tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61693013102255437532024-03-14T01:28:16.495-07:00Baron Von Goolo's™ Evil Hut of Horror & WafflesHorror Movie Reviews & Random Cynicism For Tastes Both Discerning & Otherwise.<br>Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-90697770862831257512009-01-16T22:55:00.000-08:002009-01-16T23:06:15.908-08:0013 REASONS TO LOVE TOKYO GORE POLICESometimes Sweet Baby Jeezus gives you a present. In this case, to reward us for putting up with Michael Bay's tyrannical parade of re-treaded mediocrity (a parade that is so horrible that it rips a hole in space-time and exists in the before, the now and the will-be simultaneously), the cultural divine wind that is Tokyo Shock has released TOKYO GORE POLICE on DVD.<br /><br />My friends, come close. This is a blessing that is as new and visionary as it is beyond my jaded expectations. TOKYO GORE POLICE is the bastard love monkey of TERMINATOR II, DEAD ALIVE and Carpenter's THE THING and I can't even recall the last time that a film swept my innate cynicism aside so completely. After watching it twice since it came out on DVD last Tuesday, my brain has been spinning inside my skull like a kangaroo rat on back alley street-meth but my joy, while still uncut, rings so loudly that it retards my ability to string coherent paragraphs together in a traditional review. So instead, I'm simply going to list the first thirteen things that leap out of my fingers and let you, my precious piggies, spackle in the holes when you watch this uncommon delight yourselves.<br /><br />ReadysetGO.<br /><br />1. Director/Editor/Gore FX Artist/Creature Designer Yoshihiro Nishimura is a visual auteur/thunder god on a par with Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton, blocking nearly every shot in the film so that it's suitable for framing. Whether you can stomach what you're seeing or not is irrelevant: Nishimura's sense of color, composition and balance is objectively good. The fact that he had the foresight and control to edit TOKYO GORE POLICE as well underscores what a cinematic juggernaut he is. He's like the Asian Quentin Tarantino in the wake of PULP FICTION. (And in the wake of DEATH PROOF, there might be a vacancy for the American Quentin Tarantino as well. But I digress.)<br /><br />2. Eihi Shiina plays the superheroine Ruka to leggy, stoic perfection. Compounding on her role as the mad love interest from Takashi Miike's masterpiece, AUDITION, Shiina has cemented her role as Japan's It Girl for ice-blooded, sociopathic supermodels that can carry a script. She is now firmly entrenched at #3, between Salma Hayek and Tricia Helfer, on the list of celebrities that my wife will allow me one consequence-free snogfest with if e'er I'm afforded the opportunity.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/tgp1.jpg"><br /><br />3. TOKYO GORE POLICE is destined for cult royalty. It is exactly the needle that we all look for when we wade into the haystack of MACHINE GIRL and SARS WARS: BANGKOK ZOMBIE CRISIS. It makes VERSUS look like an episode of KURE KURE TAKERU.<br /><br />4. Enough firehosing fountain blood to pressure-wash Delaware.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/tgp3.jpg"><br /><br />5. Coolest genetically modified mutant cyborg archvillain EVER.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/tgp2.jpg"><br /><br />6. Hilarious Paul Verhoeven style TV commercials confuse and delight you between sequences of intense gore. I laughed out loud at "Wristcutter G" all eight times that I rewound and watched it.<br /><br />7. Also like ROBOCOP, TOKYO GORE POLICE is set in the context of a believably executed dystopian society in the indeterminate future. While many of the elements of the film are improbable in any future, the backdrop of a privatized police force, commercialized self-mutilation and society's desensitization to violence as a whole are thought-provoking (assuming you can stop laughing or cringing from everything else going on).<br /><br />8. Quadruple amputee Spiderwoman sex-slave gimp ninja with katana legs. (Hoe! Lee!! Shitake mushrooms!!!!)<br /><br />9. Rocket powered Fist Cannon (patent pending).<br /><br />10. The face-off in Bar Independent (sic).<br /><br />11. Lady GatorCrotch.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/tgp4.jpg"><br /><br />12. Super-sexy lady samurai cop with a naginata appears out of nowhere to fight the prostitute in a sexy school uniform that's been transformed into a mutant killing machine with a giant box-cutter arm and acid spewing nipples in one of the film's most engaging and superfluous battle-to-the-death sequences. Ah, the Japanese...they can't pronounce "subtlety" so why worry about it? Big wet kiss!<br /><br />13. And perhaps most important, I can't remember the last time I had so much damn <i>fun</i> watching a movie.<br /><br />And to complete your viewing pleasure, it is CRITICAL that you watch the Japanese language version with subtitles. There is a richness of inflection and depth of sound - as well as numerous sound effects and background music - which are quite simply missing from the English dub. The dub actors are more flat and lifeless than a squirrel on the Interstate and they literally ruin the film. If you're one of those products of our public-school system that is adamantly against subtitles, you would be better watching the movie with the sound turned off.<br /><br />Sound on or off, in a box or with a fox, make time for TOKYO GORE POLICE. Along with recent films like INSIDE, TEETH, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and REC, I would not be a bit surprised to learn that we are on the cusp of an international golden age for horror movies. Wouldn't that be something? I've either got goosebumps or a recurrence of last week's rash. Fingers crossed for the former, eh?Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-19738681175499701312009-01-11T15:01:00.000-08:002009-01-11T15:15:11.391-08:00A Lesson In HumilityI have seen HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER twice. I watched GOZU until the end (and rewound the dog part five times). I watched LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT last night just to see if it's worth the remake that's coming out later this year.* And I'm the guy at the party that pretentiously interjects CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST into the conversation about cult films among people that haven't even seen Rocky Horror all the way through.<br /><br />But this made me throw up in my mouth a little.<br /><br /><object width="420" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5zYwy7hwMn8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5zYwy7hwMn8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="420" height="295"></embed></object><br /><br />(This is a two-spotted ribbonworm. It is real. And eeyew eeyew eeyew eeyew EEYEEEEWWWW!!!!!!)<br /><br />* It's not.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-24357945085704803722008-08-19T13:12:00.000-07:002008-08-19T13:41:43.617-07:00SOME MONSTERS THAT NEVER QUITE CAUGHT ON WITH THE PUBLIC<BR>The Guy Of Average Height and Weight Of Notre Dame<br /><br />The WereCareBears<br /><br />Demonkey<br /><br />That Darn Gorgon<br /><br />Thogdarr, The Creature That Talks To You On The Bus<br /><br />The Olive Loaf of Dorian Gray<br /><br />Nibbula, Hamster of Dracula!<br /><br />WereWaldo?<br /><br />Milli Godzilli<br /><br />The Phantom Of The Lady Foot Locker<br /><br />Dr. Six Nipples, The Man With Six Nipples<br /><br />MantelopeBaron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-63506306135687214102008-08-17T02:58:00.000-07:002008-08-19T00:23:07.778-07:00Baron's Bestiary - Chapter 1My last post’s thumbs up for monsters set my brainbox ta’jigglin’. In my day I’ve rubbed elbows with a monster or two. Times ten to the sixth. Which monsters have made my timbers the shiveriest?<br /><br />Culling this down to a mere, shopworn Top 10 would be a transgression against popular culture on par with greenlighting Flavor Of Love. My knowledge on this subject is entirely too encyclopedic for that sort of brevity. I will, however, commit to ten at a time and in no particular order. This will give those of you viewing at home the chance to chime in and play along. Fun! Here are the rules:<br /><br />1) The monster may come from any medium: urban legend, movies, litter-at-chore, comicbooks, anything.<br />2) I will accept a “villain” or “bad guy” as a monster as long as he, she or it has an unnatural element. This element may be supernatural, paranormal, extraterrestrial, cryptozoological, downright bizarre or generally freakish.<br />3) The monster needs to have panache, preferably in its actions as well as its attributes. The kind of monsters that lesser monsters were spun off from.<br />4) The first person to say Darth Vader gets rabbit-punched in the Adam’s apple.<br /><br />Ready? Ding ding! Round 1!<br /><br /><b>THE GILL-MAN aka THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON</b><br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/gillman1.jpg"><br /><br /><b>WHY?</b> The Big Five. The Classics. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Mummy and this guy. Universal’s stable of monsters is arguably the most iconic in American culture and the Gill-Man stands out not only for being the only one that was not based on myth or classic literature, but for looking so damn good doing it. THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON came out over half a century ago and the character design (attributed to make-up artist Bud Westmore but actually created by Disney animator Millicent Patrick) is still superior to 90% of the monster work produced today.<br /><b>TRIVIA:</b> A CFTBL remake has been in the works since 2001, in the aftermath of the catastrophic and unexplainable success of Universal’s blockbuster turdapalooza, THE MUMMY, and may or may not be released in 2009. In this version, the Gill-Man is no longer an evolutionary throwback but the result of pharmaceutical companies tampering with nature – so there’s cliché strike one right there. The film is being directed by the son of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Breck Eisner, whose film credits include being the son of Michael Eisner.<br /><br /><b>THE MONSTER SQUAD GILL-MAN</b><br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/gillman2.jpg"><br /><br /><b>WHY?</b> Because Fred Dekker’s cult classic THE MONSTER SQUAD is one of the only monster movies out there that lives up to the oxymoron of being “fun for all ages” and the magnificent detail of the Gill-Man suit, created at Stan Winston Studios by my favorite monster maker ever, <a href="http://www.myspace.com/stevewangfx">Steve Wang</a>, achieves the unenviable task of being a worthy second act to the original Gill-Man.<br /><b>TRIVIA:</b> Since THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON is the only one of the aforementioned Big Five that is a strictly Universal Studios property, Dekker avoided being sued back into the Bronze Age by referring to the monster only as “the Gill-Man” throughout THE MONSTER SQUAD.<br /><br /><b> THE TAR-MAN</b><br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/tarman.jpg"><br /><br /><b>WHY?</b> As the first zombie released from its military canister in RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, Tar-Man’s glassy stare, melting flesh, spastic movements and warbling hiss cemented him in position as The Best Zombie In The History Of Ever. Tar-Man’s sequence in ROTLD should be required viewing for any filmmaker that sees CGI as a default.<br /><b>TRIVIA:</b> The Tar-Man was played to gangly perfection by professional mime and Jim Henson Company puppeteer, Allan Trautman. That means Tar-Man has had his hand up a Fraggle’s ass.<br /><br /><b> THAT PASTY GOBLIN FROM THE EIGHTH EPISODE OF ‘TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE’</b><br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/lizzie.jpg"><br /><br /><b>WHY?</b> Dubbed “Lizzie” by her creator and director, horror fx legend and execrable actor Tom Savini, this cuddly bundle of snuggles helped wedge the first season of TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE into the aorta of horror fans everywhere. Shrunken, slimy and with a taste for co-eds, I can personally vouch for the nightmare-inducing qualities of that particular episode. <br /><b>TRIVIA:</b> For years I thought that Lizzie was one of the most original creature designs I had ever seen. Then I saw a copy of STRANGE TALES from October 1932.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/strangetales.jpg"><br /><br />Let this be a lesson to you all. Never throw away your old comic books. You never know when a 50 year old illustration will make you seem clever.<br /><br /><b> THOSE PRUNY GOBLINS FROM ‘DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK’</b><br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/dbaotd.jpg"><br /><br /><b>WHY?</b> Creepiest. Made-for-TV movie. Ever. Kim Darby plays a young wife struggling with a schizophrenic disorder, so why would anyone believe her when a clan of tiny, furry demons that look like Edward Horton try to pull her into the fireplace? They wouldn’t. Too bad, so sad, buhbye Kim Darby.<br /><b>TRIVIA:</b> Tick tock goes the remake clock. Miramax is already helming a redux of DBAOTD that will be directed by Canadian comic book artist, Troy Nixey. Sounds iffy, huh? What if I told you Guillermo Del Toro was producing it? See that? See how it seems so awesome now? Hu-hoh yeah.<br /><br /><b>CTHULHU</b><br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/cthulhu.jpg"><br /><br /><b>WHY?</b> Millions love him while millions more have never heard of him. H.P. Lovecraft is at once the most influential and under-appreciated horror author I can think of. His most enduring work are the “Cthulhu Mythos,” an entire ecosystem of cross-dimensional monstrosities, complete with its own pantheon of bubbling, tentacled Elder Gods of which Cthulhu was boss. Octopus headed, toad bodied, enshrouded with rotting, leathern wings, Cthulhu was supposedly so malignant and antithetical to human existence that just dreaming of it would drive a man utterly bonkers. Lovecraft’s ability to describe the indescribable in his writing blazed a trail for dozens of writers including Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth – even Stephen King dipped his toe in Mythos with THE MIST – but ironically, this talent of Lovecraft’s may be exactly why so few of his works have been successfully translated to film. The cosmic terror of a Cthulhu is just too massive and indefinable to be captured by anything except the imagination. The most faithful film adaptation of a Lovecraft story is probably Dan O’Bannon’s THE RESURRECTED, a faithful retelling of Lovecraft’s short story THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD. And if one imagines the monster from Dean Koontz’ PHANTOMS to be Shub Niggurath (translation: Cthulhu’s slutty sister), that movie instantly gets better. We just need to keep hoping that Guillermo Del Toro still wants to do THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS after he’s done cashing all his HOBBIT checks.<br /><b>TRIVIA:</b> Despite being the most powerful of all the Elder Gods who ruled the earth millennia before the Dawn of Man, Cthulhu is perhaps best known today for playing Davy Jones in the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies.<br /><br /><b> SANTANICO PANDEMONIUM</b><br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/santanico.jpg"><br /><br /><b>WHY?</b> Important safety tip. If one is frequenting a gentlemen’s establishment for, say, le boobies, one should expect to hear the DJ announcing succulent moisties going by names like “Cinnamon” or “Dakota.” Safe, established stripper aliases. But if a hot toddy is telling you her name is “Santanico Pandemonium” up front, that’s a clue. Grab your sack and run.<br /><br />I’ll own up to my bias. Santanico as one of the coolest monsters <i>ever?</i> Oh sure, reptilian snake vampiresses are way up there, but for pure monstrosity I think that both Amanda Donohoe in LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM and Jacqueline Pearce in Hammer’s THE REPTILE are far more engaging. But this one goes out to the little baron. Salma Hayek could not be hotter if she was made out of wasabi and napalm. I have never had a conversation about FROM DUSK TILL DAWN with a straight man that did not revolve around Santanico’s table dance. And I have never had a conversation about FROM DUSK TILL DAWN with a gay man.