REVIEW: SELECTED SHORTS: POE!

At this point in time, nearly 170 years after his mysterious death, there is nothing more that needs to be said about Edgar Allan Poe. He is the Shakespeare of the macabre, and his prose remains as beautiful as it is intimidating. He’s been a constant source of inspiration for an array of artists – from H.R. Giger to Roger Corman – and he’s as popular today as he’s ever been. From the little seen but frankly wondrous episode of "Masters of Horror" entitled "The Black Cat," to that production's crew of director Stuart Gordon, writer Dennis Paoli, and actor Jeffry Combs as the tortured writer touring with a one-man show, to the recent big budget The Raven, Poe-inspired projects are constantly coming along to whet the appetites of his legions of devotees.

In this new collection of Symphony Space's Selected Shorts, seven of Poe’s most celebrated short stories and poems are performed before a live audience, and the 2-CD set begins and ends with a bang.

Terrence Mann opens the proceedings with a truly manic reading of “The Tell Tale Heart,” reciting the tale not as if reading from a text but more like confessing his crimes to the law. He allows his mania to grow and grow, pausing to disturbingly giggle for just a bit too long in order to unnerve his audience, who laughs nervously in response to the shtick. Poe is mostly known for his detailed approach to all things horrific, but not so much his use of humor, and thankfully Mann helps to shine a light on that particularly lesser known attribute of his writing. Admittedly it wasn’t until listening to these recordings, all backed by a live audience, that I was able to see for the first time just when and where Poe was trying to insert a little levity into his usually darkness.

Probably the most beautiful thing Poe has written, the next track is “The Raven,” which is curiously performed by no less than four orators: René Auberjonois, Fionnula Flanagan, Isaiah Sheffer, and Harris Yulin. Each person certainly serves the tone of the poem well, and the readings are pitch-perfect, but it’s a curiosity that four different individuals opted to read such a brief piece. It’s not quite enough to be a distraction, but it comes awfully close.

Next up is “The Masque of the Red Death,” performed by Fionnula Flanagan. The story itself was never a favorite of mine, as Poe spends a bit too long describing the level of opulence within the quarantined mansion (he was the Bret Easton Ellis of his day). However, Flanagan does an admirable job with the material, even ticking off the elongated details – one after the other – as if she were tediously reading off a list. She wisely insinuates in her performance that the magnitude of the wealth shared by the story’s few should be just as exhausting as it is intricate.

Following that is “The Cask of Amontillado,” performed by David Margulies. He is another reader who brings to life the subtle humor often overshadowed in Poe’s work by his more morbid details. Margulies' performance as the story’s victim, Fortunato, provides most of the humor, depicting the man as an emaciated drunk prone to fits of coughing. Much like Terrence Mann’s reading of “Tell Tale,” Margulies lets a particular string of coughs go on for so long – nearly 20 seconds – that it becomes absurd, and the audience laughs in appreciation.

And then we have a reading of “The Bells,” performed by the foursome team of Auberjonois, Flanagan, Sheffer, and Yulin. However, this time, the multitudes of voices contributing to the poem truly bring it to life, especially at the end when each performer's voice begins to overlap the next, until their unintelligible reiterating of "the bells!" actually begin to sound like just that – clanging church bells. The audience's caught-off-guard and impressed response adds to the effectiveness of this tactic and it makes the experience much more enjoyable. Continuing with this troupe, "Annabell Lee" recalls my feelings toward their readings of “The Raven.” Well done across the board, but again curious that such a brief piece is read by three people (Flanagan sits this one out).

Popular character actor Stephen Lang (Avatar, Public Enemies) reads “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and the actor somehow sidesteps the gravely voice for which he’s known and performs the story with a smoother, almost higher-pitched voice. He hints at a British accent to help transport the listener to the land where the poor main character’s sentence has been handed down by a row of black-cloaked judges.

Lastly, we have the other standout track of this collection: Auberjonois’ reading of “The Black Cat.” His frantic unfolding of the events of the story, peppered with the main character’s insanity, build to an impressive climax of madness and relief. “The Black Cat” is another example of Poe’s humor subtly shining.

