Shocktober Revisited: Theory, Audiences, and Horror

 This critical essay originally appeared in 2009.

Greetings, Blogorium readers! Tonight I thought I'd share with you part of a large-ish paper I've been working on.

The paper is on movie-going as a ritual activity, which in and of itself was fun researching, but a healthy section is devoted to Horror films and the role they play in group catharsis, so I'll drop that knowledge on you, followed by a section devoted to the question: "Why do horror fans like $1.50 movie theatres?", in which I think you'll find the Cap'n comes to a reasonable conclusion.

Just a tiny forewarning: this is from a first draft, so if anything reads as dodgy or the sentences are awkward, I'll be adjusting them in ensuing drafts.

Horror Films

“Each of us experiences a film individually, and our different tastes in films demonstrate how unique our individual reactions are. Yet, what are we to make of those films that seem to have tapped in the collective fears of an entire generation?” (Phillips, 3)

Horror films repulse and terrify us, yet they remain financially, if not critically, successful. Noel Carroll poses the question “But – and this is the question of ‘Why horror?’ in its primary form – if horror necessarily has something repulsive about it, how can audiences be attracted to it?” (33) The answer may be that the genre presents us with escapist variations of real life anxieties. The genre of horror taps into our deepest primal fears, and coupled with the venue (total darkness), collectively audiences must overcome individual terrors.

Consider the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, which tapped into mounting tensions about race relations and the Vietnam War through the lens of a zombie film. Kendall Phillips describes the reaction to Night thusly, “for many contemporary critics, the film was ‘cathartic for us, who forget about the horrors around us that aren’t, alas, movies’” (93). Similarly, films like The Exorcist or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre tapped into apocalyptic concerns of the mid-1970s, though less literally than atomic holocaust films. “Apocalyptic visions… need not express a literal end of the world but may entail a sense of the inevitable decay and demise of broad social structures and order” (Phillips, 111).

Horror manages to, in the words of critic Robin Wood, “respond to interpretation as at once the personal dreams of their makers and the collective dreams of their audiences, the fusion made possible by the shared structures of a common ideology” (30). Its role as a societal release is a more extreme version of cathartic theatre, one designed to explicitly face our fears in dark spaces, with the comfort of being able to safely walk away when we choose to. Linda Williams, in learning to scream, identifies a similar mechanism in horror films designed to help audiences gasp and scream together:

Anyone who has gone to the movies in the last 20 years cannot help but notice how entrenched this rollercoaster sensibility of repeated tension and release, assault and escape has become. While narrative is not abandoned, it often takes second place to a succession of visual and auditory shocks and thrills.” (163)

Despite its role in tapping into our collective experience, the horror film is not highly regarded by critics. Robin Wood describes the phenomenon:

The horror film has consistently been one of the most popular and, at the same time, the most disreputable of Hollywood genres. The popularity itself has a peculiar characteristic that sets it apart from other genres: it is restricted to aficionados and complemented by total rejection, people tending to go to horror films either obsessively or not at all. They are dismissed with contempt by the majority of reviewer-critics, or simply ignored. (30)

Horror is regarded as a “lesser” form of cinema, one that is frequently associated with “low culture” and is beneath contempt for cultural critics. Audiences, however, flock to this ritual of being scared half to death and walking out at the end. The ways that horror films function as a dual ritual of “movie-going” and “date” are also related to cultural norms. In her discussion of horror marketing during the “classic” monster-movie era, Rhona Berenstein notes the ways that male / female reactions during this ritual are performative:

Just as social mandates invited women in the 1930s to cling to men while screening horror movies, thus encouraging them to display conventionally feminine behavior as a means of garnering male attention, so, too, did the male viewer… use female fear, as well as his own traditional display of bravery, to disguise his terror behind a socially prescribed behavior. (137)

In fact, women were frequently the target audience during the “classic” monster movie era, for reasons that solidified gender roles in American society. Berenstein continues, “women were classic horror’s central stunt participants because they were thought to personify the genre’s favored artifact: fear. The upshot was that if women could survive the viewing or a horror film, and moreover, if they could respond bravely, then other patrons, meaning men could do the same” (143).

The horror film provides a number of valuable roles in maintaining the movie-going ritual: in addition to reinforcing cultural norms, it taps into collective fears and faces taboos, even at the chagrin of most critics. At the end of a horror film, no matter how traumatic or cathartic the experience, the collective returns to the daylight, capable of functioning as members of society. As we will see, the horror film provides for a different kind of engagement in the movie-going ritual based on what theatre an individual chooses to visit.

[...]

For many critics, the reputation of Horror as a “low culture” genre comes from these second run houses. Conversely, many Horror aficionados will also attend the Sedgefield of Blue Ridge Road theatres because they replicate the “Grindhouse” experience, based on one-screen cinemas in large cities, most of which no longer exist. The Grindhouse theaters were permissive of rowdier behavior, much of which is considered by aficionados as “augmenting” an otherwise marginal film. The most famous example of a Grindhouse film or “Midnight Movie” turned ritual experience is The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

[...]

Shocktober Revisited: Sisters

 This review originally appeared in 2010.

 Sisters, a film that arguably is the first time the signature "style" of Brian De Palma is on display, is also a precursor to his "homages" to Alfred Hitchcock*, like Dressed to Kill and Body Double, cobbling from a number of the "Master of Suspense"'s films.

 Danielle Blanchon (Margot Kidder) was born half of Siamese twins, with her sister Dominique. After being separated, Danielle pursued a career in modeling and acting, appearing on game shows like "The Peeping Tom Show" (which opens the film in a curiously race-baiting manner, both for the contestants and the audience). When Phillip Woode (Lisle Wilson) avoids the temptation of watching a "blind" woman undress, he wins a dinner for two to the even less politically incorrect "African Room" and invites Danielle (the "blind" woman) to come along (Danielle wins a set of knives). Aside from an awkward run-in with her ex-husband, Emil Breton (Bill Finley), the date goes swimmingly, and he accompanies her home to Staten Island.

 After a night of heavy petting, Phillip overhears Danielle and Dominique having and argument and accidentally knocks her medication into the sink. Phillip runs out to find the twins a birthday cake, and comes back only to be (SPOILER, I guess) stabbed in the groin by Dominique, and then viciously sliced up before scrawling "HELP" on the window in full view of investigative journalist Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt). Collier becomes obsessed first with proving the murder happened, then on uncovering the "true" story of the Blanchon twins, enlisting the help of private detective Joseph Larch (Charles Durning). What is Breton's actual relationship to Danielle and Dominique? Why aren't the police interested in the murder? And what is really going on at the institute that the Blanchon twins grew up in?

 I don't feel bad about ruining the death of Phillip Woode because if you've seen Dressed to Kill, you have some idea how the first thirty minutes of Sisters is going to play out. Hell, if you've seen Psycho, you know how both of them are going to play out, but sticking strictly to De Palma films, Dressed to Kill is likely better known than Sisters, which plays out like a grindhouse-friendly warm up for his more direct Psycho homage.

 But it isn't just Psycho that gets the nod in Sisters: there's also Rope, Rear Window, Frenzy, and a strange running gag akin to The Trouble with Harry involving Woode's final resting place - and the film's MacGuffin - a fold out couch-bed. The last shot, in fact, echoes the futility of the MacGuffin, as Joseph Larch (the Sam Loomis /Lisa Fremont stand-in) sits perched on a telephone poll, spying on an abandoned couch in a comparably abandoned Canadian train station, never to be claimed.

If it feels like I'm spoiling a lot of Sisters, really I'm not; I deliberately left out the film's "twist," which shouldn't be difficult to figure out given De Palma's penchant for Hitchcock plot turns, and I'll dance around the hallucinatory third act, which takes place in the institution and intentionally echoes Freaks or The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari in its dream sequences. It's placement in the film is rather jarring, considering the great technical lengths De Palma goes to earlier in the film (including not one, but two intricate split screen sequences), and nearly derails the picture. It kicks the Freudian overtones into overdrive and drastically switches gears from an exercise in intertextuality into an overcomplicated bundle of psycho-mumbo-jumbo before returning to a by-the-numbers murder mystery.

