Shocktober Review: Spring

 When the reviews included phrases like "Linklater's Before Sunrise by way of H.P. Lovecraft," Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's Spring had my attention. It's the sort of combination that doesn't seem like it should work, and for all intents and purposes really shouldn't, but Spring finds a happy medium between those two disparate elements, along with strong undercurrents of early Cronenberg-ian "body horror". It doesn't always gel, and things get just a bit dicey towards the end, when some debatable moments of black comedy enter the narrative, but overall I was quite impressed with the end result.

 Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) just lost his mother, and after the funeral he's drinking with a friend when some guy and his girlfriend decide they want to start something. Evan snaps and gets into a fight, the kind that brings both the guy and the police to his doorstep in the next few hours. Taking a friend up on an offer to leave the country for cheap, Evan takes his passport, a backpack, and heads to Europe while things cool down. He doesn't speak any other languages, only has the money from his inheritance to his name, and knows nobody, but a chance encounter with two British tourists in a hostel takes him to a small coastal town in Italy. Within hours of being there, he's propositioned by Louise (Nadia Hilker), a beautiful student / local, but Evan is a bit more traditional. Instead of hooking up with her, he tells her they can meet somewhere later, but Louise ignores him and leaves. It's a very small town, so their paths cross again, and they strike up conversation. Before long, he's smitten by the worldly young woman, but she has a secret, one that may or may not be linked to mysterious animal - and eventually, tourist - disappearances...

 In a number of ways, Spring is similar in structure to Linklater's Before films: there is quite a bit of walking and talking about life, love, and your place in the world, and there's an obvious parallel about young love (kind of). What I found interesting was that while it's reminiscent of Before Sunrise, both Evan and Louise as characters are more similar to where Jesse and Celine are in Before Sunset. From the outset, we're dealing with damaged characters, who are nursing their own, deeply private, wounds from life, and are accordingly hesitant to share them with each other. It's not until late into the film that Evan actually tells Louise why he's in Italy - she assumes he's just some visitor looking to leave when the holiday season ends - and that's after we have a better idea what's affecting her. I'm being deliberately vague about Louise's condition (and her history) in part because part of what elevates Spring is that you don't know what's going on for much of the film. Besides, I think evoking Lovecraft and Cronenberg should give you some idea what could be happening.

 Spring deviates sharply from the Before trilogy by stretching Evan's courtship of Louise over several weeks, and while it focuses mostly on the two characters, that does mean he has to find somewhere to stay. I'm a bit torn about how helpful Angelo (Francesco Carnelutti) is to the overall narrative of Spring - the elderly widower who takes Evan on as a worker on his farm does help the younger protagonist grow and develop, and it provides a necessary bump late in the film to get him on the road with Louise, but at times Angelo's presence can feel like a distraction from the main storyline. The decision to include this third character helps expand the world of the film, but does take away the laser-like focus Linklater used to such great effect in Before Sunrise. If you're willing to stick it out with Spring, you'll understand why Hilker portrays Louise as distant and brooding as she becomes after she and Evan have sex, but it's an abrupt shift midway through the film. I will say that her demeanor is softened a bit by the mystery of how horror elements figure into the film.

 Then again, if you accept in earnest that two deeply damaged characters are coming together, albeit with great hesitation, the back and forth of their relationship is understandable. Evan is a bit too earnest in his repeated attempts to get Louise to open up, but she has very good reasons. Once it becomes clear why (again, no direct SPOILERS), Spring takes a turn, which leads to an ending some feel was underwhelming, although I found it quite appropriate considering the intimate nature of the story Benson and Moorhead are telling. What I found odd was a sudden insertion of black comedy into the proceedings, particularly when Evan and Louise stop in a church for her to take the last of her "medicine". I will admit that I laughed, but in retrospect, the reaction of objective characters observing Evan and Louise felt a bit out of place. It's a good joke, but I don't know if it's one that needed to be in Spring.

 At any rate, Spring comes highly recommended, minor quibbles aside. The body horror element can be quite horrifying indeed, and the sustained mystery of what Louise is (or is becoming) has an intriguing reveal. The subsequent conversations between our two protagonists poses some interesting questions about the nature of being, love, mortality, and identity, most of which play out in intriguing ways. Pucci and (particularly) Hilker are riveting, and the Italian coastline provides some fantastic eye candy. The effects are used sparingly early in the film, but their increased presence - particularly when Evan arrives during a very bad night at Louise's apartment - never disrupts the naturalistic aesthetic of Spring. If you like your horror with a little romance, or vice versa, there's plenty to take away from the film, and for once the combination of "blank meets blank" is accurate without Spring ever feeling derivative. Quite a feat for Benson and Moorhead, who I hadn't realized directed one of the segments in V/H/S Viral. Unfortunately, it's only one I half-liked (the skaters who go to Mexico on the Day of the Dead), but Spring more than makes up for that.

Shocktober Revisited: Mini-Reviews!

 Sometimes, horror movies get rolled up in other quick reviews, and accordingly can be missed. The following quick takes are from various points over the years, so the quality of the review(s) can vary wildly:

Die, Monster, Die! - Based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space in the same way that The Haunted Palace is based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (loosely), this AIP production has some effective imagery, but finds a way to drag on long enough to make 78 minutes feel like two hours. It's not lacking in atmosphere, and Boris Karloff certainly gives as much as he possibly can (which is saying something, as the actor was in poor enough health that he spends most of the film confined to a wheelchair), but I had trouble remembering much about the film hours after finishing it.

 Lovecraft's town of Arkham, Massachusetts, is relocated to England so that American student Stephen Rinehart (Nick Adams) can travel to the Whitley manor on the outskirts of town. Nobody in Arkham wants to talk to him about the Whitleys, nor will they provide him with any means of transportation, so Rinehart has to walk. It gives us the opportunity to see the desolate lands on the outskirts of the manor, and what looks like a huge crater, surrounded by dead trees that crumble to dust when touched. After dodging a bear trap at the gate, he enters the Whitley manor to find himself unwelcome by its patriarch, Nahum Whitley (Karloff), despite having been invited by Nahum's daughter, Susan (Suzan Farmer).

 Something is obviously very wrong at the Whitley house, and Nahum's wife Letitia begs Stephen to take Susan away (they were students at an unnamed university in the U.S.), against Nahum's objections. Letitia is bedridden and refuses to let anyone see her, and Nahum is opposed to taking her to a doctor in town. Their maid went insane and lurks around the grounds under a black veil, and their butler Merwyn (Terence de Marney) is barely capable of lifting silverware without collapsing. A strange glow is coming from the (locked) greenhouse, and it's rumored that Nahum's father, Corbin Whitley, practiced black magic (because, you know, it kind of makes it sound like it's connected to The Haunted Palace, maybe?), which seems to be confirmed from the artwork scrawled in the cellar of the mansion.

 Unfortunately, for all of the mystery surrounding the Whitleys and what writer Jerry Sohl cobbled together from The Colour Out of Space and more topical concerns (circa 1965) about radiation, Die, Monster, Die! is mostly a movie about wandering around a spooky house with candles until something jumps out. Audiences who bemoan "jump" scares in modern horror films will roll their eyes at no less than three such moments in Die, Monster, Die!, all of which have the bad form to continue well after it's clear they aren't scary. There are some nice images - the matte painting of the meteor crash looks very good, and the "zoo" of deformed creatures / aliens (it's never very clear) in the greenhouse "shed" make an impression, but the pacing of the film drags on endlessly.

 Lovecraft fans will, in all likelihood, not enjoy the explanation given to why the meteorite causes strange and horrible things to happen to the vegetation (SPOILER - it's Uranium) or the way that Die, Monster, Die! devolves into a "we have to fight the monster before we escape," wherein Boris Karloff is replaced by a stuntman wearing a glowing prototype of the "Green Man" outfit under his suit. I honestly can't remember if they even explain what happens to the maid after she tries to attack Stephen and falls down, but it's not the kind of plot point I'm even worried about following up on. While I've seen worse adaptations of Lovecraft stories, I'd be hard pressed to say I've seen one that's more of a slog to get through than this one.

