Shocktober Review: Curse of Chucky

Well, it's October, which is the best month of the year as far as the Cap'n is concerned. Not only do I have license to watch horror movies more than I already do, but it's encouraged! So why not kick it off with a sequel many of you didn't know was on the way?

 I have to admit that I was a little worried about Curse of Chucky when first I heard about it. My concern came less from the nine years since Seed of Chucky - a movie I happen to like, if that informs your reading of this review - but that Curse of Chucky was being unceremoniously dumped in the world of "DTV" horror. The Cap'n has seen his share of direct to video horror films, and with very few exceptions they tend to look cheap and offer nothing in the way of scares, atmosphere, or story. This was not how I hoped to see the next film in the Child's Play series, so I put it on with trepidation.

 It turns out that I didn't have anything to worry about, because Don Mancini - who wrote every Child's Play / Chucky movie and directed Seed of Chucky - was clearly also aware of how shitty most direct to video horror films are, and he was determined to make a sequel to Child's Play first and a low budget horror movie a distant second. Not only does the movie not look like crap, but on top of generating some legitimate atmosphere and really nice kills, Mancini adds to the series in a way fans are going to enjoy immensely.


  Nica (Fiona Dourif, daughter of Chucky) lives with her mother, Sarah (Chantal Quesnelle), who take turns taking care of each other. Sarah is an emotional wreck and Nica is paralyzed from the waist down. One day, a large package with no return address arrives with a familiar "Good Guy" doll inside. Not long after that, Nica wakes up to find her mother dead and Chucky no longer in the trash can. Her sister Barb (Danielle Bisutti) arrives with husband Ian (Brennan Elliott) daughter Alice (Summer H. Howell), and nanny Jill (Maitland McConnell) in tow, along with Father Frank (A Martinez), who hopes to rekindle Nica's lost faith. Alice takes a liking to Chucky, even if he whispers strange things to her, but as a storm threatens the power, they're in for a long night with a killer doll...

 For those of you who don't like the "camp" qualities of Bride and Seed of Chucky, I have good news for you: Curse of Chucky is considerably more straightforward in tone, resembling the first Child's Play in structure. It's a bit disarming at first, because I really wasn't sure if he was trying to reboot the series - Chucky looks like he did in the first an second film (with minor redesigns to the doll when he stops being a "Good Guy"). Mancini is clearly playing with the fact that audiences know what Chucky's really up to, but we don't hear Brad Dourif's voice until halfway into the film. Up until that point, Curse of Chucky plays a LOT like Child's Play, but with a more playful sense of "okay, what's he up to?" for long time fans.

 Much to my surprise, about an hour into Curse of Chucky, Mancini reveals that this isn't a reboot or a spin-off and is a continuation of the story - minus some questions about what happened to Chucky after Glen / Glenda got "axe happy." Beyond that, Mancini develops the Charles Lee Ray back story to boot, tying it into Nica's family history. Is there some debatable retconning? Maybe, but I have to admit it was intriguing to see Dourif on-camera again for the first time in 25 years.

  As horrible as it is to say about a movie, I feel like it's worth pointing out how good Curse of Chucky looks. Mancini's camerawork is fluid, playful, and designed to augment the story, rather than just capture what's going on and get to the next kill haphazardly. Maybe I'm just burnt out on how horrible movies like the Wrong Turn sequels look or the barely competent releases from The Asylum, but Curse of Chucky doesn't look like nobody gave a shit about it looking like a movie. Even when the budget does show (and it isn't often), Mancini works to maintain a spooky ambiance in and outside of the house.

 Two camera tricks are worth pointing out, neither of which spoil too much: the opening credits play out as the camera tracks around a rocking chair Chucky's sitting in, but as it moves from one side to the other and back again, Mancini pulls what I suspect was some in-camera trickery to transition from night into the following day. The second instance follows the audience's discovery that Chucky poisoned one of six bowls of chili with rat poison. We know somebody at the dinner table has it, but not who. Mancini sets up an overhead shot of the circular table, plates arranged like the chambers of a revolver, and slowly spins the camera around. It's a nice visual metaphor of the edible "Russian roulette" to come.

 While we're talking kills, anticipated or otherwise, Curse of Chucky has a better than fair share of practical gore effects that satisfied a "been there, seen that" hound like me. Gouged eyes, severed heads, crushed jaws, and a stabbing or two are the tip of the iceberg. What's really effective, it turns out, is the way Mancini uses Nica's paralyzed legs to generate some truly visceral blows. Just because she can't feel it doesn't mean I didn't react. To be sure, there's no doubt some digital trickery in there somewhere, but keeping both Chucky and most of the kills practical are a big plus in my book.

