REVIEW: In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Director: John Carpenter

Starring: Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jurgen Prochnow

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113409/

As we all know, John Carpenter is a man of many wonders, and has crafted some awesome movies like Halloween, The Thing, Escape from New York and many other 1980s classics. But also worthy of praise is his 1994 surreal psychological horror film In the Mouth of Madness, which I have seen half a dozen times and it just gets more and more nuts every time.

It’s about a guy named John Trent (Sam Neill) who makes a living debunking frauds. He’s quite happy doing it, until a crazy guy with a gun attacks him in broad daylight. He’s then approached by a book publishing company who has lost their biggest cash cow, Sutter Cane, who is purportedly bigger than Stephen King – tall words indeed. They want Trent to go find Cane, which he undertakes rather reluctantly, as he thinks the man is a hack. A sentiment which I’m sure is not at all colored by the fact that the bald man who attacked him before was actually Cane’s agent. He approaches it looking for a fraud on the part of the agency. It is a classic horror movie plot of a skeptic learning to believe, through horrific and depraved means - a cautionary tale, if you will.

But eventually, he does relent, accompanied by Cane’s editor, a woman named Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) who he doesn’t quite get along with. After piecing together a ridiculous puzzle from the covers of Cane’s books, Trent is convinced that it’s a real town called Hobb’s End, after one of the ones in Cane’s books. This…is the last even remotely normal scene in the movie. After this scene, things just get nuts.

What makes this movie work is the directing, which is sort of playful, like a cat toying with a mouse. It has a very unique, darkly humorous vibe to a lot of the scenes, even though there is little, if any, actual humor in the writing. Everything feels very surreal and off-kilter in a way like whoever made this bizarre world is laughing at us for getting lost in it. I’m not trying to say this is an art-flick, or abstract in any way – it is surreal and weird solely in what happens to the characters, and the way the film bludgeons the viewer with each new situation.

I think this is sort of a potpourri of horror movie clichés jumbled up into a fine, spiced curry that is hard to call derivative, because every influence and cliché is used in a new way. And even moreso, it’s almost like the movie has intruded on the set of another movie at times. There are a lot of strange things going on in Hobb’s End, but almost none of them are actually the focus of what Trent is going through. Like there are some scenes of an old lady in a hotel who butchers her husband. And another scene of the town villagers go to the church and confront this evil dark force, or something – just cool stuff like that. This is quite a marvelous deconstruction of a lot of horror tropes, mutating them into something entirely new.

But really the meat of why this is so viscerally entertaining is the tons of shocks and thrills it throws your way, with no regard for your sanity at all. At its most base level this movie is good because it continually throws ridiculously insane and twisted imagery at you, and you will feel like you are quite literally going insane along with John Trent, the poor bastard. There’s one scene where his female companion undergoes quite an eye-popping physical transformation that's pretty much insane. This is almost hard to watch at times because of all the mind-shattering twists and turns it takes, but then, you really, really want to see what happens, so you can’t stop watching.

I won’t spoil too much of this film for you. So go see it, people! I’m doing you a favor by not spoiling any of the great scenes in this! Recommended, by the way.

REVIEW: Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings (1994)

This movie has hurt me. It has hurt me so deeply that I can think of only one course of action! I will summon the ancient vengeance demon known as PUMPKINHEAD to wreak havoc on everyone involved in this movie. He will tear their arms from their sockets and tear their heads off! Revenge will be mine even if I have to suffer all the pain upon myself for it…well, on second thought, that doesn’t sound so good. Why don’t I look over this film again before such a drastic conclusion?

Director: Jeff Burr

Starring: Andrew Robinson, Ami Dolenz

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110913/

“This beats the hell out of delivering mail!”

-A guy clearly not talking about the movie at hand

It kicks off with a flashback to the 50s, which, as we all know, was the decade where everything was actually sepia-toned. An old lady in a bonnet cooks something out of a cauldron – well, I guess George Foreman grills weren’t around yet so they needed something – and feeds it to her mentally deformed mutant crack baby. Maybe he and Jason should have a play-date sometime.

