Robot Revolution: The one with zombies and an evil computer

 

The one with zombies and an evil computer

 

Title: Resident Evil

What Year?: 2002

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Mashup

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, I’m still coming out of a sabbatical from blogging that has included a complete moratorium on movie reviews. For my comeback, I decided it was time to fill out my count for this, my survey of robot/ AI movies, the feature that has done as much as anything else to keep me going. In keeping with what has been its own theme, I further decided to do something different. This time around, we have yet another murderous computer, only this time, it is technically a zombie movie. I present Resident Evil, the Patient 0 of the modern zombie movie wave, and I will be showing why the computer is much scarier than the undead.

Our story begins with an introduction to the Umbrella Corporation, a company with their own underground lab for nefarious bioweapons research, and the massacre of the staff of said facility by a series of lethal mechanisms that might or might not be working as intended. The carnage is followed up by little tasteful nudity as our heroine wakes up in the shower with no memory of where or even who she is. The story picks up momentum when the company’s paramilitary team arrives, revealing that her name is Alice and she is the custodian of the entrance to the Umbrella lab. It is also revealed that the facility has been taken over by a supercomputer called the Red Queen for reasons allegedly unknown. For no obvious reason, the team drag along Alice and a couple iffy guys they find along the way. Things go south when most of the team are wiped out by a laser cheese grater controlled by the Queen. But the real trouble starts when the survivors take the computer offline, unleashing a horde of zombified employees and a few more ugly surprises. The dwindling party must fight their way out, but they still don’t know each other’s agendas- and they may need the Queen’s help to stay alive!

Resident Evil was a 2002 horror/ action film written by Paul W.S. Anderson, based on the Capcom video game franchise of the same name. The film starred Milla Jovovich as Alice, following appearances in films including The Fifth Element (still don’t know if I can work with that one), Michelle Rodriguez and Colin Salmon as ill-fated troopers. The soundtrack was composed by Marco Beltrami and Marilyn Manson. The film was possibly the first major zombie movie of the 2000s, preceding the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. It was a commercial success, earning a box office of over $100 million against an estimated $33M budget, though reviews were mixed to negative. It was followed by five live-action sequels, including Resident Evil: Apocalypse in 2004 and Extinction in 2007, as well as a number of direct-to-video animated films. A new live-action film, Welcome To Raccoon City, received a limited theatrical release in 2021.  Anderson and Jovovich married in 2009. Their daughter Ever has several screen credits.

For my experiences, this film and franchise has been a textbook case of a film and franchise that stayed above my radar. I conspicuously declined to cover it for The Revenant Review, though I finally gave number 3 an entry in the out-of-control ebook edition. The obvious reason for this is simply that it is a profitable and well-known series that did not require comment. Another is by all means that I completely gave up on it at number 4. But the overarching consideration is just how many categories the first movie in particular stretches across, which became an immediate problem in the question of which feature to review it under. I could have covered it for the Horror Vault, or under my still nascent adaptation feature, where I already covered the Nineties Mario movie. By the time I loaded my ancient disc, however, I had no doubt it belonged here, if only because it truly represents one of the most formidable AI antagonists of the current millennium at least.

Moving in, the central reality is that this is a film that owes all its strengths to a sustained vibe. From the settings to the creatures to the very minimalist music, this is sci-fi horror at its most cold and clinical, building and even improving on the likes of Re-Animator and Day of the Dead (see also Sole Survivor, the re-review I completely botched).  The undead themselves fit very well into this world. They are among the most malevolent and vicious revenants of the Romero/ “slow zombie” tradition, with a counterintuitive subtlety that suggests a measure of cunning. The very first of them (seen well past the 30-minute mark) is representative of the lot, at first lurching along as if merely distressed, then striking fatefully just as a target comes within reach. Of course, both the shock value and in-universe effectiveness of this behavior sharply decline as the film goes on, yet it is a consistent behavioral pattern that never fails to be unsettling. The one thing that can be counted as disappointing is that their evident ability to use tools and weapons never goes anywhere, but then by the final act they are already superseded by the surreal hellhounds and the foreshadowed mutated abomination.

In the midst of all this, the Red Queen is indeed clearly established as both the primary antagonist and by far the most formidable threat as long as “she” is online. In the context of this feature, there are especially strong parallels with The Forbin Project and of course The Lift. Even more than in the former film, the AI is completely rational in both actions and motivations and as much in the right as any of the human characters. As in the latter, the computer’s most formidable ability is its control over its arcological environment that might or might not have been originally granted by its creators. (I honestly have no opinion on whether Anderson might have been directly influenced by that very odd film, as I already documented the “killer elevator” as a startlingly persistent concept.) The holographic avatar and very English accent give a fine extra touch that doesn’t really resolve the AI’s status; one can sympathize as the machine pleads to be allowed to continue its duties, but it is already clear that one cannot trust its motives or its anthropomorphic affectations. It is impossible to avoid further comment on the completely surreal laser sequence (obviously on the board for “one scene”), which does a great deal to define the tone and reputation of the film (see also Ghost Ship). On a certain level, the intentionally lethal gauntlet is less impressive and intriguing than the seemingly improvised booby traps of the opening. What is easily forgotten after two decades of “so bad it’s good” fame/ infamy is that it is preceded by an effective and plausible set-up, in which the humans remain in apparent control until it is far too late.

That already brings me to the “one scene”, and there’s one I’m going to try doing from memory. In the face of the first onslaught of the undead, our heroes are driven up against a computerized door that is still locked for reasons that won’t be analyzed. The most technically minded of the group (if I’m not mistaken the same one who turned off the Queen) remains confident as he does a hacker bypass while the others hold back the horde. He does it all with a smoothness that leaves no doubt that he can indeed do this. He is openly satisfied as the door opens behind him, and what really got this in here is that I didn’t remember or expect what happens next.

In closing, what I come back to is how I feel about this movie and the franchise. My standing and long stated opinion is that the third film was the best, the second was the worst, and everything thereafter isn’t worth the trouble of counting in the same continuity. By further comparison, the original is almost overshadowed, which I will be the first to say is the last thing it deserved. Whatever else one may say, it was the right film that came out at just the right time to bring the zombie genre back to life. It also had the further virtues of being both a competent film and a genuinely creative one that never tried to be anything but itself. That should be a good enough epitaph in an age of remakes and reboots. I for one am happy to give it a final salute and call it a day.