 If Curse of Chucky has any serious problems, they come at the end: Mancini rushes through the climactic showdown between Nica and Chucky in a way that doesn't quite resolve the build-up, even if the subsequent scene brings the story closure in a clever, twisted way. One can't help feel a bit cheated, especially as Mancini moves along to reintroduce two characters, effectively tying the first three Child's Play films into the "Chucky" trilogy. (Minor Spoiler: It might help to refresh yourself on the end of Seed of Chucky for the first cameo to avoid confusion). I actually enjoyed both surprises, although the second one initially seems to be a set up for a seventh film that quickly collapses into an "ah, nevermind" - watch until the end of the credits for that one. Had Curse of Chucky ended with the final scene in "grandma's house," I think the film would be stronger for it.

 Still, Curse of Chucky was not only better than anything I'd hoped for in a "DTV" Child's Play sequel, but it's a pretty damned good horror movie in its own right. There are plenty of novel or rarely used gimmicks, effective misdirection, and I have to once again stress really good practical gore effects. It's almost a shame Universal didn't feel confident in releasing this theatrically, because even with the time since the last film, Curse of Chucky is the kind of throwback people are often complaining they don't see on the big screen.

"E" is for Expect No Mercy

 1995's Expect No Mercy was the hotly anticipated re-teaming of DTV action duo Jalal Merhi and Billy Blanks (Talons of the Eagle). Because they'd already been undercover operatives taking down Asian criminals, Blanks and Merhi needed a new challenge, and luckily for them (not so much for us), the mid-nineties brought about the "hot" fad of Virtual Reality. It's time to head inside the virtual world for some martial arts action!

 Expect No Mercy begins with Warbeck (Wolf Larsen) booting up the "Bertolucci" program, which leads us into an amazing cgi landscape that's some serious "Money for Nothing" shit right here. I mean quality. It turns out that this is the fancy way we get to his elite hit squad, who are infiltrating Bertolucci's compound. One of them uses a whip, and another guy carries around an iguana, but is nice enough to leave him somewhere safe. Also there's a guy with grey hair named Spyder, played by Michael Blanks. Since (SPOILER) Billy Blanks fights and kills him later in the movie, you can probably call "nepotism" on his prominent role.

 They all have tiny cameras on their, uh, headsets, and Walkman earphones so that Warbeck can see and communicate with them. He warns them that they call Bertolucci the "cat" because eight previous assassination attempts have failed, but they manage to take him out and all of his body guards with minimal effort. I guess as a tribute to the target's namesake, a chick gets naked and goes skinny-dipping before it all goes down. Enjoy it fellas - it's the only gratudity you're getting in this flick.

 Now maybe I was naive in assuming we're supposed to want these guys to kill this jerk and that the iguana thing is supposed to be cool or something, but it turns out Warbeck and his team are the BAD GUYS. Good job with the "bait and switch," movie. It's weird because they make wisecracks and don't behave like evil assassins or anything - just a team that knows their job and how to do it well. But it turns out the cops frown on assassinations from a guy who runs the Virtual Arts Academy, so they send in Justin (Blanks) to find out what Warbeck is up to and stop him.

 Already on the inside is Eric (Merhi), an instructor who helps the Virtual Arts Academy students use VR training to "know kung fu" faster than they would learn it normally. They fight in virtual environments with computer generated opponents while wearing those VR goggles that you haven't seen since The Lawnmower Man or the local arcade gave up trying to get people to pay for a dumb gimmick. Also there is technician Vicki (The Walking Dead's Laurie Holden), who inadvertently gets tangled up in their vague corporate espionage.

 Meanwhile, Warbeck is being hired to kill Goldberg (Sam Moses), a key witness at some trial, so Eric, Justin, and Vicki need to stop that from happening. But first shenanigans as Justin learns all about virtual reality training and meets his other students. Also, for reasons unclear to anybody but Billy Blanks, when he arrives at the Virtual Arts Academy, he decides that he need to look like Wesley Snipes in White Men Can't Jump. It doesn't serve any purpose, but it happens.

 Expect No Mercy is a movie that moves forward chronologically, but without any of the connective tissue that helps a narrative make sense. Yes, technically what happens from scene to scene is what should happen in order for the plot to advance, but the how or why Eric and Justin get there is often completely ignored. For example, Justin gets in a fight in the cafeteria in order to steal a security card from one of the staff. The next scene (after the guards are holding him) is Justin and Eric sneaking around the heavily fortified compound (which has cameras everywhere) using the stolen card. Did the guards just let Justin go? Where the hell did Eric come from?

 If I'm being honest, it just adds to the charm of this ridiculous movie. It functions best during the "virtual" segments, of which there are less and less as the story goes on, but the best way to describe what they were going for with the "opponents" is "Mortal Kombat on a budget." There's even a kung fu clown that Billy Blanks immediately kicks in the balls. In fact, most of these guys would be right at home in a WWF ring, what with all the low blows, sleeper holds, and eye gouging. Blanks and Merhi have terrible one liners, and it's hard to assign all the blame to writer J. Stephen Maunder (also Talons of the Eagle), because you have to be able to deliver a one liner in the first place.