<br /><b>TRIVIA:</b> Besides this legendary appearance in FDTD, Salma also appears in Robert Rodriguez’ often overlooked bodysnatcher flick, THE FACULTY, a movie that ranks high on my roster of guilty pleasures. When you consider her willingness to work with (high profile but still) counter culture directors like Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith, while still having the chops to pull off a tour de force like FRIDA, she might well be one of Hollywood’s coolest actresses in addition to being the hottest.<br /><br /><b> THE CENOBITES</b><br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/cenobites.jpg"><br /><br /><b>WHY?</b> <i> <br />“HEY! You got your bondage sex in my horror! “<br />“HEY! You got your horror in my bondage sex!”<br />“HEY!!! That’s terrific!!!”</i><br /><br />Clive Barker and his leather-clad demon daddies did as much to open up the horizon of horror as Giger’s design for the xenomorph in ALIEN did for sci-fi. As if the burning lake wasn’t bad enough, HELLRAISER opened up our minds to the notion that eternal torment could just as easily involve fishhooks and our poop chutes. Stay in school, kids.<br /><b>TRIVIA:</b> Pinhead is considered a sex symbol in Japan. Which is why you should never have sex in Japan.<br /><br /><b> DOCTOR TERWILLIGER</b><br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/drT.jpg"><br /><br /><b>WHY?</b> Played to megalomaniacal perfection by the irreplaceable Hans Conreid, the title character from the 1953 musical fantasy, THE 5000 FINGERS OF DR. T., is an ivory key despot imprisoning 500 young children in his impossibly fantastic piano camp gulag, where every non-piano playing musician in the world is being kept in the dungeon. Think Lex Luthor meets Liberace. Among his henchmen are a pair of rollerskating Siamese twins connected by their ZZ Topp beards. I guarantee you that Tim Burton has worn out his DVD of this film about eight times.<br /><b>TRIVIA:</b> The 5000 FINGERS OF DR.T is the only full length motion picture to be written by Dr. Seuss. You can only rhyme ‘hop’ and ‘pop’ so many times before you snap like a Kit Kat and write something entirely misanthropic.<br /><br /><b>THE DALEKS</b><br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/daleks.jpg"><br /><br /><b>WHY?</b> Have you ever wondered why so many “aliens” from “different” worlds all have two legs, two arms, more often than not, a face, as well as an uncanny grasp of the English language? Buh-HOR-riiiiiiing. That’s why I love the Daleks so much. Not only are they singlemindedly genocidal, but they pull it off looking like giant pepper mills. Seriously, how menacing do you have to be to compensate for having a plunger hand. Lots menacing. And yet, the Daleks have been pulling it off in the various incarnations of DOCTOR WHO for the better part of half a century. Just last year, these villainous vibrators were voted the “scariest” of the Doctor’s villains by a poll of BBC viewers. (Now, if there was a <i>Dentist</i> Who, then those Brits would really be crapping their knickers.)<br /><b>TRIVIA:</b> The Daleks were created by veteran BBC production designer Raymond Cusick because a 25 year old set designer by the name of Ridley Scott turned the gig down. Too bad – that Scott kid probably could have made a name for himself if he hadn't been such a slacker. <br /><br />(ahem)<br /><br />And the Daleks make ten. A fine maiden outing, says I. I’ve already got the next ten lined up but please, try and complicate my life with your own observations.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-24746373843044129762008-07-10T03:12:00.000-07:002008-07-13T12:26:43.734-07:00MY HIGH HORSE OF HORROREventually, I'm going to talk about the French horror film, INSIDE. I'm also going to tell you how it ends, partly because I want to ruin it for you. By the time you get there, you'll understand why.<br /><br />I have an enormous problem with the spate of "torture horror" films these days. I'm referring to films where the horror is all too human and the violence, which tends to be prodigious, isn't borne of a voodoo curse or an alien's genetic imperative to lay eggs in your butt. It's just sadism. The HOSTEL films, THEM (2007), THE STRANGERS, VACANCY, P2, CAPTIVITY, TURISTAS, remakes of PROM NIGHT, THE HITCHER, WHEN A STRANGER CALLS...yadda yadda yadda. I find these films to be at best creatively lazy and at worst culturally damaging.<br /><br />The evil that men do is not entertainment. If it was, we'd have a CSPAN for Darfur by now that would make American Idol look like a cable access hog report. Horror movies are supposed to be a break from reality. In order for us to suspend our disbelief, give us something to disbelieve in. Give us a <i>MONSTER!</i> And don't feel that you need to hold back, either. The ghost of a cremated pedophile? I'm intrigued. A demonic, self-mutilating leather daddy and his carpool buddies from hell? Do go on. You don't even have to work that hard. Did any of you see CREEP (2005)? It's in that same awry-experiment mutant genre as THE HILLS HAVE EYES, only the writer/director assumed that his audience had an I.Q. above room temperature. That's really all it takes. And then, to keep us on our toes, every once in a blue moon, lightly pepper in a believable sociopath. A Hannibal Lechter. A Henry. The AntiDundee from WOLF CREEK, even. But make them the exceptions, not the rule. Give our psyches some time to heal over before you squirt lemon all over them again by reminding us how scary the world is.<br /><br />Now, I know what some of you are thinking. <br /><br />"But Baron, isn't man truly the biggest monster of them all?" <br /><br />Please know that your half-baked, freshman philosophy class nihilism is causing me actual, physical pain. You want to vilify the human condition, Moonbeam? Go watch SCHINDLER'S LIST. There's a reason that horror and sci-fi and fantasy share space in convention halls as well as in the hearts of nerds worldwide: it's all about fracking make-believe. When a movie is just about violence and sadism, that makes it too real - even if the story framed around it happens to be fiction. It takes so little effort to push that same violence into the realm of fantasy. The killers were dead but now they're only sorta dead. See? See how easy?<br /><br />I'm assuming, of course, that we can all agree that movies are meant to entertain. They're meant to add to our lives in some way, even if it's just a 90 minute vacation from hearing about war and inflation and celebrity babies. In a perfect scenario, horror movies are a catharsis, allowing us to get our adrenaline pumping, scream and blow off the steam of a stressful world by rooting for the heroes and, even subconsciously, feeling just a wee bit happier that we don't live in a world where the full moon is evil and brains are delicious.<br /><br />Torture horror films do not do this. They make us feel <i>worse</i> about the world. Their message is loud and clear: you're fucked. You don't have to go into the basement when the electricity is out. You don't have to read a passage from a book bound in human skin. You don't have to have unprotected teen sex on the grave of a drowned retard in the pet cemetery next to the nuclear power plant in order for unspeakable things to happen to you. All you have to do is be in the wrong place at the wrong time. <br /><br />What? Don't tell me that. That's not what I want to leave the theater thinking. That's just mean. I paid ten bucks for you to show me <i>this?</i> You dick!<br /><br />Which brings me to INSIDE.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/inside.jpg"><br /><br />Written and directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, INSIDE is the most relentless example of torture horror that has ever glued my eyes open in shock and awe. In a nutshell, a woman in her last weeks of pregnancy is trapped in her home and stalked by a scissor wielding madwoman that is dead set on a decidedly unscheduled C-section. Everyone that enters the house that night - and for a place out in the boonies, it's surprisingly populated - ends up savagely and spectacularly eviscerated. Nothing is left to the imagination. Gore guh-gore gore GORE! Fast forward, crazy lady is in a rocking chair, cradling a blood soaked and possibly dead newborn, as the camera pans over mommy, torn open and spilling down the stairs like a wet, meaty piñata. Roll credits.<br /><br />As a lover of film, INSIDE tears me. I want so badly to hate it and yet it's brilliantly done. It truly is. The acting, the directing, the editing - brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. INSIDE's short 84 minutes is packed - there's barely room for you to blink, so peeing or making a sandwich is out of the question. Absolutely riveting, there's no point in denying it. And yet, the story that was inside Bustillo and Maury busting to get out is about a psycho scissor sister that carves up a battered and bloodied pregnant widow like an Easter ham. Ironically, you'd have to view INSIDE in its entirety (in other words, don't rent it from Blockbuster) to appreciate the depth of depravity committed to the story here. This is neither the product of nor the fodder for healthy minds. <br /><br />Nine weeks after INSIDE's US video release, a 23 year old woman in Kennewick, WA, tortured a 27 year old mother-to-be and cut her full term baby from her womb. <br /><br /><a href=" http://www.kndu.com/global/story.asp?s=8648563">It's true.</a><br /><br />I was still feeling violated from watching INSIDE so this news hit me like a lead pipe. Coincidence? Cause and effect? Life imitating art? I cannot say. But I can say that when I seek out the vicarious thrills of a horror movie, this is exactly the type of world that I'm trying to escape from.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-86090966940658168982008-06-29T00:52:00.000-07:002008-06-29T15:55:25.407-07:00FLOSSING THE MOUTH OF MADNESS<br>Greetings gentle readers - all four of you. <br /><br />My apologies for the long break. I wish I could say that it was because I was too busy or by some stretch lacking in subject matter but the sad truth is so much more basic. I am fundamentally a shiftless person that is easily distracted by anything shiny or bouncy. Every time I sit down at my computer to type, I find myself the helpless victim of ebay and porn, as surely as Ulysses found himself caught between Scylla and Charybdis. Had Charybdis been armed with hot Asian teen on teen action, I'm sure it would have ended badly for the Greeks. Myself, since May I have surfed the intertubes muselessly, badly chafed, and now the triumphant owner of rare treasures like a dead mongoose fighting for its life against two stuffed cobras. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/mongoose.jpg"><br /><br />Isn't it swell? Neither its splendor nor its innate irony were lost on me.<br /><br />I have also, since we were last together, had more than a few occasions to wade throat-deep in the stuff of horror. In recent weeks I have viewed THEM (2007), PERFECT CREATURE, three solid episodes of NBC's FEAR ITSELF and one crappy one, THE CALL OF CTHULHU, THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (1981), VIY, SHUTTER (the original, of course), THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, EATEN ALIVE, THE OTHERS, TEETH (which will get its own blog entry soon), FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DIARY OF THE DEAD, ZOMBIE STRIPPERS, SLITHER and for the eighth time, the Zack Snyder remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD. Many of these I enjoyed. A few are precious enough to be enthroned in my DVD collection. But none of them - not one - came close to instilling me with the two-fisted horror, the creeping nausea, the drooling, slack-jawed screaming that I experienced for a full hour watching the BBC America documentary, BRITAIN'S WORST TEETH. <br /><br />BWT documents the efforts of three of Britain's foremost dentists as they agree to treat four twenty-some year olds, none of whom had been to a dentist since before Wes Craven last made a decent movie. The least terrifying was a young mother named Gemma, whose bulimia had eroded her smile down to a row of yellowed, nubby Chiclets that were good for little more than funneling broth and yogurt. Unpleasant? Certainly. But Gemma was just the warm up act. She was Julia Roberts compared to the others.<br /><br />The show actually began with Sarah, who on casual inspection was actually quite cute in that undercooked, British sort of way. Young, slender, blonde, I let my guard down as she told the story of her sugar addiction. Daily chocolate, three cups of tea with three spoons of sugar three times a day and on and on. For a moment I wondered how she managed to be so rail thin on a diet of Pixie Sticks and Yoo-Hoo - and then she opened her mouth and that moment was gone. All my moments were gone. I forgot how to blink.<br /><br />It is rare that I make an audible sound when viewing television but within that first five minutes of BWT, I screamed. And not that sort of dignified man-scream one makes when confronted by a bear or a collapsing mine shaft, either. Oh no. These were high pitched girl screams, the kind that be-pigtailed moppets reserve for spiders and strangers with candy, of such frequency and duration that every dog within two blocks was driven into a howling fit.<br /><br />Blonde, slender, "pretty" Sarah's smile was a jaundiced bag of moist, broken glass. Weakened by a hardcore diet of candy that would choke Augustus Gloop, all that remained of her teeth were jagged, splintered shards, jutting out of her gums at odd intervals and angles like a rotting picket fence. I felt the blood rush from my face. How...how could this be!?! This was an otherwise clean, educated, middle class young woman of the First World! And yet, there she was in living color, with the diseased piehole of an aboriginal meth addict. I pulled my knees up to my chest and held them there until I lost feeling in my feet.<br /><br />The narrator droned on about...I dunno, something. The state of dental hygiene in the UK, perhaps. I was too busy grappling for the last shreds of my sanity to be certain. I closed my eyes and Sarah's cockeyed zipper mouth was still there! So I opened my eyes - and there was Paul.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/bwt.jpg"><br /><br />This is Paul. <br /><br />The spongy, black rot on yellowing apple cores. Breath like the gas from a beached whale. You would think he flossed with a chainsaw and gargled with maple syrup, but you know he's never flossed or gargled in his life.<br /><br />Paul (and his sister Genna) were dentaphobes. Traumatized by a take-no-prisoners tooth Nazi at a very young age, Paul's well-founded phobia overrode his common sense and kicked off a 15 year cavalcade of tartar and gingivitis. His entire life consisted of going to work and coming home to hide his mouth. He had to take painkillers just to chew bread.<br /><br />Too much. My mouth was open and dry. Now my screams could only be heard by bats. It was as if the reality of a godless universe had tied a hobnail boot to a telephone pole and fired it out of a cannon directly at my solar plexus. I couldn't stop telling myself that <i>this wasn't a movie! This wasn't a movie!! All my happy places had evaporated! Oh sweet jeebus - now I'm talking in italics like everyone that ever went crazy and died in a Lovecraft story!! Not good!!! NOT GOOD!!!!!</i><br /><br />I woke up on the floor in a puddle of at least two of my own fluids. Cautiously, I pulled myself up and peered over the coffee table at the TV. Graham Norton was interviewing Kevin Bacon. The Beast had gone. Everything was going to be okay.<br /><br />That was about two weeks ago and I've only flossed once since. Life's funny.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-36345524137087385462008-04-16T22:58:00.000-07:002008-04-23T15:43:33.361-07:00CLIVE From New York<br>Today, <a href="http://www.sloanfineart.com/">Sloan Fine Art</a> in New York is opening an exhibit of recent works by horror renaissance man – nay, horror Zeus (kaaaaaa-<span style="font-style:italic;">BOOM!</span>) - Clive Barker, doubtless as a highbrow tie-in to the opening of Barker’s newest story-to-film, MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, next month.<br /><br />If you like, please take a moment and work through all your giggling at that title before you go on.<br /><br />MIDNIGHT.<br /><br /><I>MEAT.</I><br /><br />TRAIN.<br /><br />Five dollars says Barker was sporting a wry smile at the very least when he wrote that one.