The Horrible Horror Vault: The one that's a threequel

 

 

Title: Final Destination 3

What Year?: 2006

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

With this review, I am three years into doing movie reviews and finally definitely past the 300 movie count. For me, this has simply been another case of looking through a few options with nothing in particular in mind. It happened that that brought me to this revived feature and a movie and franchise that was never really on my radar before, except as a footnote to another movie that it might or might not have ripped off. As advertised, it happens to be the third entry in the franchise, which is exactly where things tend to get weird if they weren’t ready. I present Final Destination 3, a threequel whose good points can be as frustrating as its bad ones.

Our story begins with an introduction to our heroine Wendy, her boyfriend, and an assortment of teenagers that includes a reasonable percentage of actually likeable characters plus a couple jerks who often have a point. A premonition saves the young lady and several of her peers from an accident on a rollercoaster that apparently was last serviced when Zardoz was in theaters, but her guy is among the casualties. Soon, the survivors start to be killed off by strange accidents, and one of the jerks remembers a similar case involving a certain plane crash (because apparently even the characters would rather ignore number 2). That’s enough to convince the grieving protagonist that the unseen forces of fate are killing off her friends and frienemies- and it won’t be long before she is next!

Final Destination 3 was the third entry in the franchise of the same name. The film saw the return of director James Wong and writer Glen Morgan from the first film. The story did not feature any characters from the previous films, though Tony Todd (see Night of the Living Dead 1990) provided the voice of an announcer at the beginning and end of the film. The film starred Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Wendy, with Ryan Merriman as the helpful jerk Kevin and Kris Lemche as (spoiler???) the eventual human antagonist Ian. The soundtrack was composed by Shirley Walker (see Willard),  who had scored both of the previous films. (You really can’t win them all…) The film was a commercial success, earning a worldwide box office of about $118 million against a $25M budget. It received mixed to negative reviews, with more favorable comments singling out Winstead’s performance. Two additional sequels were released in 2009 and 2011. A sixth entry was in pre-production as of mid-2023.

For my experiences, this film came up before simply because of similarities with Sole Survivor (see my re-review, which includes comments that make no sense because I hadn’t decided what feature to put it under while writing it, and my “best” list), which I took a benign view of. As I commented previously, what both films really make me think of is the Change War series by my all-time favorite writer Fritz Leiber, which I have no illusions of being a likely influence on either. As for the present franchise, I was intrigued when the first film came out and impressed when it came my way on (network!) TV. I was interested enough to follow the sequels through 4, and found the present film to be the most interesting and flat-out good by far. If anything, it’s good enough to have a shot as a singularly rare threequel better than the original (compare with Day of the Dead). But, as I already alluded, the things that are good and actually improved are in direct conflict with a great deal that is particularly egregious, and my personal irritation is already going up after confirming that this is essentially from the same people as the first one.

Moving in, the good points of the movie are what we had so far been able to take for granted: Effective cinematography, good acting and dialogue, and a smart, genre-savvy story. On the acting front in particular, Winstead handily delivers what is easily the best performance of the whole franchise, at least outside of Todd’s comic-relief coroner. (Now that is suspiciously close to Sole Survivor…) She gets capable support from Merriman, while Lemche comes from behind as the one who truly and understandably slips into insanity. One can draw a thematic parallel in what is otherwise a weaker point in the story, the heroine’s growing preoccupation with “clues” to coming deaths that stretch things enough to be considered ambiguous in-universe. It all adds up to a story that delivers real emotional weight rather than running through interchangeable cannon fodder. On that point, further mention is in order for the macho minority character, played by Texas Battle (I literally double-checked that this is the actor’s name, not the character’s), who provides poignant bravado leading into the most well-executed death.

The ”but” that’s coming is the kills themselves. If you were willing to go along with the lethal-Rube Goldberg chain reactions of the first movie, there’s no point complaining now. However, as I ranted in a review thread long ago, several of the sequences here are particularly bad. To start with, the opening incident simply shouldn’t have happened, at least in the same way, once one particular character is out of the equation. The first two deaths (apparently done somewhat better in an alternate cut) are clearly a strained attempt to turn an especially stupid urban legend into a sensible scenario, which suffers further from contrived staging and uncharacteristically overt exploitation skin. Then there is the one that has always been my breaking point, an otherwise effective and believable workplace death that mines for redundant shock value with a gore shot that only make sense if a nail gun is loaded with literal nine-inch nails. The bigger “problem” is the definitely cumulative effect of making what would otherwise be an intelligent entry in an already thoughtful franchise feel like the dumb slasher movie that hostile mainstream observers were expecting. That, in turn, could have “worked” if there was an honest attempt at an energetic over-the-top/ “so bad it’s good” revamp (the closest thing to an excuse for 4), but with everything else at baseline, it’s just another case of too much and not enough.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with my pick for the best scene in the film. After the double funeral of the first two casualties, Kevin finds Wendy off by herself in the cemetery, shot to look sunny and peaceful. As they start into a typically engaging conversation, she says out of the blue (I can at least paraphrase), “Nothing makes me believe there isn’t an afterlife like being in a cemetery.” As the scene progresses, we get a sense of their relationship before and since the original events. It is and will remain emphatically non-romantic, yet there is a distinctive honesty already growing between them. In the midst of it, Wendy comments fatefully that she thought she has been feeling the presence of her lost love, but now thinks it is something different. Right about then, the sunny scene does change as clouds and distant thunder approach. What absolutely works is that even now, the pleasant environment of the cemetery does not feel like mockery or a fake-out; it’s just two sides of nature, mortality and grief. It’s a further reminder that this is a franchise conceived as a story with emotional and philosophical depth. Which, by my running rant, will be a further reminder that this movie is already slipping below its potential.

In closing, I will also acknowledge that I was taken off-guard in the course of this review by just how lonely I am in speaking as well as I have of this one. The first movie deserves to be remembered as a “classic” of 21^st-century horror, and it was already well on its way to that status by the time I got to it. The second was an inevitably divisive entry that tried to develop new ideas and directions, which I personally just find too unpleasant to appreciate. The present film is the one that at least looked for the right balance. It sounds little more than a do-over of the first movie, which in cold blood is exactly what it is. What the creators recognize is that telling the same story isn’t an excuse for also using the same characters. The final product proves that the same premises and situations can in fact lead to something very different, as long as it’s done with real thought and care. For that, I have absolutely no qualms standing by it. That’s enough to end on what I can call a high note.

The Horrible Horror Vault: The one with tentacle zombies

 

 

Title: The Void

What Year?: 2016

Classification: Improbable Experiment/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Ow, My Brain!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

As I write this, I have once again gone until Monday without finishing a weekend post. This time, however, it was never in doubt what I was going to review, and this particular movie was in the lineup as soon as I revived this feature. It’s one that’s been on my radar for a long time as one of the strangest and quite possibly one of the worst movies I have viewed, yet always found that neither fully described the whole. (And I have Shanks, House and Death Bed as a baseline…) Now, I’m finally ready to take this one on, and needless to say, I’m not playing nice. I present The Void, and it is among other things the kind of film that could have been custom made to annoy me.

