John’s Horror Corner: Deadly Blessing (1981), a bonkers tale villifying Hittites and house spiders
Despite the clear implications of this movie poster, this is not about Sharon Stone’s cleavage or her mouth…or any soft core porn nonsense!
MY CALL: This movie was made with a few things in mind. Spiders are scary, slamming doors are scary, and snakes are scary. Therefore, simply having all three in one movie equals super scary, right? Nope. Bad, bad and more bad; inadequate even for its time. [D+] WHAT TO WATCH INSTEAD: Equally crazy but better done and more interesting for the era was The Sentinel (1977). Even the misdirected and awful The Nesting (1981) was better than this. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND READ THIS REVIEW: Despite the awfulness of this movie, you’ll find some [bold bracketed] statements tracking our understanding of “the incubus” throughout the storyline and you’ll get a critical list for oft-taken for granted facts of life at the end. You’ll thank me, really. Enjoy.
This poorly stated religious lesson takes place in a simple farm community. Within minutes the man-child Hittite William (Michael Berryman; the bald guy from the original The Hills Have Eyes; Weird Science) is screaming “incubus” at some abstract landscape-painting non-Hittite farm girl. Also among the normal people are Martha (Maren Jensen; the original Battlestar Galactica) and Jim (Jeff East; Pumpkinhead) ,a young, expecting amorous couple, one of whom may represent the alleged incubus. [Do they mean “succubus?”]
One night after some tasteful lovemaking, ex-Hittite Jim investigates some strange noises in the barn and dies in a freak tractor accident—or was it an accident? From afar, a group of Hittites congregate to oversee exiled-Hittite Jim’s burial and say “the evil one is among us.” Curious? There’s our mood-setter. [Is the “evil one” the incubus? Who is the incubus?]
“Pillow fight!”
Lana (Sharon Stone; Total Recall) and Vicky (Susan Buckner; Grease) come in from the city to comfort the recently widowed and never-a-Hittite Martha. Meanwhile we learn of Jim’s shunning Hittite father Isaiah (Ernest Borgnine; Gattaca, Escape from New York) and how he strong-handedly manages his sin-hating family. To his flock he admonishes “She [Martha] is with incubus. She could not speak the truth if she knew it.” He even offers to “buy” their child for “a good price.” [Okay, so is being “with incubus” like being “with God?” Or is she pregnant with an incubus? Or is she possessed by an incubus? Or do they really mean “succubus?”]
This guy ALWAYS looks like this. PISSED!
Now a bunch of random, really weird shit just starts going down. Lana sees a tarantula—which I doubt you’d find in Nebraska or where ever the Hell they are—on her bedroom ceiling, the man-child Hittite gets murdered and disappears, more and more spiders show up doing regular unmenacing spider things, the already dead man-child is hanged in a barn to scare Lana, a farm chick is painting creepy shit…
…Lana eats a spider…
…Hittites are behaving badly…
…a python ends up in Martha’s bath tub…
…no, really, an African constrictor snake is in the F’n tub with her in her little home on the prairie!…
…a Hittite-ette in a night gown goes homicidal, Lana has a mental breakdown, more Hittites are exiled, Martha has a blind date with corpse Jim…
…Vicky is hitting on Hittites…
…and a country tranny gets rough with Martha but she’s saved by the stabby homicidal Hittite-ette.
WTFF is going on here!?!?!?! Are the Hittites behind the killings? Is it Martha’s friends…probably not? Maybe other folks in the community, who knows? Is this schizophrenic word salad of “things” strung together meant to be considered a plot!?! What about African constrictors and aggressive trannies in your Midwest farm house? That’s probably abnormal! You could probably report that as an attempted tranny murder snake! [Okay, at this point the damned snake may even be the incubus. I give up on the incubus!]
This movie is so FUBAR-ed. Nothing makes sense!!!! After 80 minutes of running time we have no more idea of what’s going on than we did after only 20 minutes—in fact, maybe way less amid the confusion. It’s just a series of scenes with “things” in them that aren’t scary and have nothing to do with any of the other scenes of “things” in them. It’s baffling that someone edited these clips together and thought “Yup, we’ve got a solid horror movie here.” [They also must’ve thought “this incubus idea is working out GREAT!”]
All this movie does is illustrate a few key facts of life that we often take for granted…
1) Your love life sucks if you’re dad is still alive and you’re a Hittite.
Ear puller!
Cock block! All in a Hittite father’s day’s work.
2) Spiders are evidently terrifying even with they just sit there doing regular spider shit.
3) Country farm bitches love to throw down for a good catfight scuffle.
4) Even in the early 80s movie cars were exploding whenever they came into contact with fire for even a moment.
5) “The Hittites make the Amish look like swingers.” –Sharon Stone, as Lana
6) A 3-foot python in the bathtub is not an adequate attempt at murder.
7) MOST IMPORTANTLY, if you fill a coffin with live chickens it WILL BE TERRIFYING for the next person who opens that coffin!