<br /><br />The folks at Lionsgate are themselves sporting some new gray hairs because audiences have been laughing at the <a href="http://www.midnightmeattrainthemovie.com/">trailer for a film</a> that should be, by all rights, one of the goriest and most harrowing produced this century. Vinny Jones, a modern shade of Rondo Hatton, starring as a serial killer that hunts subway riders to feed his subterranean mutant masters – what is not to love, I ask you? But come on. The trailer could show Hitler sodomizing a baby fur seal with a white-hot post-hole digger and if it ended with a deep, serious voiceover saying “MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN,” someone would still snort out a chuckle. A movie with that title should be starring <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzfRaQUHpXQ">Big Dick Blacque</a>, not the guy from KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL. <br /><br />Brooke Shields, though – meh, gray area.<br /><br />I read Barker’s collections, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Clive-Barkers-Books-Blood-1-3/dp/0425165582/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208410578&sr=8-1">THE BOOKS OF BLOOD</a>, about two decades ago and while I only recall the story’s ending, it’s certainly possible that MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN had a veiled sexual punchline in there somewhere. Barker has never been one to shy away from the horror of sex, especially in his earlier work. Have you read THE AGE OF DESIRE? It’s basically Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde if Hyde were an enormous, raging erection. Terrifying? Oh sweet crispy deep-fried jeezus, yes. I’ve only read the TORTURED SOULS novelette since Barker came out with CABAL in 1988 so I can’t speak to works like THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW and THE THIEF OF ALWAYS, but Barker’s auteurism births horror with two earmarks; that mayhem and violation of one’s body is a primal horror that shivers us all the way down to our caveman genes; and that the only thing more horrifying than witnessing said mutilated body, helpless and bloody in a whimpering heap, would be to find it arousing. <br /><br />Um, eeyew.<br /><br />The exhibit at Sloan is in two piles. There’s a miscellaneous group of relatively tame, surreal images, about half of which are architectural and make me think that Barker really got a kick out of the panoramas in THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. His work is very cinematic, which is either somewhat ironic or perfectly logical for a novelist that paints. In the hands of a less visionary man, images like THE LIGHTNING TREE could easily be dismissed as the stuff of van paintings. But somehow, when Barker does them, there’s life in them. You can see them in your mind’s eye as if you were viewing them on a big screen. They’re beautiful. If those talented boys at WETA were to bring THE LIGHTNING TREE or THE PALACE OF RAIN LANTERN to cinematic life, every dungeonmaster in Berkeley would die of priapism.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/lightning_tree.jpg"><br /><br />The other pile are Barker’s concept paintings for MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN. <i>Now</i> we’re talkin’. The mutilated beings depicted are the result of some demonic four-way between Frankenstein’s monster, a Morlock, Jeffrey Dahmer and, of course, Pinhead. They are unclean. Barker’s style is unclean. In this context, that’s decidedly a compliment. <br /><br />His brushstrokes are furious and primal, imbuing his creations with movement and savagery as if they were caged animals, trapped on a piece of paper not quite two feet square. There is little or no finesse apparent in his technique, almost as if he were trying to kill the paper by stabbing it with his paintbrush. But liked a crazed killer from one of his own stories, each stab meets the paper with purpose. Horror is not pretty.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/mmt6.jpg"><br /><br />One of my favorites of the bunch, MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN 6, vibrates on a web of black lines with an expressionistic style reminiscent of Willem de Kooning’s figural studies. Have you ever seen de Kooning’s “people”? They’re just…horribly wrong. Similarly, the abattoir in MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN 7 immediately recalled Francis Bacon’s <a href="http://francis-bacon.cx/popes/figurewithmeat.html">HEAD SURROUNDED BY SIDES OF BEEF</a> for me. For my nickel, this is fine company for a painter to find himself in. In an industry where the average pre-production sketch ends up in a landfill or on ebay, the fact that Barker’s warrant wall space in a New York gallery is a testament to the man’s talent and vision. Whether a director can accurately translate that vision to the screen is irrelevant: the painting themselves are sexy, sexy nightmares.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/mmt7.jpg"><br /><br />(What? Just because I spend all my time talking about Dario Argento and George Romero, you think I don’t know from de Kooning and Bacon? Baron gots mad skillz, fanboy. Now get thee to a museum.)<br /><br />The Barker exhibit is open at Sloan Fine Art through May 10. If you happen to be in New York proper, pop in and tell them Baron Von Goolo sent you. It will confuse the staff and I will find that amusing.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-48427753148502451772008-04-07T01:25:00.000-07:002008-04-07T11:30:06.147-07:00I Do Take RequestsAnonymous April 6 5:20 PM asks:<br /><i>What I would love would be a list of your Favorite Horror Films of the 21st Century (Thus Far). I'm curious to know which films you make the cut, and which don't.</i><br /><br />Let it never be said that I am not a man of the people.<br /><br />At first, this request gave me a good chortle. Do I even have any favorites released in this century? I am, you see, a hateful curmudgeon with a vocal, hair-trigger disdain for much of the offal that Hollywood thinks we’re indiscriminate enough to cough nine bucks for. And in all fairness to myself, much of that offal is, well, truly awful. <br /><br />Not that my heightened awareness of the genre impresses many. If any. God as my witness, I once had a “debate” with a young lady that threw up her arms in frustration when she was unable to convince me that the remake of THIRTEEN GHOSTS (2001) was a superior horror film to William Friedkin’s THE EXORCIST. Because “the effects were totally way better.” <i>Totally</i> way, mind you. <br /><br />That was in 2003. My desire to pry out her larynx with a claw hammer has lost none of its original luster. <br /><br />But as I researched, I soon realized that my cynicism here is misplaced and that this young century has indeed squirted out some fine horror. Damn fine. In some cases, fodder for classicism. Here’s a rundown of my favorites by year.<br /><br /><b>2001 – AUDITION</b><br />Honorable Mention – THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE, JEEPERS CREEPERS<br />Worst – THIRTEEN GHOSTS<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/28dl.jpg"><br /><br /><b>2002 –28 DAYS LATER</b><br />Honorable Mention – MAY, BELOW, THE RING<br />Worst - FEARDOTCOM<br /><br /><b>2003 – CABIN FEVER</b><br />Honorable Mention – HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, FREDDY VS. JASON<br />Worst – WRONG TURN<br /><br /><b>2004 – SHAUN OF THE DEAD</b><br />Honorable Mention – Zack Snyder’s DAWN OF THE DEAD, CREEP, SAW, SEED OF CHUCKY<br />Worst - DARKNESS<br /><br /><b>2005 –THE DEVIL’S REJECTS</b><br />Honorable Mention – THE DESCENT, WOLF CREEK, FEAST<br />Worst – DOOM, ALONE IN THE DARK., HIGH TENSION, THE FOG remake, THE CAVE, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR remake…sweet buttery baby jeebus, what a torrential turdfest ’05 was!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/slither.jpg"><br /><br /><b>2006 – tie: SLITHER, HARD CANDY</b><br />Honorable Mention – ALTERED<br />Worst – DARK RIDE<br /><br /><b>2007 – 28 WEEKS LATER</b><br />Honorable Mention – SWEENEY TODD, THE MIST, BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON, THE ORPHANAGE, FIDO, DEAD SILENCE<br />Worst – HOSTEL II<br /><br />I want to be clear. These are my <i>favorites.</i> Some, like DEAD SILENCE, are guilty pleasures, but all are films I recommend the most often, enjoy the most, watch repeatedly and/or rewarded by dropping some coin to own the DVD. They may or may not be the <i>best</i>. HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, for example, is a fairly awful film – but the characters are amazing, the production design is fantastic, and it leads in to my favorite movie of 2005. AUDITION and 28 DAYS LATER, on the other hand, both made me lose hold of my fluids at least once and might be among the scariest films of all time. Don’t bother requesting that list. It’s coming.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-62730777303127578782008-04-03T13:59:00.000-07:002008-04-04T00:12:12.746-07:00DEEP RED VINESUnless you’ve been too busy raising barns and churning butter or whatnot, you’ve been subjected to the relentless advertising blitzkrieg for THE RUINS, which opens wide tomorrow (April 4). The commercials have been cagey. Is THE RUINS about ghosts? Zombies? Plague? A zombie ghost plague, mebbeh? No, my friends, nothing so pedestrian. THE RUINS is the 21st century’s first man-eating plant movie. <br /><br />Gay, you say? Fiddlesticks, says I! This tickles me pink. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/theruins.jpg"><br /><br />THE RUINS is based on the best selling novel by Scott Smith (A SIMPLE PLAN) that was released late in 2006. When a friend broke this unrelentingly gory tale down for me, I immediately commented that it was a movie waiting to happen. As fate would have it, it had already been bought by Ben Stiller’s production company – which to me is almost, but not quite, as weird as Mel Brooks producing the remake of THE FLY (1986). Comedians doing horror – who knew? Of course, Brooks tapped David Cronenberg to helm his project, while Stiller gave THE RUINS to a guy that’s done some Tommy Hilfiger commercials. Smooth, Ben. I’ve got three words for your prowess as a producer: STARSKY & HUTCH.<br /><br />The commercials have purposefully obscured the botanical menace, the studios assuming that these days they need to trick audiences into seeing any horror movie that isn’t a remake of a Japanese one. Long, exasperated sigh. That’s exactly the mistake Hollywood Pictures made with PRIMEVAL (2007), a passable giant crocodile movie that was advertised as if it were the Burundi Chainsaw Massacre. Despite this sort of fumbling parentage that is almost always a smokescreen for a slack-jawed, flipper-fisted banjo boy of a film, I’m excited to see THE RUINS. Why? Because man-eating plants and other samples of mean greenery are one of the most under-harvested monster genres of all time - and in these days of This of The Living Dead and That of The Living Dead, some monstrous mulch is exactly the kind of fresh move that renews my faith in the Hollywood machine. I love violent vegetation, with its long and varied pedigree in cinema; some of which ranks among my favorite ways to kill two popcorn infused hours. Who could ever forget what that possessed tree did to that little boy in POLTERGEIST? Or what that other ever-so-randy possessed tree did to Ash’s girlfriend in EVIL DEAD? You can’t shoot them in the head or stake them through the heart, so unless you’re sporting a backpack full of RoundUp these roots of all evil can prove especially menacing. Here are a few of my faves.<br /><br />THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)<br />Seventy years old and still one of the greatest movies of all time – but an evil plant movie? Oh hell yeah. If you don’t think those thuggish apple trees were the catalyst for decades of wet beds then you just aren’t paying attention.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/oz_tree.jpg"><br /><br />THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951):<br />The guy from GUNSMOKE plays a murderous space carrot. <br /><br />What? That’s not enough for you?<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/the_thing.jpg"><br /><br />FROM HELL IT CAME (1957):<br />Most unsettled souls come back as ghosts or zombies, but in this utter turdfest the spirit of vengeance is the Tabanga, a murderous stump that grows from the grave of a slain native prince. Goofy and unwieldy, Tabanga is a guilty pleasure for those of you clever enough to provide your own MST3K dialogue.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/tabanga.jpg"><br /><br />INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956, 1978, but not 2007)<br />Required viewing for the culturally literate, this classic sci-fi tale of paranoia put phrases like “pod people” into the common vernacular. Even the 1978 remake, which is heavy on the Invasion’s vegetative origins, is solid, spooky and memorable – especially when the pod people start shrieking. The end of that movie is as bleek as it is awesome.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/invasion2.jpg"><br /><br />DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (1962, and a 1981 BBC mini-series)<br />What’s worse than waking up and finding the entire planet overrun by man-eating sunflowers? Well, probably waking up and discovering you’re blind, too. No fair! TRIFFIDS is classic, must-see sci-fi that’s been on the big screen remake block several times: every time preproduction is scrapped, I die a little inside.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/triffids.jpg"><br /><br />MATANGO aka ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE (1963)<br />Those Asians – they’ll make a horror movie about <i>anything!</i> Wigs, videocassettes, dim sum – they don’t care. But mushrooms? When I was nine this movie gave me nightmares for a month. Now, the bizarre ghost laughter that echoes through the mist-covered mushroom forest is still enough to give me a hospital-grade case of the heebie-jeebies.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/matango.jpg"><br /><br />ISLAND OF THE DOOMED aka THE MANEATER OF HYDRA (1967):<br />A seldom seen French fright flick starring Cameron Mitchell as a mad doctor that’s grown a magnolia tree with a taste for blood. The suspense is not palpable enough to justify saving the monster for the end of the film, but it’s weird enough to get a thumb up from me.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/maneater.jpg"><br /><br />THE FREAKMAKER aka THE MUTATIONS (1974)<br />This is pure ‘grindhouse meets greenhouse’ as Dr. Loomis turns Dr. Who into a half-man, half-Venus flytrap in this British bit of weirdness. You really have to give it to them for thinking outside the box on this one.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/the_freakmaker.jpg"><br /><br />LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1986)<br />Lovingly wrapped as a musical comedy, LSOH is a tale of murder, sadism, greed and alien invasion set to a bouncy 50’s beat. I positively gush at this film. Gush, I say!! Arguably the king of the plant monsters, the sinister and insatiable Audrey II ranks right up there with Gollum and Freddy Kreuger as a true scene-stealer. If you are lucky enough to get your hands on one of the original, recalled DVDs, you can see the rough cut of the alternate ending, where Audrey II kills Seymour and Audrey and then rampages through New York, Kong style. Thanks for denying us a better ending, David Geffen and your spineless focus group! You are cordially invited to kiss my daisy-white ass.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/audrey2.jpg"><br /><br />GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE (1989)<br />What do you get when a mad scientist crosses a rose bush and some Godzilla cells in order to resurrect his dead daughter? A lot of confused round eyes, for one. I mean seriously, I wouldn’t think there was enough sake in the world to come up with that shit. Still, with his acid spitting crocodile head and his toothy tentacles, Biollante is one of the coolest looking monsters to ever get his ass kicked by Godzilla. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/biollante.jpg"><br /><br />(You might note that Audrey II, the Triffids, the Body Snatchers and the Thing (as well as the monsters from INVASION OF THE STAR CREATURES, THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT, the <i>hilarious</i> THE GREEN SLIME and numerous episodes of THE OUTER LIMITS and DOCTOR WHO) are all outer space monsters. Even Biollante drifted off into space at the end of its movie. Evil plants and outer space seem to go together like schoolgirls and duct tape. I have no conclusion about that. I just found it an odd coincidence.)