Our story begins at a house in the countryside, where a guy makes his escape from a group of rednecks. We then find the survivor at a rural hospital that’s about to close, under suspicion of multiple homicides. He’s watched over by a kindly doctor and a lawman who is already wary. Tensions rise when strange, shrouded figures surround the hospital, and a pair of vigilantes push their way in. In the midst of it, the patients and staff start to transform into Lovecraftian abominations, and the doc is picked off. The lawman is left to guard the survivors, including a mother-to-be who might be more than a sympathy hook, and it doesn’t help when he gets a call from the deceased and no longer so friendly doctor. It’s a long night of growing horror and quasi-religious imagery, where the only thing that’s sure is that none of this makes any sense!

The Void was a 2016 independent cosmic horror film written and directed by Canadian filmmakers Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie, known for horror and science fiction/ fantasy comedies including Manborg. The project was reportedly influenced by Guillermo Del Toro (see… Pinocchio?), who had been in casual contact with the filmmakers during work on an unproduced adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novel At The Mountains Of Madness. The production was partly funded through Indiegogo. The film starred Aaron Poole as Sheriff Carter and the late Kenneth Welsh (see Of Unknown Origin) as the doctor. Gillespie was credited as supervisor for the film’s effects. The film was shown at Fantastic Fest in late 2016, and given a limited release in the United States, Canada and the UK in 2017. It received generally positive reviews. The film is available on digital platforms including the free Tubi platform.

For my experiences, I encountered this one through a casual viewing, after seeing it listed with some quite favorable reviews. As alluded, my immediate impression was unfavorable enough that I came back to it during the brutal countdown for No Good Very Bad Movies. In that maelstrom of kaka, it was inevitably sidelined by far more worthy contenders (see, again, High Tension, and for that matter Deadgirl). I thought of it again when I put together my capsule reviews for the Revenant Review ebook, but it was always “zombie adjacent” rather than a zombie movie, and again, there were others that were more deserving of attention for good or ill (compare, if anything, Contracted). Now, I’m finally back for a rematch, and I find it an oddly suitable companion to Wind Chill. On a certain level, this is an “evil twin” to it, except more like equal and opposite: Where that was a polished near-mainstream effort that would have benefited from pushing itself further, this is the kind of competent indie-horror effort that rarely declines to cross a line for its own sake, even when said lines are basic principles of coherent narrative. If it were my verdict to pass, I would send them both back for more work.

Moving forward, what’s front and center is that we have two concepts that could each have easily sustained the film on their own, which instead clash together. On one hand, there are the cultists, ruthless and genuinely cunning antagonists who are never presented as anything but human. On the other, there are the Lovecraftian abominations, done very well with an emphasis on their very corporeal nature. I have to say right here that the former are far more effective for the majority of the film. On that front, the first act is greatly aided by the cultists’ visually compelling costumes, which readily calls to mind the obvious real-life counterparts (and the darker elements of the underlying source material) without making this feel like a half-baked “message” story. My further editorial thought is that the abominations would have been more effective as a final-act reveal, which we do finally sort of get when the doc finally introduces a group of them in the subbasement. This is also where I have to make a further complaint: While the camerawork and storyboarding are linear enough that one can see where the creatures are and what they are doing within the environment, there’s still a trendy emphasis on poor lighting for its own sake. In this already late entry, the whole trend is conspicuously shown as what it was, an attempt by journeymen to revive an artform whose masters were long gone.

For the rest, what I decided was worth more detailed comment are the characters and story. This is precisely where actual quality becomes more frustrating than outright badness. The characters of Lovecraft himself  rarely rose above expendable exposition generators (the major exception being none other than Herbert West), which made for an acceptable conceit. Here, on the other hand, we see the bar raised to the standards of modern storytelling. These are characters we can like played by real actors, especially but not limited to Poole and Welsh. Their reactions are both rational and relatable from the outset, and we will see that they have plenty more pain behind them. Where things go off the rails is that far too many character and story points seem to come out of nowhere well into the final act. I may be bad at paying attention to these things, but this is egregious, to the point that I initially thought an entire scene was a “flashback” because I had not worked out that two characters were supposed to be married to each other. That, in turn, was all because a character is impregnated with an abomination without explanation before we know the actual pregnant lady’s real story. (I was going to go into her fate, but… just no.) My big rant, building on the last, is that these things could have been laid out in detail in the same running time as the first few monster attacks. The final testament to the outright redundancy is the doctor’s chilling introduction of his creations, which would have been there to do his bidding the whole time: “They want to die, but I won’t let them…” That is how a developed reveal works, so why did anyone think we needed to see anything but the creepy cultists before this?

Now for the “one scene”, there is one that truly embodies my issues with this film. Partway through, the lawman ventures outside, after the first of the abominations is dispatched, accompanied by the very paranoid vigilantes. Of course, the cultists are waiting, and this is their finest hour. We first see them standing in their white sheets, lit by the flashing lights of a patrol car. They all draw weapons, but only one seems to rush in for the attack. We get one of our closest looks at the black triangle all of them have over the face. A shotgun blast takes him down, and the lawman retreats. The camera flashes back to the cultists, and we see them still standing there, with absolutely no reduction in the evident threat. To them, this is clearly just a skirmish which they have already won. But what brought me right out of it is that the lawman does nothing about the downed cultist. It’s reasonably obvious that he is already dead or going to be, but surely there would be something to learn from at least a glance under the sheet. In fact, given the assumed small-town setting, it’s very likely that all of these guys (???) are people the sheriff would already know, something the film will never acknowledge or explore the implications of. And that is how you lose even a reviewer as mild-mannered as me.

In closing, I come to the rating, and this is where I literally punted. On my regular rating scale (which I never updated from The Revenant Review), this would be either 1 or 2 out of 4, very much depending on my mood. (As I regularly point out, just being on the scale is enough to separate a film from the actual “worsts”.) What finally stayed my hand is that I have seen how well it resonates with a genre fandom I have never quite been a part of. Beyond that, there are certainly strengths that I cannot easily address in my review format. The bottom line is, if you like this movie, I’m not the one who will tell you that you are wrong. I gave it a chance, and that much was what it deserved. That’s enough to call it a day.

