Stargates, Websites and Meta-Horror: Seven Lesser-Known 1994 Films That Influenced Cinema
Twenty years ago I was standing in a movie theater ticket line with nothing to lose. When the box office opened up I asked for “one ticket to see Timecop.” I was a young kid who was tired of sneaking around theaters and I wanted to gamble. The guy looked at me, smiled and gave me a ticket to the R-rated JCVD action flick. That was my 1994. I watched every movie from Angels in the Outfield to The Last Seduction and became fully immersed in all cinema had to offer. It was a glorious year for movies that proved to be incredibly influential, eye-opening and a demolisher of preteen naivety (Thank you Snowballs, Gimps, Linda Fiorentino and Natural Born Killers).
The following post discusses the less discussed or forgotten films of 1994 that had a huge impact on today’s cinema. Their directing decisions, writing and marketing played a big part in molding careers, blockbusters and global advertising over the last 20 years.
Here is the list! Enjoy.
1. Heavenly Creatures
After Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles and Dead Alive Peter Jackson directed Heavenly Creatures. The Oscar nominated film proved Jackson had more cinematic prowess than creating spectacular splatter gore. Roger Ebert had this to say about it:
What makes Jackson’s film enthralling and frightening is the way it shows these two unhappy girls, creating an alternative world so safe and attractive they thought it was worth killing for.
Jackson had successfully blended fantasy/reality by casting fantastic leads (Kate Winslet’s first film), creating a beautiful alternate world (visual effect company Weta’s first film) and writing a fully realized friendship between the two girls. Jackson and writer Fran Walsh (Jackson’s partner) worked hard to forge the bond and have talked about the importance of the relationship that went awry.
The friendship was for the most part a rich and rewarding one, and we tried to honour that in the film. It was our intention to make a film about a friendship that went terribly wrong.
The stressing of friendship is evident in Jackson’s later film trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Jackson carefully crafted Tolkien’s work and created a beautiful middle earth inhabited by wonder, darkness and friendship. Jackson and crew made the fantasy palatable and the casting of the central roles was spot on. Jackson’s prior work in horror comedy and his careful crafting added an unthinkable layer to the film that helped get the small nuances right (Hobbit foot hair). The films went on to win Oscars, collect over a billion dollars in revenue and establish Jackson as an A-list power player.
2. Stargate
The story of wormholes, aliens and James Spader feeding hairy creatures candy bars spawned 350+ television episodes, copious novels and the shortly held belief that French Stewart was badass.
Stargate was a science fiction hit that made Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (writer, producer) household names. Shakespeare it wasn’t but it began the Emmerich/Devlin reign of huge dumb that is still taking place today.
Before Stargate Emmerich helmed the uber-violent JCVD/Lundgren vehicle Universal Soldier. The movie did well at the box-office and opened the door to Stargate. The film was originally planned as a trilogy but the sequels were scrapped when Roland decided to make the super blockbuster Independence Day. ID was a massive hit and was followed up by the critical dud Godzilla. Their success from Stargate and early buzz from ID allowed Emmerich and Devlin to make Godzilla “their way” (they’ve since apologized). The marketing famously involved highly secretive tactics that never gave the audience a glimpse of the monstrously large lizard.
Godzilla was everywhere and the world couldn’t wait (listen to the great HDTGM podcast about the film). It was an international hit but pretty much everyone disliked it. Scott Mendelson of Forbes wrote a restrospective on Godzilla and explained the effect it had on today’s financial projections.
In terms of its box office, it serves as a lesson about lowering expectations and a sober exhibit of declining attendance and inflation. Sony spent a year boasting that they had the unquestionable summer box office champion and thus they were smacked down when the film merely did ‘very good’ at the worldwide box office. Today the studios desperately try to spin opening weekend projections as low as possible so they can bask in ‘surprise’ when the film ‘over performs’. In the summer of 1998,Godzilla was considered an artistic failure and a box office loser. By today’s standards, they’d still be half-right
Stargate was the unassuming science fiction flick that opened the door to 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 B.C. Anonymous, White House Down and the game changing Godzilla.
3. The Specialist
The Specialist was the last of a dying breed. It was an R-rated action film that was based around Sharon Stone and Sylvester Stallone having sex in a shower. Hal Hinson of the Washington Post had an interesting take on it:
With all the preening, posing and stretching, it’s hard to know if “The Specialist” is an action movie or an exercise video. Or a porn movie without the sex. Fit, trim and tanned to a luscious shade of gold, the stars offer their bodies to the camera as if they were contestants in a bodybuilding competition. And so entranced are they with their own smashing physiques that you half-expect them to burst into a rendition of “I Feel Pretty.”
The Specialist made a lot of money ($57 million domestic) but was killed by critics (4% RT) and did long-term damage to Sly’s action career. The annoyance was clear as Judge Dread, Assassins and Daylight all disappointed at the box office. In 1994 The action landscape was changing and Specialist was one of the catalysts.
Muscled men shooting guns whilst killing thousands was becoming a thing of the past. Action stars egos were getting too big and so were the paychecks. 1994’s action films were a changing of the guard. Keanu Reeves bulked up for Speed and had great chemistry with the soon to be famous Sandra Bullock. Also, The husband/wife/Tom Arnold dynamic in True Lies introduced male insecurity and female empowerment to the blockbuster dynamic.