<br /><br />So there you have it – a cinematic salad bar of sociopathic shrubbery! What better way to celebrate Arbor Day than to pop a couple of these into the ol’ DVD player?<br /><br />Besides planting a tree I mean.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-17487103394432854042008-03-12T21:14:00.000-07:002008-03-12T21:17:26.819-07:00Me & Ashley Alexandra Dupre<br><br />Actually, I've never met her. I just wanted more traffic for my blog. Thanks Google!Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-84290330152638385072008-03-10T00:41:00.000-07:002008-03-10T00:54:52.643-07:00OUR HORRIBLE WORLD: Nom on MomHorror isn’t just for movies, you know. Why, just look around you! The world is chock full of rank, vomitous and otherwise mind-numbing phenomena! That’s why from time to time I’m going to take a break from the make believe horrors of art and screen and introduce you to some of the true-to-life terror from…<i>OUR HORRIBLE WORLD!</I><br /><br />Motherhood! The cornerstone of any balanced breakfast. At least it is for this slimy brood of caecilians (suh-SILL-yunz). Precious!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/caecilian.jpg"><br /><br />Are they worms? Are they snakes? You’d be wrong on both counts, Mark Trail. Caecilians are amphibians, which makes them more closely related to newts and toads. And they live underground in the tropics, so they’re rarely seen and hardly studied. But the fine, fine crew of the BBC One series <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/lifeincoldblood/">LIFE IN COLD BLOOD</a> were able to film a mama caecilian with her hungry brood and document a truly nauseating wonder of nature.<br /><br />Baby caecilians are born with a series of tiny hook teeth in their mouths. For a long time no one knew why. Now it turns out that they’re specialized for <i>eating their own mother!</i> But it gets even more horrible, because the babies need to eat about once every three days and mama caecilian has evolved to re-grow a fatty, nutrient-rich new layer of skin in that amount of time so that her babies can eat her again.<br /><br />And again.<br /><br />And again.<br /><br />And as fast as the savage, hook toothed rugrats can feast, mama just keeps growing her fatty flesh back as fast as she loses it. Just like Oprah.<br /><br />So remember, the next time your nipples are chafing after a rigorous breastfeeding, turn that frown upside down and count your lucky stars that your little gobbler isn't gnawing the whole thing off! Because it’s the lowly caecilian that really pulled the childcare short straw in…<i>OUR HORRIBLE WORLD!</I>Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-73116910254357793372008-03-09T15:33:00.000-07:002008-03-09T15:42:10.055-07:00BuffdiverHi everybody. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a lesbian now. <br /><br />And she didn't even join Team Pink with Willow. That's kinda cold.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-50845521983401650712008-03-09T01:08:00.000-08:002008-03-09T17:18:38.243-07:00Looking Forward to DOOMSDAYLast Friday, Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 BC opened on what I’m sure is an ungodly number of screens. Without reading a single review, I’m confident that this film will be another $100,000,000.00+ nail in the coffin of this writer/director’s checkered career of big budget hackery. The commercials for your little caveman movie want the world to remember you as the director of INDEPENDENCE DAY, Emmerich, but to me – oh-ho-ho – to me you will always be the cultural blight that shat out the American bastardization of GODZILLA. My contempt for your “art” is a seeping wound that never heals, a scab I will pick until worms feast on my bowels. Or on Matthew Broderick’s, whichever comes first.<br /><br />The good news for you faithful fans of fearsome frolics is that you only have to hold your nose at the box office for a few more days until Neil Marshall’s DOOMSDAY opens this Friday. As confidently as I’ve assumed that 10,000 BC will suck a cueball through a key hole, I know in my coal black heart that DOOMSDAY will kick 31 flavors of ass. Because Neil Marshall is a god. Emmerich doesn’t deserve to have his last name spelled from the same alphabet as Neil Marshall. <br /><br />Now please, prepare yourselves. I’m tabling my trademark cynicism in order to gush.<br /><br />Marshall has only been on the big screen twice, both times for films that he wrote as well as directed, and both times he popped it deep into the cheap seats. Granted, two films isn’t nearly as impressive as, say, John Carpenter’s run from DARK STAR in 1974 to IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS in 1995 but compared to other horror directors that have started their careers in this century, Marshall is at the front of the pack. If not leading it.<br /><br />To wit, for your werewolf dollar, Marshall’s DOG SOLDIERS (2002) is rock solid. Shot for less than THE PHANTOM MENACE’s donut budget, DOG SOLDIERS follows a squad of British Army soldiers through the Scottish Highlands as they search for a lost special ops squad whose special op, as it turns out, was to catch a werewolf. Things do not go as planned and hi-jinx ensue. The soldiers end up holed up in a shack in the middle of nowhere, with very few options and very many werewolves scratching at the doors. Great story, confident direction, and a solid cast spinning characters that you’d prefer that the monsters <i>not</i> kill for a change. And unlike other recent films like Wes Craven’s big budget werewolf suckfest, CURSED (2005), the werewolves in DOG SOLDIERS aren’t CGI. Their realism comes from the simple fact that <i>they’re there.</i> Way too often, Hollywood seems to forget how real <i>real</i> monsters can seem. (If any Hollywoodsmen are actually reading this, please feel free to file that bit of advice away for future reference. Put it under D for “duh.”)<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/DogSoldiers.jpg"><br /><br />In 2005, Marshall followed up with THE DESCENT. This happy little girl-power jaunt reminds me of an episode of SEX IN THE CITY; if by IN THE CITY you mean IN AN UNCHARTED CAVERN and if by SEX you mean BEING EATEN BY A RAVENOUS HORDE OF SLIMY, MUTANT BAT PEOPLE. Lord knows I mix those up often enough. With the possible exception of the ham-fisted metaphor of the main character, Sarah, being reborn as an ass-kicking Amazon out of a pool of clotted blood, we’re looking at another brilliantly crafted script with believable, likeable characters and REAL monsters. Rent the unrated DVD and watch it with the original, European ending that the American studios pussed out on. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/descent.jpg"><br /><br />Marshall has found a formula that works and he’s sticking with it. Take a group of people related in some way (a unit of soldiers/spelunking Spice Girls), strand them away from the comforts of civilization (in a shack/cavern), threaten them with a horrible demise that defies a comfortable explanation (being eaten by werewolves/ Bat Boy), and make a film <i>not about the monsters</i> but about how well the people facing those monsters cope.<br /><br />Now, since my dairy-white ass isn’t nearly famous enough to rate a screener copy of DOOMSDAY I only have trailers to go on but it’s a fair bet we’re looking at another heapin’ helpin’ of that ol’ Marshall magic. This time, his group of related people is an entire populace infected with some sort of horrible plague that threatens to wipe out mankind. The seclusion are the walls built around said sick people by the rest of the world and the horrible demise is the almost certain, agonizing death that thousands of otherwise innocent human beings will suffer because their fellow man found it most expedient to turn their backs on them. The catch? Some of the sick people get better and get really pissed. They cobble together a bitter, post-punk society a la THE ROAD WARRIOR, united by the perfectly reasonable assumption that anyone on the healthy side of the wall is a right fuck what deserves to be eaten. So of course, now the incongruously hot Rhona Mitra has to venture into this predictably hostile 28 DAYS LATER meets LORD OF THE FLIES meets ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK scenario in order to do…something. Find a cure or some genetic Messiah or Oprah’s car keys, hell, I dunno. More importantly, I don’t care. Marshall is about to hit 3 for 3 and my local Cinemark is about to get another nine of my hard-earned dollars. Maybe even thirteen if I kowtow to their usurious snack pricing and get Red Vines.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-42203951827331786442008-02-24T00:56:00.001-08:002008-02-24T02:44:39.527-08:00A Belated Valentine's<br><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/monster_stickers2.jpg"><br /><br />I had a sex dream about Rachel Ray. If there had been actual penetration in the dream I believe I would be too busy thumping my head on the floor in a widening pool of my own drool to be able to write this so evidently, my subconscious is capable of some small mercies. It was one of those dreams where certain knowledge and events are taken for granted and in this case, while Rachel was busy violating my kitchen to make us breakfast and throwing me knowing, over the shoulder glances with that unearthly, deep-sea giant clam grin of hers, I somehow knew that I had just finished banging her like a retard bangs a spirit drum at camp. Thankfully, my involuntary shudder woke me.<br /><br />I blame this dream squarely on the squadrons of stomach viruses that had so recently had their way with my delicate, pasty body, as well as on the random association of Ray’s leering Jolly Roger mug staring back at me every time I’ve picked up a box of Triscuits over the last eight months. Which is often. I may be evil but that does not mean I get enough fiber.<br /><br />I also blame those viruses for throwing me off my game and delaying this, a blog with a dash of romance that I had originally intended for Valentine’s Day. Horror makes for a surprisingly solid backdrop for romance and depending on the gore threshold of your paramour, also makes for a charming evening at home with a nice wine and perhaps a bowl of popcorn (with or without a hole cut in the bottom). While there’s plenty to be said about the sexiness of vampires or (if you’re Asian) the novel kink of a demon in chains and leather, for my nickel you can’t beat the romzomcom: the romantic zombie comedy.<br /><br />When done correctly, the romzomcom is a perfect date movie. Moments of unyielding, brain-munching terror are in harmony with schmoopie love-conquers-all optimism, both with enough potency to simultaneously satisfy your inner George Romero as well as your inner Nora Ephron. The undisputed king of the romzomcoms is SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004), directed by Edgar Wright and written by Wright and Shaun himself, Simon Pegg. SHAUN OF THE DEAD is, quite possibly, a perfect film. Hilarious, well paced, brilliantly directed, inventively edited, perfectly timed, and drenched in gore when it suits the story. For my ticket money, SHAUN is the greatest zombie movie ever made as well as being in my Top 10 for comedy and the only romantic comedy I can sit through without needing an insulin shot afterwards. I will not bore you with a recap because you have either seen this slice of fried gold already or you need to. Immediately.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/shaun.jpg"><br /><br />According to many sources, SHAUN is the only romzomcom. That’s because many sources are fat and lazy and don’t love you like I do. SHAUN’s p.r. machine was indeed clever enough to coin the phrase but for all their genius, Wright & Company did not invent the subgenre. In fact, I can recall five other romzomcoms without even doing any research.<br /><br />Twelve years before SHAUN, Peter Jackson (yes, the hobbitty one) released DEAD ALIVE (aka BRAINDEAD), which may be the first actual romzomcom. The action centers around Lionel, a likeable and unlikely hero, who is cursed by a clutching, domineering mother long before Mother is cursed with a nasty case of feral undeath. Even when her priorities switch to eating her bridge club and the mailman, she still has enough time to interfere with Lionel’s budding romance with the local shopgirl, Paquita. And by “interfere” I mean “try to eat Paquita.” <br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/deadalive.jpg"><br /><br />While DEAD ALIVE’s reputation as one of the bloodiest and goriest movies ever committed to film tends to overshadow all else, it does not change the fact that this movie is full to bursting with romance, zombies and comedy. Ergo, romzomcom. Like SHAUN, I also consider DEAD ALIVE to be required viewing and until you have seen it, the most you can aspire to is my contempt.<br /><br />MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK (1993) is a flawed but likeable teen romzomcom where teen A, Johnny, is in love with teen B, Missy. Blah blah blah, Missy promises Johnny a date, Johnny dies, but Johnny also decides he wants to go on the date more than he wants to go into the light. The fact that he rots faster if he doesn’t eat people is a bit of a sticking point, as eating people is oft to be. My favorite thing about BOYFRIEND has nothing to do with the acting or the story: BOYFRIEND was produced by Touchstone and distributed by Buena Vista. That means that Mickey Mouse made a zombie movie. The delicious irony rolls over me like warm honey down my pants.<br /><br />My second favorite thing is that BOYFRIEND has an eyebrow-raising cast of stars-to-be, including a barely shaving Philip Seymour Hoffman as a thuggish jock, and Matthew Fox, Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey all in their big screen debuts. McConaughey plays Guy #2. I love that. Then in 1994, he and Zellweger worked together again in TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION. And in 1995 it's a fair bet they both got new agents.<br /><br />Along the lines of BOYFRIEND, an Irish production company called Element Films trotted out BOY EATS GIRL (2005), another teen romzomcom with a conveniently self-explanatory title. I have not seen BOY yet and since it is 31 in my Netflix queue I probably won’t until summer. If any of you kids out there in the Intertubes want to comment on it, please do.<br /><br />Back to 1993. Not all love is romantic, you know, and not all mothers are as hateful and domineering as Lionel’s Mombie-bitch-goddess in DEAD ALIVE. In ED AND HIS DEAD MOTHER, Steve Buscemi has so much difficulty saying goodbye to his beloved mum, played to perfection by the sweetly battrachian Miriam Margolyes, that he jumps at the chance to bring her back when a shadowy company called Happy People Inc. offers him the means. Hi-jinx ensue. 1993 must have been a much simpler time because no one knew what to do with ED (or BOYFRIEND or DEAD ALIVE for that matter) and the early romzomcoms were largely box office flops that were lost to the cult sections of quirky, independent video stores.<br /><br />Though not technically a romzomcom since the main monster is a demonically possessed severed hand, IDLE HANDS (1999) gets an honorable mention. There are indeed zombies (including ROBOT CHICKEN’s Seth Green), there is a love affair threatened by supernatural forces, there is much humorous mayhem, and an 18 year old Jessica Alba spends most of her screen time in various states of undress. The movie’s tagline is “A Touching Story About A Boy And His Right Hand.” I have nothing to add that’s funnier than that. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/fido.jpg"><br /><br />Most recently (in 2006), FIDO became the newest romzomcom on the block. Set in a dystopian 50’s-ish utopia a la EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, the Zombie Wars have been hard-fought and won with the help of Dr. Reinhold Geiger and the technlogical wizardry of <a href="http://www.zomcon.com/home.html">Zomcon!</a> Legions of the morbidly mobile are outfitted with behavior collars that turn them into the perfect servants. But of course, the collars stop working and hi-jinx ensue. FIDO centers around the Robinson family as they get their first house-zombie, played 100% vocabulary-free by comedian Billy Connelly. The love affair that blossoms between Fido and Mrs. Robinson (played to Betty Crockerish perfection by Carrie Ann Moss) is as predictable and heartwarming as it is unsettling. While not nearly on par with SHAUN, I appreciate FIDO for not being the same formulaic drivel we’ve all seen a million times before and for that alone it gets a big gold star from me.