Solomon Kane (2009) The Pilgrim's Kickass

What things are best in life? The usual kind of things, like crushing enemies who are driven before you, hearing the lamentations of their women, and the stories of Robert E. Howard. For those not familiar with the name, Howard was a pulp writer who, in his all too brief thirty year life, created a cultural icon for the ages when he penned the first Conan story in 1932 for the magazine Weird Tales. What few recognize about Howard is that Conan was not his only creation. He also created tales of Bran Mak Mourn, King of the Picts, El Borack, a Texas gunfighter and world adventurer, Kull of Atlantis, the basis for the 1997 Kevin Sorbo vehicle Kull the Conqueror, Red Sonja, the She- Devil with a sword, and Solomon Kane, which is what brings us here today. Kane was one of Howard’s more modern characters, a 17th century Puritan who, armed with a sword, a dirk, and paired flintlocks, wandered the land like Caine in Kung Fu and dispatched evil wherever he found it. Now he's the subject of a new movie, but will it be as just as Solomon or will the devil lie in the details?

Killjoy (2001) His Brother Killroy Wasn't Here.

This certainly didn't kill my joy, but I can't say it enhanced it. Urban horror flicks are a varied lot with Candyman, a story mined from a British author, sitting atop a heap that includes Blackenstein, an installment of the Leprechaun series, and at least two films featuring Snoop Dogg. Suffice it to say that the bar is set pretty low. So perhaps that's what makes Killjoy, a serviceable slasher with an all African American cast, seem like a diamond on the rough. In actuality, it's more like costume jewelry. If you were missing it after a party you'd be mad about it, but you wouldn't frisk your friends and neighbors to try and get it back. Killjoy tries to make all the right moves, but it’s like seeing a clown hit someone with a pie and thinking it’s hilarious. It’s funny, but it’s been done to death.

The Bigger and Badder Halloween Top 13: #6: The Host (2006)

After yesterday's trip to the land of the rising sun and Destroy All Monsters, I'm taking a slight detour across Asia to another land and another kind of monster, and the real scary thing, folks, is it might just be us. As I've mentioned before, more often than not, giant monsters are not just the source of menace because they will eat you whole and tear down your city, they're about a deep seated fear of an evil or menace beyond containment. Sometimes it's nukes or nature, but I think that today's flick is the only one in which the source of the menace lies between the lines of International politics. To really get into the peril of the film, then you have to know a bit about the history so I will warn you now that later on there might just be a boring preachy part later on. Until then, it's going to be all about a fishy menace that may or may not be spreading a deadly disease when I talk about the 2006 South Korean creature feature, The Host. 

Deadly Doll's Choice: The Children (2008): The Kids Aren't Alright

Small things are creepy, and all manner of tiny terrors have been unleashed over at The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense during this entire month of February, the shortest of the year. So for our film swap this month, we also kept things small. For my pick, I gave her the James Bond meets Lucky Charms lunacy of Darby O'Gill and the Little People, one of the most liquor soaked kid’s films of all time. In exchange, the Deadly Doll chose for me the 2008 British horror flick The Children. Kids, as we all know, are little innocent faced killers laying in wait to kill adults with unabashed glee if given half the chance. That's why I don't have any Bugg-lets running around. While others may be willing to take the chance and willingly bring a potential murderer into their home, films like The Omen, Who Can Kill a Child, The Bad Seed, and Village of the Damned have taught me how to play it safe. (For this same reason, I've never seen Cujo because I want to keep my dog.) The Children is just another reason in a long line of reasons to advocate a childless existence as a form of self preservation.

Blood Creek (2009) Blood Donation Month Begins with Schumacher's Blood Magic Nazi (Nipples Not Included)

Hello folks, and welcome to the first review of 2012. As you may have noticed from the Lair's new duds, I'm celebrating National Blood Donation Month this January. Every movie I talk about this month will either have 'Blood' (or a derivation thereof) in the title or have some other equally sanguine connection, but I'm also going to put my money where my mouth is. Sometime this month I'll be going to donate blood, something I've never done before. The Red Cross appointed January National Blood Donation Month in 1970, and I think it's a great way to start the year by giving a bit of yourself after the gluttony of the holiday season. So along with enjoying a month-long tribute to the ooey-gooey red stuff, I hope that some of you consider heading down to the blood bank and parting with a pint. Now enough of this seriousness. We have a Joel Schumacher movie to talk about today.

