Scary Movie Month 2014, Day 21

The Mutilator

This is an odd case in that it's both completely by-the-numbers and also thoroughly batshit. A group of 35-year-old kids spend "Fall Break" (because that's a thing?) at an abandoned beach condo and are systematically murdered by a lunatic with a great deal of sharp objects at his disposal.

It's a pretty standard stalk-and-slash for the most part, but has enough of an offbeat vibe that it's pretty entertaining. It opens and closes with a goofy, incongruous pop song (called Fall Break because, as previously established, that is totally a thing that exists) and features a handful of surprisingly grisly kills. There's a scene involving an oversize fish hook that legitimately made me wince, and the moment that the villain is dispatched is so crazy that it has to be seen to be believed. The flashback that sets the events in motion is also somewhere on the border between tasteless and hilarious.

The characters are fairly standard, but I couldn't help but like the practical joker of the group (played by Earth 2 Steve Lawrence, I believe). There's a scene early on where he tries to con a convenience store clerk into giving him 10% off a six-pack of beer that's just dopey enough to cross the line into charming. I have a soft spot for this character type, though. I blame my childhood hero Larry Zerner.

Scary Movie Month 2014, Day 20

Boy Eats Girl

That worked much better than it had any right to. It's the age-old tale: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy dies in a bizarre drunken accident, boy is resurrected by his well-meaning mother, boy craves the taste of human flesh. You know how it goes. As zombie comedies go it's certainly no Shaun of the Dead, but it's also not Warm Bodies so let's chalk that up as a win, shall we?

This Irish production is full of charming, funny performances (and Samantha Mumba is a stone fox on top of being charming and funny) and for a movie about ravenous zombies the humor is nicely low-key, at least until things go all Grand Guignol in the last act. About that last act, it's filled to the brim with silly, fun, PRACTICAL splatter. This is the rare movie made in the 2000s with no discernible CGI, which makes me love it that much more. If I hadn't already been in its corner, that last act would have firmly put me there. It doesn't quite reach Re-Animator or Dead Alive heights of delirium in the final act, but it still has quite a bit of fun squickiness up its decaying sleeve.

At a brisk 80 minutes, not only does it not overstay its welcome, it actually suffers a bit from being too short. Once Nathan (the boy of the title) accidentally kills himself, the resurrection takes place immediately over a montage so there's about a minute between him dead and him sitting at the kitchen table, there's not much room for any of it to sink in. That's a fairly minor quibble, though, as the abbreviated running time helps the movie stay funny and not get too sidetracked with anything resembling actual human emotion. That may sound like a slam, but it's not. Sometimes a silly little lark like this is exactly what you need in the middle of Scary Movie Month, and it fit the bill nicely.

Scary Movie Month 2014, Day 19

Nightbreed (director's cut)

I like to think that there's a parallel universe somewhere where David Cronenberg has a career like Sydney Pollack where he's not only an in-demand and commercially successful director, but also a beloved and dependable character actor. He's so much fun to watch on screen that I really wish he'd act more, and I believe that Nightbreed is the movie in which he has the most screen time. He doesn't have a whole lot more to do in this cut than he does in the theatrical, but his Decker is still my favorite thing about either version.

In truth, despite the claim of 40 minutes of all-new footage, the two versions of the movie don't play out terribly differently. Having watched the two cuts of Halloween 6 earlier this month, those played like almost completely different movies from each other. Here the movies are pretty much the same, only with a few more monsters running around in the longer cut.

The most major changes happen in the final act, though I won't go into detail so as not to spoil it. I will say that I'm a bit bummed to lose the final shot of the theatrical cut, as it's one of my favorite closing shots from any movie. The new ending is still good, just very different. There are other changes scattered about here and there, notably a sinister phone call from Decker and a terrible musical number (no, really) with a badly dubbed Anne Bobby (it's actually her own voice, but her lip movements are distractingly separate from her words) early on.