IN CLOSING: This movie actually has the worst ending I’ve ever seen. At the end, some hermaphrodite or bitch with Turner’s syndrome or drag queen or Thai boy-girl or something gets killed. Then Isaiah says “the messenger of the incubus” has been killed or whatever and leaves Martha in peace. Not two minutes later Jim’s MF’n ghost appears in her living room to warn her of some shit. Well that came a little late didn’t it, Jimbo!?! She takes not five steps from where she was standing and a MF’n incubus bursts through her living room floor, grabs Martha and drags her to Hell! [Well, shit! At least we’ve solved the mystery of the incubus. It was NONE OF THEM! FML!!!!]
Ghost Jim
Evidently that’s what the gateway to Hell looks like.
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John’s Horror Corner: Silent Hill Revelation 3D (2012)
MY CALL: Its greatest fault is that it offers nothing that original the original did; it’s never suspenseful or scary for even a moment. I managed to enjoy it purely out of my enjoyment of the creature concepts/effects and the architecture of Silent Hill’s nightmare-scape. [C/C-] IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH: Silent Hill (2006), The House on Haunted Hill (1999). DIMENSIONS: This movie was made for 3D but I saw it in 2D. Sometimes 2D versions of made-for-3D movies have noticeable faults. I didn’t find any. Although I could easily identify some effects that were meant, specifically and cheaply, for 3D which maybe felt gratuitous without it.
Evil girl with classic hell fire.
Evil girl with Dante’s “cold” inferno.
On the Original: I’ve frequently heard that Silent Hill (2006) has been considered one of the better videogame adaptation movies and did so paying a respectful homage to the look, style and scoring of the popular game. Despite its faithful to the game it wasn’t a “good movie” per se, and not even necessarily a good horror movie—it was simply entertaining. In this movie we first met Sharon, the adopted young daughter of Christopher (Sean Bean; Death Race 2; The Black Death) and Rose (Radha Mitchell; The Crazies, Surrogates), who was haunted by visions of Silent Hill. Rose thinks it would be helpful to extinguish these troubling dreams if she takes Sharon there. Then they become trapped in Silent Hill, learn about Sharon’s mystical connection to the place, and defeat some cultists who wanted her for occult reasons. Rose was somehow able to send Sharon home to Chris while remaining, herself, trapped in the extra-dimensional ill-fated village.
To the Sequel: On the plus-side Silent Hill: Revelation presents solid-pacing in delivering action, transitions to surreality, and loads of appropriately disturbing imagery. This sequel picks up conceptually right where the original ended…just many years later.
Still hunted by cultists resulting from the ongoing connection between Sharon (Adelaide Clemons; Vampire) and the demon child tormentor of Silent Hill, Chris and Sharon have been evasively on the move since the end of the last movie. As we find Sharon being introduced to a new school she finds friendship with Vince (Kit Harrington; Game of Thrones’ John snow), another new kid. In no time weird things start happening as rogue vestiges of Silent Hill cross planar boundaries to lure Sharon and the force of Silent Hill slowly merges with her reality. When such attempts fail to bait Sharon, “they” kidnap her father and steal him away to Silent Hill. Naturally, and against her father’s wishes, she insists on rescuing him and Vince, smitten with Sharon and somehow not at all shocked by all of this, is along for the ride.
Unlike the painfully slow start to Silent Hill, Revelation hardly ever slows down enough for five minutes of story or explanation between its delivery of impressive effects. It’s very entertaining and visually captivating. However, it is almost never exciting. I feel that the effects were made with “shocking” us in mind, but you can’t shock me without some form of excitation. Instead of an “oh, shit” factor followed by “WTF was that?”, this flick came off with more of an intellectualized art gallery sensation of “hmmmmm, yes…very disturbing, indeed…they did a fine job making this look off-putting.”
Green light! Stab away, ladies.
Red light! Pause on the cleavage bouncing.
I loved seeing the faceless, cleavage-rich zombie nurses and their strange stop-motion malevolence. The executioner (Pyramid Head) is cool and iconic to the franchise, laboriously dragging his weapon to remind us of how silly those gracile Soul Caliber guys are swinging their uber-big swords as if they were weightless. One of them is involved in a pretty cool final fight—cool more as a theatrical spectacle but not so much for choreography or excitement.
This dude is awesome. Check out his Men’s Health cover pose…
and here’s his Sports Illustrated home run derby promo…
and, lastly, the head shot that his agent sent for casting the next Soul Caliber game. Just you wait, this guy’s gonna’ make it big!
Oh, and the mannequin-arachnid animated construct was about as eerie as can be in sound, movement, and even how it spins “web”, “heals” and “sees.” It was a great concept deserving of more screen time.
Creepy.
Yet creepier!
The down-side: In the videogame adaptation process we hope that things which only work in games would be avoided in the movie. One such element, a mysterious amulet Sharon has and the other half of which she “must” find in Silent Hill, made its way into the movie. This was unfortunate as they could have had all of the same scenes without this completely unexplained artifact, which is called the Seal of Metatron. WTF is it called The Seal of Metatron for!?! Who or what is Metatron? Other issues include giving a name to our cultists, the Order of Valtiel, which begs for an explanation that we never fully receive. There are lots of cults in horror movies, but usually the cult is named by outsiders naming them after their ambitions or for their characteristics (e.g., The Children of the Corn). But name some faction “The Illuminati” (The Da Vinci Code) and you know they didn’t just vote on a cool name; there’s a real reason for the name. Don’t even get me started on The Halo of the Sun. All these things, these names and their crappy (if any) explanations, should have been outright deleted from Revelation and replaced with nothing! Other faults are found in the acting as supporting roles by a Legolas-turned-albino-witch Carrie-Anne Moss (Unthinkable, Disturbia) and a crazier than normal Malcolm MacDowell (Entourage, Vamps) are quite over-acted.