Ol' Joel has gotten a pretty bad rep these days, and if I put nipples on Batman, I'd expect to have one myself. It's easy to forget that Schumacher also directed The Lost Boys, Flatliners, and, my personal favorite, Falling Down without an accessory nipple to be found. Even so, I've put off seeing his 2009 return to horror, Blood Creek. However, I was pleasantly surprised by Schumacher's most straight forward foray into the horror genre. Blood Creek stars future Man of Steel Superman Henry Cavill as every-man paramedic Evan Marshall. Evan is haunted by the disappearance of his brother Victor (Prison Break's Dominic Purcell) during a West Virginia camping trip they shared. When Victor unexpectedly returns one night, Evan follows him without question back into the countryside on a quest for revenge. Victor's captors turn out to be prisoners of a greater evil, Richard Wirth (Micheal Fassbender), a blood magic practicing Nazi who has harassed the power of a Nordic rune buried under a barn. With the ability to raise the dead to do his bidding and a desire to develop a third eye during the coming lunar eclipse, Wirth stalks the brothers looking for a final blood sacrifice.

If the plot of Blood Creek sounds convoluted and loaded with mythos, it is to an extent, but, from the first few minutes of the film which introduce how Wirth came to the farm family, the film kicks off and never lets up. While there are several expository scenes to stitch together the suspense and horror sequences, Schumacher keeps the film's pace at a breakneck speed. Even so, the characters still feel fully rounded. Apart from the one or two most minor characters, it seems that the script and actors pulled the material far above the stock slasher material it could have become. The only hindrance to the film's success is some dodgy CGI special effects. Thankfully the worst of these moments doesn't come until the very end of the film. While it left me with a sort of sour taste in my mouth, had it been placed earlier, I surely would have been pulled right out of the film. The greatest benefit that the film has is the base script. While I understand that Schumacher made a number of changes to the screenplay, then called Town Creek by David Kajganich, they seem to have worked out making Blood Creek one of the most successful, original modern slasher films.

The linchpin that the film hangs on is the two main performances. Henry Cavill is an actor I've enjoyed ever since his turn on Showtime's The Tudors. Before I watched Blood Creek, I was a bit hesitant about his casting as Superman in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel. Having seen him in a more action oriented role that also delved into the pathos of his character, I'm really ready to see what he does as the last son of Krypton. Cavill infuses his character in Blood Creek with a real presence played out through subtle actions and a real sense of an internal life. There is an innocence to his character, and it makes for a perfect counterpoint to Fassbender's Nazi Wirth. Fassbender, known for his roles in 300 and X-Men: First Class, is more darkly evil here than I've seen him play before. While he's hidden beneath layers of makeup (and m.i.a. from the proceedings until halfway through the film after the short prologue), he makes a hell of an impression once he gets going. Fassbender makes such a thing as a warlock, Third Reich loving, blood drinking, zombie controlling, serial killer seem utterly believable. These two performances are what really make Blood Creek rise above the level of middling modern horror.

Plus the film is bloody. While there's a bit of CGI grue that brings down the average, there was plenty enough of the sanguine vita being spilled to please my inner gorehound. While there are some rough spots, Blood Creek is a film from a Hollywood director who clearly knows what he's doing, and he had enough sense to leave the nipples out of it. I hope you enjoyed this first post in National Blood Donation Month, and I have lots of interesting titles in store all month long. It should be a bloody good time for all, and hopefully I won't turn into Gene Shalit due to all the half ass wordplay. Well if that happens, you're sure to see my giant mustache here first. So join me back here all January and see what happens.

Bugg Rating

Dead End (2003): Over The Hills and Through the Woods to Grandmother's House We Die

There are many horrors associated with the holiday season. There's killer elves and ax wielding Santas, endless lines in the stores, the traffic on the roads, or the terror of trying to mail something. That's not to mention the constant ringing of bells, the endless din of carols rerecorded by a bevy of today's pop stars, and the barrage of  weak, uninspired television specials that premiere year after year. The biggest horror for most people may well be one of the holiday's main occasions, the family gathering. It's an event that is often fraught with mysterious relations, long distance travel to keep feuding relatives separated, and, if you're really lucky, someone will get drunk and start a fight. Hmm, maybe I'm just talking about The Lair's last office party. At some point in December it all runs together in a Nog fueled haze. Anyhow, for the characters in today's film,  the horror isn't in the holiday gathering; it's in the getting there that turns into a massive Dead End.

