31 Days of Halloween

In my defense, I’m 14 too.

Day Five: Some 2016 Horror


The Invitation


The Invitation is a small little movie that made a decent buzz on Netlifx. The plot revolves around a young man who is inexplicably invited to a dinner party by his ex-wife after two years without contact. He's already somewhat uncomfortable with the affair, but upon arrival he starts to suspect his hosts have malicious intent. The film plays as a horror/thriller, but the tension comes from whether or not the perceived danger is real. Director Karyn Kusama does a good job keeping the tension persistent through low-lighting, lingering shots, and a foreboding score. For a film like this to work it does need to go somewhere and when the film finally plays its hand it is pretty satisfying. Indeed, the film is a pretty decent potboiler and something that mostly kept my interest, but I can't imagine it really sticking with me. The exploration of grief never really amount to much and while the final reveal is neat it doesn't exactly call for a reexamination of the work. Still, as a way to kill an hour and forty minutes on Netflix, this is pretty good.

B-


The Love Witch


The Love Witch revolves around a young woman named Elaine, (Samantha Robinson) who is openly a witch who specializes in making love bombs to entrap men. However, with each experience, the man reveals himself to be unworthy for various reasons, but generally because they're pathetic. What stands out most is the film's style. The Love Witch is shot in a very striking Technicolor style and the costumes and sets echo the 1960s. The film also really plays up the melodrama of the scenario and generally goes for a comedic tone. For a time, this approach is pretty funny. The dramatic line readings, bumbling men, and awkward timing works well. This is most evident in an early section of the film where Elaine picks up and seduces a man who is eventually revealed to be a whimpering baby. The dialogue between the two works, the performances are just the right level of hokey, and the way the whole scene plays out is really amusing.

Unfortunately, this is also where the film peaks. From there, the story is never really able to find an interesting groove. Elaine just goes on to pick up more men with equally disastrous results, but the scenes never play out as interestingly as the first one. What's more, I feel the gimmick starts to run thin. Once you've acclimatized yourself to the film's style, the laughs become a lot less frequent and they also don't hit as hard as in the first act. By the end, I found I had grown tired of the film and was ready for it to be over.

The film does have a fairly interesting feminist streak, but ultimately it's a bit too simplistic. Essentially, the film is making the broad argument that men are shallow and weak. They only want to satisfy their own selfish desires and if their fantasies are fulfilled they are revealed to be quite pathetic. I'm not offended by this conclusion, but I do think it's too simplistic and not too interesting. Again, part of this is rooted in the film's style and comedy running stale. Had I been totally on-board with these elements than the film's feminist argument, would have complimented the whole nicely. However as is the film relies pretty strongly on these themes and I just don't think they're strong enough.

Overall, this film didn't work for me, but in the realm of films I don't like I do respect this one a whole lot. It dedicates itself to a style pretty fully and ultimately does a pretty good job bringing that vision to the screen. While the novelty of it did where thin for me, I imagine this will be a lot of fun for the right audience. It's also pretty different from most of the movies have seen lately and that too gives it an edge. Finally, I do wanna highlight Samantha Robinson's lead performance, which is consistently compelling even when the film starts to become stale.


Update: It's been quite a few months since I've seen The Love Witch and the movie has held up in my mind a bit better than I expected. Whenever I think about the film, my mind drifts to what it does well rather than its shortcomings. I had initially given this film a D+, but I might bump it up to a C now.

Day Six:


Film Year: 1999
Director: David DeCoteau
Starring: Oh hai! It’s Mark from The Room!
Riff Year: 2017
Riffers: Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett
Selected Short: Beginning Responsibility: Taking Care of Your Own Things

Every now and then you meet a child who forever changes your perception of how stupid a child can be. There's your second cousin's boy, Leon, who spends summer afternoons black-widow-huntin' in the woodpile. Or little cross-eyed Margie, with her affinity for drinking liters of pond water. And of course Stephen, the kid who insists Notes from Underground is Dostoevsky's finest literary accomplishment when it's clearly one of his mid-level works. I mean, honestly, Stephen, grow up.