Wasn’t that Prince Nuada’a twin from Hellboy 2?
Both the original and the present sequel end with dissatisfaction. I thought the victory over the demon child was, simply put, STUPID! Stupid akin to how the Carebears defeat Dark Heart stupid; like “Carebear stare” stupid There are actually about three different moments, well-separated by running time, which all feel like endings to the movie and all three are equally annoying.
Some chick from one of those Tokyo Gore Shock movies…or maybe a Hellraiser sequel.
All in all the nightmare of Silent Hill is painted with a steady brush to deliver a terrifying dreamscape of suffering, antigravity disintegration, torture and macabre. The acting and simplistic plot are counterbalanced by impressive effects and nifty monster concepts making for an ambivalent review, but an entertaining movie. The keen eye will also notice a rabbit motif, as if our Alice is falling down the rabbit hole to a dark Wonderland. Effects whores, fans of the franchise and horrorhounds should all see this with lowered expactations—but see this nonetheless. Newbies…keep your distance.
Chick, have you seen Donnie Darko? Get away from that thing!
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Prometheus (2012) Vivisected: Part 1: The Unacceptable Discontinuity between Alien and Prometheus
By now you’ve seen it in theaters, caught it at your discount theater, found a good Rip from some torrent site or even bought the Blu-Ray. So everyone’s seen it by now, right? After seeing Prometheus I had very mixed feelings. First off, overall, I enjoyed the movie. I loved pieces, ideas and scenes of the movie; most likely these were the highlights of the initial pitch meetings. But I had a lot of questions. Not because the movie was the kind of movie that “makes people think,” but because the movie-makers and their poorly synthesized decisions did.
It all started with a major misinformation campaign. Previews and interviews building up to the film’s release showcased a movie based on the Alien universe that would be “familiar” to fans of the franchise, but was specifically “not a prequel.” All blatant lies as this is clearly a prequel. Apparently, producers were worried that younger viewers who were less familiar with the franchise would feel alienated, avoiding the movie because they wouldn’t know what was going on. I guess these producers have never hit the convention circuit, lush with teens and 20-somethings (and, of course, much older fans as well) quoting “bad call, Ripley” or “get away from her you bitch” and, without fail, “game over man, game over.” The Alien franchise is inescapable to any television owner as we have been bombarded cheap 80s movie rip-offs (e.g., Alien Contamination, Deep Space, The Terror Within) and pop-culture references in witty, adult animated series (e.g., The Critic, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Robot Chicken)—not to mention the numerous comic book series and the recent videogame-esque AVP: Aliens vs Predator movies…and, right! Or video games and toys that accompany them!
Oodles of comic book mini-series across decades…
I struggle to believe that any sci-fi fan, regardless of age, could have possibly been unfamiliar with the plot or, more so, would avoid an uber-budgeted effects-driven summer sci-fi release. This is the product of IDIOT producers and marketers thinking that you, me, all of us, are IDIOTS! While watching Prometheus, scene by scene, I constantly found myself wondering: Why did they do it like that? As I vivisect Prometheus for your [dis]approval, here are a few things that I found I would have done differently. Today I’ll be complaining about the unacceptable discontinuity between Alien and Prometheus. Why was this a different planet than in Alien? Why was it LV-223? In Alien, the Nostromo’s crew was awakened from their hyper-sleep when they passed the moon LV-426. It was on LV-426 that they found the crashed alien ship like the one we see in Prometheus, “the space jockey” Engineer that we clearly meet [or his twin!] in Prometheus, and the xenomorph egg chamber which was paralleled in Prometheus.
Hey, kids! Stop climbing on the Mr. 1979 space jockey! He probably doesn’t like that very much. Wait! Is he dead? Stop playing with the dead thing!
However, in Prometheus the egg chamber and the “Space Jockey’s” command seat were in different rooms—so it’s a totally different scenario, right? If this was the same engineer in the same ship on the same moon as in Alien, would it really have thrown off any sci-fi viewers new to the franchise? Say “yes” and I’ll Liam Neeson throat-chop you a la Taken! Stop trying to prove that this is not a prequel—we don’t buy it!!! In the end of Prometheus, the only Engineer is attacked by a super weird, super-sized, starfish-Xenomorph thing. He loses this little tussle and is reproductively smothered.
Slightly less subtle than the facehugger from Alien, isn’t it? This one was modeled to solve that pesky blue whale problem they engineered on Earth.