The Harrington family, father Frank (Ray Wise), mother Laura (Lin Shayne), brother Richard (Mick Caine), sister Marion (Alexandra Holden) and her boyfriend Billy (Brad Miller), are on their way to Grandma Harrington's house on Christmas Eve. Driving late at night, Frank decides to take a shortcut to keep himself awake and interested in driving. Instead, Frank falls asleep at the wheel only to be jolted awake by Marion seconds before they would have had a head on collision. While recovering from the shock, Frank sees a woman in white standing along the road with a baby, and in the spirit of the season, picks her up. Things really start going bad from there, the woman in white is carrying a dead baby, Billy disappears and shows back up as a heap of bones and flesh on the asphalt, and no matter how far or fast they drive they can't seem to get anywhere. Trapped in an endless forest on a lonely road, the family is picked off one by one, and their only suspect is the woman in white and the driver-less black hearse that takes each of them away.

It's going to be a little tricky discussing Dead End without talking about the film's last five minutes. In those 300 seconds, everything that has happened in the film feels like it should be looked at differently. Then, in the credits, a short clip realigns the film once more. As I don't want to spoil the film, I won't get any more specific, but I will say that the first ending pissed me off and the second confused me. Now to go back to the main portion of the film. Clearly directors Fabrice Canepa and Jean-Babtiste Andrea wanted to say something about the horrors of family in the context of people getting mysteriously mutilated. Dad turns out to have been a cheater, as does Mom (even the paternity of one of the kids comes into question). Richard is a pothead who can't stop jerking off even on the way to Grandma's. Marion is pregnant. Dad turns violent. Mom loses her mind. You know, Christmas.

The plot of the film is so basic that Dead End really is an actor's film. With only three of four locales in the film, with the majority of time spent in their SUV, there's little other than the performances to watch. Thankfully, they are worth watching. Wise, who I always love (especially his turn as Satan on Reaper), is pitch perfect. Wise's Frank goes from irritable to emotional to all the way to flat out crazy, and every step along the way. There's a ton of dark humor in the film, and Mick Caine's Richard provides much of the smirking laughs. When his character leaves the action, there's a hole the film never quite fills.Veteran actress Lin Shayne, who many will instantly remember as the landlady from Kingpin, has had a varied career and will soon play Eleanor Roosevelt in FDR: American Badass! (starring Barry Bostwick as the titular badass and, yep, Ray Wise as Gen. MacArthur) In Dead End she plays the repressed wife who harbors an awful secret perfectly, and that's more than  can be said of the film's weak link Alexandra Holden. When her character goes catatonic, I just didn't buy it. Especially with the path her character takes later in the film. Knowing the ending it makes a bit more sense, but not enough upon reflection.

That's really what troubles me about Dead End. It's not a film that can be taken on surface value, but then the film makers chose to change what it might mean in retrospect not once, but twice, and neither time is ultimately satisfying. While Dead End is well acted on the whole, it lacks an emotional punch at the end to bring it all together. While the film comes in like a lion, it goes out squeaking around for cheese. As a Christmas adjacent film (I hesitate to call it related. Die Hard has more holiday references), it does examine a portion of the holidays that often gets ignored in the horror genre. The only films I could compare it to are the 2008 French film A Christmas Tale and the 1995 Thanksgiving themed Home for the Holidays, but with more gore, less drama, yet the same amount of familial dysfunction.  So the next time you're dreading the ride to a holiday gathering, look at it this way, the chances are you wont get caught up in a supernatural time vortex where everyone dies... probably. You might wish it, but just like Dead End, it's not as fun as it looks.

Bugg Rating

#666: It's Hell's World; We Just Live in It + The Halloween Top 13 Revealed

Welcome everyone to post number 666. One could spend a whole day poking around the internet looking for articles and videos that claim to shed some light on the dubious history of the "Number of the Beast". Trust me, I have, and it makes no more sense to me now than it did before. There is one thing that I do know. For a large number of people it's an evil number, one reserved for Ol' Scratch, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, the Antichrist, or Lucifer a.k.a that schemin' demon commonly known as The Devil. (Cue the music.... I still don't have music after 3 years? Dang-it.) While I don't have any superstitions about the number myself, I do love movies about the boss-man of brimstone and his cohorts, and that leads me right into today's big announcement. Without further ado allow me to unveil this year's theme for the Halloween Top 13!

That's right this Halloween Top 13 the Bugg is kickin' it with Satan. From October 19th - 31st, I'll countdown 13 of my favorite films filled with devils and demons. After years and years of hearing (from misguided peoples) how Halloween was some kind of satanic holiday, I've figured that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I don't want to go so far as to actually join them. (Gross.) So instead I thought that confirming their worst fears would be way more than enough.  Of course, as with every year, I don't want do all this counting down on my lonesome. For this fourth annual tradition to be a real success, I need you loyal Lair-ers to pitch in. Each day along with the review (or separate for your HT13 Overachievers), I like to include a list of your favorite films in the same demonically possessed theme. So send yours in today to thelightningbug (AT) charter.net to join in. Feel free to list as many titles as you want (up to 13) or as few, elaborate or merely list, draw a picture if you must, but please do join in.

