One more time: Official Summer Fest Announcement

editors note: I'm reposting this in case anyone missed it earlier this week, but this time it has something NEW! Oh snap!

Ladies and Germs, your Cap'n is pleased to announce that from July 2nd - 5th:

THE GREENSBORO SUMMER FEST MASSACRE PART 2

will commence. From dusk til dawn, every night non-stop horror and horror/comedy, including

and many more!

Featuring Classic Episodes from:

Special 3-D Showings of:

and


This Year's Summer Fest Field Trip Selection:

Plus Special Treats:

In Glorious High Definition!

Summer Fest begins Thursday, July 2nd, at 9pm for a special field trip screening of Drag Me to Hell at the Carousel Cinemas. After the film, we will continue watching films as long as you can stay awake at the Apartment of Solitude on Cedar Street. Each successive night will begin at 6pm and go until we pass out.

See the Cranpire, live and in person! And a bunch of other people you probably already know!!!

BYOB. Snacks will be provided, and the horror's on the Cap'n.

Contact the Cap'n for details, directions, or special requests.



* thanks to the awesome Troll cover from the Criterion Forums.

So You Won't Have to: The Day the Earth Stood Still in 2008

The Cap'n watched the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still less than 24 hours again, and I've already forgotten most of it. What I do remember is that whatever the folks who made this had in mind didn't pan out; this movie doesn't even have the moxie to push the eco-friendly agenda that's all over the bonus features. In fact, it doesn't have the moxie to do or say much of anything. Instead, this Day the Earth Stood Still strips away anything interesting about the original and replaces it with wall to wall effects shots and a mean spirited "humans suck and you fuckers deserve this" attitude.

If you're saying "well, yeah! we did screw up the earth and probably do deserve to be wiped out by Klaatu's robot locust army" (more on that in a second), you'll still be pissed off by the last second "redemptive" moment caused by two characters that totally don't deserve it. This version of the film isn't a cautionary tale; it's a condemnation watered down a by cop-out that is in no way earned by the worthless people who populate the movie.

Maybe that's the most irritating part, because if you're going to make The Day the Earth Stood Still and say "it's too late, the aliens have decided you're past redemption", then it doesn't matter that every character in the film is either a cipher who helps Klaatu move from point a to point b (Jennifer Connelly) or some total asshat who stubbornly refuses to stop for a second and think with their dinosaur brain (Jaden Smith and pretty much everybody else). When Klaatu is Keanu Reeves and he's STILL the most interesting part of the movie, you know you're in trouble.

At least Reeves has something to do. This Klaatu isn't here to issue an ultimatum; well, he tries, but instead the Secretary of Defense (Kathy Bates) flat out refuses to let him leave custody. Klaatu being an alien and all, he just walks out, but thanks to the movie he's in, humanity is looking pretty shitty from the get go. Oh, and the fact that when they shoot him this time around, he's not even holding some alien device. He's just standing there and one of the cops or military assholes just pops a cap in him.

For those wondering, Gort is in the movie but it's with a handful of stupid contrivances. For one thing, his name is Gort not because Klaatu said so, but because the Army gives it as some stupid acronym (Genetically something something something). While this doesn't become a plot hole until you think carefully about it, the "Klaatu Berata Nikto" shut-off command seems to work after Klaatu is shot but not later when Gort turns into a swarm of robot locusts.

That's right: the thing you saw eating that truck and Giants Stadium was Gort. It's almost pointless to have Gort in the movie, save for the fact they could show off some fancy CG effects by having a gigantic robot blow up some missiles. But then again, a lot of things in this movie happen because they wanted to show off CG techniques instead of develop characters.

Since none of you need to see this, it's not going to be a spoiler to tell you that Jon Hamm's character dies for no good reason near the end of the film, and I didn't even care. He's so unimportant to The Day the Earth Stood Still that you wonder why they bothered bringing him back into the story just to kill him. None of the other characters seem to care, so why should we.

In fact, the only character I was actively rooting to die was Jaden Smith's character. He's a wholly unlikeable kid who does nothing to redeem himself during the movie. Instead, he treats his step-mother (Connelly) like shit, tries repeatedly to have Klaatu arrested or killed, and then demands an alien bring back his dead father, presumably so the dead father can "Kill the alien" like Smith assumes he would. Since this little fucker is the reason that Klaatu has his "change of heart" and decides to shut off Gort, I really felt The Day the Earth Stood Still lacked any legitimate argument. Everyone acts like an ass and then has a half-hearted / practically non-existent moment of weeping and the alien suddenly changes his mind? Fuck that! In that reality, we deserved a lot worse than being eaten by robot bugs.

