What I’ve been up to…
Winter time is when I generally just start watching TV shows on DVD. In summary:
Mystery Science Theatre 3000 – Because what else am I going to watch when I’m up to my ears in pre-finals coursework and final exams, then after that, knitting projects for Christmas?
Rifftrax – Subpoint to MST3K. The first 11 minutes of the Iron Man Rifftrax are hilarious.
Cinematic Titanic – Subpoint #2 to MST3K. The redux of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is still pretty funny even if it doesn’t feature “Let’s Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas.”
Supernatural – Or as I like to call it “The Hot Guy Show.” I got drawn into this show due to the Homicide and now Deadwood-clause in my brain, meaning, I will give any show that features an actor from either show a shot. Supernatural has Jim Beaver as Bobby (he was Whitney Ellsworth on Deadwood), Sam and Dean’s sole father-figure and fellow demon-hunter. He only pops up occasionally, but the story right now is good enough that I’ve continued to watch it. I’m going through the first season of the show on DVD right now, and I’m getting the feeling that there is no greater narrative until probably the third season. The first season just seems to be the old “freak of the week” thing that Buffy and The X-Files used to do while pushing the greater narrative at a snail’s pace as we slowly get to know Sam and Dean Winchester better. Bonus: Probably one of the few CW TV shows that features adult-age main characters, and adult from the start, not an exhausted show that started when the characters were teenagers, and is now following them into their twenties (Smallville, One Tree Hill).
The Dead Set – Reality show-based horror is nothing new really, at least if you’ve seen Series 7 or the even more obscure Kolobos. The Dead Set begins with the premise of “What if there was a zombie outbreak near the location of the Big Brother house?” Mind you, The Dead Set is British, and the cultural barrier seems to be that Big Brother is way more of a big deal in the UK than it is in the US – people actually hang out outside the set as a sort of party to see the person who was most recently kicked out. It is easy to get past though, because the story is good and pretty scary. The zombies in this show run, for one thing, and this leaves few survivors in the initial outbreak. Mostly it is the housemates of the TV show, one production assistant, the executive producer (a Ricky Gervais character x Captain Rhodes in Day of the Dead x 100 = this guy), with the production assistant’s boyfriend fighting his way through the countryside trying to get to the set to find her. It’s an engrossing television show, and the boyfriend and I sat through the whole series in one night. Personally, I think I would totally be cool with zombies annihilating the cast of The Bachelor/The Bachelorette or Momma’s Boys. (You can watch episodes of the show from its website, but uh, the website kind of features spoilers if you scroll down enough).
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane – Did not blow my mind as much as I expected it to, but it is a pretty good modern take on the slasher genre.
Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! – Directed by Monte Hellman, and featuring two actors from Twin Peaks, Laura Elena Harring, and Bill Moseley (as Ricky Caldwell), this sequel still managed to be bad, and still managed to eke in clips from the first film, although Ricky was a freaking baby when the murder of his parents happened. No flashbacks to the second film, so we’re never told how Ricky went from being a guy with a gym membership to skinny ol’ Bill Moseley with a brainpan on his head, who is basically mute for almost the entire movie, so we do not get to hear his version of “GARBAGE DAY!” The film is given a more supernatural story of psychic blind girl who has inherited Eric Freeman’s acting talent who gets to see the comatose Ricky’s memories due to taking part in a scientific study. Ricky awakens from his coma and due to his psychic bond with the blind girl, is able to follow and arrive early to her grandmother’s house for Christmas and wreak havoc. It’s never really told why he wants to kill the blind girl. Maybe if he did, there would have been some Ghostbusters technology coming out of her brain into his and he would have gotten his memories back? I dunno.
Hack/Slash Omnibus 1 – I got this as a Christmas present from my boyfriend. It can work as a companion to Supernatural, since both have similar qualities. Supernatural, oddly enough may just be gorier though. Hack/Slash is a comic series about a slasher hunter named Cassie Hack and her sidekick Vlad. They go around the country killing slashers and occasionally helping people. Cassie kind of has a Tank Girl attitude and fashion style about her, although I guess slightly more Gothed up. It’s a pretty entertaining series, although it would almost be formulaic if Tim Seeley didn’t come up with some original slashers, some of whom are downright spooky (Ashley). What’s kind of cool about the series is that every once in awhile different artists illustrate the comics. Some artists work better with certain storylines better than others (again, Ashley).
NoWo600Wo: Let’s face it, I’m toast.
This may be my final posting for the month. I have 2 papers due next week and have to read a novel for a class I’m taking. I also witnessed some terrible films last weekend that kind of make me want to retreat to some old favorites for awhile. I haven’t been too enthused about what I’ve been getting from Netflix this month, but I felt the need to clear out some of the horror films that have been sitting in my queue for 2 years.
The boyf and I have been renting some terrible movies from Blockbuster lately, because non-new releases are 99 cents or $1.99. I think I’ve been so burnt out from school and zine fest organizing that I just feel like watching some stupid movies. I think I’ve realized the error of watching crap this weekend.
Walking through a Blockbuster is like walking through a weird, alternate dimension where pretty much only crappy movies are made (save for the 5 shelves devoted to Iron Man). It’s amazing how many once-popular actors are now in direct-to-dvd movies. I counted 4 starring Val Kilmer and at least 2 starring Neve Campbell. I even found one with Ewan MacGregor. Granted, some were there because some companies have decided to take advantage of having a newly popular actor’s name in the credits (I counted two with John Krasinski).
Here’s the round-up + one Netflix rental + one crappy comic book.
