Undead or Alive

That just ain't right.

The zombie comedy was first made popular by 2004's Shaun of the Dead, and while nothing has really quite matched it to date, Undead or Alive does a respectable job and has the added bonus (at least in my books it does) of taking place in the Old West. And while I would have preferred zombies you can kill with a bullet to the brain, the fact that these zombies are still coherent and can crack a joke occasionally works for the movie.

Can I offer you some delicious brains?

So the film starts off with exposition about how after warring with the US Army for many years, the Apache warrior and medicine man Geronimo performs as one of his final acts the White Man's Curse. That is put to the side after we see our first zombie attack so that we can meet Elmer Winslow (James Denton) who rides into town and gets into a fight with Luke Rudd (Chris Kattan) and the two are arrested and robbed by the corrupt Sheriff Claypool (Upright Citizens Brigade Matt Besser). And who is that in the cell next to them but our zombie patient zero (Brian Posehn) who is scheduled to be hung for eating his family. Well our heroes escape from jail, tying up Claypool's deputy Cletus and leave him against the bars of the cell, and rob Claypool of his ill gotten funds and ride out of town. Meanwhile, our zombie friend takes a bite out of Cletus since he was oh so conveniently left in convenient biting distance, and then Cletus bites Claypool when he frees him from the cell he was left in. Claypool hangs patient zero (who doesn't die from said hanging creating a B-plot to check in on occasionally during the movie as the zombie plague spreads through the town) before he forms a posse to go after Elmer and Luke and rides out after them, and as the curse begins to turn Claypool and Cletus, they in turn convert the posse into the living dead. Elmer and Luke meanwhile meet up with Apache warrior Sue (Navi Rawat), who just so happens to also be Geronimo's niece, who agrees to lead them to the nearest Army Outpost. Cue chase to outpost and big zombie fight.

Overall this is an amusing movie with some nice moments. I felt that more could have been done with the character of Sue since she seems to be there for only three reasons: exposition, T&A, and as an amusing plot device (it happens right near the end and the way that it is handled made me laugh out loud). James Denton is an absolute treat as Elmer, providing the perfect straight man for Chris Katan's Luke who was a little to zany for my tastes here. Overall, a decent movie with enough laughs to make it worth it.

Rating: B-

Thirst

Chan-wook Park first came to my attention with his incredible, yet hard to watch Vengeance trilogy (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, Lady Vengeance) so I was very eager to see his take on vampires in Thirst. Thirst is not your ordinary vampire movie. I mean, there is blood drinking, feats of incredible strength, and a general aversion to sunlight but what it's really about is how doing a bad thing for what seems like a good reason is still a bad thing and, ultimately, very destructive.

I feel like your dead husband
 is coming between us.

The story begins with Catholic priest Sang-hyeon enrolling in a trial to first be infected with the Emmanuel virus, something akin to Ebola, so that he can be a guinea pig for a new vaccine. After succumbing to the virus, he miraculously recovers after receiving a blood transfusion and he is revered by people as a living saint and spiritual healer. Unfortunately, the blood he was transfused with leaves him with a hunger he cannot quench normally and if he does not consume blood, he begins to develop the sores and boils associated with the virus. Being a man of God, he does this by siphoning blood from coma patients without killing them and is able to keep his secret until he begins to visit the family of Lady Ra, her son Kang-woo and his wife Tae-ju. Tae-ju is initially a sympathetic character since her mother-in-law and husband are both callous towards her feelings. Priest Sang-hyeon is attracted to Tae-ju and tries to stay true to his priestly vows while as his vampiric powers begin to manifest. But it is only a matter of time before Tae-ju and Sang-hyeon begin to have an affair and Tae-ju tells Sang-hyeon the Kang-woo is physically abusing her. They hatch a plan to kill Kang-woo and drown him while out night fishing, Sang-hyeon dragging Kang-woo to the bottom of the lake and laying a heavy rock on top of him to keep the body down. Because of her son's death, Lady Ra suffers a stroke and Sang-hyeon moves in with Tae-ju. Eventually, the guilt over the murder drives a wedge between Tae-ju and Sang-hyeon and Sang-hyeon strangles Tae-ju after she lets slip that Kang-woo never laid a finger on her. Distraught over what he has done, Sang-hyeon forces his own blood into Tae-ju's mouth reviving her from the dead and making her a vampire. Unfortunately, Tae-ju isn't as benevolent a vampire as Sang-hyeon and after she callously kills several people, they get in the car and Sang-hyeon drives them out to the shore to see the sun rise leading to the final five minutes which are both hilarious and sincere moments in the film.

The thing I love about this film are the levels upon which it works. First there is the overt vampire story which is original and interesting in its own way, and I love that it's accessible even though it is a culture alien to my own. Second there is the morality metaphor for the path to hell being paved with good intentions, and third there is the fight between the duality of man between his base desires and his noble intentions. Add in beautiful direction and absolutely fantastic performances and this movie is simply a must see.

Rating: A

DIE-ner (get it?)

Well there's your problem.