<br /><br />ADDENDUM<br /><br />This blog wasn't even two hours old when Chris Herndon - the artist and co-creator of the cult classic comic series, LIVING WITH ZOMBIES (not to be confused with Dark Horse Comics' recent, shamelessly plagiarized and significantly less funny LIVING WITH THE DEAD) - pointed out to me that I neglected to mention the Italian romzomcom, CEMETERY MAN (1996). Admittedly the definition of romance is a little strained (especially the one between the retarded gravedigger and the severed head) and the comedy is blacker than the cast of BARBERSHOP, but CM rightfully belongs on this list. Thank you, Christopher. I owe you a cookie.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-66049995476919503372008-02-17T02:20:00.000-08:002008-02-20T22:34:58.113-08:00FURNACE: Lukewarm At Best.<br>Greetings to all eighteen of my loyal fans!<br /><br />Please accept my most grovelly apologies for my extended absence over the last two weeks. I’m afraid that even my dark powers are no match for flu season, which ran roughshod through the steamy bunkhouses of Camp Von Goolo, pimp-slapped me dizzy and made me its dry heaving bitch. At least I got a good ab workout in. But sadly, between having long, intimate conversations with my plastic bucket and being so light-headed that I kept asking if Obama had pulled ahead of Coolidge, I was falling shy of the lucidity threshold that I like to hit before I post. <br /><br />The good news is that now that I’m rested and ready for my next review. Plus, my bucket is still nearby – which is always good to have on hand when you’re watching a William Butler movie.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/furnace.jpg"><br /><br />HA! I kid, I kid. How can you not love the guy that had the thunderous, elephantine sack to pitch THE GINGERDEAD MAN and <i>actually get that sucker made?</i> And really, FURNACE (or as it was released in the UK, TOM SIZEMORE MUST HAVE A HOUSE PAYMENT) isn’t all <i>that</i> bad. It’s just not good. Try as I might, I couldn’t get stoked over FURNACE. <br /><br />And I promise, that’s the last FURNACE pun I’m going to make.<br /><br />The story revolves around Detective Mike Turner, played by the cartoonishly rugged Michael Paré, as he investigates an increasing number of grisly suicides at the cartoonishly gothic Blackgate Prison. Cartoonishly sadistic prison guard Frank Miller (the aforementioned Sizemore) leads an inmate work detail in renovating an abandoned wing of Blackgate where, decades earlier, the Warden tried to dispose of the body of his young daughter in (wait for it...wait for iiiiiiiit…) the furnace after a friendly round of Daddy’s Super Secret FunTime Touching Game went wrong. Wronger. Of course, snugglemuffin isn’t quite dead when the Warden tosses her in and the flaming, screaming child somehow manages to reach out of the furnace and pull her 170 pound father into the furnace with her. Fifty years later, hi-jinx ensue. The titular furnace relights itself and the two ghosts with the most toast start their body-count. From what I was able to glean, for no reason at all.<br /><br />Better films have had flimsier plots but FURNACE never produces the smokescreen to hide its shortcomings. The direction is freshman at best and the cinematography is flatter than Bai Ling. But where FURNACE really confounds is in the bipolar casting. On the one hand you have hippity hop star Ja Rule (who puts in a surprisingly believable performance for all of the eight minutes he’s on screen), Danny Trejo (who I’d watch even if he was just buying stamps) and Tom Sizemore (who, from what I can tell, is a legitimate actor and easily delivers the movie’s best, too-short scene as he goes on a mad killing spree during a riot). This B-movie trifecta makes for a surprisingly solid cast for a film this modest. Then on the other hand you have the impossibly chiseled wooden Paré, the impossibly hot chick in lingerie impossibly married to a doughy, neckless prison guard, the impossibly cute and horny female medical examiner that hits on Paré whenever there’s a dead body around, and the impossibly milfy prison psychiatrist whose prescription for Paré’s deep-seated depression over the savage murder of his family is to hump his frown upside down. It’s as if the real casting director died after hiring Sizemore and the only replacement they could find had worked exclusively on BIKINI CARWASH sequels.<br /><br />FURNACE is not a film that stands up to much scrutiny. Like, why does the DVD case say “UNRATED” when there are no naughty bits (Dr. Milfy even wears her bra during the sex scenes) and half the gore is in the Alternate Scenes? And if the little girl ghost has third degree burns over her entire body, how come she still has all her hair? FURNACE is the sort of telegraphed, unchallenging fare that will play well, virtually unedited, when it starts running in heavy rotation on the SciFi Channel. They can sandwich it between GARGOYLE: WINGS OF DARKNESS and KOMODO VS. COBRA and have themselves a little Michael Paré film festival.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-7943116533280138512008-02-03T15:00:00.000-08:002008-02-03T19:36:07.496-08:00Retread Fred<img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/freddy.png"><br /><br />Last week, Yahoo News (and Variety, the Hollywood Reporter and blar dee blar blar) announced that New Line Cinema is intending to “re-launch” the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET franchise for a new generation of moviegoers. Not surprisingly, they’re in cahoots with horror production company Platinum Dunes, the people responsible for the remakes of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, THE HITCHER, and the upcoming FRIDAY THE 13TH and NEAR DARK “re-imaginings” – AND who lack enough shame to remake THE BIRDS for Universal. Platinum Dunes truly puts the <i>whore</i> in <i>horror.</i><br /><br />And now they’re coming for my beloved ELM STREET, easily one of the greatest horror movies of all time. As. It. Is. But just like TCM and just like Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN, no amount of respect for the classics will stop the box office juggernaut from romper-stomping the last ounce of vitality out of a cherished franchise like a kitten in a mosh pit. The only encouraging detail about the new ELM STREET is that due to the Writers Guild strike, no script has been started. (And all this while I thought that the only good the strike was doing was keeping PRIVATE PRACTICE off the air. Hang tough, people.)<br /><br />It’s a vain hope but maybe, just maybe, if we all eat our vegetables and believe in fairies really, really hard, someone attached to the new ELM STREET will google this blog between idle bouts of Warcraft and hot Asian teens and heed the following advice.<br /><br />First, lest we forget, Robert Englund is still very much alive. There is no reason except your own misguided ego to go casting Justin Timber Von Van der Biek or some other flavor of the week to stumble in the footsteps of a living legend. Englund and Wes Craven created nothing less than one of the most original and enduring villains in screen history. Anyone else stepping into that role will find themselves at the mercy of a ravaging, carnivorous locust-plague of critics and fanboys. And I will be there on the sidewalk, handing them little cups of water to keep them hydrated while they run you down. Hell, a lot of us are pissed that Andrew Divoff stopped doing the WISHMASTER sequels: how incensed would <i>this</i> make us then? Englund is so indelibly Freddy that you can see the character surface in just about everything else he’s ever acted in. Get him a personal trainer and a fresh director to slap some of the ham out of him and don’t fix what ain’t broke. (And Mr. Englund, If you're reading this, I'm sorry to imply you're hammy. But we can't take a chance that any of 2,001 MANIACS is still stuck to you.)<br /><br />The second and most important piece of advice is for your story. <br /><br />We all know where you’re going with this. You’re going to tell us Freddy’s back-story. And that’s okay: we know you’re an uninspired faux prequel trumped up to sell popcorn and that’s what uninspired faux prequels do. Just make sure that as the story develops that Freddy Kreuger is evil. I don’t mean <i>mean</i>. I don’t mean that he’s lashing out at a society that didn’t hug him enough. I mean the kind of evil that you have to hiss to pronounce correctly. Remember, this is the kid that resulted from a gang rape in an insane asylum. How much more do you need? Freddy did not become a monster. He always was one.<br /><br />This means:<br />No flashbacks to abusive parents, step, foster or otherwise.<br />No stripper/prostitute/tweaker mom with a heart of gold.<br />No bullies scarier than he was.<br />No cheerleader that turns him down for prom.<br />No naively optimistic psychologists.<br />No long lost sibling or pal from the orphanage or kindly janitor that represents his last shred of humanity.<br />No pets.<br /><br />I will, however, allow a priest or other spiritual figure that wastes his/her life failing to convince the authorities of Freddy’s sociopathy. But only if you have to.<br /><br />Kreuger’s soul is so tar-black that when the neighborhood PTA lynched his ass, he got fast-tracked past the Burning Lake and promoted to a demon that could kill Johnny Depp in his sleep. He didn't die and go to Hell - Hell <i>recruited</i> this muggafugga, that’s how freakin’ evil he is. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Please<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> have enough respect for us and for 2 out of the 8 Freddy films that you won’t dumb his evil down to a misunderstood childhood.<br /><br />Now, everyone at home, repeat after me: I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-22662438895931731672008-01-31T04:10:00.000-08:002008-01-31T04:23:29.852-08:00A Thumb to THE EYE: Some Real Scream Queens<BR>Since there’s nothing good on TV these days it’s possible that you’ve missed the media barrage for Jessica Alba’s new movie, THE EYE. Which, in fact, is not a new movie at all but the next in the soul-raping parade of American remakes of successful (RINGU) and semi-successful (DARK WATER) Asian horror films. <br /><br />My enthusiasm for THE EYE is checked. To start, if I wanted an American bastardization of Asian goodness, I’d go to Panda Express. To finish, I’m recoiling at the suggestion by the movie’s P.R. machine that Miss Alba is a “scream queen” just because she’s been in a horror movie. <br /><br />Okay, two. And in all fairness, I really liked IDLE HANDS. But still. My point is that “scream queen” isn’t just a throw away label you get from being menaced by a monster or doused in blood once or twice in your career. Sweet buttery jeezus, no! “Scream Queen” is a standard that’s borne proudly by women who have made a mark on, perhaps even devoted their lives to, a genre that “serious” actresses poo poo. <i>Jessica Alba?</i> My Aunt Fanny. Alba wouldn’t even make it into my top 13.<br /><br />Nice segue, huh?<br /><br />BARON VON GOOLO’S TOP 13 SCREAM QUEENS OF ALL TIME<br />(and by “all time” I mean the ones occurring to me right now)<br /><br /><b>13. Cerina Vincent</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/vincent.jpg"><br />WHAT’S SHE DONE: SASQUATCH MOUTAIN, IT WAITS, RETURN TO HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, INTERMEDIO<br />BEST SCENE: the CABIN FEVER tub scene. Never has fast-onset leprosy been so dang <i>segg-say!</i><br />One of the ScFi Channel’s go-to girls, Cerina has exactly what it takes to be a true scream queen: undeniable on-screen sexuality and the inability to judge the quality of a script. HOTCHA!!!<br /><br /><b>12. Aimee Brooks</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/brooks.jpg"><br />FILMS: THE MANGLER REBORN. CRITTERS III, SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE<br />BEST SCENE: seducing the dork in MONSTER MAN. I would pay American money to eat pancakes off that midriff.<br />Aimee’s a soap opera star that shies away from the horror spotlight. Not that you can blame her – careerwise, having THE MANGLER REBORN on your IMDB page is like taking your little brother with Tourette’s to your Senate confirmation hearing. But this statuesque blond pulls screams as either the doe-eyed victim or the cat-eyed predator so with any luck, she’ll be treating us to more horror soon.<br /><br /><b>11. Julie Strain</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/strain.jpg"><br />FILMS: Too many to list but among them VAMPIRE CHILD (which she also wrote, directed and produced), THE UNNAMABLE II, HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER (HBO)<br />BEST SCENE: any scene with Julie Strain in it (homina homina homina).<br />Not only is Julie a verifiable scream queen but she is often referred to as “Queen of the Bs” with over 100 schlock films to her credit. 1993 Penthouse Pet of the Year and married to HEAVY METAL editor-in-chief and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle creator, Kevin Eastman, the savvy 6’1” she-devil in a D-cup has parlayed her two-fisted sexuality into softcore cult stardom. Fear the coochie of Julie Strain, mortals!!! <br /><br />I know I do.<br /><br /><b>10. Brinke Stevens</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/stevens.jpg"><br />FILMS: Again, too many to list; SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-A-RAMA, SLAVE GIRLS FROM BEYOND INFINITY, DEAD CLOWNS<br />BEST SCENE: before transforming into the stripperiffic “queen of Hell” in TEENAGE EXORCIST, Brinke tries to make us buy her as a homely wallflower. Puh-LEEZE!<br />With a resume that’s even longer than Julie Strain’s, Brinke has been pitching tents for horror fans for over three decades in films that are so obscure even I haven’t seen most of them. One of her more recent films, VAMPIRES VS. ZOMBIES, is in my Netflix queue right now. Because at 53, Brinke is still hotter than a waffle iron. And because it’s got <i> VAMPIRES VS. ZOMBIES</i> in it. I mean, seriously, come on.<br /><br /><b>9. Linnea Quigley</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/quigley.jpg"><br />FILMS: jillions, but unlike Julie and Brinke I’ve actually seen a lot of hers, like PUMPKINHEAD II, SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT, and NIGHT OF THE DEMONS.<br />BEST SCENE: as Trash the zombie in RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD.<br />With her perennial 80’s kick ass vibe, Linnea will always be the Leather Tuscadero of horror to me. Zombie vagina trivia: Linnea was forced to wear an experimental “Barbie doll” prosthetic over her dirty lady bits in RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD when the producers decided that she couldn’t go full frontal <i>AND</i> eat a guy’s brains out in the same shot. Pussies.<br /><br /><b>8. Asia Argento</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/argento.jpg"><br />FILMS: TRAUMA, DEMONS II & III, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1998)<br />BEST SCENE: her zombie cage match in Romero’s LAND OF THE DEAD<br />Sadly, most American men know Asia Argento better for her role in XXX than they do for her role as Dario Argento’s daughter. Despite this lineage, Asia is a scream queen by coincidence rather than design. “Sometimes I think my father gave me life because he needed a lead actress for his films.” Lucky for us “bitter” doesn’t disqualify her. <br /><br /><b>7. Sarah Michelle Gellar</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/gellar.jpg"><br />FILMS: I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, THE GRUDGE, THE RETURN, SCREAM 2<br />BEST SCENE: Buffy’s mute handjob joke from HUSH, a Season 4 episode of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER<br />I know that a lot of true horror fans consider BUFFY to be sacrilege but the simple fact is in seven seasons, Sarah saw more monsters, gore and mayhem than most other scream queens combined. Plus, she’s cuter than a bunny made of kittens. That’s probably why all the vampires that she didn’t kill ended up having sex with her. <br /><br /><br /><b>6. Barbara Steele</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/steele.jpg"><br />FILMS: THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, THE CASTLE OF TERROR, TERROR CREATURES FROM THE GRAVE, SHIVERS, PIRANHA, <br />BEST SCENE: her not-so-relaxing facial in BLACK SUNDAY<br />Known for her crazy eyes and dubbed voice, Barbara Steele has been directed by Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, David Cronenberg, Roger Corman and Joe Dante, and has starred alongside Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, giving her the most impressive horror Rolodex of any scream queen I can think of. <br /><br /><b>5. Tiffany Shepis</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/shepis.jpg"><br />FILMS: ABOMINABLE, TOXIC AVENGER IV, DORM OF THE DEAD<br />BEST SCENE: the finale of NIGHTMARE MAN. Which would have been good even if she’d had a shirt on. But she didn’t. So it was better.