Seeing as I haven't gotten around to a film at all this month, I wanted to kick off October and this Satan Celebration with a movie that won't be appearing on my demons and devils list. While Pinhead and his Cenobite companions surely would fit the bill, I believe I've said quite enough about the portions of the Hellraiser series that I should talk about. What I haven't talked about nearly enough is the ones that barely justify a mention. Today's installment of the series, or rather today's brutalization of Clive Barker's vision, started off life as a script called "Dark Can't Breathe" before Pinhead and crew were grafted onto the story. Watching the film , it doesn't seem like a big surprise that it started life as something else. The real shock is that it ended as anything at all, even Hellraiser: Hellworld.

Despite the stated synopsis, "Gamers playing a MMORPG based on the "Hellraiser" franchise find their lives endangered after being invited to a rave whose host intends to show them the truth behind the Cenobite mythos." and one that says that "Pinhead returns to terrorize computer hackers that have opened a virtual Lament Configuration on the website Hellworld.com.", Hellworld  had little to do with either. The characters do apparently play a Hellraiser MMO (which we never see), but there's no virtual Lament Configuration to be seen. They are indeed invited to a rave (or more like a house party put on by the cast and crew of Bryan Loves You and Slipknot 2.0.) where they meet their host, Lance Henrickson, and slowly delve into his vaguely Barker-ish world.

How vague is it? Well Pinhead is on the scene, but instead of commanding a coterie of whipping chains, he uses a cleaver to cut off a victims head. Of course he's brought friends, there's a Cenobite that looks like a low end version of Chatterer, a blindfolded butterball named Bound, and one billed as "Melted Face Cenobite". To say that Pinhead has lost some of his menace here is an understatement. Doug Bradley, showing up here for the last time as Pinny, seems to be having a contest with Lance to see who can look more bored. It's hard to say who won, but Bradly looks clearly pained delivering wispy bon mots like, "Oh what wonders we have to show you." This rewording of a Pinhead quote from the first installment kind of pales in the face of past heavy hitters like, "No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering." I just couldn't help it at this point. The movie was that painful.

So was there anything in this hellacious film that actually worked. Actually yes, with some work, a little re-write, and if someone took Clive Barker out of it then it just might have been an interesting film with a commentary to make on online gaming culture. Now that is a big 'IF". When a movie is bad enough that an itinerant check casher like Mr. Bradley bows out of a repeat performance, then it was pretty damn bad. I could go into the cast of virtual unknowns or slam director Rick Bota who also made the underwhelming Hellraiser: Deader and Hellraiser: Hellseeker, but I don't see  how that's going to do any of us any good. If the devil's in the details, then he's all over Hellworld because the details are what make this movie less and less coherent as it progresses.

Bugg Rating

That's going to wrap it up today, but I'll be back tomorrow with another dose of Halloween goodness. Remember you've only got a little over two weeks to get your lists in to the Halloween Top 13: The Devil Made Me Do It. I hope to see a lot of the annual participants come out as well as a few new folks. Help me make this Halloween Top 13 the List of Darkness.

 

Jeepers Creepers (2001) Death Loves Johnny Mercer

Holy shazbot, this makes three days in a row, and this time I’m back with an old favorite. Sometimes with all the new flicks I want to talk about, I neglect to go back and really talk about old favorites that deserve a place on your shelf, your queue, and definitely on the Lair. I’m talking about 2001’s Jeepers Creepers, everyone’s favorite supernatural slasher film with a vague connection to a 1930’s Johnny Mercer tune. Some say that United Artists was all for the connection as they were the original rights owners of the song, but little known are the other Johnny Mercer themed slashers they intended to make after Jeepers Creepers made big box office. The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish, The Lady on the Two Cent Stamp, and Hooray for Spinach all went into pre-production, but none of them ended up making it to the big screen. The world will never know what randomly thrown together plots and loose collection of powers those song-powered sadists might have contained. All we can do is appreciate what we do have and enjoy watching Jeepers Creepers.

