My Name is Bruce (2006/2007/2008?)

At this point, I’m starting to believe that Bruce Campbell is a better writer than he is filmmaker. While My Name is Bruce is somewhat better than his first film, The Man with the Screaming Brain, it’s still a bit rough to sit through. Neither of his films captures that weird glee of the Evil Dead films, nor of the more obscure Detroit film crew efforts of Intruder or Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except…. Try as they may, they do not. Which is strange, because both of his books capture that feeling better than the two feature films he has directed.

My Name is Bruce is a comedy-horror take on the film of the same name from the 1970s starring Bruce Lee (yes, the comedy comes first in this one). Mr. Campbell plays a more exaggerated version of “himself” which is supposed to be a more exaggerated version of his most popular character, Ash from the Evil Dead series. He is a drunk, rude, obnoxious, selfish bastard and generally a jerk to his co-workers, and stereotypical fans. After a goofy looking goth kid/Bruce Campbell megafan unleashes an ancient Chinese demon onto his town of Gold Lick, Oregon, he kidnaps Mr. Campbell thinking that he is the only person who can save the town. Campbell, on the other hand, thinks this is all one weird surprise birthday set-up orchestrated by his agent Mills (Ted Raimi, in one of his three roles in the entire movie). When he is proven wrong, he reacts in a typical Ash-fashion.

Hearing about the movie for a couple of years before it came out, I thought the plotline of a fan or town confusing Campbell for Ash would be much more prominent than it actually was in the end result, perhaps as a commentary on how certain people or fans genuinely do confuse a character with the actor who plays them. The stronger plotline is Bruce trying to be the biggest jerk possible, and then trying to be slightly less jerky and heroic, which gets a tad boring after the first 30 minutes. The first 30 minutes are actually pretty funny and features the most skewering of Campbell. What brought the film to a distracting, crazy halt is when Ted Raimi is introduced into his third role as Gold Lick’s sole Chinese person, and the last town descendent of the people who brought about the demon in the cemetary. He gives a long expositiony speech in the middle of the movie, and I was so distracted by the fact that a white man was playing a Chinese man that I don’t even know what he said. I know this film was low-budget, and completely shot on Campbell’s ranch in Oregon (which that particular result is not as bad as it could have been – I guess Campbell has a pretty large ranch), but couldn’t he have found an actual Chinese-American to play the part? Since Raimi also plays the town’s sole Italian, I get the feeling that casting Raimi in roles that require ethnic stereotypes with bad accents is some sort of weird inside joke or is some product of a really old sense of humor, since he was also in The Man with the Screaming Brain playing a bumbling hip-hop obsessed Bulgarian man who dressed like a member of Kris Kross. It’s a sense of humor I don’t really understand. Campbell does this to an extent in his books as well. In Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way, Richmond, VA is depicted as a total Southern stereotype where bumbling Bruce makes his way into a secret society of men who long for the old ways of the South, and who brutally beat him once they find out that he’s from Detroit. I don’t think people like that exist to that exaggeration around here anymore. Even the ones that do to a small extent now mostly live in the counties outside the city, not in it. I’ll forego a rant on the voting statistics on the city of Richmond. But honestly? I swear that I see more rebel flags when I drive slightly north to Maryland and Pennsylvania than I do in Central Virginia. I still recommend the book though, it’s a fun book. In the right hands, it would make a good, high-concept movie, actually. My Name is Bruce however, is probably only worth a peek if you really like Bruce Campbell and feel the need to support him. At this point, I’d say his best movie is the short documentary he made called Fanalysis, which was attached to the “Book of the Dead” DVD release of Evil Dead earlier this decade.

If anyone can clarify the exact year this film was released, let me know. IMDB says 2007, Netflix says 2006, and my memory of horror blogs posting about the film touring around the country says late 2008. I know it took a couple of years to come out.

Demons & Demons 2

It’s taken years and I probably had too many beers when I watched this for a third or fourth viewing this past weekend, but I think Demons is finally growing on me. Does it make any sense? No, it still doesn’t. Will I ever understand some of the academic theories around this movie? Not for awhile, but mostly because I’m thinking about the scene where the blond guy is riding a motorbike through a theater slashing at demons with a samurai sword. And how right after that, a helicopter magically falls through the ceiling. Or what that red haired chick dressed as a Irish pilgrim had to do with any of this. Same with the guy in the silver mask. Why do the blond guy and the silver mask guy look like characters from Mortal Kombat?