But all of these little morons are blown away by the force of Reggie, star of Beginning Responsibility: Taking Care of Your Own Things. Reggie sleepwalks through life. He's perpetually confused and overwhelmed by his bedroom full of toys, which are all in such sorry shape Goodwill employees would spit in your face if you attempted to donate them. Since his parents have given up on Reggie long ago, it's up to this deranged menagerie of busted junk to come to life and teach him threatening lessons. Yes, it's Toy Story on acid! But not the fun kind of acid, more like battery acid that spills out of an old remote control dog toy you haven't picked up in twelve years.

Mike, Kevin and Bill try to keep little Reggie from swallowing their keys while they watch Beginning Responsibility: Taking Care of Your Own Things!

“The moral of the story is: set the bar real low so that people will be overjoyed when you stumble over it.”

Creepy as hell short that finds a child’s room coming alive because he never cleans it, and is harassed until he does. Terrifying and disturbing imagery is abound to the point where even David Cronenberg would be disgusted and disturbed.

This crazy short is given a first rate commentary, which only gets funnier the nuttier the film gets. Targets include our lazy main character Reggie, weird voice acting, and disturbing depictions of a room come alive. Basically it’s everything you’d expect and that’s definitely a recommendation.

And now our feature presentation…

Oh hai, direct-to-video prequel to C-list 90s horror movie franchise!

Greg Sestero, who you might know from such roles as Mark from The Room and Retro Puppet Master, stars in Retro Puppet Master! Learn the answers to all your burning Puppet Master questions like: “Where did he get the puppets?” (He already had them) and “What kind of drugs, Denny?” (It doesn’t matter)

To top it all off, Mark tries to pull off a French accent for the entire movie that somehow ends up sounding even faker and weirder than Tommy Wiseau’s. You know those videos where a dog is holding a huge stick in their mouth and trying to get through a doorway, but they can’t because the stick is too big? That’s what it’s like watch Mark attempt to act while simultaneously maintaining a “French” accent.

Fear not! No prior knowledge of the Puppet Master series is required. No, not even Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys. Join Mike, Kevin, Chris R, and Bill for Retro Puppet Master.*

*Chris R was arrested before he was able to record. Mark assures us that “It’s clear.”



In case you were a little confused by the complex and engaging mythology of the original Puppet Master movie, there are about fifty prequels that delve into the marvelous world of this epic saga. This is one of them. We are introduced to Puppet Master Toulon and how he learned the power of soul transference into his ugly dolls from a sorcerer who stole the power from three mummies who chase after him disguised as Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit (and yes you read that sentence right).

Yes, folks. I’m reduced to this. Part seven of a low-rent franchise that barely registers at all as horror.

And it’s a prequel.

And it’s direct to video.

And it’s a PG-13 follow-up to an R-rated series.

Oh boy! This is certainly going to be a winner!

I watched a bunch of Puppet Master movies years ago out of curiosity. I don’t remember if I made it this far, but if I did I was most likely looooooooooooong past the point of paying attention to the movie. I seem to remember moments of this movie, yet the things you would think I would remember, like the bad guys being mummies, I would have immediately recalled. But really the only Puppet Master movie I remember at all from that period is the original, and when I say I remember it I really mean I vaguely remember bits of it. For the life of me I couldn’t tell you the storyline.

Apparently they’re still making Puppet Master movies. I think that’s adorable. If they gave out a participant award for horror franchises it would most definitely win the trophy.

I don’t really have a lot to say about Retro Puppet Master. It’s boring and doesn’t have a personality. Most of the bad movie amusement factor comes from the godawful attempts at French accents and the fact that the villains are mummies. But at 90 minutes the film feels so damn padded. It feels like just an exercise to do a vintage story with a younger Toulon and seeing him first playing with soul puppets, but it didn’t really have much of a story to work around that. In short, even by Puppet Master standards (and those standards are pretty low), this one isn’t very good.

This is a Rifftrax I haven’t seen before and knowing how doofy this series can be made me anticipate my first viewing of it. Unfortunately I’m not convinced they picked the right Puppet Master movie for this riff. Retro is pretty bad and has some silly stuff in it, but it has no flavor. Some of the earlier Puppet Master films might have inspired a bit more creativity from our riffers.