Terminal Invasion - Cranpire's love of this film used to vex me. Admittedly, I'd only seen it in pieces on the Sci-Fi Channel and it looked like their run of the mill crap, just with Bruce Campbell. Now that I've watched the whole thing, I can understand why he enjoys it so much. Kind of.

I'll give credit where credit's due: director Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th) is a more competent director than most of the "Sci-Fi Original" stable of no-names. Terminal Invasion is a cross between Pitch Black and John Carpenter's The Thing, with a small dose of Assault on Precinct 13 thrown in for good measure, and Cunningham rises to the occasion. For what's essentially a ripoff of other sci-fi / horror movies, it's pretty good. There's certainly no fat on this movie, so every scene exists to set up something later.

The story takes place on a snowy night while a small band of travelers are trapped in a charter plane lobby. Campbell is a criminal being transferred who ends up in their midst, along with some nasty alien invaders disguised as humans. You can figure out where it goes from there if you've seen any of the movies above.

What I appreciated about Terminal Invasion is the way it sets up twists in the story based on things you assume to be true at the beginning. While I was pretty sure I knew who was an alien and who wasn't (and was mostly right), there's at least one genuine surprise halfway into the movie. Cunningham uses the limited geography of the terminal to telegraph plot points later, which I find to be rare of Sci-Fi Originals.

That being said, this is still a made for TV movie, and it shows. Most sets are over-lit so that shooting can commence from any angle, so even the dark scenes are pretty bright. The cgi, while used sparingly, is still five or six steps below the early Nasonex commercials. At least twice during Terminal Invasion, the movie "Fades to Commercial", and it looks silly without actual commercials.

However, most of these are acceptable if considered in the context of how Terminal Invasion came to be. The unfortunate cost cutting exercise comes during "attack" scenes involving the aliens. The camera is normally pretty stable, but when the aliens attack there's a postproduction "herky-jerky" effect that just looks dirt cheap.

Still, with expectations set properly, Terminal Invasion is pretty good for what it is, and I'd probably watch it again. Bruce is pretty good despite having to play the "stoic" type for most of the movie. Not many wisecracks to be seen here, but there is some decent gore and Terminal Invasion would be good times with a six pack and your buddies.

Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie - Tim Burton continues along his path of "things you recognize, re-imagined by a director you really used to like" by adapting the long running gothic soap opera Dark Shadows and his own short film, Frankenweenie, but this time it's stop-motion animated and three times as long.

Are you ready for the shocker? I actually liked Dark Shadows more than Frankenweenie. Nobody else did, but Dark Shadows isn't nearly as horrible as I expected it to be, and instead of nonstop jokes about the 1970s, it's a surprisingly atmospheric and violent meditation on family ties. That said, it has too many characters, superfluous cameos that really don't move the plot forward (Alice Cooper, I'm looking at you), and while it's better than I was prepared for, that doesn't mean it's even close to the best Tim Burton is capable of. I suppose after being disappointed by Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse Bride, the idea of a marginally entertaining Tim Burton film was refreshing. That said, everybody else seems to hate it, so be warned.

 Frankenweenie could be better if Burton could figure out how to stretch a 30 minute short film into a full narrative, but he didn't. Basically the structure of the original Frankenweenie has been elongated and stitched together with a clever pastiche of Joe Dante-esque "monsters run amok" - including the best (and possibly only) Bambi Meets Godzilla reference I can remember. Unfortunately, the first forty five minutes drag so much that it's more of a relief than a delight when the reanimated pets wreak havoc all over New Holland. I will say it was nice to (hear) Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, and Winona Ryder return to the Burton-verse, but ultimately Frankenweenie overstays its welcome before it has the chance to be any fun.

 Zombeavers - I didn't go into Zombeavers expecting it to be any good. This sounds counter-intuitive with what I said earlier in the recaps about trying to avoid bad movies, but I didn't watch Sharknado and this seemed like it might be an acceptable substitute. I mean, it couldn't possibly get better than the poster, or the inherently stupid premise, right? It would quickly get lazy and then I would get bored, like I normally do with Syfy Originals or movies that look like that (*coughTheAsylumreleasescough*).

 So imagine my surprise to discover that Zombeavers is a (slightly) higher budgeted version of a movie like Blood Car or Rise of the Animals. True, this is not a scrappy, home made production - how could it be with a "From the Producers of American Pie, Cabin Fever, and The Ring" on the poster? - but it has the same anarchic spirit of those movies. At times, it's actually as bad as those can be, but what helps Zombeavers (a lot, actually) is that every time you think it's not worth sticking through, something you wouldn't expect either happens or comes out of someone's mouth. Either the film takes a truly unexpected turn - which it does - or one of the characters has a line that evokes a "wait, what?" and you don't mind sticking around.

 I felt like I was in pretty good hands during the prologue, which features Bill Burr and an unrecognizable John Mayer (yep, "Your Body is a Wonderland"'s John Mayer) as drivers hauling around chemical waste and shooting the shit, often in increasingly strange ways. They eventually hit a deer, which leads to a barrel of said chemicals rolling down into a stream and to (dun dun DUUUUNNN) a beaver dam. Because, yes, this is a movie about zombie beavers. Or Zombeavers, if you will. Also, there are three college students: Mary (Rachel Melvin), Zoe (Courtney Palm), and Jenn (Lexi Atkins), who are having a "girls' weekend" in order to forget about Mary's boyfriend Sam (Hutch Dano) cheating on her. But he shows up anyway, with Tommy (Jake Weary) and Buck (Peter Gilroy) in tow, so it becomes a slightly uncomfortable couples weekend. With Zombeavers.

 You might struggle through the "set up" part of the film, and I nearly turned it off while the girls were on the way to the cabin, but some of the lines are so out of left field that I stuck with it. The tone is borderline surreal, from the "is this serious" hunter (Rex Linn) that they run into, to the neighbors near the cabin (Brent Briscoe and Phyllis Katz), who turn out to be way more savvy about kids than you'd expect. And there's a bear, but mostly, it's the Zombeavers. Which look like nothing more than marginally articulated puppets and are hilarious. You see, sometimes a cheap looking monster can elevate a B-Movie from "that was okay" to "that was amazing," and the titular zombified beavers are worth the price of admission. It doesn't hurt that Zombeavers gets even weirder when the "rules of infection" kick in, but the monsters are the stars of the show. Stick around after the credits - which include a song about the movie that puts Richard Cheese to shame - for an even better zombie related pun. If it sets up a sequel, I could be onboard with that, but if not, well played, Jordan Rubin...

 John Dies at the End -This is a faithful adaptation of David Wong's novel by Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep), at least for the first half. The film gets to about the halfway point in the book, and then realizes it has thirty minutes to wrap up the rest of the story, so liberties are taken. Honestly, I didn't mind them, because I knew what was being condensed and most of the spirit is kept intact.

 That said, I totally understand why people who haven't read John Dies at the End don't like the movie. There's a sense of context that's missing from the film as it hurtles towards its conclusion that further confuses the comedy / horror tone and probably loses a lot of people. If you haven't read the book, I wouldn't watch the movie at all. You're going to hate it because of how it collapses in the last thirty minutes. If you have read the book, know Coscarelli mostly made sensible changes (not going to Vegas, diminishing Amy's role in the overall story, dropping certain elements of Korrok's plan), and made at least one I don't really understand (changing Molly's name), and two I don't know how I feel about (no Fred Durst and John's band doesn't sound nearly as bad as I thought it would). I dig John Dies at the End, and if it ever happens, I'd watch This Book (Movie?) is Filled with Spiders, although with what they had to do on a low budget here, I can't imagine that ever happening. That's a shame.

 World War Z - One could suppose that if Warm Bodies was a zombie movie for teenage girls, then World War Z is a zombie movie for people who vaguely know the word "zombie" in popular culture. It's not even really a horror movie - more of an action / disaster hybrid with a redesigned third act that inches towards suspense but still ends up like a tamer 28 Days Later. And I watched the "unrated" version, for the record. I can only imagine how toothless World War Z must have been in theaters. Still, it has a scrappy, amiable charm for a big budgeted blockbuster studio "tent pole" movie.

