Two Hearts Are Better Than None. Or Are They?

What we've got here is a failure to communicate...

I was initially pretty ambivalent about the changes required by the MPAA for the My Bloody Valentine remake teaser poster to get a passing grade (above on the left is the original version; to the right is the doctored U.S. one-sheet, which is either a brilliant inversion of Alfred Hitchock's chocolate-syrup-for-blood technique from Psycho, or just Lionsgate being lazy); I figured, hey, at least it's not another floating-heads job.

But the more I think about it, the more this incident bothers me. It's not that I'm expecting great things from the movie (if the 3-D aspect didn't temper my hopes, the involvement of Patrick Lussier -- who's sort of the Rick Rosenthal of the 21st-century -- certainly shoved a pick-ax in them) and feel it's been unfairly maligned (the MPAA applies its no-blood or low-blood policy to all posters it approves). It's the further implications of this case that are somewhat irritating.

The one assurance offered all along by those involved with the remake as a consolation to fans of the still-just-as-potent-as-ever-in-all-the-right-(and wrong)-ways original film has been the production team's dedication to making a brutally violent, gory film, maintaining the shameless Tales From the Crypty approach to the material that helps the '80s version endure so well. Had Lionsgate forged ahead with their campaign in the states (the original poster above still hangs in European cinemas), particularly in spite of the MPAA's decree, it might have sent a clear signal of intent and re-established the ballsy integrity the firm once had among genre fans (lost amid a swollen catalog of Saw sequels and shitty direct-to-video drops). Instead, one is forced to call into question all that we've heard about the film's splatter quotient and wonder if this is going to be another edited print dropped in theaters to grab some opening-weekend bank and then released later on an unrated DVD. Sure, there are worse fates to befall a movie, but it's a lot harder for me to keep my dismissive tendencies at bay and even give something a chance if I don't think the people responsible for its creation have put their... uhh, you know... into it.

"F" for Finally

God bless the Halloween DVD season. Were it not for Best Buy and Blockbuster's annual need to fill up endcaps with something cheap and horror-related, the only new releases we'd be seeing 'round this time of year would be Anchor Bay's 47th edition of Halloween and a commemorative Evil Dead set packaged in a life-size latex replica of Bruce Campbell's chin.

Fortunately, for those of you who, like me, spend less time in October opening candy wrappers and more time opening your wallets, the harvest is plentiful this year, especially if you're inclined toward bad slasher movies, or bad-good slasher movies, or Final Exam.

Since seeing it for the first time about ten years ago, I've searched long and hard for someone else who actually liked Final Exam. Fans of "new" horror say it's too slow; fans of "old" horror say it's too much like Halloween (a detraction that's never really made much sense to me -- that's kind of like saying Diet Coke tastes too much like Coke). That's because Final Exam isn't really like any other movie from its era, or any era. It's classier than, say, Cheerleader Camp, but not exactly Carpenteresque; it's essentially just another school slasher, but probably the only one that successfully favors characters over carnage for a good hour. It's derivative, but daring. And thanks to the endless e-mail onslaught by the 14 people who enjoy it enough to have worn out their old VHS tapes, it's finally out on DVD.

No sign of any special features, so you'll have to live with a DVD on your shelf that isn't a 2-disc, high-def, scratch-n-sniff, sing-along edition, but that just means you'll have more room for that inevitable rubber chin.

Cheat Sheet:

• Bleeding Skull's timely and exhaustive appreciation of Final Exam
• Horror Movie A Day christens March 14 Final Exam day
• Final Exam for short attention spans
  

A Tale of Two Layouts (and One Aging, Narcissistic Intercessor)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Some people call it a space cowboy, but I call it April.

We shouldn’t complain about three new theatrical genre releases in as many Fridays, but the last few weeks haven’t exactly delivered the most potent 1-2-3 punch. The Ruins got fooled on April 4; more kids turned out last week for the Prom, but hardly had a night to remember; a killer paints with body parts in this week’s Anamorph, but only on select screens.

Half-hearted horror is typical for this time of year, with studios emptying out their junk drawers to make room for more prints of Iron Man and Indiana Jones -- which makes it as good a time as any to stay in and freshen things up around here. All four frequent readers will notice a new layout, still evolving as I try to decide between functionality and form (and figure out a good place to hide some surprise Jon Mikl-Thor pictures -- found one!).

