Justin Robinson's Blog, page 9

Now Fear This: Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut

Squad goals

Clive Barker’s collection The Books of Blood caused no less a personage than Stephen King to label the young Brit the future of horror. Yet this presumptive crown never sat easily on Barker’s head. That’s not to say Barker is not a master of horror — Books of Blood, The Damnation Game, and The Hellbound Heart prove he has an unrivaled command of the genre, but these are undoubtedly his lesser works. Where Barker truly shines is in fantasy, though is dark, sensual take on the genre is about as far from Tolkien as you’re likely to get.

The one thing Barker does better than anyone else out there is worldbuilding. He does it with admirable economy, throwing in little asides, painting a picture with hints and tidbits just out of sight. Even The Damnation Game, with its talk of mighty tribes of Razor-Eaters (a detail that doesn’t even factor into the narrative slightly) gives the otherwise slight tome an impressive weight. When he really unleashes his imagination, as he did with his young adult masterpiece Abarat, he makes me wonder why anyone else is bothering with this fantasy thing. Barker’s got it covered.

Cabal is one of Barker’s horror works, scarcely more than a novella, but with enough worldbuilding and backstory to support an entire series of doorstops. Like his lesser imitators, Barker tends to posit the existence of fantastic worlds right next to this one. He seldom leans on the tired Chosen One tropes that bog down other narratives, instead creating far more relatable protagonists who never end up quite as you think they should.

In Cabal, a race of monsters known as the Nightbreed live in Midian, a subterranean city beneath a graveyard in ass-end-of-nowhere, Canada. Driven to near extinction by humanity, the monsters hide out in hopes that the world will kind of pass them by. Boone, a fairly average guy, dreams of this place. They started out as nightmares, but now have an almost comforting air, as though he is being welcomed home. Turns out, he confesses this to the worst person ever: Decker, his therapist, who also happens to be a serial killer. Decker frames Boone, driving the other man to this city, where he’s turned into a monster, and that’s where things get weird.

Barker adapted his own novel for the screen, but found it butchered in the editing room. The 90 minute cut was embraced by fans mostly for the Barkerian worldbuilding flourishes, but was dismissed for its third act transformation into a tired action movie. Recently, Barker was able to create a 2 hour director’s cut, and it is the vastly superior film. While far from flawless, it restores the sumptuous visuals that had to have been Barker’s original motivation for the project. In particular, the several tours of Midian, the camera racing past a dizzying array of Nightbreed, each one distinctive enough to be the star of its own monster movie, are more than enough of a selling point.

Shot in 1990, the film is very much of the time. The effects are practical, bolstered by a few rotoscoping and stop motion effects (that are aging about as well as late ‘90s CGI). The score is a busy Danny Elfman production, not far off from his iconic work on the Batman score. Midian is a gigantic soundstage, with a real sense of place and feel because of it. When the actors are scrambling around the suspended rope bridges like a hapless Broadway Spider-Man, they look like they are really in this bizarre city of shapeshifting monsters. Other shots, including an interstitial of medieval Nightbreed being tortured to death, are done on a soundstage as well, giving it a pleasing theatrical hyper-reality.

While the Nightbreed are monsters, they run the gamut as to their menace. Some seem entirely harmless, while others are canny hunters and mad killers. Regardless, Barker sympathizes far more with his monsters than he does his human characters. While the breed are initially treated with horror, there is nearly always a comforting playfulness to them. They’re not evil, but they can be a little bad. Only the nonverbal berserkers are truly monstrous, and the breed keep them locked up against the world, releasing them only as a nuclear option.

The humans, however, are small-minded bigots who want to wipe out what they don’t understand. One Nightbreed, befriending Boone’s Nancy Drewish-girlfriend Lori, points out that when humans dream they fantasize about changing shape and living forever. Their hatred of the breed is rooted not in fear, but in envy. The human characters are sketched a little broadly — the film ends with a straight-up redneck rampage — but it doesn’t smack of unreality.

Decker, played in the film by the great David Cronenberg, is something between both extremes. As he tells a victim halfway through, he is “death, plain and simple.” With his Liston knife and button-eyed mask, he is a far more creative design for a slasher than this movie needs, and true to Barker’s formidable imagination, is the perfect villain to hang an entire series of slasher pictures on. His most important line is to Lori, when he tells her that everyone wears masks. While he’s referring to his own, it works just as well for the breed, many of whom are at least minor shapeshifters. When Decker learns of the Nightbreed, he wants to kill them, but his madness isn’t rooted in fear or envy. It is what he does. What he is.