 Based almost not at all on the book of the same name by Max Brooks, World War Z is the story of Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), a retired UN investigator living with his family, until the zombie outbreak begins, that is. Then the Deputy Secretary General Thierry Umutoni (Fana Mokoena) brings him back in to travel around the world and see what caused the outbreak, from South Korea to Israel and eventually to a World Health Organization research center in Ireland. Separated from his family, and with continually dwindling support, Gerry finds that the zombie outbreak is capable of overcoming even the most fortified of cities, and unless they can find a cure, humanity is doomed.


 World War Z is essentially a travelogue designed to show off various big action set pieces, which director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace) does fairly well, and which Brad Pitt responds to with a reasonable sense of urgency. The zombies are sometimes people in makeup but are usually great swaths of CGI mayhem, particularly during the siege of Jerusalem. The movie makes an abrupt turn in the section in Ireland, due in large part because the delay in World War Z's release had everything to do with the third act not working, so they scrapped the original ending in Russia and went with a more sparse, claustrophobic ending. It works, although you can see loose threads of plot line in the film as a result - the main example is Matthew Fox's UN soldier who doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose other than to help move Gerry's family around, but who in the original version "takes" his wife and daughter as his own. Now it just seems like an oddly high profile casting choice for a minor role at best. Doctor Who fans already know the prescient casting of Peter Capaldi as the WHO Doctor (that IS how he appears in the credits).

 There's not really much else to say about the movie. I thought it was watchable, if mostly average. The story behind the movie is more interesting than the finished product. The survival bits near the beginning and towards the end are good, but have been done better before. All of the big action sequences are bombastic and if you like explosions and zombies and some degree of violence, the unrated cut is certainly worth your time. It's popcorn fare through and through, which is fine and dandy every now and then, but I can't imagine that I'd be all that enthused for World War Z 2.

The ABCs of Death 2 - is like V/H/S 2 in that it takes everything that worked about the first film, jettisoned most of what didn't, and was more fun to watch. The premise is still the same: twenty six directors each receive a letter from the alphabet, and have free reign to come up with a 2-3 minute short film that conveys a word and, in some form or fashion, death. The ABCs of Death had some interesting entries ("Unearthed" was a good one), but leaned heavily on scatological humor ("F is for Fart" was the tip of the iceberg, it turned out), and then there were the "oh, I didn't need to see that, not ever" letters. Like "Libido" and "Pressure." It turns out there are things you might want to un-see, and several of them are in The ABCs of Death.

The ABCs of Death 2, by comparison, has nothing as traumatic, and I would suspect it would play a lot better with an audience than the first one did. Watching that one at Nevermore, there was a lot of... shall I say, stunned silence as the film went on. There are certainly some "what the hell was that?" parts in the sequel, but nothing you're going to apologize for exposing someone to. The only thing that comes close is the last segment, "Z is for Zygote," which is centered around an already unforgettable image that closes on an even more disturbing note. I know that people don't like "P is for P-P-P-P-Scary!" but I thought it had an unhinged quality, somewhere between the weirder Betty Boop cartoons and Black Lodge-era David Lynch, that worked for me.

 As with the first film, you'll find highlights ("A is for Amateur") and lowlights ("V is for Vacation"), but there's nothing in The ABCs of Death that comes close to 2's "M is for Masticate," a slow motion gross out with a wicked joke at the end. There's also "D is for Deloused," which reminded me a bit of a Brothers Quay short. I'll leave most of the discovery for you, but if you kind of liked the first film, I strongly suspect you'll enjoy this one more.

 Horns - I feel like there's a better movie somewhere in Alexandre Aja's Horns. Maybe it got lost in the editing, or maybe it's just inherent in the adaptation of Joe Hill's novel, but the finished product just don't quite work. It's as though Aja made a bitterly funny, black comedy, and also made a more generic, teen-friendly story of good and evil, and then smashed them together at the worst possible junctures. For the opening twenty minutes of Horns, you're probably going to think the movie is great: it has a wicked mean streak, Daniel Radcliffe is spot on as a guy everyone thinks is a murderer, that embraces the horns he grows and the power that comes with it. The way people react, first telling him their darkest fantasies and then acting on them when he says they should, is often hilarious.


 And then we hit the first of what turn out to be several, lengthy, flashbacks, giving us the backstory of Ig (Radcliffe) and Merrin (Juno Temple), leading up to her death - the one everyone assumes Ig is responsible for. Everyone, including his family - played by James Remar, Kathleen Quinlan, and Joe Anderson - is positive he did it and that he's lying, with the exception of his friend, Lee (Max Minghella). The "whodunit" is pretty easy to work out for yourself, even if Aja, Hill, and screenwriter Keith Bunin throw in a number of red herrings. I bet, without telling you anything else, you can guess who the real killer is. That's not the problem, so much as the flashbacks that put the mystery together. There's a massive tonal shift from black comedy to slightly tragic story of temptation and of good and evil (on a biblical scale), and for some reason, ne'er the twain shall meet in Horns.

 I can understand how it might have worked in Hill's novel - which I haven't yet read, but plan to - but as a film, the structure of the story is at times jarring and disruptive. Maybe there was no way to properly balance the two in a film, because Horns alternates between wicked and bland, between clever and obvious, without ever finding a good middle ground. There are some fantastic moments sprinkled throughout the film, and the cast is game for anything, playing both the best and worst versions of themselves as they encounter "evil" Ig, but Horns gets away from them. It's never quite the movie that it could be, so I'm left feeling ambivalent with the end result.

 The Innkeepers - From Ti West, the director of The House of the Devil, comes another slow burn horror film where tension continues mounting and the sense of dread is palpable. Instead of replicating the horror of the early 1980s, West's "haunted hotel" follow-up is set squarely in the present, and he's just as adept at creeping you out with slow tracking shots, suggested noises, and believable characters you relate to. Sara Paxton's Claire is a young woman without much of a clue what she want to do or be, who becomes way too interested in Luke (Pat Healy)'s hobby: ghost hunting. She's fixated on finding the spirit of Madeline O'Malley, a bride who killed herself in the hotel in the 1890s.

 On the last weekend that the Yankee Padler hotel is open, Luke and Claire trade off shifts, watching over the last remaining hotel tenants - former actress / new age guru Leanne Rease-Jones (Kelly McGillis) and a mysterious Old Man (George Riddle) - while they hunt for evidence of O'Malley's presence. West doles out the scares slowly but surely, and only towards the very end do things go the way most horror films go. In fact, if there's any fault to be found in The Innkeepers, it's that what comes before and after the climax of the film are undermined ever so slightly by what we know HAS to happen, even if the subtle clues of why it happens don't always add up. Without spoiling too much, I can say that the film is an example of the kind of movie 1408 could have been, one that eschews cheap histrionics and trickery and deliberately ratchets up the "willies" factor.

 Fans of The House of the Devil are going to find a lot to love about The Inkeepers, but if you like your horror fast and relentless, this may seem a little slow for your tastes. For me? Let's just say I had to watch something else after I finished it, because I wasn't going to bed.

Shocktober Review: In the Mouth of Madness

 True story: the Cap'n has often mentioned, but never officially reviews John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. There's no good reason why I haven't; it was on my "Top Ten Horror Movies" list, I played it for college students during a pre-Horror Fest III event, and generally speaking I think of it fondly. Hell, when I picked up the Blu-Ray, I thought I'd throw it on just to check out the picture quality and ended up watching all the way until Sutter Cane first appears. The phrase "this is reality!" comes up frequently in conversation with friends (to be fair, we talk about Lovecraft quite a bit). For its twentieth anniversary, it only seems fair to actually talk about In the Mouth of Madness, my second favorite entry into Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy."

 Many years ago, back in the early days of the internet, I remember going to an H.P. Lovecraft fan site and looking at the "adaptations" section, only to find that the entry for In the Mouth of Madness goes out of its way to insist that Carpenter's film is in no way "inspired" by Lovecraft and was clearly more influenced by Stephen King. Because, uh, King is mentioned by name in the film? Because it sort of sounds like his name? I hadn't laughed that hard since a Cliff's Notes knock-off insisted that MacBeth's "parade of Kings" was in no way Shakespeare flattering the royalty because "he was above such things." So In the Mouth of Madness is not directly lifted from a Lovecraft story (true), but it shares locations, character names, and thematic elements that come from his stories. Let's not forget the direct passages from "The Rats in the Walls" and "The Haunter in the Dark" attributed to Cane. It's as clearly tied to the concept of "cosmic horror" as Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy is, and that doesn't get brushed away into the broom closet.