Then—while he’s NOT sitting in his command seat contrary to Alien’s clear implication—a big-ass fully metamorphosed xenomorph erupts from his body. Why didn’t they just put him in the damned seat in the starmap room?!? He had started doing something in there earlier in Prometheus anyway. Maybe, just maybe after regaining consciousness he’d want to go finish it up instead of desperately pursuing some inferior being that he created and was mentally prepared to eradicate like a domestic roach infestation. Maybe even his damaged ship could have done whatever it was he wanted to do. Either way, the movies would have been connected and it wouldn’t have hurt the new film or its viewers’ comprehension thereof in any way. Speaking of alien ships… The crashed ship at the end of Prometheus is in the same damned position as the one in Alien!!! How dare you say the movies aren’t connected! All this decision does is upset fans (e.g., THIS GUY!). Just let it be the same damned ship that Ripley and crew found 30 years later.
So…just to be clear… Evidently two different alien Engineer compounds were made on two different moons in the same star system to serve as weapons-of-mass-destruction manufacturer’s AND at both of these alien factories something went horribly wrong which resulted in killing all but one sole-surviving Engineer who survived just long enough to get infected by a xenomorph (which it “engineered” and should fully understand) which just may turn out to be a queen laying egg-traps for the next investigating cosmonauts AND both Engineer ship headquarters end up trying to take off but re-crash in the SAME EXACT POSITION on two different moons AND in the random dead of space both such moons are—in terms of space travel and years-long hyper-cryo-sleep—rather swiftly encountered because, well, they must be on some heavily trafficked human space route. Funny they never stopped by while the engineers had the operation up and running, then, huh? Well, okay. I guess when I say it out loud it’s not all so far-fetched any more. WTFF?!?!?!
All things considered… I still would’ve liked to see the xenomorph poetically make its way to the egg chamber, foreshadowing John Hurt’s face-hugger fate in Alien or, in this case, a surprisingly similar crew member who stumbled across this surprisingly similar moon.
Hey, Mr. Engineer. I may have a lot of complaints about connecting your movie to Alien, but I still liked Prometheus. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You don’t have to drink the death pudding gook in your little Chinese tea bowl thingy.
DON’T FORGET TO CHECK OUT PART 2…
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John’s Horror Corner: The Terror Within (1989), yet another Alien/Aliens rip-off…pretty dumb, kind of fun
MY CALL: Dumb plot, no shock and rare but splurty gore result in entertainingly bad, but not really the “good” kind of bad, horror that you could probably skip. [D/D-] WHAT TO WATCH INSTEAD: For nonsensical monster rape and mutant alien assaults I would strongly recommend Humanoids from the Deep (1980), Contamination (1980) and Galaxy of Terror (1981).
Okay, so 99% of the population was killed in some incident that goes unexplained yet the desert appears to be rich with life. Normally you would have to search a long time to find so much life wandering about in the heat of the sun. Whereas two post-apocalyptic explorers find a rattlesnake and an iguana in two minutes. This is especially interesting because iguanas aren’t found in deserts. But, for some reason, after the viral incident…well, there they are. We’ll call this par for the bad horror course.
Thank God I still have hair product after the viral apocalypse!
From some sort of underground bunker command center, manned by only a few survivors, we overhear (via walkie-talkie) our two-man foraging team being killed—because, evidently, the guy not only held on to the walkie-talkie while he was being killed, but he also held down the button for outgoing communication. Before their demise, one of them cried out “Gargoyles!”
Yup. Gargoyles! As if the mystery virus wasn’t enough, these mutant monsters are another reason to live below the surface. But mutated from what? Were humans transformed into these monsters…by the virus we keep hearing about? It really isn’t important.
The low budget really stings during the first few monster attack scenes when we never see the monster even though the attacks take place out in the open in daylight! Despite this “plague” that keeps the survivors living below the contaminated surface, when they do go out to look for food they wear no protective gear or masks or anything whatsoever! The movie really gets going when our bunker survivors find a pregnant woman on the surface. What do they do? Bring her right into their bunker! Just because she isn’t dying from a virus doesn’t mean that she can’t give it to everyone else! And hey, how do they get power in that bunker? They’re in the middle of a desert!! WTFF is going on in this movie!?!?!
The survivors have mixed feelings about this pregnant woman. Some take it as a sign of hope. Others fear the addition of extra mouths to feed. But the expecting mother is strangely not happy about it at all either. Of course, one of the handful of survivors is a doctor, so they perform a c-section delivery and the monster baby bites the doctor’s hand and scrambles into a ventilation shaft. Armed with a dog, a weaponized surgical laser, a flame thrower and a crossbow, they try to hunt the monstrous baby. No guns? Curious. I guess they were going for more of a The Thing (1982, 2011) meets Thunderdome (1985) mash-up.
The gore is spurty-spray-y fun, but it doesn’t start until halfway through the very slow-starting movie during the baby hunt. Overnight, if that long, the monster baby has grown from about 8 lbs to 280 lbs. Even if something was capable of growing that fast, I’m left to wonder what it ate to pack on that linebacker mass given the fear of low rations in this bunker. The humanoid monster looks pretty cool for 80s standards. For some reason it has some torn flesh and a few exposed ribs, as if it was a bit zombified. But whatever. It’s neat and has a crazy-toothy mouth. Clearly in an effort purely to upset me, the writers decided that the bunker crew would defeat this giant monster with a dog whistle.