Much cooler stuff is coming soon, including an interview with the trinity of soul-stealing awesomeness that is Calabrese, and a tribute to sex in conversion vans. If the RSS feed’s a-rockin…

Johnston's Got Nards

So implies Scott Stuber, one of the producers on Universal’s Wolfman remake, in this interview with Empire. He goes on to elaborate a bit on the narrative, the special effects (no CG!), and Benicio Del Toro’s wolfmanphilia. Mostly, though, he talks up director Joe Johnston, which some are interpreting as a direct reaction to negative press that bubbled up when original director Mark Romanek left the project.

While I’m just as excited as everyone else about the two promo stills that emerged last week, and at the prospect of Rick Baker doing another werewolf movie, the idea of Universal doing damage control this earlier in the film’s gestation does raise some questions.

Right now my only question is: anybody got a spare $8,000?

Starting March 28, four of Stan Winston’s original monster costumes are up for bids on eBay. You can see the rest of the bunch here, here, and here.

Postcards From the Post-Apocalypse

Sometimes I get the feeling that come the end of the world, I’ll feel fine.

For about as long as I can remember (which at times stretches as far back as the day I split my two-year-old lip open and calmly explained to my mother that I thought a visit to the emergency room might be in order), I’ve had a thing for post-apocalyptic dystopias. From telling my grade school principal to take her stinking paws off me to welcoming 1997 with a Snake Pliskin drinking game, I’ve spent a lot of my formative years longing for the end of days.

In honor of the Final Girl-sponsored Hey Internet, Stop Being Such Cynical Fucking Douchebags Blog-a-Thon (and Neil “I Somehow Manage to Keep Living Up to All the Hype” Marshall), I take a break from berating Rob Zombie today and instead present these loving wishes to black leather, nuclear fallout, and the drinking of one’s own pee.


Escape From New York
Growing up in the Midwest, by the time I was about four I had developed a serious case of Los Angelenvy. This is the condition one acquires by watching a constant string of early ‘80s movies that were all filmed in the suburbs of L.A. Every time a swimming pool was dug in my neighborhood, I secretly hoped corpses would start popping up out of the hole and paranormal investigators would show up and rip off their own faces. In the sixth grade, I desperately wanted to take my first-ever date to Golf N’ Stuff. But at some point in my adolescence, I finally discovered a cool movie that had not been filmed or set in SoCal. In fact, said cool movie had actually been filmed on my home turf (apparently the streets of New York were not run-down and shitty enough to pass for a post-apocalyptic warzone, but St. Louis fit the bill perfectly). I heart pretty much any John Carpenter movie from the ‘80s, but there will always be a special pocket of love reserved for EFNY. There will always be a special pocket of love reserved for Harry Dean Stanton, too, but that’s a post for another HISBSCFD-blog-a-thon.


Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
The third Mad Max movie is not better than the first two. It’s not even anywhere near as good as either of them. In fact, it’s not really good at all. But come on, the word Thunderdome is in the frickin’ title! Incidentally, do you remember how those rumors about Michael Jackson buying the Elephant Man’s bones started circulating in the late ‘80s? I always thought Trent Reznor had perpetrated a similarly ridiculous purchase of the Thunderdome for use in his 1992 “Wish” music video (this was right after the rumor about him having his ribs surgically removed so he could fellatiate himself on stage emerged, so I assumed he must have gotten some kind of deal on the ‘dome from Tina Turner).


Waterworld
Like just about every summer movie that came out after 1993, seeing Waterworld was supposed to be more important than having sex. Or eating. Or going to college.
It was not.
But it did feature and still holds the record for the best scene ever filmed in which a man who once made out with Susan Sarandon drinks his own urine.


Tank Girl
Coinciding with my lifelong fascination with post-apocalyptic movies is my lifelong fascination with girls who could kick my ass. This affair sort of reached its pinnacle when I saw Lori Petty’s performance in Tank Girl. If The Donnas collectively ate Japan and washed it down with a bottle of Manic Panic, the morning-after result would be Lori Petty as Tank Girl.


A Boy and His Dog
In my junior year in college I took an eight-week Friday night class on science fiction movies. With nearly 20 years as a nerd under my belt, I thought for sure this would cover material I was already familiar with and be an easy ace. Instead I ended up seeing eight movies I’d never seen of, most of which I hadn’t even heard of. A Boy and His Dog was one of those movies. I didn’t particularly care for it, but I wanted to include it on this list because I think it’s noteworthy that I received college credit for watching a movie starring Don Johnson.


