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Dope. I simply loved it because of the references and shout outs to the first in the franchise. The chair scene from the original being brought back got my blood pumping so fast.
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I Spit on Your Grave
Directed by Steven R. Monroe.
2010. Rated R, 108 minutes.
Cast:
Sarah Butler
Jeff Branson
Andrew Howard
Daniel Franzese
Rodney Eastman
Chad Lindberg
Tracy Walter
Mollie Milligan
Saxon Sharbino
Jennifer Hills (Butler) is a novelist about to begin to working on her next book. She looks a little young to be on a “next” book but nevermind my ignorant biases. To get some solitude in which to work she rents a cabin way out in the middle of nowhere. She plans on staying there for several months…all alone…dun dun dun duuuunnnnn. Lost, she stops for gas and directions. While there she laughingly dismisses Johnny (Branson), the local yokel who hits on her. Over the next few days, Ms. Hills writes a little, drinks a lot and here’s plenty of things go bump in the night. Meanwhile, Johnny stews over being rejected thanks in no small part to lots of teasing from his buddies. At some point during all this one of them sneaks up to the cabin and gets some footage of our girl in her undies. After getting a look at this Johnny and the boys spring into far more deplorable action. Just so you’re up to speed, this ragtag bunch is made up of Johnny, the big guy who always has his video camera rolling (Eastman), the guy who thinks he’s handsome (Franzese) plus the mentally challenged and constantly reluctant Matthew (Lindberg). Much to Jennifer’s chagrin, they are soon joined by the town sheriff (Howard). A gang-rape ensues. Make that two gang-rapes.
Horror and revenge movie buffs are keenly aware that this is a remake of the cult-classic 1978 flick sometimes known by the same name. It also goes by its original title Day of the Woman. It might be one of the earliest entries into the genre that would eventually come to be called torture porn. The plots of the two films are identical. What the choose to emphasize is not. The three acts of both are as follows: 1) spend a little time with the heroine in and around the cabin while the boys work themselves into a lather 2) gang-rape and 3) revenge. Where the original loses people, and perhaps gains others, is the excruciating detail and protracted length of the rape scenes. We watch this poor girl being brutalized in uncomfortably realistic fashion for an overwhelmingly large chunk of the movie. Though the whole movie is fairly short, her dehumanization seems to go on for hours. This is why many have labeled the original one of the most depraved films ever made.
The remake takes a different path. We still get the rape scenes and they’re still plenty unsettling. However, they feel shorter in this version and certainly more stylized with fadeouts, echoing voices and the such. They’re enough to make the point and access our appetite for blood. The real emphasis is not only on her revenge, but how she gets it. By the way, I don’t consider anything I’ve written a spoiler. Knowing what happens is irrelevant to this movie. The question is: Do you want to see how it happens. To this end, each of her assailants is made to suffer mightily before their demise. In an interesting twist, the way she disposes of them has something do with either their personality or their role during the rape. Gore hounds will love it since we get into some pretty gross territory, here.
This brings me to my biggest technical gripe with I Spit. I’ll only speak of the technical side because the debating the morals and ethics of this movie could take several days with no resolution. A lot of what Jennifer does obviously required lots of moving unconscious men around over various distances. All of them are heavier than her, by quite a bit in some cases. In at least one instance, probably two, lifting appears to be involve. Unless she has the help of a movie crew (wink), it seems highly improbable, if not impossible she’d be able to do these things. I know, it’s a movie so roll with it, right?
After we’ve been disturbed to our core, the question remains. Is it any good? That depends on your tolerance for the sheer sadism of the acts depicted. Like the original, it fancies itself a “girl-power” movie. However, I can’t imagine either appealing to the majority of women. Is it better than its predecessor? I’d say they’re roughly the same, giving a slight edge to the original. Taken for what they try to be, I enjoy both. For exactly the same reason you may hate them.
MY SCORE: 7/10
Read my review of the original hereComment
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In case you haven't noticed I've been heavy on horror this month...it is that time. Getting down the nitty gritty of it, now...Comment
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Die Hard Dracula
Directed by Peter Horak.
1998. Not Rated, 90 minutes.
Cast:
Bruce Glover
Denny Sachen
Kerry Dustin
Ernest M. Garcia
Chaba Hrotko
Tom McGowan
Nathalie Huot
Talia Botane
Peter Horak
John Slavic
Art Vanik
In case you didn’t get the full impact, let’s start by talking about that title. Die Hard is one of the most beloved action franchises of all time. Bruce Willis built an entire career on the success of that series. Without doing any research to substantiate this, I believe there have been more incarnations of Dracula than any other character in cinematic history. Even if you’ve somehow never seen a Die Hard movie or a vampire flick you still can’t possibly go into a movie named Die Hard Dracula expecting it will be any good. I didn’t. I went in wanting to see just how bad it would be.