1995 furthered the destruction of old action. Rumble in the Bronx, Heat, Goldeneye, Desperado and Bad Boys ushered in a new violent era. Big budget films flopped as Judge Dread, Waterworld, Batman Forever (successful but was followed up by Batman and Robin), Under Siege 2 and Sudden Death all lead to the revaluation and seismic shift of action featuring less ego, more style and Travolta as the overacting bad guy.
Hello short lived Nic Cage action era!
4. Shallow Grave
Danny Boyle’s cinematic debut won him the London Film Critics Circle “Best Newcomer Award” and was the highest grossing film in Britain. It established a long running partnership with writer John Hodges (Trainspotting, Trance) and was followed up by the iconic Trainspotting. Shallow Grave was a perfect springboard for Boyle who revolutionized zombies (rage-infected people), won an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire and directed the underrated Sunshine.
The tiny budget of Shallow Grave forced dynamic shots and interesting camera angles that have become a staple of Boyle’s cinematic arsenal. He did an interview with Indiewire where he talked about his budgets:
We cap our budgets, nothing above 20 million dollars. You get more control. It’s very simple, you own all this. If you take 100 million dollars, you’ve got less control or its more of a battle to exercise that control. I find it liberating that when you’re trying to turn 100 million into 15 million, in that you’re trying to make it look like 100 million but have it cost 15 million. I love that discipline, it makes you very evangelical in the way you promote and sell the movie to the crew, when you’re asking them to do it without claiming overtime and you’re trying to persuade the actors to go a bit further with it. It becomes a mission all-together and I like that. I think it adds to a film.
The lessons Boyle learned from Shallow Grave helped mold one of the most interesting voices we have in cinema today. His focus on crime/money has been a reoccurring theme in his films and the yuppie wrongdoers ushered in a new wave of British crime cinema. He always tackles something different and has launched many careers (Ewan McGregor, Cillian Murphy, Kelly MacDonald). I’m glad Boyle has taken the road less traveled and that cinematic journey started at Shallow Grave.
5. Spanking the Monkey
Seth Stevenson of Slate summed up David O. Russell and Spanking the Monkey really well with this quote:
David O. Russell wrote his first feature-length film, Spanking the Monkey, while he was bored on jury duty. Though this coming-of-age story earnestly delved into incest, sexual assault, and attempted matricide, it somehow still got laughs—enough to win it the 1994 audience award at Sundance
David O. Russell is a fascinating director. I appreciate all of his movies and his career has been fun to follow. His set disposition may have changed but he has always had one common variable to his films. He has always coaxed wonderful performances from actors. Rolling Stone’s Peter Traver’s review of Spankingthe Monkey gives us an early glimpse.
Davies gives a poignant, emotive performance that tears at the heart. And Watson is magnificent; seductive and overwhelming without losing her character’s human scale.
David O’Russell made incest work and somehow garnered laughs. His decision to direct and write around such a tough topic forced him to create believable characters that sold the material.
His acting/director collaborations have made him a popular commodity. Mark Wahlberg made a name for himself with Boogie Nights but his highest rated Rotten Tomatoes film is Three Kings. Years later Wahlberg gave a career best performance in Russell’s I Heart Huckabeess and starred in The Fighter which won Melissa Leo and Christian Bale Oscars. The next year Silver Lining Playbook won Jennifer Lawrence an Oscar and proved Robert DeNiro still had it in him. O. Russell’s last film American Hustle was nominated in all of the acting categories.
His style has always been against the grain but Ebert summed him up in his review for Flirting With Disaster:
The writer and director is David O. Russell, whose first feature, the independently produced “Spanking the Monkey,” won him the financing for this more ambitious and very funny film. He seems to have used a lot of his budget on the cast, assembling a large group of mostly familiar faces, who project that special joy actors emanate when they know they have a great line coming up.
The success of Spanking the Monkey in 1994 has paid theatrical dividends for the past 20 years and hopefully prevented Christian Bale from drastically losing weight again.
6. Star Trek: Generations
Like it or loathe it Star Trek: Generations passed the torch to Patrick Stewart’s crew and inspired three sequels, extended television life and an eventual blockbuster remake. The most important aspect of Generations was its trendsetting internet presence. Generations boasted the first web site to promote the film. There was less than one million people with internet access in the US at the time. However, not surprisingly there was a large “Trekkie” presence of early adopters. The website boasts this fact:
The “Generations” site was an immediate success, quickly becoming one of the hottest destinations on the Web. Pages were viewed millions of times by fans around the world and when the movie opened three weeks later, it enjoyed the biggest weekend box-office total of any Star Trek movie to date.
Star Trek: Generations wasn’t without its faults and received only subpar reviews. There was controversy behind the scenes due to rewrites, budget restrictions and reshoots. Leonard Nemoy didn’t appear as Spock, Malcolm McDowell received death threats and Shatner ended up writing a book bringing his character back to life. However, despite the problems the movie was a worldwide success. It also became an inadvertent trendsetter and provided a glimpse into today’s Star Trek online culture (Just ask J.J. Abrams and crew who are still battling with the fans).
