Hack-and-stack – Page 14

Werewolf: The Beast Among Us (2012)

If, like me, you viewed the Hugh Jackman vehicle Van Helsing as mere brain-dead spectacle, then be of good cheer. Werewolf: The Beast Among Us is an efficient example of how to perform genre gene splicing without relying on a bombardment of cheesy CGI to impress the yokels in the third row.

It’s sort of a rollicking Eastern European cowboy version of John Carpenter’s Vampires with a few wink-worthy nods to Jaws, steampunk fashion and the original Wolf Man—including a reprise of Maria Ouspenskia’s famous gypsy poem (“Even a man that’s pure of heart/And says his prayers by night…”).

Somewhere in the dark forests of Transylvania, in the latter part of the 19th century, a merry band of werewolf hunters rolls into a village currently under siege from members of the lycanthrope community. But, as several characters knowingly declare, “this is no ordinary werewolf!”

The hunters are led by taciturn gunslinger Charles (Ed Quinn) and the swashbuckling Stefan (Adam Croasdell), and aided in their quest by local lad Daniel (Guy Wilson), a medical student working for the town doctor (Stephen Rea). As the nimrods close in on an exceptionally wily werewolf, the townsfolk begin to realize that there is indeed, a “beast among us.”

Perhaps due to its obvious budget limitations (Hello, it’s filmed in Romania!), director Louis Morneau pumps up the fun factor and relies on a capable supporting cast (Rea, Stephen Bauer, Nia Peeples) to tell this ripping werewolf yarn.

The hunters are a posse of cool killers, especially Kazia (Ana Ularu), who fries her foes with a makeshift flamethrower and Fang (Florin Piersic) who takes a bite out of crime with his silver choppers. The werewolf CGI isn’t particularly inspired, but Morneau wisely lets a guy in a suit handle the closeup carnage when limbs are torn off and guts are gushing.

A genuinely pleasant surprise.

Hannibal Rising (2007)

I’m all over the map after sitting through two-plus hours of Hannibal Rising, an elegantly told “origin story” of the guy who grows up to be flesh-eating foodie Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. The screenplay is by Thomas Harris, who scribbled all the books this material is based on, and the results are a weird, compelling mess—one that I am going to recommend, with reservations.

In the waning days of World War II, the Lecters, an Austrian or Lithuanian family of noble birth, flee their storybook castle to escape either the advancing Russians or the Germans. A plane crashes into a tank. Mom and Pop Lecter perish. A shiftless band of German or Austrian soldiers takes over Lecter Farm, which isn’t nearly as nice as Lecter Castle, but it ain’t bad. There’s a harsh winter. The famished brigands nosh on Hannibal’s beloved younger sister Mischa (Helena Lia-Tachovska) ’cause pizza delivery is still several years away from becoming reality.

Hannibal escapes to France or Belgium to seek shelter with his late mother’s brother. Luckily, the uncle’s croaked and his widow, a hot Japanese or Chinese woman (Gong Li), takes in the young refugee, who soon grows into a handsome and brilliant-but-troubled medical student (Gaspard Ulliel; picture a young, evil, Matthew Modine) with vengeance—and lots of emotional baggage—on his mind.

The entire subplot with Hannibal’s beautiful Japanese or Chinese aunt, who schools her nephew in the ways of the samurai (oh brother!), should have been excised; it serves no purpose whatsoever other than padding an already bloated running time. But years later, when young Lecter is tirelessly tracking the bastards that took his sister to lunch, Hannibal Rising achieves an almost-operatic grandeur. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say that revenge is indeed a dish best served cold—with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

The Task (2011)

Filmed in Bulgaria masquerading as upstate New York, this faux reality-show-set-in-a-haunted-prison feature is severely lacking in just about every department.

From a generic, no-name cast to a predictable fake-out finale, The Task is a starvation diet of style and tension. And with precious little blood and guts—and no nudity—to distract our attention, the overall cheapness and absence of fresh ideas dooms the production from the get-go.