The best part about the director’s cut of Nightbreed is that it’s the closest we’re ever going to get to being inside the vibrant mind of Clive Barker. It’s a messy place, certainly, scattered with scorpions, corpses, and the odd slime monster, but it should be a required visit for anyone interested in horror or fantasy. It’s rare to see an author adapt their own work, and it can cause problems, as authors tend to be overly precious about certain aspects of it. In this case, we finally see what Barker had in mind. To paraphrase one of his creations, it’s not perfect, but it’ll do. For now.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: Clive Barker, david cronenberg, Nightbreed, Now Fear This

Tread Perilously Grab Bag: Star Trek TNG — “The Royale”

Erik and Justin divert back to the 24th Century to look at “The Royale,” a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that apologizes for itself at every turn. Riker, Data and Worf beam down to a world of giant ammonia storms where a small bubble of breathable air maintains a chintzy Las Vegas hotel with many sordid goings on. But what does this have to do with the corpse of a 21st Century astronaut in one of the rooms? Erik and Justin discuss the perils of trying to be intentionally bad and the ease with which noir can go wrong. They also talk about that most infamous of cosplayers from the film Trekkies who claims his look was inspired by this episode.

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Filed under: Transmissions Tagged: star trek, star trek the next generation, tread perilously

Yakmala: Escape from Galaxy 3

This makes it look a lot better than it is.

I owe Starcrash an apology. Long time readers will know I reviewed the French Star Wars knockoff way back in 2010. I said some mean things. Some pretty unforgivable things. At the time, I was convinced that was the worst incarnation of that universe. That was before I saw Escape from Galaxy 3, which is somehow considered to be the second entry in the Starcrash franchise, despite not sharing a single character from the first.

Tagline: None.

More Accurate Tagline: In space, no one can hear you moan.

Guilty Party: Director Bitto Albertini, who might have also been writer John Thomas, because that’s a term for penis, and it’s pretty clear that’s where his head was at. Albertini (who is also credited elsewhere as Albert Thomas) is the mastermind behind such movies as Black Emmanuelle, which I can only assume is exactly what it sounds like.

Synopsis: Oraclon, the King of the Night, has a beef with civilization. He shows up in a giant clawed hand spaceship, which (other than an insert shot of a line of smaller fighter vessels) is the only connection to the first movie, to threaten King Ceylon, who lives on a giant space station.

The battle is pretty much hopeless, so Ceylon sends his daughter, Princess Belle Star and Space Captain Lithian (presumably named after the drug that helped him even out a little) to go to the other kings and emperors of the galaxy to unite against Oraclon. The space station blows up.

Belle and Lithian need to make some repairs, so they land on a nearby planet. There are people on it, and they’re all dressed like Greek Zapp Brannigans. They freak out when the bizarrely-dressed Lithian and Belle show up, and decide throwing rocks and waving sticks is the best way to show their displeasure. A few raygun hits dissuade them, and they return to the village elder and are like, “I have no idea what happened! We went out to say hi, and they started with the black magic!”

The Brannigans ambush and capture both Lithian and Belle, who have the survival skills of lemmings in a soccer riot. The Brannigans are going to burn the space people alive, reasoning this is the best time for it, but the ceremony stops when Lithian saves a kid using hitherto unrevealed super-leaping powers.

Yeah, Lithian has superpowers he didn’t bother to reveal until right before the burning. Sound familiar?

But if you think this is getting a little too sane and rational, don’t worry. Albertini got bored with all this and decided, fuck it, let’s make an Emmanuelle movie. Belle’s out bathing in a waterfall when this creep comes up and starts groping her with a flower. It’s like the screenwriter got up to take a leak, and when he was gone, a horny thirteen-year-old took over and typed whatever was in his head. When the screenwriter (whose name, I’d like to remind you, is a synonym for penis) sat back down, he was like, “Well, shit. I don’t want to rewrite all these finished pages. That’d be madness.”

Oraclon returns a couple times and bombs the planet, but he doesn’t find his quarry the first time because they never bothered to actually repair their ship. Eventually, they do, and good thing. The Brannigans turn on them, blaming them for Oraclon being such a douchebag.

Belle and Lithian go into space where they finally have sex. Oraclon creepily watches because he has cameras in their ship or something. I don’t know. It’s weird. Turns out, all this fucking had a purpose. They somehow leveled up.

So they pretend to surrender to Oraclon, but instead Belle just straight up disintegrates him with her vaginal space ray or whatever happened. Albertini has the same understanding of sex as a ’50 B-movie monster. Either that, or his wife has some really creative excuses for why they can’t have sex. “Sorry, honey, my uterus blast is still powering up. I could vaporize your junk!”

Belle and Lithian (now mortal because who cares) return to Planet Orgy to live in peace. Oh yeah, and it was Earth all along.

YOU MANIACS. YOU BLEW IT UP. YOU BLEW IT ALL TO…

I’m done.

Life-Changing Subtext: Living without pleasure makes you immortal. So watch Albertini’s movies and you’ll never die.