 Perhaps it's because In the Mouth of Madness is Carpenter at his most unabashedly pulpy (at least, until Vampires). This is the last of his great run that began with Halloween and came crashing down with Village of the Damned (the less said about Ghosts of Mars and The Ward, the better), but as I mentioned in the Horror Fest III recap, it's "quaintly 90s." It represents the last of an era of "contemporary" horror films that don't have any version of cell phones, the internet, or digital anything. I'm not actually sure how you would make In the Mouth of Madness today, as some intrepid Sutter Cane fan would have easily found (and posted) the map to Hobb's End online well in advance of the publication of his final novel.

 That's also why In the Mouth of Madness still works, because at first, we're not entirely sure what's happening to John Trent (Sam Neill). We know he's in an asylum (Arkham, if you were curious), and that he's been admitted under the care of (sic) Dr. Saperstein (John Glover) - hello, Rosemary's Baby reference - and that "things are really going to shit out there." When Dr. Wrenn (David Warner) comes to visit, we're introduced to the flashback of how insurance investigator Trent ended up unleashing the "Old Ones," with the help of literary agent Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) and, inadvertently, Arcane publisher Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston). But it's a slow burn - aside from the framing device, most of the first thirty minutes of In the Mouth of Madness are procedural. This is punctuated with moments of violence, or hallucinations and, in one case, and old Carpenter favorite - the "double dream" fake-out.

 Well before we're aware how much influence Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow) has over the story we're being told, a sense of unease permeates In the Mouth of Madness. It's arguably more effective than Prince of Darkness, which attempts to set the same kind of tone of foreboding menace. Carpenter and screenwriter / former New Line President Michael De Luca (who often doesn't get the credit when discussing this film) wisely frame the film through the perspective of the pragmatic John Trent. He's trained to spot a con, to find the angle in any story too good to be true, and the "disappearance" of Cane in anticipation of his novel In the Mouth of Madness is one he can't pass up. Not that, if you take the ending at face value, he ever had any choice, but his stubborn insistence on what is "real" juxtaposes nicely with the increasingly impossible world he finds himself in. Paired with Styles, Trent becomes the Dana Scully to her Fox Mulder, in some improbably warped version of The X-Files.

 Cane's novels have an "effect" on readers, one that slowly works on Trent as he does "research" - Carpenter sets up the overlapping dreams as being grounded in reality (an overzealous cop beating some kid in an alley) and slowly distorts it, introducing imagery we'll see later in the film. In the Mouth of Madness benefits greatly from multiple viewings, as Carpenter and De Luca set up much of where the story's going well before Trent and Styles leave to find "Hobb's End," the fictional town that Cane is believed to have disappeared to. There are a number of other, smaller, details, like Trent's asylum and hotel room number or the color of everyone's eyes being tied directly to something Cane says that you might not catch the first time through. In many ways I think that Carpenter improved on the weaknesses of Prince of Darkness and made In the Mouth of Madness a stronger film for it. This could, to be fair, also have something to do with my affinity for Lovecraft, whose influence hovers over every minute of the film.

 This brings us back to the distinction between Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft. In the Mouth of Madness presents us with a sort of hybrid of the two - a wildly popular horror writer whose fiction is tied together by a sense of impending doom. It's an unofficial version of Lovecraft's mythos, to be sure, but De Luca and Carpenter are treading into the territory of the "normal man who stumbles into a vast conspiracy of cosmic proportions and goes mad" almost from the end of the opening credits. This is not a story of good vs. evil (which, I would argue is a hallmark of King's novels, if not his short stories), but of inevitability, of humanity realizing its insignificance in the presence of the "Old Ones," for whom Cane is a conduit. (If you're SPOILER averse, I'd skip the next sentence) As tends to be the case for the poor sap who wanders headlong into the Mythos, Trent eventually succumbs to his own madness, embracing his fate and transforming in a final audio cue. His hysterical laughter while watching the film-within-a-film (that is the film we're watching) is all the more telling. He's just a pawn. Embrace the change.

In the end, Carpenter might have one too many visual or editing flourishes (the kid on the bike, for example), but In the Mouth of Madness is one last great salvo from a director who would largely fall off of the cinematic map by the end of the 1990s. Sam Neill is great as the hard boiled-ish type who slowly but surely melts down in the presence of something more ancient, more powerful. I've always been shaky about Julie Carmen as styles, but as time passes I find her less grating. And how can I finish without mentioning Wilhelm Von Homburg, aka goon from Die Hard but more importantly as Vigo the Carpathian? He has a small role in Madness as the father of a boy that Cane takes in Hobb's End, and his two scenes ("Cane! Give me back my son!" and "I have to, he wrote me this way") are memorable in a film full of chilling moments. It's certainly the most pessimistic of the Apocalypse Trilogy, but if you're going to follow The Thing and Prince of Darkness, why leave any trace of hope?

Quick Review(s): Non-Stop, Bye Bye Birdie, and Die, Monster, Die!

 Even the Cap'n has strange weekends, sometimes: while it should come as no surprise to you that I'm watching more movies than are being reviewed as of late, some weekends, even I can't account for the unusual combinations. This past weekend, for example, I sat down to watch Drive Hard and barely got through it, despite the potentially winning combination of Thomas Jane, John Cusack, and director Brian Trenchard-Smith. Then, because that was such a disaster, I watched Summer Fest alumnus Death Spa (this time on Blu-Ray) and was surprised at the level of talent behind the camera in the accompanying documentary (perhaps more on that at another point).

 Then, for reasons known only to me, I decided it was time to figure out whether I had really seen all of Bye Bye Birdie or not (I had), and then to check out an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation I didn't realize existed, Die, Monster, Die!, before closing things out with the latest "Liam Neeson 'special set of skills' Action Movie," Non-Stop. Because that's clearly a balanced weekend, right? A little action, a dash of musical comedy, and an AIP cash-in on the success of Roger Corman's The Haunted Palace.

 (To put it in perspective, the previous weekend included X-Men: Days of Future Past, Persona, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

 Let's take a look at this unorthodox weekend-long triple feature, shall we?

 Bye Bye Birde - Full disclosure: Bye Bye Birdie is not my favorite musical. It isn't even close (coming in well behind The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Oklahoma, or Cannibal! The Musical), but it was a production I was involved in during high school, in a strictly "behind the scenes" capacity. Our mantra, particularly during musicals, seemed to be "copy the movie" when producing the play, so I'm certain the technical theater crew watched Bye Bye Birdie (as we did with Oklahoma and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying), but I couldn't remember if I'd ever seen it from beginning to end, so as I had the Twilight Time Blu-Ray from an order last month (with Wild at Heart and Used Cars), it seemed like a good time to find out.

 (It's worth pointing out that I've never seen any other production of Bye Bye Birdie - including [until very recently] the one I was involved in - so any mentions of "changes" is based entirely on what I know of the play as we did it vs. the film. I also have no idea how many other productions model themselves after the film, so the previous paragraph wasn't meant to disparage our drama department. Maybe everybody does that.)

 The film adaptation certainly has a fine cast, not limited to a star-making performance by Ann-Margret, although she nearly lost me with the opening song. It takes a little while to get accustomed to the way she sings, particularly the title song, which in all honestly I found to be a little shrill and abrasive (it's not actually part of the stage production), but I stuck with it. I wanted to see Dick Van Dyke as Albert and Janet Leigh as Rosie, and an early appearance by Ed Sullivan didn't hurt, either (his role in the film is more significant, one of several changes in adapting the play). I also knew that I had Paul Lynde - Kim MacAfee (Ann-Margret)'s father, Harry  - to look forward to. After all, I'd already seen him sing "Kids" on his Halloween Special.