Both cuts are a mess, but they're equally fun to watch. I may actually prefer the theatrical, but that's probably only because I've lived with it for almost 25 years now. Also, they removed the country-fried cover of Oingo Boingo's "Skin" from the movie and from the end credits. What the hell, movie?

I've always enjoyed the theatrical cut despite it not actually being very good. It's a movie that loves monsters, and I love the way it revels in monsters just as much as the golden age of Universal Pictures. The monsters are the heroes, and that goes a long way with lifelong horror fans. That love is still front and center in the director's cut, and the wildly imaginative practical effects are (even when bad, which some are) so full of creativity and spirit that you want the cut to be even longer because you want to spend more time wandering around Midian, the city of monsters at the heart of the movie. I've been a monster kid my whole life, and Nightbreed is one of those movies that showed me I wasn't alone.

Technically speaking, the disc is absolutely phenomenal. Editor Andrew Furtado deserves every award they can throw at him for editing the new footage in seamlessly, if you didn't know in advance that you were watching an alternate cut you'd never know it. It looks beautiful, and is packed with informative and interesting special features, including an enthusiastic commentary track with Clive Barker himself. One thing I learned that I still can't quite wrap my head around: raving monster Peloquin is played by Oliver Parker, who went on a mere 5 years later to direct my favorite version of Othello, the one with Laurence Fishburne, Irene Jacob and Kenneth Branagh. Crazy talk.

Scary Movie Month 2014, Day 18

Necronomicon

More importantly than anything else, this completes the Alien Nation hat trick because Gary Graham is in one scene as an abusive boyfriend. I'm sure everyone at the local chapter of the Tenctonese labor union is very excited about this.

Onto the movie itself, it's pretty fun. It's an anthology of three Lovecraft-inspired stories (not exactly straight adaptations, but close) with a framing story centered around Lovecraft himself, played by an excellent Jeffrey Combs. Combs is so good that it made me want to see him in an actual Lovecraft biopic rather than just in the wraparound segments of a low-budget horror anthology.

The stories are pretty solid, and being Lovecraft they're full of all the darkness, gore, and squishy fish-monsters that you'd expect. There are also some strong performances from the likes of Bruce Payne (the villain in Passenger 57 who didn't bet on black), Richard Lynch, and David Warner.

Some of the effects are distractingly cheap, but each of the three stories has at least one standout moment of either memorable gore or extreme creepiness. The movie as a whole actually has a surprisingly consistent tone and allows for moments that are darkly humorous without descending into full-on camp, which can be pretty easy to do when your movie is stuffed to the gills (I'm so, so sorry) with Lovecraftian ocean creatures. While the movie is smart enough not to take itself too seriously, it never resorts to jokiness or anything that betrays the horrific tone. The stories don't overstay their welcome, and they're woven together in a way that feels cohesive which is all too rare in horror anthologies. It's no Amicus production, but it's a solidly old-school horror anthology in that vein. Cthulhu would be proud.

Scary Movie Month 2014, Day 17

The Final Terror

I'm kind of torn on this one. On one hand, I'm incredibly grateful to Scream Factory for finding a way to assemble a cut of a movie cobbled together from various collector's prints which had until now never been released on home video. On the other hand, the movie is not very good.

A group of forest rangers are out camping in the woods, so as you might expect there is someone waiting in the woods to cut them into bite-size pieces. The setting is actually used fairly well (when you can see what's going on...the night scenes are DARK) and there are a few genuinely tense moments, but the movie mostly left me cold.

I think the main thing that didn't work for me was the characters. I appreciate that they were older than the intended victims in most slasher movies tend to be, I just found them to be mostly unlikable. A lot of their interplay came across as fairly obnoxious, so I wasn't rooting for them the way the movie seemed to be hoping I would.

It was directed by Andrew Davis, who would go on to make The Fugitive and Under Siege, and who was also smart enough to turn down the offer to direct the sequels to either of those.  There are a few flashes of his talent, especially as the movie goes completely batshit in its final act. The last 15 minutes or so may actually be worth sitting through the whole thing. Then again, who doesn't want to see Adrian Zmed menaced by a knife-wielding maniac? He kind of deserves it just for Grease 2.