 One could say that Merhi and Blanks have wooden delivery, but that's an insult to wood. Their fights are often hilarious because of the ADR and foley, but it is what people came to see. Or rented to see. The upside is that Laurie Holden doesn't seem to be aware that she's in a shitty action movie and manages to be pretty good while still baring her midriff for the entire movie. (No nudity though, although it looks like she ends up with Merhi, so maybe we're winning out by not having a love scene). Wolf Larsen is also pretty good, as is his lieutenant, Damian (Anthony De Longis), the guy who likes to use a whip.

 Expect No Mercy is not a great movie; like many films obsessed with a fad, it just seems really dated now and while you won't see me giving this movie credit often, in the wake of The Matrix anything from the 90s dealing with virtual reality just looks silly, including Virtuosity. But laughing a lot is not such a bad thing in my book, so Expect No Mercy has a level of entertainment value that I appreciate. For movies starring Billy Blanks*, it's definitely a high water mark.


 * By this I mean "movies that are not The Last Boy Scout"

Retro Review: Lost Boys - The Tribe

 (editor's note: The Cap'n realized there was a series of Blogorium posts from 2008 that never made the transition from our old stomping grounds to the new one. As a result, it seemed like a good idea to share some other reviews that had been otherwise "lost" over the past four years).


Insert Joke about Vampire Film "sucking"

In ten years, nobody's going to be defending Lost Boys: The Tribe. No one is going to be watching it again, for one thing, but even if some curious teenager decides to double feature the first and second film (we'll get to the possibility of the third film further down), odds are they'll find The Lost Boys far more compelling then its anemic sequel.

    Lost Boys: The Tribe works very hard to mimic the structure of the original, down to recreating classic moments from the first film. The big problem is that none of it is very interesting. It turns out that if you try to retain the atmosphere of a film from the 1980s but remove all of the wardrobe, music, and cheesy haircuts, things don't work. Rap metal and excessive profanity don't actually qualify as "updating" the world of Santa Carla.

    The cast is uniformly bland,  which kills any interest in the vampires. In The Lost Boys, Keifer Sutherland was so much more interesting than Jason Patric that you wanted to see them drag him into the night. In The Tribe, all of the vampires are surfers who say "fuck" and "dude" a whole lot and like to stab each other because they can't die. And videotape it.

    The leads are vanilla, at best. Going by the names, I guess they're supposed to be loosely related to Corey Haim and Jason Patric's Emerson family, although that's never addressed in any way. They have a "kooky" aunt that's meant to fill in for the mother and crazy grandpa, which results in the worst callback to the original film at the end.

    Corey Feldman, who really ought to be the one thing this film has going for it, is a total bust and he can't help it. Feldman's voice aged a lot faster than the rest of him, so Edgar Frog sounds like a fifty year old in the body of a twenty something. In The Lost Boys, it was kind of clever that someone as young as the Frog Brothers could be experts on killing vampires, but when you add twenty years, it's just kind of stupid. Ideally you should push this world further down the line and have someone like Nick Nolte playing a much older Edgar Frog (ala Kris Kristofferson in Blade). Feldog just don't have the heft to pull it of.

    I never thought I'd say this, but director P.J. Pesce is no Joel Schumacher. There's zero visual flair in this movie, unless you count borrowing shots from the original, and even those look more like ripoffs. The script by Hans Rodionoff, when not speeding its way through the plot of the first film (the transformation from human to vampire is no longer a gradual thing but instead happens over the course of a few hours) is busy making unnecessary pop culture references. The Goonies one I was willing to ignore, but the extended Big Lebowski name dropping really irked me.

    Oh, and there's the pointless opening with Tom Savini who agreed to be in the film as long as he only had to work one night. Look for a really weak retread of his From Dusk Til Dawn character at the beginning of the film.

    Ultimately, there's not a lot of reason to watch Lost Boys: The Tribe. While I don't remember seeing The Lost Boys when it came out (I would've been eight), I did watch it on home video six and seven years later and throughout high school. Even removed from the 1980s, it was still an entertaining movie with "kid" protagonists, Mouth from The Goonies, Bill from Bill and Ted, the old man from Tron, and that strange cover of "People are Strange". As I got older, I came to appreciate Edward Herrmann, Dianne Wiest and Kiefer Sutherland. And the fact that despite being the idiot who made Batman Forever AND Batman and Robin, Joel Schumacher had once upon a time made a decent movie or two.

    Lost Boys: The Tribe has none of that going for it. I don't think I'll be watching it again. I find it hard to imagine there'd be a nostalgia for this particular era, so it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to revisit the "aughts" with this film.

***
Spoiler-ish Alert, if anyone was still thinking of watching this.

    Finally, let's discuss the actual ending; not the one where they kill the head vampire surfer moron, but the one during the credits where Corey Haim's name inexplicably appears right before Corey Feldman's. Normally, that'd be a "what the fuck?" moment, but since the music fades out, we can guess there's something coming.

