Shocktober Revisited: Cabin Fever

 editor's note: while the Cap'n is waiting to watch The Green Inferno or Knock Knock, here's a look back at Eli Roth's first film.

Today the Cap'n will be looking back at a more recent film I have an interesting history with, Eli Roth's Cabin Fever. As the film was partially shot in North Carolina (Mocksville, Danbury, Winston-Salem, and High Point), there was a big to-do made of its release in 2003 at The Carousel in Greensboro: the lobby was covered with camping-related paraphernalia, the insides of the candy displays tainted with bloodstains, and production stills and press information were abundant. I remember this because I saw the film with a soon-to-be roommate in a packed auditorium of gorehounds looking for their horror fix.

And they got it, in abundance: Cabin Fever is, whatever else it may strive to be, an effective and mostly disgusting horror film. In that respect, I recall being impressed with Roth's first feature length film. As I wrote in a 2003 recap:

Cabin Fever - Eli Roth learned a thing or two from Evil Dead. That's crucial to understanding the marketing behind this low budget gem. Cabin Fever is atypical of horror movies, and that bugs a lot of horror fans, but this isn't quite a scare fest. It's a genre bender, pitting the cast of a Teen Sex Comedy in a Cabin in the Woods Horror Movie. While it has problems (the movie doesn't know where to end and stumbles a bit in the final act), it's nevertheless a nice first film to build a career of off, and they marketed the shit out of this movie (when i went to see it, great steps were made to replicate set pieces, "authentic" paraphernalia, etc.) plus it doesn't look as cheap as it was to make, and there are some wonderful nods to past cheapie thrillers.

My compatriot hated the movie. In fact, he still hates the movie, for reasons I can't fault him for. After talking about Cabin Fever several times, I almost totally flipped on the mixed-to-positive review and decided that the film's weaknesses overcame its strengths. I convinced myself that the Peter Jackson blurb on the poster (and subsequent DVD and Blu-Ray releases) was hyperbolic, and that the film's seriously uneven tone rendered the whole experience moot.

But that wasn't the end for me; for whatever reason, I couldn't shake Cabin Fever, couldn't totally sell myself on the write-off, even if there are serious problems with the movie (which I promise I will actually get to in a moment). So I picked up a used rental copy from Hollywood Video (or Blockbuster, I can't recall), and watched it again. I had the same mixed reaction, and ended up selling the movie when money got tight. But then I'd see it used again somewhere when things weren't so rough. Friends began poking fun at me, asking why I'd keep buying "something you hated"? I didn't have a good answer, so I watched Cabin Fever again last night, for the first time in three or four years.

The damnedest thing is that for 90% of the film, Eli Roth made a really good horror film. Yes, it has lots of little nods to The Evil Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Burning, and Friday the 13th, but beyond that Roth has the essentials down pat in constructing a solid horror film. He sets up the stakes well, isolates the characters, provides semi-credible reasons why the college students partying in the cabin might have trouble finding help nearby, ratchets up the gore in a disturbing way, and sets the characters against each other without ever feeling forced.

What doesn't work, the other 10% (with one exception), happens either before they're introduced to the virus or after they try to get back to town. Everything in between the set-up and the closing works fine, save for the introduction of Deputy Winston (Giuseppe Andrews), a moment so atypical of the rest of the film, so reminiscent of Twin Peaks (not coincidentally, as Roth worked for David Lynch prior to Cabin Fever) right down to the specially written Angelo Badalamenti theme, that it grinds the horror to a halt.

The rest of the major issues come at critical points in setting up or resolving characters, which is why Cabin Fever leaves many with a bad taste in their mouths. I will provide a handy list, which is vaguely spoiler, although at this point in the review I'm taking it on faith you've already seen the film:

- Bert (James DeBello) and the "squirrel shooting" scene.
- The harmonica guy.
- The really fake deer.
- The lines "because they're gay," "don't be gay," and "what are you, retarded?"
- The "pancakes" kid, his dad, and the strangely effeminate store owner.
- Actually, just about everything that happens at the General Store.
- Marcy (Cerina Vincent)'s opening speech about college.
- A misleading racist joke at the beginning of the film that has a payoff at the end that, at best, feels disingenuous.

I'm torn about Grim, Eli Roth's stoner interloper that shows up right after Bert, Marcy, Paul (Rider Strong), Jeff (Joey Kern), and Karen (Jordan Ladd) show up at the cabin. On the one hand, there's nothing really funny about his stupid dog joke or the fact that he really only exists so that there's one more body for Paul to find. His dog, Doctor Mambo, could have been anybody's around the lake and the threat would be just as credible. On the other hand, I did laugh at how stupid the dog joke is (sorry, I won't spoil that one for you), and it makes up for the random and sort of pointless "bowling alley" story that Paul tells at the campfire.

The problem is that the tone of everything listed above is so incongruous with the rest of the film, so decidedly quirky, that it disrupts the horror, and not in a good way. I'm all for breaking the tension with a well placed joke (Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson do it masterfully), but the "jokes" in Cabin Fever aren't so much funny as they are really strange. They don't seem to belong in the same universe as the horror film we're watching, and their presence while audiences settle and and right before they leave do undermine the rest of the movie, which is, again, really good.

I am aware that the Blu-Ray of Cabin Fever is a director's cut, one that apparently smooths over the jagged edges of the film, and having watched it again and (mostly) enjoyed the experience, I think I'll look into that cut. While I can't find any fault in the criticisms of the Cabin Fever I saw then and again tonight, there is enough of a pretty damn good horror movie inside to keep me from dismissing it again.

Oh, by the way: while it's not apparently on the Blu-Ray, the DVD has an extra called "Chick Vision" that raises a pair of silhouetted hands over the screen during "scary" parts, and it's actually kind of fun in small doses. I don't know that I could watch the whole film that way, but it might be fun for parties.

Shocktober Revisited: Halloween H20 and Halloween Resurrection

 Originally, I had planned a Retro Review for Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, but  after doing some cursory research on the film I realized that I don't remember Halloween 6 at all. I saw it once, in the fall of 1995, and was surprised to discover Paul Rudd played Tommy Doyle in the film. Until I watch The Curse of Michael Myers again (or can locate the "Producer's Cut" mentioned online), there's really no point in revisiting a film I can't recall.

 Which brings me to Halloween: H20 and Halloween Resurrection, two movies I've barely seen again since the first time I watched them. They did, however, leave a greater impression on my mind than Donald Pleasance's final film appearance, and since I enjoy one of them more than anyone else seems to and really hate the other one, it's fitting to comment on the close of the pre-remake sequels to John Carpenter's Halloween. This one-two punch will leave the Cap'n with only Halloween 3, 5, and 6 to cover in the Blogorium*.

For those of you looking for a series recap, here's one in 60 words or less: Michael Myers kills his family, goes to a sanitarium under the care of Doctor Loomis, escapes, tries to kill Laurie Strode, fails, tries again, is replaced by an evil toy mask manufacturer, returns, tries to kill Laurie's niece Jamie, fails, tries again, fails, tries again, succeeds, but is then foiled by Loomis and a grown up Tommy Doyle**.

 Then there was a three year break, leading us to 1998, twenty years after the first Halloween. We move from Haddonfield, Illinois to somewhere in Northern California, where Keri Tate (Jamie Lee Curtis) is the dean of a private school with her son John (Josh Hartnett) and boyfriend Will (Adam Arkin). The funniest thing is that Keri Tate is a dead-ringer for Laurie Strode, and we discover that (SPOILER ALERT) she IS Laurie Strode. Laurie faked her death to keep Michael from chasing her (which is good, because Michael instead decided to wipe out the rest of her blood relations), and she'd been pretty successful avoiding (SPOILER ALERT AGAIN) her brother for the last twenty years. That is, until Doctor Loomis (the late Donald Pleasance, heard in narration) dies and Michael just happens to find his house and discover exactly where Laurie is. He also kills some kid (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) with an ice skate.

 Anyway, school's out for fall break(?) and Laurie's colleague Norma Watson (Janet Leigh, who is Jamie Lee Curtis' mother, which is technically a SPOILER for family tree detectives. I won't spoil that her father is Tony Curtis. Oh, crap) drives off in a car that looks a lot like Marion Crane (Janet Leigh)'s car from Psycho***. Michael begins stalking the campus, killing off students dumb enough to watch Scream 2 (gee, I wonder why? We'll get to that in a second...), and John and Molly (Michelle Williams) find the bodies and become "next" on the kill list. Unless Laurie, Will, and security guard Ronny (L.L. Cool J) can stop Michael.

