SPRING CLEANING

"We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow."

REVIEW: WEREWOLF FEVER

How on earth does one properly review a film such as Werewolf Fever?

Because, just look at this:

 

Werewolf? More like…I dunno. Not a werewolf. (That looks nothing like a werewolf.)

Werewolf Fever is a movie I should be eviscerating. I should have hit the ground running here and made 30 jokes about how completely inept it was before I ever gave you a trite rundown of the plot. I should have said something like, “This movie is so bad it might as well have been some sort of pornographic film involving werewolves.” Or, you know, something zippy and fun, like that.

I don’t really want to do that, though. I’ll be honest: I enjoyed this farce. I enjoyed the extremely hammy story. I enjoyed the superbly terrible performances. And I enjoyed the gooey effects, consisting of a bunch of severed limbs, a terrible weasel-looking werewolf, and a lot of blood. All of Werewolf Fever’s on-the-surface shortcomings – the acting, the effects, and the awkwardness synonymous with low budget filmmaking – really did nothing but enhance my enjoyment.

Here is that plot rundown I mentioned earlier, which is as simple as it needs to be: A bunch of teens working at Kingburger Drive-In deal with a werewolf that comes stalking, killing any hapless individual that tries to escape. Arms and legs go flying, and people are turned into skeletons covered in chunky meat. Humor ensues – sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident – but it’s always welcome.

What I most appreciated about Werewolf Fever is that it is most definitely a throwback to the creature features of the 1950s, when werewolves reigned supreme. And the idea of the Kingburger Drive-In – where waitresses sport roller-skates and vintage muscle-car shows take place – harkens back to that bygone era. Adding to this homage is a minor character whose heart has been broken by one of the Kingburger waitresses, and who rolls through the drive-thru to recite a poem he had "written" himself, which is stolen from Stephen King’s It (the bulk of which takes place in the ‘50s, and which also features a werewolf). Said character wears a leather jacket and carries a switchblade. All he needs is some greasy hair and several claims of harassment from male masseuses and he is literally Danny Zuko. For me, this recapturing of 1950s werewolf cinema was the biggest selling point and the most rewarding aspect of Werewolf Fever.

Director Brian Singleton had very little money to work with – that much is evident – and what money he did have went to special effects. In that regard I can't judge too harshly. But if it were possible, I would have excised a couple gore gags and put that money towards developing a werewolf costume that was more...indicative of a werewolf. The film comes dangerously close to looking like Pekinese Fever.

But at the end of the day, I can't complain too much. It really didn't affect my enjoyment of the film, so, there's that.

"Mind if we obfuscate?"

Low budget filmmaking – especially horror – can be extremely polarizing amongst genre fans. Some factions love the approach while others loathe it. I’ve always been somewhere in the middle. Time and time again it has been proven that a budget does not equate to quality, but obviously that’s not to say that every low budget effort, even if the filmmakers’ hearts were in the right place, was a slam dunk.

In terms of a general viewing, Werewolf Fever is neither a slam dunk, nor a condemnable piece of shit. It lies somewhere in the middle. But what I can say is that fans of low budgets and hammy monster costumes will find a lot to enjoy about it. It’s completely disposable entertainment, but that’s okay. So long as we enjoy ourselves.

Plus, I love that poster.

LIKE PICTURES IN A BOOK

No idea if this is legit or not, but if it is...this is pretty cool.

Stanley Kubrick's own notes made in a copy of  The Shining.

Click the photo to embiggen.

Stolen with love from The Daily Dead.

IT AIN'T THAT BAD – BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2

In this column, movies with less-than-stellar reputations are fairly and objectively defended. Full disclaimer establishes that said movies aren’t perfect, and aren’t close to being such, but contain an undeniable amount of worth that begs you for a second chance. Films chosen are based on their general reception by both critics and audiences, more often than not falling into the negative. Every film, no matter how dismal, has at least one good quality. As they say, it ain’t that bad. 

Spoilers abound. 

A sequel to The Blair Witch Project was probably doomed from the start, no matter what direction was attempted.

A direct-direct sequel? What, it turns out – oops – Heather, Michael, and Josh survived their encounter and fled that awful Parr house back into the woods for more dark-screaming?

No thanks.

Perhaps a group of investigators set out after having located the recently unearthed footage and try to find traces of the missing kids, this time bringing along their own camera crew?