This looks like some zombie behemoth straight out of a Resident Evil movie.
I was surprised that there was no nudity—this being a Roger Corman flick and all—but it was not without its share of monster rape. With such titles as Humanoids from the Deep (1980) and Galaxy of Terror (1981), a Roger Corman horror fanpage could easily be named “Monster Rape Connoisseur” or “What to Expect When You’re Expecting Evil.”
Among the cheap-horror-seasoned cast are George Kennedy (Brain Dead, Creepshow 2), the McGuyver-haired Andrew Stevens, Starr Andreeff (Amityville Dollhouse, Ghoulies 2), Terri Treas (The Nest, House IV), John LaFayette (Fright Night Part 2, Temptress) and Tommy Hinkley (Buried Alive II, Silent Night Deadly Night 4).
As none of the actors, nor the director, writers of effects crew did well, I’d strongly suggest NOT seeing this hot mess.
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Seven Psychopaths
Quite possibly the worst marketing of the year. They are making it seem like a cheeky little film involving cheeky animals and sassy characters. People expecting normalcy will be in for a rude awakening.
Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) is fantastic. His writing incorporates intelligent button pushing and violent poetry. He and his brother John McDonagh (The Guard) are responsible for two of the best films of this decade and he continues his ascent to the top of the independent mountain with Seven Psychopaths. A violent story of real psychopaths, fictional psychopaths and a gnarly throat scar.
Christopher Walken hasn’t been this good since Catch Me If You Can. Colin Farrell does more acting in two minutes here than he does in all of Total Recall. Woody Harrelson takes on the Ralph Fiennes villain role with less menace and more quirk (not a bad thing). Sam Rockwell is fantastically weird and he ends his years long streak of movie dancing in this film.
Seven Psychopaths tells the story of a man who is writing a movie, talking about a movie and being assisted by his psycho friends. After Rockwell steals Woody’s beloved dog the film veers off into unexpected territory and often comments on where it is headed. The movie is self aware, often hilarious and full of fleshed out characters who often bleed a lot. It also features a scene where Woody delivers the mother of all neck squeezes on Colin Farrell.
This film will live on for years as movie lovers watch it and quote the movie. It is a quip factory that will require multiple viewings to learn them all. The film is not for everyone because of the ultra violence, profanity and wonky narrative. It is a wild and unexpected ride into the seedier areas of Los Angeles and the boozy memory of an alcoholic writer.
Sit back, relax and watch your favorite actors as they read a fantastic script with aplomb.
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The Tank Top Horror Film: A Horror Tradition
Co-writer John read my Silent House review and proclaimed “the world needs a tank top horror Bad Movie Tuesday. ” I’m not sure if the world needs a pithy review about actresses wearing tank tops in bad movies. However, I am pretty certain the readers would appreciate an interesting horror observation during Halloween. The idea came from a comment my fiancee made while watching Silent House. She said “Jennifer Lawrence is stuck in a tank top in her recent horror film too.”
The next day I saw a trailer for the film Mama that stars Oscar Nominated super actress Jessica Chastain that featured her wearing a tank top.
Three fantastic actresses, three bad films, three tank tops. Tank top horror (TTH) was invented.
Tank top horror is not a new phenomena. Actresses willing to scream whilst being scantily clad has long been a staple of the horror genre. However, I’ve only noticed it lately and begun to realize how ingrained it is within the horror cannon. The interesting thing is that tank tops often go hand in hand with an abysmal Rotten Tomatoes score (15% average for all the films included) and very little money. The one film that did make tons of money was the Texas Chainsaw massacre remake which I blame on Leatherface’s allure and audiences not being hip to Michael Bay’s ability to produce horrible remakes.
The general result is a subpar horror film that makes a few dollars (Chainsaw being the exception) and opens the door for a remake that will inevitably kill the series.
The main reasoning behind this post is not to poke fun or show pictures of women in tank tops. It is to explore a phenomena that cannot be avoided. These roles are not just for B/C List actresses anymore. If you look at the first poster you know notice that before Kristen Stewart was the highest paid actress in Hollywood she was looking at stuff while wearing a tank top. Now she just looks at stuff in different outfits and makes A LOT more money. She survived her date with the tank top because nobody watched The Messengers and it was better than terrible which makes it instantly forgettable.
The last three TTH films have been headlined by the most talked about actresses working today. Elizabeth Olsen, Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain are future Oscar winners who have proven to be magnetic forces of nature. Their recent films Hunger Games, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Help, Take Shelter, Coriolanus, Liberal Arts, Winter’s Bone, X-Men First Stand, The Silver Linings Playbook, The Tree of Life and The Debt have all featured them as strong willed women who take matters into their own hands. While listening to the Take Shelter (best movie of last year) commentary director Jeff Nichols talked about how Chastain didn’t want to be saddled with the stock “wife” role. Her hesitance to play thesupporting wife makes it all the more confusing that she would play the “tank top woman” in a horror film called Mama.
TTH films are like the 12 mile mud run known as the Tough Mudder. If they survive the mud and manage to be good in the film they will have a long career. If they star in a TTH film called The Roommate with Billy Zane their chances are not so good and they will end up like my brother and I in this clip
Their odds of success also falter when they find themselves yelling at ovens.