 Why am I being so glib about H20? Well, the more I think about the film - based on a treatment by Scream co-creator Kevin Williamson - the stupider it seems. It's funny, because I guess I overlooked how stupid and obvious these references were when I was 19 (something the people who saw it with me did not), and the Cap'n instead focused on the Laurie Strode / Michael Myers story line. To be fair, that is the only thing H20 has going for it: the film decides to pretend that Halloween 4, 5, and 6 never happened****, which you can debate the relative merits of, I guess, in order to focus on the lethal sibling rivalry. The ending, where (SPOILER ALERT) Laurie decapitates an ambulance driver Michael's head is still a satisfying close to their story, one that the following film manages to ruin in the first five minutes.

 It's worth noting that even at the time we were impressed that L.L. Cool J took five or six rounds to the chest from a revolver and walked away at the end of the film. I don't remember if they said he was wearing a vest, but why would a prep school security officer need to?

Anyway, back to the way that Resurrection mangles everything, even making people who didn't like H20 say "well, at least that one didn't kill Laurie Strode." Oh, (SPOILER ALERT). Yeah, in addition to retrofitting H20 so that Michael somehow does a switcheroo with an ambulance driver before Laurie can lop his head off with an axe, they leap forward in time to an asylum where Laurie's been locked up, waiting for Michael to wander in unabated. Sure enough, they tangle, she tries to kill him (hanging? maybe?) but he stabs her or something and she falls from the roof of the asylum in what is the least effective death of a Final Girl since Jason Vorhees followed Alice Hardy back to town for some apartment complex murderin'.

But wait! That's the BEGINNING of Halloween: Resurrection, a movie that gets EVEN WORSE before Busta Rhymes drops some Kung Fu on Michael Myers. That does happen, by the way, and you don't need a SPOILER ALERT because we both know you don't have to watch this film.

So what, pray tell, could the plot of the 8th Halloween film be if the villain kills the Final Girl in the opening of the film? How about a webcam reality show about some stupid contestants wandering around the Myers house? Sound good? Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes) and Nora Winston (Tyra Banks) sure thought so, and their web company, DangerTainment, is sponsoring this MTV's Fear knock-off. A group of college students (including Katee Sackhoff, Sean Patrick Thomas, and Thomas Ian Nichols) who "won" the chance to be on this show, wander around the house looking for clues about Michael Myers. Want to guess who has nowhere else to go after he killed his sister? Want to guess who isn't happy to find people in his childhood home? Want to place bets on whether a charred Michael Myers opens his eye for the final stinger in this turdstorm of a sequel?

The 19 year-old Cap'n may have been kind to H20, but the 23 year-old knew he hated Resurrection well before the halfway point. I remember not liking Halloween 6, but that's not as clear to me as the hatred for the last gasp of the Halloween franchise after Miramax squeezed everything left out in 2002. In retrospect, had I watched Resurrection again before Rob Zombie's Halloween, I might have been kinder, even with all of the idiotic "I'm gonna skullfuck you" dialogue. It's like the Weinstein brothers perceived a certain formula from H20 (a handful of "hot" young actors from better movies*****, a popular rapper, some referential dialogue, and whatever the newest fad was) and recycled it into a crappier version, a xerox of Kevin Williamson's already growing stale pop culture screenplays.

 Halloween: Resurrection is what people are complaining about when they talk about how awful sequels are, and devoid of the one consistent narrative thread between the first seven films (okay, six, since Halloween III isn't about Michael or his family tree), there's nothing worth investing your time in. I honestly can't say I've seen a moment of the film since we saw it on the big screen, and I know I've watched parts of H20 on cable. If one was on, the other one must have been at some point. After part 8, there was a five year layover, and then Zombie took over. At the time I write this, Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer (My Bloody Valentine 3-D, Drive Angry) have pitched a Halloween 3D to the Weinsteins that they may eventually get to after rebooting Hellraiser (you read that right), but for now, at least I can say that Rob Zombie's Halloween 2, for as many detractors as it has, is a MUCH better movie than Halloween Resurrection, and it's probably better than H20. Now who would've thought I'd ever say that?



*For write-ups of Halloween (kind of), Halloween II, Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween the Remake and Halloween 2 the Remake, follow the respective links.
** This much I gathered from IMDB's coverage of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.
*** SPOILER: It IS Marion Crane's car from Psycho.
**** In the interest of fairness, Williamson's original draft did include 4,5, and 6 as continuity, and writers Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg wisely dropped the subplot.
**** And by that I mean American Pie and Save the Last Dance, and eventually Sackhoff would be in Battlestar Galactica but I'm not giving Bob and Harvey any credit for that one...

Shocktober Review Revisited: The House of the Devil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Retro Review: The YAD Archives (Part Five)

 Welcome to our final edition of the YAD Archives. Maybe. If Major Tom permits, I might put up his reviews of Collateral and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, along with another friend's review of a "movie" called Stern Auditor or a review of Mona Lisa Smile. Today I thought I would focus on "character" reviews.

 Looking back at older "From the Vaults" posts, I see that one of YAD's two "gimmick" reviewers already has a post devoted to some of the movies he saw. The idea behind "Timothy Brednick" was to have the perspective of a child on movies that children should never, ever see. I'll include the reviews from that older post, along with a few others I found digging through the archives.

 Timothy wasn't our only ridiculous gimmick reviewer. My personal favorite was StanDAMAN69@yahoo.com*, and to a lesser degree, his nemesis Smooth69AllNite@hotmail.com**. The idea behind both "reviewers" was to have the perspective of the average high school alpha male mixed with the hyperbolic profanity of the average Ain't It Cool News "talkbacker." I think we were largely successful, although my favorite reviews were the movie "mashups."

 A different kind of disclaimer: while I am leaving everything "as is," this is more a warning to those easily offended. The "Stan" reviews are equal parts juvenile, homophobic, profane, and insipid. They don't represent the views of Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium and were intended for parodic purposes, not to disparage anyone. Other than the people of West and East Lansing Michigan. No, I'm just kidding; I've never been to Michigan, I don't know anybody who went to high school there, and I really just liked the way it sounded as a proclamation of how awesome an idiotic high school student would think he was.

---

Timothy Brednick:



Open Water
by Timothy Brednick

I thought this movie was very scary. Why did they get left behind and drown? The girl commited suicide and no one found her and the jelly fish scared me. what is a jelly fish made of mommy says it is not jelly. i do not like jelly fishes. someone said there was a shark but mommy made me cover my eyes like when we went to see Cabin Fever (i did not like cabin fever it was so boring and nothing happened but the dog was cool and the bunny suit. i like bunnies) i guess i will not go swimming alone anymore but mommy says that the lifeguard is always there any way so ok. can i have some juice now? apple juice would be good. i have to give the movie stars? like the gold stars mrs jonson gives us? i guess i give it 6 stars that is pretty good right.

The House of Sand and Fog
by Timothy Brednick

I do not understand why i had to watch this movie. people are very sad and argue a lot and i guess some woman loses her house and then the man puts a bag on his head and she steps on some nails my daddy did that one time and it got infected and he stayed home like the time i ate too many worms and got parasides. that was gross. there was a lot of fog and i remember some sand at the beginning but why did the foreign man have a mushtash and then he did not have one. too confusing. mommy and daddy cried at the end but i went into the living room to play with transformers i hate reviewing movies i wish mom wouldn't yell at me and not tell me i have to earn my keep what does that mean ooooh blues clues is on

Scooby Doo: Monsters Unleashed
by Cynthia Brednick

Timothy is sick in bed, and since I assume in order to get paid he needs to provide a review every month, so here I am in his stead. Scooby Deux, as I like to call it (I'm so clever, don't you think?) is the usual garbage disguised as children's fare, promising the moral that you should be true to yourself, but the reliance on fart jokes and insinuations of Lesbianism and Drug Use assure me that my child will never see this film. I should've known it, the cartoon was bad news. Shame on Peter Boyle (so wonderful in Everybody Loves Raymond) for lowering yourself to this. And that Tramp Alicia Silverstone! don't think I haven't seen The Crush. WHORE!!! Feh. I don't know what I was expecting, but Scooby Deux didn't Deux it for me!


The Ring 2
by Timothy Brednick

it's not fair! i wanted to go see the Ice Princess, but stupid mommy told me i had to see stupid Ring Two instead! sll because daddy was boosinkittup again and bills are due. again! I hate mommy. I wish she'd go into the tv and never come back like in stupid Ring Two. This movie is not scary but is really stupid, and Im only five years old (almost six). Lots of gross girls were in the audience with older guys and they would not shut up but after a while i didnt care because the movie is stupid. if all people who are dead look like the guy in that truck then i am not afraid of ghosts anymore. samara was cool she hates taking baths too! i want to be able to kill grownups! ima make a videotape just you watch me...


The Omen
By Timothy Brednick

This may be the bestest movie I ever saw. Damien has dogs and he has toys and a nanny and he goes to the zoo and has a circus at his birthday party and anybody who doesn’t like Damien goes away and never comes back. That’s good because I don’t like knives and if daddy came at me with a knife then the police would come and then I’d be the presidents son and then I go from a mansion to the white house. I went to the white house one time and there were lots of rooms and ropes and stuff and places I couldn’t go but if I was the presidents son I could. I’ma ask mommy if I can change my name to Damien and go to the zoo. Oh mommy says I hafta give it stars like in mr kerners class one time I got three stars for tying my shoes but the omen gets like a hundred stars it is the greatest movie I ever saw!