    Sure enough, Edgar Frog is sitting under a lone spot light talking into the darkness, saying things like "cut the theatrics! I know you're there." Then we see a shadowy Corey Haim, looking much worse for the wear (nearly unrecognizable to be honest). They hint at some kind of history between the first Lost Boys film and The Tribe, and then they say some really cheesy stuff and attack each other. Cut back to the credits.

    Alternate endings on the dvd carry this thread further, but suggest that Edgar Frog's brother Alan (Jamison Newlander) is now a "Master" vampire and is coming back to exact his revenge on the Coreys. Either way, we're being promised a third Lost Boys movie that has all the makings of being MUCH worse than The Tribe. Tell you what, gang; go find Jason Patric and get him involved, because if you're going to pursue a continuation of the original film using people willing to come back, then you might as well grab him too.

So You Won't Have To: Cabin Fever 2 - Spring Fever

 Despite the title in question, I didn't actually approach Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever with the intention of tearing it a new one. It is true that I haven't heard a kind word about what could at best be called a "really unnecessary sequel," but the film was directed by Ti West, who made two films I really enjoyed (The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers) and one I'm still looking forward to watching (The Roost). The version of Spring Fever released on DVD may not represent West's vision for the film (more on that in a bit), but I thought that there might be enough of his style left in Cabin Fever 2 that it could overcome the negative buzz.

 Boy howdy does it not. Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever just sucks. I'm not saying that Eli Roth's Cabin Fever is some kind of classic, but it's uneven tone is helped by some impressive gore and mounting tension in the mid-section. Cabin Fever 2, on the other hand, takes all of the offbeat comedic moments, removes all of the tension, and replaces disturbing makeup effects for an onslaught of gore and projectile blood vomit. It's a movie trying really hard to be funny and gross at the same time and feels like it desperately wants to be a throwback to 80s splatter flicks. That would be fine, but there's this fidelity to the first film (in particular, the goofy parts of Cabin Fever that don't work) that leaves the film a jumbled mess.

 Top billed Rider Strong (returning from the first film) is smashed by a bus before the opening credits roll, for reasons unknown. It turns out that the fact he sort-of survived the end of Cabin Fever and is hit by a school bus heading away from the middle of nowhere, North Carolina* to Springfield, where Spring Fever is set. His infected blood and guts being spilled all over the front of the bus is irrelevant because the water source his body was floating in at the end of Cabin Fever was the source for Down Home Water, a bottling company that delivers tainted product to the same school in question.

 We learn all of this in an animated section during the opening credits, just in case audiences a) didn't see Cabin Fever or b) weren't paying attention to the beginning of Cabin Fever 2. Seriously, while Deputy Winston (Giuseppe Andrews, also returning) is being a goofball and insisting the bus driver killed a deer (one wearing a watch and shoes), the Down Home Water truck drives by right before the animated sequence starts, and then flashes back to the same scene just in case we didn't get it the first two times. Later in the film, Deputy Winston watches the truck driver (Larry Fessenden) start spewing blood and there's a flashback to the first Cabin Fever so that we're clear that Winston went through all of this in the first movie. That's 30 minutes into Spring Fever, by the way.

 Anyway, so we've moved away from the discomfort in juxtaposing city college students against dubious hillbillies (something Roth toyed with in Cabin Fever) and to generic "small town USA" with a high school prom, some outcasts, a jerk, his ex-girlfriend, and a few caricatures disguised as school faculty (no, seriously: the biology teacher [Angela Oberer] has a harelip and yells all of her lines). Now, Cabin Fever certainly had its share of stereotypical characters, but at least Roth played around a little bit with our expectations. Not only are the characters in Spring Fever barely more than "types" but they aren't the least bit interesting. It's hard to care about someone, let alone feel invested in their living or dying, when there's no one interesting on screen. Every opportunity to do something fun with them is squandered repeatedly.

 For example, there's an 80s styled montage of high school students going to a Disco-themed Prom that continues setting up that the villainous ex-boyfriend (Marc Senter) has a black belt by having him practice in his make-shift dojo (shades of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4). So we should expect some kung fu action right? It's set up not once but twice that he's into the martial arts, but instead he just beats one guy to death with a fire extinguisher and smashes his ex-girlfriend Cassie (Aliexi Wasser) in the head with a hammer. His idea of "fighting" the protagonist, John (Noah Segan), is to shove him around. Total waste of setup there, gang.

 In deference to West, Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever was taken away from him by the producers and Lionsgate and was subject to reshoots and re-editing without his involvement. He asked to have his named removed from the film (in order to make Spring Fever an "Alan Smithee" joint), but since West wasn't in the DGA, his request was denied. How much of Spring Fever is West's and how much is the producers' is up for debate, but there are certainly chunks of the film that look like The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers.