The Horrible Horror Vault: The one that's the other best horror reboot

 

 

Title: Evil Dead

What Year?: 2013

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, I’ve been debating what do for an off-week post while trying to maintain a ludicrous output for another project. After going through several promising contenders, I decided to investigate some recent chatter. That brought me back to something I had thought about reviewing for quite a while. It also brings me into territory that was already opening up once I reactivated this feature, the “modern” horror reboot, which has long since become synonymous with the most hated trends in modern genre films. Just to be contrarian, I’ll be taking on an entry in one of the most infamous and iconic franchises of all time. Here is Evil Dead, 2013 edition, and it is… really, really good???

Our story begins with a young girl captured by yokels who believe she is possessed by a demon. We then jump to the beginning of another story as we meet Mia, a young lady on her way to a cabin with her brother and her friends as part of her recovery from substance abuse. The friends soon warn the brother that Mia has already had to be resuscitated after an overdose, and this intervention must be hardcore. But the group discover signs that someone has been using the cabin, including a book with dire warnings scribbled in not to ever, ever read from it. Naturally, the smart guy of the group manages to disobey. As Mia gets wired, strange visions appear. As her madness begins to spread to the others, it becomes clear that there is a supernatural force in their midst, and the darkest secrets are what they brought with them. It’s up to Mia and the brother to defeat their literal and metaphorical demons, before Hell arrives on Earth!

Evil Dead was a 2013 horror/ dark fantasy film directed and cowritten by Fede Alvarez, developed as a reboot of the 1981 film and franchise created by Sam Raimi (see Darkman). The film reportedly entered production in 2011, with Raimi and star Bruce Campbell credited as producers. The film starred Jane Levy as Mia, with Shiloh Fernandez as the brother David. Effects for the production used a reported 70,000 gallons of fake blood, mainly for the rain of blood in the finale, breaking a record previously set by Dead Alive. The film was released by Sony in April 2013. It was a commercial success, earning $97.5 million against a $17M budget, and received largely favorable reviews. Alvarez followed the film with Don’t Breathe, also starring Levy, in 2016. A TV series Ash Vs. The Evil Dead, starring Campbell and directly following the first two films, aired on Starz from 2015 to 2018. In 2023, a new film Evil Dead Rise was released, which did not directly follow or reference any prior films.

For my experiences, what really popped into my mind going into this is that remakes and reboots are usually the kind of film that go over my radar. The further irony is that the relative few I have dealt with are easily among the best movies I have ever reviewed. In the process, I have ended up giving a reasonably comprehensive survey of the different approaches to remakes. Night of the Living Dead gave a straight do-over of the original film, with a bigger budget and a few twists to reflect changes in society at large. The Thing, by now the most revered in the whole category, went back to the pulp source material for what became a readaptation as much as a remake. In the middle, you have the 1980s The Blob and Invaders From Mars (which I now must admit belonged on my “best” list), which kept the essential concepts with plenty of updates for effects, production values and politics. By comparison with these, most of the modern remake/ reboot waves objectively reach no more or less than the proverbial high standard of mediocrity. The real result is a certainly frustrating glut of films that are simply too unambitious either to inspire or offend. The present film stands as the outlier that did something different, and that is just the beginning of why it is by far the best of an iffy lot.

Moving forward, I will add as I usually would have already that I saw this in the theater, pretty much at its opening. (Yes, I also just saw the new one, but I don’t want to talk about that one yet.) What was jarring at the outset was that it almost entirely removed the humor of the franchise, something I would have said was so essential that a film without it might as well be marketed as completely separate. In fact, what emerges from under the one-liners and splatstick is an allegory of madness, grief and redemption. I must say as a further rant that it also highlighted a counterintuitively conventional spirituality that was there all along. In the midst of the secular nihilism of the slasher era, the original films offered admittedly imperfect good against absolute supernatural evil. (I will get back to that…) The further step of making the demonic forces into a symbol of addiction and familial dysfunction was perhaps not the best or even the most original move, but it makes for a film that at a minimum has something to say. That, in turn, builds to a jaw-dropping payoff with the literally Biblical finale.

Then there are the “Deadites” themselves, which have no name here. What’s most noteworthy is that they are made far more vulnerable than their earlier counterparts, without being any less terrifying. These are true demoniacs, and as such can be permanently neutralized by the things that would kill a normal human. At the same time, the prominent role of bodily fluids gives a biological logic that supports lends itself to alternative semi-scientific explanations discussed in the film, at least for a while. The limitations of mortality are more than made up for by their utter savagery and a further penchant for self-mutilation that had not appeared in the franchise before. The most intriguing result is a genuinely two-sided escalation in brutality as the uninfected defend themselves by increasingly desperate means. Another emerging subtext is an emphasis on violence by women against men and each other, which somewhat eases the especially uncomfortable sexualization of the first film. The difference shows especially in the direct remake of the most infamous scene of the franchise to represent the possession of Mia by the slimy spawn of the Abomination. Things are toned down enough to give the feel of the symbolic, and perhaps debate the reality of the events within the film’s own universe, but the implications remain clear and brutal.

Now for the one scene, I am giving honorable mention to what was really my first choice, the smart guy reading the possession spells, which stands out as a notable remnant of the humor of this odd franchise. But I couldn’t avoid a scene that has stood out from the beginning, the first possession besides Mia’s. After the main character’s first freakout, the one character with medical training (played strikingly by Jessica Lucas from Cloverfield) runs for supplies while still covered in gunk of uncertain composition. After a few moments of conversation, we find her in a bathroom trying in vain to clean up. She finally gets out a fateful syringe and a container of medicine. The door slams shut, and she sees her own face, grinning and mutilated, before the mirror shatters. As more creepy sights builds up, she starts to withdraw into another room, further from the group. That’s when she freezes literally in her tracks, an action that feels as violent as any number of the many convulsions before and since. Then the camera zooms in on her legs, and we see another fluid trickling. It’s a subtle detail, yet brutal (and borderline misogynistic) in its implications, and it’s everything one would expect from an Evil Dead film.

In closing, what I wanted to close with is what made the Evil Dead franchise great to begin with, something that figured very much in my reactions to the latest installment. What set it apart from the first film onward was its humor. I would argue that what made it last (especially from Evil Dead 2 onward) was its underlying optimism about human nature. This is a series that says you can be weak, fallible and outright cowardly, but still have a chance as a champion of good, and if the cosmic forces of evil take your hand, replace it with a chainsaw. I posit further that this is exactly where the present film got the point of the original and ran with it all the way. For me, that’s more than enough to get it the highest rating, and that’s where I’m fine ending it. Hail to the king!

Movie Mania: Most heroicest movie tracks!!!

