In spite of the best efforts from the writers to give their most passionate story, one thing they do achieve is making the character of Moose something of a more dignified and empathic underdog hero. In a film series filled with pretty people, it’s refreshing to see the screenwriters working toward making Adam G Sevani something of an entertaining and complex individual. Here instead of making us laugh, he’s given much more dramatic material however cliche it may be. Continue reading
Comedy… especially horror comedy, is almost impossible to pull off. As the Wayans brothers can attest to, there’s only so much material to be mined until you’re pretty much just tapping the same old cliches for an audience that has seen it a thousand times over since the eighties. If “Scary Movie” proved anything, it’s that horror spoofs are quickly forgotten and easily aged especially when fads in horror comes and go faster than style in America. By the time “Scary Movie” was released, the whole “Scream” phenomenon was tired thus the Wayans were already three steps behind. “Stan Helsing” is an attempt to combine all the classic tropes while also bringing an actual narrative to the audience. Oddly enough while it’s not a good film by any means, it’s also not the worst spoof ever put to film.
I’m not sure what the point of watching a horror movie is if we know everyone dies beforehand. Writers Hoffman and Jones take the unfortunate road of meeting us at the end with Reggie Bannister’s sheriff protagonist at the crime scene of said Spring Break Massacre explaining how every character dies. Meanwhile the story is told in completely disjointed formats and confusing shots that really left me in the dust. Why is this so high concept if it purports to be a slasher throwback? Why exactly is it called Spring Break Massacre if the majority of the story occurs during a slumber party?
Mac Ahlberg’s porn comedy begins on a literal high note with a wonderful little masturbation scene featuring the insanely beautiful Teresa Svensson as Eva asleep in the buff dreaming of a man while fingering herself near orgasm. Hilarity ensues when her upright do-gooder older sister intervenes and attempts to wake her up leading to some incestuous horse play that ends with a splash. Eva’s older sister declares that in order to keep her sister from getting in to trouble, she’s shipping her off to an all girls school. I mean, nothing could wrong there right?! The fool proof plan Eva’s sister has provided essentially unravels as Eva is shipped off to a sophisticated school for moral edification (I’m quoting one of the characters) where she will straighten up and fly right.
I’m still trying to figure out if Michael Reeves’ 1966 quasi-creature feature is an unintentional satire, or just an overrated piece of cult cotton candy that gets more credit than it deserves. It was tough to make heads or tails of this movie at times, and you can sense the writer going off the rails in many instances where he just didn’t seem to be able to grasp his own premise. Why would it take bullets to bring down a witch that was around during the eighteenth century? Why bullets of all things? It’s tough to really capture what the film is going for when it purports to be an honest to goodness horror film and then shows a title card reading “Transylvania – Today.” Seriously? That’s the best that they could do?
Vincenzo Natali’s science fiction Frankenstein tale of 2010 may and will eventually be misunderstood by a greater portion of the movie audiences expecting a simple monster flick about an experiment gone awry. While in essence it is just that, “Splice” is much more an on the nose satire of parenting and the intervening of the drug industry raising children, and the dynamic between father and daughter and mother and daughter. Ultimately while sometimes absurd and just filled with dark twisted humor, “Splice” offers the question if children are born and develop in to chaotic monsters, or if their parents and their own insecurities and misery eventually turn them in to such beings. What starts out as two scientists forming a bond with their own special creation turns in to a battle between two feminine species for the love of a man who begins to form unusual and abstract feelings for the both of them.
Another leg in Frank Sudol’s “Budget Gore Series” of animated genre entries, and the final cut out style animated movie from BlackArro, “Shock Invasion” is pure Frank Sudol available solely for the open minded genre buff where in Sudol channels Bakshi in a gore soaked science fiction tale that is about as creative and surreal as Sudol can be. Going from zombies, to demons, now on to merciless aliens, Sudol enlists his mini-budget and vocal talents to animate a sick little gem that chronicles the fight for survival of a group of rag tag denizens of a futuristic city. Ral Foster awakens one day to discover his entire city has been infested by aliens who have taken over the living and can inhabit their shells.