Scary Movie Month 2014, Day 16

Invaders From Mars (1986)

Allegedly cocaine-fueled Tobe Hooper is the best of all possible Tobe Hoopers. This, while a far cry from CokeTobe's best work, is still a pretty fun take on 50's alien invasion movies.

Terrible kid actor Hunter Carson (I was warned about his performance but not nearly enough, he was truly awful. Also, it should be noted that he runs exactly like Steven Seagal, which is never not hilarious) is David, our hero. This is problematic, because within minutes we're rooting for aliens to eat him.

Anyway, David stumbles upon an alien conspiracy to take over his neighborhood, which leads to a great deal of slimy goings on about town. Karen Black (Hunter's real-life mom, sadly) is the school nurse and also the only person who believes David that they're in deep slime. Things are a bit more fun in the first half, once they head into the alien's lair the movie starts to drag a bit and never quite recovers, but there's still plenty of silly fun to be had.

My favorite CokeTobe movie (and favorite Hooper movie in general, probably) is Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and that movie has a crazy cartoon energy that he's never matched since, even in a movie like this that's just as cartoonish only actually meant for kids so it can wear those influences right on its sleeve. While it's missing that crazed anarchic spirit, it still revels in a very specific sort of artificiality that I really enjoy. Sets that look like sets, actors going just a notch too high over the top, rubber-suited aliens...if these are things that make you smile, you're gonna find a lot to love here. Also, Eric Pierpoint with hair, making him the second Alien Nation alumni I've encountered this month (the lovely Teri Treas, also with hair, was in The Nest). Hopefully Gary Graham will turn up in something soon so I can get the hat trick.

Scary Movie Month 2014, Day 15

Big Ass Spider!

I am absolutely terrified of spiders. The movie Arachnophobia, a PG-13 affair marketed as a "Thrill-omedy" (!) has probably given me more sleepless nights than any horror movie in history. So, when I first saw posters & such for a movie called Big Ass Spider! two thoughts went through my head: great title, and no fucking way will I ever watch that. Cut to last night, when I listened to an episode of the great Killer POV podcast that featured Mike Mendez, the director of Big Ass Spider! He was funny, enthusiastic, and convinced me to give his movie a try. Spoiler: I'm SO glad I did.

There are movies that pop up on the SyFy Channel every few weeks, you know the type: Sharktopus, Mega Piranha, RoboCroc vs DynaHamster or whatever. The thing they all have in common is that they're uniformly awful. They try so hard to be campy that they just become boring and lifeless, they don't understand that you can't manufacture camp. I cannot stress enough that this is NOT one of those movies, it's a blast from start to finish and it's fun without ever becoming just another generic monster-movie-of-the-week.

I'd go into detail about the plot, but it's all right there in that glorious title. Greg Grunberg (who, for the record, is fantastic and knows exactly what movie he's in) is an exterminator who loves his job, but not in a mean-spirited or sadistic way, he's just a guy who's good at what he does, and what he does is combat spiders. Good thing, because there happens to be a big ass one in town that requires attention.

The movie is fast-paced, consistently funny, and even has moments of genuine suspense. The supporting cast is great (a shame Ray Wise and Lin Shaye never got to share a scene, they were terrific together in Dead End) and the comedy comes from character which is so rarely the case in movies like this. It's never outwardly jokey (ok, maybe a little) but it's solidly funny throughout (and at 80 minutes, it never wears out its welcome). The effects are mostly poor CGI, but as an inveterate arachnophobe I was somewhat glad for that, since the cartoony nature of some of the effects kept my heart from exploding while watching it. Had it been too realistic, I might have been writing this from the back of an ambulance.

This is easily my favorite discovery of the month thus far, and I'm glad I finally gave it a chance. I never thought I'd say this, but I sincerely hope there are more Big Ass Spider!s in my future, and at the very least I'm fully on board for whatever Mike Mendez has up all eight sleeves next.