Which is not to say that critics with a psychoanalytical bent won't have a field day with Sisters (as they do with virtually all of De Palma's films): the almost literal "castration" of both male leads (and a more figurative form for Larch and Arthur McLennen [Barnard Hughes**], the reporter who broke the twin story) is consistent throughout the film. Dominique seems to be triggered by arousal and her weapons are always phallic (a kitchen knife, a scalpel), and Collier's general disdain for men (and her overburdening mother) eventually point her towards a safe, if unsatisfying, end.

Sisters is a bit sloppy around the edges, lacking in much of the precision evident in later Brian De Palma films, but it has a scrappy quality to it that keeps the film watchable when it teeters on incomprehensibility. It doesn't hurt that Kidder is very good as Danielle and Dominique, and Salt carries most of the film as the truth obsessed Collier. Wilson, Finley, and Durning are also believable in mostly thankless roles, and when De Palma is on, the film crackles with suspense. It's easy to see in Sisters the traces of his later, superior films, as well as his interest in incorporating Hitchcockian themes and images early on. As a horror film - which I suppose is technically why it's included this month - you could do worse, although Sisters is probably going to appeal to cinephiles more than casual viewers.

*edit* In my haste to put this up, I forgot about the Cranpire's favorite character, who will be referred to only as "The Midnight Gardener," who so inexplicably a plot device that I must assume he's a direct reference to another film. Kudos to you if you identify it in the comments!

* The debate rages on whether these are homages or rip-offs, and I don't really want to get into it here. For plenty of starting points, I refer you to Google.
** If the name doesn't ring a bell, Hughes' voice should automatically ring a bell, particularly if you remember Dumont in Tron or Grandpa in The Lost Boys.

Blogorium Review: Ms. 45

 Abel Ferrara's third film, Ms. 45, is an unusual entry into the "revenge" film subgenre. The trailer sells it as a vintage slice of grindhouse cinema, but in truth, Ferrara is less interested in titillation and cheap shocks than exploring a character slowly losing her grip on reality. In some ways, it is a "revenge" film, but not in the way that an I Spit on Your Grave is; I found odd but persistent parallels to Taxi Driver throughout Ms. 45, although the films approach their respective protagonists very differently.

 What causes Thana (Zoë Tamerlis) to radically shift from a meek seamstress to a an alluring siren of death is, even for grindhouse films, a pretty rough way to start a movie: on the way home from work, Thana is dragged into an alley and raped by a man in a mask (played by the director, billed as "Jimmy Laine"), and when she pulls herself together from that violation, she comes home to find another criminal who broke in and is furious that he can't find any money. He decides to also rape the already shell-shocked Thana, but she manages to subdue and, ultimately, kill him. Thana, unsure of what to do, cuts his body into pieces and stuffs him in the fridge and freezer, determining it would be best to leave his parts around New York City, so as not to raise suspicion. She also finds his .45 next to the couch, which brings us to the next phase of Ms. 45.

 The content of the film certainly fits inside of the wheelhouse of "grindhouse" and "revenge" cinema, but there are some critical distinctions that are likely to surprise fans looking for some cheap, grimy thrills.  Both rape scenes are grim, unpleasant affairs, with limited nudity that focus more on violation. The horror plays out on Thana's face, and what little nudity that follows is almost always coupled with a traumatic memory of the one-two punch that sets the narrative in motion. Unlike most "grindhouse" cinema, we're not meant to enjoy the taboo, but to experience it for what it is - in that respect, Ms. 45's opening is similar to Irreversible. The other factor that separates Ms. 45 from most "revenge" films is the fact that the first rapist never returns - while the violation of I Spit in Your Grave is atrocious, the audience gets some satisfaction from the brutal retaliation on the men who committed it later in the film. What happens instead in Ms. 45 at first seems to be a cultural statement about macho stereotypes and Lotharios in the late 70s and early 80s, but then turns into something quite different.

 What I found most interesting is that the first time Thana kills someone with the .45, it's the result of panic, but not totally unjustified. Like nearly every man in the film, the greaser who chases after her is introduced trying to pick up literally any woman who walks past him, but the reason he's chasing Thana has nothing to do with sex. He mistakenly thinks that she forgot her bag (in fact, just a body part) and is trying to return it to her, and when she runs down an alleyway and panics, she shoots him point blank in the head. It's an accidental reaction and happens for reasons neither fully understand, but it sets Thana on a different path for the rest of the film. She begins dressing more provocatively, wandering the streets at night, and finding men who stalk her, and then kills them ruthlessly.

 This is not to say that most of the men in Ms. 45 don't deserve what's coming to them, at least initially. The best example is a sleazy fashion photographer introduced making out with his girlfriend in a restaurant where Thana and her coworkers are eating lunch. As soon as the girl leaves, he begins to hit on their table, and manages to talk Thana into coming up to his studio, only it doesn't quite work out the way that he planned (the scene is reminiscent of Blow Up, or perhaps Brian DePalma's early film Murder à la Mod ). Other random street thugs get theirs, including an impressive scene where Thana kills five guys surrounding her in rapid succession (Ferrara never does explain how she learned to shoot with such accuracy and only once addresses the lingering question of ammunition).

 As the film goes on, however, Thana's grip on being "wronged" by men slips away. She picks up a guy at a bar who relays a long story about his wife cheating on him with another woman, which ends with him accidentally killing himself. In another scene, Thana decides to kill a young man who doesn't even know she exists, but has committed the cardinal sin of making out with his girlfriend in front of a Baskin Robbins. She fails in killing him only because he manages to open the door to his apartment building (without ever knowing his life was in danger), but her frustration at not shooting him is the first sign of misplaced aggression. Her boss, Albert (Albert Sinkys), a fashion designer, initially seems to be overbearing but sympathetic to her trauma, but shifts to just another sex starved creep by the end of the film. At the end (SPOILER), Thana goes on a shooting rampage at a Halloween party, indiscriminately gunning down any man she sees, whether or not they made any passing glances at her. In the end, she's taken down by a co-worker, Laurie (Darlene Stuto), who she can't bring herself to shoot. Laurie, by the way, is holding a knife like this, which can't be mistaken for anything but a phallic metaphor:

(in case you're wondering, that's how she holds it the entire time)

There's something important worth mentioning that makes Ms. 45 more unorthodox from its "revenge" ilk: Ferrara and Tamerlis made the unorthodox choice to play Thana as mute, so that we see everything play out on her face, but without ever hearing her say anything. Tamerlis does wonders conveying the transformation of Thana, first as timid and withdrawn, to overwhelmed and traumatized, and finally to a woman unwilling to deal with the amorous advances of men in New York. It also gives the added benefit that her undivided attention to many of her victims is read as interest, and not a single one of them ever seems to be aware that she can't talk. That they don't care is only more damning and essentially seals their fate.

 It seems unlikely that Ferrara and screenwriter Nichols St. John chose the name Thana ("what is that, Greek?" "It is to you.") for their protagonist and didn't intend it to be a reference to Thanatos, the Greek personification of Death. Ms. 45 is littered with references to Thanatos, Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle (which describes the dueling creative forces of Eros [love] and Thanatos [death], a central theme in the film), and a few, less subtle, religious allegories. The first rape leaves Thana curled up in a fetal position in the alleyway, with an apple at her feet, and the second ends when she smashes a glass apple into the head of her (pun intended) intruder. The "loss of innocence" metaphor, coupled with her final burst of violence dressed as a nun during a Halloween party, is unlikely to just be a coincidence.

 I mentioned Taxi Driver earlier, and while Travis Bickle seems to wait the entire movie to finally burst into violence, there is a component of his nihilistic outlook on life that is mirrored in Thana for much of Ms. 45. As she transitions from drawing out the worst examples of masculinity (and ending them) to randomly attacking anything that resembles sexual activity - whether it involves her or not - there's something about Bickle's misanthropy that is familiar. Near the end, there's a scene that's very hard to argue isn't Ms. 45's equivalent of "you talking to me?" despite the fact that Thana cannot, in fact, talk to the mirror. The explosion of violence at the end (again, directed at men in both films, but for somewhat different reasons*) is similarly chaotic, and their mental states are comparable heading in the the climax of their respective narratives.

