REVIEW: BATTLE OF THE DAMNED

Something you may not know about me: Though my main love will always be the horror genre, my second love is old-school action. To me, guys like Arnold, Sly, and Chuck Norris will always be gods. It was through Stallone's recent creation of The Expendables franchise that I grew to rediscover my love for the second string guys, and this more than includes Dolph Lundgren. Between the aforementioned Expendables films (dripping with "male-pattern badness") and the newer Universal Soldier entries (Regeneration and Day of Reckoning), well...I just love Dolph. He always seems to be having more fun than any of his action hero counterparts. Though no one will ever refer to him as a strong thespian, there's no denying his larger-than-life on screen presence. So when I one day read of this film coming soon that involved the words "robots," "zombies," and "Dolph Lundgren," well...my proverbial ticket was already bought. (It was "robots" that clinched it.) A film in which Dolph and a bunch of broken down robots take on a horde of zombies? Who the hell doesn't want to see that immediately?

Dolph plays Major Max Gatling, and besides having a ridiculous/bad ass name, he is also the leader of a team of mercenaries charged with traversing a zombie-infested landscape on a rescue mission for a girl named Jude (Melanie Zanetti, the tiniest version of Mary Louise Parker you'll ever see). While doing so, nearly all of his men become ghoul poop. Realizing this was a mission they weren't meant to survive, Dolph puts his sole remaining survivor on the rescue chopper but opts to remain behind to complete the mission. Completely stupid decision, I know (and so does he: "Gatling, you're a stupid son-of-a-bitch), but...if he got on the chopper, there'd be no movie – no zombies, and no robots – so, eat it you filthy cynic.

What we have here in Battle of the Damned is essentially Escape from New York: Replace Snake Plissken with Max Gatling, replace the prisoners with zombies, and replace Adrienne Barbeau and Ernest Borgnine with robots. Oh, and there is a rag tag group of survivors holed out in this zombie landscape, led by a man named Duke.

Lundgren portrays Gatling as a dry-humored nonconformist who would rather crack wise than play nice (that is if he's not treated with all due respect), but this is all simple set dressing because you know he's bound to step up and be the hero that gains him the giant head shot on the poster.

Battle of the Damned dabbles joyfully in familiar territory – and not just Carpenter's Escape template, but also in Romero's post-apocalyptic "let's-live-opulently-and-ignore-the-problem" environment that he perfected in Dawn of the Dead. And in those films, there is an attempt to eventually strip away war zone New York and Monroeville Mall and spend time with our characters, observing them in their environment and getting to know them. And Battle does that, too. It is pleasing to see this kind of attempt at development in what is essentially a DTV movie with robots, zombies, and that guy from Rocky IV who said, "I must break you." One might argue that it was because the filmmakers were forced to halt the zombie carnage due to budget constraints that they filled all the in-between stuff with human conflict. Byproduct of a low budget or not, it's there, it works, and that's all that matters.

The tone is played mostly straight; though it every so often takes a time-out to make a joke, or nod to Dolph's career ("Where did you even find that guy? A super-soldier factory?"), this admittedly stupid concept for a film is taken pretty seriously. That's not to say the film isn't at times unintentionally funny. When our characters see a swath of robots marching down the street and one of them, nearly nonplussed, asks, "Robots? Where'd they come from?", you have to laugh. But it more than adds to the experience that I, at least, am looking for from a film of this type. Plus I'll admit, I have kind of a stupid sense of humor, and I found myself chuckling every time someone in the film even just said the word "robots." ("You brought back robots?" "Killer robots?" "The robots!" )

Melanie Zanetti as Jude does as she is directed, and though she does it mostly fine, the whole angst-ridden, bitter teen who answers every question with some kind of angry, sarcastic response starts to wear thin after a while. Pretty bad considering she's the one you're supposed to care second-most about – plus she's preggers! Her performance can sometimes be irritating in that Ellen-Page-from-Juno kind of way, but if that threatens to happen, just keep telling yourself, " 'It's only a movie...about robots...It's only a movie...about robots...' "

The make-up effects are pretty well done; the visual effects (re: robots in motion) are less so, though I would describe them as inconsistent rather than across-the-board poor. Normally I am quick to call out a film for implanting story elements dependent on CGI even though their low budgets simply do not allow for it, but, once again, Dolph 'N' Bots vs. Ghouls gets a pass from me.

To appreciate Battle of the Damned is to appreciate B-movie productions, aging action heroes whose hey-day you might argue is behind them, and films with gonzo log lines. I doubt anyone who opts to watch the film based solely on its plot will be disappointed; though the zombie element isn't constant, and the robots don't make their appearance until the last act, there is still plenty of skull-crushing action and violence to please those looking for a bloody 90 minutes. 