Doomsday
Worried about how the dollar is doing against the Euro right now? Just wait till Neil Marshall gets a hold of it. Not even Shaun of the Dead duo Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg know how to rescue a traditionally American horror subgenre that’s flagging the way this guy does. I’m pretty sure the man secretes awesomeness from his pores and just sprinkles it on whatever movie set he’s working on at the time. This movie might as well be The Road Warriorette Escapes From Edinburgh, which is exactly why it’s the greatest thing to ever happen in the month of March, 2008.

The next best thing is the HISBSCFD blog-a-thon, so go read the other entries and don’t come back till somebody drops the big one.

Scream Streams: PARENTS

Lately there’s been an influx of great bad movies popping up for free online viewing, so I’ve decided to start spotlighting one weekly. I figure it’ll ensure at least a semi-regular posting schedule, and help me earn my merit badge in Randy Quaid appreciation.

To that end, if you find yourself with 81 free minutes this week but no copy of Caddyshack II handy, just point your finger clicky thing over to Hulu.com and take in the next best example of Quaidness in the 1988 suburban cannibal satire Parents.

Highlights include:
• A delightful mid-century production design
• Meat that comes to life
• A scene in which an elementary school teacher sneaks into the young hero’s home, hides inside the kitchen pantry when she hears someone else in the house, and then inexplicably grabs hold of a carving knife, slicing open her own hands.
• Randy Quaid writhing on a blood-soaked bed.

The Thrill of It All

This year De of the Dead made my bloody valentine by gifting me with the 25th Anniversary edition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which includes a DVD featuring the complete 13-minute mini-horror film that first taught me to love zombies and dance poorly.

The video is still amazingly fresh and effective (probably in part because we’re not used to seeing a Michael Jackson that resembles a human being with a real nose, let alone one that’s wolfed out or been zombified), and features what I to this day consider to be one of the top three “corpses coming out of the ground” sequences of all time (the other two appear in Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and the original Return of the Living Dead).

But a true acknowledgement of “Thriller’s” legacy is really not complete without recognizing some of the masterpieces the video inspired, all of which are now preserved forever (or until the FCC goes all Orwell) on YouTube:

The Michael Jackson Original
Co-starring the voice of Vincent Price and a girl I always thought was Tootie from The Facts of Life.

The Indian Version
This is easily my favorite “Thriller” knockoff, if not for the weird “chicken variation” on the signature “creep” dance, then for the muffled mystical voice at the beginning that makes it sound like the paunchy lead is being turned into a monster by the ride operator on the Tilt-A-Whirl.

The Lego Adaptation
Amazing. Someone buy these guys some space sets so they can remake Moonwalker.

The CPDRC Inmates Version
You’ve got to wonder how they decided who would play the girl.

No Love for New Line

2008 may be the last year that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes gets a valentine from Bob Shaye.

In response to the recent suicidal tendencies of TW’s stock price, Bewkes has started eyeing cost-cutting options, and the first name on his kill list appears to be Shaye’s New Line Cinema label. Founded by Shaye and partner Michael Lynne, New Line was for a long time regarded by horror fans as “the house that Freddy built” for the phenomenal financial haul of A Nightmare on Elm Street, which first established New Line as an economically viable independent studio. Time Warner acquired the company when it bought up Ted Turner’s media assets, and has since run the studio separately from its Warner Bros. division (per Shaye’s wishes) with Lynne and Shaye as its co-chairs.

While he hasn’t always made the best choices as studio head (in reality, Bewkes’ decision to cut New Line may depend on whether or not Shaye gives him back that $8.00 he spent on a ticket to Man’s Best Friend), Shaye has never tried to hide or back away from his involvement in horror. In the dark ages of the early ‘90s, New Line was virtually the only studio regularly putting horror movies into theaters. Were it not for Shaye’s unpopular decision to back movies like In the Mouth of Madness, future installments of those “Scariest Movie Moments” specials that run on Bravo around Halloween would be forced to refer to the period as “the Vidmark Era.”

If TW does cut New Line (and Shaye and Lynne), it will most likely fold all of its assets into the Warner Bros. division. Shaye and Lynne would loose valuable fallback franchises like the Nightmare, Friday the 13th, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, though considering how those are faring these days, they might be better off rotting in the WB vault.

Of course, the break could provide the opportunity for Shaye and Lynne to revisit their Reagan-hippy roots and start up their own new company like the Weinsteins did, but then again, we all know how well that turned out.