 There's certainly more under the surface than just gratuitous violence and nudity in Ms. 45, something that might surprise audiences who only know it from the poster or seeing the trailer on the 42nd Street Forever compilation. I was pleasantly surprised, and when I realized that Zoë Tamerlis was the same Zoë Lund who wrote Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, it made a certain kind of sense. Abel Ferrara has always found as way to imbue the trashy with art house sensibilities, so if you don't mind not getting nudity every fifteen minutes in your "revenge" film, or a film that challenges the idea of satisfaction through violence, Ms. 45 will be a refreshing experience to the subgenre. It's not always pleasant, and given the subject matter, it really shouldn't be. If you aren't coming in looking for grimy kicks, you might find something really interesting to come away with.

 * Since the central premise of Ms. 45 is about men treating women as nothing more than objects, one could argue that Travis Bickle killing pimps and johns is actually doing exactly the same thing than Thana is doing, if for a different reason, although by that point in Thana's story she's just killing any man she sees.

Blogorium Review: Machete Kills

 I really wish Machete Kills was a better movie than it is. It's just a bummer, because Machete is dumb fun: a trashy, grindhouse-esque slice of Mexploitation, with a stacked cast and a sense of reckless abandon that manages to be coherent in spite of itself. And Machete Kills? Well, let's just say being able to shoot anything at any time digitally has really ruined Robert Rodriguez...

 Machete (Danny Trejo) is dealing with loss when he's summoned by the President to stop a crazy drug lord Marcos Mendez (Demian Bichir) from launching a nuclear missile at Washington, D.C. When he easily infiltrates the compound, he discovers that Mendez has connected the firing mechanism to his heart, so if he dies, the missile launches. Machete must bring him back across the border from Mexico, keep him alive, disarm the bomb, and contend not only with the cartels, but a gang on vengeful prostitutes and an assassin who can take on any face. And that's not even taking into account the person who gave Mendez the missile...

 If you're looking for a movie that delivers on the title and nothing else, then Machete Kills lives up to its promise. Machete does kill, and he kills in any variety of creative fashions. Does he flip a boat over so that it runs into a dock motor first, chopping a bunch of stooges to pieces? Yup. Does he attach a guy to a grappling hook and send him into a helicopter? Also yup. Does he attach himself to a helicopter rotor and spin around decapitating guys with his weapon of choice? He sure does. He even uses a gun that "turns guys inside out" to end a chase sequence. So, as President Rathcock (Charlie Shee-, pardon me, Carlos Estevez) says, "Machete kills! That's what he does!"

 The problem is that it all looks like bargain basement, Syfy Channel / Asylum Pictures digital skullduggery. The "inside out" gun, no exaggeration, looks like a slightly bloodier version of what happens when a Dalek shoots someone on Doctor Who. There's so much CGI blood in this movie that, when added to the copious green-screening, makes Machete Kills look like something that a film student would make over the course of a weekend. I understand that Rodriguez can make a movie like Machete Kills on the cheap, but it doesn't have to look this cheap.

 And before you say "but Cap'n, it's an exploitation movie! It's SUPPOSED to look like shit!" allow me to remind you that this is the same Robert Rodriguez that made Planet Terror, which has a comparable level of carnage and still looks like a movie, not something that's supposed to sit next to Birdemic in the $7.99 bin at Best Buy in two weeks. Machete Kills looks less realistic than Spy Kids 3-D, and I'm positive there are at least a few 100% practical sets in Machete Kills. Most of them don't look like it (and at least two of them are just a bar and restaurant somewhere in Austin), and it feels like every driving scene was done in front of the green screen in Rodriguez's studio.

 Machete Kills doesn't feel like a movie; it feels like a lark that Rodriguez (or, more likely, 20th Century Fox) expects people to pay for. Rodriguez was probably more than happy to make it, even if it feels less complete than the last Resident Evil movie (which, if you remember, I likened to an extended trailer for the inevitable next Resident Evil movie). At least Resident Evil had the decency not to open the film with a trailer for the next film.

 That's right, Machete Kills opens with a trailer for Machete Kills Again: In Space, which arguably manages to look even worse than the movie you're about to watch, but only because it's all in front of green screens. It promises the exact same cast and already sounds like the director doesn't care ("And Lady Gaga as... whoever Lady Gaga wants to be!"), and lets you know this is where we're going. Just bear with Machete Kills as it spins its wheels for 100 minutes, because at the end of the tunnel we're going to space! With lightsaber machetes and a guy in a silver mask played by Leonardo DiCaprio (* Casting Subject to Change) plus Machete fights clone Machete!

 And then we have to watch Machete Kills, which would have been not so good even without the promise that there isn't going to be an ending. Right out of the gate the second problem with Rodriguez's "shoot anywhere, any time with your friends" approach is apparent. It's true that his casts are stacked (no pun intended about Sofia Vergara there), but if you're expecting to see many of them on screen together, don't hold your breath. He's taken the Sin City approach of "shoot when you're available" to the extreme, and for the first time it's readily apparent in Machete Kills.

 When I saw Sin City, I didn't know that Mickey Rourke and Rutger Hauer weren't in the same physical location for the scene between the two characters. It's just the two of them sitting on opposite beds across from each other. Using green screen trickery, Rodriguez convinces you that two actors who filmed on different days are talking to each other and are inhabiting the same space. Only later did I find out they weren't acting against each other, and it was an impressive trick.

 On the other hand, I could tell almost immediately that the one day Jessica Alba was available to shoot was not a day Mel Gibson was there to kill her character (SPOILER) and that the reason that Gibson's character, Luther Voz was wearing a luchadore mask (the only time he wears it) was to disguise the fact that they weren't on screen together. If that were the only case of scheduling tomfoolery in the film, I'd forgive it, because Rodriguez manages to use the mask as a visual bridge later in the film, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.

 It's clear that most of the people in the film came in for one or two days, filmed all of their scenes, and probably never interacted with Danny Trejo. The character of El Chameleon is a perfect example: this is a super assassin who changes faces after every kill, which is a great way to include Walton Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Lady Gaga, and Antonio Banderas in the movie, except that the first two are in scenes with people who have nothing to do with the story, Lady Gaga makes a grand entrance in a gas station that looks fake and then is driving in front of a green screen, and Banderas and Trejo are barely in the same scene together. And this is a character who decides to collect a bounty to kill Machete.

 Well, it should be that, but instead it feels like "hey, Lady Gaga, come shoot whenever you're available and I'll make you a badass assassin with a cool poster and put you in the trailer." Goggins is in one scene. Gooding is in three, and Banderas is in two. They're all really fun to see, but they don't have any time to make an impression. Machete Kills is too busy cramming in plot to have anything good to do with the great cast Rodriguez assembled. Most of the movie is Danny Trejo and Demian Bichir (Che, Weeds) on the road, saddled with a dumb subplot about how Mendez has a split personality that conveniently shifts whener the story needs it to.

 It would be easier to dismiss Machete Kills outright if it there weren't some actual highlights to the film, chief among them the commercially toxic Mel Gibson. I understand that mentioning Mel Gibson goes over about as well as invoking the name of Roman Polanski, but the truth is that as super villain / inventor Luther Voz, Gibson is great fun to watch. It seems like Rodriguez and screenwrite Kyle Ward poured all of their good ideas into the character, from his obsession with Star Wars to his admiration for Machete, and I have to say that it's fun to see Mel Gibson playing slightly comedic again. They manage to sneak in Mad Max and Man Without a Face references without being too obvious, and he's definitely a highlight in the film.