Defining Quote: Belle Star: “After thousands of years our sexual powers have come back to life. And we haven’t suffered any harm. On the contrary, we’ve acquired a powerful new dimension.” Thought I was joking about leveling up, huh?

Standout Performance: Don Powell plays the King of the Night, and he’s the only one I believe has even heard of acting before they turned on the cameras. He’s also dressed like a wrestler with low self-esteem, so there’s that too.

“Be honest. Is the bowtie too much?”

What’s Wrong: Did you miss the part where the space opera turns into softcore porn? Because that’s it, right there.

Flash of Competence: Belle Star’s costume features starfish covering her left boob and right butt cheek. Those little guys hang on for dear life, so I’m giving it to them.

Best Scenes: Lithian and Belle don’t know what sex is. I can buy that. Maybe they reproduce with cloning chambers or ovipositor robots or whatever. I know the creators didn’t think it through, but I’ll take it. Then Lithian sees a stream, and he’s like, “What’s that?” Belle has to explain water to him as something she saw in her dad’s museum. Ha ha ha, nope. Although maybe extreme, thousand-year dehydration explains why Lithian is such an idiot.

Belle and Lithian discover sex the way Albertini did in his sixties: by hiding in some bushes and spying on a young couple. They’re doing some of that gross early-‘80s kissing too. The kids eventually see the weird space people and escape into the water, presumably because they know that moron Lithian is terrified of it.

So Belle and Lithian return in the very end, apparently having forgotten they had to flee an angry mob. You don’t forget your first angry mob, so I’m going to assume this is normally how these two are asked to leave anywhere. Don’t worry, though, the angry mob has totally forgotten too. Probably because they’re like, “the magical sex genies from space are back! Everyone’s gonna get laid!”

Transcendent Moment: So pretty much as soon as these two discover sex from the creepy locals, it looks like they’ll end up together. Or strung out in the corner of some wood-paneled basement waiting for Chad to come back with the amyl. Belle starts trying to introduce Lithian to sex, and he’s about as confused as you’d expect a thousand year old virgin to be.

Then two ladies and a dude happen by and Belle’s like, “Hey, wanna bang?” She swaps the guy and they start up a little group sex. “Watch us,” she exhorts Lithian, and the whole time he has this nervous smile like, “Why am I going to sneeze out of my penis?” But then Oraclon shows up, probably because the screenwriter just caught the thirteen year old kid at the typewriter and was like, “Seriously? No one is buying this.”

“They want us to wear what?”

If this is a sequel to Starcrash, I can only assume Belle Star is the descendant of Stella Star from the first one. And that those hand-ships are prefab and sold from spaceship Ikea. Or, possibly, that no one cared about the rich mythology of the Starcrash universe.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion, Yakmala! Tagged: Escape from Galaxy 3, John Thomas, porn, sequels, Starcrash, Vaginal superpowers, weird turns, Yakmala!

Tread Perilously Grab Bag: K9 And Company

Taking a break from a series and returning to the land of Doctor Who, Justin gets introduced to Elisabeth Sladen and Sarah Jane Smith with the lesser light pilot of K9 and Company, “A Girl’s Best Friend.” Sarah arrives from an assignment abroad to her Aunt Lavina’s house in a small British village. Lavina’s made tracks for the US, but there are plenty of odd townsfolk to have tea and chat with. Sarah also picks up Lavina’s ward Brendan at the train station. It gets murkier from there as the pair discover K9 Mark III back at the house and some local pagans attempt to rough up Brendan. Erik and Justin discuss the origins of K9, Sladen’s numerous returns to the series and Doctor Who superfan Ian Levine.

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Filed under: Transmissions Tagged: doctor who, elisabeth sladen, entertainment, k9 and company, tread perilously

A Now Fear This Roundup

I’m planning to spend most of this week digesting, and frankly, that gets in the way of long, rambling, and expletive-filled reviews.  Fortunately, in the six years Now Fear This has been alive and well, I’ve written a lot of long, rambling, and expletive-filled reviews.  So this Thanksgiving, if you’re looking for something terrifying to watch that maybe you haven’t heard of, browse through this list of (mostly) horror gems.

28 Weeks Later: A lesser film than its predecessor, though it still has plenty to recommend it.

Attack the Block: Aliens attack a London slum, and it’s up to an embryonic street gang to save the day.

The Bay: The ‘80s meets the ‘10s in this disturbing found footage gem.

Bad Milo!: A touching horror comedy featuring a butt monster.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon: A mockumentary on the making of a supernatural serial killer in the tradition of Jason, Freddy, and Michael.

Breakdown: Kurt Russell vs. JT Walsh.  Nuff said.

The Brood: Having kids never seemed so fun and easy in this Cronenberg classic!