Other than the title song, I found that I enjoyed most of the numbers in Bye Bye Birdie, although there are less of them than in the play (Rosie has at least one song cut, along with another song distracting reporters from asking questions about Conrad), but by necessity we also removed all of Hugo Peabody's songs - the actor playing him wasn't a singer - something that wasn't an issue for pop star Bobby Rydell, who is arguably a better singer than Jesse Pearson, the titular character. While I had largely forgotten about how much the movie deviates from the stage production, I found myself enjoying (and recalling) moving songs around - "Put on a Happy Face" in the MacAfees' back yard with Rosie, and almost immediately following "One Boy." Perhaps it was my general ignorance about Janet Leigh, but I didn't realize she was going to be singing, or, more impressively, be directly involved in the gymnastic elements of the Shriner dance. Watching the long, mostly unbroken takes, Leigh is, as best I could tell, being flipped around without the benefit of a double.

 Reading a bit about the movie, I hadn't realized that Dick Van Dyke and Paul Lynde weren't fond of the adaptation (both were in the original play), and that the former in particular felt it showcased Ann-Margret too much. It is true that the teaser trailer is strictly about Ann-Margaret and just barely finds time to mention anyone else, but even with the lion's share of screen time (and to be honest, Albert and Rosie get a lot of the middle of the film to themselves), she's not a low point in any way. If there was anybody who I felt underwhelmed by in Bye Bye Birdie, it's Conrad Birdie.

 Pinpointing exactly what's so problematic about Conrad is tricky - part of it is that director George Sidney toned down the "Lothario" part of Birdie, and aside from one quick mention of needing a "church key" to open his beer, he's not much of a louse in the film, either. Instead, Conrad is strangely muted, not particularly charismatic, and in no way deserving of the attention he gets from the girls of Sweet Apple, Ohio. I know that he's based in some capacity on Elvis (which is how most people seem to picture him), but my understanding was that the composers (Charles Strouse and Lee Adams) actually designed the character more around Conway Twitty. There's a rumor that Elvis was approached to play Birdie in the film, was interested, but Colonel Parker didn't want him parodying his image. No offense to Jesse Pearson, but it might have at least given Conrad more "oomph." He barely makes an impression for being the titular character, to the point that the Moscow Ballet portion of the Ed Sullivan Show at the end of the film is more interesting than "One Last Kiss."

 Bookending title song and Birdie aside, there's a lot to like about Bye Bye Birdie, much of which centers around Dick Van Dyke. Mary Poppins fans should keep a close eye out during "Put on a Happy Face" to see an early version of his "penguin" dance. He elevates a largely reactive character in a way that Rydell similarly doesn't (no fault of his - Hugo isn't much to work with). It's hard to argue that Ann-Margret isn't the centerpiece of the film, and she certainly makes a splash. I imagine she had some interesting conversations with Presley during the filming of Viva Las Vegas...


 Non-Stop - I suppose the easy joke here would be to say that "Non-Stop is more of a non-starter," but the truth is that for a healthy chunk of its mid-section, the film is a serviceable to pretty good thriller with enough unfolding plot developments to keep you invested. That all falls apart if you take any time to think carefully about the story, but by the time you realize what he / she / them are actually up to, it won't even matter. It's a ridiculous explanation, followed by an even more implausible climax that will leave you shaking your head. But I've gotten ahead of myself, haven't I?

 Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) is an Air Marshall on a routine trip from New York to London, when he receives a mysterious text on his secured phone. A passenger aboard the plane threatens Bill that if he doesn't transfer 150 million dollars to a private account, someone will die every twenty minutes. Marks isn't just going to let this happen, but without causing panic on the plane, who can he trust?

 That's the set-up for the film, and for the most part the entire plot, for better, for worse. Most people are really just coming because Liam Neeson is in the film and he has a gun on the poster, which brings us to his "particular set of skills" in this film, which are drinking and being a grizzled Air Marshall who hates flying. I think he's also supposed to be good at observing people, or at least that what the hazy shots of passengers led me to believe. Mostly he's good at profiling, as he picks out people who look the most threatening (and are, of course, not at all), but since most of Non-Stop is predicated on not being able to trust anybody on the flight Bill is on from New York to London, I guess it's okay for director Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown)  to prey on our jingoistic prejudices at the outset, since he's going to totally blow our minds later in the movie. (SPOILER ALERT: the "Suspicious Muslim" stereotype is a doctor and the vaguely Easter European dude who doesn't say anything until halfway through the film is an NYPD officer. Gotcha, racist audience members!).

 Now I'm being unfair to some degree, because Collet-Serra and screenwriters John W. Richardson, Christopher Roach, and Ryan Engle do a fair bit of twisting our expectations around, even if they sometimes cheat a little bit to do it. Since we know almost nothing about any character other than Bill until well into the movie, the audience is left only with our preconceived notions about "suspicious" people on airplanes, which they toy with repeatedly. The mystery of who is sending Bill these messages (which eventually appear on screen, so we don't have to also look at his tiny phone throughout the film) and how people are going to die on a crowded flight is a pretty good one. In fact, the execution of the plan goes in a few unexpected directions early on, to the point that I was pleasantly impressed, but it doesn't last for very long. By the time that Non-Stop shifts into full on hyperbole and (SPOILER) the TSA agents believe that Marks is hijacking the plane, things strain credibility. And that's before we get to the big reveal and the even dumber thing that happens after that.

 But, just in case you wanted to watch Non-Stop, I won't give it away. It's almost ridiculous enough to recommend in and of itself, but the fact that the first half or so is also a decent game of "cat and mouse" works in its favor. In the "Liam Neeson, man of action" genre, it falls somewhere between Taken and Taken 2 - neither as enjoyable stupid as the former, nor as inane and redundant as the second. I haven't seen Unknown, so I couldn't comment, but Collet-Serra also made that, as well as Orphan, another movie with a "really?!?" twist. If you're inclined to enjoy movies like this, or saw the poster and said "I'll rent that," you're better off watching Non-Stop than, say, Drive Hard. If you're more predisposed towards, say, Neeson in The Grey, this is not going to be your cup of tea, but if you liked Flightplan... well, um, you liked Flightplan. Congratulations?

There's a surprisingly high ratio of "really, they're in this?" in Non-Stop, including Academy Award Winner Lupita Nyong'o (flight attendant "Gwen," sporting the same high-top fade she had at the Oscars), Academy Award Nominee Julianne Moore (Jen Summers, woman sitting next to Bill who ends up helping him), Guy who has been in back-to-back Best Picture Winners Scoot McNairy (Tom Bowen, dude who is going to Amsterdam), and of course, Academy Award Presenter Liam Neeson*.
Also, lots of familiar faces, like Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery (flight attendant Nancy), Ain't Them Bodies Saints'sNate Parker (Zack, dude who Bill is a jerk to), and House of Cards and Midnight in Paris's Corey Stoll (Suspicious looking dude).

 While we're at it, why not Linus Roache (Batman Begins) as the Captain, and Anson Mount (ummm, Crossroads) as a passenger with a secret, although for a minute I thought it was Eric Bana rocking a Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code wig. But, alas, it's just Anson Mount, dude who is (SPOILER) secretly also an Air Marshall and who (BIGGER SPOILER) gets his neck broken by Bill in a pretty violent bathroom fight and who also (EVEN BIGGER SPOILER) got killed because he thought Bill knew he was smuggling a briefcase full of cocaine on the flight but (SPOILER FOR THE "BIG DUMB" ENDING) was actually smuggling a briefcase with cocaine that had a bomb hidden inside so that the mystery texter could blow the plane up. Nice job (SPOILER FOR A DIFFERENT MOVIE), "Final Boy" from All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. Bana would have had that on lock down, and wouldn't have made fun of Bill for having "drunken Liam Neeson red eye" before the flight.

  Finally, although you're likely not going to be asking "who is that guy on the phone from the TSA who won't 'negotiate with terrorists'" (e.g. Bill), it turns out to be a fairly familiar actor, particularly if you watch Boardwalk Empire. It's one last surprise, and probably the most welcome one considering that the end of this movie is so stupid that Passenger 57 looks downright plausible by comparison. Or Air Force One, for that matter. Or the one with Steven Seagal and Kurt Russell. Executive Decision? Sure, why not. That ought to give you some idea of what you're in for. But for a while, you might actually enjoy it, and depending on your level of sobriety, then you might really enjoy the ending.