 The other high point is Marko Zaror, who plays Zaror, a genetically engineered army of clones created by Voz to battle Machete and to protect him when he leaves the nuclear ravaged Earth for the safety of his space station (aha, see where that's going?). Zaror is a Chilean martial artist and has a cult following among actions fans, so it's nice to see Rodriguez give him several opportunites to go mano-a-mano with Danny Trejo (I don't need to tell you that he's spot on in the title role, do I?). Also good are Amber Heard, Michelle Rodriguez, and I guess Tom Savini, although the three of them are in so little of the film that they don't register for long stretches. And yes, Tom Savini plays the same character who killed Machete's brother in the first film, but he's had a change of heart and, well, it's just an excuse to bring him back. Until I looked at IMDB, Like Lady Gaga, Sheen / Estevez doesn't make much of an impression. And William Sadler? I forgot he was even in the movie...

 It's a little maddening that there's so much of this cheap, boring, over-complicated movie to have to sit through in order to have a handful of bright spots, and even though Machete Kills barely made a dent with audiences, I somehow suspect Rodriguez made the film cheaply enough to have already shot most of Machete Kills Again: In Space. But I have to be honest and say I don't want to watch it. I didn't like, but respected Sin City. I loved Planet Terror. I liked Machete. I disliked almost all of Machete Kills, and looking at how digital filmmaking has slowly turned Rodriguez from a director who made movies with what he had to a guy who can literally use anything and shoot on anybody's schedule, all to his detriment, I'm not so keen on his movies anymore. It's like he's become a parody of his own Grindhouse segment, and we seem more and more distant from something like Desperado or The Faculty, which looked and felt like actual movies. Machete Kills feels like an experiment, and not the good kind.

Blogorium Review: Drive Angry

(editor's note: thanks to some of the pictures below, this review is probably NOT SAFE FOR WORK.)
(supplemental note: thanks to all of the google searches for "Drive Angry naked chick," the Cap'n has opted to digitally alter one of the pictures below. Sorry, but you'll have to perv out somewhere else.)

Drive Angry is the trashiest movie I've seen in a long time. Were it not for John Waters, one might argue that Drive Angry is the trashiest film I've ever seen, and even with that caveat, it's still impressive watching a film that just doesn't care whether you identify with (or even care about) anybody in the film. I could write about Drive Angry without SPOILERS, but then I would remove all incentive for you to see the film. Seeing as nobody went to see Drive Angry in the first place, I feel I owe it to the people involved making the film to send a few of you in the right direction, so SPOIL I shall.

John Milton (Nicolas Cage) is a man on a mission - specifically a mission to stop Jonah King (Billy Burke), a Satanic Cult Leader, from sacrificing his granddaughter during a full moon and unleashing Hell on Earth. Milton already has a bone to pick with King for murdering his daughter (a member of the cult) while the not-so-good-father was in "prison," so there's no way he's going to stop chasing the Satanists all the way from Colorado to Louisiana. The problem is that Milton keeps destroying / abandoning his muscle cars, so he picks up a ride from Piper (Amber Heard), the kind of girl that puts the "trash" in "trailer trash." Unfortunately for Milton, The Accountant (William Fichtner) has been sent to return him to "prison," and he's not going to take "no" for an answer...

This first SPOILER isn't necessarily one depending on how easily you can pick up on an obvious image of John Milton's car speeding out of Hell. Yes, Hell; there's some quick exposition about how members of the cult could have sworn he was dead, and Milton seems to the ability to survive being shot in the eye at point blank range. That said, director / co-screenwriter Patrick Lussier (My Bloody Valentine 3D) and writer Todd Farmer (Jason X) find every way possible to avoid directly mentioning the central conceit of the film.

Nearly every person I mentioned Drive Angry to didn't know that Nicolas Cage's John Milton escapes from Hell to save the baby, and all of them were more interested in the film when they found out. It seems to me that if you want to market a "grindhouse"-style movie, you might want to include that critical component in the marketing. Otherwise, it looks like another silly movie starring Nicolas Cage, like Season of the Witch (which preceded Drive Angry by only a month).

It's a shame, because Drive Angry is a lot more fun than Season of the Witch, and for that matter many Nicolas Cage films people have been avoiding since Ghost Rider*. I sense that more people would tune in if they knew that Drive Angry had a more ludicrous hook. Mind you, the hook, while never directly spelled out, is crystal clear for anyone paying attention. The Accountant's ability to manufacture phony FBI badges by flipping a coin, or the fact that he tells nearly everybody he meets when he'll "see" them again should be a dead giveaway. If, for some reason, it isn't, hopefully the "God Killer," a giant handgun that Milton steals during his escape, will give you the hint this isn't your average "chase" film.

Fichtner steals the show as the unflappable Accountant, and is easily the preferred antagonist to Burke's Jonah King. It isn't just that Fichtner easily owns every scene he's in; Jonah King is such an ill-defined villain that you a) never know what he's really trying to do, and b) never feel threatened by him. Other than having coke fingernails and shooting his revolver like a cowboy, all King does is talk about his "new world order" and watch his followers kill (or get killed).

At one point, without having done anything to demonstrate it, King boldly proclaims that he is "armored with a power that you will never know" and that "nothing of this Earth can kill me." However, other than having a bit of a fight with Piper in an RV, the only other information we have about Jonah King is that people keep stabbing him with his Satanic Pendant and that Milton's daughter bit his penis off.

Did I mention this was a trashy movie? The kind of movie where Piper knocks out the girl her boyfriend Frank (Todd Farmer) is cheating with in the middle of a trailer park, and then some fat guy walks up, smirking, and snaps a picture of the naked girl. The kind of movie where a guy is, for no apparent reason, wearing a wig that looks like... you know what? Why don't I show you. A picture is worth far more than any description I could give you (and also mostly NSFW):

Lussier shot Drive Angry in 3D, and it shows early on, even if I saw it in 2D; there are quite a few "coming at the camera" gags but things seem to settle down quickly, which may or may not have improved watching it without the gimmick**. Lussier and Farmer explore similar subplots to their remake of My Bloody Valentine (a film I must admit I didn't enjoy much); Drive Angry is their not only does Farmer once again play a mostly naked guy chasing a totally naked girl through a parking lot, but Tom Atkins (Night of the Creeps, The Fog) appears as a police chief that is largely ineffectual in his pursuit of Milton.

Drive Angry is less of a remake than an homage (of sorts) to films like Race with the Devil, although that's not the only place it borrows from. A sex scene with Milton and Candy (Charlotte Ross) quickly turns into a gunfight, and the fact that Milton doesn't stop having sex would be more impressive if I hadn't already seen Shoot 'Em Up, which is already more of a cartoon than anything in Drive Angry.

That said, I have one more image from Drive Angry, from a promise made by Milton too silly not to pay off at the end of the film. Someone asks him if he wants a beer, and Milton says "not unless I drink it out of King's skull." So after he sends his granddaughter off to be raised by Piper (a horrible idea, as anyone who watched the movie should know), we get his promise fulfilled.

The best part about this is how nonchalant Cage, Fichtner, and Lussier treat the "skull drinking," as though we shouldn't be surprised this is happening at this point. Then again, Drive Angry is exactly the kind of movie not to make much ado of skull drinking. And that, my friends, is trashy in all the right ways.

* Including the actually, not-being-ironic-when-I-say-this-no-really-I-mean-it, really good Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which is trashy in a different way but again let me stress that it's a WERNER HERZOG film so maybe you should rethink your whole "that movie has to suck" prejudgment. ** I can't imagine it made anyone who paid an extra $5 for the glasses happier, since there are huge chunks of the movie where 3D would have been negligible a best.

Blogorium Review: Hobo with a Shotgun

The Cap'n has to say that I'm a little bummed that so few people I know are excited about (let alone aware of) Hobo with a Shotgun. The film, which pits a homeless man against a seemingly endless wave of corruption, depravity, and violence in a small town, looks to offer cheap thrills - another homage to the era of exploitation cinema and VHS naughtiness. So does Hobo with a Shotgun deliver on the sleazy simplicity of its title? Read on to find out.

A Hobo (Rutger Hauer) arrives in Hope Town looking for a fresh start, a chance to buy a lawn mower and start his own business. But Hope Town is anything but hopeful: under the grip of The Drake (Brian Downey) and his sons Slick (Gregory Smith) and Ivan (Nick Bateman), people in the city are arbitrarily brutalized and executed. Violence runs rampant, the police have no interest in taking down The Drake, and Hobo finds his only ally in prostitute Abby (Molly Dunsworth). When a pawn shop robbery forces Hobo to choose between his lawnmower and a shotgun, he declares a one-man war on the town, but can he survive when The Drake orders all homeless people to be killed?