 I'm two days behind on blogging, and I'm trying to hold down my fiction post count, so here's something a bit different. I'm doing a rundown of the most heroic movie score tracks, at least from the eras and genres of films I usually cover. Here's my list in top 10 format, with a bit of handicapping to avoid overrepresentation of composers or franchises.

10. Action Pack/ "Peter Changes His Mind", Simon Haseley, Dawn of the Dead-  I covered this extensively in my Dawn/ Day of the Dead soundtrack post and video. A tough-as-nails SWAT trooper contemplates self-termination, decides to kill zombies instead. It gets made fun of, and I have joined in, but it's a textbook case of cheesy/ "bad" music that really works. What could be more life-affirming than plowing through the undead hordes to literal football music?

9. "Klendathu Drop," Basil Poledouris, Starship Troopers-  The space troopers invade a planet of Bugs, get slaughtered. It's great music with enough of an edge to fit the themes. And the cover is, ah, different...

8. "Futile Escape", James Horner, Aliens- I couldn't avoid this one. The Colonial Marines make a fighting retreat from the xenomorph swarm, get picked off one by one starting with Bill Paxton. It's not as popular as "Ripley's Rescue", but it ups the game for a sequence that ratchets up the tension as things go from bad to worse. Also proves Horner could compete with the best on the law of averages.

7. "The Asteroid Field", John Williams, The Empire Strikes Back- The Millennium Falcon runs from the Empire through a swarm of deadly space rocks. The best incidental music from the greatest science fiction film of all time by the most accomplished science fiction/ adventure composer, and we're still not even in the top 5...

6. Star Trek First Contact/ Main Theme, Jerry Goldsmith- A showdown with the Borg is introduced with a surprisingly subtle opening. The composer of the "Next Gen" theme returns with a theme that's truly noble. Oh yeah, I wrote this one up for my Revenant Review ebook that I'm still waiting for someone to buy.

5. Conan the Destroyer/ Main Theme, Basil Poledouris- The second movie featuring the most famous sword-and-sorcery hero opens with an epic opening theme. You can argue whether the movie is better than the first one (it is), but the soundtrack is among the very best from an underrated composer. And see the movie review and expanded soundtrack post...

4. "Ride of the Firemares," James Horner, Krull- A band of heroes race against time to the evil overlord's teleporting castle on magic horses. The effects aren't great, but the music is epic. See my soundtrack post while you're at it...

3. "Building the Crate", John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams, Chicken Run- Claymation chickens race to build an aircraft before their owner completes a machine to make them all into pot pies. It's a masterpiece of frenetic energy with real emotional weight. The moral in case you missed it, we're all the chickens.

2. Superman/ Main Theme, John Williams- The most epic theme from the master. Just because it's virtually impossible for the hero to lose doesn't mean he can't be awesome.

1. "Entr' Acte", Jerry Goldsmith, Patton- The high point of the soundtrack that convinced me that Goldsmith was as good as Williams. It's the essence of victory; what more is there to say?

And that's really all I wanted to do for this. Things like this are why I love movie music as much as I love movies. If anything, it may seem like I'm not being as eclectic as I usually am, but that's because the very best movies are the ones that tend to go above my radar. As an extra, here's an updated playlist covering most of this list plus a few surprises. While I'm at it, here's the one I'm proudest of (after the one that's literally one song), my Poledouris playlist. That's all for now, more to come.

Movie special: Revenant Review ebook publication announcement!

 

It's the last day to post for the off-week, and I used the time to forge ahead on a long-term project. The upshot is, I finally published an ebook based on my Revenant Review feature. It's not yet clear if the ebook will be available for purchase bfore I need to get this post up. Update 10/26: The ebook is live, link here.

For now, here's the movie poster I used for the cover. The movie is titled Don't Go In The House, at least in U.S. release. I still have no idea what it is actually about, not do I particularly care. With my luck, though, I'll probably end up reviewing it sooner or later.

And here's something I thought of using, a foreign poster of The Incredible Melting Man, which I actually reviewed under Space 1979. It's really quite impressive, so of course it has almost nothing to do with the movie.

And while I'm at it, here's the link for my Space 1979 ebook!

With that, I'm going to post this page. I will update this as links become available. That's all for now, more to come!

The Classics File: The one that made Bela Lugosi

 

 

Title: Dracula

What Year?: 1931

Classification: Prototype

Rating: Who Cares??? (2/3)

 

As I write this, I’m closing on fifty reviews for my No Good Very Bad Movies feature, and not far from 300 reviews total. It crossed my mind that the one thing I haven’t dealt with is perhaps the one kind of movie I hate most, the “overrated” movie, and this interested me enough to consider why. The most obvious consideration is that the most obvious suspects are the kinds of films I don’t usually deal with, say, romantic comedies and historical dramas. What really stands out to me is that there really is a measure of justice here. Genre critics and fans like me will dig up horrible movies from long before we were alive, but “mainstream” pop culture memory has the depth and longevity of astroturf. I personally have seen many blockbuster films that I was subjected to seemingly disappear from public consciousness in 10 years or even 5. The remnant that remains are the overrated classics, and these vex me enough for one last tilt at the windmill. To kick things off, I present Dracula, the cornerstone of a whole genre that has never satisfied me.

Our story begins with an outsider approaching the castle of an aristocrat named Dracula, a crumbling ruin that for some reason has a possum infestation. The count is ready to look for a new place in the big city, and he has brought our nominal protagonist on board as a real estate agent. The count soon arrives in merry England, bringing a mysterious plague with him. The cast of noblemen soon realize that Dracula is a vampire, an undead fiend that must drain the blood and health of the living to survive. To save British morals and possibly civilization, they must destroy the revenant- but a gentleman’s beloved is already in his thrall!

Dracula was a 1931 horror/ drama film from Universal, based on the novel of the same name by Bram Stoker. The film was directed by Tod Browning, known for horror/ surrealist silent films such as London After Midnight, and starred Hungarian-born Bela Lugosi in his breakthrough role. The film was an immediate success, and together with Frankenstein became the foundation of the “Universal Monsters” franchise. It also launched Lugosi into other high-profile films such as 1932’s White Zombie. Browning followed the film with Freaks, his most well-regarded and controversial work. The director subsequently declined due to conflicts with studio management and several box office failures, while Lugosi suffered increasingly from typecasting in low-budget horror and parodies of his earlier work. Lugosi died in 1956, due in part to substance abuse. Browning died in 1962.