Audio recordings of Poe have existed for years, perhaps most famously the ones performed by Vincent Price. And because Poe's works are public domain material, my guess is there's an awful lot of recorded material to sift through. However, this edition of Selected Shorts is one of the best. And with Halloween coming up (fist pump!), it's a perfect time to grab this new set.

Buy it.

More info on Symphony Space.

About Selected Shorts (from the Press Release):

Selected Shorts, the acclaimed short story series recorded live in performance at Symphony Space and broadcast nationally on public radio, is releasing a 2-disc set highlighting 8 of the most popular short stories and poems from Edgar Allan Poe on September 1, 1012.

Poe! is a deliciously gripping sampling of the mad imagination of 19th century gothic master of horror and suspense, murder and mayhem, Edgar Allan Poe. The creepy, breathtaking, and soulful classic tales include: “The Masque of the Red Death,” the terrifying and ironic story of a nobleman who attempts to seal himself and his friends away from a terrible plague raging outside, performed by Fionnula Flanagan (Transamerica); “The Pit and the Pendulum,” a hair-raising first-person account of a man in a torture chamber during the Spanish Inquisition, performed to a fare-thee-well by Stephen Lang (Avatar); “The Black Cat,” in which a man’s dead pet comes back to haunt him, performed by Tony winner Rene Auberjonois (Boston Legal). Plus there are dreamy, mesmerizing and haunting readings of Poe’s wonderfully-atmospheric best-loved poems, “The Bells,” “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee.”

These thrilling performances will leave you breathless and happily terrified.

The 2 CD set contains:

The Tell-Tale Heart performed by Terrance Mann

The Raven performed by René Auberjonois, Fionnula Flanagan, Isaiah Sheffer and Harris Yulin

The Masque of the Red Death performed by Fionnula Flanagan

The Cask of Amontillado performed by David Margulies

The Bells performed by René Auberjonois, Fionnula Flanagan, Isaiah Sheffer and Harris Yulin

The Pit and the Pendulum performed by Stephen Lang

Annabel Lee performed by René Auberjonois, Isaiah Sheffer and Harris Yulin

The Black Cat performed by René Auberjonois

Selected Shorts is an award-winning, one-hour radio program featuring readings of classic and new short fiction, recorded live at New York’s Symphony Space and on tour around the US. Each week on public radio stations nationwide, great actors from stage, screen, and television bring short stories to life. One of the most popular series on the airwaves, this unique show is hosted by Isaiah Sheffer and produced for radio by Symphony Space and WNYC New York Public Radio, and distributed by PRI. Selected Shorts is broadcast on 143 public radio stations nationwide for 300,000 listeners weekly. The podcast has over 300,000 iTunes subscribers.

LEVITY

Word on the street is Soylent Green is made of people.

(Probably more of that left-wing propaganda.)

SHITTY FLICKS: JAWS: THE REVENGE

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis.

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

Pre-3D Dennis Quaid, the Jaws series was pretty respectable, and granted, while we're only talking two films here, Jaws 2 had a lot to live up to. Compared to how sequels usually go, Amity's second go-around with a killer shark is pretty good. But then that fateful day came when Jaws: The Revenge/Snooki was born. And they have been lowering the bar ever since.

Jaws: The Revenge begins in December in the small, sea-side town of Amity. Choirs rehearse, people merrily shop, and a shark uncharacteristically swims in the freezing cold Amity waters, hanging out near the old piece of drift wood it's put in place to lure out the youngest son of his arch nemesis, Chief Brody (Roy Scheider, who opted not to return in any further Jaws films following Jaws 2, yet would agree to star in even worse direct-to-video sequels to fucking Dracula 2000—but I’m not bitter. RIP, by the way).

Ellen Brody, widow of Martin, fries a disturbing looking fish for dinner as her youngest son, Sean, the new Chief Brody of Amity, hangs out and stares at his mother with an unintentional, yet undeniable, look of lust. They receive a call from Mike, the eldest Brody son (cult hero Lance Guest) who is on a cushy grant assignment in the Bahamas. They make witty phone banter, reminding us that this is what real families do, and that what we’re about to experience—a shark methodically stalking members of a specific bloodline—is a problem real families face every day.