It seems only natural that Star Trek was the first to venture into the new “cyber frontier.”
7. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
Timeout magazine summed up New Nightmare perfectly:
The climactic punch-up fails to match the power of the first film’s true ending, but in deconstructing his own bastardised creation, Craven redeems both the series and his own tarnished reputation.
Freddy Krueger had become a joke. A once scary nightmare machine became a one-lining stand up comedian who couldn’t garner laughs or scares. However, somewhere out of left field Wes Craven came up with New Nightmare. It played with convention and brought scary back. The film was critically respected (77% RT) and I believe it led Craven to the groundbreaking Scream.
New Nightmare only made $18 million because the series was so deflated. However, it has accrued a cult following and helped create the “meta-horror” dynamic. Wes Craven had found his footing and got his edge back (Sans Vampire in Brooklyn). Roger Ebert a notorious hater of horror liked the movie and eloquently wrote about it:
“Wes Craven’s New Nightmare” dances back and forth across the line separating fantasy from reality. This is the first horror movie that is actually about the question, “Don’t you people ever think about the effect your movies have on the people who watch them?”
Ebert’s question was answered several years later as young punks slashed and quipped their way to box office glory. New Nightmare refreshed Craven and this allowed him to give another generation a screaming new nightmare.
There you have it! Seven influential 1994 films. Comment. Reply. Share. Comment again. Share those comments and reply to other comments.
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John’s Horror Corner: Bad Milo (2013), hands down the best movie about an ass monster I’ve ever seen!
MY CALL: More adorable than horrific, Milo put a big smile on my face. This is hands down the best movie I’ve ever seen about a butt monster. MORE MOVIES LIKE Bad Milo: Like a few laughs with your horror? Try Final Destination 5 (2011), Piranha 3D (2010), Piranha 3DD (2012), The Hazing (2004) Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), Drag Me to Hell (2009), Hatchet (2006) and The Cabin in the Woods (2012). If you love gory, exploitative, intensely inappropriate movies and can tolerate subtitles I’d suggest you pick a few movies from A Beginner’s Guide to Tokyo Gore Shock Cinema.
Duncan (Ken Marino; Eastbound & Down, Children’s Hospital) leads a stressful life which, consequently, led to the development of an anal polyp. His doctor’s prescription: avoid stress. Of course, right after receiving this advice, he encounters nothing but stress. His boss is pressuring him, his wife (Gillian Jacobs; Community) wants to start a family, his mother married someone younger than him, and his co-worker is making his work life Hell.
During an entertaining, gastrointestinally-scored bathroom scene, Duncan gives anal birth to Milo, the malevolent personification of his anal polyp which emerges from his ass to kill the source of his stress. What’s REALLY scary, though, is that after Milo kills he returns and climbs back into Duncan’s ass!
The jokes are funny, but not quite the over-the-top nature I expected. I thought this would be scripted more like Scary Movie. Instead this was played mildly straight-faced…for a butt monster movie. However, the physical comedy is HILARIOUS! As far as butt demons go, Milo is pretty cute…adorable at times…like a shaved Gizmo, cooing and cuddling. The creature effects were decent, too.
See? Just plain adorable!
A lot of inappropriate things happen in this movie beyond the plotline that an anal polyp demon emerges from a man’s ass for occasional killing sprees. A man falls face first into another man’s bare ass, a man’s face is eaten by Milo while Milo is still inside Duncan’s ass, a man’s penis is brutally bitten off…this is definitely the kind of flick you watch with a case of beer and some of your gore-loving bros.
Oh, and watch through the credits. There are some really funny b-reels.
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Man of Tai Chi (2013), a so-so martial arts movie that probably shouldn’t have been directed by Keanu Reeves
MY CALL: The fights weren’t great and overall this was just okay. I feel it would have been better if Keanu didn’t direct it. This is one of those cases where following the classic kumite martial arts movie tropes would have paid off. MORE MOVIES LIKE Man of Tai Chi: If you want great fights that will leave you begging for more, then aim for Bloodsport (1988), The Quest (1996), The Rundown (2003), The Condemned (2007), The Protector (2005), Ong-Bak (2003), The Raid: Redemption (2011), Undisputed II (2006) and Ninja II: Shadow of a Tear (2013), to name a few.
Keanu Reeves plays the quintessential Jean-Claude Van Damme movie bad guy. Donaka Mark (Keanu Reeves; 47 Ronin, Constantine) drives a ridiculous car, lives in a ridiculous house and runs a ridiculous underground fighting syndicate simply to entertain himself. He’s mega-rich yet he conducts a wealth of felonious business.
Tiger Chen (Tiger Hu Chen; stunts for The Matrix movies) is a disciplined martial arts practitioner, but he can’t seem to harness his Chi (sort of like becoming enlightened or something). Donaka sees Chen win a kung fu tournament with his Tai Chi and wants him as a competitor. Chen is young, innocent, has a kind soul, and wants to change people’s skewed perspective towards Tai Chi as a legitimate fighting style. Tiger Chen brings us Tai Chi like we have never seen it before, a soft style done hard.
He comes to Donaka’s security agency for a job interview only to be attacked by a trained fighter. The fight is the interview. Chen is conflicted about using his fighting for personal gain, but accepts Donaka’s offer when his master’s 600 year old Tai Chi Temple is threatened.