Brotherhood of the Wolf: Possibly the finest horror romance period piece kung fu action flick ever made.

Bubba Ho-Tep: Elvis and JFK fight a mummy in a Texas rest home.

Cast a Deadly Spell: Los Angeles, 1948. Everyonr uses magic.

Cellular: A fun thriller featuring Captain America and the Transporter.

Centurion: Extremely sexy people battle it out in Iron Age Scotland.

Changeling: A baroque docudrama about the nature of corruption.

The Changeling: A truly creepy and atmospheric ghost story.

Chillerama: Highly offensive and extremely funny horror comedy anthology.

The Company of Wolves: Neil Jordan’s fairy tale phantasmagoria that’s probably his way of dealing with sexual abuse.

Cube: Six people trapped in the world’s strangest prison.

Dark City: Director’s Cut: A new edit transforms a good film into a great one.

Deep Rising: A creature feature in the tradition of the best b-movies.

The Descent: A modern classic of survival horror so scary it barely even needs its monsters.

Dick: A comedy about Dick (Nixon).

Dog Soldiers: Werewolves hunt British soldiers through the Scottish highlands.

Drop Dead Gorgeous: A pitch black comedy finally getting its cult due.

Fido: The story of a utopia or dystopia. Or zomtopia.

Frailty: A creepy Southern Gothic tale about God.

Freddy vs. Jason: Two horror icons duke it out.

The Ghost and the Darkness: Building a bridge is tough when you’re dealing with two of the worst serial killers in history who also happen to be lions.

The Gift: A creepy Southern Gothic gem from the minds of Sam Raimi and Billy Bob Thornton.

Ginger Snaps: Lycanthrophy serves as a metaphor for puberty for a pair of gothy Irish twins.

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed: A symbol-happy sequel with a stunning twist.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch: The anarchic sequel/parody of the horror blockbuster.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters: So much better than it looks.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II: An underrated sequel ramps up the worldbuilding.

High Tension: A French extremism homage to classic horror of the ‘70s

The Hitcher: A stark cat-and-mouse story in the unforgiving desert.

The House of the Devil: An ‘80s homage so loving it’s a wonder I didn’t dream it.

The Innkeepers: A slow and moody film that accurately captures the realities of the workplace.

Ironclad: A group of badasses defend a castle.

Insidious: An eerie gore-free ghost story from the guys behind Saw.

Insidious Chapter 2: An effective sequel to a true horror gem.

Joe Versus the Volcano: A sweet romantic fantasy about the importance of dreaming big.

Josie and the Pussycats: A fun musical comedy.

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau: A great documentary about a terrible film.

May: An indie dramedy gone horribly awry.

The Missing: An Apache sorcerer kidnaps a girl to sell her into slavery, Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones to the rescue.

The Mist: Though adapted from a Stephen King novella, this is one of the best Lovecraft movies ever made.

Mute Witness: Hitchcockian yarn about a mute girl targeted for death by Russian snuff film makers.

My Boyfriend’s Back: It’s a one joke picture, but you gotta admit the joke is pretty funny.

Outlander: Alien Jesus + Vikings vs. Dragon.

Pontypool: A truly original take on zombies.

Predators: Basically an episode of Deadliest Warrior with fucking Predators.

The Purge: Anarchy: A sequel that finally fulfills the squandered promise of the original.

Rare Exports: A truly original Christmas horror film.

Ravenous: You are who you eat.

The Sacrament: A disturbing fictionalized account of Jonestown.

Series 7: The Contenders: An early satire of reality television.

Session 9: This whole goddamn movie is haunted.

Splice: Why you should never use metaphor with your mutant.

Stake Land: A survival horror movie with indie cred.

The Strangers: Lock the doors, bar the windows.  Doesn’t matter.  They’re already in the house.

Streets of Fire: A rock and roll fable.

The Stuff: Are you eating it, or is it eating you?

Teeth: A young woman makes friends with her mutation.  Say cheese!

Them!: ‘50s atomic horror classic about giant ants.

The Thin Blue Line: An Errol Morris classic that doubles as a terrifying horror story.

Trollhunter: The best found footage movie ever made.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil: Ingenious hicksploitation parody that gives us The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from Leatherface’s point of view.

You’re Next: An inversion of the classic home invasion horror thriller.

Enjoy your terror!