"Yeah, sure, I'll do 'Revenge of Jaws.' Just let me beat
my pride with a log and I'll be right there." - Roy Scheider

Later, Sean, having Christmas shopped while on duty, is on his way out the police station door to spend the holidays with his family when Polly, his old hen secretary, informs him that some piece of drift wood is caught under a buoy and needs to be towed away, lest it cause some sort of accident from all that late night, bitter-as-cold Christmas traffic. Brody relents, climbing aboard his boat after reminding various passersby that he shares a connection with them—that he is a part of their lives and history, as they are a part of his.

And then the shark eats both of his arms.

Seriously? A man who has had two previous shark encounters feels his best course of action, after having both arms ripped off by a shark that is intent on killing him, is to lean his whole fucking body over the side of his boat as he shouts to the nearby shore for help?

Of course, no one hears him, and he is eaten about as quickly as the realization that set in for people who paid to see this movie that they were watching a train wreck.

Ellen cries.

Mike and his family fly home to Amity for the funeral, where Mike sees that Ellen is going batty, since she's convinced the shark Martin Brody killed at the end of the first film 15 years prior is back to kill off the family (which is true...?). Ellen claims that Chief Brody was killed by the shark, to which Mike retorts it was a heart attack. “It was the fear,” Ellen turds. “The fear of it killed him!”

Ellen cries.

Mike convinces her to come to the Bahamas with him for a vacation away from all the drama. Ellen agrees. They board the ferry to the mainland to begin their journey to a warmer climate, and hopefully, happier times.

Ellen cries.

On their flight to the Bahamas, we are introduced to one of the least-imaginatively named characters in cinema history: Hoagie, played by Michael Caine, who famously could not accept his Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters in person because he was off filming this monstrosity. The genesis of his character name came from the screenwriter's realization that he could no longer coast on the already-established series' characters and would have to come up with his first original name. And so he sat back in his chair, stared at his store-bought dinner, and said, “What the fuck should I name him?”

Michael Caine would eventually go on record with his thoughts on the movie with one of the most fantastic things anyone has ever said about their own work: "I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."

(penis joke)

The family arrives at Mike’s home and Ellen freaks out almost immediately, as Mike’s young daughter, Thea, plays on a rope swing out on the water. Ellen then feels like a burden and probably cries.

Later, Mike is out on the water doing his bullshit experiments on conch shells, and we meet Jake, played by Mario Van Peebles, whose mock Bahamian accent offends both the ears and true natives.

Meanwhile, Ellen swims out in the middle of the ocean when she suddenly realizes this is an awful idea and gets the spooks. She begins to swim to shore when she is savagely attacked by a shark and is killed. Her blood mingles with that of the warm, island waters the end.

Oh, wait, I’m sorry. That was just a dream sequence. God, I’m really sorry—I was completely fooled there for a second. I really thought that our lead character would completely break character, spend time in a place that she's deathly afraid of, and then die halfway through her own film. 

Turns out there’s about another hour of this to get through. My bad.

Out during a routine conch shell tagging, which is probably the least interesting thing marine biologists could ever desire to do, the shark makes its presence known by sidling on up next to Jake as he farts around in his tiny little whatever-the-fuck mobile at the bottom of the ocean.

“There’s a big fish down here, mon,” Jake gurgles into the walkie talkie.

Mike, up on the surface on their boat, smiles, maybe remembering his dismembered dead brother.

“Oh yeah? How big?”

Cue the shark suddenly popping out of the water and chewing dumbly on the side of the boat for a moment before giving up and sinking below the water.

(stuffy British voice) "Notice how the shark propels itself
upward on its haunches to investigate the black man with the
odd hair. The shark manages to hold its whole body out of the
water using a method we call magic."

Jake escapes back to the surface since the shark couldn’t give less of a shit about him, and he has a joygasm in his shorts, enthusiastically making very preliminary plans on how to track the shark. Mike forlornly sits on the side of the boat, remembering that one time his family was destroyed by a very similar shark. Jake realizes he’s being a dick and unbelievably insensitive and the two wrestle.