The Quick and the Undead was released and distributed by Anchor Bay, since they seem to be dipping into that part of the DVD business now. I figured a western with zombies would equal win for me. I was wrong, although this was not the worst movie I viewed this weekend. The first problem is the director, Gerald Nott, named his production company the punny name of Nott Entertainment, causing myself and my boyfriend to refer to all the actors as more famous actors that they looked at (the lead guy would be NottBretMcKenzie, or NottKurtRussell). The story is thus: 82 years before a plague broke out that caused people to become zombies. For some reason or another that’s not fully explained NottBretMcKenzie is immune to the virus and seemingly death in general, possibly due to the injections he takes (again, not fully explained). As a bounty hunter, he kills zombies and collects their fingers because zombie fingers are money? I don’t know, that’s not totally explained either. He’s shot down by a group of outlaws (featuring NottWilliamSanderson or NottHarryDeanStanton, NottFrancesMcDormand, and NottSomeRandomC-ListRapperThatAlwaysEndsUpinShittyHorrorMovies or NottSomeActorfromTheWire) and they steal his bag of pinkies. Of course, he pursues, along with the guy who sold him out, NottPaulGiamatti. They meet some zombies along the way, including a Native American zombie (there’s something that hasn’t been mined yet – Native American zombies!). The bad guy really is bad. This movie had a lot of unique ideas, but did not pursue any one of them enough to make watching this worthwhile. It came off as a rough draft of a potentially good script that somehow got filmed. Another weird thing is that NottBretMcKenzie sounded as if he was dubbed by the guy who dubbed Franco Nero in Django to sound more like Clint Eastwood.
This is quite possibly the worst movie ever made. I think I can say that with some confidence. Zombie Nation is not even funny-bad, it’s question-humanity bad. Nearly a week later and I still feel de-moralized and somewhat hopeless. I don’t even know where to begin. The movie is about an LAPD cop who likes to kill women. Let’s start with how a single warehouse in this movie was used as the set for everything – the police station that looked nothing like a police station and was basically lit with lamps, one of the cop’s apartments, the killing space for the psycho cop who said he was from Alabama although he carried a heavy Eastern European accent, a psych ward for a flashback, and what it actually is, a furniture warehouse. For continuity’s sake, the final scene features a woman chewing the cop out for not having the furniture store open. There are no zombies until the final 30 minutes, and they are voodoo zombies. The zombies just have heavy eye-makeup on save for the one who looks like Cynthia Nixon, but is also sporting a heavy Eastern European accent. At one point, she is actually kind of given proper zombie makeup. All of the women’s clothes look like they came from KMart, circa 1997. The voodoo priestesses are all dressed like Miss Cleo. The Romanian girl who is the cop’s final victim: I swear 3 different actresses play her, each with different colored hair. Although the blond one gives the only LOL-moment of the movie, delivering the line “Of course!” while making something very close to one of Paul Rudd’s famous facial expressions in Wet Hot American Summer:
The movie goes between using HD Video and like, shit video. They alternate even within the same scene because Zombie Nation has a lot of cuts. And JPEG stills are inserted at one point.
70s Skeezy Horror Icon David Hess is listed on the box. While he admittedly doesn’t seem to pop up in random bad B-movies as much as say, Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Campbell, Tony Todd or Brad Dourif (well, I guess those guys are more 80s-early 90s horror icons), this is not a reason to rent this movie. He’s in it for only a minute and it is towards the end of the film.
Zombie Nation was released and distributed by Lionsgate. I know they release, distribute, and make a lot of shit movies, but this is a new low.
Truth be told, I watched this over two nights, a few nights apart. It seemed like an okay movie, but my main beef is that Netflix continues to display box art from reputable companies like Blue Underground or Anchor Bay, only to send you the DVD released by shit companies like Westlake Entertainment. Like Tenebre, this was a copy of a bad VHS copy. “VIDEO CALIBRATION” never came up at least. But the colors were washed out and I swear something was not quite right about this copy, like perhaps Westlake took a heavily edited VHS copy and released it on DVD. Maybe it’s just me, but Netflix also had this movie rated as PG. A PG Argento movie does not compute, especially when a man’s bloody death by train is shown, as is the final death. Granted, the deaths were a lot quicker and less lingered over than in his later films, but something didn’t feel right to me about this copy.
The Chronicles of Dr. Herbert West #1 (Comic Book)
I haven’t read Herbert West: Re-Animator by H.P. Lovecraft in about 15 years and I know that Stuart Gordon & Co. took liberties with the story to make the Re-Animator series of films, and while I admit that I have an intense bias because of the films… this comic is bad. Like, poorly conceived fanfic bad. West is given a tragic backstory (even worse, during the ensuing tragedy ads for this comic book company’s other releases are in plain view) and a girlfriend (named Megan, no less – wrong dude, people – but Dr. Cain doesn’t exist in this book). They also draw him ugly and give him a terrible hair color. I know that last part is petty and just my bias towards Jeffrey Combs’ version of West, as is possibly everything else I hate about this comic book. The greatness of West is that he is both a bad guy and the hero of the Re-Animator movies, which makes him terribly fascinating and fun. He has no past other than his previous work in Europe. There is also the unabashed homosocial relationship between he and Dr. Cain (and in the last movie, Dr. Phillips). He has no interest in women, just his work. This comic series can’t be loyal to Lovecraft either, because from what I’ve read, women rarely exist in Lovecraft stories anyway.
And yes, I know I should catch up on my Lovecraft. The Library of America anthology of his work is on my Amazon wishlist.