That said, Mike, Kevin, and Bill have a case of the giggles in this riff. They crack up at each other a lot, which adds a bit to the experience because if they’re having fun, the audience is having fun. This Retro riff has moments where it is gutbusting, but mostly dies down to a mild chuckle through most of the runtime. I’d probably recommend this riff the most to people who are familiar with Puppet Master because you’ll appreciate them riffing this particular Puppet Master film more than your average Rifftrax fan. If you are a Puppet Master virgin then you might not get a lot out of them riffing this film except just some middling to good comedy.

31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN

PRISON (1988)



Doomsday finally watched Freddy Krueger Part 4. He said many things but what he didn’t say is who directed the movie. It was none other than Renny Harlin who gave us such classics as Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger. We all gotta start somewhere. Doomsday learned that the hard way. Hopefully he’ll turn the success of Geostorm into Die Hard 5 and Expendables 4. In regards to Harlin, Freddy is what put him in the mainstream but it isn’t what put his foot in the door. That honor goes to Prison.

Before I get into Prison, I have to briefly mention someone else. Charles Band is a schlock master producer. I’ve reviewed some of his movies in the past. Perhaps his most notable work is Re-Animator. If you’re unfamiliar with Band, Re-Animator gives you a good idea of what to expect from him. In Prison, however, he bent over for Harlin. It is shocking to see Band’s name in the credits because none of his trademarks are on display except for perhaps the music. The music in his movies tend to sound like stock music but they actually aren’t. It’s weird. Anyway...

The movie stars Lane Smith, Perry White from the Lois & Clark show, as a hardass warden in a prison that’s haunted by a prisoner he executed. It’s a haunted house movie... but set in a prison. You can see why Harlin got hired for Freddy Krueger Part 4. He had the qualification to make an offbeat fantasy-horror movie.

What impressed me the most is that Harlin managed to create suspense in an unlikely place. This isn’t necessarily camp. It’s mostly played straight. You’re expected to believe these are criminals serving their time and prison guards following the orders of an asshole warden. Then when the supernatural entity is unleashed you’re supposed to feel sympathy for all these people. It’s a lot to ask and he gets results. He does give us two “good” characters to identify with, a young Viggo Mortensen helping his fellow inmates and a government employee trying to right the wrongs of the warden, but it’s largely an ensemble. Harlin expects us to be invested in this environment and these people and go along with horror conventions. It’s a twist that Harlin managed to pull off.

Dracula and PG Cooper will hate it, but I highly recommend it for thebtskink and Wyldstaar if they haven’t seen it yet.

1992 Dracula > 1958 Dracula > 1931 Dracula

31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN

LADY IN WHITE (1988)



Remember when kids movies had balls? Lady in White stars Lukas Haas as a boy in 1960’s white America who befriends a ghost and tries to solve her murder. In the meantime, a black man is falsely accused and shit gets ugly among the adults. Moe Green from The Godfather plays the police chief.

Movie is batshit crazy. It’s part Wonder Years, part Spielberg, part social commentary and part Tim Burton - I guess. It’s an odd mashup but totally works because it has that 80’s charm that puts a spell over you. People are obsessed with Stranger Things and Stephen King’s IT, but you can’t duplicate the real thing.

Why? Two reasons. Movies don’t have music anymore. It’s just ambient sound now. It’s that bullshit Hans Zimmer stuff. You gotta have that John Williams... Danny Elfman... symphonic orchestral should. And secondly, it’s just a cultural thing. We live in a pussified and easily outraged society. Here you have a PG-13 movie about a child trying to solve a murder while racist townspeople get ready to hang an innocent black man. This movie would never get made today. You’d have one portion of the audience offended that the 60’s were trivialized. Another portion would complain that a white boy is the hero. Why couldn’t the ghost befriend a black kid? Then you’d have soccer mom’s with pitchforks because their children were exposed to harsh realities. Meanwhile, Donald Trump gets elected for a second term.

Don’t waste your time with these 80’s wannabes. Stick to the real thing. They have a bitchin’ soundtrack.

Day Seven:


Film Year: 2004
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jason Behr, Bill Pullman, Ted Raimi, Takako Fuji
Riff Year: 2006
Riffers: Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy
Selected Short: What I We Had a Fire? (also riffed by Bill Corbett)

Some questions are as old as time. “Why are we here?” “Can love really last?” “Who let the dogs out?” “Is corn grass?” But there’s one ancient question that’s sure to chill you to the bone, when asked creepily by your five-year-old after a long pregnant pause: What If We Had A Fire? It’s a simple query that can draw a lot of attention: just ask a certain Floridian minister who was recently in the news.