<br />With just over 10 years in the biz, Tiffany has already racked up over 50 films on her resume and has already made the jump from scream princess to producer with her upcoming BONNIE & CLYDE VS DRACULA, where “B-movie” stands for blood, bullets and boobies. Tiffany cracks my Top 5 because she’s hotter than an iPod at a swap meet, can actually act, and answers the phone when I call. Zero degrees of separation, slutpigs! Eat <i>that!</i><br /><br /><b>4. Sheri Moon Zombie</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/smzombie.jpg"><br />FILMS: THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, TOOLBOX MURDERS (2003), HALLOWEEN (2007), GRINDHOUSE<br />BEST SCENE: her song and dance in HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES.<br />Not that a gorgeous, rock n’ roll blond can’t make it in on her own in Hollywood, but being married to someone as iconic as Rob Zombie ain’t so bad. They’re like the Neil Simon and Marsha Mason of horror. Except that I’ve never had the slightest desire to sniff Marsha Mason’s sock drawer.<br /><br /> <br /><b>3. Jamie Lee Curtis</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/curtis.jpg"><br />FILMS: HALLOWEEN I, II & III, TERROR TRAIN, PROM NIGHT, THE FOG (the good one)<br />BEST SCENE: horror, schmorror - her strip tease in TRUE LIES. <br />Jamie Lee Curtis was in the original HALLOWEEN. That is all you need to know. <br />P.S. She does not have a penis.<br /><br /><br /><b>2. Ashley Laurence</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/laurence.jpg"><br />FILMS, HELLRAISER I, II & VI, THE LURKING FEAR, WARLOCK III<br />BEST SCENE: playing with her box and unleashing the dangling sausage monster in HELLRAISER. No subtext there, Clive. Jeezus.<br />A few years ago, Ashley did a Geico commercial. Immediately, I imagined the gecko getting his soul torn out by a bunch of leather demon daddies. <i>That’s</i> how engrained the character Kirsty Cotton is in my psyche. Plus, hot. Tire fire hot. Ashley Laurence is on my magical list of celebrities that one’s spouse is supposed to give you a pass to snog on should the opportunity present itself. This is why I bring a bottle of tequila with me to horror conventions.<br /><br /><b>1. Ingrid Pitt</b><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/pitt.jpg"><br />FILMS: THE WICKER MAN, COUNTESS DRACULA, THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, THE TELL-TALE HEART (2008)<br />BEST SCENE: coming out of the closet (coffin, whatever) to Jon Pertwee in THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD<br />Ingrid Pitt’s career spans almost half a century, making her the undisputed Grand Damme of Scream Queens. Making her (tooth)mark on the Hammer horror films of the 60’s and 70’s, Ingrid proved herself on par with the likes of horror archetypes Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and in the case of COUNTESS DRACULA, proved herself to be even more of a thorn in the side to the Hammer censors. And she did it all without silicon or saline. Inconceivable.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-68549537416058876682008-01-23T11:47:00.000-08:002008-01-23T17:45:35.893-08:00Zombie Names<br><u>Top 10 Most Politically Correct Terms for Zombies</u><br /><br />The Formerly Abled<br /><br />Unearthed American<br /><br />Person of Horror *<br /><br />The Life Challenged<br /><br />Cerebravore<br /><br />The Post-Interred<br /><br />The Differently Active<br /><br />Previous Citizen<br /><br />The Morbidly Gifted<br /><br />The Fundead<br /><br /><br /><u>Top 10 Least Politically Correct Terms for Zombies</u><br /><br />Barbara (female) or Johnny (male)<br /><br />Mister Stinky<br /><br />Coffin Jockey<br /><br />Li’l Chompy<br /><br />Thriller<br /><br />Piñata-head<br /><br />Worm Taxi <br /><br />Jesus 1.0<br /><br />Dirtback<br /><br />Hobo<br /><br /><br />* Credit for this gem goes to my friends at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UfFxf7fMsM" target="_blank">LIVE WIRE!</a>, who are painfully clever.<br /><br><br>Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-44790061326895626092008-01-22T15:43:00.000-08:002008-01-22T17:06:17.510-08:00Regarding Ellen PageAs you read my posts over time, those among you observant enough to care will take note that I am a practiced hypocrite. My values and standards, passions and grudges ebb and flow in response to what I think is cool or funny at any given moment - and I do this wantonly and unashamedly, knowing full well that since nothing I say stops global warming or cures cancer, it doesn't matter. Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. (Emerson said that, and he is far more clever than I. And since you are reading this when you could be doing literally anything else, we'll assume more clever than you as well.)<br /><br />And so it goes with my opinion of the preening gaggle of self-congratulatory dilettantes at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. I hate them until they do something I agree with. While I never remember actually thinking that the Academy ever had a particularly firm grasp of the nuances between, say, an ass and an elbow, I didn't start actively reviling them until 1994 when PULP FICTION lost Best Picture to the jogging retard movie, a travesty applauded by pabulum-minded greeting card peddlers and bunny snugglers the world over. Since then I have watched their monkeyshines with a popcorn tub full of hot buttery detachment and contempt. <br /><br />Anyway, hypocrisy.<br /><br />The 2008 Oscar nominations were announced this morning and Ellen Page got a big gold star for her performance in JUNO. While I have an oversize tote full of rat’s asses to give for their other opinions, Page’s nomination not only seems reasonable to me but universally just.<br /><br />I have not seen JUNO. (SWEENEY TODD first, then THE ORPHANAGE, then AVP-R it it's still in theaters and <i>then</i> JUNO.) But I do not need to see JUNO to know that Ellen Page, despite being just a wee behbeh, is one of the greatest actresses on screen today. Because I've seen HARD CANDY.<br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/hardcandy.jpg"><br />HARD CANDY (or as it was released in the United Kingdom, CRIKEY! MY BALLS!) is a 2005 indie torture-horror thriller that came out to significant praise and few screens. Page is <i>brilliant</i>. She's right up there with Anthony Hopkins in the Best Performance In a Horror Movie category. (Which is not a real category because there's only a nominee about once ever decade.) HARD CANDY is an unnerving game of cat and mouse between a sexual predator and his intended victim, but this particular cat and mouse turn out to be more like ITCHY & SCRATCHY and the cat ends up drugged and tied to a table with his nuts on ice. <br /><br />Page’s performance is relentless. In a movie with a cast of about five, she owns the screen whenever she’s on it. I remember sitting in the theatre thinking that this girl was going to go on to screen greatness and voila – a mere two years later and she could be Best Actress. And if she isn’t this year, she will be. My gawd, she’s not even old enough to drink yet.<br /><br />If you missed it, pop HARD CANDY into your Netflix queue. Unlike many of the movies that I will recommend as this blog develops, it’s legitimately good. Better yet, watch it after you get home from seeing JUNO. It would be like some sick Sweet Valley High version of Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-91663735490761332622008-01-18T02:11:00.000-08:002008-01-18T12:07:29.025-08:00SPOILERFIELDIt's 2 am on Friday, 1/18/08, and it will surprise no one that's ever met me that I just spent the previous 99 minutes at the midnight viewing of CLOVERFIELD. For the record, THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS is still the best American made giant monster movie ever.<br /><br />CLOVERFIELD loses on a technicality because really, it's not a giant monster movie. It's a <span style="font-style:italic;">love story that has a giant monster in it</span>. And even in that category, it only rates second. Top honors still go to the original KING KONG. Had I known that CLOVERFIELD was going to spend so much screen time on its soap opera, I'd be asleep right now. I definitely would have seen CLOVERFIELD in a theatre someday - and enjoyed it - but I wouldn't have pumped my pasty carcass full of Mountain Dew so I could do it NOW NOW NOW. <br /><br />The thing that's going to keep CLOVERFIELD alive in the hearts and minds of basement dwelling fanboys forever is what the movie <span style="font-style:italic;">doesn't</span> show you. Which is hardly anything. There is no backstory. There is no explanation for or of anything. And when it comes to giant monsters, there's <span style="font-style:italic;">always </span>a reason. Your bomb/mineshaft/volcano/loud rock music disturbed my eternal slumber. You stole my baby/egg/girlfriend/sacred relic/twin fairies. Your alien invasion/robot version of me is not welcome here.<br /><br />In CLOVERFIELD, the monster attacks New York and everybody dies, and in between those two events, a bunch of yuppie hipsters try to save their friend and not get eaten along the way in an escalating series of what-the-#$%@! moments. That's pretty much all that happens and since the whole thing is POV of people caught in the thick of it, that's all you're told. But the Interweb is packed to bursting with backstory, including a lot of the theories I posited myself yesterday. Like the whole Slusho thing - you see it on that one guy's t-shirt and that is it. But online, there's plenty of support for a veritable cornucopia of explanations. In fact, everything about the film is open to a million theories, each one as valid as the one before it. It's a college film professor's wet dream.<br /><br />I also want to be on record as stating unequivocally that in any city-crushing smackdown, GODZILLA would slap CLOVERFIELD's ass silly and take it's lunch money. The CLOVERFIELD monster is just not that impressive. It's cool and all, but it suffers from that same, too prevalent lanky-armed, barrel-chested, skinny-waisted, pasty-skinned character design that you can see in INDEPENDENCE DAY, PUMPKINHEAD, THE CAVE, WAR OF THE WORLDS (the Tom Cruise one) and dozens of other contemporary monster flicks. If you're supposed to be big enough to knock over a building, look the part. I like my giant monsters with some meat on their bones. Gangly, shaven sea gibbons just don't pack that punch. That fake whale monster fan art? <span style="font-style:italic;">Much</span> better.<br /><br />All in all, see CLOVERFIELD. It's a good popcorn thrill ride. <br /><br />Then go buy THE HOST on DVD. It's a better movie.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-15568325767489065962008-01-16T23:35:00.000-08:002008-01-17T10:37:29.254-08:00GORGOID, The Stuff From 20,000 Fathoms: My Cloverfield Theories<br>Make no mistake, I loves me some giant monster movies.<br /><br />My love is pathological and unreasoning. I saw GODZILLA’S REVENGE on a Saturday afternoon creature feature when I was nine and after that, I had a radioactive lizard on my back. Greatest giant monster movie ever? GAMERA 3: THE REVENGE OF IRYS (Japan, 1999). Worst giant monster movie ever? THE GIANT CLAW (USA, 1957). I have seen them all, except for the really obscure Korean ones like SPACE MONSTER WANGWAGWI. I don't mean for that to sound like bragging. I am merely stating my credentials up front.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/cloverfield.jpg"><br /><br />In case you somehow missed it, CLOVERFIELD comes out this Friday and as far as pre-opening hype goes, it’s easily 2008’s SNAKES ON A PLANE (which in turn was 2006’s BLAIR WITCH PROJECT). Unlike SNAKES, though, CLOVERFIELD might actually be something that people would want to spend nine dollars to see. In fact, the CLOVERFIELD teaser campaign could be so effective that the movie will flop: at approximately 22:40 hours later today, Thurdsay, 1/17/08, half of CLOVERFIELD’s main audience of sci-fi fanboys and Internerds will die of brain aneurysms brought on by the pressure of over-conjecturing about what the damn monster is.<br /><br />So far, actual details about the film have been scarce. No one outside of the film’s cognoscenti has any verifiable intel regarding the monster and that’s driving many an Internerd crazier than Lindsay Lohan at a pharmaceutical tradeshow. The theories and rumors, however, are rampant and range from the truly moronic to probably better than the actual film. I am here to sift through some of those and posit one or two of my own.<br /><br />Here’s what we know.<br /><br />First, we know that bad stuff happens. The opening of the trailer says:<br />MULTIPLE SIGHTINGS OF CASE DESIGNATE "CLOVERFIELD"<br />CAMERA RETRIEVED AT INCIDENT SITE U.S.447<br />AREA FORMERLY KNOWN AS "CENTRAL PARK"<br />So right off the bat, we know that the people taking the video were unable to deliver the camera themselves (dum dum dum!) and that however things went down, Central Park didn’t survive (dumdumdum DUMMMM!!!). CLOVERFIELD is a faux documentary shot by the folks living it, just like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, and this doom and gloom set up certainly implies that the heroes don’t fare any better than those hippie kids did.<br /><br />We also know that the film is being produced by JJ Abrams (LOST, ALIAS) and was written by Drew Goddard (LOST, ALIAS, BUFFY, ANGEL). There’s not a lot of big screen experience here, but there’s a lot of imagination and good judgment so that’s a good sign. The film is being directed by Matt Reeves (FELICITY, and, um, FELICITY) but since he’s vetted by Abrams that’s pretty much an all season fast pass.<br /> <br />CLOVERFIELD was originally a crafty codename intended to keep the film a secret. It’s the name of the street in Santa Monica where the movie’s offices were. Other working titles have included CHEESE, PARASITE and SLUSHO. This Slusho thing is either key or a brilliant red herring. To wit:<br /><br /><a href=" http://www.slusho.jp/<br />">CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL SLUSHO WEBSITE</a><br /><br /><a href=" http://www.tagruato.jp/">AND CLICK HERE FOR SLUSHO’S EVIL CORPORATE PARENT CORPORATION, TAGRUATO</a><br /><br /><object width="400" height="334"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QBee1TuUSJE&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QBee1TuUSJE&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="400" height="334"></embed></object><br /><br />Slusho is a fake Japanese soft drink that first appeared in ALIAS. If you’re paying really close attention, the character Jason (Mike Vogel) is sporting the Slusho brand on his t-shirt in the CLOVERFIELD trailer. Coincidence? From the guys that brought us the Dharma Initiative? Let’s assume not.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/slusho.jpg"><br /><br />The Slusho site tells us that Slusho’s secret ingredient, “Seabed’s Nectar”, is some mysterious ooze from the bottom of the ocean – so it only makes sense that the Japanese would be the first to eat it. It also states that Slusho is so addictive that you will become a “small whale” from drinking it. My gut is that this is a rare case of too much truth in advertising. <br /><br />Other pages inform us that the FDA “and other such organizations” haven’t approved it for human consumption yet. Curioser and curioser. Assume something sinister and ascribe mind and body altering effects to your Slusho habit; the customer quotes from the Happy Talk page become quite ominous. My favorites are “she is one of them” and “Slusho makes my stomach explode with happy.” The picture below is from the trailer. Somebody’s stomach is sure exploding with something but from the screaming, “happy” isn’t my first guess.