Darry and Trish (Justin Long and Gina Phillips) star as a brother and sister on their way home for spring break. Trish, in no hurry to get home and face her mother’s endless questions about her boyfriend, asks Darry to take the long way down two-lane country roads to delay their arrival. (I’m betting she never took anything that wasn’t an Interstate ever again.) After having an encounter with a rusty, aggressive truck on the road, they spot the driver dropping what looks like a human body down a shaft. Derry (being softhearted as well as softheaded) wants to go back and see if anyone needs help. Naturally, this only gets them deeper involved with “The Creeper”, a flying, axe wielding demon that’s woken up for its annual feeding like a bloodthirsty cicada.  Working from a sense of smell, “The Creeper” is soon hunting down the siblings and killing off anyone who might help them. Hence look for deaths from the great Eileen Brennan (Clue, The Sting, Private Benjamin), Brandon Smith (Robocop 2, No Country for Old Men), and Patricia Belcher (Bones, Flatliners, every sitcom in the last 15 years).

Given the curtest inspection to the plot, the killer’s motivations, origins, etc, or the actions of 95% of the film’s characters, Jeepers Creepers fades faster than fingerprints left by dead skin cells. For me, Jeepers is one of those films where it's best I turn my brain off, sit back, and start yelling at people for being stupid. Knowingly Gina even says to Derry as he tries to lean down “The Creepers“ body chute, “You know that point in horror movies where somebody does something stupid and everybody hates them for it. This is it.” It was, but there are also a jillion examples of that very behavior in this film. No matter what is happening around Gina and Derry, they have to stop and look at it. These two really are a supernatural serial killer’s dream, bratty, brash, dumb, and always ready to stop for help and provide a few more bodies. Trying to make Jeepers Creepers make sense (don’t even get me started on actual on screen continuity), is a fools errand, and I know while fools are off doing such things I could be gleefully watching the Mac guy get it.

Writer/Director Victor Salva broke through to the mainstream in 1995 when his strange little film Powder became something of a surprise hit. Before then Salva had stuck to genre type features, but after he took one more stab at family friendly fare with Rites of Passage in 1999. It’s success (or lack thereof) is probably best illustrated by the fact that two years later he returned to horror with Jeepers and has kept on the path of terror ever since. Jeepers Creepers, while lacking some in the story and sense department, is a gorgeously filmed movie. Salva worked with his frequent collaborator Don E. FauntLeRoy, and they did a great job both setting the movie’s tone and working out great shots for their killer. With such a high concept design, demon head, silver spiked axe, frizzy hair, duster, wings, and so forth, Salva did an excellent job slowly revealing portions of the killer, slowly building the whole picture in the audience’s mind.

Jeepers Creepers would never go on my shortlist of great horror films unless the category was “winged slashers” then it would probably take top honors. It would however go on a list of films I just find to be super enjoyable to watch. The kills are grotesque enough, the killer interesting enough, and the characters completely enjoyable to yell at when they do stupid things. This is especially true of Justin Long. (While I’ve never been a big fan of Justin, his acting is particularly sketchy in JC and it doesn’t help that his character is fairly unlikable. Drew, what do you see in that dimwit?) Jeepers Creepers is the perfect type of film to put on and have fun watching. Who cares where you got them eyes as long as they’re watching something that you enjoy.

Bugg Rating 

Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009): Under the Sea (Something Will Eat Your Ass)

The Summer months are officially upon us, and that means that often this genre film buff’s mind turns from the gloom and doom of dark winter horror and thrills to the Summery delights of action flicks, teenage romance, and killer animals. The last of these has become an exceedingly campy and popular staple of the poorly spelled SyFy network, but I have to admit that I’ve never sat down to watch one of these made for TV masterpieces. However, when I ran across a Blu Ray of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, an Asylum Home Entertainment rip off of SyFy’s oceanic themed animal attack flicks, I couldn’t resist. I figured at nothing else I would get three bucks worth of enjoyment watching ’80’s icons Lorenzo “The Renegade “ Lamas and Debbie (Deborah, cause she’s all grown up now) Gibson  of Electric Youth  fame fight off a pair CGI nightmare. I wasn’t wrong, at least not exactly. Just when I thought that I might have wasted my money, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus snatched victory from mid-air, literally.

Deborah Gibson stars as oceanographer Emma MacNeil who is cruising around the Artic in her mini-sub checking out the whales when a government helicopter stops by to test out some experimental sonar. The sonic waves make the whales freak out and ram a nearby iceberg unleashing the titular pair of prehistoric creatures. The Mega-pus puts the moves (and some serous devastation) on an oil platform while Mega-Shark gets frustrated trying to find a meal big enough and tries to pluck a plane from the sky. MacNeil gets canned from her ocean research job for taking the sub without permission, and she soon finds herself falling in with Japanese scientist Seiji Shimada (Vic Chow) and a team out to stop the giant creatures. After one botched attempt, the team is taken prisoner by government jerk face Allen Baxter (Lamas) and made to continue working on how to capture the creatures. Eventually, and kind of shockingly, a plan to pit the two against each other propels the film to its climatic final confrontation.

