Evil Dead (2013) + Beyond the Hills (2012)

Posted in****/****, 2012, 2013, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Horror, Romania, Theatrical

Evildead

EVIL DEAD
***½/****
starring Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas
screenplay by Fede Alvarez & Rodo Sayagues, based on the screenplay by Sam Raimi
directed by Fede Alvarez

BEYOND THE HILLS
****/****
starring Cosmina Stratan, Cristina Flutur, Valeriu Andriuta, Dana Tapalaga
screenplay by Cristian Mungiu, inspired by the non-fiction novels of Tatiana Niculescu Bran
directed by Cristian Mungiu

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The greatest irony of Fede Alvarez’s otherwise laudably straightforward reboot of Sam Raimi’s Spam-in-a-cabin classic The Evil Dead is that the moments where it references its primogenitor are actually the movie’s weakest. I’m thinking, in particular, of handsome young hero David (Shiloh Fernandez) getting thrown around a wet cellar in high Raimi smash-zoom style, which only underscores how much the original films drew their tone from Bruce Campbell–and how much this new one misses him. The danger of casting a group of beautiful people and taking itself deadly seriously (and jettisoning the “The,” in a gesture that reads as hipster insouciance) is that Evil Dead might draw closer to the mainstream and farther from its grindhouse roots. The small miracle of it, then, is that in both its absolute glee in finding the line of how much gore to show and then crossing it (a pair of glasses stop a hypodermic needle…but only for a moment) and its surprising efforts at locating a deeper thread in a frayed brother/sister relationship and the impact of drug addiction, Alvarez’s film is a solid, even affecting genre piece that allows for an abundance of memorable money shots. Compare its intelligence and earnestness, its infernal energy, against the disrespectfulness and self-satisfaction of The Cabin in the Woods to see that Evil Dead is not just a taste of the old religion, it’s really pretty great.

Countess Dracula (1971)/The Vampire Lovers (1970) [Midnite Movies Double Feature] – DVD|The Vampire Lovers (1970) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1970s, 2013, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory, UK, Vampire

COUNTESS DRACULA
*½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras A
starring Ingrid Pitt, Nigel Green, Sandor Eles, Maurice Denham
screenplay by Jeremy Paul
directed by Peter Sasdy

THE VAMPIRE LOVERS
***/****
DVD – Image A Sound B+ Extras A-
BD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Ingrid Pitt, George Cole, Kate O’Mara, Peter Cushing
screenplay by Tudor Gates, based on the story “Carmilla” by Sheridan Le Fanu
directed by Roy Ward Baker

by Walter Chaw Britain’s Hammer Studios all but defined the period horror film from the late-Fifties on, making matinee idols of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and erstwhile vampire hunter Van Helsing. But musty is what most Hammer productions remain (with notable exceptions like Quatermass and the Pit), and as the drive-in exploitation ethic of Herschell Gordon Lewis began to redefine the limits of what could be shown with regards to gore and nudity in the United States (arguably, the European films that found currency in the Sixties with a more sophisticated audience had as much or more to do with the “opening” of America’s notorious piety), the studio found itself distressingly out of touch–Merchant/Ivory doing The Matrix.

The Vampire Diaries: The Complete First Season (2009-2010) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2010, 2013, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Romance, Teen, Television, Vampire

Vampirediaries

Image C+ Sound B- Extras C-
“Pilot,” “The Night of the Comet,” “Friday Night Bites,””Family Ties,” “You’re Undead to Me,” “Lost Girls,” “Haunted,” “162 Candles,” “History Repeating,” “The Turning Point,” “Bloodlines,” “Unpleasantville,” “Children of the Damned,” “Fool Me Once,” “A Few Good Men,” “There Goes the Neighborhood,” “Let the Right One In,” “Under Control,” “Miss Mystic Falls,” “Blood Brothers,” “Isobel,” “Founder’s Day”