Holy bad movie Batman. From the moment the title of DIE-ner (get it?) comes up, you must realize that you, or a loved one, have made some poor choices in life if you find yourself watching this dreck. And it's not just that it's not a very good zombie movie with substandard visual effects, but with flashbacks for our serial killing protagonist, it feels like writer/director Patrick Horvath seems to be trying to make some sort of statement. If he's not, he just made a particularly shitty movie.

The movie opens with Ken, our serial killer with his bag of rope and duct tape, killing the chef and waitress in an all-night diner. Shortly thereafter a couple having marriage troubles and the town Sheriff arrive to round out the cast which spends only an hour and sixteen minutes NOT killing zombies. Instead, Ken keeps getting knocked out and flashing back to when he was a child and his mother left, or they're experimenting on how to kill one of the zombies which is impossible anyway, or waxing philosophical about evolution and how maybe the zombie is the next step. While it's not the worst zombie movie I've ever seen, it comes pretty damn close to it.

Rating: D-

Blood Creek

Do you mind? I'm having an intimate
moment with this Rune stone.

Chocolate and peanut butter, two tastes that taste great together. We all know it; we all love it, so why can't the same be true with our movie villains? Well, in 2009 we got to see that theory put into practice with not one, but two movies where our villains are not only Nazis, but zombies as well. Norway's Dead Snow and Joel Schumacher's Blood Creek both utilize this mixing of genres and each works in its own way. At a later date, I will discuss Dead Snow, so let's get to the meat and... well, more meat of Blood Creek.

The story opens in 1936 with the Wollner family, German immigrants, on their farm in West Virginia. They have received a request from the German government to host a scholar looking to do some research into Runestones. The researcher is the affable, yet ominous, Richard Wirth played by Michael Fassbender. After a minor display of its power, we jump to the present day where we are introduced to two brothers; Evan (Henry Cavill), a paramedic and Victor (Dominic Purcell), a Gulf War veteran who had been missing for two years and presumed dead. Victor had escaped from the Wollner farm and asks his brother to go back with him to stop the evil that existed there. You see, the Wollner's, who have not aged a day since the 1940's, have attempted to keep Wirth contained on the farm, but in order to do so, they have to supply him with a steady supply of blood. Blood that he had been getting from Victor. And when Evan and Victor return to exact vengeance, they upset the balance between the Wollner's and Wirth, potentially giving Wirth the chance to complete the ritual he was unable to finish decades before and unleashing him on an unsuspecting and unprepared world.

Baby... you got REAL ugly.

So, I've had issues with Schumacher ever since he decided to put nipples on the Batsuit in Batman & Robin. I know it's nit-picky, and it didn't help that that movie was just awful, but it's the first thing that comes to mind whenever I see his name appear associated with a film. And the man can direct. Just look at Tigerland. And I guess the stars were in alignment here because this is a decent horror film with some interesting tweaks on very old themes. I think it also helps that the cast puts in some very strong performances, most surprisingly Michael Fassbender since it must be difficult to emote through all the effect appliances he was wearing throughout the film.

Rating: B+

House of the Devil



It's right next to the Catholic church on 4th street.



There are atmosphere movies and then there are atmosphere movies, and House of the Devil is one of those films that just has atmosphere coming out the wazoo. On the surface, this is a haunted house story with slasher film elements thrown in and is filmed in the style and very much made to feel like a movie from the late 70's or early 80's. And here the key to the frights are not blood and gore, but a slow build up of tension with just the right shocks to really jangle your nerves. It reminds me of the original Halloween and the way that that movie built it's tension.

As for the story, all I will say is that Samantha, a college student looking to earn some quick cash so she can rent an apartment, agrees to take a babysitting job out in the ssticks, on the night of a full moon. That's really all I will say about it because anything else I say will reveal too much. It's a movie that feels like a slippery slope argument. Because it's not just "Come out to the middle of nowhere to babysit on the night of a full moon and someone said they saw the devil nearby and oh, by the way, the phones don't work." Each level is a reasonable and seperately rationalizable action because the things that will happen just don't happen in our lives. I mean they happen, but they don't happen to us. So each step of eerieness seems silly to freak out over by itself, but when finally taken as a whole are "let's turn on the lights" scary.

There is one thing that I did not like about this movie and that is the opening text before the movie begins. It's that sort of informational "70% of Americans believed blah in the 80's" and "the following is based on true unexplained events". And while that sort of title was part of the style for movies of this sort during the 80's, I think it takes most of the punch out of the climax of the film. If you can skip past it without reading it, I think it makes for a far better film, but I can't say for sure since I can't unsee what I've already seen. But still, it is a phenomenal film.

Rating: A

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is a self-aware parody that also mixes its metaphors and cliches to the pinnacle of absurdity creating something so awful that it travels through that black hole from which none emerge and emerges from a white hole on the other side to become pure brilliance. It takes meta to a whole new level.