Demons is about an assorted group of people who are given tickets to a sneak preview for movie at this mysterious art deco-style theater. No one knows what the movie is about, but it turns out it’s a horror movie that seems to be about young archeologists on the search for a mask. A similar mask was in the lobby and one of the prostitutes attending the film with her pimp and co-worker puts it on, and is cut on the cheek. Something similar happens to a person in the movie, and all hell breaks loose.

I like Rosemary, the ground zero demon. She has hair like my middle school chorus teacher (or Rick James if you prefer). She is one badass demon.

The movie has a good, apocalyptic ending once you get past the goofy points that come before it. Also, a cameo appearance from the kid from Fulci’s The House by the Cemetary.

As far as Demons 2 goes, I want to like it, but it’s kind of a mess. I do not know whether or not it was supposed to be in continuity with the first movie. The first character we see is the guy (who looks like the result of what would happen if you mixed Michael Berryman’s genes with a young Rupert Everett’s) who played one of the coked up punk kids  in the first movie, as a security guard for this building in the second movie. Also in this movie: the guy who played the pimp in the first movie, this time as the building’s very bossy/poor man’s Ken Foree-type personal trainer; and a young Asia Argento.

This time the demons are coming through the television in a show that most of the characters seem to be watching. The show may or may not be a documentary on what happened in the first movie, or it may be more of the movie or a sequel to the movie the people in the first Demons movie were watching. I honestly don’t know, and wish I did know. This time the ground zero demon is Sally, who has having a birthday party in her apartment. Sally is one of those needy friends who is a gigantic drama queen. She storms off into her room at one point while her friends are dancing to The Smiths, where she catches the show and the demon that somehow makes it out of the television.

Demons 2 is somewhat reminscent of David Cronenberg’s Shivers. It is a film that takes place in a completely secure and locked down high-rise apartment building, meaning that the other inhabitants become infected really quickly, although mostly because blood is continuously seeping through the floors and pipes. That’s a terribly made building right there. Under more capable hands, the main story of the hunky physics major who is trying to save his pretty and pregnant wife, would be more compelling. Instead, you just root for them cos even as a demon, Sally is still pretty annoying.

The ending is also not particularly satisfying. It’s pretty disappointing actually. It’s almost as if the budget ran out. The film in general leaves a lot of unsettled stories, like, what happened to lil Asia Argento?

I don’t live in a large city, and it’s probably goofy for me to think about this just based on Shivers and Demons 2, but why would anyone think that having a self-contained building and/or a building where if something goes wrong, the building is completely locked down and impossible to get out of a good idea? Was this entire sub-subgenre of film based on The Towering Inferno, where “people trapped and in danger in a large building = entertainment”?

I can’t remember whether or not I’ve heard recently that Demons is up for a remake. It probably is, since at this point, one may as well believe that any horror movie made in the past 30 years is up for a remake. Unless the makers find even someone more incompetent than Lamberto Bava to be at the helm of these films, the remake(s) may not be that bad. Which I hate to say about Lamberto Bava, because his first film, Macabre, is actually pretty good. I want to think that for some reason, Demons and Demons 2 got seriously butchered at some point, but considering that both movies have been on video or DVD in America for at least 20 years, I find it hard to believe that there are better versions of these movies out there, versions that match the pretty good concept with good quality. Oh well.

Night of the Demons 2

Ever since the Night of the Demons remake was announced recently, I keep seeing the original referred to as a “horror-comedy”, which puzzles me to no end. The original NotD seemed to be trying to be a horror-comedy but vastly failed. Oddly enough, the horror and comedy come off way better in Night of the Demons 2, a 1994 direct-to-video sequel. While the first NotD caused me to get completely hammered before any of the actual horror started happening, the sequel gets going right away.

The connection to the first movie is thus: Angela’s newly orphaned younger sister Melissa (a.k.a. Mouse) is sent to a Catholic boarding school after her parents commit suicide. She has frequent nightmares about her sister, and has to deal with constant teasing and bullying from her classmates about her sister. While the adults believe that Angela just ran away, even Mouse believes that she just resides in Hull House, possibly as the bride of Satan. On Halloween night, Mouse is dragged to the house along with some unsuspecting classmates by Shirley, the token mean girl.  The twist in this one is that while when they get spooked and leave Hull House, Angela is able to follow them back to the school. Both sections of the film feature the better gross-fun or funny moments, including a special effects creation that can best be described as “handboobs”. There’s also a nun in the same vein as the priest from Dead Alive who claims “I kick ass for the Lord!”