 Die, Monster, Die! - Based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space in the same way that The Haunted Palace is based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (loosely), this AIP production has some effective imagery, but finds a way to drag on long enough to make 78 minutes feel like two hours. It's not lacking in atmosphere, and Boris Karloff certainly gives as much as he possibly can (which is saying something, as the actor was in poor enough health that he spends most of the film confined to a wheelchair), but I had trouble remembering much about the film hours after finishing it.

 Lovecraft's town of Arkham, Massachusetts, is relocated to England so that American student Stephen Rinehart (Nick Adams) can travel to the Whitley manor on the outskirts of town. Nobody in Arkham wants to talk to him about the Whitleys, nor will they provide him with any means of transportation, so Rinehart has to walk. It gives us the opportunity to see the desolate lands on the outskirts of the manor, and what looks like a huge crater, surrounded by dead trees that crumble to dust when touched. After dodging a bear trap at the gate, he enters the Whitley manor to find himself unwelcome by its patriarch, Nahum Whitley (Karloff), despite having been invited by Nahum's daughter, Susan (Suzan Farmer).

 Something is obviously very wrong at the Whitley house, and Nahum's wife Letitia begs Stephen to take Susan away (they were students at an unnamed university in the U.S.), against Nahum's objections. Letitia is bedridden and refuses to let anyone see her, and Nahum is opposed to taking her to a doctor in town. Their maid went insane and lurks around the grounds under a black veil, and their butler Merwyn (Terence de Marney) is barely capable of lifting silverware without collapsing. A strange glow is coming from the (locked) greenhouse, and it's rumored that Nahum's father, Corbin Whitley, practiced black magic (because, you know, it kind of makes it sound like it's connected to The Haunted Palace, maybe?), which seems to be confirmed from the artwork scrawled in the cellar of the mansion.

 Unfortunately, for all of the mystery surrounding the Whitleys and what writer Jerry Sohl cobbled together from The Colour Out of Space and more topical concerns (circa 1965) about radiation, Die, Monster, Die! is mostly a movie about wandering around a spooky house with candles until something jumps out. Audiences who bemoan "jump" scares in modern horror films will roll their eyes at no less than three such moments in Die, Monster, Die!, all of which have the bad form to continue well after it's clear they aren't scary. There are some nice images - the matte painting of the meteor crash looks very good, and the "zoo" of deformed creatures / aliens (it's never very clear) in the greenhouse "shed" make an impression, but the pacing of the film drags on endlessly.

 Lovecraft fans will, in all likelihood, not enjoy the explanation given to why the meteorite causes strange and horrible things to happen to the vegetation (SPOILER - it's Uranium) or the way that Die, Monster, Die! devolves into a "we have to fight the monster before we escape," wherein Boris Karloff is replaced by a stuntman wearing a glowing prototype of the "Green Man" outfit under his suit. I honestly can't remember if they even explain what happens to the maid after she tries to attack Stephen and falls down, but it's not the kind of plot point I'm even worried about following up on. While I've seen worse adaptations of Lovecraft stories, I'd be hard pressed to say I've seen one that's more of a slog to get through than this one.



 * I'm just messing with you - he was nominated for Kinsey, but I had you going there for a second, didn't I?

Cap'n Howdy's (Back)Log: Documentary Recap!

   While it may come as a surprise to readers that the Cap'n spends time watching more than just schlock, more often than you'd expect I'll sit down and watch a documentary. What you may notice is that I don't often write about them, usually because I don't feel like rehashing what they're about. Ultimately, the question is whether there's something new to learn about the subject that you didn't already know (if you knew anything about it in the first place), and I suppose that most of the below succeed in that category to one degree or the other. In this instance, I'm including these mini-reviews to let you know they exist, because I hadn't seen or heard too much about them prior to screening.

Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters - It's hard not to see this movie and draw parallels to The King of Kong, because they are, in essence, about the same thing. Tetris fan Pat Cotri discovers that while there are a number of rankings on various sites, there has never been a tournament to determine a champion for the game, so he organizes one and invites various "masters" from around the world to compete. Looming over the entire event is the question of whether Thor Aackerlund, the legendary wunderkind of the Nintendo World Championships of the 1990s, will return from a self-imposed exile in order to join the tournament.

 Where Ecstasy of Order differs from The King of Kong is that there's no "David vs. Goliath" angle, ala the Billy Mitchell / Steve Wiebe high score battle. These are evenly matched players who accomplished extraordinary feats with the game of Tetris (the NES version, for those curious), including the rumors that Thor not only reached "Max Score" but has more lines than anyone on the "Kill Screen," - the point at which lines begin to fall so fast it's nearly impossible to line them up.

 Rather than deal with human conflict, Ecstasy of Order centers around technique, about the approach to Tetris, and about the many ways players accomplish feats most of us didn't know where possible. It becomes a bit hypnotic, and that's well before the demonstration of the "invisible pieces" version of Tetris appears in the film. I won't reveal who does and doesn't make it to the tournament, let alone who wins, but I appreciated the level of respect among competitors. The title of Tetris Master is no misnomer in this case.


 Rewind This! - A documentary about VHS tapes and the people who love them? Yes indeed, my friends. Designed as a love letter of sorts to a (mostly) defunct staple of home video, Rewind This both covers the history of the videotape, its rise and fall, and the fanatics who go out of their way to collect the obscure and the bizarre releases that will in all likelihood never be released again. As somebody who grew up during the era of home video (and who has more than a few VHS tapes at home), it's nice to see that the love for the format still exists, even though tapes have a worse chance than vinyl of enduring over time. The very things that come up about why VHS is so endearing - the tracking lines, the wear over parts of the film replayed repeatedly - are the very reason that they don't last. Tapes wear out, break, and can sadly be erased at a moment's notice.

 Now that hasn't stopped me from keeping the ones I have (and coveting the one VCR I own that still works) but the truth is that it's harder to maintain this medium. The nostalgia factor and the access to titles that, quite frankly, have and probably will only exist on tape is the driving thrust behind the documentary (not to mention a continuing thread on series like Red Letter Media's "Best of the Worst" or Everything is Terrible), so it was nice to see a celebration like Rewind This!. VHS essentially launched home video, and it was (and, I suppose, is) the longest running format to date. After all, DVD barely made it ten years before Blu-Ray began chipping away, and who knows how long that has before digital or the next innovation takes over? Eventually we may come to a point where the tapes no longer play, and Rewind This! might go from a love letter to an archive of a lost era, but in the meantime, it really got me jazzed to fire up the VCR again...

 41 - I didn't know much about George H.W. Bush - as a President or as a man - when I watched 41 so in that regard this HBO documentary was informative. It's much more focused on Bush as the man rather than as the public servant, and surprisingly doesn't cover much of his time as President (or, for more obvious reasons, his period in the CIA). If you don't know much about him or his family history, it's certainly worth checking out, but don't expect much in the way of political gossiping, ala Clinton's My Life. Other than a very curt mention of how he "doesn't want to talk about" Ross Perot and the 1992 election, Bush is remarkably magnanimous towards most of the people he worked with. You also won't learn too much about what he thinks about George W. Bush, or Jeb for that matter, but there's plenty about the dogs. I don't mean to undersell the documentary as fluff, because it really isn't - you'll learn a lot about Bush's personal history and home life, but there's a limit to the political lessons to be gleaned from the experience.

 Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic - Showtime produced a rather thorough documentary about the life of Richard Pryor, from his earliest stages of comedy right up until his premature retirement due to advanced MS. I must admit to being surprised at how much of Pryor's career I wasn't aware of, in particular the period before he dropped out of comedy to reinvent himself in anonymity out west. There's a great deal more to the "freebasing" incident that led to burns all over Pryor's head and body than one would think based on more cursory career retrospectives, and certainly more about how he lived after MS sidelined him (something even a heart attack couldn't do earlier in his life). I'm not sure that I'd ever seen footage from the failed attempt at Live on the Sunset Strip that preceded the concert film we all know, but it's fascinating to see his awareness that it's just not happening. My only gripe is that among all of the other comedians, celebrities, friends, and lovers interviewed, I don't understand why Dave Chappelle was included if he only appears twice in the documentary, for a total of less than two minutes. Both times he appears the comments are more conjecture than insight, and it seems like a waste of Chappelle to bring him in only to add nothing.