So then a group of kids with 50s style hair, led by a guy that could probably stunt-double for Ray Liotta, drive up and decide to have their daily party-on-the-side-of-the-road party. Oh what fun it will be! They chase down the mutant crack baby through the woods, mugging to the camera all the while, and kill him brutally. This whole scene could easily be improved by adding the Benny Hill theme.

We then switch to the modern day where some doofus is getting ready for his first day as town sheriff, a position which he got even though he has apparently been gone from the town for years. He says it’s the perfect job because there’s no crime or gangs or anything in the town. But then he also says that he hopes their rebellious teenage daughter won’t get into any trouble. Did he just…magically forget what he just said?

He gets a shot for some reason, as I guess all sheriffs need rabies shots in this town (a fact I came to find more sensible after seeing the rest of this stupid film), and the mayor comes in. The mayor is a ridiculous looking 90s caricature with a bizarre suit/mullet combination that just makes him look like…well, a character in a horrible 90s film. Some guy says that he's ready to come in now...he walks in...asks for a guitar…they give it to him…and he leaves. WTF? That’s about all I can say. The mayor needs a guitar, so he stores it in the police station? He had to make a special appointment with the sheriff just to come in and get it before leaving again? Why?

"My mullet is so big it EATS all the answers to those questions!"

Then of course we see the daughter herself as she gets into a car with a bunch of morons and goes to hang out at every teenager’s favorite hot spot: the exact place where that mutant crack baby was murdered in the sepia-toned flashback just moments ago! DUN DUN DUN. This one guy just starts making out with her unprecedented, and of course she’s totally OK with it, being an idiot and all. I guess she always just goes with the first guy who sexually harasses her as long as he’s good looking! That’s truly the path to a good relationship.

So after her dad tells her NEVER to see the kids she was hanging out with again (because even though there’s no danger in town, he can apparently TELL they're up to no good by just looking at them...maybe that's why he was given the sheriff job), she sneaks out and sees them anyway. This time, they show her another one of their hobbies, driving down the road at night and screaming like lunatics for no reason. And here we see a true example of their worth as human beings as they TURN OFF THEIR HEADLIGHTS while driving on a dark road at like 70 miles an hour, at least. Why? Does it really enhance the thrill that much? I mean, they could seriously hurt someone…don't they have any consideration for those around them?

OK, OK, stupid question...

And that’s exactly what does happen. They end up hurting the crazy old witch-lady that apparently lives nearby. Why was she outside in the middle of the road at night? Because the movie’s plot demanded it for convenience. After the idiot boyfriend agonizes over the damage done to his car – isn't this guy such a stand-up, model citizen? – they finally decide to go to the witch-lady’s house, as she has disappeared (how?!) and they want to go apologize.

Inside, they find some spooky voodoo witchcraft junk, taken from the Closet of Cliché Horror Movie Props, and as convenience has it, one of the girls in their group knows about witchcraft and can show them what to do with it. The old lady kicks them out, but not before they take a bunch of crap used for an occult ritual that they don’t even know what it does. Why are these kids so bent on performing an occult ritual anyway? I just love how readily they accept it, without even questioning it at all. You'd think they'd just shrug it off and go back to being delinquents, but nope; the next scene is them in the graveyard reading the spell out loud. But hey. Anything to move the plot forward, right?

So their meddling somehow sets the house on fire! Fine, fine, just go with it, even if it is monumentally ridiculous. They all go home. The next day, cops investigate the scene and determine that there was a fire! What geniuses they are! Then some hick gets murdered and is found with his arms and head cut off quite cleanly, with bloody markings all over the walls, so naturally the cops suspect that that and the fire are connected. OF COURSE!

Truly an astute deduction!

But the real cincher for their brilliance in the detective field comes when they have a conference at the sheriff’s house about this baffling case, and the FIRST THING THE SHERIFF SAYS is that it must be the ancient legend of Pumpkinhead behind the whole thing. Oh yeah! Couldn’t just be a serial murderer, right? Has to be supernatural folklore behind the whole thing. There’s no other plausible explanation! That would just be silly.

So then we see a fat guy having sex with a blonde lady. As she leaves to go to the bathroom or something, he calls after her: “This beats the hell out of delivering mail!” Well, thank you, stock character. Thank you for providing us with that Eureka moment, that having sex is better than delivering mail. Although I can’t say it speaks much for your companion’s, erm, skills when you have to weigh those two options against one another.