Sidenote: I have no clue why Alba is yelling at the oven. I thought the picture was funny and wanted it in the post in the same way I like to include Dolph Lundgrens singing Elvis and Nicolas Cage running around in a bear suit.
It is interesting to see these fantastic actresses who have wonderful resumes putting on the tank top and starring in quickly forgotten films. Is it inevitable? Is it similar to testing almost every young actor in comic book adaptations? Did they want to get in shape for their next roles and the tank tops were motivation? Did they want to see if their acting holds up in bad horror films? The tank top is a strange conundrum in the horror world that can only be matched by the recent crop of found footage films in which tourists go to Chernobyl for extreme tourism or feature demons named Toby that have way too much free time. (Thanks John for those wonderful reviews)
These movie rarely make money but they can be great for an actresses career. Here are instances of actresses who survived the dreaded top.
1. Olsen is a fantastic actress with indie cred who chose a TTH film with an interesting selling point. Silent House was done in one take (strategic edits). Critics basically said “the movie was sub par but Elizabeth Olsen was great.” Studios, producers and directors appreciated that she elevated a bad movie by being convincingly terrified.
2. Jennifer Lawrence escaped horror movie infamy because House at the end of the Street was released in theaters with little press and was out of the theaters so quickly people didn’t have time to watch it. They studio hid the film in the same way Lawrence is hiding from whatever bad plot twist was ahead of her.
3. Mama will in no way hurt Chastain’s career because she is a fantastic actress and Zero Dark Thirty will erase any thought of the horror film. If anything it might get her a role in the remake of Sid and Nancy because now she can pull off the punk look.
4. Hilary Swank survived her TTH film The Reaping because at any given moment she can make like a chameleon and win another Oscar.
5. Odette Annable survived the TTH film The Unborn because the only thing people talked about was how Gary Oldman ended up in the film.
6. Amber Heard survived All the Boys Love Mandy Lane because it sat on the shelves for years waiting for distribution after Senator went bankrupt. By the time it was finally released Heard has passed the tank top horror tests.
Upcoming and established actors have their own version of TTH. It is the Bad Superhero Film (BSF). Chris Evans had to survive Fantastic Four. Dolph Lundgren drove around on a motorcycle in the sewer in The Punisher. Sly Stallone destroyed Judge Dredd and tangled with a pasta robot. Ben Affleck got stuck in a strange playground fight in Daredevil. Ben Foster played a shirtless angel in X-Men 3. The most famous BSF has to be George Clooney’s batnipples and Arnold Schwarzengger’s one liners in Batman and Robin. It doesn’t matter where you are in your career because a BSF or TTH film is right around the corner.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the TTH genre is a rite of passage. It doesn’t matter where actresses are in their careers because the tank top is looming. What matters is how well their performances hold up amongst the badness. Michael Jordan had the flu and still scored 38 in the playoffs against the Jazz. Elizabeth Olsen was saddled with a terrible twist but walked out with her head held high and Oscar glory in her sights.
This Halloween stay away from the Tank Top and watch the classics like Halloween, Poltergeist or Ernest Scared Stupid. Also, check out under the radar horror films like Devil, Insidious, Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil or Session 9. Read John’s Horror Corner posts as well. He covers mainstream, less mainstream and incredibly non-mainstream Horror flicks.
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John’s Horror Corner: Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)
http://whatdidijustwatch.blogspot.com/2012/10/paranormal-activity-4-move-review.html
MY CALL: They dropped the ball on this one and left a bad taste in my mouth marking, perhaps, an end to this otherwise well-done franchise. Not scary. Not creepy. Not good. [D] IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH: Paranormal Activity (2008), Paranormal Activity 2 (2010), Paranormal Activity 3 (2011), Grave Encounters (2012), Poltergeist (1982).
I loved Paranormal Activity (2008), perhaps enjoyed Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) even more, and, despite being my least favorite, I even liked Paranormal Activity 3 (2011). These three movies set the same stage with the same types of slow-building creepy scares while obscurely adding detail to the origin of their poltergeist.
This fourth installment has the same directors as Paranormal Activity 3 (2011), but they seemed to have strayed from the formula that worked so well in the previous films. For example, parts one to three open by introducing us to young couples and families that are likable, and they did this well so that we viewers would actually give a damn when bad things start happening to these characters. They’re always some variant of an American family portrait and it’s easy for us to identify with them. Part four begins by introducing us to Alex, a young teen, and her sort of annoying boyfriend. Contrary to the prequels she is just handed to us and no effort is made to show her finer qualities or her relationship with her parents. In fact, the parents are more implied than presented until later in the movie, when they become more integral to the story. We don’t even get the notion that the parents have a happy marriage as our victems did in Poltergeist or the earlier Paranormal Activity films. As a result, we don’t know much about them and feel indifferent about their haunting.
Alex is meant to be a protagonist much as the daughter was in Paranormal Activity 2. She does the things a protagonist does, but I never bought it. Her character was ineffective. As the story progresses and her parents begin to experience the haunting, we are just then starting to learn about them. Oh, and the franchise story seems to be getting obscured rather than developed in this fourth film which was, for lack of a better word, annoying.
