Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1993)

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

With the original’s star Lance Henrisksen gone, and his purpose fulfilled, there’s really nowhere to go with the pumpkinhead mythology, so the sequel just strings together a humdrum revenge tale. Or “Pumpkinhead Knows What You Did Last Summer.” The original “Pumpkinhead” may not have been a masterpiece by any definition, but it was assuredly a solid revenge film with a unique monster. Director Jeff Burr’s follow up is a sub-par mess that has no real grasp on what kind of tale it wants to tell, its main downfall being the abysmal performances by the entire cast.

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Big Driver (2014)

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

I’m personally a fan of revenge thrillers, and am quite surprised to see Stephen King of all people concoct a rape revenge thriller. Out of the sub-genre, they’re the most notorious of the sub-sub-genres. “Big Driver” is an often toothless and ridiculous rape revenge thriller about a writer who may possibly be going mad after being viciously and repeatedly raped in a road side gas station by a hulking driver. He’s known as “Big Driver,” and is a very menacing and horrific villain. That is until the narrative unfolds and then he becomes a cartoon. It’s not enough that he may possibly be a trucker that had an impulse to rape and victimize a gorgeous woman on an abandoned road.

And it’s not enough that perhaps he has snared his share of victims in the past. No, King has to keep piling on absurd twists and turns with our villain Big Driver, while pretending to say something about writers. Truly, the writers’ psyche can be a maddening and unusual place, but for Tess Thorne, she’s a woman who’s been victimized one too many times and has an odd selection of friends. She has her characters from her book series about knitting elderly women solving crimes, her GPS named Tom (the only trustworthy man in her life), a cat named Fritz, and a neighbor who may or may not be romantically involved with Thorne.

Nothing is ever really confirmed for the audience, as every element of the plot is thrown up in to the air and never really resolved. At one point it’s suggested the stylish revenge plot is all in Tess’s mind but it’s never confirmed. Then we’re told that her confrontation with Big Driver was planned. “That’s a little far fetched,” Tess thinks aloud. But lo and behold, it’s not too far fetched the primary narrative itself. And by god King goes all the way, with a dramatic confrontation, and an abrupt final scene that may or may not be one big imaginary sequence in Tess’ slowly unraveling mind. What is the horrendous life Tess had? Why does Tess come across another victimized woman? What insight does this moment lend her exactly?

Is Tom the imagining of an ex-boyfriend or just a creation of Tess’s to compensate for her lack of romance? If Tess really is so closed off to everyone, why does she live in such an open suburban neighborhood? And what of the loose ends like Tess taking a limo home after being raped? No one really reported her injuries? I’m not sure if “Big Driver” is supposed to be a meta-thriller about a writer who enacts revenge through means that seem almost too good to be realistic, and the almost ridiculous sequence of events are intentionally silly, but “Big Driver” is too haphazardly written and sloppily directed to really answer that for the audience. In the end, it’s a terrible thriller with more head scratching questions than answers.

Deep Rising (1998)

Posted on October 16, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

For a movie with so much story and set up, it’s shocking how well “Deep Rising” comes together. Stephen Sommers is really committed to delivering a squared jawed hero with a lot of his action movies, and “Deep Rising” gives us Treat Williams in rare form. Director Sommers’ B monster movie action flick is still a lot of fun, despite the aged special effects and slew of sub-plots, some of which are left unresolved. That said, “Deep Rising” has all the ingredients for a fun and raucous action horror film.

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My Boyfriend’s Back (1993)

Posted on October 13, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

It’s unusual how a film made in 1993 actually feels like it was made in 1983. And that’s likely because of producer Sean Cunningham and composer Harry Manfredini, both of whom inject an eighties atmosphere that makes Bob Balaban’s “My Boyfriend’s Back” a surreal but entertaining zombie romance comedy with a very funny script by Dean Lorey. It even has something of a Tim Burton aesthetic where the small town the story is set feels perpetually stuck in the fifties despite being the nineties.

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Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Posted on October 11, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

I really enjoy what director Frank Oz does with “Little Shop of Horrors.” Rather than simply ignoring the cheesiness and camp value of the original, he embraces it. He also injects a pulpy comic book atmosphere, along with sixties pop and soul that compliments the tale perfectly. While I’ve always had a weak spot for Roger Corman’s original, Frank Oz succeeds in giving “Little Shop of Horrors” the campy adaptation that it deserves with a brilliant cast, and great tunes. This is a movie that always played on local TV as a kid and I always ignored it for reasons I don’t quite remember. In either case it’s no masterpiece, but it’s a fine and fun horror comedy.