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: 28 Weeks Later, Attack the Block, Bad Milo!, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, Breakdown, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Bubba Ho-Tep, cast a deadly spell, Cellular, Centurion, Changeling, Chillerama, Cube, Dark City, Deep Rising, Dick, Dog Soldiers, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Fido, Frailty, Freddy vs. Jason, Ginger Snaps, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, High Tension, Insidious, Insidious Chapter 2, Ironclad, Joe Versus the Volcano, Josie and the Pussycats, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's The Island of Dr. Moreau, May, Mute Witness, My Boyfriend's Back, Now Fear This, Outlander, Pontypool, Predators, Rare Exports, Ravenous, Series 7: The Contenders, Session 9, Splice, Stake Land, Streets of Fire, Teeth, The Bay, The Brood, The Changeling, The Company of Wolves, The Descent, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Gift, The Hitcher, The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers, The Missing, The Mist, The Purge: Anarchy, The Sacrament, The Strangers, The Stuff, The Thin Blue Line, Them!, Trollhunter, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, You're Next

Lifetime Theater: No One Would Tell

I seldom tell everyone up front who’s in a specific Lifetime movie. I generally prefer to let the insanity stand on its own two legs before hitting the reader with the punchline: “Oh yeah, and it stars Phylicia Rashad, Garth Brooks, and Amy Fisher.” This week, I need to frontload the cast, because this thing is exactly what you think of when you think Lifetime, down to the pitch perfect cast of former TV stars, musicians, recognizable faces, and one truly bizarre stuntcasting decision that ties the whole thing together like a rug an Asian guy just pissed on.

You have Full House’s Candace Cameron in the lead, with Fred Savage as her meathead boyfriend/villain, Michele Phillips from the Mamas and the Papas as Cameron’s mom, and Season Hubley as Savage’s mom. Heather McComb, who guest-starred in one of my favorite X-Files episodes of all time (the one with the Satanist PTA) plays Cameron’s best friend Nicki, and Justina Machado of Six Feet Under plays the other, while Eric Balfour has a small but crucial role as a pal of Savage’s. Rodney Eastman also makes an appearance, and he is likely most familiar as the mute kid in Dream Warriors, but was in a terrible movie my cousin and I were obsessed with mostly due to its incredible TV Guide synopsis: “Teen gets respect, girlfriend with raygun.” And that stuntcasting I alluded to? That would be Sally Jessy Raphael as a judge.

The Notorious SJR

Now, it just occurred to me that a younger reader (do I have any of those?) might have no idea who any of these people are. Especially Sally Jessy Raphael, though she does have the three-name trend of young, attractive actresses from the late ‘90s. You might imagine her in a short-lived WB show about witch-hunters falling in love with witches or something. No, SJR (as she has never been known), was part of the daytime talk show trend, which reached its zenith and nadir at the same time, with former mayor Jerry Springer. Having her play a judge who reads the moral of the story to the audience in case any of them missed it, is pretty much beyond perfect.

It’s probably pretty obvious by this point that we’re in the past. While the Lifetime network is not known for nabbing stars at the height of their popularity, casting SJR now would likely lead to some confused blinking and maybe a few, “Oh yeah, I remember her… didn’t she do commercials for Old Navy?” No One Could Tell was released in the Year of Our Grunge 1996.

…oh god, was it ever.

Watching this thing was like getting beaten with a sack of Clueless DVDs all wrapped up in a flannel shirt. The styles could have come out of a time machine, and owing to Lifetime’s more modest budget, they were considerably more accurate than other examples. They couldn’t spend a ton of money making everything up, so you got tons of baby blue jeans, high waists, big belts, belly shirts, layered hair, and I could go on, but I’m getting myself worked up here. The whole thing looked like a Delia’s catalogue.

Since this project started, it’s my first real dip into the Lifetime that most people think of when they hear that word. It’s also my first return to the ‘90s since I finished up with Blossom those many years ago. I can report now, for certain, that the network we know was definitely a thing. Unfortunately, this movie isn’t one of the parodies you’d hope for with nothing but wish-fulfillment. This one (as evidenced by the fact it needed a third act judge to tell all the characters how badly they suck) is a downer.

Candace Cameron gets in an abusive relationship with Fred Savage, which amounts to the most bizarre sitcom crossover ever. Savage also has undergone an Anthony Michael Hall in Edward Scissorhands transformation, and he basically spends the entire film working out, wrestling, or slapping Cameron around. There’s also a framing device in the beginning where Savage and Balfour drive Cameron out into the woods, then Savage and Cameron go off alone, with Savage coming back covered in blood and holding a knife. Or, as an OJ juror might say, “reasonable doubt.” Fuck you, this is 1996, I get one OJ joke. I made an Amy Fisher reference and none of you assholes batted an eye.

Where was I? Right, the bulk of the running time goes to Cameron’s relationship, which gets etched all over her skin in the form of bruises. Only Nicki really thinks anything is wrong, but her objections are too little too late, and tempered by the fact that she doesn’t want to lose Cameron as a friend. There’s a reason “don’t shoot the messenger” is an adage, and it’s not because people are forgetting to shoot that person. Eventually, Cameron dumps Savage, but he lures her out to those woods and things go bananas.