To kick things off we’re given a brief history of Vlad Dracul AKA Vlad the Impaler. This little portion ends with fast forwarding 300 years from his death late in the 16th century. Here’s where we get our first hilariously bad moment. Vlad…ahem…Dracula wakes up, grumbles about not being able to take it anymore and his coffin lifts off the floor, busts out of his tomb and takes off flying across the countryside while “Ride of the Valkyries” blares from the speakers. Oh my, this might even be worse than I’d imagined. Yes!
The coffin lands in a vacant castle in Moravia. The king chase some random chick there and stabs her right on top of the coffin. Dracula wakes up again, kills the guy and brings the girl back by turning her into a vampire. We fast forward again to “present day” California. We meet Steve. The first thing we realize it that he’s played by a really bad actor (Denny Sachen). He’s the worst of the three very bad actors in this scene. Of course, this means he has the biggest part of the trio. Anyhoo, Steve loses his girlfriend to a water-skiiing accident. Distraught over her death, he decides to go to Europe on a little vacay. After a few drunken nights he wanders around and somehow finds himself in…Dun dun dun DUUUNNNN...Moravia. He meets Carla (Dustin) which totally freaks him out because she looks exactly like his dead girlfriend. Even creepier, Carla also drowned. It just so happens that the falling star Steve saw and wished upon when he was back home struck Carla’s casket and brought her back to life. Uh-huh. This has nothing to do with anything else in the movie, but I’d thought I’d mention it. Well, it has a little relevance. Apparently, her resemblance to his girlfriend helps the two fall quickly and madly in love.
Anyhoo, the locals have figured out that Dracula is slinking around, munching on peasant girls. I almost forgot to mention that for some unexplained reason he appears in three different guises in human form. One is normal looking, one like a walking corpse and one even worse than that. No, there is no rhyme or reason for which way he’ll look during a given scene. Of course, they do the same thing everyone else in movies seems to do. They call in Dr. Van Helsing (Glover). Since the actual locals are too chicken to help the doc out, he recruits Steve. What follows is Van Helsing and Steve making repeated attempts to kill the vampire and failing miserably.
We have to forgive our would-be heroes for their lack of success. These boys have a lot to overcome. We’re told Dracula can go out in daytime so long as he’s not struck by direct sunlight, but we find out the sun seems to have no effect on him at all. We’re told he can be killed by silver bullets, but we find out that doesn’t actually work (I thought that was werewolves, anyway). Anytime they stick something in his chest he just pulls it out and keeps going. The thing that seems to hurt him the most is the dentist yanking out one of his fangs. Yup, Dracula actually makes and goes to an appointment with the dentist just like us regular folk. I wish I was making this up. Well, yanking out a fang doesn’t kill him, only pisses him off. He’s invincible. They even chop his head off, which we’re also told will kill him. No problem. He just screws the damn thing back on. I guess Die Hard Dracula is a good title after all.
Through all the shenanigans we’re blessed with some of the worst dialogue you’ll ever hear. To say it’s cheesy is an insult to cheesy dialogue. I’m talking stuff my 11 year old daughter would write then ball up the paper and throw it in the trash for being too corny. It doesn’t help that the acting is all over the place. Glover as Van Helsing and the three guys that play Dracula ham it up pretty good, delightfully overacting. Yes, they actually use a different guy for each of Dracula’s looks. Why? Who knows. I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with anything you actually see on the screen. Oops. It’s actually four guys. They have another guy that does the voice. One more thing: Glover is actually the father of Crispin Glover. He’s got a list of credits longer than my arm that includes some of the most beloved TV shows of all time (The Six Million Dollar Man, The Dukes of Hazard, Mission: Impossible and Kojak to name a few) and a few well known movies (Chinatown and Diamonds Are Forever among them). I’m not sure how he ended up here. I have three theories I’m deciding between: 1) he was desperately in need of money (but can’t imagine he made any on this) 2) he was friends with the director and 3) someone had pictures of him naked with farm animals.
The rest of the cast ranges from really bad to Steve’s nearly catatonic reading of lines. He makes Keanu Reeves look like James Cagney. As far as other production values go, well, I’ll just say that I could tell they used several different types of cameras during camcording…er…filming. If you’re a lover of bad movies this one should be on your must-see list. It’s so bad, it’s awesome!
MY SCORE: -10/10Comment
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Insidious
Directed by James Wan.