When watching a film called Hobo with a Shotgun, one cannot be faulted for forming certain expectations about what one is going to get. Look at the poster to your right, for example: its retro "unfolded" image and "kitchen sink" approach of what you'll see in the film promises a kitschy, uber-violent experience, most likely verging on offensive with gobs of gore, drug use, and prerequisite gratuitous nudity. Sure enough, one would not be mistaken to think all this (and more) is on display in Hobo with a Shotgun, a title of such simplicity it reminds one of Snakes on a Plane. Hold that thought...

The film has an interesting history of its own: Hobo with a Shotgun was the winner of a contest to create your own fake trailer for Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse, and because the Blu-Ray took nearly three years to come out, Hobo with a Shotgun's presence on the disc was largely forgotten. Director Jason Eisener and writer John Davies pushed forward with their trailer, a YouTube sensation, and landed Rutger Hauer in the title role.

What began as this:



became this*:



and is now playing On Demand and on the Playstation Network, with a theatrical release in the near future.

Hobo with a Shotgun aims to be a throwback to the politically incorrect, exploitative "trash" films that made up the "video nasties" shelf at your local video store. Like Planet Terror, it goes for the gusto when it comes to ultra-violence; there are kills in this film the Cap'n has never seen before, and I'm no slouch when it comes to murder set-pieces. If Planet Terror was an homage to John Carpenter's 1980s output, then Hobo with a Shotgun is a throwback to the endless variations on Death Wish, particularly The Exterminator. It's also not far off from Rodriguez's own spin-off of Grindhouse, Machete.

If you're looking to get your quotient of "wrong" met, you're going to have a hard time finding it all packed into one film beyond Hobo with a Shotgun: pedophile Santa's, child endangerment, eviscerations, beheadings, hangings, castrations, broken limbs, crooked cops, people being burned alive, a "bumfights"-esque filmmaker, hiding in corpses, burning school buses, ice skate fights, and the Plague - a pair of killers dressed head to toe in homemade armor hired to take out the Hobo. At one point, for reasons best unexplained, the Hobo watches as one member of the Plague fights an octopus. Ivan and Slick are, for reasons also unexplained, 80s themed jock thugs, dressed in "prep" clothing with Tom Cruise slicked hair and a DeLorean.

While this might sound enticing, Hobo with a Shotgun makes the crucial mistake of being relentlessly downbeat from beginning to end. As a result, we as an audience aren't allowed to revel in the trashy violence, cheesy dialogue, or over-the-top performances. Instead, the cumulative effect is mostly a downer; what was fun in Planet Terror or ridiculous in Machete is instead dour, hopeless, and devoid of any of the thrills and chills implied in Hobo with a Shotgun's concept. There are a few chuckles to be had (mostly from the newspaper headlines, my favorite of which was "Hobo Stops Begging, Demands Change") but I'd have a hard time justifying putting Hobo with a Shotgun on during a party. Other than grossing the faint of heart out, its really only going to be a buzz kill. While it isn't boring like, say, Snakes on a Plane, the incessant profanity and unyielding cruelty do damper a "party" atmosphere.

The film's downbeat ending isn't likely to make it a hit with midnight movie crowds, but I think on a one-by-one basis, Hobo with a Shotgun will entertain enough gorehounds and retro-junkies to justify recommending a rental, just don't make it the centerpiece of your own "grindhouse night."

The film is well shot, reasonably well acted by its mostly unknown cast, and has enough going for it that I imagine many of you will enjoy it on some level, but its pedigree as an off-shoot of Grindhouse might lead people to expect a different movie than what you get. Then again, since so many people didn't know Hobo with a Shotgun even existed, you might not have the same expectations I did. While it's no The House of the Devil or Black Dynamite, Hobo with a Shotgun does try to capture a particular slice of genre exploitation, and it's mostly successful which is better than a lot of what's out there.



* If you were wondering, the original Hobo, David Brunt, appears in what amounts to a cameo as a crooked cop.

Unrelated (as much as possible)

I've been racking my brains trying to find something to write about other than the bizarre trifecta of celebrity deaths - Ingrid Pitt, Leslie Nielsen, and Irvin Kershner - because I just don't have enough anecdotes beyond repeating "The Empire Strikes Back was the first movie I saw" or "The Naked Gun was a movie we watched during the first sleep over birthday party I remember" or "Ah, Ingrid Pitt. Where Eagles Dare and The Wicker Man, and oh yeah, Doctor Who*." That's really what I've got.

Other being enthused at the combination of James Franco and Anne Hathaway (who are consistently excellent hosts on Saturday Night Live) hosting the Academy Awards, I don't have much to add to that. Awards Season has been more of a Neil thing over the last few years, and I often find myself missing out on the shameless Oscar bait high profile end of year films. Yes, it's true: I'm more focused on Tron Legacy and True Grit than... well, that should give you some idea of how out of it I am. I'll be lucky to catch Get Low before the Oscar ceremonies, and I really want to see Get Low.

While toying around with ways to approach the forthcoming "Retro Reviews" column - which replaces "From the Vaults" in January - I found myself torn between reviewing films from my perspective now, or when I first saw them. During high school and early years in college, I saw perhaps more films than any other period save for 2007-2010. Many of the films I watched then I've never seen since (Lost in Space, Godzilla, The In Crowd), but some, like The Fifth Element, were revisited, and when I think about what I thought of Luc Besson's film the first time I saw it compared to the second, a review from that first experience might be as entertaining as a critical synopsis from today.

If I can make time in the next few weeks, I really hope to have reviews up for Harry Brown, I'm Still Here, the complete Metropolis, The Magician, Head, and possibly a revisiting of The Expendables outside of the sphere of that other movie opening the same day. And yes, I might look into Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. That being said, I'm torn between Metropolis, I'm Still Here, and Harry Brown, which are sitting on the table with Ratatouille, Grindhouse, 12 Monkeys, Fight Club, The Wizard of Oz, and Best Worst Movie.

That being said, I have a sudden, pressing urge to watch The Wicker Man, Forbidden Planet, and The Empire Strikes Back...




* The Warriors of the Deep, if you were wondering.

Blogorium Review: Sisters

Sisters, a film that arguably is the first time the signature "style" of Brian De Palma is on display, is also a precursor to his "homages" to Alfred Hitchcock*, like Dressed to Kill and Body Double, cobbling from a number of the "Master of Suspense"'s films.

Danielle Blanchon (Margot Kidder) was born half of Siamese twins, with her sister Dominique. After being separated, Danielle pursued a career in modeling and acting, appearing on game shows like "The Peeping Tom Show" (which opens the film in a curiously race-baiting manner, both for the contestants and the audience). When Phillip Woode (Lisle Wilson) avoids the temptation of watching a "blind" woman undress, he wins a dinner for two to the even less politically incorrect "African Room" and invites Danielle (the "blind" woman) to come along (Danielle wins a set of knives). Aside from an awkward run-in with her ex-husband, Emil Breton (Bill Finley), the date goes swimmingly, and he accompanies her home to Staten Island.

After a night of heavy petting, Phillip overhears Danielle and Dominique having and argument and accidentally knocks her medication into the sink. Phillip runs out to find the twins a birthday cake, and comes back only to be (SPOILER, I guess) stabbed in the groin by Dominique, and then viciously sliced up before scrawling "HELP" on the window in full view of investigative journalist Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt). Collier becomes obsessed first with proving the murder happened, then on uncovering the "true" story of the Blanchon twins, enlisting the help of private detective Joseph Larch (Charles Durning). What is Breton's actual relationship to Danielle and Dominique? Why aren't the police interested in the murder? And what is really going on at the institute that the Blanchon twins grew up in?