The stunts are good when judged by themselves (out of the context of the fight scene). There’s more wire-work than I’d prefer–really, if I can tell you’re using wires then you’re doing it poorly. For me it was a little too much Matrix meets Hong Kong cinema, and not enough “practical yet amazing” stunts a la Undisputed II (2006). The martial arts choreography fell far short of my expectations. Bits here and there were great, but the parts in-between the occasional great few seconds failed to hold it all together as a credible fight of such caliber.
Did the action disappoint me? Yes. But did that mean that I couldn’t enjoy this movie? Not at all. This movie is presented with a straight face but has an over-the-top story that smacks of the 80s and 90s Van Damme movies that I loved so much. Needless to say, it brought about a few chuckles at times. Bloodsport (1988), Lionheart (1990), The Quest (1996)…these movies didn’t necessarily have “great” choreography throughout. No, no, no. But they had great fight scenes that entertained. Man of Tai Chi tries to follow the same trajectory. But a few showboat moments here and there to capture the oohs and aahs, glued together by “filler” choreography just didn’t do it for me. Another down-side was that this was presented with none of the tongue-in-cheek humor we’d find in JCVD’s roles between the fight scenes. This was maybe a teeny bit too serious. As director, I think Keanu needed to have a little more fun with it all.
This was a waste of a fight. Tiger Chen only fights this guy so that Keanu could show that he fought bigger, stronger opponents.
Same deal here.
Another thing the JCVD movies got right was that every opponent (and therefore every fight) had his own style. Not just fighting style, but personality. This film makes an attempt at this, but really fails to deliver. I found myself unimpressed with some of the fights, and the fighters were often devoid of any personality. The AMAZING Iko Uwais (The Raid: Redemption) gets a cameo, but it’s squandered. FAIL.
The final fight against Donaka wasn’t even good, verging on farcically bad. The choreography was poor, Keanu appeared to be moving very slowly yet somehow taking Tiger by surprise, the lines were hammed up, and there were no impressive moves. Adding to the nonsense, Tiger manages to attain enlightenment mid-fight and basically throws a Kameha-meha Haduken to defeat his wealthy oppressor who keeps repeating “you owe me a life” like a broken villainous record.
Did I think this movie could have been done much, much better. Absolutely. But I still enjoyed it…in the sense that it’s “so bad it’s good.” It was nothing powerful or wowing. I’ll probably never feel the urge to see it again. But it was okay. I was marginally entertained by the fights (but didn’t love them), I liked the over-the-top story of an eccentric billionaire running an illegal fighting circuit, and I liked watching Keanu play this over-the-top bad guy.
In all honesty, I feel this would have been far better if Keanu didn’t direct it. This is one of those cases where following the classic kumite martial arts movie tropes would have paid off.
Mark wrote a much more positive review of this film in case readers would like a second opinion.
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John’s Old School Horror Corner: The Other Hell (1981), another incomprehensible Italian horror that doesn’t even deliver the gore
MY CALL: This Italian horror fails to deliver the gore we’ve come to expect and is directed so poorly it’s about unwatchable. But I won’t lie, I was somewhat entertained by its level of bonkers nonsense. SIDEBAR: Also marketed as Guardian of Hell, this Italian film was originally titled L’altro inferno.
80s Italian horror has a way of catering to our inner perverted intoxicated teenager. It’s always so over-the-top. Not five minutes into this movie and we see a hot topless dead nun on an altar in some sort of alchemical laboratory. An overly sanctimonious nun mutilates the attractive body’s genitals while reciting zealous rantings about the Devil and the vagina being a gate to Hell. Normally this would serve as a reliable sign that this would be one of those so bad it’s good gory Italian sensations. Sadly, this submission falls short.
Nuns behaving badly.
“Bonkers” would best describe the storytelling style of this film. Nuns go crazy, randomly show up dead and kill people, a priest spontaneously combusts, house pets become evil, there are a few strangulations and stabbings, and there is hardly any sense of sound explanation or pacing. Put simply: weird shit happens, then we watch some filler scene that neither explains what happened nor establishes the events to come, then more weird shit happens…then just wash, rinse and repeat until you run out of running time, adding over-the-top acting, terrible writing and provocative imagery as necessary.
What’s with the large mannequin-esque dolls everywhere? What’s with the ninja-masked nun chick? WTF is going on in this movie!?!
After several inexplicable murders occur at a convent, the somewhat young Father Valerio (Carlo de Mejo; City of the Living Dead, The House by the Cemetery, Contamination, Manhattan Baby) is sent to investigate. His faith is tested with temptation and his sanity is tested by the chaotic script. I’d explain the plot more but…honestly, it was hard to keep track of what the Hell was going on.
Father Valerio and an evil nun.
Director Bruno Mattei (Hell of the Living Dead, Zombi 3) seems to try and fail to capture the off-the-cuff tangential stylings of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. Even though neither of them were terribly talented storytellers, their direction was slightly less erratic (most of the time, LOL). You practically could have randomly ordered the scenes of this movie without reducing the followability of this senseless plot. For all I know, that may be exactly what the editor did!