If you go into watching Mega- Shark vs. Giant- Octopus without expecting a movie that would be called Mega-Shark vs. Giant-Octopus, then I’m not quite sure what you expected. Perhaps someone mislabeled your copy of Magnolia, and instead of a serious film full of maddeningly morose characters, you ended up watching one of the dumbest films ever made. The fact that you didn’t realize it wasn’t Magnolia and watched the whole thing while wondering if P.T. has lost his mind, however, is on you. If you go into the film expecting a campy movie about two cartoonishly large creatures duking it out while and 80’s pop princess looks on, then you’re in lick because that’s what you’d be getting.

I’m not going to spend a ton of time defending or lauding the film’s action, direction, or performances. Doing so would only be a fool’s errand. Mega vs. Giant (as I’m going to call it for brevity henceforth) is an enjoyable film simply because it is so misguidedly bad. I’ll be completely honest and say that the scene of the shark snatching a plane out of the sky practically paid for the movie in and of itself, and the final battle between the two was also nearly as entertaining. Everything else in between is just filler, but it’s filler that features Debbie Gibson. Now when I was about 12 or 13 years old I had the biggest crush on Debbie Gibson, and now some twenty years later I am happy to report that I still have the biggest crush on Debbie Gibson. I can’t say the same for the Lamas.

Lorenzo Lamas is never the best actor, but back in the day Renegade was a pretty decent Sunday afternoon distraction when it cam on after the block of Hercules and Xena. Here he just shows up to be a harass government stooge that isn’t beyond throwing some racism at Vic Chow’s character despite him being one of the scientists trying to stop the monsters. Lamas’ character didn’t do the film any favors, and while I’m sure he was showing up to cash a check, it still seemed puzzling that it would have been worth cashing. As for Chow, while he should be one of the driving forces in the film, I often forgot he was around even though he had a stilted, forced love scene with Ms. Gibson. In fact other than Gibson’s oceanographer and her sub co-pilot, just a few hours after watching the film I already have trouble coming up with other characters.

In the end, Mega vs. Giant needed no characters, no plot, and no sense to be made because in the end the Mega-Shark fighting the Giant Octopus was all the film really needed. Though I do have to reiterate splicing in a few shots of Debbie Gibson probably wouldn’t have hurt. I can’t imagine that Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus will be a title I will find myself prying off the shelf with wild abandon every time I want to watch a film, but if I have a friend come over and they’re in the mood for something stupid and absurd, it would be one of my go-to choices. Will I pursue the Asylum indirect sequel that features both Gibson and her former rival Tiffany? You bet your boots I will, and when I do you folks will be the first to know. I hope you enjoyed the kickoff of the Summer season here at the Lair. So when you’re inside trying to beat the heat, remember to come back here all Summer long for a bunch of cool films.

Bugg Rating

Midnight Movie (2008): Won't Keep You Up Nights

Hey folks. It’s Friday so that means another dose of Spring Slashers. This week, I thought I would check out a title that had been sitting around the house for some time. I picked up Midnight Movie as part of a 2 pack that also included the biker slasher Poker Run. While bikers getting hacked up didn't hold much interest for me, I thought that Midnight Movie sounded like it might be a little bit of cheesy fun. Now I was basing this solely on the synopsis because the cover art looked terrible and the only actor I vaguely recognized was Brea Grant from Heroes and Rob Zombie’s Halloween II. As it seemed to me, Midnight Movie looked like a supernatural slasher with a self referential nod to the genre. Done right, this could have been a great modern twist on classic slashers meets present day, but as I bought this film and another for three dollars, I didn’t hold out much hope.

Director Ted Radford (Arthur Roberts) had been institutionalized for years because of his obsession with his own film, The Dark Beneath. When a doctor decides to show Ted the film in hopes of making a breakthrough, the results are very different indeed. Seventy people in the psych ward are killed including, presumably, Ted Radford as well. Meanwhile, in a nearby small town, at a dumpy theater that only shows crappy movies because the boss is a cheapskate, The Dark Beneath is tonight’s feature. Settling down to watch the film, a group of teens, a biker on a date with his old lady, and the cop obsessed with the Radford case all think they’re in for a dose of schlock horror, but when patrons of the theater begin to get killed off, it seems that Radford’s screen slasher has made it to the real world.