Brokeback Mountain
By Timothy Brednick

I don’t understand why people do not like this movie and will not see it. Kissing is gross but only if you kiss girls because they have cooties but if you kiss boys you wont get cooties because boys don’t got them. I mean duh! Of course those cowboys did kiss girls too and one of them gots sick see I told you cooties. Whats a parenpasis mommy? Mommy says there should be parenpasis on the cooties part. Anyway there were fireworks in one part and the blonde cowboy sounded like sling blade hah ha sling blade was funny I met him one time he was a mall santa and smelled funny. Anyway if I play cowboys and Indians I know that it is ok to kiss cowboys and to say “I cant quit you” and then go hide in the tree fort daddy built because the Indians wants to scalp us oh no!



Army of Darkness
By Timothy Brednick

Daddy has this dvd that’s always sitting on the shelf and so I put it in because I know how to work a dvd player. It is silly. Ash is this guy who has one hand and the other hand has this silver glove on it that crushes stuff like the hulk. ASH SMASH! Hahahahah it rhymes. Parts of it were scary but it was ok because ash would say stuff like “give me some sugar” and “this is my boomstick” and king Arthur was in the movie I saw this movie with king Arthur that was sooooooo boring it was named after his sword boo I hate that movie but ash saved the day and this book tried to eat him and this other book was really a vacuum and his face was silly and I don’t know why im not allowed to watch it it was way funny. Eight stars is good.


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 StandDAMAN69@yahoo.com:


The Punisher
by StandaMAN69@yahoo.com (guest contributor)

Not Since Next of Kin has a movie rocked my world so hard. ROCKED, I say. Because that is truly what the Punisher will do to your puny world. IT WILL ROCK YOU! Tom Jane is the friggin Punisher and he whups a whole heapin load of ass on Vincent Vega for fuckin with his schema! Arrows and shit! THE PUNISHER BEATS FRICKIN KEVIN NASHS ASS! and he's so cool that even tho rebecca hot piece of score ass romijn offers herself up to him hes like "babe, i'm sorry but i rock to hard. asses need kicking and that's what i do!" THAT ROCKS! give it ten frickin stars because five just dont ROCK ENOUGH! EAST LANSING HIGH SCHOOL REPRESENT!


Johnny Paycheck
another review by StandaMAN69@yahoo.com

starring Keanu Affleck
Uma Thurman-Rollins
and Ice-T Eckhardt

Johnny Paycheck is basically about this computer hacker dude that puts Judge Dredd into cryogenics because he beat wesley snipes demolition ass and then he gets some program that erases his memory and takes away like 90 millions bucks or something. then this chinese dude chops peoples heads off because Ice-T told him to do it for special crimes unit or some shit. Then Agent smith shows up and beats some serious ass until the bride chops him in half or something. so now there's two agent smiths and along with the bride and the dude from rollins band they set out to beat up the chinese dude and ice-t. then pig vomit comes in and says whoa wait just one minute you've got this bag of clues johnny paycheck and you'll get your memory back (or some shit like that) them the chinese guy flips out and cuts his head off and for some reason juliette lewis is in this rock band playing songs while it happens with the dude from the crow. what the fuck? so anyway johnny paycheck and pig vomit's head use their bag of tricks to remember that he's really the one and that he invented a machine that can predict how to kill the chinese guy and then ice cube shows up and presides over a battle to the death between the bride and the chinese dude and the guy from rollins band flips out and kills ice-t and agent smith porks juliette lewis and that dude from the crow. meanwhile the bride is beating some serious ass on the chinese dude but he gets the upper hand and cuts both of her hands off and she's like oh shit i'm so dead, but johnny paycheck uses the machine to tell her to kick him in the nuts (theres like some built in explosive or some shit) and she does it and he friggin explodes, killing ice cube and the dude from rollins band too. then johnny paycheck and the bride run off into the sunset and use surgery or something to graft her hands onto pig vomits head. pretty fuckin gay man.


Walking Tall
by StanDAMAN69@yahoo.com

yeah so the rock plays Buford T. Puser, ass kicker extraordinaire (see mrs. jonson I told you I could use those grammar words shit) who comes back to his hometown after layin the fuckin smackdown on terrorists or brendan fraser or some shit how should I know? anyfuckinway, he finds this babe at a strip club/casino/drug dealership and along with his boy johnny knoxville and a HUGE fucking stick he sets out beating serious loser ass then he becomes the sheriff after some jabronis cut him all to hell so you know how that ended ….. serious smackdown action one problem though it was too short man like seriously I felt like it was over before I could build up a good whiz in me, and that folks is the gauge of a rockin movie (like collateral I had to fuckin piss twice and I held it the second time cos… whoa) like it was cool and shit but there was a lackage of stiffler-action and most definately no WALKEN-mania… shit. anyway I guess it rocked my world as much as it needed to and then went along the rocks merry way. fuckin a man, fuckin a.

Denzel Washington Sets a Man on Fire
By StanDAMAN69@yahoo.com

NO FUCKING SHIT I swear to you he stuffs C4 up this dudes ass and fucking blows him up and the fuckin car hes tied to! Holy shit this movie rules!!! Its like the punisher but with way more crazy camera moves and rack focus and all that shit that I love no way should you miss this movie DAMN I am so pumped about MAN ON FIRE fuckin mark anthony blows his brains out and shit, and Christopher walken does his thing and…. goddamn HE CHOPS THIS DUDES FINGERS OFF AND THEN PUTS A CIGARETTE LIGHTER ON THEM! Yeah boy fuckin represent! MUTHAFUCKIN DENZEL AND SHIT this redeems him for the way he went out in training day screw ethan hawke what a LOOOOZAH like them fucks from west lansing FUCK YOUZ GUYZ!!!!

Zombie Dead Eat Some Fuckin' People
by StanDAMAN69@yahoo.com

yo, i know this shit isnt like in theaters or whatever but man that new dvd is the shizznizzle! fuckin dawn of the dead and shit. MORE GORE MORE NAKED ZOMBIE SHIT FUCKIN HEAD SHOT THAT TAKES OFF THE DUDES SKULL BUT THERES HIS FUCKIN EYEBALL!!!!! u know the score guys go buy it and get ready to kick out the jams with some ass kicking zombie slaying action... oh yeah, if u fucks at west lansing think u r so tuff, fuckin bring it beotches! ill fuck up up hardcore cuz im comin strong 24\7. yeah ill bring the dawn of the dead to ur fuckin asses

SAW
by Smoooth69AllNite@hotmail.com

Shit, lemme show you how this is done, StanDAFAG!!!! HAHAHAHA YOU SUCK!

SAW is pure ass beating punishment of LOOOSAHS that deserve to have their jaws ripped open and split to shreds by razor blades. Dr. Douchebag finds himself chained in a room with Paparazzi Jerk, and the doll of death wants them to duke it out. They have a pair of hacksaws with which to chop off their feet and some cigarettes, plus the corpse of some dude that blew his brains out before they woke up. BOSS. Oh yeah, and Danny "LETHAL WEAPON" Glover mopes around and gets his throat slit, but that's nothin compared to what happens to his partner. If you were down with HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES but you thought Zombie pussed out on the bloodshed, then this is your joint, straight up. SHIZZNIZZLE. Eat it, Stan, U SUCK!!!


Buffy the Grudge Slayer and The Temple of Suck
NO FUCKIN STARS
by StanDAMAN69@yahoo.com

MAN THE JAPANESE MAKE SOME SHIIIIIIITY FUCKIN MOVIES for real tho, what in the fuck were they thinkin with this movie, cuz they musta been on shrooms or some shit "yo man, lets put this all out of order and take the scary parts out and get fuckin daphne from dooby deux (heheheh)" what the shit sam raimi? i mean did u see the fuckin japaneez one or did u just get high and point at a board. fuck, i was board all the way thru this fuckin joke. kids r not scary, their lame, and the floatin chick with stupid eyes? totally rippin off the Ring dude and not even some hot chick to distract me cuz that movie sucked ballz too! note 2 hollywood: STOP remaking sucky ass japanese movies becuz you dont bother to improve them first. U R like that pie fucker Smooothlubeupmyass@homomail.gay.