I have seen a lot of Dolph's post-Universal Soldier DTV filmography and I can say this with confidence: Battle of the Damned is certainly one of the better ones – if not the best. Obviously once you've suffered through something like The Minion or Bridge of Dragons, that's certainly not saying much, but hell, give it a watch. I have a feeling the majority that do will be pleasantly surprised and ultimately entertained.

Besides, there's literally a scene where Dolph asks his robot army, "What do we do with zombies?" and the robots respond, "We fuck them up."

I mean, come on...on what planet is that not the greatest of all times?

THE BITTERROOT FOOTAGE

My name is Chad. I'm a student at a university in New York. I just moved to a studio apartment and needed some furniture. I found a guy on Craigslist that wanted to desperately get rid of his things at super cheap prices so I went to check it out. He sold things in bulk to get rid of as many things as possible. I bought a small table and it came with a bunch of other random things. Some of it I gave away and some I kept.

An old wooden box caught my attention. It was locked, and out of curiosity I kept it. I had to force open the lid with a screw-driver and inside I found some old pictures.

The word 'bitterroot' was handwritten on the backs of all of them. There was also a tin can that contained a reel of film that I later learned from my friend Dario (a film student), was 8mm film.

The film was pretty damaged so I just kept it on my bookshelf as decoration, but I couldn't get the images of the pictures out of my head. I had to figure out a way to watch that film.

With help from Dario, we got an old 8mm projector in good working condition on Ebay. The film skipped in several spots so we put it together with a special tape and then watched it again. What we found was disturbing.

Visit the website for more.

MACABRE ART: SKELETAL MADONNA III

 

Skeletal Madonna III

© RecluseSpider

A GLIMPSE

NOW AVAILABLE: DRINKING GAMES

Ryan Gielen’s Drinking Games Coming to DVD this August

New York, NY – Believe Limited is excited to announce the August 20th DVD release of Drinking Games, the new psychological thriller from director Ryan Gielen (The Graduates, Turtle Hill Brooklyn). Written by Gielen and star Blake Merriman, Drinking Games is based on the off-Broadway play "Dorm," also written by Merriman.

It's the last night of the fall semester, and all over campus parties are raging.  While alcohol flows, Richard and Shawn argue over what to do with Noopie, the mysterious upperclassman passed out on their floor. After a blizzard seals them in the dorm with a handful of hapless friends, Noopie awakes and uses a mix of drugs, booze and sex to manipulate the group to their physical and emotional breaking points over the longest, most dangerous night of their young lives. Will it be their last?

The DVD release will include a commentary with Gielen and selected cast members, interviews with the cast and crew, a music video from cast member Michael Pennacchio and "Drunk Sports," a comedic web series. 

Official site.

Watch it now on Amazon!

Drinking Games (Official Trailer, HD) from Ryan Gielen (Believe, LTD) on Vimeo.

REVIEW: AN AMERICAN GHOST STORY

"Are you ready for your first night in a haunted house?"

And so begins An American Ghost Story. Like Sinister and The Amityville Horror before it, our characters knowingly move into a house allegedly haunted and previously the scene of a family murdered. Paul, much like Elliott Oswalt in Sinister, has decided to write a book about the infamous house to which he and his girlfriend have moved, his rationale being the explosion in popularity of the supernatural, as well as his own desire to "finally finish something" he has started. And he has a plan to make the so-called haunted house more interesting for his potential book. "Supposably [sic] recreating a room's look can make spirits more active," he explains. "I'm going to make this house look as much like it used to as I can." Well, he doesn't even get that far when all kinds of spooky goings-on begin to occur: a phantom ball following him around a la The Changeling; moving kitchen chairs and teleporting dolls a la Poltergeist; a ghost actually wearing a bed sheet a la Paranormal Activity 3; and spontaneously opening drawers and cabinets a la The Sixth Sense. It's not long before Stella peaces-out of the house immediately following her first brush with signs of the haunting, leaving Paul to be alone with his ghostly company.

Ghost movies are getting hard to do and harder to appreciate it. Because it's all been done. All of it. We've seen the twist endings involving dead main characters, we've heard the disembodied whispering in the dark corner, and dear god, we've seen the jocular and obnoxious friend/comic relief purposely scare our lead(s) because, you know, why not? And too often we see low budget "filmmakers" who crap out a rough outline for a film in order to ride the coat-tails of another more popular and high profile one. (The Asylum has been known to do this when they're not tossing sharks in tornadoes.) What can trump these hurdles are two simple things: a well-told story and filmmakers with honor and taste.