The show is the creation of Mathew Holness and Richard Ayoade (The It Crowd, The Mighty Boosh) where they play the characters of Garth Marenghi and Dean Learner respectively. Garth Marenghi is self-proclaimed "author, producer, dreamweaver, plus actor" that's really a caricature of a novel writing machine (e.g. King, Koontz, Patterson). Marenghi introduces each show by reading an excerpt from one of his novels and then explaining how, with his publisher Dean Learner, created a television show too radical and terrifying to be broadcast at the time of it's creation that television executives shelved until this time of creative stagnation.

So what you might be expecting is something on the lines of the Twilight Zone, or the Outer Limits, but what we get is a Marenghi playing the character Dr. Rick Dagless in a medical drama in a haunted hospital that's also playing with the buddy cop dynamic with a hospital administrator that wants everything by the book. So it's not really surprising when we start seeing stories about hellmouths, PMS driven psychokinesis, devolution, a spectral scotch mist, and a mutant space broccoli virus. To add to the campiness, the production values are reduced and good actors do a great job of giving some very bad performances, specifically Richard Ayoade, who hysterically funny in the roles of Dean Learner playing hospital administrator Thornton Reed.

The problems with this show don't have anything to do with the show itself, but with how it's available. While it does air sporadically on Cartoon Network un the US, the only consistent way is to catch it in a chopped up format through YouTube. That being said, it's still totally worth tracking it down in whatever method you can. Here's a taste from the opening credits.

Rating: A 

The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu

Film adaptations of Lovecraft are rare, and more often than not they are pretty awful. But this isn't so much an adaptation as it is a love letter to Lovecraft. A very, very funny love letter. The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu also presents one of the most accurate and concise representation of H.P. Lovecraft's body of work compiling the key points of the Lovecraft Mythos in a three minute animated segment of film. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The story unfolds with the discovery of an ancient relic by the Cult of Cthulhu and the decision by the final members of an opposing faction, a Council of Elders at Miskatonic University (Go Fighting Mi-go!) reaching out to the final descendant of H.P Lovecraft. In the film, they only call him Jeff, but I like to think that his name is Jeff Lovecraft. Of course, because formula is king, Jeff is a repressed 9-5 cube drone with no knowledge of his heritage and destiny and is dragged kicking and screaming through the story only to finally embrace his destiny and save the day in the end. That is really my only complaint about the movie, and even then, it's a complaint that is completely overshadowed by the rest of the movie's awesomeness. The supporting cast of Paul and Charlie add the humor, knowledge, and motivation that Jeff lacks to drive the story forward at a pretty blistering pace as the movie clocks in under one hour and twenty minutes.

While Jeff, Charlie, and Paul are a big reason why the movie works, a movie like this needs a really good villain. And the villain we are given is the Starspawn, a character mentioned in passing in At The Mountians of Madness. But here, the Starspawn is elevated to the level of a General and responsible for the formation of the Cthulhu Cult, an detail not in the Mythos which works for me because really, who wants to try and raise an ancient deity that will only drive you mad and your reward for service is to be eaten first. And the Starspawn looks good. For a movie with what I can only assume was a small budget, they invested it wisely in the visual effects for the Starspawn. The make-up and physical special effects were, on the whole, far better than I expected. The CG was adequate and thankfully used sparingly as its over use would only draw attention to itself and away from the story.

If you are a fan of Lovecraft, this is a definite must see.
Rating: B+

Review - The Hazing

College students have to spend the night in a supposedly haunted house overnight in order to join their respective fraternity/sorority, but surprise surprise, the house is actually haunted and evil shenanigans ensue. You've seen it a thousand times before and you'll see it a thousand times to come. The Hazing is exactly what you think it is from it's description, but it is also so much more.

This movie has a lot of things going for it. First let's talk about the script. The story has been told so many times that the problem I generally see with a movie like this an attempt to Shyamalan it, or put a hinky twist that you'll never see coming. Thankfully, they don't try and pull one here and instead work on dialogue. And it shows as the script-writer takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to the film, giving us the wink and nod every now and again to let us know that he knows where we are all coming from. These moments are some of the most enjoyable of the film.

The second thing that this movie has going for it are it's actors, most notably Brad Dourif. I'm a big Brad Dourif fan. Ever have been since I first saw him on Tales from the Crypt. And he is fantastic here. I want to say that he is under-utilized but I would be wrong. The best part of his performance, in my opinion, is when the other actors are portraying him after he's possessed them.

And now the bad parts. It's obviously a low budget film and that shows in the quality of sets and effects. Forgivable but it's there. The next big issue is direction. There are a lot of decisions by the director that are absolute killers for this movie. The first 15 minutes of the movie are almost unwatchably bad and I can't even blame the screenwriter for that since he and the director are the same person. There are some very poor choices that seem like filler, like the Reservoir Dogs homage where they obviously couldn't get the rights to "Little Green Bag" so he had a friend record something like it to dub over a completely unnecessary slow walk scene. It's thirty seconds of film that simply makes you ask 'Why?'

This is one of those movies where offering a recommendation depends on the viewer. If you're someone who likes horror movies, this is definitely one to watch. If not, well, it wouldn't kill you to take a pass on it.