Star Rick Moranis plays Seymour Krelborn, the workaday loser in the slums of his city who works at a flower shop. After fawning over his co-worker Audrey, he decides to take some initiative after financial concerns from his boss and brings in a rare flower. The flower was hit by lightning during a solar eclipse, and Seymour immediately buys it for the sake of the novelty. After pricking his finger, he realizes the plant is alive and hungry for human blood. Soon enough the need for blood transforms in to hunger for human meat, and Seymour must either feed the plant, or lose it and his fame. Nicknamed Audrey II, the vicious plant that turns in to a villain for Seymour, is a wonderful monster. The puppetry matched with Levi Stubbs’ performance make it a menacing foe that is so much more dangerous than it initially looks. Moranis plays Seymour as a mentally unbalanced but very desperate loner who is in love with Audrey and finds she is incapable of being with anyone but her abusive boyfriend.

Steve Martin as Orin Scrivello pretty much steals the film for the screen time he’s given as an over the top biker who works as a dentist for the thrill of torturing patients. Martin is hysterical in the role of the heel, and he even shares a hilarious scene with Bill Murray as the masochistic patient anxious to be tortured. Along with Murray and Martin, there are some great cameos by John Candy, Jim Belushi, and Christopher Guest, all of whom lend a high comedy pedigree to Moranis’ already charming performance. Keeping the film ironic and somewhat meta is the excellent musical numbers, all of which serve as a means of forwarding the narrative, and occasionally challenging the motives of Seymour and his man eating plant. The trio of Tichina Arnold, Tisha Campbell and Michelle Weeks are impressive, delivering some excellent musical numbers of their own, including the opening title track. “Little Shop of Horrors” is a pulp pop twist on the original Roger Corman horror comedy that’s funny, fun, catchy, and well worth its reputation.

Mothman (2010)

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

With a B movie like “Mothman,” you can only laugh it off. What keeps the film from really taking off as an effective horror entry is that it’s so painfully derivative of “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” Jewel Staite stars as Katharine, a young girl a part of a small group that goes camping. One night during a swim with her friends, they decide to pull a prank on the youngest in the group resulting in an accidental drowning. So frightened are they by this that they decide to cover it up, and pretend it was one big accident. Why?

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Kill (2011)

Posted on October 8, 2014 by Felix Vasquez

Much as I hate to admit it, “Saw 2” pretty much aced the concept of the strangers waking up in mysterious circumstances scenario that’s become so prevalent in modern horror. Directors Chad Archibald, and Gabriel Carrer don’t even seem to try with “Kill,” which is just another variation on the premise from “Saw 2,” except “Kill” is filled with so much more inconsistencies. Not to mention the cast is filled with terrible actors portraying obnoxious characters that literally do nothing but bicker and argue from the first moment they wake up in a mysterious house.

A group of people wake up in a house that’s been boarded up and barred down. They soon realize they’re being terrorized by a mysterious entity watching them, and proclaims that in order to survive and make it home to their significant others, they have to kill each other. Nope, this isn’t “Battle Royale,” although I’d bet the parallels aren’t a mistake. The surviving member of the group gets to go home. I think. Why are the victims awoken in white clothing? Who knows? What is the relevance of the connection that inevitably rises to the surface in the middle of the terror? I wasn’t sure, and I immediately stopped trying to care. What do the tiki men signify? What’s with all the imagery of knights and medieval drapery? And what are the TV’s even for?

Details and plot devices are brought up and abruptly rendered invalid moments later, and there’s just no plot progression until the final twenty minutes. There are even stunning moments of sheer stupidity, like when one of the characters confirms one of the victims has a pulse, prompting another character to ask “Is he alive?” And you have to enjoy how the characters break free from the house while a character screams “Stop! This is someone’s house!” The production is pretty poor as well, with bad editing, and really dicey direction that never fulfills the intended illusion of claustrophobia and paranoia. One of the most distracting elements of “Kill” that tore me out of the narrative was the bad sound.

I don’t know if the rooms on the sets echoed, or if there was ambient sound dripping in to the movie set, but every piece of dialogue sounds canned. So much so that you could almost swear the movie was dubbed. There’s a lot of really ambiguous plot elements brought up and featured with no real clarification, and truthfully I never cared to ponder what I’d seen. I was just happy it ended. “Kill” is terrible because it feels incomplete, rushed, and incredibly half hearted. Almost as if the directors just made points up as they went along. I’m also assuming the directors thought they’d lay the ground work for a follow up. I don’t think there’s any kind of material available for another droning ninety minutes of pointless violence and a script that’s one note and with zero narrative.