was omnipresent in the 1980s. I must admit that other than Conan the Barbarian, I was never that into the whole movement, and only one website really seemed very excited about Your Highness when the film actually came out, so I skipped out on it. It's not highly regarded by critics or audiences, and when I couldn't make a $1.50 Theatre showing, it seemed best to let the film slide. I will give it a shot some time soon, because I do trust the creative team.



 Super splits critics right down the middle: James Gunn (who wrote Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake and directed the amazing Slither) took a very Troma-esque approach to the "super hero in the real world" subgenre (see: Kick-Ass, Defendor, Special, Paper Man, and a few others I'm forgetting), starring Rainn Wilson (The Office), Ellen Page (Juno), Kevin Bacon (Hollow Man), Michael Rooker (Slither), Nathan Fillion (Serenity) and very briefly, Linda Cardellini (Freaks and Geeks). It's a twisted, at times extremely violent and crude film, and as many people hate it as love it. I have the feeling that some of that comes from the influence of Lloyd Kaufman's Troma Films, where Gunn cut his teeth - there are parts of Super that feel like they've been directly lifted from The Toxic Avenger, and if Troma team releases aren't your thing, Super might not be either. However, if you even liked Slither, you should check out Super.

 It was odd to see all of them coming out on the same day, draining the wallets of geeks who can't be bothered to sit in a movie theatre anymore, because they share roughly the same history: lots of buzz preceding their release, mixed reviews, and moderate to tepid audience attendance. I don't know about Your Highness, but Super and Paul will probably have a long life on video because they appeal to the shut-in's and cast-out's that do, well, what I'm doing right now. Gee, I wonder if I have Paul and Super sitting on the table across the room? Maybe, but what are they sitting under? Bet you won't guess that one!

 (Hint: It's not Your Highness.)

  It is fair to point out that despite their lack of box office busting prowess, none of the discs appear to be bare-bones. This may be a sign that studios are aware that the geek demographic is willing to pay a little bit more for a high quality, high definition experience as long as the movie is packed to the gills with bonus content (Universal is very good at this, and while Paul isn't as loaded as, say, Scott Pilgrim with extra features, it's a better lineup than say, Paramount's True Grit Blu-Ray).

 Why all three on the same day? I don't really know, but maybe we ought not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it's an opportunity to kick back with some friends, some brewskis, and enjoy a laid back August weekend.




Hollow Man is what you guys think of when you hear "Kevin Bacon", right? Or maybe Death Sentence? Oh, and Michael Rooker has been in a lot more than just Slither, but Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer ate up too much space and I'm sure as hell not going to use Mallrats.