Blade Sucks Three
by standaman69@yahoo.com

aight so what was i expectin right? fuckin more blade ass beatin check fuckin score ass chix check fuckin LAME ASS VAMPIRES check WTF????? shit man, this movie has so little ass kickin that i can barely qualify it as action, more like "im mopey ass blade cuz i cant act for shit" and hey lets cut away to cap' chocula for a halffuckin hour drake ass lame shit. FUCK u think van helsing got dracula wrong oh shit u have no idea! fuckety fuckballs is this shit lame. on the plus corner, porker posey and jessica biel and bonk-worthy, reapers dogs are pretty funny. fuckin van wilder kicks some ass but he cant shut his fuckin yap. oh yeah, like triple "how do u know how big my dick is" h (seriously he fuckin says that shit) man trips, ur no rock. ur not even hogan quality YEAH U HERD ME GAME STICK WITH EVOLUTIOn! fuuuuuck im getting sick of all these shitty movies man! but fuckin saw is comin out on dvd soon!!!!!! SHIT YEAH!!!!



Sin Shitty!

By standaman69@yahoo.com

yoyoyo sherboy Stan, back from spriiiiiiiinnnngg breeaaaaakakaka! shit yea homez, i was fuckin tearin it up in east lansing last fuckin week. man i was so fuckin ripped that i almost forgot i saw fuckin sin shitty! now that i remeberd i fuckin wish i had. yeah yeah whatever it was violent n shit, but dudes looked like they had fuckin jizz all over their jacketz 4 most of the movie

MAJOR LEAGUE GAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yo i wont front the bitchez in sin shitty were smokin hawt (even if mah girl alba didnt get butt nekkid i still stroked it in her honor) and who knew the chick from gaymore girls was bone worthy??? still aint gonna watch that shit. fuckit im all for decaptatin and whatevah, but this movie just a little 2 gay if u kno what i mean...

1 star for da movie
5 starz for my bitchez

now i yall excuse me i gots half a bottle of crown royal left and that shit aint gonna drink itself....


Adam Sandler fucks it up again!
By standaman69@yahoo.com

i dunno what ur fuckin problem is snadler but this fuckin spanglish shit was worse than donkeypunch love and at least that had some fuckin class a ass beatin. instead of bein the ass we all know ur, instead you mope around like some fuckin pussy 4 2 hours when U KNOW that spanish maid wants your ass! DO IT MAN!!! fuck mrs david duchovy... wait, no do them both 3WAY!!! yeah baby thatd be better than the fuckin shit i just slept thru. fuckin longest yard better kick some serious ass or make fuckin happy madison again just stop bein such a pussy snadler.

---

* By the way, I don't actually know who has that email address, but it was taken by the time I realized I should probably register it with Yahoo.
** I also don't have that email address.

Happy Crom Day to You!

 Interesting tidbit: thirty years ago today (May 14th), Conan the Barbarian opened in theatres (and, I can hope, Drive-Ins) across the country. The Cap'n was a little too young to see Conan the Barbarian (being three years and exactly one month old), so I missed out on that and the rest of the "Class of '82," what has become a semi-legendary year for geek cinema. That's how geeks characterize it now, because I don't remember it being a big point in pop culture during the 80s or 90s, but it's all good. Starting in 2007, when the "Class of '82" turned twenty five, retrospectives kicked in, and now we're at the thirty year mark, which is right around the age of people who pay attention to things like this. Like me.

 Well, that got away from where I wanted it to go. Anyway, so if you aren't in the mood to check it out, here are some of the movies released in 1982:

 The Boogens
 Annie
 Death Wish II
 Victor / Victoria
 Rocky 3
 Six Pack
 The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
 Zapped!
 Yes, Giorgio
 Halloween III: Season of the Witch
 Tootsie
 Gandhi
 48 Hours
 The Verdict
 The Toy
 Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
 One from the Heart
 Visiting Hours
 Airplane 2: The Sequel


 Wait... what do you mean "that's the wrong list"? What the hell is wrong with that list? I like those movies. Geeks like The Boogens, right? What do you mean "they haven't seen The Boogens?" That's not my problem! They love Rocky 3 and Death Wish II and 48 Hours! Hell, some of them will even defend the indefensible, like Zapped! and the misguided but I guess not unwatchable Halloween III...

 Okay, fine. It's true that the list above is an "alternate" list I compiled while I was trying to get the "canonized" releases right. Honestly, I'm standing by the assertion that about half of them still fit in just fine with the actual "Class of '82" which includes:

 Conan the Barbarian
 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
 Blade Runner
 John Carpenter's The Thing
 First Blood
 Das Boot
 Friday the 13th Part III (in 3D)
 Porky's
 Cat People
 The Sword and the Sorcerer
 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
 Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
 Poltergeist
 The Secret of Nimh
 Tron
 Pink Floyd: The Wall
 Fast Times at Ridgemont High
 Class of 1984
 The Beastmaster
 Eating Raoul
 Creepshow
 Q: The Winged Serpent
 The Last Unicorn
 The Dark Crystal

 I included movies like Das Boot and cult films like Eating Raoul and Q in this list because they're frequently mentioned, but like Halloween III I suppose they could go on either list. It's a shame more of you haven't seen The Boogens though...

 Now, that is an impressive lineup. It comprises the list of movies that many people my age watched on home video along with the likes of Ghostbusters, The Goonies, and Back to the Future all the way through adolescence. I can only imagine what it must have been like to see Conan the Barbarian one week and then to see The Road Warrior the next. To be old enough to really take in a summer filled with that many cherished entries into "geek" cinema is something I can only envy from afar. I wasn't old enough to even be cognizant that Ridley Scott was adapting Philip K. Dick and John Milius would set the bar for "sword and sorcery" films that hasn't ever really been matched in the 80s, 90s, or 21st century. And it was the second of three "sword and sorcery" films just that year!

 To wonder what the guy who made Halloween, The Fog, and Escape from New York was going to do with The Thing from Another World or how Paul Schrader was going to reinvent Cat People. Most of all, to see it with fresh eyes, in a world devoid of the internet and where cable television didn't have the range of coverage it does now. By the time I'd heard of most of these movies, it was through people who had already seen them or through movie guides. By the time I knew what Season of the Witch was, I had been warned that it didn't continue the Laurie Strode / Michael Meyers story and was therefore a "mistake." On the other hand, Blade Runner's failure and stature as something of a "cult" phenomenon allowed me to approach the 1992 "Director's Cut" with intrigue.

So looking back at the way these films were released, it's understandable how Tron, Blade Runner, and The Thing were all swept aside by the "summer of E.T." Steven Spielberg had a massive hit on his hands, and Scott's narrative-ly dense dystopia and Carpenter's misanthropic and nihilistic alien invasion film weren't exactly going to fit in with a friendly extra terrestrial eating Reese's Pieces. Tron? Well, it took twenty eight years for Disney to even consider making a sequel to its "world inside a computer" film, and it fared about as well. I happen to like Tron, partly because of its place in my childhood but also because as I grew up more of it made sense and it's really not a "one sitting" kind of movie. E.T., on the other hand, has a little something for everybody, and in one go-round.

 There are so many different things you could talk about here, like Star Trek II getting everything fans wanted right where The Motion Picture didn't (again, this is based mostly on what I understand, as I was introduced to Star Trek films through Wrath of Khan and not The Motion Picture) or the way that the otherwise formulaic sequel Friday the 13th Part III introduced the iconic image for the series (Jason's hockey mask) while also having just about every "point something at the camera" 3D gimmick you can think of. You had the first John Rambo film, Sylvester Stallone fighting Mr. T, the first Mad Max film most Americans had seen (and without dubbing), the movie that launched Arnold Schwarzenegger as an action star, two legendary comedies, and George Romero and Stephen King's homage to EC Comics.

 Okay, so I poked a little fun at the beginning, but it is clear why 1982 was such a rich year for revisiting. Most of those films were regulars at the Howdy household, at least during age-appropriate periods. Some of them were discoveries in high school and in college because of their release in proximity to the rise of home video. It was hard not to know they existed because whether I'd seen them or not, the box covers were at both video stores in town. Filling in the context came later, and being nostalgic for a period that I lived through but couldn't participate in after that. I get why so many geeks of my generation fixate on this particular year.

  But the real takeaway here - other than wishing Conan the Barbarian a happy 30th birthday / anniversary - is that you should see The Boogens. Seriously - it's a pretty good slasher movie with kinda goofy monsters but you don't see them until the very end. It's one of those under represented horror films that deserves its day. And if you're not the horror type - and honestly, if you're reading this blog I don't know how that's possible - there's always Six Pack. Kenny Rogers, Diane Lane, Anthony Michael Hall, Erin Gray, an RV full of orphans and a grizzled stock car racer. Or something like that. It clearly doesn't suck is what I'm saying here.

Retro Review: The YAD Archives (Part Two)

 Welcome back to another special edition of the Retro Review. Today we'll continue looking at a heretofore forgotten collection of reviews from defunct online magazine You're All Doomed. Today I thought it might be fun to take a look at a series of reviews by Professor Murder, titled "Hey Dirtbag!" They range far and wide in the spectrum of cinematic quality, but I continue to laugh at his spoiler for Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

 Disclaimer: The only thing I've changed with these reviews is replacing Professor Murder's actual name with his Blogorium moniker. Trust me, his employers wouldn't want this coming up in a Google search.