This movie is perhaps known for featuring one of Christine Taylor’s early film appearances, about a year before her breakout role as Jan Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie. On Netflix, she is given one of the top billings, whereas in the film she’s given eighth or ninth.

What I find odd is that between this series and the Sleepaway Camp series, both of the villains of the series are females named Angela. There weren’t and aren’t too many female villains in horror film series, but I’m thinking that considering the meaning of the name “Angela” (“messenger of god” or “angel”), it’s meant to be ironic in these movies.

While Netflix, nor likely any video stores around here seem to have the 1997 Canadian-produced Night of the Demons 3, possibly Night of the Demons 2 is the only worthwhile movie in the series anyway.  Hell, if I found a copy for $5 somewhere, I might buy it. The remake looks as though it’s changing the plot around a bit, although I have to wonder with the casting of Shannon Elizabeth as Angela, if the main characters are still going to be teenagers or adults.

Night of the Demons (a.k.a when misplaced nostalgia goes wrong)

Past perhaps my taste in music, I don’t consider myself a particularly nostalgic person. I never gave into that trend some years ago where people my age (usually younger) were sporting t-shirts of 80s cartoon characters. Would I wear an Ghostbusters t-shirt if I could find one in my size? Hell yes, but only because it remains one of my favorite movies, not just because I loved the movie when I was 4.

Trying now to get back into blogging, I wanted to write about a horror series. After hearing a podcast wherein the hosts watched every single Friday the 13th movie ever, I thought of tackling that series too, although it would probably be from the perspective from someone who has never really liked the series all that much. Instead of that, I decided to cover a smaller series that I never read much about and kind of wanted to revisit, Night of the Demons. Downside? I can only get the first two movies from Netflix. I have no clue where I could get the third film.

I was first introduced to the Night of the Demons series when I was a teenager. The movies were usually on cable, late night HBO or Cinemax. I’m pretty sure I saw the films completely out of order, but I liked them in all their fairly sleazy glory. To add to the backstory, I also saw all the films anywhere between 1-3 years before I saw the first and second Evil Dead movies (Army of Darkness was occasionally on the Sci-Fi Channel though) – copies were hard to come by in the area I lived in.

It is because I did not see the first two Evil Dead films until I was 18 that I probably liked the Night of the Demons series way more than I should have back then. While I am not getting the second film in until tomorrow, I watched the first over the weekend. My reaction was not pretty. I basically downed two rum and cokes within the space of an hour. It is because of that that it’s hard for me to say whether Night of the Demons is a film that wears its influences on it’s sleeve or if it’s outright ripping off Evil Dead with a dash of Romeroism thrown in towards the end (both outwardly when a character is suddenly revealed to have the last name of “Romero”, as well as who lives).

The plot is that a group of friends/frenemies go to a Halloween party thrown by gothy outcast Angela and her friend played by Linnea Quigley (seriously, this movie has so many characters that I don’t know all their names) at Hull House, a former funeral home at the edge of town with a dark and murderous past. The characters vary from obnoxious assholes to a few goody-two-shoes (although two of them have the most sense to try to get out when things start to get rough in the beginning) to a few in-between characters. The cast has fairly decent racial diversity, I guess. At the party, they decide to communicate through a found mirror (not the “Bloody Mary” game, but something else) and one of the nice kids sees a demon and her death while everyone else argues and sees nothing.

You think that would get the ball rolling, but while this movie is only about 90 minutes, nothing much happens until minute 50. It is then that you really start to see the physical Evil Dead influence more than past just cribbing off of its plot. Night of the Demons and Evil Dead 2 came out within a year of each other, but I get the feeling that this movie was completed before Evil Dead 2. Otherwise, you probably would witness some attempts at gross-out humor. Any attempts made at humor in this movie mostly fail and are mostly centered around dudes unapologetically looking at Linnea Quigley’s ass.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

One thing I will admit is that the makeup for Angela, iconic on the series video covers, is pretty damn creepy. I get uneasy if I think about it too much. It did pop in my head that night after watching it when I woke up in the middle of the night.

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