For my experiences, a central reality I have already commented on is that I grew up with the Universal Monsters films without really experiencing them first-hand. (Ironically, the one I definitely remember seeing in my youth is Abbott And Costello Meets Frankenstein.) That left me in an especially odd position with Dracula. Of course, I knew of the film and character. I can remember reading an apparently faithful comic-and-cassette adaptation of the novel. I also became familiar with the tragic biography of Lugosi, and eventually found my way to Nosferatu. Most significantly, I became very familiar with “real” folklore about the undead. But until the viewing for this review, I had literally never seen the actual film, in no small part because I already knew that it had very little to do with anything people had actually believed in. I finally fit in a viewing one morning before work, and came out even more underwhelmed than I expected.

Moving forward, the literal elephant in the room here is the reason I usually don’t review “high profile” movies: This is a definitive example of a film that is almost inseparable from its own influence. It’s all the more unfortunate that it has been parodied often enough for a substantial number of people to know the parodies far better than the original. (The “bleh bleh bleh” running gag in the Hotel Transylvania franchise is actually a pretty good “meta” illustration of the problem.) For 1980s kids like me, it’s like growing up with a Weird Al Yankovic song and then finding the original he was making fun of. Things get even trickier with Lugosi, who has long since been reduced to a Rorschach test for critics; some will see a demigod before his tragic fall where others just see a ham who was always overrated. On that particular point, I feel I can be a voice of reason. I will be the first to say, Lugosi was a gifted and versatile actor. This, however. is absolutely not his best work (though certainly not his worst either…). Given that he got in at least a decade of “respectable” work between this film and his actual slide into low-budget typecasting in the early to mid-1940s, the whole idea that this was some irreproducible peak was always a backhanded slight to his actual talent. The actors who really can’t improve on their first major role are the ones who end up washed up long, long before he did.

After all that, I still haven’t really talked about the movie, and I freely admit that I’m not sure if I can. This is a film that truly feels like a prototype. All the elements of great gothic horror are here, surely by Browning’s hand: The spooky castle, the shadowy crypts, the inexplicably unsafe staircase (wait, was Death Becomes Her making fun of this?), the ethereal zoned-out vampiresses. They just don’t quite come together. Then sometimes they don’t work at all, egregiously the bats, which look at least as cheap and silly as the alleged effects in an actual Ed Wood movie. (Hell, Abbott And Costello looked like it had real bats.) What I find inexplicably lacking is any sense of tension, which in turn comes down to the lack of an engaging hero. For most of the movie, Harker and Van Helsing (I honestly never tried to sort out which is which) do little more than narrate Dracula’s misdeeds. When they do finally do something, their plan amounts to hitting Dracula when he can’t fight back. Only once does Dracula pit his full hypnotic powers against a would-be slayer, in a truly great scene that might justify the movie’s reputation if it wasn’t inconsequential to the plot. My final beef is that all of these issues were already present in the book, yet Stoker’s tale made it interesting and dramatic even in the Radio Shack adaptation.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and I can honestly point to the moment this movie lost me. Very early on, we are given a view of the interior of Dracula’s castle, and it’s all well and good. We soon get to the crypt, and this is where things get wonky. First up, a rodent-like creature emerges from a coffin which is in fact clearly a possum, something a number of commentators confirmed. So sure, this could just be a stand-in for a very big rat; I discussed the surprising difficulties of filming live rodents myself when I reviewed the Willard remake (see also Of Unknown Origin). But then we see what are very obviously armadillos, a creature which is like the possum found only in the Americas and also is so unthreatening that is literally toothless. The strange thing is that I had seen these harmless creatures hyped as somehow dangerous before in Ingagi, so I decided to see if I could figure something out. Apparently, armadillos are something of a pest in the areas where they live, with a further disconcerting habit of digging up carrion and fresh graves either for meat or just in pursuit of insects already attracted by such things. So why did Browning see fit to put them on-screen here, as he apparently did in a number of his films? Did he expect audiences to accept them as dangerous based on dim rumors and simple unfamiliarity? Or are they simply here as a strange animal that few people at the time would recognize? I just don’t get it, and that is my refrain for much of what follows.

In closing, what I come back to is what “overrated” really means. It’s easy to joke about films that deserve to be forgotten or entirely lost, but after seeing how many good films have suffered that very fate, I cannot wish it even on the most terrible movies I’ve ever seen. On a philosophical level, it’s in the normal course of things that some films receive more praise and profit than they deserve. The “overrated” films that are a real problem are the ones that distract from ones that are as good if not better, and this is definitely a case in point. I haven’t been doing this review to tell anyone that this movie is “bad” or good. That is a judgment only the individual viewer can make, especially for a film this far removed from its own time. What I have said and will continue to say is that there are films that are better, like Nosferatu, White Zombie, even From Dusk Till Dawn in its own way. (Why have I still reviewed only one of those movies???) By all means, give it a look, and be glad we all have that privilege. But don’t let it stop you from looking at other movies. With that, I for one have said my piece.

The 1970s File Finale: The one that's the other worst zombie movie

 

Title: Horror of the Zombies aka The Ghost Galleon

What Year?: 1974

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: Dear God WHY??!! (1/3)

 

As I write this, I’m continuing a long, slow buildup to a new ebook. In the process, I’ve continued to go through material I hadn’t come up with a use for before. That brought me to yet another oddity I had already considered for the present feature, which happened to fit better still with the present 1970s lineup. As I have previously recounted here and elsewhere, the 1970s was a golden age of the zombie movie. Inevitably, some were good and some were bad, with many of the best and worse coming before the genre had quite emerged as its own thing. Here is a definitive case and point, an entry that might not even be counted as a zombie movie if certain parties hadn’t labeled it as such. Here is The Ghost Galleon, aka Horror of the Zombies, and on top of everything else, it’s the first appearance on this blog for the Blind Dead, a horror franchise that makes the worst excesses of the slasher boom (see Sleepaway Camp) look remotely sane.

Our story begins with two lovely models lost at sea who wouldn’t be qualified to operate a bumper boat. Per their desperate pleas, they have wandered into a warm, foggy sea that an all-purpose scientist insists shouldn’t exist at their latitude, where the only other ship in sight is a spooky derelict sailing ship they see absolutely no problem climbing aboard. Their fate must be decided by a crew of human traffickers and a woman who was more than friends with one of the damsels at sea. A ragtag expedition makes their way to their position, where they find only the ghost ship which they see no downside to boarding, even after the scientist asserts that they are really in another dimension.  The other shoe drops when they realize the ship belongs to the Templars, who in this loose retelling are Satan-worshippers summarily blinded and burned at the stake for human sacrifice and other unpleasantness. Now, they haunt the land and sea as skeletal undead who hunt their prey without sight, and this time, the idiots are on their turf!