I don't feel bad about ruining the death of Phillip Woode because if you've seen Dressed to Kill, you have some idea how the first thirty minutes of Sisters is going to play out. Hell, if you've seen Psycho, you know how both of them are going to play out, but sticking strictly to De Palma films, Dressed to Kill is likely better known than Sisters, which plays out like a grindhouse-friendly warm up for his more direct Psycho homage.

But it isn't just Psycho that gets the nod in Sisters: there's also Rope, Rear Window, Frenzy, and a strange running gag akin to The Trouble with Harry involving Woode's final resting place - and the film's MacGuffin - a fold out couch-bed. The last shot, in fact, echoes the futility of the MacGuffin, as Joseph Larch (the Sam Loomis /Lisa Fremont stand-in) sits perched on a telephone poll, spying on an abandoned couch in a comparably abandoned Canadian train station, never to be claimed.

If it feels like I'm spoiling a lot of Sisters, really I'm not; I deliberately left out the film's "twist," which shouldn't be difficult to figure out given De Palma's penchant for Hitchcock plot turns, and I'll dance around the hallucinatory third act, which takes place in the institution and intentionally echoes Freaks or The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari in its dream sequences. It's placement in the film is rather jarring, considering the great technical lengths De Palma goes to earlier in the film (including not one, but two intricate split screen sequences), and nearly derails the picture. It kicks the Freudian overtones into overdrive and drastically switches gears from an exercise in intertextuality into an overcomplicated bundle of psycho-mumbo-jumbo before returning to a by-the-numbers murder mystery.

Which is not to say that critics with a psychoanalytical bent won't have a field day with Sisters (as they do with virtually all of De Palma's films): the almost literal "castration" of both male leads (and a more figurative form for Larch and Arthur McLennen [Barnard Hughes**], the reporter who broke the twin story) is consistent throughout the film. Dominique seems to be triggered by arousal and her weapons are always phallic (a kitchen knife, a scalpel), and Collier's general disdain for men (and her overburdening mother) eventually point her towards a safe, if unsatisfying, end.

Sisters is a bit sloppy around the edges, lacking in much of the precision evident in later Brian De Palma films, but it has a scrappy quality to it that keeps the film watchable when it teeters on incomprehensibility. It doesn't hurt that Kidder is very good as Danielle and Dominique, and Salt carries most of the film as the truth obsessed Collier. Wilson, Finley, and Durning are also believable in mostly thankless roles, and when De Palma is on, the film crackles with suspense. It's easy to see in Sisters the traces of his later, superior films, as well as his interest in incorporating Hitchcockian themes and images early on. As a horror film - which I suppose is technically why it's included this month - you could do worse, although Sisters is probably going to appeal to cinephiles more than casual viewers.

*edit* In my haste to put this up, I forgot about the Cranpire's favorite character, who will be referred to only as "The Midnight Gardener," who so inexplicably a plot device that I must assume he's a direct reference to another film. Kudos to you if you identify it in the comments!

* The debate rages on whether these are homages or rip-offs, and I don't really want to get into it here. For plenty of starting points, I refer you to Google.
** If the name doesn't ring a bell, Hughes' voice should automatically ring a bell, particularly if you remember Dumont in Tron or Grandpa in The Lost Boys.

Blogorium Review: House of 1000 Corpses (revisited)

After becoming the victim of a "trappening*" by Professor Murder and the Cranpire, I find myself in the unique (unfortunate?) position of being able to re-review Rob Zombie's feature debut, House of 1000 Corpses, and it since falls somewhere within the category of "horror," it seems appropriate to include the film in our Shocktober celebration.

Briefly, a little history between the Cap'n and House of 1000 Corpses: I worked as a projectionist for a movie theatre way back when Universal studios was still planning on releasing Mr. Zombie's first film, and as a White Zombie fan, I was pretty excited. He promised "raw" and "unrelenting" horror with a guarantee of "1000 corpses**!," so when the teaser trailer came out, I did pull aside an extra copy for another fan. Then, as many of you might be aware, Universal dropped House of 1000 Corpses, touting that it was "too hardcore" or something to that effect in 2000.

Eventually (circa 2003), Lion's Gate picked up House of 1000 Corpses and released in theatres, and I saw it a few days before my 24th birthday. I hated it. The film was garish, obnoxious, tried too hard to be shocking and "hardcore," and was ultimately a lackluster mish-mash of bad acting, tedious over-editing, and cheap stunt casting. The memory that sticks with me was a passing joke by one of the people I saw it with about Dr. Satan needing to fight "Doctor Jesus," which sent another friend into fits of hysterical laughter.

Over the ensuing seven years, I've tried to watch House of 1000 Corpses again, gathering that I must have "missed" something, considering its loyal supporters and advocates. Considering that I really enjoyed The Devil's Rejects (which features the same characters), disliked Halloween, but liked Halloween II, I made concerted efforts to give House of 1000 Corpses another go-round. Without fail, I make it as far as Baby (Sheri Moon-Zombie)'s lip-synch routine before I'm so bored that I hit the "Stop" button. That is, until Sunday night.

So... how is the rest of House of 1000 Corpses? Pretty much exactly the way I remember it: actors who can do better (and clearly did, considering The Devil's Rejects) shouting, mugging, and generally making asses of themselves for 89 minutes. In between, there are long, pointless scenes, intercutting of wholly irrelevant footage from other films or characters unrelated to the story, and lots of acts which one is apparently supposed to find "wrong" or "taboo." Unfortunately, the film has all the subtlety of an anvil to the forehead, so tedium replaces sensory overload in short order.

I suppose I could talk about the cast, which features Rainn Wilson (The Office), Chris Hardwick (Attack of the Show), Erin Daniels (The L Word), Jennifer Jostyn (The Brothers McMullen), Walton Goggins (Predators), and a host of genre veterans: Karen Black, Bill Moseley, Tom Towles, Irwin Keyes, Harrison Young, and Sid Haig. The truth is, that there isn't a single character to take any interest in; not the kids, not the Firefly family (which includes Moseley, Black, Moon-Zombie, Matthew McGrory, Robert Mukes, and Dennis Fimple), or the victims-to-be that populate the rest of the cast.

I could mention the myriad of references to other films (or, in many cases, direct lifts from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House by the Cemetery, or Spider Baby), or even the fact that all of the members of the Firefly clan borrow their names from Marx Brothers characters was kinda-clever until Zombie made the reference explicit in The Devil's Rejects. I even thought about the crane shot that takes forever (and remains unintentionally hilarious, despite the fact that I can't quite suss out what it's a reference to), but instead I'll point out one telling detail that should give viewers unfamiliar with the film all the information they need.

At one point, Denise Willis (Erin Daniels) uses a phone booth to call her father (Harrison Young), and there are a few "missing" signs littering the inside of the booth. The missing children one isn't really an issue, but the "Missing Cat Head" really sent the Cap'n into fits of giggles. It's so stupid, so incongruous, and so indicative of the pervasive "oh man, that's messed up!" that I could no longer take the film remotely seriously. It reminded me of the one clever visual gag in the film (a box of Agatha Crispies cereal), and nothing else. Had the film been included on one of Zombie's video DVD compilations, this chicanery might be more forgivable, but House of 1000 Corpses was released theatrically and people were expected to pay to see this film alone.

If House of 1000 Corpses was intended only to undermine the sleazy, grindhouse-esque era of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Eaten Alive, I could maybe give the film a pass, but having listened to Zombie's commentary track, it's not. House of 1000 Corpses is meant to be sensory overloading shock, a film that'd Zombie would rather have Universal drop than sacrifice any of his "original vision." On those merits, I contend that the film fails miserably, and worse still, is simply too dull to recommend watching.

Watch The Devil's Rejects, which does actually manage to do what Corpses cannot, or watch Halloween and Halloween II. The first may be an interesting failure and the second a widely reviled sequel (by almost everyone but me), but at least you won't feel like your time was wasted.



* "Trappening," a term coined by Professor Murder, is when someone tricks you into coming over, only to discover they've put on a horrible movie that you have to watch. They considered this totally fair because I've put them (and most of you) through many a "Trappening" before...
** This is debatable, since I still argue most of Dr. Satan's lair is skeletons, and that the hallway that Denise runs down is deliberately suggested to be larger than it is without actually showing said "corpses." Even if there are 1000 corpses, they certainly aren't in the Firefly house.