I have absolutely no idea how this body disposal is supposed to work. Granted, I don’t think the Lifetime network should turn into a how-to on murder, but a little realism wouldn’t be a terrible idea. They’re out by the lake, which is where teenagers go, I guess, when they live in a place with standing water. I’m from California, and as you might have heard, we don’t have that. At all. It’s sort of a problem.

It’s initially filmed that Cameron screams, goes silent, and then Savage comes wandering out of the woods looking like he tried to give Carrie White a pelvic exam. Then, in a flashback, we see him wrap up the body in plastic and tape, row it out into the lake, and dump it over the side. First off… that’s water, Fred Savage. You can’t wash your hands in it? Second… did you leave that shit out there? How pre-meditated was this? We never get an answer, either. Savage spends the whole movie protesting his innocence until Balfour gets an attack of conscience.

So what did we learn? Fortunately, I don’t have to think of it, since SJR flat out tells me in the end. Don’t beat or murder anyone (though she doesn’t really concentrate on this). No, the real evil was perpetrated by the friends who sat back and let this happen. Is that accurate? I don’t really know. Maybe blame the person who committed the crime, since, you know, it’s a crime and all. Just a thought.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: Candace Cameron, domestic violence, Fred Savage, Lifetime Theater, Michele Phillips, No One Would Tell, Oh god the '90s, Sally Jessy Raphael, the '90s

Tread Titan Perilously: Episode 7

The penultimate episode of Treat Titan Perilously focuses on losers and losing. In the grimdark world where Jogger Titans roam free, Erik and Justin discuss topics as varied as The Prisoner, Watchmen, The Wire and The Walking Dead. The Scouts fail at their mission and reaching the basement has never seemed farther away. Eren reveals that he is a poor MMA fighter, Mikasa returns to defend Eren and Titan Hunter Lestat reveals he can use the screw attack.

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Filed under: Transmissions Tagged: attack on titan, enterainment, the prisoner, The Walking Dead, The Wire, tread perilously, Watchmen

Now Fear This: Frailty

Texas is a flat circle.

What is the role of the Almighty in fiction? It’s an ongoing debate, and there’s no correct answer. Humans tend to have widely diverging belief systems, even amongst those who are supposedly practicing the same faith. The existence of the supernatural in anyone’s fiction is going to default to the beliefs of the author. An atheist writer will assume no divine presence unless the story specifically calls for it, while a theist will assume some flavor of the godhead conforming to their conception of it. Most often, this presence or non-presence doesn’t really matter at all. God exists in the world of Pride and Prejudice, but it never comes up. There is no god in the Foundation series, and no one cares. Sometimes, though, God steps down and gets involved.

Some of the greatest fiction of the late 20th Century includes events specifically described by the characters (and not contradicted in the subtext) as divine miracles. Raiders of the Lost Ark culminates in a scene of literal wrath of God, cleaning up all the troublesome Nazis, but sparing Indy and Marion because they remembered they have eyelids. Pulp Fiction has a lesser event, but as Jules points out, it’s not about the size of the miracle. God saved both Jules and Vincent, and because Jules listened, he walked away and lived (and left Vincent unguarded, allowing Butch to kill him, but still).

The overuse of the divine to wrap up problems even has a name: deus ex machina. Meaning “god from the machine,” this dates back to early forms of drama when an actor portraying god, helped by a literal machine (I’ve always pictured them a bit like cherrypickers with fake clouds glued to them), comes down from the rafters and sorts out the trouble in the play. “You marry him, you marry him, and you go to hell to hang out with Hitler, Jared from Subway, and the guy who invented autotune.” The idea is that this cheapens the drama. Who cares about anything if God sorts it out in the end just like He wanted? What’s the purpose of the struggle at all?

And yes, this flies in the face of conventional theology too: where’s the free will we’re always hearing so much about? Characters don’t technically have free will, sure, but they also don’t really murder each other. It’s called suspension of disbelief.

When is deus ex machina okay? There is no real answer. What bothers some people doesn’t matter to others. It might have something to do with the viewer’s own beliefs — a theist might be more inclined to accept the involvement of the Almighty — but I’ve never done anything even approaching a scientific study. So who knows? I know that I am one of those who hates the form with a burning passion, to the point that the end of Raiders, a movie I love, never sat quite right with me.

That’s not to say any presence of God instantly derails my enjoyment of a movie at all. This week’s flick, Frailty, implies the existence of a fascinating and terrifying God, and it does it through the lens of a sleepy Southern Gothic gem of a horror flick, directed by none other than the great character actor Bill Paxton. Yes, that Bill Paxton.

Him.

It stars Paxton as the unnamed “Dad,” who awakens one night after having had a vision. An angel came down from heaven and informed him that it’s his duty to go out and kill demons disguised as people. He’ll get three magic weapons, which turn out to be a lead pipe, a double-headed axe, and a pair of work gloves, and a list of people who are secretly demons. God basically showed up and declared him an honorary Winchester brother.