The Horror of the Zombies was an American title of the Spanish film  El Buque Maldito (most literally “The Damned Vessel”) by the late Amando De Ossorio. The film was the second sequel to De Ossorio’s 1971 film Tombs of the Blind Dead, following The Return of the Evil Dead (the good/ tolerable one) in 1973. The film continued the series’ pattern of not directly referencing earlier entries, and sometimes contradicting them on various points concerning the backstory, powers and weaknesses of the Templar entities. The film starred Maria Perschy and Barbara Rey as the highest-billed damsels, with the American exploitation veteran Jack Taylor as the least expendable male. Perschy made the film after reportedly suffering burns on set in 1971. The film has been released both under its listed title and as The Ghost Galleon. The former title has appeared on copies of poor quality in public-domain combo packs. De Ossorio completed a fourth and final Blind Dead film Night of the Seagulls in 1975, and reportedly continued to feature the Templars in paintings. He died in 2001 at age 82. Perschy died of cancer in 2004.

For my experiences, what really led to this review was my own debate over the actual “worst” zombie movie. As I have regularly commented, the genre is distinctive for a wealth of movies that are “bad” by any technical or professional measure yet still “work” on their own and the genre’s terms. For the purposes of this feature, the “winner” hands down was Deadgirl, specifically because of issues that went far beyond objective quality, with The House By The Cemetery and perhaps Frankenstein’s Army as dishonorable mentions. That still left plenty more to consider on more objective grounds, and I narrowed it down to about three. Two that I will name-drop were The Alien Dead and The Chilling, both semi-amateur films from the 1980s, which I have written up in other formats. The present film was the one that stood out, again because it unquestionably reaches a minimum standard of competence. Why it went wrong was something I am still trying to comprehend and express.

Moving forward, there’s so much that can be said about the franchise that it’s easy to get bogged down. The Templars are quite possibly the strangest revenants on record, and from me, that is really saying something. The obvious problem is that it is virtually impossible to try to explain or describe them in cold blood without making them sound ludicrously unthreatening. Visually, they are a good example of the “skeleton” variant of the zombie/ revenant concept, and if things ended there, they would be unobjectionable. Things get weird with their posited handicaps. They really are supposed to be blind, a premise that is rarely if ever at odds with their portrayed behavior. On top of that, they are slower than usual, often advancing with what amounts to a back-and-forth wobble. On the other hand, they are clearly intelligent and very good at surrounding or cutting off their prey, especially in confined artificial spaces. At their best moments here and elsewhere, there is a sense of cat-and-mouse sadism in their slow and steady approach, often in far greater numbers than needed. Their real advantage is that the franchise features the dumbest, most amoral and outright irritating protagonists to be encountered in the genre, who in this case are too interchangeably unlikeable and dull for the viewer to get invested even in seeing them picked off.

That brings us to what is supposed to set this film apart from its predecessors, the ghost ship. From outside, shrouded in the equally mysterious fog, it would surely be credibly eerie on a good print, calling to mind the superb gothic horror of William Hope Hodgson. A bad copy, however, just seems to amplify what is cheap and wonky while obscuring what might have been effective. It’s boosted somewhat by the talk of interdimensional collisions from the simultaneously omnicompetent and utterly useless scientist, which culminates in the unsettling disappearance of the boat. The interior spaces provide some good moments, yet it gradually become frustrating. The dark, cramped chambers suit the Templars’ tactics better than usual, but after the first two or three kills, there’s no further tension nor anything to build up to. Obviously, these people have to get off the ship or they’re going to die, and nobody familiar with this franchise is going to bet against the Templars. The one source of residual interest is the strange horned skull that seems to serve as both an idol and nerve center. It’s a fascinating design that seems truly and fully pagan rather than Christianized shorthand for the Satanic, and again, it would surely be even more unsettling on a copy of quality. It still doesn’t really do anything except blaze in ineffectual rage when defeated. All in all, it’s just too little, mostly too late.

That already leaves me at the “one scene”. I’m going with the one that was baffling enough for me to go back and try to figure it out. As sometimes happens, it really turned out to be an extended sequence. A little ways in, one of the original damsels has survived long enough to explore the vessel. In the process, we get a good feel for the ship and its pervading atmosphere. At the point that I really wanted another look at, she actually settles down to sleep in the ship, listening to what looks for all the world like a Walkman. This is a distracting rabbit trail in itself, because while more or less portable cassette players would have existed by the 1960s, the Walkman didn’t make it a major “thing” until the early 1980s. The simplest explanation is that this is a vintage portable radio. (Never mind how it’s getting a signal…) Eventually, she wakes up and turns it off, by which time it’s very clear the Templars are active and aware of her presence. What makes this very brief and random moment strange even for this franchise is that this isn’t the first character in the series to survive quite inexplicably, at least for a while. Perhaps those without fear or guile have a certain protection against the Templars, perhaps this is another artifact of their apparent humor, or perhaps they haven’t been interested enough to respond until now. Alas, in this case, they are already closing in, confirming that even those who escape their attention usually don’t do so for long.

In closing, I come as usual to the rating. In honesty, this was one time I chose the rating ahead of a fresh viewing. I will freely admit that I came close to changing my mind. What held my resolve is just how much the whole series wastes its own potential. De Ossorio started with a singularly unnerving variation of the undead, and added the creative freedom of a franchise that effectively reboots itself with every movie. What he actually delivered was one decent-to-good movie and three more that range between mediocre, disappointing and completely intolerable. The present film may not even be the worst of the lot (I’m now inclined to give that distinction to Night of the Seagulls), but it is by all means an egregious showcase of everything wrong with the series. With that, I for one am happy to leave it in the rear view mirror.

Really Good Movies! The one with TV zombies

 

 

Title: The Signal

What Year?: 2006 (copyright)/ 2008 (general US theatrical release)

Classification: Improbable Experiment

Rating: Underrated! (1/3)

 

As I write this, I’m looking at really going through with an ebook compiling my Revenant Review feature. I’m once again coming back to this feature to take care of loose ends I didn’t get to before. This time around, I have a movie that I considered very strongly for that feature but never felt satisfied calling a zombie film, even compared to admitted gray-area entries and oddities like An American Werewolf In London, The Grapes of Death and Tourist Trap. To me, it’s a definitive example of a “zombie adjacent” film, sharing many conceptual and thematic affinities with the genre without quite falling within it. Considered as a zombie movie, it is both one of the strangest and one of the best of the “modern” era. I present The Signal, a post-apocalyptic film about a TV broadcast that makes people crazy… except, there’s a good chance they think you’re one who's crazy, and how do you know they aren't right?