Anyway, Pumpkinhead kills him, to a riveting soundtrack of 80s bubblegum pop. The worthlessness just astounds, doesn’t it?

"This does NOT beat the hell out of delivering mail!" 

OK, so our next pair of stock characters to be killed are a pair of brothers who have a deaf-mute sister. One of them likes to pick on her and the other likes to, apparently, sleep with her. Well, those two are complete wastes of life and deserve whatever death they get, so I’ll just skip this one.

The movie then decides to provide us with some important exposition from the burnt witch lady, who dies but then resurrects herself magically to make sure the viewers are not too confused - although what she says mostly just creates even more questions, and not all of them good ones. Apparently the mutant crack baby from the opening was actually called Tommy, and he was the lovechild of the old woman and Pumpkinhead. That’s…so wrong on so many levels that it would take DAYS to fully go into it! How would Pumpkinhead even do that…? WHY would the woman even…ugh! That’s just too creepy to consider! I think this movie’s going to give me nightmares.

Apparently Tommy must have…inherited Pumpkinhead’s superpowers in the gene pool, or something, because yeah, he’s back for revenge now after 35 long years. And there’s some trite plot about how the sheriff saved him from dying once as a kid, and the Judge of the town is actually the bad guy now, and yadda yadda yadda, who cares? He kills a lot of people but is stopped, again, by the Judge, and the movie ends. What did we learn from this, kids? That having sex is definitely better than delivering mail.

But seriously, this has to be one of the funniest things I’ve seen that probably didn’t mean to be. It’s just so…silly! It’s absolutely priceless, and if you have a chance to see it, do so for the unintentional comedy. The movie itself is crap, but it’s the kind of crap that makes you laugh. It's stupid, there are tons of plot holes, but it is also pretty hilarious at times. And I guess I want to take back that stuff I was saying at the beginning of the review. Heh. I think such a revenge might be a little harsh. Heh. I can do that, right? RIGHT?

*Gulps*

Review: The Santa Clause (1994)

Director: John Pasquin

Starring: Tim Allen, Judge Reinhold, Wendy Crewson

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111070/

With all the countless movies made for families about Santa Claus, with their jolliness, holiday cheer and just a little bit of risqué jokes for extra measure…this film is another one. The Santa Clause, starring Tim Allen, tells a heartwarming story of a man who became Santa Claus and was briefly estranged and alienated by his family and friends before becoming accepted…as being Santa Claus…okay, okay, it’s a weird-ass, schmaltzy flick without much common sense, sue me.

This film does have some problems. I mean, the whole idea is that whoever puts on the Santa suit after Santa is dead or incapacitated in any way becomes the new Santa, right? Well what if a Jew or a Muslim or a Scientologist became Santa? I guess the elves would make due, but all I’m saying is, they should be grateful that Tim Allen was so reasonable about it. Hell, what if nobody put on the Santa suit in time for Christmas? Seems like that’d be a pretty big fucking deal. Maybe they have some secret back up plan that the movie isn’t telling us about?

But fortunately for the elves, Tim Allen puts on the suit and although he’s initially suspicious and apprehensive, he grows very quickly accustomed to the idea and makes a 180 turn in terms of morals and thoughts about it. Too fast, I think. I mean we’re barely given any time to accept this whole thing in the first place, and yet with the movie’s quick editing it seems like Allen barely has a second thought about it, going straight from Scrooge-esque disgruntlement to immediate acceptance in the bat of an eye. Not really convincing, movie.

After Allen’s rendezvous to the North Pole, along with his incredibly annoying little boy, the kid starts to tell everyone about his dad’s new job. Why does Allen keep letting him though? This is the kind of thing I’d like to call the Idiot Effect, a snowballing of events that propel the film’s plot forward, but could have very easily been avoided if the characters just had a little more intelligence. Why does Allen keep letting the kid blab to everyone and thus flush his self image down the drain? It could all be solved by just one sentence of dialogue: “Hey, listen, don’t tell anybody about what happened last night.” That’s it. That is all that is needed. Then none of the problems in this movie would have happened, and maybe we could have spent our time better actually delving deeper into the whole Santa mythos that this movie obviously put time into. It seems like the film has a priority issue here, that’s the main problem.