Alex’s family takes in their neighbor’s (Katie Featherson; Paranormal Activity, Paranormal Activity 2, Paranormal Activity 3) young son Robbie after she goes to the hospital sick. After taking in this quirky child and his invisible friend, some strange things start happening. We don’t know what Katie was doing between her disappearance (at the end of Paranormal Activity 2) and this movie. She’s just dropped in our lap and we have to just deal with it. Robbie paints a color-by-numbers witchcraft symbol on Wyatt (Alex’s little brother) which evidently indicates that he is to be possessed during some ritual.
http://www.filmofilia.com/watch-second-paranormal-activity-trailer-117196/
Alluding to the end of part 3, this concept is hardly followed up. Toby, Robbie’s invisible friend-poltergeist, is a mixed bag in this film. The first two films seemed more like “house” movies in which “things were simply happening to people” as a result of “something.” Part three presented a poltergeist, a specific entity, which was actively “doing things to people.” In part four, we get a little of both, demonstrative of poor writing and rendering our ghost less credible. The “things” that happen to Alex’s family are less frequent, less scary and less interesting by far than in the other films.
http://www.filmofilia.com/watch-second-paranormal-activity-trailer-117196/
In addition to seeing people getting dragged across the floor by some invisible evil, like they did in EVERY PA movie, we get a random, boring levitation.
For whatever reason, the directors also used fewer subtle “did you see that?” moments when something moves or changes and if you blink you’d miss it. Those moments were exciting in the earlier films. All we get in this one is two moving objects, a broken chandelier and some swaying doors. This movie actually felt boring compared to the rest of this engaging franchise. Even the meant-to-be-shocking ending was a big ho-hum disappointment.
Even if you’re a fan of the franchise, you should probably just skip this.
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Here Comes the Boom (2012)
MY CALL: This less dramatic and bigger-boned Warrior double-take is sweet and well-intended with poorly written dialogue, but also with perfectly-executed feel-good scenes complete with the occasional guy-cry alert—‘cause every guy wants to be a hero, right? Unrealistic? I don’t care! The writing sucked, but Kevin James’ warmth and solid direction made a believer out of me. Do yourself a solid and see this mixed bag of warm fuzzies. [B] IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH: Step it up from cute, feel-good comedy to the real thing and see Warrior (2011). Want more cute, beaten-up underdog sports comedy? Then aim for The Replacements (2000). “Miles and miles of heart.” Just like this movie. TRAILER: CLICK HERE to see the trailer.
Kevin James (Zookeeper, The Dilemma) plays high school teacher Scott Voss, who couldn’t even be troubled to care less about the young minds he’s paid to mold. But like Warrior’s Joel Edgerton, this science teacher is faced with a dream-crushing financial dilemma. Not his own dreams, but those of his career-threatened music teacher colleague (Henry Winkler; The Waterboy) and their mutual musically-inclined students as budget cuts mandate the elimination of the music program.
Littered with empty plot developments, the movie is poorly edified yet somehow sprouts sweet and moving moments as Voss begins to care more for saving the music program and helping these students than landing a date…with the always lovely Salma Hayek (Puss in Boots; The Savages) who plays the school nurse. To raise the requisite $48000 he discovers mixed martial arts (MMA), in which even the losers go home with a handsome pocket full of cash.
The dialogue is not clever, the jokes aren’t funny and most of the comedy-writing fails in kind—including a woefully bad adult food fight scene akin to a makeover-slumber party pillow fight. Physical comedy must save the day as we witness Voss getting put through a meat grinder of embarrassing losses, combat faux pas and, oh right, an unforgettable vomit-in-the-face scene! Really, it was pretty special.
Where the writing fails this film over and over, good direction and character-acting turns a salvageably serviceable comedy into something unexpectedly special. The novelty of seeing “MMA Kevin James” fueled our interest and filled the seats; a typical slacker-turned-hero funnyman project. But as I questioned the comedic value of this flick, stolen moments of sincerity began to carry the movie. Voss never quits on these kids. Always ill-prepared but retaining a strong support team, he somehow survives fight after fight on the sheer, pain-sponging, admirable dedication to never let those kids down.
He enters the ring seeking no more than to be well enough afterwards to step up to his next opponent. But as he fights to protect that which his students love, he rediscovers how much he loves helping and teaching these kids; he rediscovers a version of himself he thought was retired in his past.
Kevin James pulls a “Warrior” and dislocates his shoulder. Salma Hayek’s got this.
Who’s in his corner…well cast, indeed! Salma Hayek is adorable when she lets her guard down and, later in the movie, becomes a credible love interest for our roly-poly brawler. Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg play themselves for the MMA UFC fans. But most memorable among the supporting cast was Kevin James’ serial co-star Bas Rutten (The King of Queens, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, The Zookeeper… I’m guessing they had at least some part in dreaming up this story together) as Niko. This real-life UFC heavyweight champion is presented to us as a yoga and spin class-instructing ex-MMA-trainer never-was trying to earn his US citizenship. He’s funny enough (for a real ex-fighter), intentionally and grinningly “cute”, and plays a credible, concerned instructor to Voss.