So…this guy is in the movie. I have no idea why. Really. No idea. And why he dies in a dog attack I also have no idea.
The effects are weak and the gore is minimal, especially for an installment in Italian horror. Not sure why. Maybe red paint and chicken livers weren’t on sale that week. Just to be clear, you all agree that 70s and 80s Italian horror appeared to simply use red paint and butcher’s trimmings as blood and guts, right? Super thick and bright red with a few random chunks. Normally crazy gore is what makes these Italian films fun and watchable. Perhaps that’s likewise why this film was so disappointing.
I enjoyed bits here and there and, I must admit, I was somewhat entertained. So while I’m not specifically going to recommend this to anyone, I won’t warn off any adventurous horror fans either.
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John’s Horror Corner: C. H. U. D. (1984), cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers
MY CALL: This throwback is slow-paced (until the fun-filled third act), not at all scary, and doesn’t pack a particularly gory punch, but it is fun and cheesy nonetheless and should be on every horror fan’s list. MOVIES LIKE C. H. U. D.: Return of the Living Dead (1985) and Alligator (1980).
This “it came from the 80s” classic presented the notion that we have more to fear than the shallow gene pools of Wrong Turn hillbillies from generations of inbreeding and the nuclear fallout-malformed denizens of The Hills Have Eyes. Here, we explore the fear of man’s impact on the planet with toxic waste-mutated monsters.
Homeless people are disappearing from the streets of New York City…so what exactly seems to be the problem? This would typically go entirely unnoticed and uninvestigated as local politicians high-five this inexplicable victory. However, when a local soup kitchen owner (Daniel Stern; Leviathan) reports that his dining hall has been a few vagrants short the police seem to drop everything to investigate these missing homeless people. Seems legit.
Bored with working on perfume commercial campaigns with his oft-half-naked model girlfriend, somehow a photographer (John Heard; Cat People) gets involved in investigating these hobo disappearances. Well that makes perfect sense. I can see how a successful, model-dating photographer would want to put his life on hold to go spelunking the feces-painted corridors of New York’s sewer system with a crusty bag lady.
It turns out that our missing hobos have come into contact with a toxic waste gas leak and subsequently mutated into cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers instead of the more fun Ninja Turtle alternative.
Why do their eyes glow?
Our cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers have glowing eyes and look like slimy, skinned Lord of the Rings orcs under Sauron’s command. The effects are decent for the time and will certainly bring about some chuckles. The mutants’ claws are clearly rubber monster gloves in lieu of more detail-oriented latex work. As campy as that may sound, this movie maintains a straight face and never verges on “deliberate” campiness. Doing so with no satirical allegory whatsoever, this movie pays more attention to the investigation and cover-up of the C. H. U. D. than it does on the monsters themselves. As such, you may notice that you see much less of the monsters than you’d prefer. It’s cheesiness is found in its poker face.
Speaking of campy, for no reason at all this CHUD’s neck elongates before our eyes as if in honor of the Evil Dead-possessed Henrietta.
The first hour of this movie is pretty slow. But in the third act we finally see regular doses of gore and CHUD screen time. Despite a slow start, I think this movie is worth it. It’s no founding father of horror tropes by any means, but today’s fans of horror should log it into their repertoire nonetheless.
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MY CALL: Overall this movie failed at being interesting, scary or creepy, and it hardly maintained any sense of atmosphere or suspense at all. Another weak witch flick for young adults (despite the R-rating). MORE MOVIES LIKE The Woods: Want more movies about young witches? Try Beautiful Creatures (2013) or The Craft (1996), both of which were notably better than this.
“Set in 1965 New England, a troubled girl encounters mysterious happenings in the woods surrounding an isolated girls school that she was sent to by her estranged parents.” [–IMDB]
Heather Fasulo (Agnes Bruckner; The Pact, Venom, Blood and Chocolate) is delivered to an all-girls boarding school in the woods by her parents Alice (Emma Campbell; Feardotcom) and Joe Fasulo (Bruce Campbell; Oz the Great and Powerful, Evil Dead 2, Escape from L. A.), happy to be rid of her.
Don’t get excited about Bruce Campbell, he’s hardly in this movie. But, much to his confusion, he does vomit a twig.
The students of this school fear the surrounding woods because of a story about three witches who had taken over the school a century ago. This story is especially interesting because all of the school’s current teachers were once students.
The girl fights in this have got nothing on The Craft!
The leader of the local Mean Girls troupe Samantha (Rachel Nichols; The Amityville Horror, Conan the Barbarian, P2) readily makes her influence known to newbie Heather with some bully-style flexing. But Heather resists showing the other students there’s a new tough chick on campus. Both actresses do a fine job despite their ill-directed and poorly developed surroundings.
Headmistress Traverse (Patricia Clarkson; Shutter Island) takes a special interest in Heather, giving her tests with strange symbols and discussing some special scholarship. A quiet, troubled student Anna (Kathleen Mackey; Apartment 1303, Gothika) suggests that Heather, like Anna, might be “special.” What does it all mean? I guess the ending sort of explains it…poorly.
