POPCEREAL REVIEW: Home for the Holiday (1972 TV)

I've got your present for you. It's a pitchfork!! In your back!!!

The four Morgan sisters reunite, after nine years, as they visit their ailing father.  There is the youngest, Christine (played by a young Sally Fields, fresh off her run as The Flying Nun), an naive innocent college girl, who still depends on her big sisters; Jo (Jill Haworth) the feisty socialite, Fred (Jessica Walter, who was killer in Play Misty for Me, just a year earlier) along with her bottles of vodka, and Alex (Eleanor Parker) the older, mother-hen spinster.

Don't look at him, whatever you do

They've been summoned to their childhood ranch estate by their father (the ever enjoyable Walter Brennan), who is convinced that his new wife (the creepy Julie Harris) is trying to poison him.  Her first husband died under mysterious circumstances, and now the sisters are worried that she is targeting their father's money.  To make matters more difficult, there is a terrible December thunderstorm a-brewing.  Trapped in their secluded childhood home, the sisters keep an eye open for their suspicious stepmother, and open some scabbed over wounds from their own dysfunctional past.

Killer Graphic Tee

Oh... and let's not forget the maniacal killer, dressed in a yellow rain slicker and boots, and red rubber gloves, carrying a pitchfork!

Produced by the dream team of Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, this TV Movie is already a must see. But then you throw in John Llewellyn Moxey -- the best TV Movie of the Week director ever(!), well, then you just have a hit on your hands.

Oh yeah, Michael Myers.  I got your number.

I can still remember the first time I watched this Yuletide creeper.  It's probably the first slasher flick I ever watched.  Sadly, though, in the pantheon on modern horror, there is no mention of this small screen gem.  Halloween has already been established as the original slasher flick, and has been widely credited for setting the standards and motifs.  Horror buffs will also look back a couple years previous to Black Christmas, and credit that film for establishing the guidelines for all others.  But, no one ever talks about Home for the Holidays.  Clearly, HFTH is well set in the Made for Television vein, with the old fashioned "ladies in distress" theme, and Gothic thriller overtones.  It doesn't compare to the youthful. angsty and lusty predecessors, with their shocks and sex.  But, check out the killer donned in the slasher style garb!

If we all know one thing about slasher flicks, it's that the killer is always masked, his/her identity hidden from the viewer.  HFTH has that motif down pat, and it predates Halloween by a half dozen years (Black Christmas by two years).

Actually, this argument is somewhat of a moot point, seeing that the Italian Giallo pictures had killers running around in rain slickers and gloves long before Spelling and Goldberg decided to make this film

PEEPHOLE REVIEW: And Soon the Darkness (2010)

Odette Yustman fulfills her contractual agreement -- that of having her butt cheeks featured prominently in a bad movie.

Which way outa this movie?

Comparing this Hollywood remake to its original British predecessor would be like placing Dolly Parton next to a 5th Grader and asking the little school girl not to have a complex.  It's just plain not fair!  Not that the remake would fare any better, being critiqued on its own merits.  The original was brought to the screen by the creative team who behind the incredibly imaginative and unique 60s British TV spy series The Avengers.  the remake was brought to the screen by the creative team of... a pile of short films.

The two perky mod British girls, of the original, are replaced by two perky American college girls (played by Amber Heard and Odette Yustman), and the rural countryside that thy bicycle through has moved from France to Argentina (golly gee, tourists terrorized in the wilds of South America -- how original).  Like a cookie cutout, the remake follows the original plot lines:  the girls find themselves in a small village where other female travelers have gone missing, they run into a handsome stranger who appears to be following them, the girls have a tiff and separate. and help is found from the local law officer.  But, the comparisons stop there.  Clever character twists, nuanced direction and imaginative storytelling have all been traded in, like an American girl for white slavery, for standard college buddy horror fare. 

"Seriously, I am the poor man's Megan Fox.:

Heard and Yustman are asked to not much more than look good in their summer minis and bikini.  Their performances are about as standard as can be -- Heard is the "nice" girl who shyly bats her eyes at the cute American stranger, and Yustman is the flirty bad" girl, who plays up the frat boy hi-jinks with an embarrassingly modicum talent for humor.  Ironically, Heard is tagged as a producer on this movie, which makes me wonder why she didn't demand some better development for these characters. Why, upon hearing about the strange disappearances of other college age tourists, would these young ladies then strut into the local watering hole, inhabited by all locals, wearing their sexiest dresses, and then grind on the male patrons, while singing along to The Divinyls' "I Touch Myself?"  After this act of idiocy, it's hard to care what happens next to these brainless kids.

And what does happen next is straight out of every other Tourists Beware!! movie that's come out in the past few years.

What's my motivation?