While there is some graphic tandem-elbow-to-the-face violence, parents looking for fun “family night” movies should appreciate this (but let’s keep the kids over 11 or 12). This movie has all of the cute, do-gooder, Pay It Forward feelings with none of the harsh backlashing reality… One of the music students helps Niko study for his citizenship exam, Voss helps that student’s dad with his restaurant by getting him to hire Voss’ painter brother as a chef which saves his brother from a failing and ungratifying business and saves his student from being forced to quit band to help at the restaurant, this also helps save his brother’s marriage, and helping the kids ends up helping Voss. See? How unrealistically sweet.
Also unrealistic, but also perfectly acceptable and enjoyable to me, was watching Voss ascend the lower tier MMA ranks for a once in a lifetime shot against a UFC headliner: real-life MMA fighter Krzysztof Soszynski (but not as himself). James, as Voss, looks well- but hastily-trained, yet not unreasonably so. In his final fight Voss takes a serious beating, earns the champ’s respect, and even I caught myself rooting for him when I dropped my guard a bit to reality. Complete with cliché, Voss does so with his high school kids flown in to Vegas to watch the fight.
For all of the “incredible” and “unreasonable” that festoons this movie, I stand by it as a feel-good flick in which Kevin James demonstrates complete resolve in the face of an insurmountable obstacle. While in real life, sometimes the “little guy” gets pummeled, this is just the “help your fellow man” tale I needed.
See this. 
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That’s My Boy
That’s My Boy is incredibly vulgar. I remember watching Reservoir Dogs at a young age and thinking the swearing was out of my league. That’s My Boy brings scatological jokes to an insane level of disgusting. I’ve sat through some of the grossest comedies and I’ve never thought “this goes above and beyond the farthest reaches of vulgarity.”
The story centers around Sandler’s character trying to keep himself out of jail by reuniting himself with his son and imprisoned baby mama for $50,000. When Sandler’s character was in middle school he impregnated a beautiful teacher and had to raise a child when he was a kid. This of course wrecks havoc on his son Andy Samberg who becomes an emotional mess. All of this happens on the weekend of his wedding with Leighton Meester. Jokes about incest, poop and pee fountains ensue.
The vulgarity is too easy and keeps funny lines from actually happening. For instance, without all the gross jokes we could have more moments like when Sandler calls Vanilla Ice “Vanilla bean latte.”
Also, there is a neat little exchange between Sandler and Samberg:
Sandler: I got you a snake!
Samberg: It died after it ate all your quaaludes!
Sandler: That was the first time EVER a king Cobra smiled.
The duo also have some interesting tattoos which get some chuckles.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard more disgusting things coming from people’s mouths. The film is a welcome return to attempting humor after Jack and Jill. Empire is the the best film magazine on the planet and they got it right when they wrote:
“Not nearly as terrible as burped-out Sandler disasters of recent years, there’s enough funny stuff here to remind us of his talent. Still, it’s not for everyone.”
This movie gets positive points for not being like his last films. I’ve also noticed that Sandler loves casting people from The Godfather. Al Pacino rapped about Dunkin Donuts in Jack and Jill and in That’s My Boy James Caan plays an Irish priest who beats up Samberg then gets knocked out by a Sandler bottle shot.
That’s My Boy is way too disgusting to recommend but there is cleverness amongst all the crap (literally and figuratively).
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Argo
Argo is tense, intelligent and another excellent film by Ben Affleck. The man has proven to be a fantastic director and actor. Character actors must love him as well because he hires most of them and Argo gave many people an excuse to grow a mustache and wear some funky glasses while spouting well written dialogue.
Affleck handles the true story with a sure hand and respect of history. Also, whenever Rory Cochrane and Affleck go back to the 70’s the result is cinema gold (Argo, Dazed and Confused) Argo tells the story of six Americans who escaped from the seized American embassy in Iran in 1979. 52 Americans were taken hostage from the embassy and the six escapees hid in the Canadian Embassy. CIA agent Tony Mendez came up with a plan to pose as a Canadian film producer scouting Iran for a film called Argo. The six Americans would pose as the film crew as Mendez snuck them out of the country. The fake film was backed by Lester Siegel a famous producer and John Chambers a legendary makeup artist. They created fake buzz, script readings and a production office to legitimize the Star Wars ripoff.
What follows is a tense trip to Iran in which Mendez has to make the American’s convincing film folk and not get them hung in the Iranian square. It is an interesting story to tell and you can tell Affleck really cares about the subject matter.
Argo will receive a best picture nomination and the 95% on Rotten Tomatoes is well deserved. However, it didn’t have the stand out characters that Gone Baby Gone and The Town had. There is no Jeremy Renner chewing scenery or Casey Affleck commanding the screen. They had an aura of unpredictability that Argo is missing. Mendez is a fantastic character and true hero and there is nothing wrong with that. But, I quickly forgot about the film despite the strong storytelling. It tells a compelling story capably and makes for an enjoyable ride but lacks the moments that made his two prior films so memorable.
Movies, Films & Flix 