 Okay, so I'll give him a bit of a pass for not being involved in the final product, but I'm not seeing much of the movie that worked in the first place either. Even the West-ian tracking shots happen during scenes where characters aren't doing anything engaging, and there's zero tension in the film. This is coming from a director who excels at setting up tension. Instead there's non-stop gross out moments: a janitor pees blood into the punchbowl, the sidekick Alex (Rusty Kelly) gets a blowjob from a girl with braces and mouth sores and then later squeezes bloody pus out of his dick, and the aforementioned girl with sores is also a stripper with boils all over her breasts. By the time a biohazard team swoops in, The Crazies-style, to lock everyone in the school, I didn't care that the prom turned into a bloody vomit spewing chaos. That's supposed to be the major set piece of the film, I think.

 There are two moments in Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever that surprised me, and I don't know they it can be attributed to West or not, but they are the rare moments were the goofy tone helped instead of hurt. After Deputy Winston gets Toby (Judah Friedlander), the night guard at Down Home Water, killed, he decides he no longer wants to be a cop and runs away with his cousin Herman (American Movie's Mark Borchardt). While nothing that Winston does in the movie makes any sense, there is a moment where Herman is trying to bribe a police officer into letting them drive through a restricted area. He drops some money on the ground, and as the cop bends down to get it, Herman drops the silliest looking elbow drop you're likely to see and knocks the officer out. I will admit that it was so out of left field that I laughed.

 The other moment comes from something that doesn't serve any purpose in the story but is weird enough to mention: so it's set up in biology class that Frederica (Amanda Jelks), the "fat" girl, has a crush on presumptive Prom King Rick (Thomas Blake Jr.). Rick seems to be making fun of her in class, so when he invites her to come skinny dipping with her in the pool, we expect some high school humiliation of the "fat" girl by the "popular" kids. Nope; it turns out that Rick does want to have sex with her but then the flesh eating disease starts doing its thing on her and he's killed when he accidentally falls into the pool trying to fish her out. It doesn't have any bearing on the narrative (unless you count a quick moment when Cassie sees Frederica's corpse in the pool later) but was unexpected.

 Still, two moments do not a watchable movie make. Ti West fans are best of avoiding Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, as are fans of Cabin Fever and, well, most horror fans. DTV horror aficionados are going to have more fun with the Wrong Turn sequels than this, and its reputation as a forgettable unnecessary sequel is deserved. There's nothing you're going to get from watching this movie, and in all likelihood we'll never get the third film a superfluous animated epilogue promises (during Mardi Gras, no less). West moved on to better films, and Eli Roth has the satisfaction of knowing that for all of its faults, his Cabin Fever could be much, much worse. The proof is in the sequel.

 P.S. It's worth mentioning that Rider Strong (Cabin Fever), Larry Fessenden (I Sell the Dead), and Judah Friedlander (Feast) have a combined screen time of seven minutes in an 86 minute movie. Giuseppe Andrews is in and out of the narrative, Mark Borchardt has a slightly extended cameo, and Michael Bowen (Lost, Walking Tall) has a pointless role as the "gay for no good reason" Principal who also yells all of his lines. Don't let their names fool you in the opening credits.


 * I'm not positive it's ever made clear in Cabin Fever that the film takes place in North Carolina, or that I just know that it was filmed here. Cabin Fever 2 was also filmed in NC, but on the opposite side of the state in Wilmington.

Blogorium Review: Hostel Part III

 I feel like there should be some kind of criteria for reviewing direct to video sequels. See, they're almost never going to "hold up" to their theatrical brethren, and even when they do people seem surprised, like it's not possible. I blame Disney for a lot of this, so bear with me here: while DTV isn't by any means new, and the house that Walt built isn't entirely responsible for this, they did unleash a wave of direct to video sequels to their newer, successful films. There were the Aladdin sequels, the Little Mermaid sequels, the Beauty and the Beast Christmas movie, then The Fox and the Hound II, Pocahontas II, Peter Pan: Return to Neverland, The Lion King 1 1/2 and 2, Lady and the Tramp II, Cinderella II, Cinderella III, and even a Hunchback of Notre Dame II.

 What these unwarranted, unasked for sequels all have in common is the same thing that most DTV sequels have in common: they look cheaper, they feel half-assed, and they aren't very good. Disney keeps pumping them out, and parents looking to satisfy their kids' appetite for something new (but old at the same time) keep buying / renting them. The same thing applies for action, science fiction, comedy, and especially horror fans when it comes to DTV: we know it's not going to be good, but what the hell, right?

 In the case of Hostel Part III, we're looking at a trifecta of "uh oh"'s heading in: it's DTV, it was made without the participation of Eli Roth (who wrote and directed Hostel and Hostel Part II but apparently didn't even want to produce this one), and aside from the Elite Hunting Club, has nothing to do with the first two films. I understand that very few people are of the same mind as the Cap'n when it comes to Hostel and Hostel Part II, but I think they're a step about the Saw films and other so-called "torture porn." I feel that the first one plays some interesting games with our sympathies and expectations, and that Part II takes any lingering expectations and turns them on their heads again, both with a gruesome sense of humor while simultaneously generating some serious discomfort during the "kill" scenes.