Perhaps if the first Blair Witch had been released after Paranormal Activity, which had proven you could go back to the same well using the same schtick and find success, then maybe that would’ve happened.

But it didn’t.

Blair Witch’s success at the box office rang the dinner bell for an inevitable sequel, and so franchise owner then-Artisan Entertainment became intrigued by a pitch that would’ve made the first movie just that: a movie.

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 takes place in an environment where The Blair Witch Project is recognized as the fictional narrative piece of pop culture phenomenon it legitimately was when it was released back in 1999. It follows a group of people so obsessed with the movie that they set out on some kind of Blair Witch Weekend Extravaganza to immerse themselves in everything that made them total suckers for the movie.

I give Artisan and director Joe Berlinger heaps of credit for trying it this way. You have to admit, it’s a pretty ballsy move by putting all your eggs in the basket of “you know that movie you love and which made the world come out in droves to see it? Turns out we’re retconning it all and having it be just a movie.” And it was even ballsier in picking documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger (the Paradise Lost trilogy; Brother's Keeper) to take the helm of his first (and so far, only) feature film.

The screenplay by Berlinger and co-writer Dick Beebee (the House on Haunted Hill remake, “Tales from the Crypt”) is actually not just some kind of exploitative rehash of familiar horror tropes (or at least wasn’t meant to be), but was actually about our dependence on pop culture and the power of mass hysteria. All of the characters come from completely different walks of life – a former patient of a mental institution, an unstable weirdo (and hot) Goth, a married team of writers researching for a book, and a new age Wiccan out to dispel the notion that all witches are evil bitches – and yet they have all ended up in the same place, and it was their obsession and/or infatuation with The Blair Witch Project that led them there.

The best part of the film belongs to the opening five minutes (not including the terrible credit sequence), which is a compilation of news reports and entertainment talk shows discussing the explosive reaction to The Blair Witch Project – from MTV's Kurt Loder (remember him?) to Jay Leno – which is intermingled with interviews of “real” Burkittsville residents who discuss their love/hate relationship with the film. It’s an incredibly clever and intelligent opening to a film that is trying to tell its audience right off the bat, “We’re trying something different.”

Obviously, though it's shot traditionally, there still needed to be that amateur video aesthetic that made Blair Witch so successful and effective. And so elements of video captured by our cast becomes the catalyst for the film's conclusion. Because what the video shows them doing does not at all match up with what they're absolutely sure happened, according to their own memories. The things they experienced – and believed to be the real truth – are easily shattered when played on a computer screen in front of them. And what the video shows is them committing murder, participating in orgies, and offering sacrifices to the "real" Elly Kedward. But we, the audience, never saw these things. We saw a bunch of white kids drinking copious amounts of alcohol and each discussing his/her own ties to The Blair Witch Project. They were obnoxious and antagonistic and sometimes irritating, but never murderous. So how was it this footage was captured? Are we, the audience, being lied to? And if so, who are the perpetrators? The kids? The witch? Our own eyes? The true mystery lies in a statement made by Jeff, the leader of the Blair Witch Hunt, when he says "Video never lies. Film does, but video never lies." Work that around your noggin any way you see fit.

Unfortunately what was to be a more highbrow and classy affair was corrupted by Artisan Entertainment, who demanded that corny gore and Marilyn Manson complement the opening credits. Blair Witch 2 became a real Frankenstein affair, and Berlinger’s commentary on the DVD is quick to point out which scenes he was forced to include in order to appeal to a more broad (read: stupid) base.

In some regards, I am the lone cheerleader, and unendingly optimistic. But in others, don’t worry – I’m not delusional. For instance, I recognize that the acting is pretty atrocious. Though some members of the cast went on to other notable things (Erica Leehrsen did 2003’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wrong Turn 2; Jeffrey Donovan ended up with "Burn Notice"; Kim Diamond became Spike Lee’s muse), there is no short supply of horrendous acting and/or dialogue.

For instance:

“Witch bitch!”

“The witch…kills…children!”

"Fucking witch!"

Etc.

(But let it not be said bad acting has killed a horror movie. Mia Farrow’s flat and corny performance in Rosemary’s Baby didn’t deter its then-and-now legendary reputation, and Heather Langenkamp didn’t exactly graduate from the actor’s studio before taking on A Nightmare on Elm Street.)

BUT!