Slash on Demand

Not counting the aftermath of Brittney’s evitable self-destruction, the day following the Super Bowl will probably go down as YouTube’s busiest day this year. Even I had to find out what Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons have in common. But if Clydesdales and Coke ads don’t tempt your clicker finger, just try putting some slash in your search bar.

Over the last few months, YouTuber Taylor has been quietly uploading slasher crap and classics alike to his SlasherTV channel, providing 24/7 access to streaming screams from the glory days of campground massacres and suburban dismemberment. Has your local Blockbuster lost its copy of Bava’s Blade in the Dark? Can’t get past the hideous case art for Happy Birthday to Me enough to actually pick up the DVD?? No worries, they’re all here, complete and uncut (albeit broken into segments), along with some relics that may never find their way to any “official” digital format. Case in point, Taylor’s most recently unearthed treasure, the rare backyard Betacam extravaganza Boardinghouse (which, incidentally has been on Code Red’s DVD release roster for over a year now).

Print and transmission quality varies from flick to flick, but these aren’t the kind of movies you’d want to blow up to full-screen mode anyway; they’re much better as background fare, something to listen to while you browse and flip back to just as John gets a shish kebab skewer through the throat.

With Hollywood being all litigious and stuff, there’s no telling how long the channel will be broadcasting, so get your kicks while you can.

The Bodies Count: The Curious Value of Character in the Friday the 13th Flicks

From the time I was eight-years-old, not a single Friday the 13th has passed without my special observance, first in the form of caffeine-fueled adolescent sleepovers and USA’s Up All Night movie marathons, then later raucous Friday drinking games and illicit, hockey-masked runs through forested nooks and cemeteries, and, in the digital age, faux Jason interviews and ridiculously detailed and lengthy online articles on everything from the top 13 sex-related deaths to “those damn enchiladas” from Friday V.

Thus, though my interest in the series has waned over the last few years and it’s a little on the fringe of this joint’s thematic intent, when Final Girl Stacie Ponder issued an open call for Friday-centric blog posts, I couldn’t resist throwing something together and pimping what I feel is one of the more under-appreciated elements of the series, something this lingering saga of a lovable backwoods mamma’s boy and his bond with a severed head is not particularly well-known for: its characters.

In the slasher genre, where 95% of all individuals are quickly introduced specifically for the purpose of a sensationally graphic or even comic demise soon afterwards, first impressions are essential, but seldom lasting. In most traditional slashers, the killer is really the star, if not the killings themselves. Nobody remembers Mabel from My Bloody Valentine for her wholesome, small-town, apple-pie charm; they remember her for her death via tumble dryer. Understandably, as the Friday franchise was dragged into its teen years by Jason Goes to Hell and, with Jason X and Freddy Vs. Jason, into its early- to mid-20s, all attention was increasingly focused solely on Jason and some high-profile and highly illogical slayings (or, in the case of the latter example, Jason, Freddy, and Monica Keena’s irritating, nasally whine).

But over the last few years, as my thoughts returned to Crystal Lake with every Friday the 13th, and as I’ve tried to understand and explain to others why the early Paramount-era movies are so much fun while the later-day New Line ventures make Uwe Boll seem like the Orson Welles of horror, I’ve found myself remembering and caring less and less about Jason and his exploits and focusing more attention on the freaks, tramps, and bad dancers who’ve helped make the series so endearingly awful. These days, when I talk about the movies with friends, nobody mentions the infamous sleeping bag death from Part VII or the dimensionally popping eye from Part III; we talk about bicycle-riding soothsayers, post-coital handstands, and “Star Mummy.” We talk about screen-wide denim cut-offs, strip Monopoly, perverted morgue attendants, Crispin “Dead Fuck” Glover, and, of course, those damn enchiladas.

The Halloween movies are memorable for their palpable dread, their unsettling, genuine ambiance, and their stark approach to the concept of evil. The Nightmare series enraptures with fantastic visuals and an equally fantastic twist on the American dream, appealing to teenage audiences by catering to the idea of parents as an adversarial force responsible for their own progeny’s undoing. I think the Friday the 13th franchise stands out from the slasher pack because of its cast of inexplicably and yet irresistibly compelling anthropological sideshows – a collective group not too dissimilar from a bunch of Jerry Springer Show rejects gone to summer camp. The guy with the mask and the machete is just a bonus.

If your celebratory plans call for revisiting the series, as many will today, pay a little extra attention to the characters that populate its wacky world, the equally wacky things they do; just remember to stay away from those damn enchiladas.

Happy Friday the 13th!