My last issue with the film is that it’s just resolved all too quickly, the whole entire thing. Allen comes to term with his being Santa and decides to give it his full effort, but his ex wife and her new husband are afraid of him and think he kidnapped their son. He brings the kid back, escapes the police with the help of his James Bond-style elves (I know, just go with it) and everything is pretty much fine, resolved quicker than you can count to three on one hand. Give us some more conflict! This just is not enough, and I know there could have been more effort put into it.

Really, this is just a decent film. There are a lot of little plotholes and things they could have fixed if they just tried harder, but it is a charming film. I like the way the elves have all that futuristic technology and I like the way they set up the Santa mythos. Tim Allen does OK, even though the kid playing his son pretty much sucks. But what can you expect? It’s a kid’s movie, a dime-a-dozen family flick from the 90s that pretty much went through the motions. It’s fun, but it’s unspectacular.

Review: Ed Wood (1994)

Director: Tim Burton

Starring: Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bill Murray, Jeffrey Jones, Lisa Marie

"I just want to tell stories. The things that interest me."

-Ed Wood

You know, I don’t get Tim Burton. It’s been a while since I’ve seen his much lauded The Nightmare Before Christmas opus, but the ones I have seen recently are all messed up, quality wise. He puts out a great movie like Batman, then the awful pile of hack that was Batman Returns. These days he puts out dreck like Sweeney Todd and then entertaining flicks like Alice in Wonderland, defying all expectations. I hate some elements of his style, but even I can’t deny the power of some of his best films. Like Ed Wood. Yup, that’s all you’re gonna get for a segueway.

Ed Wood is just masterful. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a film like this…oh wait, it was when I watched The Big Lebowski a few days ago; scratch that. But this is still a very accomplished and well done flick. It’s about the life of Edward D. Wood Jr., one of the worst film directors of all time, and it chronicles his journey to attaining that wonderful honor. It’s even shot in all black and white, just like films back in Ed’s time were! Guess who the lead actor is?

a)     Nic Cage

b)     Dennis Hopper

c)     Johnny Depp

d)    Keanu Reeves

If you guessed “c”…well, duh! It’s a Tim Burton movie! But he does a very good job as our energetic, quirky director, even cross-dressing on camera. Yes, that’s right. Johnny Depp cross dresses; you have to see it to believe it. His acting here is really good though, capturing an innocence that is usual for the characters Burton has him play, but also a certain subtlety that seems to escape both of them in their later days. I think my favorite, though, is Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi. He really does a spectacular job, channeling all the hopelessness of an old washed up celebrity and making him totally likable and amiable. Just watch the first scene where Ed is over at his house, where they watch the old re-run of one of Lugosi’s films on the Vampira show. He starts doing this thing with his hand that apparently, all vampires have to do to seduce women. And the look on his face when the trick-or-treater isn’t scared by his Dracula get up is priceless. This is the best character in the film by far, but that isn’t saying much, as the others are all still very good, too.

Jeffrey Jones as Criswell is hilarious with his stoic expression and calm tone. Bill Murray as “Bunny” is a smaller role, but every scene he’s in, you can tell he’s having fun, and you will be laughing along with him. Sarah Jessica Parker as Delores is pretty damn solid, too, and she shows a wide range of emotions and moods that are just hysterical combined with Wood’s happy-go-lucky act. And Lisa Marie as Vampira is priceless…hell, I could go on listing every member of this cast; it’s really phenomenal. What a great cast.

The story chronicles the haphazard adventures of the making of three of Wood’s much storied films, from the ‘true to life’ story of Glen or Glenda, in which he turned a contract from a porn studio to put out a sex-change movie into a rambling, incoherent mess of his own personal demons, to the making of Bride of the Monster, where he and his crew stole materials from a bigger studio but did not actually have the equipment to make them work right, and finally to Plan 9 From Outer Space, which…well, I’ll go into it later. With every quickly-filmed scene, every messy execution and every mistake, Wood just repeats the words “That was perfect!” and moves on, eager to keep filming. He just loves telling stories, and he doesn’t care how sloppy he gets. “Nobody will notice that,” he says indignantly, shooing off any criticism. What’s going on in his head? I don’t know. But that good natured smile and those wild eyes are poised to succeed no matter how bad he ends up sucking. He’s just unstoppable, even when the rest of the world hates him.

