Showing posts with label july is ghouly pronounced ghoul-eye. Show all posts
Showing posts with label july is ghouly pronounced ghoul-eye. Show all posts

Jul 8, 2020

WYRMWOOD: ROAD OF THE DEAD (2014)


Wyrmwood is exhausting, but not necessarily in a bad way. Though its own marketing is quick to declare it as a combination of Dawn of the Dead and Mad Max, what Wyrmwood seems to owe a lot to, in spite of its vehicular zombie carnage, is From Dusk Till Dawn, a film that was so excited to circumvent expectations that the sheer audacious spectacle of it all pushed its audience to sheer fatigue by the time the Geckos were regretting their pilgrimage to the Titty Twister.

Wyrmwood takes a more restrained approach in scope, as necessitated by its budget, but the frenetic and frantic camera work, the cuts, the quick zooms, the Greengrassness of its execution - it soon becomes an entire carnival of clowns burning with neon-colored fire screaming in your face. What that overextended image means is simply: after a while, you want to scream "enough!"


Thankfully, this in-your-face motif doesn't last through to the end of the first act, but then the film runs into a new problem: going from a hyperkinetic carnage-a-thon to a slower-paced and idiosyncratic walkabout. Jokes happen, sadistic doctors dance to disco - and this in a film where a father is forced to shoot his own daughter in the face with a nail gun. It's unexpected, and the decision to do so feels like trying to appeal to every facet of the zombie-loving audience: those who love goofball humor with their undead, and those who don't.

People like to debate the effectiveness of the zombies from the Romero era versus the post-28 Days Later/MTV generation version, and which of them are superior, and on and on. This debate is generally broken down into the ol' walking versus running ghouls. But what it should be broken down to is the approach to the story - in particular, how the zombies are presented, and what purpose they serve. You'll find that the separation of the old school versus the new school becomes increasingly blurred, and after a while it doesn't matter if the undead are shambling slowly after you or doing an all-out sprint. Soon the only question that will matter is this: are the zombies being used for a purpose, or a plot device? Is there a social message at hand beneath all the face eating, or are zombies in right now so let's open that killer werewolf script you have and do a term-find/replace from one monster to the other?


The biggest hurdle Wyrmwood has to overcome is how completely oversaturated the zombie sub-genre has become. To purposely use a bad pun, the zombie thing has been done to death, and except for the minuscule population who simply can't get enough, everyone else has taken two steps way back from the whole brain-eating affair. Because horror subsists on cyclical genre, the zombie thing is a phase that will soon work itself out and fade back into the ten-dollar budget camp, where filmmakers have no agenda beyond good intentions and a story that hinges on metaphors of cannibalism and consumption rather than because zombies are "in." The slasher craze came and went - twice - as did the "torture porn" phase, which was mercifully short-lived. Zombies, too, will one day fade back away into the dark, unexplored recesses of the genre, and high school teen girls (or their moms) will stuff their Daryl t-shirts into the Goodwill garbage bag and wonder just what it was they were thinking.

Wyrmwood doesn't have a whole heck of a lot to "say," and its tonal shift from dead seriousness to smart-talkin' ironic fun doesn't necessarily come off feeling natural. That, once again, a group of survivors encounter a threat even more dangerous than the growing zombie army - that of the military who have let the power go their heads (which has been done already in 28 Days Later and Day of the Dead before it) - isn't doing the film favors. Its involvement of the Mad Max angle (another Australian production) certainly has a lot of potential to inject new life into the increasingly boring zombie sub-genre, but not nearly enough is done with it to make Wyrmwood stand out from the pack. However, given its easy watchability factor, the solid performances, and admittedly excellent make-up and visual effects, a little bit of brainless entertainment never hurt anyone.


Jul 5, 2020

DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004)


I wanted to hate Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead merely on principle. 

The brand new remake train had barely been rolling before one of the grandaddy of all zombie horror classics was announced: George A. Romero’s seminal semi-sequel Dawn of the Dead.

The jaws of horror fans everywhere dropped like a ‘70s Tom Savini over a mall banister.

“How dare they?”