An American Ghost Story is not the most original haunted house movie ever made, nor is it the best, but it is well-made and at times effective. You will see an awful lot of familiar gags taken from other well-known genre films, but our filmmakers are smart enough to know that it's precisely because you have seen these other well-known films that you are watching their film in the first place. And so in that regard An American Ghost Story instead becomes a charming, if at times familiar experience.

Stephen Twardokus as Paul (and also our script writer) makes for an effective lead. He's boyish and innocent, perhaps at times a bit too saucer-eyed, but it's hard not to like him. After a rocky beginning, in which he grins as he tells Stella about the bloody killings that took place in their house and makes tasteless jokes about brain matter, he soon sobers up and becomes a much more respectful character. In keeping with the previous (and unavoidable) comparison to Sinister, Paul is far more sympathetic than Ethan Hawke's Ellison. While he was driven by a desire to prove something to everyone and rediscover his fame by writing "his In Cold Blood," Paul's goal is not a selfish one. He's not particularly interested in the paranormal; he instead just wants to prove something to himself, and he's willing to ride a current fad to do it. This isn't necessarily a problem, but it does make his reasoning seem like a cheat. "Ghosts are in, so I'll write about ghosts," etc. And it's not even like he starts off as a skeptic and soon learns to believe - from minute one he's already trying to communicate with the ghosts via tape recorder. Because of this, the character of Paul is limited, emotionally, and gives us less to invest in.

The acting itself is just fine, and that goes for the entire ensemble. Wendy Haines as Sue does the best job out of everyone, playing a former tormented tenant of Paul's new house. Liesel Kopp and Cain Clifton as Stella and Sam, respectively, do well in their limited roles; they only seem to make an appearance when the plot calls for it (or we need a humor break).

Oh, and I love this ending - both on a thematic level as well as a technical one. And that's as far as I'll go in describing it.

Director Derek Cole knows the less-is-more approach. Likely this was a result of the low budget, but who cares? It's still effective, and forces he and Twardokus to rely on mood and traditional scares. This decision makes for a solid backbone of tension, and is only periodically ruined by unnecessary jarring musical stings. A purposeful slow-burn pace and extreme lack of special effects may turn off some viewers used to breakneck speed and ghastly set-pieces, but I doubt this film was made for them, anyway. Think The Haunting. Not, you know... that other The Haunting.

An American Ghost Story hits video August 20.

PATTON ON BLADE

 

I've only just now discovered The A.V. Club's late-2012 interview with comedian/actor Patton Oswalt, in which he touches on many different aspects of his professional career. Among these are his hilarious recollections of the train wreck that was Blade: Trinity. (I bet you completely forgot he was in that, didn't you?) I've always found Oswalt to be refreshingly candid, but not in any way where he comes across as offensive or arrogant. Below are a few selections from his pretty wonderful interview where he shares a few B:T anecdotes: 

Wesley [Snipes] was just fucking crazy in a hilarious way. He wouldn’t come out of his trailer, and he would smoke weed all day. Which is fine with me, because I had all these DVDs that I wanted to catch up on. We were in Vancouver, and it was always raining. I kept the door to my trailer open to smell the evening rain while I was watching a movie. Then I remember one day on the set—they let everyone pick their own clothes—there was one black actor who was also kind of a club kid. And he wore this shirt with the word “Garbage” on it in big stylish letters. It was his shirt. And Wesley came down to the set, which he only did for close-ups. Everything else was done by his stand-in. I only did one scene with him. But he comes on and goes, “There’s only one other black guy in the movie, and you make him wear a shirt that says ‘Garbage?’ You racist motherfucker!” And he tried to strangle the director, David Goyer.

...

So we went out that night to some strip club, and we were all drinking. And there were a bunch of bikers there, so David says to them, “I’ll pay for all your drinks if you show up to set tomorrow and pretend to be my security.” Wesley freaked out and went back to his trailer. [Laughs.] And the next day, Wesley sat down with David and was like, “I think you need to quit. You’re detrimental to this movie.” And David was like, “Why don’t you quit? We’ve got all your close-ups, and we could shoot the rest with your stand-in.” And that freaked Wesley out so much that, for the rest of the production, he would only communicate with the director through Post-it notes. And he would sign each Post-it note “From Blade.”

...

A lot of the lines that Ryan Reynolds has were just a result of Wesley not being there. We would all just think of things for him to say and then cut to Wesley’s face not doing anything because that’s all we could get from him. It was kind of funny. We were like, “What are the worst jokes and puns that we can say to this guy?” And then it would just be his face going, “Mmm.” “Smiles are contagious.” It’s so, so dumb. [Laughs.] That was an example of a very troubled shoot that we made fun. You have to find a way to make it fun.

Read the whole thing.