Oh, and since the significance of the title comes up (albeit in a really stupid way), I'll close by addressing that. In the original, Klaatu makes everything stop to prove a point: "We have the ability to fix this if you won't, but we're asking you to try." In the remake, the "Day the Earth Stood Still" happens because Klaatu stops Gort from eating New York and then flies away, and I guess all the power on Earth disappears. That's it. The movie is over so quickly after this happens that you're left saying "wait, that's it? that's why the earth stood still? this movie is retarded!"

Nothing in this remake happens because it would logically occur that way, mostly because story contrivances keep getting in the way and forcing the film to go in a "nicer" direction, even if nothing that leads up to that point justifies the end result. The movie itself won't even say that we need to "go green" because I don't think they really believe it. Oh sure, the extras make that case over and over, but the movie only says that humans are a problem. The whole "nuclear annihilation" angle from the original is wiped out by a half-assed "Inconvenient Truth" soapbox. But like everything else in this Bad Idea of a Film, it's half assed.

The Cap'n has seen it so that you won't have to. No need to thank me, it's just my job. Please don't ask me about Shit Coffin. Fuck that movie.

From the Vaults: Blogorium Review - The Frighteners

No Rest for the Wicked: The Frighteners

It's been quite a while since I'd seen The Frighteners from beginning to end, but after watching it last night, time seems to be kinder to it than I remembered.

The first time I saw The Frighteners was sometime in 1996, when my dad took me out to the Colony in Raleigh (the only theater playing it as I recall) to see Michael J. Fox's comedy horror epic. I don't really think I knew who Peter Jackson was at the time; I certainly hadn't seen Bad Taste, Dead Alive, or Heavenly Creatures, but I knew about Meet the Feebles (the most fucked up puppet movie not made by Jan Svankmajer) and was probably seeing it soon. I was thinking The Frighteners would be something along the lines of Ghostbusters, since the ads play up the humor. Clearly, I was mistaken.

I remember liking The Frighteners, although the mix of humor to horror tended to lean heavily in one direction or the other for long periods of time, and the hell worm eating Johnny and Patricia (Jake Busey and Dee Wallace-Stone) really disturbed me at the time. Critics seemed to take exception to a horror comedy that was more horror than comedy, and to this day The Frighteners is regarded as a misfire for Peter Jackson.

Looking back at it, I'm not so sure. Yes, the film is marketed as a comedy, and yes, it's not a comedy in the sense that Ghostbusters is, or even Dead Alive, which took gore to such extreme lengths that one couldn't help but laugh. The horror in The Frighteners is unabashed; characters we care about are murdered wantonly by the Soul Collector, and the gore is often more disturbing than laughable (with the notable exception of Jim Fyfe and Chi McBride's ghosts in the first act, where gore is played for laughs). Jackson pulls the rug out from under us, setting us up for a funny romp and then turning things dark very quickly.

That being said, it still works if you know what you're getting into. Even having not seen it in years, I knew The Frighteners was a horror-comedy that leans more in one direction than the other, and when weighed with what Jackson's done before and since, the movie give us a glimpse of a director moving from one type of film to another.

For The Frighteners, Jackson really relied on the still fresh WETA team to use what computers could do in 1995 to make the ghosts seem real in the film, and because of what they accomplished, he felt comfortable enough to consider making The Lord of the Rings next. Frighteners was also Jackson's first major studio picture with an "A List" Star (bear in mind that Kate Winslet was an unknown when Heavenly Creatures came out and had not yet appeared in Hamlet or Titanic) and a large budget. For a director accustomed to low budget movies, this was a high concept film, and Jackson's brand of black comedy was a little darker than most American audiences were ready for.

Uneven as it may be, The Frighteners is still fun to watch, and as the last major starring role for Michael J. Fox as Frank Bannister, a time capsule of an actor still in his prime. It also has a fine supporting cast, with Trini Alvarado, the aforementioned Busey and Wallace Stone, Fyfe, McBride, John Astin, and Jeffrey Combs playing the most demented FBI agent you're likely to see. Oh, and let's not forget that extended cameo from R. Lee Ermey, basically reprising his role in Full Metal Jacket.

The version I watched was the extended Director's Cut, which runs a little over two hours and adds fourteen minutes back into the running time. A few sequences seemed new (like the ghosts dressing up as The Grim Reaper to scare Frank and more flashback material of Johnny and Patricia) but for the most part I can't really remember what was new and what wasn't.