Anna disappears and soon the students and faculty start behaving strangely around Heather… basically some attempts are made to add substance to the movie. Not to be mean, but I feel this was written for the PG/PG-13 young adult crowd, which makes the drama and tension feel really weak to the more mature viewers who came to see this R-rated release. Not that everything can be written by J. K. Rowling, but Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) felt far more credible, serious, tense and dramatic with its PG rating and this with its R, and that shouldn’t be.
The gore seems sufficient, I guess. The type, execution and amount may spark the interest of the inexperienced, but it didn’t do much for me. Mostly mist and aggressive plant life, the supernatural effects smack of Beautiful Creatures (2013) meets Evil Dead (2013). These vines, like the gore, are seen most in the finale and they’re done VERY WELL. In fact, the vines were the only creepy thing about the movie. I guess it’s trying to be scary, but I’m feeling none of it. Really…none. This is rated-R but it feels aimed at youth. The gore and the presentation of death must’ve pushed it to R, but I’m baffled nonetheless by the decision to present this story in this way to adults.
The ending was surprisingly pretty good and loaded with dark fantasy evil shrubbery effects and more gore. There were some other scenes that could’ve been cool, but they weren’t followed up or explained, just squandered.
Overall this failed at being interesting, scary or creepy and hardly maintained any sense of atmosphere or suspense at all.
Skip it.
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Bad Movie Tuesday: The Lose/Lose Remake of Oldboy
There is a momentum changing moment in Oldboy when Brolin is released from captivity after twenty years. He emerges from a large box and chases down a mysterious woman. He stops her violently in front of some football players and it all goes wrong. The players react to the male/female violence and immediately get the living sh** kicked out of them. The scene is brutal, unnecessary and likely results in one persons death. The fight establishes the toughness of the title character but also proves how unnecessary the film is.
I won’t make this an original vs. remake write-up. However, in the original the recently released main character finds some street punks and gives them a good beating. The moment is funny, unexpected and you don’t mind that some hoods got their face punched. The moment worked because the film is so cartoonish and you didn’t feel like innocent bystanders got destroyed. The remake features total stereotypes receiving WAY too much punishment for trying to do something good. I think Spike Lee tried to do something good but ended up like the bloodied folk. He fought an uphill battle that was bound to disappoint due to directing choices and studio meddling. The A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd sums it up well:
Park’s film was wildly irreverent, grinning manically in the face of torture, suicide, incest, and other taboos. Lee’s Oldboy is a more somber affair. That said, maybe straight-faced isn’t the right approach for such an over-the-top narrative, pulled from a Japanese manga and built around one of the most elaborate revenge schemes in recent movie history. Park knew he was making pulp, and directed accordingly.
Oldboy does not feel like a completed film. It is overly edited and doesn’t come close to the slow burn of the original. It starts off well enough as it expands the prison sentence to twenty years and gives us more time in the hotel room. However, once he is loose the movie plows forward and loses any creative nuance that was created. My biggest problem with the film is the director’s cut excuse used by Spike Lee. The film had many hurdles to clear (insane fanboys, incest, hammer fights) and that wasn’t helped by a mythical three-hour cut.
Both Spike Lee and Brolin commented on how the three-hour cut is much better than what was dumped into the cinemas. However, the remake shouldn’t have been three hours. Park Chan-Wook told the story in two hours and it was a beautifully insane cult classic. Thus, why make a longer remake of a two-hour movie? Did Spike really think audiences would sit through a 180 minute remake of an incredibly violent cult classic?
There was bound to be cuts and the film suffered. The original fight scene which was filmed in a single take is now chopped up and features bad guys who only want to get beat up. It is poorly set up, sped up and sacharine compared to the original. Lee wanted it to be bigger (three floors) and Brolin was pushed to his physical limit (five weeks of prep) but it was hindered by cheekily dressed villains, brutality and a studio edit.
Brutality is not a substitute for quality. Oldboy’s brutality felt organic to the story. However, the violence in the remake feels shoehorned in. It never feels right. The original set a cornball/bonkers atmosphere that felt like a parallel world which made the violence palatable. The remake feels grounded in realism with the occasional sped up action scene. There are moments when Brolin literally throws men on their heads and you wonder how he acquired such brutal techniques.
The other problem with the film is Sharlto Copley’s questionable villain.
His accent is odd, motivation wonky and scenes were cut down (thank you three-hour cut). He is not a threat and pales in comparison to Ji-Tae Yu who owned the screen as the twisted baddie of the original. His character was sleek, suave, petty and believably diabolical. A good hero needs a good villain and Lee Woo-jin was a great bad guy. Copley is nothing but facial hair, scars and a weak back story. The bad guy barely registers and that is terrible thing when the movie is all about a man getting revenge.
The Oldboy remake fought a losing battle. I’m sure the three-hour cut is better but I think Spike Lee should have focused more on character and plot instead of making things bigger and better. More can sometimes be less and that is evident in the Oldboy remake.
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John’s Horror Corner: Chopping Mall (1986), a crazy melee of killer robots that shoot frickin’ laser beams from their eyes
MY CALL: There’s nothing iconic about this bad 80s sci-fi/horror and I’m not saying it should be on your “must see list.” But this has everything I miss about the 80s; it’s so awful and cheesy and cheap and campy, and that’s what makes it so sweet to the refined horror connoisseur. MORE MOVIES LIKE Chopping Mall: The Outing (1987), The Initiation (1984) and Dawn of the Dead (1978) deliver more “mall horror” in the classic style we know and love. SIDEBAR: This was originally titled Killbots. That title would have made more sense since the present title makes me think of a slasher movie.