In the afterglow of his religious ecstasy, he wakes him his two boys, Fenton (Matt O’Leary, most famous as Brain in the excellent noir Brick) and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter, the asshole quarterback in Friday Night Lights). Fenton sees his father as dangerously insane, while Adam accepts what’s going on with the chilling peace of the dutiful son. Dad begins taking demons — who are totally people — and when he touches them without the gloves, he can see their sins. They’re murderers and pedophiles all, and he kills them with the axe, chopping them up and burying them in the city rose garden next door. Later on, law enforcement gets a note from the God’s Hand serial killer.

The entire thing is told in flashback when adult Fenton (Matthew McConaughey on a dry run with the character who would become Rust Cohle), lays the entire story at the feet of FBI agent Wesley Doyle (Powers Boothe). It’s probably not much of a surprise that this is setting up for a stunning third act twist, a twist McConaughey expertly foreshadows with extremely subtle acting choices. He reins in his formidable movie star charisma to portray a man entirely shattered by a childhood spent raised by a madman.

How insane is Dad really? Through the bulk of the film, as we see him through the eyes of skeptical Fenton, we are led to believe that he is a serial killer and nothing more. Periodically, he insists they will have supernatural aid. Taking one victim from a parking lot in broad daylight, Fenton asks how they won’t be caught. “God will blind them,” Dad says about the people all around. There’s no accompanying physical manifestation, but sure enough, they get the “demon” back to their slaughterhouse without any trouble.

Dad’s devotion, or psychosis, gets its sternest test when Fenton goes to the sheriff. Dad ends up murdering the man, and he’s visibly distraught. It’s the first person he’s ever killed, after all. The others were all demons. He tearfully lays the death at Fenton’s feet, as the price for not trusting him.

By the end of the movie, it’s pretty obvious that the God of Dad’s fantasies is quite real, and thus the vision was as well. The war in heaven has arrived, and people like Dad are the ones fighting it. The serial killers have become our heroes. Or, perhaps, it was never God at all. The devil is the great deceiver. While the ultimate source remains murky, the presence of the divine — which sets up rather than solves the twist — enhances a story that was already plenty great without it.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: Bill Paxton, demons, Frailty, God's Hand, Matthew McConaughey, Now Fear This, serial killer, Southern Gothic

Tread Titan Perilously: Episode 6

Erik’s prediction about the basement is woefully wrong as the scouts encounter the Jogger titan. While Eren dithers about taking action, Armin comes more into his own. The Jogger also owns a number of scouts. Erik and Justin appreciate several things about episode 17-19 and wonder if, perhaps, anime fans hold onto just a few things in the midst of otherwise dreadful series. Lestat, Dr. Hengle and Rainer continue to be great as the program (re)introduces horse whisperer Christa.

With the end in sight, though, Erik doubts we’ll ever reach the basement.

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Filed under: Transmissions Tagged: attack on titan, tread perilously

Yakmala: Double Down

Notice the unattributed pull quotes.

In the history of my bad movie scholarship, I’ve proposed several unifying theories. Perhaps the most important has been the Insane Foreign Businessman Auteur Theory, in which a wealthy oddball from overseas tries to emulate the movies he loves so much and comes up wanting. The Room, Miami Connection, and Troll 2 are all great examples. But what happens when an American somehow doesn’t understand the basic grammar of American movies? Then you get auteur Neil Breen and his bizarre paranormal techno-thriller arthouse blockbuster Double Down.

Tagline: None

More Accurate Tagline: The Bourne Incomprehensibility

Guilty Party: Neil Breen. Normally I’d list all the things the auteur in question did, just to give the reader an idea of how much of his stink (and it’s always a dude) has been rubbed over this thing. With Double Down, it’s almost easier to list what Breen didn’t do. Makeup and lighting spring immediately to mind, because the credit in the end is listed as, no shit, “NONE.”

Synopsis: Holy shit, you guys, Aaron Brand (Neil Breen) is awesome. He majored in computer science and was first in his class in college. He was a fighter pilot and got all these medals, which he now puts on a sweet jean vest that’s only missing a kickass Whitesnake badge on the back. Then he was a covert agent for the government, but went rogue, and now he works for the highest bidder. It’s basically the resume you wrote at thirteen when you thought Solid Snake could stand to butch it up a little.

Brand cut ties with the government after they murdered his girlfriend, which is basically the dumbest thing they could have done. I have no idea what they were even trying to do, but if I started listing every single time that happened in this movie, this would go from being a review to a hostage situation.