Blogorium Review: Machete

This summer, I worried about Predators. I anticipated Inception. I decided to "wait and see" about The Expendables. I mostly didn't think about The Other Guys. I hoped Piranha 3-D would back up Aja's boasts of "gore and nudity". I politely tried to ignore Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. But there was one movie that I gave no second thought to, no pause: Machete. After Robert Rodriguez slapped that faux-trailer at the beginning of Grindhouse, there was no question that if it ever came to fruition, Machete would be pure exploitation through and through.

And folks, Rodriguez and co-director Ethan Maniquis deliver all the gore, guts, gratudity, and irreverence that the trailer promises, and then some. If you're not interested in seeing a movie where Danny Trejo uses a guy's intestines to swing from one floor of a hospital to another, then Machete isn't going to be your cup of tea. That's really the tip of the iceberg, too: expect numerous decapitations, Cheech Marin being crucified, Michelle Rodriguez losing an eye, threesomes, telephones hidden in vaginas, seppuku, defenstrations, electrocutions, and Lindsay Lohan.

Despite anything you were expecting, Machete does actually have a plot. In fact, it has several: Federale Machete (Danny Trejo) is trying to take down Mexican Drug Lord Torrez (Steven Seagal, doing the worst Mexican accent imaginable, until he drops it mid-movie), when he's betrayed by his chief. Torrez kills Machete's family and leaves him for dead. Three years later, on the other side of the Texas / Mexico border, Immigration Agent Sartana (Jessica Alba) is keeping an eye on illegals that formed the Network, led by Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) out of her taco stand. Meanwhile, a vigilante border patrol led by Lt. Stillman (Don Johnson) is hunting down and shooting anyone who crosses illegally, with the approval of Senator James McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro), who is running for re-election.

Following me so far? Okay, so Machete resurfaces in Texas as a day-laborer and is hired by Booth (Jeff Fahey) to assassinate Senator McLaughlin, but it turns out to be a trick since Booth is McLaughlin's campaign manager (none of this is spoiling anything since all of this set-up is in the trailer). Machete turns to his brother, a Padre (Cheech Marin) for help, and also seduces Booth's wife June (Alicia Marek) and Meth-head daughter April (Lindsay Lohan). Booth sends his sniper (Shea Washington) and bounty hunter Osiris Ampanpour (Tom Savini) after Machete while trying to maintain a massive conspiracy to re-elect McLaughlin so he'll build a border fence that only Torrez can smuggle drugs through. Sartana and Luz try to keep Machete alive while he seeks vengeance against Booth, McLaughlin, and Torrez, who he doesn't realize are connected (at first).

Still with me? That gets us to the halfway point of Machete and doesn't properly cover the less than subtle immigration subtext in the film, how the Crazy Babysitter Twins from Planet Terror figure into the film, or Booth's henchmen, or the reporter from Exactamundo Television, or the day-laborer army that the Network brings together to help Machete (including Spy Kids and World's Greatest Dad alum Daryl Sabara) or any other subplots that may involve Lindsay Lohan shooting people while dressed as a nun.

That the plot doesn't necessarily resolve itself should surprise no one, but there's plenty of mayhem and insanity to keep you occupied. At the center of it is Danny Trejo, who makes even the most implausible moments seem possible with his squinty-eyed, "I don't give a shit" attitude and genuine bad-ass presence. Jeff Fahey is on the opposite side as a sleazy, perverted politico willing to do anything to make money with a morally dubious boss (an over-the-top Robert DeNiro). Cheech Marin has fun as the confession taping, pot smoking Padre that wields dual shotguns, and somehow avoids his Nash Bridges co-star Don Johnson for the entire film.

Johnson and Savini are pure moustache twirling villains that chew up every scene they're in. Michelle Rodriguez acquaints herself to the film better than Jessica Alba does, but only because Alba seems so silly trying to rally Machete's army or fighting a Luchadore Hitman. And then there's Steven Seagal, who plays, well, Steven Seagal as a Mexican Druglord. I'm not kidding when I say he gives up on his terrible Mexican accent about halfway through the film, and I love his death scene, which may be the most ridiculous thing in an already over-the-top movie. Oh, and I guess there's Lindsay Lohan, who spends most of the movie naked but strategically placed in such a way that she's not really naked, unlike Alicia Marek, who spends most of the movie entirely naked. Just like Myra Leal, who is credited as Chica (Naked Girl) on IMDB.

I'm reasonably certain that most of the trailer was actually integrated into Machete, save for a handful of changes in the story between 2007 and 2010. As it is, Machete is a wildly offensive movie to just about all types, but what did you really expect from the trailer? Remember, this is the same Machete where the line "they just fucked with the wrong Mexican" is only slightly changed to incorporate the voiceover into actual dialogue. Machete is pure exploitation, and if it's not as knowingly goofy as Planet Terror, it's because of the earnest (if ridiculously delivered) anti-anti-immigration message. Plus, the film ends promising not one, but two sequels: Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again.

So needless to say that seeing Machete won't necessarily enrich your life or increase your standing among film snobs; I doubt that's going to linger in the minds of groups that go to see this wanton display of violence, nudity, gore, and hammy acting. Even if you try to give this a serious walk-through of intertextuality or critical analysis, you do so trying not to admit that you enjoyed a movie that promised nothing more than exploitation and delivered accordingly.

Releases, Announcements, and Things of That Nature

I usually put up reviews on Monday of movies the Cap'n and Doctor (nee Professor) Murder saw, but since Saturday saw a review for The Expendables (and the subsequent addressing of specific criticisms directed at the film), today's entry will focus on upcoming releases of interest to all.

For example, tomorrow brings a Blu Ray release for Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (review here), which means that for the first time since it played in theatres, it'll be possible to watch Hamlet from beginning to end without switching tapes / discs/ etc*.

Tomorrow also brings the release of season four of Dexter, something I've been trying to follow all year to no avail (streaming faltered consistently during episode three, so I'm two and a quarter episodes in). Seeing as the BIG TIME SUPER SPOILER has already been spoiled for the Cap'n (coupled with ads for No Ordinary Family that functionally sealed the deal), what remains is to figure out HOW that happened. Oh, and to see more of super creepy John Lithgow...

Moving a bit further out, Criterion announced their November releases, and it's some very exciting news:

While I'm done eating crow, Antichrist is finally on the list of Blu Rays coming out, along with The Night of the Hunter, Chaplin's Modern Times (a sign that Criterion may be slowly replacing the Warner / Mk2 releases), and a boxed set that has my attention piqued, to say the least - America Lost and Found: The BBS Story. If you've read or seen Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, you already know who Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner are, but to folks not steeped in the move from studio controlled films to the independent spirit of the late sixties and early seventies, BBS are responsible for some of the best known "new wave" American films not coming out of AIP**.

The boxed set has seven movies, a few of which I'm familiar with and the others I've heard of. That all of them are under the Spine Number banner makes the Cap'n very happy. They are:

Head - The Monkees' psychedelic answer to A Hard Day's Night and Help!
Easy Rider
Five Easy Pieces
Drive, He Said - Jack Nicholson's directorial debut.
A Safe Place - Orson Welles, Tuesday Weld, and Jack Nicholson, directed by Henry Jaglom.
The Last Picture Show
The King of Marvin Gardens - Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, and Ellen Burstyn.

It's hard to topple a list like Antichrist, The Night of the Hunter, and Modern Times (coupled with The Thin Red Line, Paths of Glory, The Magician, Hausu, and a Blu Ray The Darjeeling Limited) but Criterion really outdid themselves with this boxed set. It's a collection of movies that existed in various forms on DVD (and Easy Rider on Blu Ray) but puts them together in a way that serves as a historical document of the "independent" movement one reads so much about. Count the Cap'n in.