Lanny Flaherty as Sheriff Cravens gives the best performance…ever.

In the movie’s final act, in which reality (or is it?) is slowly meshing with fiction, there are some nice nods to the first film, such as the very greasy Rustin Parr-looking repairman saying, “I’m finished now,” after fixing a soda machine (although they did blow the line they were trying to homage, which was actually “I’m finally finished”). Additionally, his assortment of tools, when piled together, depict the infamous stick figure that became synonymous with the first film.

The resurrection (forgive the pun) of the Burkittsville Seven children murdered by Parr make several appearances as ghosts, and while the idea of including them is nice, and even appropriate, their make-up is beyond pitiful, and comes off like an elementary school Halloween parade. There are also nods to Kyle Brody (the 8th and only surviving victim of Rustin Parr) and Eileen Treacle, who was allegedly drowned by the witch in a very shallow creek. While these inclusions are clever, it also adds an additional layer in that, yes, the first Blair Witch was just a movie, but all of the events discussed in the film – Rustin Parr, the seven murdered kids, etc. – all allegedly happened. So what we're dealing with is a sequel to a movie that calls it just a movie, but which is based on a "real" history that was completely fabricated for said first movie. Still with me?

Carter Burwell turns in a clever and nature-driven score, using a combination of water and stones to create a patchwork of very woodsy-sounding themes.

Humor is a welcome presence from time to time, normally courtesy of Jeffrey Donovan, and I do also love that “Heather Donohue/light bulb” joke, where the punch line is screaming. (I have an affinity for very stupid jokes.)

As far as horror sequels go, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 gets a bad rap. It’s not as abhorrent as, say, The Exorcist 2, but it’s also not held up to legendary status (and fairly so). It’s big on ideas and nearly-but-not-quite ruined by a meddlesome studio throwing shit at the horror wall to see what sticks. Berlinger has a keen eye, and portions of the screenplay are clever and intelligent. I'd love to somehow see the original director's cut of this – I have a feeling it didn't include owl eating.

Because we'll never really know what Book of Shadows was originally meant to look like before all the studio tampering, it's hard to assign the appropriate level of blame to director Joe Berlinger. The end result is a somewhat irritating hodgepodge of ideas that, while based on an interesting concept, is ultimately dampened by lowest common denominator-type shock value, awful teen rock'n'roll (Nickelback yay!) and the typical amount of violence usually reserved for Friday the 13th. A shame, since the first Blair Witch's level of violence amounted to a couple of red squishy things wrapped in a shirt – and yet it still managed to be a box office and critical juggernaut – so why Artisan felt the need to cram in generic horror blood-n-guts is something we'll never really know.

A really great idea exists at the core of Book of Shadows, and if you can let the film be and examine it with a less discerning eye, sometimes you can catch glimpses of the director's original vision.

I urge you to revisit this particular fright flick. You might just be surprised.

HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?

THE GRAND FINALE

"I separated the joints - the arm joints, the leg joints - and had to do two boilings. I think I used four boxes of Soilex for each one; put in the upper portion of the body and boiled that for about two hours, and then the lower portion for another two hours. The Soilex removes all the flesh, turns it into a jelly-like substance, and it just rinses off. Then I laid the clean bones in a light bleach solution, left them there for a day, and spread them out on either newspaper or cloth and let them dry for about a week in the bedroom."

REVIEW: DUST UP

Boy, desert-set adventures just about always end with a grown man being roasted on a spit and then eaten by a bunch of meth heads, don't they?

But seriously folks...

Jack (Aaron Gaffrey) is a war-torn "high desert handyman" who lives in a trailer way out in the middle of a barren landscape. He is haunted by memories of his time spent in the marines during the (Iraq? Afghanistan?) war, in which an explosion kills a fellow marine and tears half his face apart, ripping out an eye in the process. His only companion is Mo (Devin Barry), a skinny white kid cavorting around in Native American garb and looking nothing at all like an actual Native American.

A routine plumbing call has him paying a visit to young mom Ella (Amber Benson), whose pipes are shooting out muddy crappy water. It's right around this point when Jack meets Ella's drug-addicted husband, Herman (Travis Betz), who is thousands of dollars in debt to the local drug king pin Buzz (the absolutely insane Jeremiah Birkett). As you can probably guess, Jack gets involved with all the goings-on of Buzz's drug underworld and things get a little bloody.