Later, Jake attaches a heartbeat tracking device to the shark and hooks it up to a monitor, which will alert them if the shark is ever within close proximity. It should be noted that Jake is capable of creating inventive machines to help aid in the tracking of a great white shark, something no one had ever done up to that point, yet devotes his studies to finding out how conch shells fuck and move.

Ellen and Hoagie grow closer and closer, almost on the verge of having old sex, when something less disturbing happens: The shark attacks Thea while she is out on the water and eats the woman sitting right behind her.

Ellen, sick of this shit, takes Mike’s boat and heads out to sea, her eyes narrowed, her old, gnarled hands grasping the wheel, her dry skin stretched over her forehead like a child’s mask. What her plan is remains unknown by the audience and probably her. All we know is she’s pissed (because the music says we have to think that).

Mike returns home, sees his daughter in a semi-comatose state, and then leaves to chase down his mother with the help of Jake, who apparently sits the fuck home and does nothing as the whole island is besot with shark-inflicted trauma.

On their way to find another boat, they run into Hoagie, and the three hop into his plane to find Ellen, who has made incredible, space travel-like time to get so far out into the middle of nowhere. The plane discovers her as she is in the throes of her genius plan: to stand at the bow and sit there like old, white shit as the shark pops up out of the water to eat her flaccid body. Luckily, Hoagie is an ace pilot, and he flies so low that it knocks her out of her stupid ‘whoa-as-me’ trance, saving her life and keeping her on the planet for at least 3-4 more years.

SHARK DANCE PARTY!!

Hoagie attempts a water landing, which is impossibly successful. Mike and Jake swim for the boat, and Hoagie, instead of getting his old ass in gear and swimming for the boat himself, opts to just stand on the wing of the plane and make old cockney jokes.

The shark then pops up and eats Hoagie. How ironic.

Mike and Jake reach the boat and everyone hugs.

Ellen cries.

Then Hoagie pops up to alleviate the high dramatic tension this movie thinks it’s creating, fresh out of the water, yet, completely dry. Hoagie makes about five unfunny jokes in a row before they figure out they should probably concoct a way not to die. Jake turns a flashlight into something that sends out electronic pulses to the tracking device attached to the shark and can fuck with the shark’s sonar, thus confusing it so they can….do something that remains unknown. If anyone has a plan to follow up the pulse thing, nobody’s talking.

Jake steps out on the ledge of the bow to shoot electronic pulses at the shark. The shark responds by shoving his head out of the water and screaming. Jake does this a bunch of times until the shark pops up out of the water right under him. Jake attempts to shove the whole flashlight gizmo into the shark’s mouth, which I guess is supposed to make it explode.

Somehow.

Well, Jake falls directly into the shark’s mouth because he is a dumb, dumb fuck.

Mike screams one of cinema's greatest slow-motion screams.

Ellen cries.

If you watch this scene barely carefully, you’ll see that the shark, with Jake firmly entrenched in its jaws, then lowers itself snout-first back into the water, which would indicate that this shark is completely out of the water for such a move to make any kind of physically realistic sense.

Note to filmmakers: sharks are not snakes. Also, they do not growl/scream.

"How do you do daht wit you body, mon?"

Mike makes his own flashlight gizmo and tries the same damn thing. The shark again screams like a dinosaur each time it receives a shock. Ellen steers the boat, and as she does so, inexplicably has flashbacks to Martin Brody’s bad-ass defeat of the shark in the first film, even though she wasn't actually there to see it. As Mike sends out pulses, Hoagie stares with his thumb up his ass and continues to make supremely inappropriate jokes, and Ellen steers the boat, and:

ENDING # 1

One last pulse from the flashlight pisses off and disorients the shark so much that it LITERALLY, and impossibly, stands completely perpendicular out of the water so that Ellen can steer the boat's broken bowspirit directly into it, stabbing it. The shark wiggles its head around as blood spews everywhere, and the boat is ripped apart by the flailing.

ENDING # 2

One last pulse causes the shark to literally EXPLODE, shooting pieces of shark gore everywhere. The force of the shark exploding also causes the entire boat to explode, and our cast is thrown into the “ocean,” and if you look carefully, you can see water clearly lapping up against the matte painting in the background. And despite the fact that the shark exploded to pieces, we see it sink slowly to the bottom of the ocean, letting its blood fill the screen until all we can see is red—a frankly beautiful shot in an otherwise shitty movie. And do you know why? Because it’s stolen, frame-for-frame, directly from the first Jaws.