 Therefore, I walked headlong into Hostel Part III, not knowing much about the film nor wanting to know a whole lot about the "starting from scratch" plot. There are no shortage of terrible DTV sequels (American Psycho 2, any of the Children of the Corn or The Howling) but every now and then there's an unexpected (if unrequested) sequel that surprises you, even with lowered expectations. Hostel Part III is in league with the likes of 30 Days of Night: Dark Days as a movie I was pleasantly surprised by. They aren't great, and to be honest I don't know that the world would even notice if they didn't exist, but for what they are you aren't going to feel ripped off (like, say, Hellraiser: Revelations).

 Hostel Part III's secret weapon is its director, Scott Spiegel. You might not recognize the name, but he was / is a long-time collaborator with Sam Raimi and also directed Intruder and From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money, which is also a "well, that was kind of fun" DTV sequel from the turn of the millennium. Spiegel is a big fan of strange camera angles and uniquely gory effects, one of which fits in really well with the Hostel series, which he produced (hence the connection).

 In fact, taking the Elite Hunting Club out of Eastern Europe and dropping it into Las Vegas might be exactly what the series needed to keep Hostel Part III from being "more of the same, but less." Once you remove the concept of visitors in a foreign land unknowingly walking right into a trap (what I'd call the "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" template) and put it in "Sin City," where people go to do horrible things and no one ever finds out (for the sake of comparison, let's call that the "Hangover" template), then the stakes have changed. The American assholes out to use the "old country" as their personal playground is gone and now they're wittingly setting themselves up for whatever horrors await.

 This time around, instead of vacationing students, we have some buddies going on a bachelor party: there's the groom, Carter (Kip Pardue), his best friend Scott (Brian Hallisay), his married pal Mike (Skyler Stone), and the guy with the crutch, Justin (John Hensley). After leaving his bride-to-be, Amy (Kelly Thiebaud) behind, Carter is informed by Scott that they aren't going to Palm Springs, but to Vegas where he's hired some "special" company in the form of Kendra (Sarah Habel) and Nikki (Zulay Henao) at a special club off of the strip. If you've seen Hostel, you can imagine where this is going.

 And while you'd be right (eventually), you're going to be wrong almost every other step of the way: Spiegel and screenwriter Michael Weiss are constantly misdirecting the audience, playing to what you assume is going to happen only to discover that they turned left instead of right. It's actually more fun than annoying, because instead of trying to guess what's coming next you just take every possible clue as either a trick or not and wait to see where Hostel Part III is taking you. The only thing you can really count on for sure is that there IS an Elite Hunting Club facility, it is in a run-down building, and that they still manage to sneak in some foreign accents.

 The other contribution to the overall Hostel series is that Part III adds another level to how EHC operates: because they're in Las Vegas and not some decrepit warehouse, the club allows executions to be performed in front of an audience (on the other side of a glass wall) who place bets on tactics victims will use to stall their killers, what kind of weapons, and in one scene how many arrows it will take to kill a guy. Everything is overseen by Flemming (Thomas Kretschmann) and Travis (Chris Coy), along with a couple of overzealous guards (Derrick Carr and Frank Alvarez) who give a different kind of personality to the operation than we saw in Hostel and Hostel Part II. Sure, at this point it's well beyond being "faceless" and terrifying as an "unknown" entity, but that's really something Roth started with the second film.

 Spiegel also doesn't let down on the kills (mostly): there's a "while they're still alive" facial surgery, bugs being poured down someone's throat (with inside-of-mouth POV shot as the bugs crawl in), some skin carving, and death by cattle prod (to be fair, that doesn't happen IN the execution room, but there aren't actually that many of those in Part III). The characters don't amount to much, but instead of douchebags or innocent art students, these guys come off as losers who are trying to be cool but just don't have it in them. They're constantly doing things that should, by all rights, have them killed well before they make it to EHC, but at least you aren't rooting for all of them to die immediately after meeting them.

 Maybe the ending stumbles a little bit, if because it's one of the two possible twists they could have gone with considering the propensity for tricks. Then again, I guess I'm already judging Hostel Part III on curve, so I can't go too hard. I'm comparing it favorably to From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money, for crying out loud: it's not the kind of movie you're ever going to put on for friends who want to see a "scary" horror movie or who are in for a new experience. It's more the kind of movie you'll rent one night, be reasonably happy with, and maybe mention it to a buddy that's into watching all kinds of horror movies, even DTV ones. By that criteria, I feel like Hostel Part III will be a nice respite from the normal crap passing itself off as a "sequel".

Horror Fest 6 Presents: Choose Your Favorite Series

 At this point I don't think I need to tell you that the Cap'n loves horror movies. I devote an entire month to cover it, write about the films on and off during the year, and I bet if you were to break down the reviews on this site, I have a sneaking suspicion which genre would win out. While I devote a lot of digital ink and space to individual horror films, I rarely take the opportunity to talk about horror series. Let's amend that, shall we?