An assortment of reality show hopefuls are kidnapped and taken to an abandoned prison with a sinister reputation. Formerly under the rule of a sadistic warden who tortured and starved his inmates, the rambling edifice is rumored to be haunted, and the unlucky contestants must spend the night, completing a variety of unsavory tasks, in order to win $20,000.

Though the prison is wired with cameras, props, and spooky audio effects, the presence of a legit ghost throws a wrench into the works.

The Task is a total dud, no matter how you slice it. We’re never given a reason to care about any of the characters—and we don’t. If they were faced with an awesome battery of mind-bending horror and derangement, the blandness of the characters wouldn’t have made any difference.

As it stands, the stakes are never enough to draw anyone into the low-voltage narrative of The Task. As my former editor would say, when presented with uninspired copy, “It’s awfully so-whatty.”

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

The real title of this Yuletide bloodbath should have been Billy Never Had a Chance. I mean, come on! Here’s a kid who’s already been spooked by his evil/senile grandpa into being afraid of Santa Claus, who then watches his parents get slaughtered by a stickup man dressed as St. Nick. Then he’s shipped off to an orphanage where a cruel Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin) beats him for watching a couple engage in sexual congress (in an orphanage?) and then forces him to sit on Santa’s lap. He’s not even 10 years old yet! How the hell did they think he was going to turn out? Our cookie-cutter approach to mental illness is so lame.

Fast-forward 10 years and Billy the ticking time bomb (Robert Brian Wilson) is now a handsome, strapping young man—with a job in a toy store. Yeah, what with his mom and dad getting iced by Santa and all, he probably should have reviewed his career options a bit more thoughtfully, but I guess he needed the money for a new bike or something. Inevitably, Christmas rolls around and Billy’s nerves are a trifle frayed, as visions of the holly jolly fiend bombard his every waking moment. And for the piece de resistance, his drunken store manager (Brit Leach) makes poor Billy pull Santa Claus duty for the legions of snotty moppets that descend on the store like locusts on Christmas Eve. Like I said, he never had a chance. Hell, I’d have gone on a killing spree for having to entertain the brats, even without Billy’s tragic backstory.

Yes, it’s a ham-fisted and lurid psychodrama with plot developments you can see coming from miles away, but director Charles Sellier made sure that Silent Night, Deadly Night doesn’t scrimp on the spectacle essentials (i.e., blood and boobs). And in its painfully obvious effort to illustrate why this traumatized kid becomes an axe-wielding killer, we are forced to relive those horrible formative years right alongside Billy—which is far and away the most horrifying aspect of the movie. Suck it, Mother Superior!

Let’s face it: You really can’t miss with an evil, murderous Santa Claus. Maybe they should have called it Portrait of Santa as a Young Maniac.

Stag Night (2008)

When using public transportation it’s generally a good idea to pay attention to the stops. This is especially true of the New York subway system since the labyrinthine underground is apparently teeming with cannibals.

Hmmm. Cannibals of New York—sounds strangely familiar.

A quartet of yuppie jerks gets 86ed from a strip club while celebrating Bro Mikey’s (Kip Pardue) bachelor party. On a whim they decide to catch a subway uptown for more partying, and meet up with a pair of strippers en route.

Mikey’s asshole brother Tony (Breckin Meyer) fails to impress exotic dancer Brita (Vinessa Shaw) with his drunken machismo so she judiciously maces the whole bunch, forcing them to evacuate the train—at an abandoned station.

All too soon the foreplay’s over and they’re on the run from a bunch of CHUDS (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, duh!) who look like off-duty extras from The Pirates of the Caribbean.

Stag Night successfully takes a moldy premise and breathes some life into it by not wasting our precious time with shit we don’t care about. The group is dropped into perilous circumstances with very little fanfare, and the ensuing action is breathless and brutal, with buckets of believable blood and guts (including a couple tasty decapitations).

The depiction of the subterranean squatter camps is rendered in vivid detail, revealing a savage society that has siphoned electricity and water from our own, while developing its own harsh code of survival.