If there existed an alternate universe in which Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers collaborated on a script, which was then directed by a Natural Born Killers-era Oliver Stone, Dust Up would come as close to such a wicked threesome as that. A script filled with quirky characters and snappy dialogue is visualized on screen in the frenetic, yellow-tinted style that Stone eventually bequeathed to Tony Scott (RIP). It is a fun, gory romp that contains just as much charm as it does slimy, grimy set pieces.

And the film is funny. Legitimately so, but in that odd, screwball way similar to its cinematic soul mate, The FP. Most of the characters are over-the-top and outlandish, but it all exists in a world where everything is perfectly normal. Broad Dust Up is not. It is a very refined and specific type of humor, and general audiences need not apply. Because while it is often funny, it is also often crude, violent, and even disturbing. Basically, if you can't get behind one character strangling another to death, all the while jerking himself off and ejaculating on the victim's face - all done for both comedic and shock purposes, mind you - perhaps you better check out before you get in too deep. Because you will see things in Dust Up you might not be able to unsee.

Gaffrey as Jack seems to be having the least amount of fun, per his character, being that he is a lonely and isolated figure whose only companion is a half-naked fake Indian. His eye patch and constant lemon face are deceiving in the sense that Gaffrey is actually quite capable of holding his own as far as the humor element goes. Straight-faced humor is often a gamble, because if the humor itself is lame and ineffective, such a performance can come off as boring. But because of the completely diverse group of characters by which he is surrounded, his straight man schtick plays well when coupled with Betz's Herman, who has some of the best lines, or Barry's Mo, whose mere presence never really stops being ridiculous.

Amber Benson plays the sole female lead, and she is saddled with the archetype of the young mom with a dead beat husband who is just trying to hold it all together. Still, she's given some fun lines and is allowed to get into the thick of it when shit really hits the fan. I can't say I'm familiar with any of her work on "Buffy," but her ability for comedy wouldn't surprise any fans of the Joss Whedon favorite.

And Jeremiah Birkett - holy shit. He takes the generic stock character of the drunk king pin and turns him into a devious, misogynistic, sodomizing, bisexual-for-the-fuck-of-it, baby-threatening son of a bitch. He seems to be having a hell of a time playing one, as his performance is near electrifying. At several key moments he is eerily reminiscent of Bernie Mac (RIP), and somewhere I hope Birkett takes that as a compliment, because he definitely should.

As is the case with most low budget cinema, Dust Up isn't entirely perfect. The character work for this type of film is definitely well-done, and you get the sense that anyone on screen can get knocked off at at moment. (One particular sequence, in which one of the more colorful antagonists hops aboard a quad and chases our heroes as they run through the desert, shooting one bullet after another, is effectively suspenseful. The quick editing leaves the viewer unnerved that one of our protags could drop at any moment.) Dust Up, in that regard, works in making you care about its characters, as batshit insane as they may be. But what rubbed me the wrong way was the filmmakers' inclusion of what, to me, seemed like irrelevant defamation of the country's current economic crisis, which has been caused by those "living behind golden gates." And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm certainly not telling writer/director Ward Roberts to shut the fuck up and just make a movie. But these condemnations (straight from the maniacal Buzz) come so late in the third act that by the time he gives his speech to his crowd of meth heads, you begin to wonder why it was even included. The idea of "war is bad" literally occurs within the film's first frame, and its effect on Jack are felt throughout the running time. And that's fine. If a morality message had to be included, the war motif more than satisfied the job, and it felt natural and unforced. 

Filmmakers, more than any other artist, have long used cinema to condemn the actions of political systems. George Romero's been doing it for forty years, and he was not the first, nor the last. But in order for your point to have any validity, it needs to be organically weaved through your story. The third act inclusion feels like a late-stage attempt at giving Buzz some motivation and rationale behind his meth business and the Christ-like sway he holds over his meth head followers. It's not like it derails the film at all, as the majority of it is too silly and weird to take seriously, but on the flip side, this little detour into holier-than-though territory makes it stick out all the more.

But that aside, Dust Up accomplishes its number one goal, which is not to preach, but entertain. I can't say that if you have a sense of humor you will laugh and have a good time, because as I previously mentioned, this is not a film for everyone. Unless you find the idea of random sodomy amusing. And don't we all?

Dust Up hits video November 13.