HEY DIRTBAG! Go see Resident Evil Apocalypse!
by Professor "The Hammer" Murder

I don’t often like movies based on Comic Books so when I heard about Resident Evil 2 you can only imagine my trepidation. But when one of my friends managed to score a rough cut of the movie directly from the studio, I figured, “What the hey! I’ve got some time to kill so I might as well do this as opposed to something else!” I must warn you however, there are spoilers ahead so when you see the word “SPOILER” in all caps like that, skip it if you don’t wanna know what happens. 

The movie opens with a couple of cops or something riding in a car. They’re jibber-jabbering about some company called umbrella, and how stuff is going wrong with it. Then I hear the word Zombie and my ears perk up. So after a very impressive CGI scene involving the car, the guy who’s driving it ends up on this street that appears abandoned. UNTIL ZOMBIES START TRYING TO EAT HIM. So he freaks out, after realizing he does not have many bullets and runs toward a, quite conveniently placed I might add, Ammo store. The clerk tries to shoot him yadda yadda, and then gets turned into a zombie. Luckily, for The Cop, there’s some ammo and a box of health lying around. He kills the fresh zombie and runs to a nearby Police station or HQ for the uninitiated. This is where the Producers kick it up a notch, because my friend told me that if I go to the DVD menu, and press some buttons, The cop would get a whole bunch of new weapons that he wouldn’t normally get till later into the movie. So, wanting the best for the Cop, I did. THEN HE GOT A FLAME THROWER! AND A GATLIN GUN. AND A BAZOOKA! Or maybe it was a rocket launcher, something like that. The movie was pretty great from

SPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THERE IS A HUGE FREAKING SPIDER IN THE SEWER UNDER THE HQ!

here on out except for one part. Just when the movie hits its cadence as it were, the whole movie starts over with the chick who was riding in the car with the guy cop. Then you have to watch the whole thing over again with a different character. Well, you will if you go see it. I turned it off around there. 

---

Run Ronnie Run

by Professor "The Hammer" Murder

"I recommend it."
-also-
"You can give it some stars or something if you want."

---

HEY DIRTBAG! Go see “Kingpin”
This was from before the Farrelly brothers were known crap perpetrators so I will let it slide as I still really like this movie.
by Professor Muder

Seriously. If you have a girlfriend, go see Kingpin. Even if you do not have a girlfriend, Go See freakin Kingpin because, and I sincerely mean this, it could help you get a girlfriend. Ok. The movie starts out with woody from Cheers in this Bowling Alley. So, there are these girls, they must be around 17 and they’re all giggling and stuff and putting on their bowling shoes and then woody is all “hey what lane am I on?” and the clerk says Lane 32 and He goes “cool”. Now I know this sounds boring, but it is all crucial to the plot line. So then Woody starts bowlin’ and what not and then the guy from those vacation movies who’s not chevy chase shows up with a bottle of Everclear. Well Well Well, thinks the audience, Now this party is getting started! So Woody’s all like “Hey Guy from Vacation! Come compete with me on lane 32, which is right next to these young hotties” which makes the young hotties giggle. SO vacation guy is all, yeah, I’ll come and compete with you but you must remember that I am Amish and mistrust machinery. Woody goes, “yah whatever. Hey. Let’s play this game. I’ll say something to the hotties and then you have to do something to top it.” Vacation guy says “werd.” So they do some stuff and get drunk on everclear and Woody turns out to be a pretty good bowler but at the end he looses his hand in the ball retrieval system and Vacation guy is all “I told you not to trust machinery”

---

Hey Dirtbag!

Did you just rent Van Helsing?

This movie is not so bad… as long as your bullshit goggles are appropriately adjusted. Don’t worry if they aren’t yet… they will be by about five minutes in.  You see It appears that all the universal movie monsters live in the same world and that Van Helsing’s name is not Abraham as “Bram Stoker” would have us believe but rather the far cooler Gabriel. Oh… and then he gets bitten by a werewolf and is really pissed until he realizes the power he can unleash.  Oh yeah also, only werewolves can kill Dræ-kewl. Not to mention the fact that the character who we will for all intents and purposes call ‘Q’ has invented something that can produce light “to the intensity of the sun” but has no idea what to do with it. Idiot. ‘Q’  also gives ‘Gabriel’ a gasoline powered cross bow with which to kill things. Dear Van Helsing, what a great crowsbow you have. The better to kill you with. Fuck the state penn, fuck hos at penn state.

            Kate Beckinsale is always hot. That’s all there is to it. Even when she’s trying to be marginal, she’s still really REALLY hot and she’s not trying to be marginal in this movie. She’s just full on screamin’ hot. I’m up in the MGM coked up PSYCHE! Induce sign language, ordered hot coffee with a Danish. RELAX! whispered “they rap entertainers. I love that pepsi commercial with her. I freakin bought UNDERWORLD because she’s so hot. Plus the movie’s really funny but that’s another story.

            -Professor Murder

Retro Review: The YAD Archives (Part One)

 Greetings, readers. I was considering what I wanted to take a look at from yesteryear, and while I was looking at some old files, the Cap'n found a series of reviews from You're All Doomed magazine, an online publication I was involved in with several friends (and periodic guest bloggers here). While YAD wasn't built for the long haul, I was quite surprised how many reviews of films we posted. Many of them never made their way to my old "From the Vaults" column (the one Retro Reviews replaced), so I thought it might be fun to share some of them over the next few weeks.

 Here's a bit of a disclaimer: these reviews are from six or seven years ago, and they represent an embryonic form of Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium Reviews. I'm going to present them "as is", even if it makes me shudder a little bit. I'd like to hope that my writing has improved since then, but here are some movies from half a decade ago that haven't been covered.

 Other disclaimer: So I don't necessarily agree with the Garden State review anymore, but that's okay. We grow apart from movies sometimes.

 2005

This month:

A Very Long Engagement

Garden State on DVD

We Don't Live Here Anymore

The Forgotten on DVD

Blade Trinity

Flesh Eaters from Outer Space/Invasion for Flesh and Blood Double Feature

A Very Long Engagement

3.5 Stars

Fans of Jean Pierre Jeneut need not worry, A Very Long Engagement is indeed another step forward in his filmography; in fact, those most likely to be disappointed will expect to see something very much like Amelie. They wouldn't be wrong to assume so; after all, Jeneut places Audrey Tatou front and center, and the ads (what little there are) don't to much to explain what this movie is about, and you could easily assume A Very Long Engagement is another love story. Which it is, just in a very different way.

For those of you who have no idea what the plot is, it goes something like this:

5 French soldiers a condemned to death for self-mutilation during World War I. Instead of being executed, the military leaves them in a no-man's zone between French and German trenches to fend for themselves (i.e. face certain death) Audrey Tatou is the bride to be of one of these soldiers, and the bulk of the film is dedicated to her search into what happened to the doomed five.

While love is the glue holding this movie together, Engagement is more of a detective film, slowly piecing together the story of what happened to each man, how their loved ones react to it, and whether any of them survived.

Jeneut throws every trick in his arsenal at us during the film; for starters, since the film takes places in 1920, the film stock is deliberately tinted and scratched,  and much of the framing in wide shots resembles films of the teens and twenties. We're introduced to each of the soldiers and the hilarious (and gruesome) each one commits self mutilation before we know where the movie's going, and I suspect much of how things play out are set up in the opening moments. He also replicates newsreel footage to help with transitions and manipulates the soundtrack to sound scratchy and worn out.

Jeneut also seems to have found his acting counterpart in Tatou; he films her in such a way that you can't help but want her to succeed (to make her even more endearing, the choice was made for her to have polio and walk with a limp) I'd be surprised if we don't see them working together down the line.

Tatou is wonderful playing a very different woman than Amelie Poulain; Mathilde is a girl that's lost almost everything, and her persistence on using coincidences to reaffirm suspicions are used to great effect. Dominique Pinion turns in another touching supporting role as her Uncle, and Jodie Foster (!) speaks better french than I'd imagined. Despite the name appearance, Foster isn't American stunt casting; her role is actually a crucial part of the mystery.

If anything, I had trouble with the ending. Not how it ends, but more how quickly it ends. Don't get me wrong, the movie's a little more than two hours long, but the actual denoument comes about 2 minutes before the credits roll. We find out what happens, and suddenly the movie ends. Otherwise, A Very Long Engagement is fine entertainment for fans of the director.

Garden State

4.5 Stars

If there's one problem with Garden State, it's that the movie is too easy to love. This, understandably, is a minor problem, but waiting a few days between watching it and writing this tone my love of the film considerably.

Don't get it twisted, this is a great movie. Zach Braff put together something truly magic here: We're not just talking Wes Anderson's The Graduate (which, incidentally, is Rushmore), but at the same time, comparisons to Anderson are well made. Braff has a great eye of frame composition. Every shot is full of eye catching detail. And he's got a natural chemistry that makes him easy to relate to.