By now, the remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre had come and gone, leaving behind a relatively positive reaction on audiences and a wildly successful profit. If that was to be the beginning of a remake craze that still hasn't gone away, no one at that moment would know. But when Dawn was announced, Internet considered rioting in the streets before deciding to just stay home and bitch about it on Internet. And, if we’re being fair, the earliest snippets of preliminary information re: Dawn proceeded through the usual rank-and-file motions that most remakes would follow — an untested music video director would helm; there’d be no involvement from its original writer or director; the cast would be relatively obscure (including a then-unknown Ty Burrell).

Oh, and the guy who wrote the Freddie Prinze Jr. Scooby Doo movies was handling the screenplay.

: O


But a funny thing happened: Dawn of the Dead proved not only to be the best 2000s era remake to come down the pike, but it transcended all the remake baggage to become an excellent, vicious, dark (and light) contribution to the horror genre.

The aforementioned screenplay by that Scooby Doo guy (James Gunn, who would go on to write and direct the beloved Guardians of the Galaxy flicks for Marvel) was undeniably clever and whip-smart, and which included cameos from a large portion of the original’s cast. (Ken Foree even gets to recite his infamous line of dialogue — “When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth.” — now with a much bleaker approach.) Even the character of Andy, the gun store owner who has been living on the roof of his store, and who communicates back and forth with our cast via dry erase boards and binoculars, was extremely well utilized, offering an atypical but effective relationship that you’d hope to see in these kinds of films where characterization sometimes falls by the wayside. (And the conclusion of his character is eerie as hell.) The screenplay lacks the commercialism subtext from the original, but as confirmed by participants this wasn’t by accident. Gunn, especially, felt Romero had already done it, and didn’t feel the need to do it again.

Signs of the Zack Snyder to come are present, but still dialed back, offering a sense of a filmmaker establishing a style and oeuvre that would be on more prominent display in 300 and The Watchmen. Though Dawn is incredibly gory in spots, the action elements are rousing and intense; Dawn’s entire first and third acts are nothing but mounting tension and propulsive fight-or-flight scenes, filled with an incredible array of gore gags.


The cast work well as an ensemble, with the only minor weak spot being Sarah Polley, who doesn’t seem entirely comfortable working in such a specific genre. She’s just fine in the smaller moments, especially when we see the adrenaline melt off following the harrowing opening escape scene and letting the reality sink in, leaving her a sobbing mess. But in the bigger, more genre-appropriate moments, she’s not nearly as convincing. Ving Rhames enjoys a more prominent role here than he was getting during this era of his career, playing the prototypical Snake Plissken-ish bad-ass who abides by his rules exclusively, but he’s good at this type of role and easily embodies the kind of part essayed by Ken Foree in the original. (With a clear intent on being deceiving, director Steve Miner cast Rhames as a similarly bad-ass military man in his woeful remake of Day of the Dead in an effort to suggest the two films were related. They aren’t.) A pre-House of Cards Michael Kelly plays C.J., the asshole security guard with a heart of gold who ultimately ends up playing the film’s most interesting character, and the actor subsequently offers the absolute best performance in the entire cast.

Dawn of the Dead shouldn’t be as good as it is, and even if Zack Snyder had gone on to do nothing else notable for the remainder of his career (you’d probably have people out there who would confirm this), he at least proved there is such a thing as doing a good remake, and laying out how to do it: respect the original and its fans, take the concept and do something familiar but new, and leave it all out on the field. (Plus a Tom Savini cameo never hurts.)


Jul 4, 2020

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 2 (1988)


Like all other horror franchises, Return of the Living Dead eventually lost its way, succumbing to straight-to-Sci-Fi-Channel sequel oblivion stocked with actors you’ve never heard of (and Peter Coyote) and with budgets so low that they made even Night of the Living Dead feel opulent. Some folks who profess to be horror fans don’t actually know there are a total of five films in this franchise. I don’t blame them. After the classic original film, which I consider to be the quintessential example of how to make a horror-comedy, the trajectory of the ensuing sequels were tonally all over the place, vying sometimes for a straightforward horror experience, and sometimes vying for extreme, unmatched, unprecedented stupidity. Return of the Living Dead 2, the only sequel to be financed and distributed by a major studio (Warner Bros.), is desperate to achieve the same magic tonal balancing act as its predecessor but isn’t nearly as successful.

