Can a noir be in Technicolor and still be good? Oh, yes. Yes it can.
(BTW, is there a Gravatar expert in the house? Cold Fusion has a new theme that’s supposed to support gravatars in the comments, and does for other sites using the theme, but for me not so much.)
Nov 4
Remote (1993) is Moonbeam Entertainment’s answer to Home Alone. It’s not what we normally think of as “genre” cinema, but it is gimmicky; that’s gotta count for something.
Esteemed game designer and gentleman farmer Sandy Petersen comes to Jabootu and reviews a Herschell Gordon Lewis gore flick so you don’t have to…and more importantly, so I don’t have to. It’s not just paint that hits the canvas when some mysterious person apparently yells for no reason Color Me Blood Red.*
[FYI Liz, in your country it’s called Colour Me Blood Red. Just so you’re not confused. Also, you drive on the wrong side of the road.]
Nov 3
Remember that really really really lame “horror” DVD cover? I think I’ve found its rival.
The description for Gravestoned from the official site:
FINALLY. A HORROR FILM FOR STONERS.
Shark and Coltrane, two out-of-work pot farmers really want to break into the movie business. So they chainsaw a cadaver’s arm off and use the severed arm as a prop in a horror film. Now they have to survive a night in the graveyard with a cadaver zombie that wants his arm back! Pot smoking slacker gravediggers, a movie goddess (Lar Park Lincoln, Friday the 13th Part 7), an obsessed movie mogul, a cadaver salesman, hot cheerleaders who may be exotic dancers, a redneck who would love to grill a severed arm and a horny Scottish Terrier – they’re all here in this over-the-top horror film for stoners that has been called the most ominous use of a severed arm in the history of celluloid
Point #1: Wasn’t Charles Band’s Evil Bong (2006) a horror film for stoners? Evil Bong 2: King Bong (2009)? Shrooms (2007)?
Point #2:
How stoned do you have to be to think, “That looks like a good movie”?
Oct 31
AIP’s strangely belated Jaws rip-off sees a Californian community terrorised by a giant octopus driven to madness and murder by what it hears on the radio. Given that this was 1977, you can hardly blame it.
A handful of big-name American stars and a supporting cast of familiar Euro-faces struggle gamely, but are thoroughly out-acted by two trained orcas and a tank-bound cephalopod…one of which, tragically, did not survive to the end of filming.
.
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Oct 30
Why not close out Lovecraft Month with a movie that stretches “based on the works of HP Lovecraft” well past the point of being a plausible claim.
In recent reviews, and as we continue to discuss movies based on the literary works of pulp horror/sci-fi author HP Lovecraft, the names Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon have popped up a lot. More specifically, the title Re-Animator keeps getting dropped into impolite conversation. The team of Gordon and Yuzna have enjoyed considerable acclaim from fans for their adaptations of Lovecraft material and for their ability to take Lovecraft’s work and make it something new without losing the essence of what made the story work in the first place. They did this in a number of ways, but probably the wisest decision they made was to confine themselves to the periphery of Lovecraft’s bibliography, selecting lesser known and all-but-forgotten stories rather than Lovecraft’s best known and most beloved. The first of the author’s story the duo chose to tackle was Herbert West, Re-Animator.
It wasn’t one that Lovecraft fans rallied around, so it would be less likely to get dissected or draw ire for departing from the source material. In terms of mind-bending weirdness, it was relatively straightforward, meaning that the filmmakers would not have to grapple with the more abstract horrors with which Lovecraft so often dealt. The resulting film, Re-Animator, is often heralded as a classic of American horror, combining the chills of Lovecraft with a black sense of humor, over-the-top gore, and something lurking beneath it all that means even amid all the mayhem and outrageousness, there’s something that just feels… icky. Almost sordid. Certainly unsettling. I’m not one to argue with consensus in this case; I think Re-Animator is fantastic. I think it’s a cornerstone not just of American horror, but horror in general. It’s a film that one can return to over and over without ever growing tired of it. And it’s amazing still what they were able to get away with. Over twenty years and at least as many viewings later, it’s still as shocking and gleefully unbelievable as it was the very first time I saw it.
So naturally, I’m not going to review that film.
Oct 29
I know, I know. There are some of you out there who are questioning what I have decided to review today for two reasons. The first is that Ziggy’s Gift, while unknown, is not a movie. The second is that it is Christmas-themed, and the actual holiday is still some distance away. But I want to get the word out on it, to plant a seed that may take a little while to sprout and eventually convince people to check this special out before the holiday passes. This special is really special. Trust me.
And what theme ties together the last two movies featured in Month of the Living Dead? Easy. They’re both Spanish-language. And I swear I didn’t plan this.
(Their titles both begin with “G,” too, at least in the versions I watched. How crazy is that?)
Oct 28
Ironically, I was literally discussing this show with a friend just last night at the Portage Theater last night, where they were showing a John Carpenter double bill. Moreover, there was a guy selling a pirate set of the program in the lobby, which I actually stopped to look at. Glad I didn’t buy it!
From Tim Lucas, no less, the publisher of Video Watchdog: “Universal has sublicensed the rights to the classic Boris Karloff series THRILLER to Image Entertainment, which plans to release a single box set of the complete series sometime prior to Halloween next year. I recently returned from Los Angeles where I recorded audio commentaries for the episodes “The Grim Reaper” and “The Premature Burial” with screenwriter and film historian David J. Schow and director/cinematographer Ernest Dickerson. David, who wrote the classic reference THE OUTER LIMITS COMPANION and edited several books of stories by THRILLER scribe Robert Bloch, has been playing host on most of the commentaries — he had done six before I showed up. I’m also told that the set will include isolated music tracks for every episode! ”
This has been on my Top Five Want List for a loooong time. Great news! And it sounds like they’re really going to do a bang up job on it. And one big set, rather than season sets! Whoo-hoo!
FROM BEYOND
The choice of “From Beyond” as the source story for a movie is not necessarily an intuitive choice. It’s seven pages of things that the human eye cannot behold, and really it doesn’t have much “story” to it other than “I saw stuff and almost died, but then I shot the machine and lived, only to wish I hadn’t.” Other than the framing device, the whole story consists of sitting down in front of a machine. Character development consists of describing what a shriveled gargoyle Tillinghast has become. And, again, all of the visuals are meant to be literally impossible things which the eye is incapable of perceiving. But then, Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna’s first choice was not this story. After the success of Herbert West: Re-Animator, the follow-up effort was originally slated to be Dagon. That didn’t end up happening, though, because Charles Band didn’t think that fish-people were sufficiently scary. With the potential for special effects in the mid-1980s for this crew, maybe he was right… but then, given that my experiences with Full Moon films have basically been a string of letdowns, I dunno if Charles Band is the authority I’d bow to in terms of what’s scary.
Only one more review to go before the gate is unlocked and we all go mad…