Admittedly, this isn't the most original idea for a movie, but you really don't mind seeing a movie about finding yourself and true love in the midst of tragedy because of how magnetic the cast is. Along with Braff, Ian Holm brings a subdued, nervous performance of a man who just doesn't understand his son, the always reliable Peter Sarsgard plays the affable loser that wants nothing more to smooth things over so well you tend to forget just how good he is at it. Then there's the revelation: Natalie Portman. I'd been so used to seeing her go half-assed in Star Wars that I forgot that this was the same Natalie Portman that blew everyone away in Leon. She's a force of nature in Garden State, but it's a testament to her talent that she never takes it over the top. This is the type of character that'd tempt some to go way past believable, but you never feel like she isn't a real person (even if that real person is a chronic liar who suffers from siezures. Speaking of which, kudos to Braff for avoiding the easy dramatic device of the free spirit heroine being dragged back to earth with a tragic seizure scene)

Garden State works because everyone involved wants it to, and where most movies would drag or take the easy route, things work so very well because we're invested in the characters.

* I should take a moment to talk about the music. My friend scoffed at my interest in Garden State, calling it "an advertisment for how awesome indie rock is" which, from the tv ads for the soundtrack, isn't that far off base. However, the movie, despite using indie rock as an almost excluse soundtrack, only directly draws attention to the music once. I think it's not as obtrusive as some might expect it to be (think of it as a more subdued version of Simon and Garfunkel's "Graduate" soundtrack)

We Don't Live Here Anymore

4 Stars

I'll keep this short, because the glee in this film is not from the story (which is, in essence about two couples cheating on each other with, well, each other) but the top notch performances from the four leads: Laura Dern, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Krause, and Naomi Watts. This is the kind of movie where the fun is watching four great actors work off of each other, and becoming invested in them. From the short stories of Andre Dubus (In the Bedroom, The House of Sand and Fog). Why this movie came and went I'll never know, but it's most definitely worth tracking down on dvd or video.

The Forgotten (with and without alternate ending)

1 Star

The Forgotten is a movie with nothing worth watching in it. The ads did nothing for me until the VERY end of the trailer, when we see Oz's Lee Tergerson sucked into the sky. along with the cabin around him. That's it. And I should've known that in itself couldn't sustain the movie. Because, guess what folks, this is a twist movie without the twist. What happens is exactly what you'd expect seeing someone sucked into space without any good reason. Fuck it, *SPOILER*, The Forgotten is an ALIEN ABDUCTION MOVIE. And a terrible one at that. The mystery might've been interesting if the payoff wasn't so fucking stupid. No, that's not true, because it's pretty clear about 25 minutes in where this movie is going, and things just get more and more preposterous, with plot holes a mile wide by the time we get to the end.

Oh yeah, the ENDING. The chief differences in the two endings offered on the dvd boil down to this: One has Julianne Moore taking her empowerment back from the alien, the other has him give her the child back. The difference is literally whether she's on the ground or standing up when he loses. (Yes, the means by which she discovers her son are slightly different, but the alternate version is so inept I'll spare you the details) Either way, same stupid happy ending closes the film, implausible though it may be.

If you're wondering, the movie got 1 star for Julianne Moore, Gary Sinise, Alfre Woodard, and Lee Tergeson, who really should've known better. Shame on this fucking movie. Suck!

Speaking of Suck:

BLADE TRINITY IS THE DUMBEST MOVIE OF 2005

I promise. There isn't a movie that could come of during the rest of 2005 that was so blatantly stupid. I'm aghast how something this retarded was commited to film. I mean, David Goyer wrote Blade. He wrote Blade 2. Shit, he wrote Dark City. And you're telling me not only did he write Blade Trinity, he DIRECTED it too? This floating turd? Oh, where to start....

Let's start it this way: in the first couple of minutes, Parker Posey's Vampire Skank gives the Sun the middle finger (seriously) right before they resurrect Dracula (oh, wait, pardon me, DRAKE). Or maybe we could talk about Triple H's mind blowing line delivery of "How the fuck do you know how big my dick is?" Or Ryan Reynolds taking EVERY joke too far. For example:

Parker Posey: Where's the tracking chip?

Ryan Reynolds: In my right buttcheek.

(Triple H punches Ryan Reynolds)

RR: Okay, It's in my left buttcheek.

(Triple H hits him again)

RR: All right. Seriously. It's in the meat of my ass.

PP: Stop it!

Now, I'm not certain of this, but I'm guessing the "stop it" wasn't in the script. I hope the rest of it wasn't, but considering how utterly dopey Blade Trinity is, nothing's certain. This is a movie that takes the Reapers (remember that? The strain of vampires that nearly killed everyone in Blade 2?) and reduces it to Vampire Pomeranians. Seriously. A movie where Dracula goes to a vampire themed store and kills some goth kids. That's it. He just goes in and kills them. It has nothing to do with the plot. How about a blind woman who creates 3D models on her computer? When Wesley Snipes is the least stupid thing about the movie, you know you're in trouble.

Oh yeah, I guess Jessica Biel kicked some ass. You sort of forget about her (unless you're my roommate, but that's another story entirely).

Now, allow me to explain why I'm giving Blade Trinity 4 stars, when The Forgotten only got one.

Blade Trinity is one of "those" movies. The kind of movie that kept MST3K on the air for 10 seasons. You shouldn't see this movie alone. You'll curse my name if you do. But if you get properly ripped on cheap liquior and drive to the $2 theater for a late showing, Blade Trinity will be the funniest shit you've seen in years.

oh, and speaking of which:

I've been using Netflix to rent pretty much any movie I read a dvd review of (courtesy of DVD FILE, DVD JOURNAL or DVD TALK), and the Warren F. Disbrow double feature of "Flesh Eaters from Outer Space" and "Invasion for Flesh and Blood" was so great I went out and bought the fucker. And I promise, a better $11.99 won't be spent on two movies.

These little gems were made in 1988 and 1992. In New Jersey. And the coup de gras, on HOME VIDEO. That's right, Camcorder horror movies. I know, I know, you've been burned before. Camcorder movies always suck. Not so, my friends.

These movies (which, according to the credits are actually called A Taste for Flesh and Blood 1 and 2) make Splatter University look like the crap it is. True, the acting isn't much less inept in these doozies, but there's something endearing about the scope of these no budget chucklers. We're talking about a movie that starts in Space! (Well, a cut out of a space ship over Earth, and a space shuttle on a black rod) And Disbrow never wimps out on excessive gore (the movies have a running joke about a guy getting his dick ripped off) and every other possible cliche you could hit in 90 minutes. The first movie is just kind of stupid, but the lameness keeps you entertained until it's over. The sequel, however, eschews coherence for comedy and sci-fi geekery that only exists in the basement next to a D&D set. There's a sub-plot about two losers driving around town trying to film naked girls for $10,000 apiece. Really, and it's complete with goofy synth music that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. The biggest star in either movie is the Director's Father (also the BEST ACTOR in either movie) Oh wait, I forgot that Marilyn "37" Gighliotti has a cameo in the second movie. The box proudly proclaims "CLERKS MARILYN GIGHLIOTTI", but I promise, Disbrow's father is second only to the monster in reasons to watch this shit. This is the kind of movie to kick back a few brewskis with and laugh your sorry ass off. Oh hell yeah.

Retro Review: Cap'n Howdy's Four Favorite Summer Fest Moments

 After getting the bad news out of the way, let's move on to happier times, shall we? After last year's Horror Fest: A People's History, wherein the Cap'n collected memories from folks who attended the first seven Horror / Summer Fests, I thought that to follow it up with my own favorite moments.

 Summer Fest was always designed to be more on the "fun" side: we'd watch horror comedies, focus less on being scared than being entertained, intentionally or otherwise. The atmosphere at Summer Fest is designed to be looser, less regimented. I like to put a list of movies out there, and adhere to it slightly - that way, you never know what you're going to see on a given night, which gives you incentive to come every day of the fest.

 It's traditionally where we'll try out some kind of new "gimmick": field trips, 3D, guest bloggers, or one of the five moments listed below (that happened after the oral history came into being). They slowly transformed from being all night affairs to include afternoon mini-marathons, as was the case at Summer Fest 3. Listed below, in no particular order, are four memories from Summer Fests 1-3 that stick with me. Many of them are film related, and even the one that isn't directly tied to a movie is an experience I'll never forget (or live down).

4. The First Field Trip - What often gets lost when discussing The Happening's role as our first "field trip" screening was the film that followed it when we got back to The Apartment of Solitude: Plan 9 from Outer Space. The experience of watching The Happening was a jovial one, save for one major issue - the air conditioning was so loud that half of the group couldn't hear the film. While that may sound like a godsend, considering how bad The Happening is, it doesn't help convey just how awful the film is without the wooden line delivery.