I don't understand how some people can defend remakes, when movies like this are the common result.  The took the skeleton of a great, nuanced, witty and terrifying movie, and then boil off all the meat.  What many producers fail to realize is that it's not the story that makes a good film good, but the storytelling. The original 1970 production was a perfect gem of quiet suspense, built on good pacing and characters.  And Soon the Darkness 2010 is merely a pointless regurgitation of Saw and Hostel gimmicks.

A NEIGHBORHOOD REVIEW: Shank

I little bit ago, I dished out some free copies of Revolver's release of Shank.  I asked the winners if they would give a review of the flick, just for funtime sakes.  Here's Michal Zombie's review, from over at his My Zombie Life blog.

"So in the not too distant past I won a online contest run by I.m. BadRonald for a copy of the movie Shank. Its a British movie about a post apocalyptic London in the year 2015 where gangs run the streets and its a fight for survival. Cool, sounds like The Warriors or A Clockwork Orange so far. . . and that's about the only nice thing I'm going to say about the movie....:

That was a small taste.  Go read the rest here...

Lancelot LINKS: snubdom's review of classic TV movie Bad Ronald

I came across a link to Rick Tremble's website of wild, trippy illustrated movie reviews -- and other stuff -- snubdom. It's a funhouse full of subversive movie reviews, music, comix and other shit.  I parked myself down in the review archives for a couple few, I was having such a blast!  And, while reading my way through, I came across this review -- Bad Ronald! 

Undoubtedly, one of my all-time favorite TV Movies of the Week.  Scared the cripes outa me as a kid, and still puts the willies in me when I see it now.  It's not your traditional horror fare -- more a suspense thriller -- so it's not full of big frights or leaping cats.  What got to me was the brilliant perforance by Scott Jacoby as Ronald.  When he finally takes that turn into insanity, he is simply a big creepy creepster.

So sacred this movie is, to me, that I have not yet done a review of it, myself.  I figured I'd ask Rick if I could post his unique review here.  He said I could.  And I thank him greatly.  Enjoy!

PEEPHOLE REVIEW: Damned by Dawn (2010)

Damned if You Do...

Come on, come on... Take a!  Take another little piece of my heart, now ba-bay!!

It's interesting, the title of this flick.  It's so close to the alternate title  of The Evil Dead (Dead by Dawn), a movie that the filmmakers and distributors just love to compare it to.  Content wise, it has the same high energy visuals blasting throughout, just as Sam Raimi's movie did.  The filmmakers of DBD certainly get an A for effort.  They put in a lot of work to try and make this film LOOK foreboding.

The problem is... they overdid the doom and gloom, and unwittingly overburdened the audience (while at the same time, underwhelming them with lack of plot).

If I find that damn fog machine, I'm gonna trash it!

From the opening fog-enshrouded title sequence through to the very end of the movie, the screen is so filled with a deathly blue/gray pallor that we're sapped of any pleasurable feelings.  Every exterior sequence is absolutely drenched in fog, fog from a fog machine AND computer generated (computer generated fog is up there on my annoyance list, along with CG blood splatter and CG frost breath). Yes, building a foreboding feeling is a helluva tool for horror, but too much of it works against the emotional hinge of the story.

Claire and Paul (Renee Willner and Danny Alder) head to the country to visit Claire's sick grandmother (helluva good time to introduce the family to your new beau!).  Claire is entrusted with an funeral urn, by her grandmother (who already looks like she's been dead for weeks), with the eerie and vague notice that she'll "know what to do with it, when the time comes."  Well, the time comes when a wailing Banshee comes to take grandma away to the hereafter.  Apparently, grandma knew that her grandchild would screw up and kill the banshee, and then have to use the urn to fix up the entire mess.  Grandma -- always knows everything, she does.

Do you think I should sue those nincompoops down at the spa?

This may have been an interesting film, had the filmmakers put as much effort into the story and the performances, as they did the effects.  Director/Writer Brett Anstey expresses his love of the great Hammer Studio horror films (the footage of his old Super8/videos from his youth demonstrate his love of horror), and how he wanted his film to deliver the same feel. But he misses the mark.  The Hammer films were filled with vibrant colors and vibrant performances.  They were gruesome, but also sophisticated.  The performances were earnest, and the stories and direction innovative.  With Damned by Dawn there is an utter lack of any of these qualities.  The characters move through their environments with no aim or goal.  Claire enters the bedroom of her grandmother frequently, but for no other reason than to just happen upon another clue to the plot.  It's very much like watching someone play a video game.  The player walks the character to a room, they find a clue, they leave, they go find another clue... on and on, until you come to the confrontation with the adversary.  And then the clues and whatever else is found, is used in battle.

the plus side is some of the creature effects.  They are quite old school and clunky computer generated goblins, but the effect of them all flying after Claire, as she tries to escape in the climax, is really pretty creepy.  If I had only an inkling of worry about the character's well-being, I might've had more of a connection.