Writer Peter A. Dowling relies a bit too much on the chaotic shaky cam, but he’s obviously right at home with this sort of fast-paced murderous mayhem.

Worthy and watchable.

Return to Horror High (1987)

Once again I’ve been overtaken by a bout of idiotic nostalgia, so hold onto something. Let us return now, to the mid-1980s, a time when George Clooney was a nobody; when women strutted about in loose-fitting jumpsuits, and men wore break-dancing pants and white sneakers—all the better to flee from the axe-wielding maniacs, who seemed to be popping up everywhere.

Return to Horror High wears the trappings of a slasher film, but it’s really more of a sly primer on the genre as well as a goofy tribute to those resourceful filmmakers who routinely found a way to finish a crappy movie that no one would even admit to watching in the first place, because slasher movies have no redeeming qualities. And yet, watch them we do.

A schlocky horror picture crew sets up shop in an abandoned high school, where a few years before, a series of grisly murders took place. (Let’s face it, we’re not here for non-grisly murders.) Somehow, the killer was never found! (Which doesn’t say much for the competence of the local constabulary. Just sayin’.)

As the film crew, including cheapskate producer Harry Sleerik (the great Alex Rocco), director Josh Forbes (Scott Jacoby), and leading lady Callie Cassidy (Lori Lethin, from Bloody Birthday and The Prey, among others), feverishly tries to re-create the mayhem of the original murders, they begin to notice that both actors and techs are disappearing all over the place.

The premise allows writer/director Bill Froehlich to zoom in on the nuts and bolts of the slasher movie, even as his characters gamely go about the business of unmasking a killer and finishing the stupid film. “Why do people walk into dark basements without a flashlight?” wails Callie, as she and her policeman boyfriend Steven (Brendan Hughes) prepare to do exactly that.

Return to Horror High is like Truffaut’s Day for Night—as directed by Roger Corman. It both lances and enhances the illusion of low-budget filmmaking, and in doing so, offers up periodic glimpses of why so many of us cheerfully waste our lives watching such wretched nonsense.

Froehlich layers past and present like a cake boss, telling the story of the original massacre, the making of the film, and the comic police investigation (featuring Maureen “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha” McCormick) that follows, all with a wink, and a few timely “meta” observations from the cast.

When Callie objects to having her shirt torn open in a meaningless scene, Harry realizes a compromise is called for. “Write ’em a hopeful, life-affirming scene where they talk about love and children—and make sure it’s set in the showers,” he commands the hapless writer.

Note: A very young and boyish George Clooney does indeed get top billing, even though he only lasts about 10 minutes. That’s called shrewd marketing. Harry would approve.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Happened to catch this on SyFy today and felt compelled to wrangle a few words. Now, there have been some wretched, wretched entries in the Friday the 13th series—but this is the worst. Not only does Jason NOT take Manhattan, his reputation as a first-tier remorseless killing machine takes a serious knee to the groin.

Yet another crop of one-dimensional teens takes a slow boat from Crystal Lake to the Big Apple, and recently revived Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) decides to hitch a ride. (Probably wants to audition for Phantom.) See, it’s a senior class trip for good ol’ Crystal Lake High (?), and Sean (Scott Reeves), the son of the ship’s captain, is in love with Rennie (Jensen Daggett), who as a kid was nearly drowned by the child version of Jason (?) because her asshole Uncle Charles (Peter Mark Richman) dumped her in the middle of Crystal Lake to force her to learn to swim shortly after her parents were killed in a car crash— *has aneurism* Cue funeral march.

Just a few notes for writer-director Rob Hedden: Dude, I’ve read Shakespearian comedies with fewer subplots. All we really want is for Jason to strap on his hockey face and amass a respectable body count, preferably utilizing a battery of imaginative and colorful devices. Fail.