Spoiler of the Day: Hellraiser - Hellworld

 Pinhead is not actually killing the Hellworld game players during a massive party; they have been hallucinating based on a drug the unknowingly took. The real perpetrator is the father of their dead friend, who blames them. The Host kills all of them but two and escapes. While going through his son's belongings, he finds the Lament Configuration and summons the Cenobites. They kill him, and use his body to taunt the survivors. That's it until Hellraiser: Revelations comes out.


 Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Darkness Falls

Spoiler of the Day: Hellraiser - Deader

 Reporter Amy Klein is following up on a story of a cult called Deaders who can bring the dead back to life. The Deaders leader, Winter, ends up being killed by the Cenobites because he is infringing on their territory (Hell), and Amy opts to kill herself instead of become one of their victims. However, the Lament Configuration is still intact and waiting new victims...


Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Hellraiser - Hellworld

Retro Review: Dungeons & Dragons (an imagined conversation)

 Cap'n Howdy: Hey, do you guys remember when we went to see Dungeons & Dragons?

 Professor Murder: Yeah, of course I do.

 Cranpire: Nope.

Professor Murder: What do you mean "Nope"? How do you not remember an evening from eleven years ago?

Cranpire: All I remember is that I didn't like the movie.

 Cap'n Howdy: None of us liked the movie; in fact, I bet I remember only a little more about the movie than you do.

 Cranpire: Probably.

 Cap'n Howdy: Well, there was Jeremy Irons as a... wizard? Mage? That's what they're called, right, Mages?

Professor Murder: Don't look at me. I have no idea.

 Cap'n Howdy: Well, anyway, then there's his sidekick -

Professor Murder: The dude with blue lip gloss.

 Cap'n Howdy: Exactly. The bald guy that was in Highlander: Endgame: Bruce Payne.

 Cranpire: Oh, he was on Keen Eddie.

 Professor Murder: Keen Eddie? Did you watch that show?

 Cranpire: Yeah, I like to watch shows that were canceled early.

 Cap'n Howdy: You remember that, but not Dungeons & Dragons?

 Cranpire: Well, I make a point of following obscure supporting actors.

 Cap'n Howdy: Anyway, so the movie also had that guy who looks like Wil Wheaton, but isn't -

 Cranpire: Justin Whalin, from Child's Play 3 and Serial Mom.

 Professor Murder: Wait, Andy from Child's Play 3? Impressive, Cranpire.

 Cranpire: Thanks.

 Cap'n Howdy: As I was saying, he goes on some quest with his friend (?), Marlon Wayans. They're thieves and Jeremy Irons is trying to raise a dragon or something and Thora Birch is in the film, and so is Richard O'Brien.

 Professor Murder: Who, if I remember correctly, was one of your selling points.

 Cap'n Howdy: Yes, he was. If I was more of a Doctor Who fan in 2000, I might have pointed out that Tom Baker was in the movie.

 Cranpire: Huh.

 Professor Murder: Yeah, that's really more than I remembered about that movie. What was more fun was how we got Cranpire to see it with us.

 Cap'n Howdy: That's why I wanted to have a review of the film in the first place. The story behind the movie is more interesting to me.

 Cranpire: I have no idea what you're talking about. Seriously.

 Cap'n Howdy: Do you not remember that you were working at the Rathskeller*, and we came by to talk you into seeing Dungeons & Dragons with us?

 Cranpire: Nope

 Professor Murder: You were cleaning up and we talked your manager into letting you off an hour early to come along. We paid for your missed hour, your ticket, and snacks - we bought you!

 Cranpire: Drawing a blank.

 Cap'n Howdy: I think that Professor Murder even drove us from your work to the theatre and then brought you back to the Rathskeller to pick up your car, and even though we laughed through the whole movie, you complained about how we "ripped you off" by dragging you to Dungeons & Dragons.

 Cranpire: That makes sense, but I don't remember that at all. I remember not liking the movie, and I saw the sequel at the video store.

 Professor Murder: Wait... you hated the first one but watched the sequel? Did you?

 Cap'n Howdy: No, I've never seen it. I don't even know what it's called.

 Cranpire: Yeah you do, I called in to the radio show you did to tell you it was Wrath of the Dragon God. It wasn't any better.

 Cap'n Howdy: It amazes me what you can and can't remember.

 Cranpire: I don't really remember seeing Dude, Where's My Car? with you. And I didn't fall asleep for all of The Man Who Wasn't There, for the record.

 Professor Murder: But you did sleep through part of it.

 Cap'n Howdy: Anyway, whether that jogged your memory or not, that happened. It was funny to me, and it's also kinda funny you don't remember that at all.

 Professor Murder: Good times.

 Cranpire: Well, if you guys are all done, I'm gonna smoke a cigarette and finish watching River of Darkness. It has Kurt Angle vs. zombie Kevin Nash.