All mood and atmosphere, gore and goblins.  The only ghost here is the plot.

Spit Take

They're coming in February, 2011!!  Both... simultaneously. 

"They do respect her but(t)...

"...They love to watch her strut..."  Bob Seger

Gone (2007)

Another bad day for the outback backpackers.

For reasons that I can't quite comprehend, the Australian horror scene got a real bad knock after the controversial Wolf Creek ripped through the horror headlines.  So many people said it was a disgusting, all-for-the-thrill-of-gore movie.  Many unjustly threw it on the torture-porn funeral pyre, along with Hostel and Saw and their cousins (Wolf Creek was miles better than those pieces of mule shit).  Others -- the Aussie locals who recalled the tragedy it was loosely based on -- were outraged that filmmakers would so quickly capitalize on a brutal true-life crime.  Me?  I thought it a fantastically built upon suspense yarn that explodes into unrelenting, and horrific terror.  I was disturbed and unsettled... and I like that.  Gone didn't deserve to be shoved aside because of the other film's controversy.  In fact, outside of some similarities in their storytelling maneuvers, the films are quite different.

Hmm... you think this cage this guy has behind us is some kinda foreboding omen?

Brit boy Alex (Shaun Evens from the gawdawful After Dark Horrorfest IV entry Dread) arrives in Australia with nothing but a backpack and a tourist guide. Looking lost, a charismatic American traveler Taylor (Scott Melchlowicz from Mean Creek) invites him along to party Aussie style with a couple local gals he's hooked up with.  It isn't until after Alex crawls out of a sleeping bag with one of the girls that he fesses up that he's in town to meet up with his girlfriend.  Oops!  What to do with the incriminating Polaroids that Taylor snapped of all of them last night?  Not a problem.  Taylor is such a cool dude, he tosses the pics in the trash at the gas station, before delivering Alex to his rendezvous with his girl Sophie (Amelia Warner, who did a number of period pieces before tagging onto some genre flicks) -- except that he's not gonna exit the scene that easily.

They didn't sign their postcards

After an initial day of fun and frolic on the Aussie beaches, Taylor drops the news that after a one night fling, Sophie's gal pal Ingrid (Zoe Tuckwell-Smith) grabbed the earliest bus outa town, leaving the two lovebirds with a third wheel on their romantic getaway.  Naturally, this doesn't sit well with Alex, seeing that Taylor has the scoop on his infidelities AND is being very obvious towards his girlfriend.  The pot starts to boil over when the lovebirds run into another fellow traveler who is a link to Taylor's sordid, maybe violent past. Envy, paranoia, distrust... all items on the menu on this vacation from hell.

He's attracted to me?  Oh please.

I don't understand why this flick didn't get more attention.  I guess that by the time Gone had entered the horrorspehere, people were already leary of the tourists-meet-tragedy flicks, like Touristas, Donkey Punch, and the Hostel twins, so they didn't bother.  It's a shame, because fans were all abuzz about Lake Eden (another romantic excursion gone wrong) but no one seemed to notice that Gone was written by James Watkins, the fellow who directed, and also wrote, that fine flick.

Much like Wolf Lake, the film takes its time to let the characters breath, to interact and react to each other. The performances are pretty much solid, with Scott Melchlowicz pulling off the double-edged task of being both charismatic and slimy.  And the direction by Ringan Ledwidge is so wonderfully subtle. Nothing is obvious, and that's exactly why this flick works as a suspense thriller.  The character of Sophie could've easily been the usual pissy, underappreciated hot girlfriend, but Ledwidge steers Amelia Warner towards a performance that is more genuine.  She's a girl who wants to enjoy her time with her boyfriend and gets effected by the change she sees in him.  She's definitely a cute girl, but her looks and fashion sense are downplayed, so as not to be just some body for the camera to focus onto.

Yeah, she's mine.  Can't you tell?

 Taylor is certainly dubious and has ulterior motives towards Alex's girlfriend. And Alex is a guilt-ridden freak who knows he doesn't deserve a girl as sweet and genuine as Sophie.  These personality conflicts are what build the suspense.  There's no body in the trunk that we're waiting for the unsuspecting lovebirds to discover, no detective knocking at doors to get us all riled up, no big shows of violence (until the 3rd act!).  It's all character driven thrills.  But, unlike Wolf Creek, the gruesomeness is not so much slash-'em-up kind, but more pulse pounding (with a white knuckle "chase" scene climax that is absolutely maddening), cat-and-dangermouse kind.