Necessary Evil: Super Villains of DC Universe - My familiarity with the villainy of the DC Universe is mostly limited to Batman, with a smattering of Superman and Green Lantern antagonists thrown in for good measure. Other than knowing the names Manta Ray, Black Adam, Reverse Flash, and Gorilla Grodd, I don't know much of anything about them. I'd like to say this documentary helped, but while a lot of DC antagonists are included, the focus sways heavily on psychoanalytical reasons for villains to exist and how each DC hero's rogues gallery is uniquely suited towards them.

 This is not to say that the documentary, narrated by Christopher Lee, isn't interesting, but if you're looking for more than the most cursory discussion of major villains, you might wish that this could be spun off into a series. Lex Luthor and the Joker get most of the screen time, and that's not actually that much, because at a little over 100 minutes, there's more of a focus into breaking them down into types with the occasional brief overview of characters like Man-Bat or Harley Quinn (again, Batman characters I already knew about).

 I'm not certain who this documentary is for, either, considering that many of the participants - including DC executives, artists, writers, voice actors, and people who on the surface have next to nothing to do with the comics (WWE Superstar CM Punk shows up once specifically to mention Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, and nothing else!) - talk about major characters as though fans have never heard of them. Doomsday's entire first appearance is covered, up to the death of Superman and an explanation of what happens if you kill Doomsday. Perhaps Necessary Evil was designed as a primer for readers of DC's new-ish "52" re-launch. I'm not sure. It's fun to watch, but I must admit that it amounts to little substance by the time it ends.


Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown - There's a lot of substance at hand in this documentary about one of the titans of horror writing. Yes, Stephen King sells more and Clive Barker is more disturbing, but the influence of H.P. Lovecraft permeates every crack and crevice, every darkened hallway of horror to this day. What I wasn't expecting from Fear of the Unknown, what turned out to be the most welcome, was how in depth the coverage of Lovecraft's personal life and how they influenced his writing. The documentary moves in a basically chronological fashion through his life, but takes detours to analyze major stories in depth with a who's who of writers, directors, and historians.

 Among the interviewees are Lovecraft biographer S.T. Joshi, writers Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Peter Straub, and directors John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon, and Guillermo del Toro, all of whom bring a wealth of knowledge about the author and his stories. Carpenter tells the story of how, as a child, he read The Rats in the Walls in a horror anthology and its lasting effect on him. Much to my surprise, the racist tendencies in Lovecraft's writing isn't glossed over and discussion and contextualization of his opinions on immigration appear throughout Fear of the Unknown, often with a more frank and less apologetic tone than might be expected. The analysis of the stories is most welcome and the participants go well beyond rehashing the Elder Gods mythos in bringing insight to Lovecraft's many phases of writing. Also, make sure to watch the extra interviews if you pick up the disc to hear Carpenter discuss In the Mouth of Madness, Gordon explain why his adaptation of Shadow Over Innsmouth is called Dagon, or about del Toro's (currently) aborted attempt to adapt At the Mountains of Madness.


Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony - Well, maybe this should be called "the Extremely Unexpected Pre-teen to College-Aged Male Fans of My Little Pony," because at least at the outset, that's what Bronies seems to be about. This documentary is all over the place, and while I suppose it is enlightening, I'm not sure what audiences are supposed to take away from it, other than adults watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

(After doing a little research, it looks like the documentary was originally going to follow John de Lancie at conventions (he appears on the show as the voice of Discord) but when the Kickstarter campaign ended considerably more successful than anticipated, the scope changed. I'm not sure it was for the better.)

 Bronies is a schizophrenic film, one that starts with a montage of teenage guys talking about how weird it is that they like My Little Pony ("it's for little girls") and then later the persistent argument is that it shouldn't be weird but gee, isn't it so weird you guys? It's never a Trekkies level of "freak show" documentary* but I really think that if people didn't continually mention how weird people must think it is even though it's totally not and we should get over being prejudicial about the fact that adults watch cartoons for kids, the message might just sink in for itself. Seriously, all the documentary really needed was the scene where the dad of one Brony who doesn't know how to feel about his son liking the show talking to another dad who embraces his son's fandom. It says more than a dozen talking heads repeating ad nauseum that "there's nothing 'weird' about it" and that bullies should stop picking on Bronies. Yes, we got it. Please can we not keep reminding the audience that it's not weird that people are geeky about things. Most of them - particularly ones who are inclined to watch a documentary about Bronies - are going to move past the "weird" phase quickly.

 That said, the increased scope does mean that while the focus is all over the map, there is more of an international vibe to the film. Bronies follows an Israeli DJ who makes music based on the show, a couple in Germany who make their own figurines, a young man in England with Asperger's who travels to Manchester for his first convention, and stateside, a fan from a small town in North Carolina who is incessantly bullied for proudly displaying his fandom for the show. Hearing what the show means to all of them is worthwhile, and while I don't necessarily think it's "weird" for adults or young adults (we don't really meet adult fans until well into the movie) to like a cartoon, I get that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is probably viewed differently than Invader Zim or SpongeBob Squarepants (shows that started airing when I was well into my twenties).

 Interviews with de Lancie and voice actor Tara Strong are valuable, as well as insight from creator Lauren Faust, but I think Bronies tries too hard to be too many things - a late inclusion that "oh yeah, adult women like My Little Pony: Friendship is magic, too!" seemed, well, odd, as though the focus needed to shift once more well into production. This is a side note, but I could tell it was a Kickstarter funded production when the movie ended with nine minutes to go, and sure enough, eight of those nine minutes were names of people who helped to fund Bronies. I hope they don't mind that I skimmed that part - normally I watch the entire credits of a film out of respect for the people who made it, but even the Cap'n has limits. Still, enlightening, I guess, in that I a) had no idea there was a new My Little Pony show (and I worked in a toy store!) and b) that it had unexpected adult fans. Good on you, Friendship is Magic!

* In truth, nothing is ever as strange as the Trek-themed dentist, and yes, I get that initially My Little Pony cosplay just looks like neon "furries," but I've seen weirder examples of fandom. Like Steampunk. Yeah. Steampunk Comic Book Cosplay. That is a real thing.

Two Reasons I Don't Always Understand Geek Culture

 The Cap'n is, unavoidably, a geek. While I don't always identify as such, it's hard to write on a blog where you adopt the moniker of a demon from The Exorcist and plaster artwork of Dr. Re-Animator and The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman on the page. I try to mix up the content, but let's be honest here: after devoting a weekend to a "virtual" version of a horror film festival I usually host in person, I bounced back with a documentary about what Conan O'Brien did after NBC dropped him for Jay Leno. While I haven't read many comic books in the last year, I still watch movies about them, and am looking forward to Joss Whedon's The Avengers.

 However, I don't always understand my geek brethren; there are things about the internet in particular - the nesting place of the "geek" - that seem counter-intuitive to what people claim they want. Today I'll take a look at two things that don't really make sense to me, especially in a time when "geek" culture seems to be getting everything they want from major studios and television networks. I'd normally do four, but the first two were so long that I thought I'd cut it in half.

 1. "We want to see it, but we're not going to go see it!" - I call this the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World effect, although you could just as easily replace that with Kick-Ass, Serenity, Your Highness, or a dozen or so other movies designed specifically for a geeky demographic. You can't throw a rock without hitting someone complaining about how Hollywood is constantly recycling, remaking, or re-imagining something from the 1980s. Now, it is true that this happens with increasing regularity, in part because people go see these remakes. I mean, why not? They already know the title, vaguely remember the story, and it beats going to see something else.