“Eight teenagers are trapped after hours in a high tech shopping mall and pursued by three murderous security robots out of control.” –IMDB
The very first night that a mall breaks in its new security team of three robots, lightning strikes the control center and somehow short circuits them…into killer robots. That same night eight 20-somethings decide to have an overnight sex party in the mall…because that’s what kids did in the 80s, they had overnight sex parties. I struggle to envision that any teenagers or 20-somthings would have died in any 80s horror movies if there were no overnight sex parties.
Well after one of the security robots detonates one of their hotties’ heads with its laser vision, and thus ruins their overnight sex party, the men furiously hit the sporting goods store, load up on guns and propane tanks and fight back! What ensues is a lot of fun, bad nonsense. In fact, everything leading up to that was a lot of fun, bad nonsense, too.
Let’s talk about these robots for a second. They look like mini-Johnny-5’s complete with videogame laser gun vision and what are called “sleep darts.” I wonder how much these robots cost to make. If AI-robotic security sounds a little excessive for your average mall in Ohio, please note the obviously moderately priced time-locked Star Wars doors which are sealed shut over night. What’s with this mall? It’s like a military tech experiment!
The overnight party crew of 20-somethings include a lot of familiar faces: Allison (Kelli Maroney; Night of the Comet, Not of this Earth), Suzie (Barbara Crampton; You’re Next, Lords of Salem, The Re-Animator), Rick (Russell Todd; Friday the 13th Part 2), Linda (Karrie Emerson; Evils of the Night), Ferdy (Tony O’Dell; Evils of the Night), Leslie and Mike (John Terlesky; Deathstalker II). Also look for Mr. Bud the CHUD himself Gerrit Graham (Child’s Play 2, It’s Alive III, TerrorVision) and Gremlins‘ Dick Miller (Piranha, The Howling, The Twilight Zone: The Movie).
Dick Miller’s brief cameo getting electrocuted by a killbot.
To call the writing a bit stale would almost be a compliment. The poor attempts at humor in this movie succeed at little more than securing the bad name earned by 80s horror writers. Thankfully, we find our humor in some of the kills.
Following the most ancient horror axiom, if a woman in her panties runs, she WILL trip and fall.
Director Jim Wynorski used the success of this film to pole vault his career into the big leagues. He later went on to helm such bare breast-rich film as Deathstalker II (1987), Not of this Earth (1988), Return of Swamp Thing (1989), The Haunting of Morella (1990), 976-EVIL II (1992), Ghoulies IV (1994) and many more.
If you enjoy the 80s, the cheap, the campy, the cheesy and the awful, then you should enjoy this.
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John’s Horror Corner: The Stuff (1985), a social commentary told by a mind-controlling dessert food
This movie cover reminds me of the scene when the parents come home in The Gate (1987)…but they’re not really the parents.
MY CALL: Unintentionally hilarious and lush with social commentary, this story about a delicious mind-controlling ooze is sure to entertain despite tragic writing and direction. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Stuff: More amorphous enmities may be found in The Blob (1988), The Raft (segment from Creepshow 2; 1987) and Street Trash (1987). The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Live (1988) and The Thing (1982, 2011) all provide stories in which trust and conspiracy are tested during surreptitious alien takeovers. SIDEBAR: The DVD includes commentary from writer/director Larry Cohen. It’s pretty great.
A man stumbles across a delicious, pulsating gooey substance bubbling out of the ground at an industrial mining site, which he immediately touches, sniffs and tastes. WHAT!?! Now I’m no geologist, but when I encounter mysterious STD-like, sticky, gobbledy-gook discharges oozing from Mother Earth’s orifices I tend to keep a safe distance. I mean, why was it bubbling? Was something alive under the surface? Was it super hot? Is it loaded with some dangerous bacteria or fungus or virus? I doubt I’d touch it…let alone taste it! Did this guy not see The Blob (1958, 1988)? If he had seen The Blob I bet he’d of thought twice.
But low and behold it turns out to be a sweet, tasty treat which is readily–basically overnight–mass manufactured as a domestic dessert staple. This film is cleverly complete with television commercials for “The Stuff,” marketing it as an adult snack with the tagline “enough is never enough.” This tongue-in-cheek propagandist approach reminds me of They Live (1988) as we observe so much social commentary on the American practices of consumerism, advertising, and corporate and FDA ethics.
Like in so many other stories, a young boy (Jason) discovers something just isn’t right when he sees The Stuff crawling around in his refrigerator. Jason won’t eat The Stuff after seeing it meandering around the some Tupperwared leftovers, but his parents do and they’ve been acting weird. Like buying a year’s supply of The Stuff and throwing away all of their other food in the trash weird.
Luckily, an investigator (Mo) for a competing snack food company is also going around trying to figure out what The Stuff is made out of–and he’s not getting answers. It seems that all of the FDA folks who so suspiciously and swiftly approved the product have all left the country. Hmmmm…nothing strange going on here. Just regular everyday FDA stuff, right?