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/cloverfield2.jpg"><br /><br />We also know two things about the monster thanks to a recent press release by Abrams. He says that the monster is “a baby. He’s brand-new. He’s confused, disoriented and irritable. And he’s been down there in the water for thousands and thousands of years.” Abrams goes on to mention that our skyscraper sized baby is host to “parasites” that he sloughs off in a sort of “post-birth ritual.” And of course, once a giant monster’s giant parasites lose their meal ticket, they’re going to hook their claws into whatever else looks most edible. One one hand, I love this plan. It only makes sense that a monster the size of Rhode Island would have its own ecosystem. There’s a hint of this idea in 1954 in the original GOJIRA, when investigators find a living trilobite in one of Godzilla’s footprints. There’s also a glimpse of this sort of symbiosis in Frank Darabont’s THE MIST, at the end when the giant whatever steps over the car, with flocks of something-or-others circling it. On the other hand, if these minimonsters turn out to be baby Cloverfields we’ve got the same cheap Jurassic Park rip-off that Roland Emmerich’s blasphemous 1998 GODZILLA travesty devolved into. That’s the point where I kidnap Abrams and sell his kidneys on the black market to get my ticket money back.<br /><br />Roving packs of five-foot whale lice would indeed bring the horror down to the street level with the five partiers and their handheld video camera. After all, the Japanese know that the best way to focus on a giant monster for a whole movie is to have it fight another giant monster, and CLOVERFIELD shows no signs of that. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/nonono.jpg"><br /><br />So from what little info we have, we can discount many of the fanboy theories. It’s not another American GODZILLA film, nor is it a legitimate American licensing of the true Toho GODZILLA. (Abrams has said on numerous occasions that he’s looking to make his own mark on giant monster cinema so look for an original beastie.) Robots don’t have parasites so it isn’t VOLTRON. It’s comes up from the bottom of the ocean so making it an alien would be an unnecessary detail. And despite the fact that it comes up from the ocean, it’s not CTHULHU. This last theory is surprisingly popular amongst the geekery despite how obviously wrong it is. Cthulhu isn’t about knocking over buildings in New York. It’s about rising out of the tide in Massachusetts and driving anyone with monkey DNA batshit crazy just from the sight of it. Backing Cthulhu in this movie is like voting for Nader: you and your crazy friends know it could be the best choice ever, but the other 99% of the universe doesn’t know what the fuck you’re babbling about.<br /><br />The filmmakers have also publicly stated that the creature is not a mutated whale, a la an exceptionally convincing piece of fan art by fantasy artist Doug Williams that has been grist for the rumor mills all over the Interweb. A whale monster would be a nice little homage to Godzilla whose Japanese name, Gojira, is a derivation of the Japanese word for whale, kujira. Keep that little nugget tucked away for bar trivia night.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/whale.jpg"><br /><br />I think we need to consider that the filmmakers’ refute of the whale theory may in fact be a big, fat lie. Williams’ wonder whale was definitely designed with a human wearing a rubber suit in mind: just look at the arms and legs beneath all those the flippers. Then read the two “Smilers!” press releases on the Tagruato website for a glimpse into the effects of animals on Slusho. Some whales do dive down deep to feed. Does Seabed’s Nectar cause mutations? Whatever the creature is, it’s coming up from the depths. This future DVD extra bears that out nicely:<br /><br /><object width="400" height="334"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KarNwKx5mGY&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KarNwKx5mGY&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="400" height="334"></embed></object><br /><br />So here’s where I’m putting my money.<br /><br />CLOVERFIELD is going to be a cautionary tale. Nine out of 10 giant monster movies share the same basic caveat: when you dick with the natural order, prepare to be counterdicked a hundredfold. The original GOJIRA/GODZILLA came in the aftermath of America scaring the crap out of the world with the A-bomb. Godzilla was and has always been a metaphor for the dangers of unchecked nuclear power. In the 70’s, when we as a society first started actively caring about what we dumped, tossed, burned and flushed, Godzilla put on a white hat when an even greater threat emerged in GOJIRA TAI HEDORAH aka GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER.<br /><br />Fast forward thirty years and we’re living in a world where global warming and overconsumption of natural resources threatens to burn out the planet while we’re still standing on it. That’s freakin’ <i>terrifying!</i> Now suppose that somewhere out there on the 2/3 of the planet that we’ve never explored, something bigger than us starts wondering what douchebag has been turning up the thermostat and drinking all his Slusho without chipping in. Pissed? Oh, you bet.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/yesyesyes.jpg"><br /><br />While I am confident that Abrams N’ Palz™ are more than clever enough to come up with their own giant monster story, I’m betting that CLOVERFIELD finds its inspiration not from Godzilla, not from Japanese robots and certainly not from squidheaded cosmic overlords, but rather from GORGO, THE STUFF and THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS.<br /><br />GORGO is a UK giant monster movie where the titular beast shows up, wrecks a little bit of London and then is captured and put on display. It turns out that Gorgo is actually just a baby and the real fireworks start when mommy shows up, wrecks the rest of London and rescues her wubbykins. Abrams has already told us that his monster is just “a baby.” Will our trigger-happy military actually manage to make it cry loud enough for mommy to hear? That would suck for us.<br /><br />THE STUFF is a rarely remembered 1985 Larry Cohen film about killer yogurt. An old miner finds a bunch of bubbling white goo coming out of the ground and before you can say “addictive microorganisms that control your brain before they melt your bones,” an ice cream company slaps a label on it and sells it all over the world. Does that ring a bell? <br />(Besides Slurm, I mean.) It’s a safe bet that Slusho is at least part of the reason that the CLOVERFIELD leviathan is so ornery. Have we been wantonly pillaging its food source, like we do the rest of the planet? Or is Slusho even creepier, as in one of the creature’s own precious bodily fluids? I would never stop laughing if it turned out that the world’s most popular soft drink was Godzilla semen. Neh-ver.<br /><br />THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS is, to this day, arguably the greatest American giant monster movie, even more so when you consider that it came out three years before the domestic release of the original GODZILLA. In this little gem, a surviving dinosaur gets thawed out by an A-bomb test in the Arctic (ahem! global warming! ahem!) and starts trashing (drumroll please) New York City. The military quickly learn that they can shoot the Beast but in doing so, a virulent contagion spreads from the monster’s splattered blood. So in that movie the virus turned out to be the real problem and in this one, the parasites do. Or the Slusho does. In either case, a giant monster rampaging through your city is an excellent distraction from the more immediate threat. Like how a war is supposedly more important than dying polar bears.<br /><br />Too political? I’m sorry.<br /><br />But for all my speculation - which isn’t even enough of the tip of the iceberg to make a decent Spoogezilla smoothie with – CLOVERFIELD is already being shipped to theatres and the odds of any of my or anyone’s rambling being relevant in 48 hours is 50/50 at best. I’ve already got my ticket and my swelling aneurysm for the Thursday midnight thundergeek pre-showing: that’s all that matters right now.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-8362772514703468022008-01-15T17:33:00.001-08:002008-01-15T20:11:13.143-08:00Masters of Horror, Season 2<img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/moh.jpg"><br /><br /><br />Ready for round 2? <br /><br />I know I was. Despite the fact that much of MOH 1 was flaccid at best, I still find myself riveted to the concept of a weekly horror anthology show. The hope it gives me in inextinguishable. It has to be. Cuz let’s face it, as horror fans we put up with a lot of crap. For every THE EXORCIST, there are ten thousand SLEEPAWAY CAMP IIs waiting to sodomize what few precious cinematic standards we cling to. We need to know that there are “masters” at work, keeping this ol’ dead horse alive and eating brains, and that the next EVIL DEAD or PSYCHO or GINGER SNAPS is right around the corner.<br /><br />Let’s see what sort of hope MOH 2 brought us.<br /><br />THE DAMNED THING<br />I assuming that the title is actually referring to this episode’s script, which is clichéd, predictable and lacks an ending. The story just stops – which after an hour was okay by me. When I saw Tobe Hooper’s and Richard Matheson’s names in the credits, my eyes totally made that ah-OOGA sound. Those two geniuses are given an hour to play and they do <i>this</i>? I remain bewildered and twitching to this day. After the stumbling DANCE OF THE DEAD last season, Hooper is 0 for 2.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/family.jpg"><br /><br />FAMILY<br />John Landis has still got it, and directs George Wendt in a likeable performance as a lonely, suburban psychopath. FAMILY is a popcorn-worthy hour and one of this season’s best. The performances were even diverting enough that the relatively predictable ending snuck right by me. Landis, you sly boots, you. With DEER WOMAN under your belt, you’re 2 for 2.<br /><br />THE V WORD<br />Ernest Dickerson did as well as could be expected with Mick Garris’ bipolar script. The first half of this vampire yarn is wonderfully suspenseful and creepier than the repressed memories of an inappropriate uncle. Spooky ol’ Michael Ironside is nothing short of perfect as the alpha vampire. But despite this strong hand, the second half makes a hard right turn into SappyTown. The young hero, now a vampire himself, is emboldened by the power of loooooooove and overcomes Ironside’s eeeeeevil influence in order to save his own baby sister. Turn your volume up loud enough and you’ll still hear the echoes of my dry heaving. I’ve seen Scooby Doos that didn’t have that pat of an ending.<br /><br />SOUNDS LIKE<br />Brad Anderson wrote and directed SESSION 9, which is easily one of the best and most underappreciated horror movies of this decade. He also directed THE MACHINIST, which, while not a horror movie in the strictest sense, rocks. Like these two gems, SOUNDS LIKE follows Anderson’s trademark theme of creeping insanity that may or may not have supernatural causes. Unlike the two films, Anderson is not given a feature’s worth of time to develop the story. As a result, SOUNDS LIKE feels rushed and I was often left with that ‘um...whaaaa?” feeling. This includes the climax, which balances being a cop out and a gory crescendo at the same time. I’m nitpicking, though, and SOUNDS LIKE is an entertaining cerebral palate cleanser between monster episodes. Hell, compared to most of the episodes this season, SOUNDS LIKE walks on water.<br /><br />PRO-LIFE<br />Myself, I support the right to choose. In this case, I chose to fast forward through <i>the most contrived script and hammiest acting in the whole series</i> in order to get to a cool looking monster. John Carpenter not only screwed the pooch on this episode, he shaved its back and stole its chewtoy. It's hard to find dialogue delivered this badly outside of an Oxy Clean infomercial, but PRO-LIFE pulls it off. Carpenter’s average for the series stands at .5 for 2. CIGARETTE BURNS was one of last season’s best, but there needs to be a penalty for this subcrap turdtacular. <i>You’re John Fracking Carpenter, man!</i> You know better.<br /><br />Back to the monster – or better, all the monsters. The most consistent masters of horror of the series - the artists that manage to not only deliver but deliver with a smile and a side of fries every episode - are Howard Berger, Greg Nicotero and their legion of astoundingly talented flying monkeys from KNB EFX Group. Perhaps even more critical to each episode than Garris himself, Berger and Nicotero are the delicious reason I keep licking this lollipop every week, even though half the time it tastes like honey on a hairball. <br /><br />Which beats the hell out of a hairball without honey. <br /><br />But I digress.<br /><br />PELTS<br />Speak of honey-covered hairballs and they shall appear. Italian director Dario Argento has a rep for weaving offbeat supernatural phenomena into tales of brutal violence. But the ghosts of raccoons haunting an evil furrier? That’s not offbeat, that’s guh-hey. Argento ends up 1 for 2, saved by last season’s JENIFER.<br /><br />THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION<br />Bingo! Big fat gold star to Joe Dante and writer Sam Hamm for delivering the series’ second best episode ever. Although the title telegraphs the ending to anyone that's ever watched a National Geographic special, this is one of the few episodes that would make a fantastic feature length movie (if you can overlook the relative buzzkill of the extinction of the human race). Inventive, violent, suspenseful, well directed and acted – with a dark twist on current trends of “green living” that I for one found very welcome. Paired with HOMECOMING from last season, Dante proves to be the series’ most dependable director. I’m calling it 3 for 2.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/val.jpg"><br /><br />VALERIE ON THE STAIRS<br />Mick Garris pens and helms this tale of figments of the imagination that don’t know their place. Our hero learns too late that beautiful naked women that magically appear on staircases can’t be trusted the same way you’d trust, say, a beautiful naked woman throwing up in the bushes outside of a nightclub. Remember kids; drunk and naked, yes, magic and naked, no. Tony Todd appears as the episodes monster du jour, an old school demon straight out of HAXAN. Berger and Nicotero wove their usual makeup magic on Todd but honestly, his voice and demeanor alone are enough to empty the bravest of bladders. VOTS isn’t outstanding but since neither this nor CHOCOLATE went so far as to actually suck, Garris’ directorial average is kicking around 1.3 for 2. <br /><br />RIGHT TO DIE<br />Rob Schmidt? Seriously? How did the guy that directed WRONG TURN get to be a “master” of horror? Was George Romero too busy doing comic book conventions? Jesus wept, people.<br /><br />Ironically (and I really, truly mean that), this episode was turned out okay. The skinless apparition of the scorned and scorched lady burn victim was ghastly and inventive and when the antagonist is force-fed his just desserts, the story proves satisfying. And while I am not usually a fan of gratuitous sex being shoehorned into a script as filler, Julia Anderson’s soft-core hot tub scene is hotter than a Rolex on a hobo. PARENTS: if you’re concerned about that horror addicted, comic book reading, Warcraft playing, mathlete teenage son of yours, rent him this. If that hot tub scene doesn’t have him grabbing his inhaler for dear life, face the fact that you’re never going to have grandchildren.<br /><br />WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM<br />I didn’t even have to eject this DVD. My player vomited all by itself. <br /><br />How director Tom Holland and writer David Schow were able to take something as universally creepy as the killer ghost of a retarded clown and make it, well, <i>more retarded</i> is beyond my capacity for forgiveness. <br /><br />THE BLACK CAT<br />prediktabul nding. I haz it.<br />But the good news is Stuart Gordon isn’t sodomizing another Lovecraft story. And the better news is he’s not rolling Poe over, either. This BLACK CAT is an original tale that features Jeffrey Combs as Poe himself in a fictional tale of the hardship and inspiration, lovingly sprinkled with murder and animal torture, leading up to the penning of the title story. And guess what? It didn’t suck at all. Better than that, even – I’d watch it again. Gordon managed to put aside his trademark lack of subtlety and direct Combs in an atmospheric tale of spiraling self-destruction that’s actually reinforced by the gratuitous gore instead of being distracted by it. I enjoyed it enough that the utterly formulaic ending didn’t even faze me. Congratulations, Stuart. You ended up 1 for 2. You may have a cookie.