Thankfully, since I didn’t hold out much hope, I didn’t get my hopes dashed. In fact I got just what I expected. This was the first film directed by Jack Messitt, who currently works as a camera operator for the TV series Bones, and it does show. It also shows that Messitt is more than a little fan of Wes Craven. Throughout there are several references to Cravens films The Nightmare on Elm Street and Shocker as well as Texas Chainsaw Massacre which the movie within a movie, The Dark Beneath, most resembles.  While Messitt doesn’t execute all his high concept ideas, Midnight Movie is no where near the biggest failure I’ve seen recently. (Craven’s recent My Soul to Take was not much (if any) better). No specific part of the film ever rises enough above the mundane to warrant a mention, but Midnight Movie does remain absolutely consistent throughout. The consistency is just at a very low level.

I did rather enjoy the design of the slasher. Though he did appear somewhat similar to Leslie Vernon in 2006’s Behind the Mask, it wasn’t enough to bother me. I did feel like his sharpened corkscrew pointy weapon left a bit to be desired, but perhaps it was chosen just because it would be weird and unwieldy. Unfortunately, it also meant that while there was plenty of blood in the kills, there was really only one or two different ways of killing someone with it. In general, I commend the film for its use of gore, something sadly used all too sparingly in many slashers. The biggest detraction (other than the abrupt and nonsensical ending) is that none of the actors were really all that good. While they were not generally hate-able  as so many other slasher film casts are, the scant 79 minute running time barely gives the film enough set up time much less lots of free moments for character development. That being said, the film takes a solid 30 minutes before it really gets going wherein it meanders about before getting the murders going.

On the scale of bad slasher films, Midnight Movie is no where near the top (or bottom however you want to think of it), but the fact remains that it still belongs on the bad list. There’s just too much in the film that is disjointed and doesn’t quite work. Looking back over this review, I failed to mention but one actor's name, and he’s only in the film less than five minutes. However, that is really the kind of non-entities these people are. Even the last survivor is not someone I had made a connection with through the script had been specifically set up for the audience to feel sympathy for the character. The clumsiness with which they went about it turned me off of it as much as anything else in the film. The only thing that saved it being rated a one was the best illustration of a "if you want them then you'll have to go through me" scene. In the end, I would have been better off watching one of the real, original midnight movies instead.

Bugg Rating

Lightning Bug (2004): Robert Hall's First Film Turns Out Not To Be a Bio-Pic About Me

I while back I gave director Robert Hall and his film Laid to Rest a thorough poking with my list Top 10 Common Complaints of Laid to Rest’s Chromeskull. Honestly, while Hall’s movie has its ludicrous moments, the kills are quite good and the suspense does seem to build effectively. So I was interested to see what other credits Mr. Hall might have to his name. Needless to say, I was a bit surprised to find out he was the director of 2004’s Lightning Bug, a film I’ve heard about many times due to our similarly eponymous monikers. (I want to dispel right now anyone’s thoughts that The Lair might be named after Hall’s film and point you to the real secret origin story HERE.) I never could quite bring myself to actually watch Lightning Bug until I found out he was to be a guest at Horrorhound Weekend. I figured this could go two ways. It could make-up a bit for cutting Chromeskull to ribbons or it could signal that I should make sure to give Mr. Hall a wide berth around his table.

Unlike Laid to Rest, Lightning Bug is not a horror film. If anything it is a Southern fried drama with thriller elements thrown in for good measure. Green Graves (Bret Harrison) is a self taught horror movie make-up prodigy, but he, his mother Jenny (Ashley Laurence), and brother live in a small Alabama town. Green has plans to make it to Hollywood someday, but first he has to make a bit of cash. Landing a job with Mr. Tightweiler (Bob Penny), the kindly old coot who runs the rather tame “spook house” for Halloween, Green finally finds an outlet for his artistic endeavors. He also finds someone to relate to when he meets Angevin Duvet (Laura Prepon), a gothic girl who works in the Video Store, but has dreams of being an actress. The two support each other, but with an abusive stepfather who beats his mom, a church out to shut down his “Satanic” haunted house, and Angevin’s mother trying desperately to keep them apart, Green worries he will never escape the town and get to really pursue his dreams.