And how come when Jason (finally!) gets to Manhattan, he ignores the teeming masses of street gravy in order to pursue a handful of pipsqueaks from his hometown? Hell, they get mugged within 5 minutes of arriving! Couldn’t Jason go after the Mets or something? Why doesn’t he just merrily filet the entire city? The regulations that govern Jason’s behavior are awfully vague. What’s his deal anyway? I mean, I like the guy, but he needs a reboot. What’s Quentin working on at the moment?

And aside from a shot of Times Square and a few Statue of Liberty cameos, the New York location doesn’t figure into the story at all. Hell, they could have been going to Halifax. Consider this the nadir of Jason Voorhees.

Student Bodies (1981)

This early attempt at slasher satire is pure, unadulterated corn.

Student Bodies is an “Alan Smithee” production, written and directed by television veteran Mickey Rose (The Odd Couple, Happy Days, The Love Boat, Too Close for Comfort, and like a hundred others).

Cheap, goofy gags abound as repressed virgin Toby (Kristen Riter, who would later appear in the J. Geils Band “Centerforld” video) tries to figure out who’s killing off her horny classmates.

A maniac known as “The Breather” (he sounds like an obscene phone call—especially when he’s making obscene phone calls) stalks an assortment of high school kids, waiting until they’re getting ready to get it on before killing them with a ludicrous assortment of weapons, including paper clips, an eggplant, an eraser, and a horse-head bookend.

Final Girl Toby tries her best to stop the fiend—who strikes during the homecoming parade, the big game, and the prom—but ends up as the prime suspect instead.

Student Bodies isn’t especially witty, but the sheer volume of schtick keeps it afloat, as it turns out the entire faculty, as well as the brain-damaged janitor, are all murderous psychopaths.

No real nudity or gore, but at one point, a man appears on screen who explains that “R” rated movies make more money. So he says “fuck you” to the audience.

An interesting curiosity from decades past that’s at least as funny as anything from the Scary Movie franchise. Yeah, I know, faint praise indeed.

Donner Pass (2012)

A little R&R in the heart of cannibal country? What a great idea! Donner Pass may have a teeny weeny budget, but I have grudging admiration for director and co-writer Elise Robertson’s commitment to blood-and-guts filmmaking and her insistence on adding a few surprise ingredients to the (human) stew.

A quartet of students in search of a winter’s idyll take up residence in a remote snowbound cabin. Sure, it sounds innocent enough, until a truckload of their drunken buddies crash the party and a partially devoured body count ensues. Apparently the rumors of cannibal pioneer George Donner haunting the hills in search of a little warm flesh have some basis in fact. You just can’t keep a good man down!

Although she’s playing with well-worn tropes (e.g., should they leave the cabin and try to get help during a blizzard or sit tight and await the dinner bell? Decisions, decisions …), Robertson gamely tries to instill some believable humanity in her doomed characters—a bold gambit considering we’re not tuning in to see if Kayley (Desiree Hall) and Mike (Colley Bailey) can work out their relationship difficulties or if reluctant host Thomas (Erik Stocklin) is going to get in trouble with his parents for having a rowdy soiree in their absence.

Although the trail of misdirection that leads to the hungry mastermind isn’t exactly revelatory, it’s got a pinch of panache and a dollop of entertainment value. There’s also a straight out of left-field date-rape revenge subplot that has no reason to exist beyond padding the movie’s scanty 80-minute run time.

All things being equal, I’m going to give Donner Pass a cautious recommendation. Robertson and her amateur cohorts display enough dexterity and creative moxie with these frozen leftovers to warrant a watch—but only if you’ve finished your chores and walked the dog.

7 Below (2012)

A lukewarm, paint-by-numbers haunted house entry mainly notable for the presence of Ving Rhames and a doughy Val Kilmer. Rhames tries his best, but 7 Below never really heats up.

After a bus accident and the threat of bad weather, seven uninteresting people take refuge with the mysterious Jack (Rhames) in a house where 100 years ago an evil little boy sliced and diced his kinfolk.

It’s slow, contains little gore and no nudity, and by the time the final scene washes up on the beach, just barely alive, you’ll probably have switched it over to ESPN.

I watched so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.