 The chatter is loud and not necessarily without cause, but then when a project that comes out that ISN'T a remake, re-adaptation, retooling of something we've already seen, or even just not another "reboot" of a series we're invested in, the same geeks crying out suddenly get very quiet about putting their money where their mouths are. I was very, VERY hard on Scott Pilgrim fans in particular because instead of going to see the movie they constantly hyped as "finally, something that isn't like everything else," they instead stayed home and complained about how stupid it was that people went to see The Expendables instead. It's not Sylvester Stallone's fault that you didn't go see you new favorite movie, nor is it Julia Robert's fault with Eat, Pray, Love. I have tried to move away from using Box Office figures as a barometer for anything, but if you read "geek" coverage of Scott Pilgrim vs the World after the first two weeks, you'd think that it was hovering right below the aforementioned films. Nope. Scott Pilgrim vs the World came in behind The Expendables, Eat, Pray, Love, The Other Guys, and Inception. Inception is, by the way, an exception to the rule, although the "it was overrated" chants are getting louder every week.

 Mind you, it's not just Scott Pilgrim: Sucker Punch, a film that caters to geek fetishes, was also widely ignored by its target audience. Serenity, a film based on Joss Whedon's short-lived Firefly, apparently had a legion of fans called "Browncoats" who went to the free screenings the summer before the film came out, and then were so enthusiastic that they didn't go see it again. Or tell their friends to see it. Or tell anyone to see it, even though you'll be hard pressed to find a Firefly fan who won't talk about Serenity until they're blue in the face. So if you're this enthusiastic about a film, this excited for an alternative to the "same old thing," something directed to the very vocal internet, why is it you're happy to let the film die a lonely death in theatres, complain about the films people went to see while you stayed home, and then wait for the Blu-Ray? Eventually they'll stop listening to your pleas, stop catering to your whims, and then you're left with the same old thing.

 Don't believe me? Look at Universal: they're smarting from the Scott Pilgrim debacle, coupled with big losses for Your Highness and modest returns for Paul. Now that Comcast bought the company, they've already put Guillermo Del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness on indefinite hold, and have delayed further development of Ron Howard's adaptation of The Dark Tower series. These are two highly sought-after geek adaptations, and considering how much muscle they have behind them, the reason they've been put into development hell has a lot to do with the "We want to see it, but we're not going to see it" precedent.

Normally, when Guillermo Del Toro wants to adapt H.P. Lovecraft in a big budget, R rated horror film in 3D with the backing of James Cameron and star Tom Cruise, a studio isn't going to say "no" to that. Del Toro is the only "x" factor there, with his critically popular but financially modest films, including Universal's disappointing Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The argument was that Universal was concerned about the "R" rating, but it's not as though high profile projects with an "R" rating haven't performed well for them. The concern seems to be that the geeks clamoring for this film might not bother showing up (again), so why invest that kind of money when the precedent says there's no good reason to?

 The Dark Tower series is even more ambitious: Howard wants to adapt the entire series, split up between films and a running TV series that would bridge the movies. Javier Bardem is virtually a lock for Roland, and yet Universal is hedging about "the budget." Why? Again, because even with someone as reliable as Ron Howard and his long time producer Brian Glazer, there's concern that the people who claim to want to see this (the geeks) might be so fickle that they just won't show up. It's killed potential series before: just look at The Golden Compass, or Push, or Jumper, or I Am Number Four. Relative quality aside, those were designed to be "first chapters" in longer narratives, and they probably will never be. Even the geekiest of all geek properties, Tron Legacy, was met with derision by geeks and Disney is debating how much of a budget cut a third Tron will get, if they make it at all.

 It turns out that "if they build it," geeks won't come. Even if they love it. That boggles my mind. The negativity surrounding "bad" films is understandable to a point, but if you're just going to blow off genuine olive branches from people who speak your language, what exactly do you expect to be on the big screen next time?

2. TV Wasteland...? - We live in a time where television is littered with "geek" friendly shows: zombies, alien invasions, dinosaurs, time travel, super heroes, galactic battlestars, and even a "monster of the week show" that's really just about monsters. Oh yeah, and Doctor Who is back. So is Futurama. And yet, week after week, I come away enthusiastic from another episode of a show I enjoyed only to find the internet is littered with nit-pickers complaining about how that great episode was actually "underwhelming" or "lame." I was just looking to see if I missed some small detail, but instead have to wallow through criticism of the "revelation" that ended season six of Doctor Who (okay, the first half). How The Walking Dead is "boring" or "not what we wanted," etc.There was a television show about THE TERMINATOR, and all people did was complain about it.

 I'll freely admit that the ending of The X-Files and Lost disappointed me, and I've made it clear why, but one of the reasons I try really hard not to critique individual episodes before the show is over is because I like to give the creators the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they are making it up as they go along, maybe not. Thanks to the internet, I now know that by the time I get to the end of Battlestar Galactica, more likely than not I'll feel cheated. I didn't want to know that, but shy of never visiting any "geek" site and totally avoiding my friends, it's almost impossible not to be inundated with negativity during a period where networks are actually catering to the audience that shouts the loudest. It's no surprise that shows don't last long when the feedback they see is negative. I'm already worried about Torchwood: Miracle Day, the return of a series I thought was really finding its footing, because the buzz around the first few episodes is not good. Ugh.

 This is hard for me, because I realize that I am essentially complaining about complaining. I'm throwing my two cents into a bottomless pit of negativity, but I just don't understand what's going on here. This is as good of a time to be a geek as humanly possible, and instead of celebrating it, there's a ceaseless echo chamber of backhanded compliments and outright hostility directed at people like us, who grew up watching the same movies we did, and are now trying to represent that point of view for the rest of the world. Now we're at a point where Patton Oswalt (perhaps with tongue in cheek) is suggesting that geek culture "needs" to die so that we can learn to appreciate our roots. The relative quality of films and shows are no longer important, because they all "suck" to people who can shout the loudest. When asked for an alternative, they ask for something and then blithely ignore the result.

 I don't understand you, geeks. I am trying. I thought I was one of you, and I tried to make my own rules clear: there are movies I am interested in and ones I'm not. I'll try to branch out every now and then, and whenever possible not look at gift horse in the mouth. I know that movies like Machete and Black Dynamite and Hobo with a Shotgun were catered to my demographic, and while I maybe didn't love everything about all of them, I try to be clearer than "it just sucks and you suck if you like it." I genuinely wanted to understand what it was about the Saw films that people gravitated towards - it didn't work for me, but obviously they have a strong following. I will ceaselessly sound the horn for films that I think people would really like; films you might not see or know about otherwise. I didn't ask for Scott Pilgrim, so I didn't see it, but I sure as hell was enthusiastic about Tron Legacy and I sure as hell saw it in 3D on an IMAX screen. I backed that geekdom up, and I need to do the same for The Tree of Life soon.

 To close, I don't want to criticize the internet critics, the home of geekdom in its many forms. I just want to understand what's going on here: it's an almost unprecedented time to enjoy having geeky interests, so why is the target audience ignoring it in droves, flooding message boards, and unleashing on people for not doing it for them? 

Horror Fest Day Two: The Call of Cthulhu

Of all the movies playing at Horror Fest this year, I was the most curious how The Call of Cthulhu would play, because it takes a pretty audacious set of fanboys to make a movie in the digital era of H.P. Lovecraft's best known story and present it as an authentic silent film.

It doesn't always work, I'm afraid; there are a handful of instances where the editing is a little to well done and they didn't add quite enough grain and scratching to convince anyone it isn't actually from 1925 (and having watched mostly films from the silent era in the last few months, even the best restorations can't make movies like Metropolis or The Gold Rush look as good as The Call of Cthulhu does), but even still, the short film is quite a feat.

Without losing any of the dread of Lovecraft's story, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society manages to compress it all into forty five minutes and still not look hokey or stupid where many films might have. The silent acting is showy but not obvious, the music is very appropriate (where certain scores for Nosferatu are painfully not) and the art design, lighting, and effects really sell the dream world of the elder gods. Even something that has the potential to be disastrously silly, like the Louisiana swamp sequence, are still eerie and atmospheric. The Cthulhu statues look good, and so does the big guy himself, even as a stop motion puppet (ala the dinosaurs in The Lost World).

Overall I'd have to say that the quibbles are minor and that the short itself really is a success where many Lovecraft adaptations are failures (or very good bastardizations, like Stuart Gordon's filmography.)

As I was walking some folk outside early this morning, our neighbors downstairs (who were having a party) asked them if they were "coming out of Horror Fest?" when they replied in the affirmative, one guy asked "damn, was it scary?"

I felt good. Our reputation precedes us.