2010. Rated PG-13, 103 minutes.
Cast:
Rose Byrne
Patrick Wilson
Ty Simpkins
Barbara Hershey
Lin Shaye
Leigh Whannell
Angus Sampson
Andrew Astor
Ruben Pla
Meet the Lamberts. They’ve just moved into a big pretty house. Almost immediately things start going bump in the night…and sometimes during the day, too. Mom Renai (Byrne) notices things the most. She whimpers and cries a lot. Dad Josh (Wilson) is almost perpetually on his way out the door and sleeps fairly hard do he doesn’t notice anything at all. Their oldest son Foster (Astor) says he’s scared once then we hardly ever see him again. I guess Hollywood is compliant with child labor laws after all. Speaking of which, there is an infant who’s name I can’t recall. She’s also sensitive to the strange happenings and cries almost as much as her mother. Finally, there’s middle-child Dalton (Simpkins). He seems to be the target of all this paranormal activity. See what I did there? Smooth, huh? He bumps his head, sees something scary and a day or two later slips into a coma. The doctor says it’s not really a coma. He doesn’t know what it is, but whatever. Mom and Dad bring Dalton home so he can be in his own bed during his not-coma and weird things keep going on.
Before I go any further, let’s talk about this house. It’s a gorgeous house with at least two floors of living space plus an attic. All of the rooms are huge including a living room in which their piano looks small. For a family of five, with the parents presumably in their thirties, it’s pretty much a dream house. Mom is an aspiring but non-paycheck earning songwriter. What does Dad do? He’s gotta be a young hotshot exec at some highly successful company, right? No. maybe he’s a lawyer or a doctor? Try again. Pat yourself on the back if you said school teacher. I’m not talking professor at a prestigious university. I’m talking middle-school. Uh-huh. Let’s move on.
As they tend to do in such movies, the noises and sightings intensify. Unable to take it any longer, Mom demands the family move immediately. The very next day, or so it appears, the Lamberts are moving into a smaller but still very nice house they’re leasing according to the sign on the lawn. Seriously, what district does this dude teach in? Anyhoo, in their new-new home there’s more random noises and sightings of grumpy looking dudes stomping around. Who ya gonna call? Momma-in-law (Hershey) has been hanging around the new-new place and is seeing stuff, too. She calls Ghostbusters, sort of. It’s really Elise (Shaye) who is a friend of hers who has a pair of geeky employees with lots of equipment. Long story short, we get the revelation we either figured out on our own or already knew because it’s in the trailer. Lady, it ain’t the house. It’s that little snot-nose that’s been lying in bed for the last 40 minutes of this flick. I won’t tell what happens after that because then we’d be getting into spoilers. It’s far beyond me to totally ruin a movie watching experience for you. Maybe.
I will do what I’m here for. I’ll tell you how I feel about all this. If you’ve ever seen a haunted house movie, this one will be less than thrilling. It is even more derivative than most. It feels like a mashup of Paranormal Activity and The Amityville Horror with a heaping helping of Poltergeist thrown in. At this point, the entire sub-genre can only be so creative. This one merely regurgitates what it got from those others without the tension carrying over. It never grabs you. The whole thing feels more hokey than scary. It doesn’t help that this set of apparitions is comparatively impotent. They pace back and forth, hide in corners and occasionally reach for someone. Sadly, it’s painfully obvious they’ll never get there. Worse, they look like they know they’ll never get there. The last scenes provide some intrigue and is a decent setup for a sequel. It’s just not a sequel I’m particularly anxious for.
MY SCORE: 5/10Comment
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Patrick Wilson is one of the few actors/actresses that immediately turns me off to his films.Comment
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You've been doing this thread consistently for nearly three years...holy shit. Now that's commitment.
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The Strangers
Directed by Bryan Bertino.
2008. Rated R, 88 minutes
Cast:
Liv Tyler
Scott Speedman
Gemma Ward
Kip Weeks
A group of masked strangers terrorize a young couple at their summer home in the woods. The movie works hard to extract fear and dread from the tension of the situation and resists the urge to compile a bunch of cheap jump-scares or use a lot of gore. Liv Tyler proves to be a capable scream queen. Unlike much of his other work, Scott Speedman actually appears lifelike.
Our bad guys can get in and out of the house apparently at will yet still resort to cheap "scary" tactics like axing the front door. They can also control sound, I guess. They make extremely loud noises sometimes, which I get. What I don't get is they also do some things in silence that should be audible for at least half a mile. This gives them a superhuman quality that isn't needed. It makes the grave mistake of telling us the ending at the beginning. That has worked in lots of movies but in this instance it renders the whole thing pointless. It tells you what's going to happen and then spends the next hour and a half barrelling towards that inevitable conclusion without any mystery as to how we're going to arrive there. Therefore, an ending that could've been shocking, disturbing or some other awesome -ing is left impotent, or more accurately limp from its pre-mature activity.