 Most of the negative reaction to The Happening comes (I think) from the second time I screened it, during Horror Fest III - it was an unannounced surprise, following the already bad Paul Lynde Halloween Special, and being exposed to something so terrible less than six months later was a bit cruel. That said, I think that during Summer Fest 2, following The Happening with Plan 9 from Outer Space gives you a much better idea of how the Cap'n views M. Night Shyamalan's "B-Movie." The idea was to convey a disasterpiece in its classic and modern forms, and had I not dropped The Happening in out of context four months later, it might not be as infamous as it is now.

 Or not.

 3. Late Nights / Early Mornings - What sticks with me about the first Summer Fest, beyond The Happening, was that it was the last time we consistently watched movies from dusk till dawn. I have vivid memories of being half-awake, watching Shark Attack 3: Megalodon and Friday the 13th Part 2 with Neil and the Cranpire at six in the morning. We'd nod off a little, wake up, nudge each other to catch some unforgettable moment (and there are many in Shark Attack 3), and then try to go on as long as we could before passing out as the sun came up.

 As I get older, it gets harder and harder to stay up all night, and we usually peter out somewhere between two and four a.m., and agree to regroup the following afternoon. During Summer Fest 3, we actually started Saturday at 2 in the afternoon, watching a quadruple feature of Phantasm III, Cheerleader Camp, The Gate, and Thankskilling, then took a dinner break (more on that next) and continued well into the night. Alas, the Cap'n and compatriots aren't as young as we used to be, and no amount of caffeine has been able to alter our curmudgeonly ways. Before too long, I'll be hosting Horror Fest Early Bird Specials, so we can all be in bed by 9. In that respect, it's nice to look back at those barely awake moments of shocks and laughs, aided by sleep deprivation.

 2. The Great McGangbang Experiment - Okay, so I don't think I gave her proper credit at the time, but the Rianimator (and at the time, Dominator) brought the concept of the McGangbang to my attention during Summer Fest 3. They insisted we read an article from Cracked.com about "food for failures," which was so funny that their insistence we try the McDonalds catastrophe seemed like a great idea. There were a handful of intrepid McTaste Testers, and after the matinee feature, we went to get the necessary materials to rock a McGangbang.

 I mentioned this in the original coverage (which has pictures), but the unholy combination of cheeseburger and McChicken sandwich wasn't all that bad. At first. The combination worked, in some illogical way, until your stomach caught wind of what was going on upstairs. Then rebellion began, and with the exception of our intrepid junior Summer Fest attendee, Chris, everyone who finished their McGangbang spent the next two hours in their own personal digestive hell. We had an extra one, thanks to a snafu about who was going to pick them up, but none of the people who arrived after the challenge wanted any part of it, mostly because they could see how miserable we were.

Luckily, iron stomach Chris took the last one home, secretly hoping that we could try the Taco Bell variation some time soon. It's the first food challenge we've ever had at a horror fest (if you don't count trying to drink Bud Light with Clamato or our Wild Irish Rose mixed beverages a challenge), and I don't know if there will ever be another one. If so, it would have a lot to live up to.

 1. Discovery, discovery, discovery - I'm not even sure where to start with this one. My main goal with the Blogorium is to expose people to films they've never heard of or have never considered before. Horror and Summer Fests are an opportunity to move beyond just writing about it and to actually watch those movies with and audience. Sometimes, it may be a film we've seen before that takes on a life of its own (like the Night of the Lepus screening at Summer Fest 1 that became a twenty person version of Mystery Science Theater 3000), but more often it's about films that I've heard of and save for a fest, often without watching them myself. Better still are movies that someone brings to a fest that knock everybody off of their feet.

 I mention Blood Car and Terrorvision a lot on the Blogorium, but would have never known they existed without Neil and Dr. Tom (respectively) bringing them to my attention. That they stand out at their respective fests (Summer Fests 1 and 2) is saying something, considering just how many great movies played those weekends, but it's so. I'd also like to highlight Teeth, The Giant Claw, Fido, Hillbillys in a Haunted House, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, ThanksKilling, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, Drag Me to Hell, and Basket Case, which I hadn't seen to that point. The lost, forgotten, and obscure gems are what keep these festivals interesting to me, or we'd just watch our favorite horror movies over and over again (which we sometimes do).

 In that spirit, if there's a Summer Fest this year, I have many films that I'd never heard of prior to 2011 that should be fun to watch, including The Boogens, Abby, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde, Rubber, Bug, and From Hell It Came that should provide hours of enjoyment. I also have ideas for new "theme" nights, although they might be split up over the next few years, devoted to blaxploitation films, animals gone wild films, and marathons based on actors from Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who (would you believe that I'm working on finding horror movies for as many of the twelve doctors as I can?).

Retro Review: Halloween: H20 and Resurrection

 Originally, I had planned a Retro Review for Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, but  after doing some cursory research on the film I realized that I don't remember Halloween 6 at all. I saw it once, in the fall of 1995, and was surprised to discover Paul Rudd played Tommy Doyle in the film. Until I watch The Curse of Michael Myers again (or can locate the "Producer's Cut" mentioned online), there's really no point in revisiting a film I can't recall.

 Which brings me to Halloween: H20 and Halloween Resurrection, two movies I've barely seen again since the first time I watched them. They did, however, leave a greater impression on my mind than Donald Pleasance's final film appearance, and since I enjoy one of them more than anyone else seems to and really hate the other one, it's fitting to comment on the close of the pre-remake sequels to John Carpenter's Halloween. This one-two punch will leave the Cap'n with only Halloween 3, 5, and 6 to cover in the Blogorium*.

For those of you looking for a series recap, here's one in 60 words or less: Michael Myers kills his family, goes to a sanitarium under the care of Doctor Loomis, escapes, tries to kill Laurie Strode, fails, tries again, is replaced by an evil toy mask manufacturer, returns, tries to kill Laurie's niece Jamie, fails, tries again, fails, tries again, succeeds, but is then foiled by Loomis and a grown up Tommy Doyle**.

 Then there was a three year break, leading us to 1998, twenty years after the first Halloween. We move from Haddonfield, Illinois to somewhere in Northern California, where Keri Tate (Jamie Lee Curtis) is the dean of a private school with her son John (Josh Hartnett) and boyfriend Will (Adam Arkin). The funniest thing is that Keri Tate is a dead-ringer for Laurie Strode, and we discover that (SPOILER ALERT) she IS Laurie Strode. Laurie faked her death to keep Michael from chasing her (which is good, because Michael instead decided to wipe out the rest of her blood relations), and she'd been pretty successful avoiding (SPOILER ALERT AGAIN) her brother for the last twenty years. That is, until Doctor Loomis (the late Donald Pleasance, heard in narration) dies and Michael just happens to find his house and discover exactly where Laurie is. He also kills some kid (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) with an ice skate.

 Anyway, school's out for fall break(?) and Laurie's colleague Norma Watson (Janet Leigh, who is Jamie Lee Curtis' mother, which is technically a SPOILER for family tree detectives. I won't spoil that her father is Tony Curtis. Oh, crap) drives off in a car that looks a lot like Marion Crane (Janet Leigh)'s car from Psycho***. Michael begins stalking the campus, killing off students dumb enough to watch Scream 2 (gee, I wonder why? We'll get to that in a second...), and John and Molly (Michelle Williams) find the bodies and become "next" on the kill list. Unless Laurie, Will, and security guard Ronny (L.L. Cool J) can stop Michael.

 Why am I being so glib about H20? Well, the more I think about the film - based on a treatment by Scream co-creator Kevin Williamson - the stupider it seems. It's funny, because I guess I overlooked how stupid and obvious these references were when I was 19 (something the people who saw it with me did not), and the Cap'n instead focused on the Laurie Strode / Michael Myers story line. To be fair, that is the only thing H20 has going for it: the film decides to pretend that Halloween 4, 5, and 6 never happened****, which you can debate the relative merits of, I guess, in order to focus on the lethal sibling rivalry. The ending, where (SPOILER ALERT) Laurie decapitates an ambulance driver Michael's head is still a satisfying close to their story, one that the following film manages to ruin in the first five minutes.

 It's worth noting that even at the time we were impressed that L.L. Cool J took five or six rounds to the chest from a revolver and walked away at the end of the film. I don't remember if they said he was wearing a vest, but why would a prep school security officer need to?

Anyway, back to the way that Resurrection mangles everything, even making people who didn't like H20 say "well, at least that one didn't kill Laurie Strode." Oh, (SPOILER ALERT). Yeah, in addition to retrofitting H20 so that Michael somehow does a switcheroo with an ambulance driver before Laurie can lop his head off with an axe, they leap forward in time to an asylum where Laurie's been locked up, waiting for Michael to wander in unabated. Sure enough, they tangle, she tries to kill him (hanging? maybe?) but he stabs her or something and she falls from the roof of the asylum in what is the least effective death of a Final Girl since Jason Vorhees followed Alice Hardy back to town for some apartment complex murderin'.