Our story begins with a woman watching TV with her lover, before hurrying home to her clearly suspicious husband. Meanwhile, a strange, constantly-shifting image starts appearing on TV screens and a range of other devices. Whoever watches the broadcast soon become erratic, distressed or openly violent, with a speed and degree that varies widely. As the odd apocalypse unfolds, the lady is forced to escape her apartment to get away from her husband, with the aid of a clearly unreliable survivor with enough of his marbles to improvise a gnarly mace. The ordeal leaves her wandering, zoned out to the music of a Walkman, while we double back to the building, where her husband has holed up with a mixed group hosted by a woman who still thinks they are gathered for a party. Finally, we come back to the boyfriend, apparently the only person to recover his sanity after being exposed to the signal, in a race to find the lady before her husband does!

The Signal was a 2007 independent horror film originally shown at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was written and directed by David Bruckner, Dan Bush and Jacob Gentry, with each having full control over a separate segment of the film. It was reportedly made in 13 days on a total budget of $50,000. The cast included Anessa Ramsey as the lady Mya and AJ Bowen of You’re Next as her husband Lewis, with Sahr Ngaujah as Rod. The film did not receive a general release until early 2008, to mixed to positive reviews. The film’s DVD release included three shorts based on the film’s scenario, all credited to Gentry. It is available on digital platforms.

For my experiences, this stands out for me as a “forgotten” movie that I personally can remember being fully aware of when it came out. As usual, it was a while before I saw it, but I don’t think any later than 2012 and maybe as early as 2010, which is almost immediate by my standards. I have also been almost sure I originally saw it on Netflix streaming, except I also remember seeing the movie with the shorts, which I have never found except on the DVD. (I’m going to go ahead and say that the experience is just not the same without them, especially “The Return”.) Beyond that, my strongest recollection is an early suspicion that this was an unofficial adaptation of Stephen King’s Cell. That will give as good a jumping-off point as any, as this is among other things a far better use of the ideas shared with the novel than the “real” movie that we eventually got.

Moving forward, the most noteworthy thing by far about this film in the zombie genre context is the degree to which it develops a point of view for its zombie analogs. This isn’t especially unique; there have been sympathetic “character” zombies before and since in films like Dead Heat, Shatter Dead and Warm Bodies, with the definitive example still being The Crazies. What is different is that most such films ease the viewer into accepting the “good” zombie (especially of the “character” variety) as in some way different from the rest, or else reveal they were “bad” all along (see Life After Beth). Few besides Romero really accepted the full implication that the “infected” characters who remain likeable and non-threatening (for the moment…) are still a part of the bigger problem that will have to be dealt with sooner or later. Grapes of Death was one; this film is another, perhaps even more effective. Here, most of those affected by the signal still envision themselves as the heroes who will save the day or at least them, and many freely admit that they will have to overcome or control their own derangement to do it. The problem is that far more often than not, they just end up becoming the villain of someone else’s story. Then there is the husband Lewis, who by absolutely all indications is simply acting out tendencies that have been bottled up all along.

On more detailed analysis, most of the arguable and inarguable problems with the film come from its necessarily hit-or-miss experimentation. Just how much it works for any given viewer is very likely to depend on which segment seems best or worst, which in turn is definitely open to mood as well as opinion. Judging from correspondences, many/ most favor the first part, which has the raw vitality of the best zombie movie openings. Less optimally, it is the one segment that is supposed to be focused on the lady, who in fact is already eclipsed by Rod, the one major character whose status is never resolved to my own satisfaction. To me, the movie hits its peak in the middle act, which I find reminiscent of Link, of all things. What it shares with that film (yeah, the killer monkey butler one) is the feel of a mannered Victorian murder mystery gone entirely awry. Here, we have Lewis devolving as already outlined, locked in with a hostess who has apparently only killed once in actual self-defense and an unexposed bystander who just tries to go with the flow. The dynamic quickly becomes malign positive feedback, to the point that the conformist helps dispatch one of the unfortunate few to intrude, while the other two get fuzzy on who’s who and indeed who’s alive. It’s telling and unfortunate that the least is usually said about the finale. It is by my own appraisal the weakest segment, enough to bring down the rating. On the other hand, it does have its own strengths. I find it especially intriguing that it’s only here that hallucinations of the actually impossible play a major part, conspicuously Rod’s return as a reanimated head. Whether or not it was planned, it’s a crossed boundary that was best saved for last, the final breakdown of reality as well as reason.

That leaves the “one scene”, and if it was all up to me, I would go with “The Return” short, which is the main reason I didn’t just buy this movie long ago. But since even the occasional deleted scenes I have featured were at least intended to be in the movie (see Lethal Weapon and for that matter Link), I’m going to go with a bit from the middle act, tellingly by the same collaborator who went back to do the shorts. Not long after our introduction to the principle characters, someone arrives insisting he’s come for the party. After a very tense debate whether to terminate him with prejudice, the two guys let him in. What follows is a surreal and oddly grating encounter I’m surprised I didn’t remember as I did several other specific moments from this part in particular. At face value, the new arrival is the most “normal” we see at any point in the proceedings. The increasingly obvious problem is that he acts far too normal to be both rational and aware of the actual situation. Still, one can allow that he may be trying to play it cool as the middle man already is… right up to the point when he starts talking openly and crudely about his chances of finding a lady friend once the other guests arrive. It’s a mindboggling moment even for this film, and like many of the best, it never is entirely explained.

In closing, all I have to add is that, while it could still find its way into certain plans for the Revenant Review, this is one that never quite belonged there. Whether it counts as a zombie movie need not have been a problem, but it still wasn’t the kind of movie I had set out to cover. That also puts it in a problematic position within the current feature. While it has started to get a reputation as a neglected or “forgotten” film, I find this no more warranted than discounting it as entirely bad.  From what I can both remember and reconstruct, its actual status is close to that of The Thing, which it already has plenty in common with it thematically: It was reasonably well-known when it was released; it was well-regarded by many critics if not most; and it has remained accessible up to the present day. If anything, it was never polarizing enough to attract the hostile comments The Thing sometimes did, and of course, it cost too little not to have made a profit for somebody. However, it still never risen to the status of an undisputed “classic”, either of the conventional or “cult” variety, despite already approaching the edge of the 10-20 year window in which such things usually happen if at all. In just a little more time, it might well become a ”forgotten” film, especially if someone manages to botch the digital rights. For now, I will praise it as what it is and always was, an offbeat gem that’s just a little more satisfying for staying that way. With that, I can rest.