The Frighteners is unfairly maligned in the Peter Jackson filmography, and certainly worth another look. You might be surprised that is still holds up, or that Jackson went from this directly into Lord of the Rings, but a watered down PJ film this is not.

Official Summer Fest Announcement! (repost)

editors note: I'm reposting this in case anyone missed it earlier this week. I'll also put this up again on Monday.

Ladies and Germs, your Cap'n is pleased to announce that from July 2nd - 5th:

THE GREENSBORO SUMMER FEST MASSACRE PART 2

will commence. From dusk til dawn, every night non-stop horror and horror/comedy, including

and many more!

Featuring Classic Episodes from:

Special 3-D Showings of:

and


This Year's Summer Fest Field Trip Selection:

Plus Special Surprise:

In Glorious High Definition!

Summer Fest begins Thursday, July 2nd, at 9pm for a special field trip screening of Drag Me to Hell at the Carousel Cinemas. After the film, we will continue watching films as long as you can stay awake at the Apartment of Solitude on Cedar Street. Each successive night will begin at 6pm and go until we pass out.

BYOB. Snacks will be provided, and the horror's on the Cap'n.

Contact the Cap'n for details, directions, or special requests.



* thanks to the awesome Troll cover from the Criterion Forums.

From the Vaults: Why the Cap'n doesn't like Rob Zombie's Halloween

So, Rob Zombie made House of 1000 Corpses, which I loathed. Then with all the good word, I checked out The Devil's Rejects, and I was stunned. Everything wrong about Corpses was addressed and fixed in Rejects: the hyper-kinetic editing was gone, the cartoonish acting scaled back, and incidental stunt casting paid off with actual characters. So what the fuck happened?

I've wrestled with how to explain why Halloween doesn't work. Either cut. There are fundamental problems in comparing Carpenter's film to Zombie's, because I'd rather not bring up Leitch or Stam or other theory scholars, so I decided to approach Halloween on its own merits, and not as a "re-imagining", remake, re-interpretation or whatever. But that's even worse, because as its own movie, Rob Zombie's Halloween fails a number of basic tests, many of which have to do with story progression, logic, and suspension of disbelief.

Let's address story progression first: I'll go alone with humanizing Michael Meyers. Fine, he has the generic serial killer / pyschopath upbringing featuring the Rob Zombie players uttering lines like "When I get out of this chair I'm gonna fucking skull fuck you to death, bitch!", but Michael seems to be in his own world. He does his own thing, and he happens to kill well. Okay, I'm on board. It's different, but it's your movie, Mr. Zombie. The institution stuff is all right for a while, but then we start getting improbable for no reason, and here's where the logic problems kick in. Why would Dr. Loomis leave Michael alone with a nurse when he has access to a fork. Why does he have access to a fork in the first place? Does anyone else even live in this asylum, because until his escape scene, we only see the guards, Michael, and Loomis. Also, how does Michael, who Loomis, the guards, and Zombie all claim is "near comatose" go from the little blonde kid to a hulking brute without ever exercising? That's a pretty big leap to ask me to take, and it isn't the only one. How it ties into Michael escaping is even worse.

Ah, the escape scene. In the theatrical cut, okay, I get it; it's sort of like how Michael gets away in Halloween 4, and then there's the payoff of why people assume Michael isn't dangerous because he never moves. In the "Director's Cut", which is safe to assume is Zombie's preferred cut, Michael escapes because two guards decide to rape a new inmate IN MICHAEL'S ROOM WHILE MICHAEL SITS THERE! Then Michael kills them because they play with his masks. Then he kills the one guard who was nice to him and just walks away. How does Zombie rationalize this? He uses the argument that this is consistent with stories about what happens in asylums, but he makes one HUGE mistake. Like a few other things I'll discuss below, just because it's real doesn't mean it's logically coherent in the narrative. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

The stunt casting is a mess in Halloween. If anyone can explain why Udo Kier, Mickey Dolenz, Sid Haig, or Clint Howard need to be in this movie in any way, I'd be happy to hear it. At least there's a reason for Ken Foree's scene, or some purpose for Danny Trejo and Brad Dourif to be in the film. Shit, the casting of Danielle Harris (Halloween 4 & 5) as Annie is inspired. Sherri Moon Zombie is fine as Michael's mother, but William Forsythe is wasted in a one note role. Actually, don't get me started on his part, or how he dies.