With the tagline, “There are Monsters in His Way”, cover and poster art that emphasizes the spookier, moodier moments in the film, and with Ashley Laurence (Hellraiser) and Kevin Gage (May) listed so high up in the credits, I truly expected some kind of supernatural horror flick. Lightning Bug is actually much more of a “coming-of-age” story with a horror backdrop. For any of us who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s as horror fans, metal heads, or Goths, Green Graves is an instantly relatable character. I recall plenty of times people would ask me if I worshiped Satan because I liked Guns N’ Roses or watched C.H.U.D. What can I say? It was the Nineties and the last vestiges of Metal and Horror equal the stuff of the Devil was just beginning to finally wear out of the mainstream. I should say that, like Robert Hall’s protagonist, I also grew up in the South so our shared experience could be geographical, but I really think that Hall was looking at something much bigger here. He was looking at how life and the hand we are dealt, no matter where or how bad it is, sometime must be overcome to achieve our dreams. For my money, it’s a pretty good message. While Hall flirts dangerously with After School Special themes, he reigns in his film and delivers something really heartfelt.

There should be really good reason for it being so lifelike. Just like Green Graves, Robert Hall also moved from up North to a small Alabama town in his youth. I’m sure he had a couple of dumbass friends like Tony Bennett and Billy Martin. I would venture to guess that he had a stepfather he didn’t think too much of as well. However, I do hope, at least, the story takes a turn from the autobiographical in the last segment of the film. I won’t say how Green Graves' story turns out, but as for Robert Hall, he got his first break driving 300 miles to Selma, Alabama, impressing special effects artist Thomas Burman, and was hired as an assistant makeup effects artist on Abel Ferrera’s Body Snatchers. At the time, he was de-boning chicken in a Tyson plant for a job. So here’s a guy who took the risk, and it paid off. Say what you want about Chromeskull, but Robert Hall has created quite a career for himself as a makeup artist for everything from Buffy and Angel (ironically also for Whedon’s synonymous sounding Firefly) to Wristcutters and The Burrowers.

That being said, Lightning Bug, for all its good intentions, is something of a mess. There are an incredible number of continuity errors. I won’t even try and list them as it doesn’t take a keen eye to spot them. There seems to also be a massive number of plot holes where things are just not explained or don’t have solid logic behind them. As a concept, the movie is great. The execution left a little something to be desired, but this is a first film. With that being said, it should be noted that Laid to Rest shares many of the same problems. There is also a terribly uneven scale of acting on display in Lightning Bug. Ashley Laurence completely disappears into the role of Green’s alcoholic mother to the point where she is unrecognizable as the actress who survived Pinhead’s wrath in four Hellraiser films, but Bret Harrison missed the mark as the emotional center the story. He would prove himself more talented in comedic roles as the lead in Reaper a few years later. George Faughnan steals every scene he appears in as Green’s friend Billy Martin, and with his loose tank top and mulleted hair, he reminded so much of a childhood friend of mine. Then on the other hand, Jonathan Spenser completely annoyed me as Green’s other friend Tony.

Lightning Bug also gets quite a boost from the films two heavies. Kevin Gage (May, Strangeland, Laid to Rest) gets across the alcoholic, rage filled menace of his step dad character in a way I only thought Michael Rooker could.  Every scene he appeared in felt like there was a coiled snake making an appearance and readying itself to strike. The other villainous character in Lightning Bug is Mrs. Duvet, the mother of Green’s main squeeze and the driving force behind the church’s protests of the haunted house. Shannon Eubanks, a character actress with only a handful of roles to her credit, is the embodiment of the shrill W.A.S.P, and in addition, the added character quirk of a pillow she constantly carries around in memory of her deceased husband, gave the conservative activist a softer side. So even though I disagreed with her, her methods, and what she was after, I felt compassion for her. I suppose I should also take a moment for Laura Prepon who produced Lightning Bug as well as co-starred. The That 70’s Show star looks gorgeous as the goth styles totally suit the redhead, but her character never really gets off the ground.

Robert Hall, who wrote the script for Lightning Bug some four years before it was made, obviously felt this was a passion project. It was his story, though fictionalized, and he found a way to tell it that both rings of truth and stays entertaining. His next films, Laid to Rest and its sequel, take a different tact. Lightning Bug is about a boy trying to make his dreams come true. Laid to Rest is the product of Robert Hall following his dreams to their ultimate conclusion. After all, who among us wouldn’t want to create a slasher and have it grace the cover of Fangoria, the same magazine that inspired your dreams. Now don’t get me wrong, I still think Chromeskull is one of the more ludicrous slashers to ever grace the screen, but I do admire both of Mr. Hall’s films now for very different reasons. Lightning Bug is a great “coming of age” movie for horror fans that reminded this viewer to never give up on dreams. Laid to Rest on the other hand is what happens when those horror nerd dreams come true.

Bugg Rating

Here's the trailer, and then below you can find the whole movie via Youtube. (or on Netflix Instant)