by Walter Chaw You can diagnose things like Kevin Williamson’s tween opera “The Vampire Diaries” by how much of the dialogue consists of peoples’ names. “Hey, Ben is with Carrie down in the tomb with Josie and Halley. Chris said he and Caroline would meet us there, but then Damon said that Stefan was going instead, but Stefan still has feelings for Elena…” OMFG, amiright? Add to that a liberal use of music by the likes of Matt Kearney, The Fray, and Bat for Lashes, mix sloppily with flavour-of-the-month genre fetish, and, voilà!, the kind of thing everyone describes as a “guilty pleasure”–which basically means they’re not telling you they also enjoy “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”. The remainder of the dialogue is interested in secret parentage, secret siblings, and this and that about lore to establish credibility while simultaneously demonstrating that everyone involved in this one has read more books than Stephenie Meyer (a low bar) and is aware of Stephenie Meyer…and Heath Ledger…and Emily Brontë. Never mind, you wouldn’t understand. Similarly difficult to understand are magic rings that allow vampires to walk around in daylight, ancient tombs sealed by Creole witches led by that bitch from “A Different World”, and a complex series of events that need to happen before one of this show’s vampires are able to turn one of this show’s hot little nymphos into a vampire. It’s a metaphor–not for abstinence, per se, but maybe for embarrassing tumescence. That’s right, “The Vampire Diaries” is a boner joke.

The Apparition (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2012, 2013, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror

Apparition6

*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras HILARIOUS
starring Ashley Greene, Sebastian Stan, Tom Felton, Julianna Guill
written and directed by Todd Lincoln

by Walter Chaw I think you enter into a handshake agreement with The Apparition that it’s never, not for a moment, going to be scary when in its prologue, we’re introduced to Harry Potter alum Tom “Draco” Felton as a grad student or something in a Doc Brown helmet prattling on about “anomalistic psychology” in that affected, pained way the Harry Potter alums (see: Emma “Hermione” Watson in The Perks of Being a Wallflower) seem to have adopted post-franchise. Or maybe it’s the first scene between central pretties Kelly and Ben (Ashley Greene and Sebastian Stan), which, without fail, sports extra, meaningless, unintentionally hysterical blank reaction shots, thus announcing, in addition to hyphenate Todd Lincoln’s inability to cast, his inability to frame shots or hire an editor (or three, as the case may be). To The Apparition‘s credit, though, milquetoast hero Ben is wearing the Bauhaus T-shirt I used to wear in high school when I wasn’t trying to be hip, so…yay for being old enough to have a direct connection to a hipster reference. As for the rest of it, it’s kind of astonishing that this didn’t land as a dtv relic submitted for the immediate disapproval of the Netflix-streaming peanut gallery.

Frankenweenie (2012) – Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2012, 2013, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Directors: Tim Burton, Disney, DVD, Family, Horror

Frankenweenie1

**/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras C+
screenplay by John August, based on a screenplay by Lenny Ripps
directed by Tim Burton

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Back in the early Eighties, Tim Burton was part of the conveyor belt at the Walt Disney Company, cranking out artwork for films like The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. But drawing cuddly animals proved as bad a fit for Burton as it did for R. Crumb, and the studio eventually allowed him to separate from the pack, giving him a chance to hone his voice that was kind of unprecedented. Under the Disney umbrella, Burton produced two black-and-white shorts: the animated Vincent, a sweet and Seussian ode to his idol, Vincent Price (who narrated); and the live-action Frankenweenie, about a boy who uses mad science to bring his departed canine back to life. The latter scandalized Disney (too “scary,” plus dead dogs and black-and-white have got to be roughly equivalent anathema to kiddie fare), and plans were shelved to attach the film to prints of Pinocchio in 1984. Three decades later, Disney confidently bankrolled a feature-length remake of Frankenweenie, stop-motion animated this time but still in black-and-white, and still with an undead dog at the crux of the narrative. What changed in the interim?

ParaNorman (2012) – Combo Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2012, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, DVD, Horror, Zombie

Paranorman3

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Chris Butler & Sam Fell
directed by Chris Butler

by Walter Chaw Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) can see and speak with ghosts, which, if you squint a little, is only a metaphor for the kind of sensitivity that, in a boy, will invariably lead to about a decade of being brutalized by his disconnected male peer group. (Everything will change once he invents Microsoft or Pixar.) Norman’s chief tormentor is barely-verbal Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, already past his sell-by date); his shallow and image-obsessed teenaged sister with a heart of gold™ is Courtney (the awesome Anna Kendrick), who has the hots for the captain of the football team, pre-verbal Mitch (Casey Affleck); and Norman’s best friend, whether he likes it or not, is Mitch’s weird, fat little brother, Neil (Tucker Albrizzi). The first problem of ParaNorman is that, in its rush to be sensitive to intelligent outcasts like Norman and Neil, it dehumanizes and mocks its tormentors, robbing them of the depth and complexity that would have resulted in a better film than this beautifully-wrought, entirely predictable package. (It’s like a jack-in-the-box made by Faberge.) The only moment in which one of these “inside” characters is given any kind of depth (it’s Mitch) is used as a sort of sitcom punchline that doesn’t lend the moment gravity so much as it continues the road of taking sloppy aim at an easy target.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi

Killerklowns1

***/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras A
starring Grant Cramer, Suzanne Snyder, John Allen Nelson, John Vernon
screenplay by Charles Chiodo & Stephen Chiodo
directed by Stephen Chiodo

by Walter Chaw Boy, you know, I really like the Chiodo Brothers’ Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I can’t help it. I like it more than Night of the Creeps, more than Matinee, more than any other film that would see 1950s creature features resurrected, be it through homage or farce or satire. I like it because it’s unapologetic, and because its high concept is broad enough that there are sufficient gags to peanut-butter across the entire runtime. I like, too, that they don’t end a scene without a groaner, meaning they’re unerringly true to their stated mission of erecting a shrine to Irvin S. Yeaworth’s The Blob (truer, even, than the contemporaneous remake of The Blob) and doing it with a relentlessly light touch. It’s never scary (unless you’re a true coulrophobe), but it is often uproarious–like when one of the titular alien Bozos squirts angry Officer Mooney (John Vernon, just fantastic) with gag flowers, to which Mooney, out of proportion to the affront, responds, “I oughta shoot you right now.” I also appreciated the moment when head girl Debbie (Suzanne Snyder) asks why they’re being shot with popcorn and her boyfriend Mike (Grant Cramer) replies, “Popcorn? Because they’re clowns!” Well, no shit, Debbie, try to pay attention.

The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982) – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack

Posted in1980s, 2012, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, DVD, Horror

Death Dorm
Pranks
***/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras A
starring Laurie Lapinski, Stephen Sachs, David Snow, Daphne Zuniga
screenplay by Stephen Carpenter, Jeffrey Obrow, Stacey Giachino
directed by Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter

by Jefferson Robbins There may be nothing groundbreaking or new about a bunch of film nerds in their early twenties running around making a horror movie on the cheap, but that’s because Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter probably did it first. Created with the kind of zeal, energy, inventiveness-on-a-budget, and adherence to forms that are symptomatic of most youthful endeavours, The Dorm That Dripped Blood–written, shot, and released under a multiplicity of titles–is very much a product of its time and zeitgeist. That doesn’t mean it lacks worth–in fact, it manages to be both fun (in an ironic, cheesemongering way) and, in its final minutes, quite compelling and suspenseful.

Night of the Living Dead (1990) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1990s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: George A. Romero, Horror, Zombie

Notld6

**½/**** Image C- Sound B Extras B
starring Tony Todd, Patricia Tallman, Tom Towles, McKee Anderson
screenplay by George A. Romero, based on the screenplay by John A. Russo and Romero
directed by Tom Savini

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is a watershed: a quintessential drive-in/B-movie that demonstrated without equivocation how horror/exploitation pictures are often “indicator species” in the cultural swamp–the ones that most quickly, most effectively locate the toxins in the ecosystem. Appearing in 1968, Night of the Living Dead addressed the rise of televangelism in its legion of communion-taking, slow-walking white people; predicted the generation gap (alongside Rosemary’s Baby) and a spate of evil-children flicks that appeared in the early-’70s; and spoke to the Civil Rights war in its blithe casting of black actor Duane Jones and not-so-blithe murder of his character by a posse of hillbilly vigilantes in the final frames. There’s something super-charged in the image of Jones holing up in a farmhouse with whiter-than-white, meeker-than-meek Barbra (Judith O’Dea), something explosive in the social microcosm represented by survivors trying, unsuccessfully, to work together to affect their escape from what’s really just a metaphorical threat. The movie resonated then; it resonates still.

The Raven (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack

Posted in2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, DVD, Horror, Hungary, Mystery, Spain, Thriller, ZERO STARS