Back to the serious problems in logic and suspension of disbelief: this is REALLY IMPORTANT, because it's not addressed AT ALL: How the fuck does Michael Meyers know that Laurie Strode is his baby sister? Even Dr. Loomis doesn't know. Strode's parents don't know. Only the Sheriff knows, and he ONLY tells Loomis. If Meyers is in no way supernatural, then how do you explain this, the KEY to what Michael does in the last quarter of the film? Anyway, I have bigger fish to fry.

This would be easier to overlook if Laurie, Annie, and Lynda weren't totally unlikeable. Laurie's introduced making some crass joke about having sex with the hardware store owner, and when they aren't calling each other "bitch", they're being rude to Tommy and Lindsey. There's no wonder Michael wants to kill them; I would too. Even Tommy and Lindsey are too smart and too sassy to be likeable, all because this is (in Zombie's words) how he "remembers kids being". Again, more realistic does not translate into sympathetic characters. Why should I give a shit when Laurie finds Lynda dead if I hate both girls? The most interesting thing Zombie does is NOT kill Annie, so that when Laurie finds her, she's still on the floor screaming because Michael's in the house.

As a matter of fact, even though Zombie swears he has no plans for a sequel, he left Laurie and Annie alive, and there's even enough justification for Loomis not to be dead (he's last seen grabbing at Michael, not dead). Only Michael appears to be dead at the end of Halloween, but Zombie mentions in the commentary that Laurie's probably as crazy as he is now. Hello, unnecessary sequel. Goodbye unnecessary remake.

From the Vaults: Horror is Saved! (oh, wait...) part 2

Blogorium Mini-Review: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

I never bothered writing a long piece about this, instead referencing it when talking about Hatchet, and I just don't know if I have the energy for another Halloween-like tangent, which is what deconstructing this misguided deconstruction of slasher films requires.

Let me make a few salient points which I hope will give you some idea of why having a movie that pretends people like Freddy Kruger and Michael Meyers are real but also wants to explain how the defining characteristic of the genre work fails miserably:

- There's a fundamental lack of research here. I'm fine with throwing in alterations like "survivor girl" instead of "final girl" as long as you have a reason for the change, but I get the impression the makers of this film haven't ever read serious deconstruction of this genre by people like Julia Kristeva or Robin Wood. As a result, they keep teasing the "why" of Leslie Vernon but never get around to addressing it.

- I cannot understand why they included Chucky in the list of "real" killers. Do you really expect me to believe that in a film where you explain away the "supernatural" aspects of slashers that Charles Earl Ray actually fooled people into thinking he was a killer doll? Really?

- The Ahab. It's not just that there's only really one "Ahab" in any of these series (evident by the fact that Robert Englund is doing the worst Loomis impersonation I've ever seen) but how much time Behind the Mask devotes to this and other clearly understandable archetypes. They set up a number of things that anyone versed in slasher films should instantly recognize (and let's be honest here, that who Behind the Mask is marketed towards) but then repeatedly feels the need to have our surrogate documentary filmmaker ask "can you define _____?" How many of you couldn't figure out what I meant when I said Ahab, even if you hadn't read Moby Dick?

- Leslie Vernon is the most obnoxious character in the film and I find it amazing we're supposed to be captivated by him or the "danger" he poses. I shouldn't even have to explain why all of the other slashers Vernon keeps mentioning are frightening, and why his step by step explanation of what he was going to do somehow doesn't register with the filmmakers at the end...

- Oh, and the Nightmare on Elm Street reference at the high school. Way to distract people while Vernon is alledgedly giving out important information on "clique" stereotypes.

Seriously, I cannot fathom how people are "wowed" by this movie. Am I missing something here?

From the Vaults: Horror is Saved! (oh, wait...)

What are horror fans smoking?

Are you truly so sick of unnecessary remakes and shitty watered down Japanese horror rip offs that a movie like Hatchet is a beacon of shining light? Really? Unless we watched different movies called Hatchet that by some strange coincidence both came out this year then the internet horror community cannot be trusted.

First you burned me with Dead and Breakfast*, which is easily the worst combination of horror and comedy to come out in the last five years. Then you go apeshit about Behind the Mask, a movie that so fundamentally misunderstands slasher films that it creates an archetype known as the "Ahab", conveniently ignoring the fact that the only slasher series with a hero character hunting the villain consistently is Halloween. (And that's the tip of the "what's wrong with Leslie Vernon" iceberg.) And now Hatchet.