Additionally, there are regular Blu Ray releases coming for Back to the Future, Apocalypse Now, The Evil Dead, The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, that massive Alien Anthology box, King Kong, the first season of The Twilight Zone, Time Bandits, Mars Attacks, Forbidden Planet, Mona Lisa, The Last of the Mohicans, The Exorcist, Psycho, Grindhouse (as one movie!), Seven, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Oh, and that announcement about next year's big Blu Ray release. I'll save that for Wednesday, when I answer the question "could he possibly do two Video Daily Double posts about the same thing???"

Stay tuned.


* technically speaking, since there was an intermission during the theatrical release where one can assume the projectionist had to switch platters (a 4 hour movie would be a massive amount of film to put on one platter), it will be the first time you can watch it beginning to end with no interruption whatsoever.
** American International Pictures is probably best associated with Samuel Arkoff, James Nicholson, and Roger Corman, and launched more careers than you can imagine. Check out a brief description via Wikipedia.

From the Vaults: Blogorium Review - Grindhouse

(editor's note: the power situation is far from resolved. That being said, I've been slowly working on a proper review of A Serious Man, though I really feel like I should watch the movie again first. The short version is that I loved the movie. I can't help but feel like another go-round would be helpful, as I get the impression that I'm missing something. Like the first time I saw Barton Fink, but more ephemeral. Anyway, enjoy the review of Grindhouse, from shortly after its release)

It occurred to me that while in Cary, the absolute perfect conditions existed to do something I hadn't done in a long time, which was see a movie with Adam and Cranford, in this case the almost** perfect pairing of theatre to movie; Mission Valley and Grindhouse.

That's right, I watched it, and by golly, I liked it. A whole lot. Cranford and I liked Planet Terror more than Death Proof, and Adam really dug Death Proof. We all liked the trailers equally, and agreed we'd go see any of them that became movies.

The easiest way to digest the experience is just to break it down, because it's more than just two 80 minute movies with trailers, it really is quite a package deal to be involved in.

After stock cards for Coming Attractions and "thanks for coming" spots you might recognize from Kill Bill, we get the first trailer, which is

MACHETE

"He gets the women. He kills the bad guys" "If you hire him to kill the bad guys, make sure the bad guys aren't you" "they fucked with the wrong mexican" Machete plays like the Mark Wahlberg movie Shooter that we'd actually want to see. Danny Trejo kills people in four or five different and brutal ways, and then Cheech Marin is a priest who walks around with two shotguns avenging his brother.

Then we get a title screen that involve kittens and the old R rating screen, one that I admittedly had never seen, and then it's time for

PLANET TERROR

I forgive Robert Rodriguez for Sin City. Really, I do. If you're one of those people who really, REALLY liked The Faculty and From Dusk Til Dawn, or you have a real love jones for the Globus / Cannon era of 80's Sci-Fi / Action / Horror movies that ripped the shit off of John Carpenter and George Romero, then hands down this will be your favorite of the films. Not only does Rodriguez play by those movie rules, he also makes fun of them in ways that don't stand out like a sore thumb.

And look at that cast! Michael Biehn (The Terminator), Jeff Fahey (Body Parts), Tom Savini (please, like I need to tell you who that is), Josh Brolin (The Goonies), Naveed Andrews (Sayid on Lost), Bruce Willis, Nicky Katt (Insomnia), Marley Shelton (Sin City), Michael Parks (From Dusk Til Dawn), Freddy Rodriguez (Six Feet Under), Stacy Ferguson (Yes, Fergie), and Rose McGowan (Scream...?)

I saved McGowan and Ferguson for last because it'd make sense for them to be weak links, but damned if Rose McGowan doesn't really steal this movie right out from everyone else. BEFORE the Machine Gun Leg even. I was beginning to feel like the machine gun looked a little dumb in the ads but much like Shaun of the Dead, context really is everything.Fergie doesn't actually have much to do, but she's actually not sucky in the first great Zombie kill scene in the movie. (Or mutants... it's really up for grabs)

Naveen Andrews... man, if you liked him on Lost, he's really something in what amounts to a cameo. He has a particular fascination with a part of the male anatomy that makes his first scene quite memorable.

I could really rave about Planet Terror, but I'll just leave it at this: Jeff Fahey and Michael Biehn play brothers. One is the Sherriff; the other owns a Bar-B-Que place. And the "missing reel" is f'n funny. And a Nouvelle Vague singing "Too Drunk to Fuck" in a scene not to be missed.

At the point that ended I really had to pee, but there was NO way I was missing my shot at seeing the Thanksgiving trailer again. But first was the ad for:

WEREWOLF WOMEN OF THE SS

Easily the most retarded of the four trailers, Rob Zombie stuck every Ilsa, She Devil of the SS movie into one trailer, added Sybill Danning, Tom Towles, Sherri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Udo Kier, and the BIG surprise, Nicholas Cage. Yes, the same Nic Cage I rip into so readily caught me totally off guard when the announced said "AND NICHOLAS CAGE AS..... FU MANCHU!" and Cage does the most ridiculous Fu Manchu impression ever with the fakest looking moustache you're gonna see this year. The trailer is just quick cuts of every nazi exploitation standby ever, and then repeated shots of some werewolf with a machine gun and two naked she-wolves behind him for no good reason.

After that we got a nice ad for some Barbeque place in Texas called Acuna Brothers with random shots of various foods, and then a trailer to help you vomit said food back up:

DON'T

I'm not even sure I can explain the Don't trailer, because it's really dependent on the Voice Over Guy and how he says things like

"If....You're.....Thinking....of....going....in....that.....house..........DON'T"

and something really strange or disgusting happens. Edgar Wright really fashioned an ad for one of those British movies from the seventies came in the wake of Hammer studios collapsing. Really funny in a disturbing way.

(If it helps, you should think of the trailer as a combination of The Legend of Hell House and The Burning.)

and then, there was

THANKSGIVING

Seeing this online was cool, but seeing the Cheerleader / Trampoline thing with an audience is that much better, as were almost all of the fucked up things Eli Roth does in his two minute slasher money shot homage. I would pay to see Thanksgiving right now if he made it. The same goes for Don't and Machete. I might not pay full price for Werewolf Women of the SS, but I'd see it.

I should mention that in addition to being scratchy, losing audio, and film distortions, in between every "reel" of trailers or movies is a few seconds of white space, as though the projectionist didn't cut it properly and left part of the "tail" on, runing the "illusion". As a former projectionist, I got a kick out of that.

Finally, even though I missed part of the credits, there was

DEATH PROOF

Here's what I don't exactly like about Death Proof: There are VERY long stretches in the beginning and middle of the movie that exist only because Tarantino*** wanted to write Tarantino-esque dialogue for women, and had he only done it the first time, I'd be okay with that, because what happens between those yap fests makes up for it.

What I do like about Death Proof: The driving sequences are the SHIT. When Tarantino drops repeated references to Vanishing Point (going so far as to put the car from Vanishing Point in the movie), he'd damn well better deliver on the car portions, and yes, does he ever. This easily could have been Tarantino slobbering over his standby obsessions again, but instead he simply uses the things he loves about Hot Rod movies and slasher films to make a high octane car chase that rivals The French Connection or Ronin. Really.

Kurt Russell really brings his A-Game to Stuntman Mike, a character that's alternately psychopathic and really, really pathetic, and all of the girls in the second half bring it (including Uma Thurman's stunt woman from Kill Bill, Zoe Bell, who plays herself and does some ridiculous car stunts). The ending will probably remind people a little bit of Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill, as that is the spirit it closest resembles, but there's just that gap between the first time Stuntman Mike looks at the camera and winks and the next time he does that really doesn't need to be.

So anyway, Grindhouse is a SEE IT IN THEATERS, because this is meant to be watched with your rowdiest friends in a raucous crowd in the dive-iest theater you can get to late at night. And don't feel bad if you get up and walk around, because almost everyone else in the theater did at one point or the other, including all three of us. Oh, and we didn't need to say shit, if that tells you anything. The experience is half the fun of the show, so check it out.


** The perfect pairing would've been Grindhouse at The Studio, but since that can't happen anymore, Mission Valley is a close second.
*** I should mention that QT has roles in Death Proof and Planet Terror, but you're not gonna care about the Death Proof one once you've seen what happens to him in the first movie.