It's actually a pretty good watch at home, at night, in the dark because the possibility of the situation is one most of us have at least thought about once or twice. However, it's not as good as it should be. Horror fans give it a look but don't expect the next great thing.
MY SCORE: 5.5/10Comment
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I feel like thats becoming the tell-tale sign of a bad to average movie, starts off with a scene from later in the stroy and back tracks.
Easily the worst recent offender of this was Skyline. Jumped ahead like 15 minutes into the story, retracked for an intro into cliche characters than was right back were the movie started. Avoid that turd at all costs DellComment
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Trick 'r Treat
Directed by Michael Dougherty.
2007. Rated R, 82 minutes.
Cast:
Anna Paquin
Brian Cox
Dylan Baker
Rochelle Aytes
Quinn Lord
Lauren Lee Smith
Moneca Delain
Leslie Bibb
Our saga begins with Laurie (Bibb) and her husband arriving home from a night of Halloween fun. Their house has been decorated for the holiday and she wants to clean up. Horny hubby has other ideas. He throws a temper tantrum until the wife tells him to go upstairs and “put on the tape.” He happily jaunts up to the bedroom and pops in some porn while anxiously awaiting his lovely lady. Apparently needing to psych herself up, Laurie decides to stay downstairs and do some cleaning before giving her man a mercy-lay. As is often the case in horror movies, she hears a few strange noises and suddenly finds herself all sorts of murdered. That’s the end of story number one. Sorta.
After the opening credits, we’re told it’s “earlier.” Yeah, it’s one of those. Sometimes it’s earlier, sometimes later and pretty much impossible to keep up with. That doesn’t matter, we’re here for the killin’. To that end, a few more stories set themselves up. There’s the grade school principal who’s also a serial killer, a group of early teens in search of the truth behind a local urban legend, some college aged young ladies trying to get the one virgin among them laid and eventually, the principal’s neighbor meets a trick-or-treater. Other than happening in the same small town on the same night, the stories aren’t related. Well, two pairs do form as the stories intertwine somewhat. Even then, they aren’t really related, just sharing a character. Thankfully, they all end with that killin’ we’re here for.
Individually, each tale has a fair share of intrigue. They’re well told and all of them are twisted. However, the lack of cohesion works against it. Instead of watching a movie, it can occasionally feel like we have a severe case of ADD. We’re just jumping back and forth with no rhyme or reason. This creates the movie’s biggest problem. When it’s all said and done, it feels like a pointless affair. So, while it has lots of very interesting things going on, it never quite comes together.
MY SCORE: 6/10Comment
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Halloween (1978)
Directed by John Carpenter.
1978. Rated R, 91 minutes.
Cast:
Jamie Lee Curtis
Donald Pleasance
P. J. Soles
Charles Cyphers
Kyle Richards
Brian Andrews
John Michael Graham
As a youngster Michael Myers kills his older sister on Halloween night and is put into a mental institution. Fifteen years later, again on Halloween night, Michael escapes and heads back to his hometown.
This is one of those rare movies that helped create a genre. In this case, that genre is the modern-day slasher flick or more specifically DTMs or dead-teenager-movies. Yes, there were slasher flicks, even DTMs before this but this provided the template for not only a host of sequels but also a slew of imitators that are still being made over 30 years later. As far as the actual movie, it uses some effective tension building methods that maintain a creepy feel to the movie even though not much actually happens over the first half of the film. Most notably these include the now-you-see-him-now-you-don't moments of the killer himself and the use of what I believe is one of the most effective scores in the history of cinema. Of course, things get fun when the bodies start piling up over the latter part of the movie.
The script cuts alot of corners. Its done in part to tighten the movie by keeping the run-time down. It's also done in part to keep from explaining things. For instance, how does this doctor seem to know what Michael Myers is thinking even though we're told he hasn't spoken a word since the night he killed his sister? Because what he sees in Myers' eyes is "pure EVIL", of course. How very scientific of you doc. There are more things in a similar vein so I could see why a remake would want to flesh things out. Unfortunately, Halloween establishes one of the slasher genre's main weaknesses right off the bat: the acting is nothing to write home about. Then scream-queen Jamie Lee Curtis isn't bad, you can see why she went on to bigger and better things. The rest of the cast is functional at best. By functional I mean they're slightly better than sounding like they're reading, except for Donald Pleasance as the doctor who just over-acts. However, all of that is forgivable especially given the same things still occur in horror movies so it doesn't even seem dated. What is laughable though is the way our bad guy fails to kill Jamie Lee Curtis (seeing how she's appeared in a few of the sequels and the movie is over 30 years old I don't think I'm spoiling anything). Honestly, more than once Myers has Jamie Lee at point blank range without her even aware of him, yet he misses her with a knife that has a blade on it the size of my forearm.