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/wash.jpg"><br /><br />THE WASHINGTONIANS<br />Cannibals? Creepy. Old guys in makeup and powdered wigs? Also creepy. George Washington used his wooden teeth to eat virgins? Creepy trifecta! Congratulations, you have my attention. The actors delivering their lines like a community theatre production of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN? Oopsie doodle, you just lost it. Time for a sammich.<br /><br />DREAM CRUISE<br />Norio Tsuruta’s DREAM CRUISE is the last of season 2 to come out on DVD. I won’t lie: I haven’t seen it yet. I’ve yet to read one favorable review and from all accounts it’s another case of a vengeful, watery Asian ghost girl with long, magic hair tentacles. Come on, Asian directors! Isn’t there anything else you’re scared of? Giant lizards? Declining math scores?<br /><br />O sure, I’ll see DREAM CRUISE eventually. With the Writer’s Guild still on strike, I’m even amazing myself at the crap I’ve been watching. If DREAM CRUISE exceeds my expectations – which are currently hovering at none – I’ll append this.<br /><br />That’s it for season 2. Not half bad, but not really half good either. Luckily, horror fans tend a ‘glass half full’ kinda bunch. Which has always struck me as odd.<br /><br />And now, we wait. <br /><br />Showtime, a CBS company, has kicked MASTERS OF HORROR to the curb and this summer it resurfaces, reinvented, as 13 episodes of FEAR ITSELF on NBC. It’s an interesting move for NBC. MOH is not exactly small screen gold: edited for network TV, most of the episodes would either be unwatchably dull or unworkably short. That means that story alone will have to fill the gaps left by gore and boobies. As if such a thing were possible. <br /><br />Still there’s hope. NBC is obviously comfortable subjecting its viewers to unreasoning, mind-numbing horror. After all, this is the network that greenlit JOEY.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-57427969340423739802008-01-07T02:02:00.000-08:002008-01-07T16:54:01.884-08:00Masters of Horror, Season 1<img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/moh.jpg"><br /><br />When I first heard about THE MASTERS OF HORROR, I started giggling like a Japanese schoolgirl on Red Bull. This, I thought, is why Prometheus gave us television. <br /><br />As of this writing, MOH has been on the air two seasons on Showtime and the third season is migrating to NBC under the title FEAR ITSELF. That…will be interesting. Both of the Showtime seasons have been available on DVD for a while now and since this effort was pretty significant for horror fans I’m chiming in, late as opposed to never. After all, it’s part of my mission here to save you $3.79 at Blockbuster whenever possible. Think of me as your seeing eye dog that’s specially trained to keep you from stepping in another dog’s poop.<br /><br />Here’s what Season 1 had to offer. Keep in mind that these men have the eggs to call themselves “Masters” so I see no reason to cut them even a shred of slack. <br /><br />Entertain me, monkey boys!<br /><br />INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD<br />In the series’ premier episode, director Don Coscarelli weaves a tale about a young girl being menaced by a deformed serial killer. Way to hit the ground yawning, guys.<br /><br />DREAMS IN THE WITCH HOUSE <br />You know the story about Rumpelstiltskin, the elf that spins straw into gold? That’s how I feel about Stuart Gordon, except that he is not an elf. He is a wheezing bridge troll that takes the gold of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the greatest horror author in the history of ever, and serially spins it into mule vomit. I could not hate this episode more if it had shot my dog and stolen my truck.<br /><br />DANCE OF THE DEAD<br />Directed by Tobe Hooper and starring Robert Englund, this episode literally brought me to my feet. So that I could walk over to my DVD player, take out the disc and throw it as hard as I could at my cat. I needed something to share my pain.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/dance.jpg"><br /><br />JENIFER<br />aka Night Of The Butterface. The main problem with JENIFER is that unless you’re making a sammich during the first three minutes, you already know exactly what the next 57 minutes lead up to. But if you’re a fan of the old CREEPY magazine and are familiar with the source material by horror überartist Berni Wrightson, you’ll appreciate Dario Argento’s faithful adaptation as much as I did. Not too shabby.<br /><br />Here’s a fun bit of cocktail party banter: although the MOH directors are generally given free rein, Argento scored the series’ first censorship with two scenes of graphic oral sex that never made it to air (but supposedly are on the DVD special features). Personally, just watching Jenifer eat a Twix would be enough to stimulate my gag reflex so I might have to side with the angels on this one.<br /><br />CHOCOLATE<br />MOH series creator wrote and directed this episode about a food designer lab guy that develops a unique psychic link with a murderess. My guess is that they were running short on the effects budget and needed an episode that didn’t have a cool monster in it. Luh-hame.<br /><br />HOMECOMING<br />Finally! Joe Dante starts his streak as one of the season’s and the series’ best contributors with this thinly veiled jab at the Bush administration by screenwriter Sam Hamm. Zombie soldiers rock the vote. I love this episode.<br /><br />DEER WOMAN: <br />A series of bizarre trucker murders leads a detective to a Native American were-deer woman. In theory this sounds gayer than Allan Cumming getting his own fragrance but in practice, director John Landis turns this into one of the season’s best episodes.<br /><br />CIGARETTE BURNS<br />Zeus of horror, John Carpenter, continues the show’s winning streak with this story about a movie that drives its audiences insane. (Hell, he got plenty of practice doing the same thing in IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS in 1995 so this should have been a walk in the park.) This episode also features the disturbingly puffy and fish-eyed Udo Kier, a one-man atmospheric slam dunk for any horror film. Udo Kier could do an IHOP commercial and I’d still feel like I needed a shower afterwards.<br /> <br />THE FAIR HAIRED CHILD<br />How the epileptic chimpanzee that directed FEARDOTCOM was able to keep the MOH streak going is an utter mystery to me, but director William Malone delivered this solid episode about a warlock couple that just want something to hug. The creature in this episode is delicious and could have carried its own feature. My favorite bugaboo in the whole series so far.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/fhc.jpg"><br /><br />SICK GIRL<br />MAY is one of my favorite horror films of the last decade and I’m sure I’ll ramble on about it at some point, so of course I let out a high pitched squeal when I found out that director Lucky McKee was reuniting with Angela Bettis for this one. Add in horror porn star Erin Brown (aka Misty Mundae) and a vicious beetle that can scramble your DNA and baby, you got yourself a stew. A little campy at times, but fun. <br /><br />At this point, I'm encouraged. There's been a streak of five episodes ranging from entertaining to legitimately good and I've almost got the dry, grainy taste of the season’s first three episodes out of my mouth.<br /><br />PICK ME UP<br />WHAMMO! Larry Cohen delivers the series’ best episode by a wide margin. Who would have thought that the guy that did IT’S ALIVE III had this in him? Now, I’m not a fan of torture horror. I usually need something supernatural in a movie to really grab my attention. But this story, written by David Schow, about a turf war between two serial killers is original and captivating, and casting Fairuza Balk as the mouse caught between the cats was genius. If you only see one episode of MOH, blar dee blar blar blar.<br /><br />I can’t wait to see how good the next episode is, can you?????<br /><br />HAECKEL’S TALE<br />O goddammit. Who gave a Clive Barker story to the guy that directed WILD THINGS? You <i>know</i> it's just gonna be about dicks. What, was the title NYMPHO WITCH ZOMBIE GANGBANG already taken? After loving every second of PICK ME UP, enduring HAECKEL’S TALE was like my TV punching me square in the Adam's apple.<br /><br />IMPRINT<br />Takashi Miike is going to get his own blog here someday. Oh, you can bet on that, pumpkins. <br /><br />But I digress.<br /><br />IMPRINT was the object of much buzz because SHOWTIME REFUSED TO AIR IT! Sweet buttery jeebus on a cracker, what unearthly visions of mind-wrenching madness and gut-churning mayhem could Miike be trying to jam into our horror holes?!! He couldn’t have come up with something more horrifying than his film AUDITION, could he have?<br /><br />Well, yes. And no. Here’s my theory. Mick Garris called Miike. “Takashi. Babe. Listen. I’ve got this series on American television and you can do whatever you want for an hour. Interested?” So Miike thinks for a second. “Let’s see…what would creep out an American audience? How about extended prostitute-on-prostitute torture sequences with needles, incest, vestigal twins and a Civil War grade abortion clinic set next to a clear mountain stream so that I can film the deformed feti struggle for life as they bob on their way out to sea? Groovy, let’s do this.”<br /><br />So while IMPRINT is chock full ta’bustin’ with truly ghastly sequences and imagery, they don’t hold together as a story. It’s just too much for one hour. Your enthusiasm is appreciated, Miike-san, but seriously, try decaf.<br /><br />Next up – Masters of Horror Season 2.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6169301310225543753.post-59688350645307068002008-01-06T00:29:00.000-08:002008-01-06T01:03:03.820-08:00HATCHET: Axe me again and I'll kill you the same.<img src="http://www.baronvongoolo.com/blog/hatchet.jpg"><br /><br />There are three things I want everyone to know about HATCHET.<br /><br />The first is that Mercedes McNab (aka "Harmony" from the Buffy-verse) needs to leave her clothes on. I'm not often accused or prudery nor would I find myself administering the proverbial kick for the proverbial cracker should the otherwise nubile Miss McNab be involved. It's just that the poor poppet is sporting one of those unfortunate boobjobs where the implants have started migrating towards the armpits, causing her nipples to slant inwards and give her funbags an off-putting, cross-eyed effect. Highlighting those in the first ten minutes of the movie telegraphed a freshman director whose judgment is less than razor keen. And completely spoiled a piece of Harmony on Willow fan porn that I've lost the will to write. Sigh.<br /><br />The second is that actor Joel David Moore is a font of underappreciated screen goodness, so much so that I've already added SPIRAL (which is also by HATCHET director, Adam Green) to my Netflix queue. Joel David Moore may not ring any bells but you've seen this guy. His trademark Gilligan meets Shaggy awkwardness is refreshingly genre-neutral and, in HATCHET, makes him a solid comic foil for mayhem. I should also mention that he is from Portland and I have a soft spot for the local boys. In fact, I once met Moore's family at an Old Town Chicago Pizza Works after the local premiere of DODGEBALL, in which Moore plays Owen and scores my favorite crazy-eyed Amazon, Missi Pyle. Good on you, you lanky bastard. His family was a salt of the earth, good natured crew that could not have been more proud of their son/sibling/cousin and went on at great length about his success to anyone with a sympathetic ear. I was of course interested in knowing why, if Moore was so loved and successful, weren't his sainted parents seeing DODGEBALL in Hollywood with their son and Vince Vaughn instead of in Clackamas with Aunt Ruby. Sadly, the jalapeño poppers had just arrived so no satisfactory answer was forthcoming. <br /><br />There is a scene in HATCHET where Moore witnesses boogieman of the week, Victor Crowley (played with practiced ease by Kane Hodder), cleaving his best friend from collarbone to hip (as homicidal hunchbacks are so oft to do). Moore's response is one of the more reasonable in recent slasher film memory: beat feet and when you've attained some distance, vomit like a you're in a Monty Python sketch. And by jingo, there was no sad, mouthful-of-thousand-island-dressing vomit that most "actors" expect us to swallow as gut-wrenching pathos for JDM! Nay, I say! This was a violent fountain of half-digested fear, an acrid plume of viscous, yellow-green fury that seemed to erupt from Moore's very soul! Dumbfounded, I paused the movie and watched the scene frame by frame, looking for the hoses, the bladder, anything that could cue me in to how they did it. Nothing. Moore - for his art, for his film, for the dusty, forgotten gods of cinéma-vérité - was legitimately hurling like an Amish schoolgirl full of cheap tequila, an act that was further supported by the DVD's special features. Take notes, students. Joel David Moore is the new Lizard King Viking Sex God of character actors. You may quote me.<br /><br />And the third thing (remember? stay with me) is something you'd think I'd have already learned by now. The more effusive the critical praise for a horror film is prior to its limited theatrical release (especially when it comes from horror-biased sources like BLOODY DISGUSTING and ICONS OF FRIGHT), the higher the likelihood that it will choke. Horror icon Kane Hodder even went so far as to say - and I quote - “This is the best horror movie I have ever been involved with. All I can say is that it’s great. I stake my reputation on it.” <br /><br />Wow. Hodder was in THE DEVIL'S REJECTS and JASON X, two horror films that grace my permanent collection for two very different reasons, so this is high praise indeed. Either HATCHET is a buttery slice of cinematic gold or Hodder is an indiscriminate shill whose pants are on fire. G'wan, take a guess.<br /><br />Let's just say that as far as being a film critic, Hodder is an excellent stuntman.<br /><br />But I want to be fair to HATCHET. It's not a horrible movie. If you're a insatiable horror movie slutpig like myself, HATCHET is practically required viewing. It's what all the cool kids are watching. And it's a damn sight better than 90% of the pestilent drivel that's passed off as horror these days. So don't overlook it because I was left wanting. I am callous and bitchy, with unrealistic expectations, a hair trigger hatred for sloppy film making and a petty but seething jealousy for one-shit wonders that somehow manage to get their vomitous films into every Blockbuster in the universe. It isn't right. And no, I did not misspell one-hit.<br /><br />And make no mistake, HATCHET is a sloppy film. In one of HATCHET's final sequences, the three main characters find themselves being chased through a cemetery by the maniac. As if subtitling the movie as "Old School American Horror" could possibly forgive this sort of cliché, my favorite bit is when the protagonists lean against an ancient, moss-covered mausoleum - oh-so-subtly emblazoned with the director's surname in giant gold letters - and the whole wall wobbles like it was made out of paper mache. Because it was. I was about to rewind the DVD to make sure I had seen what I thought I saw, but the editor was kind enough to include two more shots with the same wobbly wall. I assumed that the director meant Jason or Freddy when he said "Old School American Horror" but I guess he meant Ed Wood.<br /><br />But despite this and other shoddy production design, some clumsy directing, the predictable story arc and the lazy character design (the maniac Crowley is unremarkable and little more than an unmasked Jason), I managed to enjoy HATCHET for what it was. The cinematography was consistent and the acting was surprisingly solid for a film of this budget. Director/writer Adam Green did a nice job with much of the dialogue and obviously has a penchant for blending humor and horror that I assume will blossom once he loses his directorial baby teeth. And here's what most of you are waiting for: the gore. The gore is plentiful and fairly splendid. The deaths are straightforward hatchet jobs (ba-rum-BUM kissssssh!) that are obviously crafted with a canonical reverence for the subject matter that I feel makes up for their lack of originality.<br /><br />None of it is as good as that vomit shot, though.Baron Von Goolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05091461625272140725noreply@blogger.com1