A theme song plays “one lick is never enough of The Stuff” and Models lasciviously lick spoonfuls of this homicidal yogurt; Jason’s mother testifies that she lost 5 pounds on a Stuff-only diet; and Jason’s father attests that it “kills all the bad stuff inside us”… just drink the Kool-Aid and the allegory cranks on. The satire is so blatant that it’s never obscured by the clumsy storytelling, which make the movie all the more entertaining.
The Stuff functions like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). You come into contact with it (via ingestion), and it gradually “replaces” you with a Stuff-replicant that’s like you, but not quite right. Once infected, the goal simply becomes to get everyone else infected…but not by force. When Jason refuses to eat The Stuff his parents angrily ground him, sending him to his room until he conforms. When Jason “fakes” eating it, his family is pleased.
Just try it, they said. What could go wrong, they said.
The effects include evil stop-motion marshmallow fluff and the gore and facial prosthetics are pretty good for the 80s and remain most entertaining today. At times, The Stuff oozes around like The Blob. But I was quite impressed with the pacing, however schizophrenically haphazard (LOL). Much of the movie (most of the middle) was without interesting effects, yet the utterly brash satire and senselessly incohesive scene transitions of it all keep me laughing.
Here’s something that’s never explained. At times The Stuff expels itself from its host, killing them. This never seems to serve any purpose.
Characters seem to come out of nowhere without ever having been established, then they may never be seen again regardless of the rapport they may have built. The randomness is major! For example, a conspiracy-theory-toting general leading a resistance to The Stuff happens to own two radio stations to spread his message. Oh, and his “army” takes taxi cabs when travelling in military convoys. WTF!?! Oh, and an infected guy just strolls past this army security by making a scene. Oh, and a cookie industry mogul has some ancient kung fu fists of steel. Oh, and this one Stuff-infected dog was his Stuff-infected owner’s boss. Huh? Just bonkers!
This is the face of frustration I had when trying to make sense of the plot.
Curiously, we never really find out where the stuff came from. Did it well up from deep beneath the Earth’s surface, did it crash land on a meteor like The Blob (1988), or did it come in a spaceship like The Thing (1982, 2011)? We also never learn its purpose. It’s clearly smarter than the mindless consuming machine of The Blob. But was it “trying” to take over the world like in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) or peaceful domination like in The Live (1988)? No motive is ever revealed.
The Stuff attacks in various ways.
This movie (or, AHEM, it’s writer/director) may have exhibited all of the smooth storytelling of an over-excited 5-year old trying to explain something he didn’t really understand in the first place. But like a child fumbling over his thoughts in a word-salad of excitement, The Stuff is not without its own special brand of charm. This movie and its franticly forced social commentary are hilarious and it is well worth a watch.
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John’s Horror Corner: Grabbers (2012), evil blood-chugging space tentacles with a sense of humor like Shaun of the Dead
MY CALL: More fun than a drunk panty raid full of tentacles…okay, that probably didn’t make any sense. It has evil blood-chugging space tentacles and a sense of humor like Shaun of the Dead. So just watch this and enjoy. MORE MOVIES LIKE Grabbers: Shaun of the Dead (2004), Trollhunter (2010).
In this unexpectedly charming movie, a likable alcoholic is challenged with saving an Irish community of fishermen from a blood-sucking alien invasion through reckless inebriation. Now I understand that this plot may leave you pondering “just how good could this movie really be?” Just take my word for it and give this film a chance. Think Shaun of the Dead.
Our unlikely hero is local drunkard Ciarán O’Shea (Richard Coyle; BBC’s Coupling) and, of course, he of all people makes the discovery that the tentacular aliens are allergic (even deadly so) to the local lushes’ high blood-alcohol content. Nice choice to begin your invasion, aliens. You’re deathly allergic to alcohol and you crash-landed off the coast of Ireland. Smart choice!
Good call on the rolled up magazine. Definitely my weapon of choice.
Grabbers come in different sizes.
Because we can’t have a proper hero without some romantic tension, the local bar wench exerts some uncomfortable yet cute pressure in coupling Lisa (Ruth Bradley; Beauty and the Beast, Primeval) with O’Shea. Ruth Bradley and Richard Coyle fair splendidly as a dainty prude who is drunk for the first time (in order to survive) flirting with a drunk who is trying to sober up to impress her. The warm fuzzy levity is abundant and their flirtatious relationship comes off as shockingly convincing. And by the way, Ruth Bradley really rises to the challenge of acting drunk.
They had some fun with the gore effects. This movie isn’t exactly “gory” but it still has its fun with rolling severed heads. The CGI alien monsters look a lot like the giant facehugger that brings down the engineer towards the end of Prometheus (2012). In fact, you’ll delight in the cephalopodic mayhem when it actually “facehugs” a victim. They look great! Oh, and the hatchling grabbers make adorable squeaky sounds like a Pomeranian chew toy–they’re so cute…until they attack.
The dialogue is nothing short of charming and excellent throughout the movie. Almost any time I wasn’t laughing out loud, I was grinning at the marriage of the silliness of these scenes coupled with oft-alcohol-induced dialogue. The characters all play off of each other splendidly and the chemistry between O’Shea and his flirtatious rookie drinker Lisa is a much slurred splendor.
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