But while the question of “who didn’t start the fire?” was well and thoroughly answered by the esteemed Mr. Joel, this matter has gone woefully unaddressed. No longer! The young star of our film goes after the issue head-on, inspired by the scorched home of one of his classmates. Undistracted by the question of “Should We Try To Help The Recently Displaced Family of My Classmate?” our boy says, hey, what about ME? His parents promptly send him off to seek answers at the fire station, so they can work on the new insurance scam their son’s question has inspired. “Honey, what if we had a fire? Maybe then I could get that Camaro I’ve always wanted!”

Pretty much every party Mike, Kevin and Bill have ever attended has ended with the question What If We Had A Fire?

In honor of today’s movie’s flaming climax, I thought we could all use a lesson in fire safety in case we were chased by ghouls and burned our house down to stop the madness. Fortunately for the family here there are no vengeful spirits haunting this family, but they want to have a fire plan because it’s better to be prepared.

The riffing is devilish and a dark, with a lot of stabs at pyromania taking center stage. They question the effectiveness of the fire plan as well as dishing out more potential obstacles in their way. This is definitely a short classic.

And now our feature presentation...

The scariest thing to come out of Japan since Pink Lady, The Grudge tells the story of a young woman who travels to Japan with her underwear-sniffing boyfriend and soon finds herself in the clutches of an evil curse (as if having an underwear-sniffing boyfriend wasn't bad enough).

Bill Pullman co-stars, sort of, in that he speaks several lines of dialogue. In contrast to a high body count slasher film, The Grudge is infused with a suffocating sense of dread, very much like an average episode of According to Jim. Kevin Murphy and Mike Nelson settle their own grudge in this not-to-be-missed RiffTrax.



“Yes, we get it! You can do a killer impersonation of the Little Rascals’ Froggy!”

Maybe it’s because the last movie I watched was Retro Puppet Master, but this movie is actually a cool horror ride. I personally was never one of those people who praised The Ring as a horror masterpiece (I find it nonsensical and uninteresting), I wasn’t really invested in the J-horror invasion by the time the American leap was made for the Ju-On series, which begat The Grudge. I watched the movie on home video after it’s theatrical run and dug it. Years later I checked out the Japanese films and they’re honestly among the very few movies in the last twenty years to give me the heebie jeebies (and yes, I’ve seen The Conjuring and no it wasn’t scary though it was mostly fine). I think mostly I’ve spoiled myself so much on technical knowledge of filmmaking that it’s hard for me to picture any sort of film as not “staged” in some manner, which steals the effectiveness on the horror genre. Yet there was something about Ju-On that got under my skin and continues to.

This simple haunted house tale has Sarah Michelle Gellar as a caregiver who tends to an old lady living in the local “murder house.” She becomes haunted by the spooks that live inside, as they mentally screw with and eventually kill her and anyone else who enters.

It might go without saying that the original films are superior. While there’s a certain technical polish that improves the look of select copied scares in this film, the rawness of the Japanese films enhance the dread, which is what these films thrive on. Furthermore the nonlinear structure is clearer in the Japanese films, which are presented as a series of short stories. It’s not hard to figure out that something similar is happening in this film, but it’s structure is nevertheless weird. Plus seeing Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy the Vampire Slayer for seven years does the film no favors, as she’s thrust into a role where she faces ghouls and plays the helpless victim. That’s just not Buffy, man!

And then there’s the fact that it’s a film taking place in Japan, centered on people who live in Japan, and the characters just happen to almost all be English speaking Caucasians. So...WTF?

But alas, while it’s an inferior product, director Takashi Shimizu (who also helmed the original films) knows mood and atmosphere if nothing else. The movie makes me feel everything about it, and when a movie makes me feel something at all I consider that a win.

I tell you, the only time I feel more dread than this is when I see Adam Sandler has a new movie on Netflix.

As for the riffing, “levity” is the word of the day. Mike and Kevin see the film’s mood and raise the stakes with a lighthearted attitude toward it. There is some great material when the two are debating the logic and storyline of the movie at several points. One of my favorite moments comes a half hour in in which Kevin is confused how the ghosts are killing people, and Mike points out the obviousness of the little boy ghost Toshio killing people by “opening his mouth” at them. They also grant some great potshots at just how slow people seem to walk in the movie.