The three survivors meet up in the water to talk about stuff going on in their lives when suddenly Jake, offensively alive, floats up to them and says hello. This is what we call an “homage.” This scene is an “homage” to the original Jaws, where Richard Dreyfuss suddenly shows up at the end after being gone for most of the final act, even though the audience thought he was dead. It was a little nudge at the audience,  the original filmmakers saying, “See? We had you! We had you so good you forgot about Richard Dreyfuss!” However, don’t be fooled. Jaws is a fantastic film - a true display of bravura filmmaking in the face of high on-set tensions and malfunctioning special effects.

Jaws: The Revenge isn’t.

Jaws: The Revenge shows a grown man being savagely chewed and eaten by a shark, and then pulled under water for several bloody minutes, but then has that man come back anyway so these very lame filmmakers can say, “See? We fooled you. You all thought Jake was dead because his chest was ripped apart and he was drowned.”

Anyway, why the two endings? It would seem Ending # 1 was the re-shot ending, which I guess was less stupid than Ending # 2—you know, the one featuring the spontaneous explosion.

TRIVIA!

The former president of Universal Studios, Sid Sheinberg, commissioned this film to be made as a birthday present to his wife. That wife? Lorraine Gary. And she reacted to the prospect of such an audacious birthday gift the same way audiences did after they saw this film so many moons ago.

She cried.

What I Learned from Jaws: The Revenge:

• Sharks growl.
• Sharks are capable of setting up elaborate traps to snare their victims.
• Sharks hold grudges against people.
• Sharks will avenge other sharks, even though they also eat each other.
• People are named Hoagie.
• Michael Caine will literally do anything for money.

---

Now Available

LEVITY

 Hmm...

ARE YOU ALRIGHT, PATRICK?

"I know my behavior can be...erratic...sometimes."

If we don't, remember me.

THAI FOOD

Thai Mother Allegedly Kills, Eats Sons

A Thai mother has been accused of killing, cooking and eating her sons because she thought they were pigs, the Bangkok Post reports. Hallucinations may have played a role in the tragic crime.

Police received a complaint last week that the woman, a member of the Musur hilltribe in Thailand's northernmost district of Chiang Mai, Mae Ai, allegedly "butchered" her two sons, ages 1 and 5, and proceeded to cook and eat them. According to the Bangkok Post, law enforcement officials allegedly found the woman asleep with several body parts strewn around her. Later, they reportedly learned she had been treated for mental illness since 2007.

A previous report from the Bangkok Post said that the woman stopped taking her medicine one or two months ago. A hospital report said the woman suffered from hallucinations and thought someone was coming to hurt her.

The news is the latest in a string of reported cases of cannibalism this year. Police busted a cult in Papua New Guinea in July for allegedly eating victims' brains and penises. In April, authorities in northeastern Brazil arrested three people for allegedly killing women and making pastries with their flesh.

Earlier this year, hallucinations caused by bath salts were thought to be behind an infamous face-eating attack in Miami, Florida. However, a toxicology report later showed that only marijuana was present in the attacker's system.

Source.

Yes, this image actually exists.
And I didn't even have to search "pig baby."

DOCUMENTING THE GREY MAN (2012)

Warning: Spoilery content contained throughout.

Many filmmakers will tell you that they are just as satisfied with their film having a negative reception as they are a positive one, their reasoning being that their film in some way challenged their audience and triggered an emotional response. For some filmmakers, I’m sure that’s true, and for others, it’s probably a curtain to hide behind when celluloid shit hits the critical fan.

The only thing Documenting the Grey Man triggered in me was an overwhelming desire to turn off the thing and try to salvage the rest of my hour (because the movie is an hour long).