Anyway, Brand basically turns himself into a tuna-gulping homeless man. He lives out in the desert in his Mercedes, hacking into government stuff and scampering gingerly over the reddish rocks on a perpetual spirit quest. He’s mostly bummed about his special lady being whacked, and having visions of her and him as kids. Occasionally he runs into a dying old man who’s supposed to symbolize America because Breen has been hiding his medication under his tongue this whole time.

He gets hired to shut down the Vegas strip for two months, and there’s some airborne anthrax running around too. He puts that on a guy, but nothing ever comes of it. I… I don’t even know what’s supposed to be happening here. Breen spends most of his time telling us via voiceover how ball-shatteringly awesome he is, then moping around the desert, checking on a sleeping bag where he keeps his girlfriend’s bones.

Eventually, he realizes literally no good person ever has used anthrax for anything, and he kills his employers — although some of them kill each other for no reason — and wanders off into the desert. He’s at peace with his girlfriend too, probably because she was a ghost being like, “Dude, stop putting anthrax on people.” That’s a good ghost right there.

Life-Changing Subtext: Technology, spirituality, and individuality are good, governments and chewing gum are bad.

Defining Quote: In other movies, you sometimes wonder what the main character is thinking. Breen’s been there, and he has a solution. Why wonder when you can just have your hero tell us on voiceover, or, you know in dialogue! Brand:  I’m so confused and depressed at my double life! I’ve got so many questions, I’m so confused!”

If you’re looking for context, you’re asking the wrong questions, but here goes. He yells this at his girlfriend’s ghost while shaking her shoulders, like he’s upset about some weird racist joke she told to Egon Spengler.

Standout Performance: There’s not a single good one amongst the terrified collection of non-actors Breen somehow roped into his nightmarish vanity project. If you told me Breen was pointing an Uzi at them off camera during line readings, I’d believe you. You have to give this to Breen himself, who, though a terrible actor who delivers every line like a sleepwalker asking for directions out of this clown locker room that’s also his friend Jerry’s living room, is undeniably magnetic. You can’t look away. Sure, you’re waiting for him to somehow literally crash and burn, to discover some new method of failure where the laws of physics are temporarily suspended, but he does stand out.

“What happened?” “Breen tried to do a romantic scene.”

What’s Wrong: There are times you can almost tell, almost, the kind of movie Breen wants to make. He’s clearly a middle-aged guy, and like most of us, he has rapidly diminishing fantasies about being a secret agent badass. So he makes a movie where he’s Jason Bourne. But he also lives in the desert, and that place fucks with your head. Like other desert dwellers — you might know them as the guys who founded nearly every religion that’s caught on — he’s developed a deep interest in the paranormal and the spiritual. So that shit’s going in, like stuffing a sausage with night terrors.

He’s also an artist. So in the middle of everything, he’s going to throw in symbolism, a timeline that jumps around, and, you know ghosts in thongs because fuck you, he paid for the goddamn movie, and what are you gonna say about it, Chad?

It’s a vanity project, and there aren’t even the rudimentary checks and balances that kept The Room from featuring a vampire with a flying car. This is Breen’s psyche, and it is an extremely sweaty place.

Flash of Competence: Breen uses a ton of stock footage, and that’s pretty well shot.

Best Scenes: Double Down features the greatest proposal scene in film history. Brand and his special lady friend are naked in the pool, although his girlfriend is wearing a flesh-colored thong, so I’m not entirely sure if she’s supposed to be naked, or just has baffling taste in swimwear. A sniper takes her out just after she says yes, because even Breen has a better handle on irony than Alanis Morrissette (ooh, time travel burn). For some reason, he ends up floating face down alongside the not-future spouse, like he’s making fun of her for floating like a dead goldfish. While her legs are clamped resolutely together, he’s floating free. Ah, romance. Though he might need to apply some SPF 1000 to the back of that sack.

Whenever Brand sits down with his computers, and it’s always several laptops because geniuses can’t use just one, they’re all off. He doesn’t even have fake stickers on the screens to pretend they’re on, either. I’m just assuming part of his paranormal abilities are using deactivated electronics. He does have a bio-medical implant (shown in disgusting stock footage) that has no other effect on the plot.

I don’t know what it is with crazy filmmakers and go-nowhere cancer plots, but this one has one. While having dinner with some people — relatives, friends, who knows — they tell him their daughter Megan has brain cancer. “Oh, no,” Brand says, in the same tone of voice he might use if he found out they were out of Cap’n Crunch. Then he puts his hand on her head and convinces himself he cured her. Did he? Maybe. She’s never in the movie again.

Transcendent Moment: Every last glorious second.

Here he goes again on his own.

Double Down is one of the most baffling films I’ve ever slapped eyes on. What’s even better is Breen has made two more, one every four years. He’s due for another in 2017.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion, Yakmala! Tagged: art movie, Bourne, Double Down, Neil Breen, spy, what the hell did I just watch, Yakmala!