There are moments of laughs, but for the most part this Trax just amuses at a casual pace. The movie gives them plenty of openings, and there is plenty of silence for them to get their material in, but are usually huge gaps in between the well placed zings. They keep the mood of the piece as playful as possible, but overall sometimes they just seem frustrated at the film’s lack of momentum and just say something to the effect of “GRUDGE SOMETHING!” When the riffers claim boredom is always my least favorite kind of riff, because it lacks in creativity and honestly reeks of desperation.

That said, this one is fun mostly, it just isn’t a laugh riot. And the movie is a good watch too, so I’d say I came out of this viewing with a positive outlook.

Incidentally, and spoiler alert by the way, during the film’s opening scene where Bill Pullman commits suicide by jumping out of a window, they comment that they doubted it would kill Pullman though it might do in Bill Paxton. I said to myself “too soon!” before I remembered this was recorded ten years ago.

I saw Gerald's Game on Netflix today and recommend it.

VAMPIRE’S KISS (1989)



Unlike Deexan who likes to pretend that Nicolas Cage didn’t make movies before 2006, I grew up as a fan. The Rock. Con Air. Face/Off. All classics.

Hold on.

I got an AOL Instant Message from thebtskink

...

...

...

Nicolas Cage has been making movies since the 1980’s. The worst one he ever made was Vampire’s Kiss. He plays a New York yuppie who descends into madness after getting bite by a vampire. Nicolas Cage was paid in pounds of cocaine and it shows. While the movie attempts to tackle the subject of mental issue, Nicolas Cage is in his own little world, making God knows what movie. It’s like someone took Nicolas Cage from one movie and CGI’d him into another movie. How the fuck did this movie get released? It probably didn’t cost more than 5 bucks to make. Woody Allen literally made the same movie twice but with two different casts. Couldn’t they have done the same shit here? Was Griffin Dunne not available?

Berberian Sound Studio is what you’d call something of a freakout movie. That is to say that it’s the kind of movie where you’re with its protagonist through a stressful situation and watch both him and the film he’s in kind of goes crazy as a reflection of this. In this case that insanity comes from a British sound engineer from the 70s who’s been invited to work on an Italian horror film. The movie he’s working on is some sort of gruesome exploration of witches being tortured by inquisitors or something. We never actually see a single frame of the movie within a movie aside from the opening credits but we do see them doing a lot of the Foley work and adr and you get a pretty good idea of how messed up it is. As he’s doing this the sound engineer starts to kind of lose his mind and things start getting increasingly surreal. It’s certainly a fairly unique film but I’m not sure it’s everything it could have been. Toby Jones is a good actor but I’m not quite sure he was perfect for this part and I never fully understood why he finds this situation quite as stressful as he does.
*** out of Five

31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN

WOLF (1994)



When audiences talk about monster movies, they mostly acknowledge Universal’s output from the 1930’s & 40’s and Hammer’s unlicensed remakes from the late 50’s and 1960’s. Afterwards, there was a shift in horror and monsters only show up sporadically as a throwback to innocent times. Truth is, there was a major push in the 90’s by Columbia/Tri-Star to revive monster movies and their contribution should be held in the same esteem as Universal and Hammer. We got a badass Dracula, a flawed but interesting Frankenstein and a quirky Wolfman. Later on, we got Jekyll & Hyde. More on that later.

Starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer, The Joker and Catwoman, Wolf is in the borderline between horror and comedy. Nicholson plays an aging book editor in New York who’s being phased out of his job in favor of a young man played by James Spader. One night, Nicholson is bitten by a wolf and later turns into Wolverine from X-Men. Now with a new lease on life, he sets out to reclaim his place in the world.

This movie isn’t for everyone. It doesn’t have the theatricality of Dracula and Frankenstein and that is sure to turn off the more bloodthirsty fans of the genre. But honestly, the wolfman never had the scope of its peers. It was always about a regular guy crossing path with gypsys. It’s gypsy shaming! Turning that into a New York story is fine. If anything, it should have embraced it more. It should have been a full blown satire. That’s why it lacks acclaim. It’s not funny enough to be a comedy and it’s not scary enough to be horror. It needed an alpha filmmaker to pull off the material.