Return of the Living Dead was very much a product of the ‘80s, filled with a bevy of absolutely delightful special effects and make-up, an inspired punk soundtrack, and a gleefully unrestrained Dan O’Bannon, who strived to push both genres to their breaking points. The teenage faction of the main cast were additionally punked out: mohawks, big hair, neon and pastel colors, leather, chains – you name it. It was very ‘80s, but a different kind of ‘80s.


The sequel wisely chose to eschew this particular punky approach (as it would have seemed even more derivative) in favor of another series of ‘80s tropes: the plucky boy hero, aerobics, and Michael Jackson. What results is a movie that feels more like its own entity rather than something sequalizing something else; Return of the Living Dead 2 is part and parcel with many other horror flicks with this sort of tone that pervaded theaters back during this magical decade. Titles like Night of the Creeps, Night of the Comet, The BlobNeon Maniacs, and more offer a very playful tone juxtaposed against creepy imagery, with all kinds of fun violence to boot. I genuinely believe that Return of the Living Dead 2’s reputation would be far more celebrated had it been released under a different title. Compared to its predecessor, it’s not nearly as fun, funny, vicious, or by default, original. But it’s not a totally dismissible effort, either. (That wouldn’t start until Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis.) Much of the humor still works, the entire cast is game (including Twin Peaks’ Dana Ashbrook and my longtime childhood crush, Suzanne Snyder), and the gore gags, though somewhat neutered when compared to the original, are still pretty icky/gooey for a mainstream studio release.

In an odd bit of stunt casting and surreal humor, James Karen and Thom Matthews (the doomed warehouse workers from the previous film who most certainly did not survive their encounters with the undead), appear as different characters: Burke and Hare-ish grave robbers who can’t quite put a finger on why their new zombie perils feels so…familiar. It’s a weird gag and sort of groan-inducing in its unsubtlety, but it’s still a delight to have them, and frankly is a joke that should have kept going well into the series.

Return of the Living Dead 2 is an example of a very middle-of-the-road sequel. It harps on all the high points of its predecessor without mastering any of them, but it’s still worthy of attention. I’d even go as far as to call it a highlight of the ‘80s, if you can put aside its lineage and look at it as a standalone brain-munching romp.

Jul 2, 2020

DEATH BECOMES HER (1994)


In a crucial scene during the first act, Meryl Streep's Madeline Ashton saunters out of her mansion shared with her husband, Ernest (Bruce Willis), whom she stole from Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn) to meet up with a young stud for a routine tryst, only to see that the man with whom she's been cheating has also been cheating on her. After she confronts him about it, he tells her, "You should find someone your own age, Madeline." Cue the rain that immediately pours down, the kind of poetic timing that only exists in film. Within the span of just a couple minutes, we discover so much about the type of woman Madeline Ashton is: vicious--in that she blatantly packs an overnight bag and exits the house in front of her husband; a paradox--in that, though she's willfully cheating on her husband, she becomes enraged that someone would dare do that to her; and finally, deeply sad, afraid, and alone--in that the only worth she could ever measure was her beauty, and now without it, she feels completely useless.

Beneath the EC Comic vibes of horrific violence and very black humor, there is a pretty potent discussion the film wants to have about the blood thirst between women vying for what they think they deserve, as well as the cog-machine-like machinations of Hollywood, which uses up actresses like Madeleine Ashton and then deposits them once they have out-aged their purpose. It's the kind of conversation that's being had right now, but one that director Robert Zemeckis, and screenwriters David Koepp and Martin Donovan, wanted to have nearly 25 years ago.


Even if we wipe away all the context on display and examine the film for what it is, Death Becomes Her is simply a hell of a lot of fun. Seeing the '90s-era versions of Streep, Hawn, and Willis take on such a goofy, gonzo approach to a film and screaming to the rafters with their performances is what makes Death so enticing to watch. Streep, especially, who is likely the most esteemed actress still working today, seems to be having a ball playing not just a bitch (which she'll do again famously in The Devil Wears Prada and The Iron Lady), but an undead bitch. With Death Becomes Her being Streep's sole contribution to the horror genre (she admitted during a Wes Craven retrospective that, prior to working with him on Music of the Heart, she opted not to watch any of his prior films because she didn't have the stomach for it), she lets it all hang out and leaves it all out on the field. Likely the chance to skewer Hollywood and its ageist approach is what led her to sign on to the film in the first place, but she is totally down with the more gruesome aspects of the story. Seeing someone so high-brow bring her usual level of Streep to something that might appear as if she's "slumming it" is one of the best aspects on display.