According to the box, Hatchet is:

"The Next Icon of Horror" - Ain't It Cool News

"Among the Greatest Slasher Flicks of All Time" - Bloody Disgusting

"Has Audiences Shedding Tears of Terror -- And Laughter" - MTV

"So Indescribably Awesome that You Cannot Conceive." -Ain't It Cool News

WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. And FUCKING WRONG!

This cannot possibly be the movie you're describing on the box. It can't. The horror community cannot possibly be so strapped that this painfully unfunny, badly paced, woefully scare-less waste of eighty four minutes could be OLD SCHOOL AMERICAN HORROR (which is the TAGLINE for the movie right under the title).

For starters, the has all the aesthetic value of a Sci-Fi Channel original film, the kind of which are meant to look "theatrical" but all the mise-en-scene points to "will translate well to tv", which is what nearly every shot does. It's hard to find a point in this movie, during which most of the film takes place at night in a swamp, where the actors aren't totally lit. I mean with BRIGHT overhead lights that seem to be aimed directly at them. The shot composition leans on the "show everbody" side, which makes the "surprise" appearance of the killer that much more nonsensical.

It's embarassing when I can point to lesser sequels of Friday the 13th that have better camerawork and composition than Hatchet, but it's true. The stunt casting is almost irrelevant, since most people won't even notice that Blair Witch Project's Joshua Leonard is the other dude who dies with Robert Englund, and Tony Todd just barely qualifies for a cameo. There's a perfectly ruined opportunity involving the ambiguous death of Kane Hodder's character to introduce a second killer into the proceedings.

I don't even want to talk about the "killer", Victor Crowley, because after a pretty nice backstory, he's pretty much wasted in the rest of the film. I hate to break it to you, but there is some strange internal logic at work in the Friday the 13th and Halloween films about where and when Jason and Michael Meyers show up. This is wholly lacking in Hatchet, as Crowley pretty much just shows up whenever. And, like the Zombie remakequel of Halloween, there's an inexplicable "buffing up" phase between childhood and adult** in order to make him the hulking killer that can rip the top of someone's head off for no reason.

The pacing is all over the map, including a coda that happens so close to the climax you aren't actually sure the movie's ending yet, a much too long "getting to the bad place" expositional period, and a big plan that serves no purpose. It doesn't even work in an ironic way, so if that's what they were trying to do by subverting expectations, they failed.

I really can't understand how you could covet this film as real, quality horror. Hatchet fails on almost every level, and while I hate this remakitis and J-Horror influx as much as anyone else, you can't seriously tell me this movie is on par with Slither. Slither is genuinely good American horror, and it's fucking funny. Jeez, even Feast, which masks most of its problems with sheer ferocity and manic energy, is light years better than Hatchet. And Feast came from Project Greenlight, for chrissakes!

If Hatchet is what's good about horror, then I'm a fan of the wrong genre. This ain't old fashioned anything, unless you like celebrating the Splatter University's of slasher flicks. This is like watching the remake of 2000 Maniacs and saying "man, this sure reminds me of the good old days of horror!" Maybe you should look a little harder then, because I'd hate to think I'm alone in liking old school horror. I'll admit to going out on a limb defending Dead Silence, even weakly, but at least it dared to suck no matter who watched it. I can't imagine the defense for Hatchet; there just isn't anything inventive or particularly redeeming in the film.

* I would like any of you to explain to me how Dead and Breakfast is in any way an "American Shaun of the Dead", as the cover art boasts. Please. I'd love to hear that argument.

** Don't even fucking start with me about Jason. Don't. Jason Vorhees is pretty much a normal dude in parts 2-5, and when he turns "zombie" in Jason Lives, then the Kane Hodder super monster has some retarded justification.

Official Summer Fest Announcement!

Ladies and Germs, your Cap'n is pleased to announce that from July 2nd - 5th:

THE GREENSBORO SUMMER FEST MASSACRE PART 2

will commence. From dusk til dawn, every night non-stop horror and horror/comedy, including

and many more!

Featuring Classic Episodes from:

Special 3-D Showings of:

and


This Year's Summer Fest Field Trip Selection:

Plus Special Surprise:

In Glorious High Definition!

Summer Fest begins Thursday, July 2nd, at 9pm for a special field trip screening of Drag Me to Hell at the Carousel Cinemas. After the film, we will continue watching films as long as you can stay awake at the Apartment of Solitude on Cedar Street. Each successive night will begin at 6pm and go until we pass out.

BYOB. Snacks will be provided, and the horror's on the Cap'n.

Contact the Cap'n for details, directions, or special requests.



* thanks to the awesome Troll cover from the Criterion Forums.