The movie opens with our eventual ghost-hunting crew sitting down at some kind of low-rent fast food place as the “leader” lays it all out on the table. He wants to “investigate” a Pawley’s Island home, in which the family claims to be experiencing a haunting, possibly by the Grey Man, a well known South Carolina legend. He explains he basically wants to fake everything and record everything, because, ya know, I guess it's easier to immediately establish a reason why he's a dick, and why our film crew don't drop their cameras and run the hell home upon seeing the first instance of creep.

Patton Oldswalt

The crew soon meets the family, including the little girl who seems to interact with the ghost (of course, since that’s become a common staple in the genre). Each family member is interviewed, and they each provide firsthand accounts of their so-called haunting. Sounds, things being moved, etc. Oh crap, the girl’s possessed. Everyone dies. Cut to black.

Thanks?

I was initially drawn to DTGM because of the found footage format it utilizes. Found footage movies are my weakness. I will always be tempted to sit down with one, no matter the concept, the budget, or the production company. Added to that, DTGM is based on a “true” story: that of the Grey Man, a mothman-like mysterious phantom who haunts the beach of Pawley’s island.

According to Wiki:

A local legend on the island has grown about the Gray Man. Thought to be the original owner of the Pelican Inn, the Gray Man is a friendly ghost who warns of impending hurricanes and protects the resident's houses from the storm. Serious hurricanes have struck in 1724, twice in 1752, 1822, 1911, 1954, and 1989. As recounted in an episode of the TV series Unsolved Mysteries, several different witnesses reported that they had seen the Gray Man shortly before Hurricane Hugo.

So, okay. That’s enough to capture my interest, as most ghost stories lean more toward the sensational and the dangerous. You often don’t hear stories of ghosts trying to be courteous and maternal.

Too bad DTGM had no idea what to do with this concept, as it eventually devolves into yet another film in which a camera crew runs around a house being pursued by an evil entity, intent on killing them all for no discernible reason whatsoever.

The performances are tepid pretty much across the board. Not a one of them feels at all natural or genuine, and each time a character speaks, you can’t help but realize that you’re not experiencing something even in the least bit real, but a really crappy direct-to-video movie. This becomes painfully evident once the in-movie documentary begins, and Pawley’s Island natives are interviewed. It’s almost astounding how unnatural and forced each interviewee appears, being that all they have to do, literally, is speak. There’s no need for a performance, because it’s just…talking. And they can't even do that. (The very first interviewee just may be the worst offender, going out of his way to sound as stereotypically "black" as possible, falling back on a “dammmmm!”, and even managing to shoe-horn in a bad joke about the business with the ghost being “white people’s” problems.)

In preparation for DTGM, writer/director Wayne Capps (who also plays the film’s fake psychic, and who gives a grating, overbearing performance) intensely studied other found footage stalwarts like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity and promptly threw out everything that worked about those movies, crafting a film in which people randomly wander around a house and then die by an invisible blow to the head. 

Seriously. 

Not a one death in DTGM is the least bit compelling or interesting. The entire cast literally just falls down, one at a time, with bloody foreheads, complemented with a muffled “splat” sound added in post so viewers are able to understand what the hell just happened.

Hey, I have a question: Why base your film on a real legend, using said legend to set up your concept, and then abandon everything about that real legend just to do your own thing? That’s like saying, “I’m making a movie about Bigfoot,” but then instead make a movie in which Bigfoot walks around with a knife and stabs babysitters in Haddonfield. Couldn’t the in-movie filmmakers have unearthed anything at all – a single piece of evidence – to imply that perhaps the Grey Man isn’t as helpful as his legend dictates; that his existence isn’t as romantic as Pawley’s Island wants to believe? Couldn’t the film have unearthed some kind of revelation to explain why everything previously known about the Grey Man was terribly incorrect? After all, they had an otherwise unused half-hour to play with. But I guess they were too excited to get to the game-changing money shot in which the entire cast throw their heads back and fall down.

Post-rough cut viewing.

When the credits rolled I stared at my television, and then after a while, I said, “Why bother?”

And that’s the real question here: why bother making DTGM? Nothing was gleaned, nothing new was introduced, at no point was it remotely creepy, and the legend on which it was based was completely dismissed after the first ten minutes.

Actually, after having written this review, I may have been wrong. I guess the film triggered an emotional response in me after all: total irritation.