But wait! That's the BEGINNING of Halloween: Resurrection, a movie that gets EVEN WORSE before Busta Rhymes drops some Kung Fu on Michael Myers. That does happen, by the way, and you don't need a SPOILER ALERT because we both know you don't have to watch this film.

So what, pray tell, could the plot of the 8th Halloween film be if the villain kills the Final Girl in the opening of the film? How about a webcam reality show about some stupid contestants wandering around the Myers house? Sound good? Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes) and Nora Winston (Tyra Banks) sure thought so, and their web company, DangerTainment, is sponsoring this MTV's Fear knock-off. A group of college students (including Katee Sackhoff, Sean Patrick Thomas, and Thomas Ian Nichols) who "won" the chance to be on this show, wander around the house looking for clues about Michael Myers. Want to guess who has nowhere else to go after he killed his sister? Want to guess who isn't happy to find people in his childhood home? Want to place bets on whether a charred Michael Myers opens his eye for the final stinger in this turdstorm of a sequel?

The 19 year-old Cap'n may have been kind to H20, but the 23 year-old knew he hated Resurrection well before the halfway point. I remember not liking Halloween 6, but that's not as clear to me as the hatred for the last gasp of the Halloween franchise after Miramax squeezed everything left out in 2002. In retrospect, had I watched Resurrection again before Rob Zombie's Halloween, I might have been kinder, even with all of the idiotic "I'm gonna skullfuck you" dialogue. It's like the Weinstein brothers perceived a certain formula from H20 (a handful of "hot" young actors from better movies*****, a popular rapper, some referential dialogue, and whatever the newest fad was) and recycled it into a crappier version, a xerox of Kevin Williamson's already growing stale pop culture screenplays.

 Halloween: Resurrection is what people are complaining about when they talk about how awful sequels are, and devoid of the one consistent narrative thread between the first seven films (okay, six, since Halloween III isn't about Michael or his family tree), there's nothing worth investing your time in. I honestly can't say I've seen a moment of the film since we saw it on the big screen, and I know I've watched parts of H20 on cable. If one was on, the other one must have been at some point. After part 8, there was a five year layover, and then Zombie took over. At the time I write this, Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer (My Bloody Valentine 3-D, Drive Angry) have pitched a Halloween 3D to the Weinsteins that they may eventually get to after rebooting Hellraiser (you read that right), but for now, at least I can say that Rob Zombie's Halloween 2, for as many detractors as it has, is a MUCH better movie than Halloween Resurrection, and it's probably better than H20. Now who would've thought I'd ever say that?



*For write-ups of Halloween (kind of), Halloween II, Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween the Remake and Halloween 2 the Remake, follow the respective links.
** This much I gathered from IMDB's coverage of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.
*** SPOILER: It IS Marion Crane's car from Psycho.
**** In the interest of fairness, Williamson's original draft did include 4,5, and 6 as continuity, and writers Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg wisely dropped the subplot.
**** And by that I mean American Pie and Save the Last Dance, and eventually Sackhoff would be in Battlestar Galactica but I'm not giving Bob and Harvey any credit for that one...

Retro Review: Cabin Fever

Today the Cap'n will be looking back at a more recent film I have an interesting history with, Eli Roth's Cabin Fever. As the film was partially shot in North Carolina (Mocksville, Danbury, Winston-Salem, and High Point), there was a big to-do made of its release in 2003 at The Carousel in Greensboro: the lobby was covered with camping-related paraphernalia, the insides of the candy displays tainted with bloodstains, and production stills and press information were abundant. I remember this because I saw the film with a soon-to-be roommate in a packed auditorium of gorehounds looking for their horror fix.

And they got it, in abundance: Cabin Fever is, whatever else it may strive to be, an effective and mostly disgusting horror film. In that respect, I recall being impressed with Roth's first feature length film. As I wrote in a 2003 recap:

Cabin Fever - Eli Roth learned a thing or two from Evil Dead. That's crucial to understanding the marketing behind this low budget gem. Cabin Fever is atypical of horror movies, and that bugs a lot of horror fans, but this isn't quite a scare fest. It's a genre bender, pitting the cast of a Teen Sex Comedy in a Cabin in the Woods Horror Movie. While it has problems (the movie doesn't know where to end and stumbles a bit in the final act), it's nevertheless a nice first film to build a career of off, and they marketed the shit out of this movie (when i went to see it, great steps were made to replicate set pieces, "authentic" paraphernalia, etc.) plus it doesn't look as cheap as it was to make, and there are some wonderful nods to past cheapie thrillers.

My compatriot hated the movie. In fact, he still hates the movie, for reasons I can't fault him for. After talking about Cabin Fever several times, I almost totally flipped on the mixed-to-positive review and decided that the film's weaknesses overcame its strengths. I convinced myself that the Peter Jackson blurb on the poster (and subsequent DVD and Blu-Ray releases) was hyperbolic, and that the film's seriously uneven tone rendered the whole experience moot.

But that wasn't the end for me; for whatever reason, I couldn't shake Cabin Fever, couldn't totally sell myself on the write-off, even if there are serious problems with the movie (which I promise I will actually get to in a moment). So I picked up a used rental copy from Hollywood Video (or Blockbuster, I can't recall), and watched it again. I had the same mixed reaction, and ended up selling the movie when money got tight. But then I'd see it used again somewhere when things weren't so rough. Friends began poking fun at me, asking why I'd keep buying "something you hated"? I didn't have a good answer, so I watched Cabin Fever again last night, for the first time in three or four years.

The damnedest thing is that for 90% of the film, Eli Roth made a really good horror film. Yes, it has lots of little nods to The Evil Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Burning, and Friday the 13th, but beyond that Roth has the essentials down pat in constructing a solid horror film. He sets up the stakes well, isolates the characters, provides semi-credible reasons why the college students partying in the cabin might have trouble finding help nearby, ratchets up the gore in a disturbing way, and sets the characters against each other without ever feeling forced.

What doesn't work, the other 10% (with one exception), happens either before they're introduced to the virus or after they try to get back to town. Everything in between the set-up and the closing works fine, save for the introduction of Deputy Winston (Giuseppe Andrews), a moment so atypical of the rest of the film, so reminiscent of Twin Peaks (not coincidentally, as Roth worked for David Lynch prior to Cabin Fever) right down to the specially written Angelo Badalamenti theme, that it grinds the horror to a halt.

The rest of the major issues come at critical points in setting up or resolving characters, which is why Cabin Fever leaves many with a bad taste in their mouths. I will provide a handy list, which is vaguely spoiler, although at this point in the review I'm taking it on faith you've already seen the film:

- Bert (James DeBello) and the "squirrel shooting" scene.
- The harmonica guy.
- The really fake deer.
- The lines "because they're gay," "don't be gay," and "what are you, retarded?"
- The "pancakes" kid, his dad, and the strangely effeminate store owner.
- Actually, just about everything that happens at the General Store.
- Marcy (Cerina Vincent)'s opening speech about college.
- A misleading racist joke at the beginning of the film that has a payoff at the end that, at best, feels disingenuous.

I'm torn about Grim, Eli Roth's stoner interloper that shows up right after Bert, Marcy, Paul (Rider Strong), Jeff (Joey Kern), and Karen (Jordan Ladd) show up at the cabin. On the one hand, there's nothing really funny about his stupid dog joke or the fact that he really only exists so that there's one more body for Paul to find. His dog, Doctor Mambo, could have been anybody's around the lake and the threat would be just as credible. On the other hand, I did laugh at how stupid the dog joke is (sorry, I won't spoil that one for you), and it makes up for the random and sort of pointless "bowling alley" story that Paul tells at the campfire.

The problem is that the tone of everything listed above is so incongruous with the rest of the film, so decidedly quirky, that it disrupts the horror, and not in a good way. I'm all for breaking the tension with a well placed joke (Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson do it masterfully), but the "jokes" in Cabin Fever aren't so much funny as they are really strange. They don't seem to belong in the same universe as the horror film we're watching, and their presence while audiences settle and and right before they leave do undermine the rest of the movie, which is, again, really good.

I am aware that the Blu-Ray of Cabin Fever is a director's cut, one that apparently smooths over the jagged edges of the film, and having watched it again and (mostly) enjoyed the experience, I think I'll look into that cut. While I can't find any fault in the criticisms of the Cabin Fever I saw then and again tonight, there is enough of a pretty damn good horror movie inside to keep me from dismissing it again.

Oh, by the way: while it's not apparently on the Blu-Ray, the DVD has an extra called "Chick Vision" that raises a pair of silhouetted hands over the screen during "scary" parts, and it's actually kind of fun in small doses. I don't know that I could watch the whole film that way, but it might be fun for parties.