* I feel no concern about mentioning this because the Rathskeller no longer exists and it's very unlikely anyone would figure out what employee is being mentioned here.

From the Vaults - The Crow: Wicked Prayer (A Cautionary Tale)

Ok, so I must warn everyone NOT to see The Crow: Wicked Prayer.

Yes, I am sure that many of you are already saying:

"Well, duh. Why did YOU watch it?"

to this I will make the case why I did watch it. Let's say, for example:

* You liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel.
* You really liked Edward Furlong in Pecker
* It's Dennis Hopper, man! Playing a Satanic Gangsta Priest!
* And Danny Trejo! Danny fucking Trejo!
* The first Crow was a personal favorite of yours, and even though you didn't like City of Angels and never saw Salvation, see the above pluses.
* You liked Six String Samurai

(okay, I've probably lost a lot of you right here, because I can't imagine anyone but me really saw every one of those factors as a plus, but I'll continue)

Okay, let's systematically destroy those pluses:

* David Boreanaz plays the Satanic Cult leader broad, to the point that when he is possessed by Satan, it borders on cartoonish. He's terrible in this *ahem* movie.
* Have you ever stood outside a Hot Topic and watched every fifteen year old goth kid walk in and out? You know the ones that just figured out they needed makeup? Make that kid the hero of this movie, and then tell him to pretend he is anguished. More than he already would.
* Yeah, except that Dennis Hopper has no idea how to deliver lines like "Do you agree to make Satan your homey?" and "I declare you dude and shorty." It's not even funny how boring he is.
* Poor Danny Trejo. They must have forgotten to tell him he'd be shirtless during the ridiculous "wake up the crow" dance, and he's jiggling all over the place, making this goofy face like he didn't know the camera was rolling.
* If Salvation is half a bad as Wicked Prayer, I'll never see it.
* Forget Six String Samurai. Throw any sense of visual style or coherence out the window. Not only does it feel like no one making the movie knew what happened in the plot, but the frenetic editing or head scratching flashbacks/hallucinations.. fuck. ok, this movie is incomprehensible. I almost turned it off twice, but for the sake of saying I went the distance, I watched it all. If you can figure out the plot, let me know. There's something to do with a Satanic Cult and an Native American Reservation and miners, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you how it fit together.

This is a disjointed piece of shit, and I warn you, do not waste your time. This movie isn't even "funny" bad, it's just BAD.

Oh yeah. Tara Reid is the bad girl. The less said, the better.

In other news, Hellraiser: Deader and Hellraiser: Hellworld will be joining The Prophecy 4 on shelves soon. (that's Hellraiser 7 and 8, for those keeping count. With Kari Wuhrer and Lance Henrisken, respectively)
I won't be watching any of them*, so if you do, keep it to yourselves, ok?


* Future intercession: Total Lie. I watched the Hell out of Hellraiser: Hellworld. Best Hellraiser sequel that has virtually nothing to do with the first film ever.

Not Funny People, but Maybe Funny Ha-Ha*

I'm still working on the Funny People review, so in the mean time the Cap'n would like to let you cool kids in on a special development. Unbeknownst to many of us, Dr. Uwe Boll was hard at work making a new movie based on a recent video game: Far Cry.

As is to be expected, it looks right up your alley. See for yourself:



I can't be 100% certain (okay, I can), but the music in the beginning sure sounds like it's from The Dark Knight. The music at the end sounds like every action movie I've ever seen Wesley Snipes in (but specifically Blade), but if someone would be so kind as to identify it, you'll win a special prize.

Without having seen Far Cry (or, for that matter, ever seeing Far Cry), I notice that Dr. Boll managed to snag Udo Kier and Hugo Stiglitz from Inglorious Basterds. Good for him. Enjoy, you masochists.

---

Speaking of masochism I'm very willing to partake in, there's a new Universal Soldier movie coming out. This one doesn't necessarily eschew the Burt Reynolds and Gary Busey chapters of the U.S. saga, but is a sequel to Universal Soldier: The Return.

Instead of getting Bill Goldberg to come back to fight JCVD, the producers aimed high and plucked Dolph Lundgren out of the cloud known as The Expendables. I don't actually know how they plan on explaining the "death by corn tiller" ending from Universal Soldier, but you can't really complain about getting a much older Van Damme and a less-older looking but it's still 17 years later guys Dolph Lundgren together to fight each other, and possibly UFC guy I'd never heard of Andrei "The Pit Bull" Arlovski.

Again, I'll let the evidence speak on its behalf:



My guess why this looks classier (albeit filmed in one location) than Far Cry is the director. See, he's the son of the director of 2010: The Odyssey Continues, which is a favorite film of Major Tom's.

All snarking aside, I already added this to my Netflix queue. I'm kind of sorry to see that the movie JCVD didn't open more doors for the man JCVD, but at least he's making direct to video sequels to movies I kinda liked now. Hopefully he can be retconned into TimeCop 3...



* but not that piece of shit indie movie Funny Ha Ha. Fuck that movie.