And not to leave Goldie Hawn out of the lovefest, who matches her co-star pound for pound, but can we all just sit back and enjoy Bruce Willis giving one of the best performances of his career? The man who famously sleepwalks through one direct-to-video action film after another is almost operatic as Ernest Menville. He's a shrieking, boozing, wide-eyed, scheming drunk, and it is so so so much fun to watch. He's never offered as much energy and actual performance, ever--not even during his five-time run as John McClane--and it's a shame we'll probably never see it again.


Rumors abound that Death Becomes Her was intended to be the launch of the Tales from the Crypt film brand, and being that the picture was released by the eventual distributor of Demon Knight and Bordello of Blood, as well as directed by Tales director and executive producer Robert Zemeckis, it's an easily believable one. It certainly has the make and model of the EC Comic aesthetic down: brutal violence, murderous schemes, ironic twists, sexytime, and gallows humor.

And also the special effects.

Zemeckis has always been a filmmaker, though talented, accused of letting his interest in special effects drive the narrative, instead of the other way around (which purists will tell you is the proper hierarchy). Death Becomes Her is no different, and though its the visual effects that take precedence, the physical ones are equally impressive. Hawn's temporary transformation into a bloated, overweight, cat-hoarding shut-in, for one, is still impressive even ten Eddie Murphys later. But it should come as no surprise that some of the visual effects, though not all, haven't aged well, which has always been one of Zemeckis' shortcomings as a director. In the same way I'm sure the effects for Back to the Future looked tremendous in 1985, and Contact looked tremendous in 1997, the effects in Death Becomes Her are coming up on twenty-five years old, and they wear their age appropriately.


Shortcomings aside, Death Becomes Her is just fun. It's hilarious in all the right places, and equally gruesome in others. Watching the likes of Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn--two legendary and respected actresses--do battle with axes, with one's head being smashed down inside her neck while the other has a broken handle speared through the giant hole in her stomach--feels like a novelty, but not the extraneous and ultimately forgettable kind. Despite all the goofball charm and somewhat limited appeal (mothers weren't quite prepared for this Meryl Streep film), Death Becomes Her feels like it's not just from a bygone era, but feels like a miracle that it was ever made at all. This type of concept is still made today, only they star actors who make a living in churning out straight-to-video rubbish, but that this time it involved the likes of Streep, Hawn, Willis, Koepp, and Zemeckis is what continues to make it such an event. Its appeal--much like Madeline and Helen--will never die.

Death Becomes Her feels like one of those films they don't make anymore, and they probably don't. With all this talk in Hollywood of unbalanced opportunities between men and women, and especially with the ageist issue that seems to dog some of our older actresses, Death Becomes Her is actually more relevant now than it was back in 1992. It's a delight to see its wicked cast take part in something so loony and dark, and it's also a delight that Shout! has resurrected it for a new life on blu-ray. In the same way people don't talk enough about Peter Jackson's The Frighteners, Zemeckis' Death Becomes Her deserves more accolades and attention than its received over the years. 


Jul 1, 2020

JULY IS GHOULY!


Puns for days, you assholes. 

If my extremely clever play on words hasn't clued you in, TEOS is taking the month of July to honor one of the most persistent sub-genres in all of horror: yes, like the flesh-ripping cannibals themselves, the zombie movie will never die. It's been with us "officially" since 1968, when George A. Romero (whose name I'm going to drop a LOT this month) lovingly ripped off Richard Matheson's post-apocalyptic tale of survival I Am Legend, tweaked it for some additional bloodletting, and bequeathed unto the world Night of the Living Dead. With just one movie -- one gritty, low-budgeted phenomenon -- that bearded, safari-jacketed hippie legend created an entire sub-genre, and he'll never fully get the credit he deserves for that. 

During the month of Ghouly (and it's pronounced 'ghoul-eye,' don't be an idiot), titles great and not-so-great will be celebrated, along with titles that one never would've considered to be a zombie flick until I said it was, and what I say goes. 

So grab your braaaaains and join me for a month-long celebration of the undead.

And remember...

THEY ARE GOING TO EAT YOU.