If you're a fan of horror movies, see this one if you haven't already. It's a classic within the genre and deserves to be seen. Definitely take a look if you plan on seeing the remake. I always recommend seeing the original, preferably before the remake. If you've already seen the remake but not the original, go back and see what they working with. If you're not a horror fan then skip it. The truth is it's a great slasher flick, among the best ever but not really a great movie in the grand scheme of things. There is a big difference between the two.
MY SCORE: 7.5/10Comment
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Halloween (2007)
Directed by Rob Zombie.
2007. Rated R, 111 minutes.
Cast:
Malcolm McDowell
Daeg Faerch
Tyler Mane
Sheri Moon Zombie
William Forsythe
Scout Taylor-Compton
Hanna Hall
Danielle Harris
Danny Trejo
John Carpenter’s Halloween is widely regarded as one of the greatest horror movies ever made. It is undeniably one of the most influential and imitated movies of all time. Every slasher flick that followed owes it a huge debt of gratitude. Without it, there may not have been a Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street. That it would be remade was inevitable. Musician turned director Rob Zombie tackles the task.
To Zombie’s credit, he’s not content with merely doing a spot-on remake with updated wardrobes. He truly tries to make it his own. He does this by taking us deep into the world of the iconic slaughterer of teens. We first meet Mikey (Faerch) when he is just a wee lad, albeit one with a penchant for killing small animals. Very tired of how people treat him, he graduates from animals to humans. Through a startingly realistic series of events, he kills four people who make the error in judgment of pissing him off. We then spend some time with him in a mental institution, both at the beginning and end of his stay. Eventually, we get to the point that serves as the starting point for the original, his escape from the institution and subsequent return home. This constitutes the first half of our feature and it is spectacular film-making. It’s much more brutal, unflinching character study than true horror. Since it revolves around a child committing some hellacious acts, all of which are graphically depicted, it’s all sorts of unsettling. The magic of it is that through the mayhem of his life, we feel bad for Mikey. Like we do about most children who come from adverse circumstances, we feel his life could’ve been different. It could’ve been better. We see points where small changes my have made a world of difference.
During Michael’s escape, something happens that eats away at the movie. His humanity is quickly and completely stripped away. All of the empathy the film had been working so hard to build up comes tumbling down due to his final encounter with the guard played by Danny Trejo. This is an occasion where predictable would’ve been a good thing. Had the expected thing happened, basically the opposite of what actually does, it would’ve maintained our feelings for him going forward. Instead, the director’s nihilism got the best of him. From this point on Michael Myers (Mane) is once again a faceless monster we’ve no attachment to.
This brings us to the second half. From here we get a mechanical but truncated remake of the original. Things keep happening at a rapid rate so we’re never bored. The problem is our emotional involvement has taken a nosedive. The reason for this is two-fold. I’ve already explained the first part of it. The other part is this shortened second act. We meet the people of present day Haddonfield that Michael will shortly terrorize. However, we don’t know them. We don’t care about them. They are merely the bodies in various stages of undress that our killer will mutilate. Like all the best movies in the franchise, the original isn’t about Michael Myers. It is about Laurie Strode, the Jamie Lee Curtis character now played by Scout Taylor-Compton and the terror he cast upon her. We felt for her. We were scared with her. This time around we couldn’t give a flip about her. It wouldn’t be an issue if we still cared about Michael but we don’t. In the blink of an eye he went from a scarred, misguided and dangerous child to a superhuman behemoth who’s only function is viciously killing anyone in his path.
Rob Zombie’s Halloween is a hard movie to judge. The first hlf alone makes it worth seeing. It contains some of the best storytelling of any American horror flick perhaps of the 21st century. The second half is stilly visually exciting, but leaves us flat as the boogeyman coldly moves from victim to victim. Murder is a gruesome but clinical and joyless task he must continuously perform for our morbid pleasure. The director gave us Mikey and created a soft spot in our hearts for a child who can’t seem to help but lash out in ways fatal to others when he’s angered. Then, Mikey was snatched away. In his place, we were given the machine known as Michael Myers.
MY SCORE: 7.5/10
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I dont remember the version its under, but you obviously watched the other one because
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