This movie is mostly pretty funny, but I have to admit it gets pretty sad at times, too, like when Bela is committed to the rehab center, and spends his first night awake, screaming his head off. And his final scene out in the yard, being filmed staggering around and smelling flowers…well, just try and watch that scene and tell me you weren’t touched.

But he passed away, as he did in real life, before the filming of Plan 9 ever started, and life went on. How does Ed deal with it? Just like in real life, he hires some guy who looks nothing like him to walk around with a cape in front of his face, obscuring the fact that it isn’t really him. Some of Ed Wood’s best scenes occur in this last segment, the filming of the infamous crown jewel of B movies, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and that’s quite a feat. I think the scene where they all get baptized is my favorite in the entire film. And Ed’s explosion in front of the Baptist sponsors is classic, his voice hitting a squealy high that is really funny.

“Do you know anything about the art of filmmaking?” asks one of the Baptists, to which Ed replies, “I would hope so!”

That pretty much sums up the entire movie right there. Ed Wood is a vivid, hilarious, witty and extremely clever look at a very strange man. I haven’t seen all of Tim Burton’s movies yet, but of the ones I have seen, this one is the best, by far and wide. And that’s saying a lot, considering how much I loved Batman. Ed Wood encapsulates a number of things that make film so great – artful, stylish directing, comedy that goes between subtle and overt, great acting and casting choices and it’s just all around entertaining as hell. What more could you want? Go see this movie; especially if you like Burton’s later, more over the top work. It’s worth a viewing by anyone.

Review: Speed (1994)

Director: Jan de Bont

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111257/

"Oh! In two hundred years we've gone from "I regret but I have one life to give for my country" to "Fuck you!"?"

-Howard Payne

I’m going to have to write this review fast, before the bomb goes off. If I review slower than 50 mph, then we all go up in flames and I’ll never be able to reach the talked-about 100 reviews for the site! Speed is a movie made in 1994 starring Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper and Sandra Bullock. Hopper is lame, Reeves is lamer and Bullock is cute. The plot revolves around a cop (Reeves) who has to stop a money-hungry psychopath (Hopper) from blowing up a bus. But indeed, it’s rigged like a game – the bus has to keep going at about 50 miles per hour, or else the bus will explode!

This movie is just full of tension. The plot moves fast and is full of excitement on every level. Reeves must find a way to stop the bomb and apprehend Hopper, and fast. I found the script corny and blatantly stupid at times, but even then, it wasn’t a major detractor, and I could overlook it once the movie kicked into gear. Everything in this movie that could possibly go wrong actually does happen – first they have to defuse a bomb in an elevator, then the hour-long bus escapade, and finally a deadly date in a subway car…all ending in some sort of explosion every time; how tiring must that get? I can only imagine how annoyed that must make Reeves…but then, he’s a lame actor anyway, and can’t properly convey annoyance to begin with. So all I can do is imagine anyway. Still, though. It’s worth considering the ramifications of a mind getting too used to explosions. Eventually, they must become trite.

Uh oh. I didn’t review it fast enough.

KABOOM!

Phew! Made it out in the nick of time through an extremely implausible and yet bad-ass stunt that you’d have to be either on drugs or as blandly heroic as Keanu Reeves to attempt. Now I can finish up this review properly…well, most of the end is Sandra Bullock carrying the entire movie alone while Dennis Hopper cackles and over-acts like a moron – but I suppose that’s kind of entertaining on its own. In a way detrimental to him, more than anything. But I still really enjoyed it. It’s a fun movie. It manages to create a lot of big, stupid explosions and a ton of gripping tension, and the fact that it can overcome the often lame acting and dialogue says a lot. Hey, I liked it. I’d probably watch it again. Just not too fast – I’ve still got some other stuff to review, too.