Raven1

ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C
starring John Cusack, Luke Evans, Alice Eve, Brendan Gleeson
screenplay by Ben Livingston & Hannah Shakespeare
directed by James McTeigue

by Walter Chaw I’m no nineteenth-century cop, but I personally would begin by interrogating the guillotine-pendulum maker. James McTeigue’s abominable The Raven posits legendary Marylander Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) as a crazed, alcoholic, frustrated-artist type who has a bar tab the length of his arm to go with a fiery temper and a quite-requited, it turns out, affair with toothy Emily (from Aardman Studios: Alice Eve), daughter of Captain Hamilton (Brendan Gleeson). Alack-alay, what should happen but a wax museum breaks out as a critics-hating serial killer (just like Theatre of Blood, which I should’ve revisited instead) enacts scenes from Poe’s stories whilst dressed in the hat and cape of McTeigue’s V for Vendetta protag. Good copper Det. Fields (Luke Evans) is hot on the miscreant’s trail, enlisting Poe as a Poe expert to try to get one step ahead of the well-read marauder. There is, alas, no ratiocination the equal of the mystery of Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare’s (no relation, I hope) bewilderingly bad screenplay. No one, no one, could deliver these lines–a mush of anachronistic phrases and “period” posh–with conviction, much less the miscast Cusack and a motley band of supporting players. The good news is that The Raven is funny. The bad news is that it’s so awful, it makes you the kind of person who watches a movie just to be superior to it.

Torso (1973) + Maniac Cop (1988) – Blu-ray Discs

Posted in1970s, 1980s, 2012, Action, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Crime, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Satire, Thriller

Maniaccopcap3

I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale
***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras B
starring Suzy Kendall, Tina Aumont, Luc Merenda, John Richardson
screenplay by Ernesto Gastaldi and Sergio Martino
directed by Sergio Martino

MANIAC COP
**½/**** Image B Sound A Extras B
starring Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell, Laurene Larson, Sheree North
screenplay by Larry Cohen
directed by William Lustig

by Jefferson Robbins Slasher movies are concerned with not just murder, but with its root cause–not motive, really, but motivation. There has to be a detonator, or else stalker-horror is what its most strident critics accuse it of being: all body-count, no brains. The films have leeway to be less concerned with motive than, say, those Ustinov-as-Poirot adaptations, where the whole cast learns whodunit while seated for tea and cakes in the third act. (I sort of miss those; I wish “mystery” hadn’t been usurped by “thriller” in the moviemaking lexicon, and in part I blame Jonathan Lynn’s 1985 Clue.) But they have to successfully allude to a trigger point, some match to the killer’s keg of gasoline.

Child’s Play (1988) [Chucky’s 20th Birthday Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray + DVD; Chucky: The Killer DVD Collection

Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Romania, Satire, Thriller, UK

Childsplaycap

CHILD’S PLAY
***/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini and John Lafia and Tom Holland
directed by Tom Holland

CHILD’S PLAY 2 (1990)
**/**** Image C+ Sound A-
starring Alex Vincent, Jenny Agutter, Gerrit Graham, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by John Lafia

CHILD’S PLAY 3 (1991)
*/**** Image B- Sound A-
starring Justin Whalin, Perrey Reeves, Jeremy Sylvers, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by Jack Bender

BRIDE OF CHUCKY (1998)
**/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Katherine Heigl, Nick Stabile
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by Ronny Yu

SEED OF CHUCKY (2004)
*/**** Image A- Sound B Extras C-
starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Billy Boyd, Redman
written and directed by Don Mancini

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Twenty years and four sequels later, it’s obviously pointless to try to conceal that Child’s Play is about a serial killer (Brad Dourif) who transfers his soul into an innocuous doll, but watching it today–more than a decade after it thoroughly traumatized me as an impressionable preteen–I was surprised to learn that the film itself didn’t do much to hide that fact from the start. Oh, sure, when you first approach Child’s Play, you’re ostensibly supposed to wonder whether little Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) is responsible for the murders peppered throughout, despite his loud protestations that Chucky did it. But no, it never really tries to pretend that these horrible acts are being committed by anyone other than that godawful doll. In taking that perspective, Child’s Play preys upon the irrational fears we all harbour–that sting of dread we get at the sight of an unintentionally unsettling toy, immediately wished away by safe, immutable reason: that’s impossible–a doll can’t hurt you.

Dark Shadows (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Tim Burton, DVD, Horror, Vampire, Werewolf

Darkshadows3

*½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B-
starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green
screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith, based on the television series “Dark Shadows” by Dan Curtis
directed by Tim Burton

by Angelo Muredda Like so many of his recent dioramas, Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows starts off looking suspiciously like a real movie. The director’s tendency to Burtonize cherished texts into gauche self-portraits is suppressed in an economical opening that tells with a straight face the dolorous tale of Barnabas Collins, once-imprisoned and newly-freed vampire star of Dan Curtis’s late-afternoon soap. The mood is sombre–a nice hat-tip to Curtis’s morose series, which, if you’ll pardon the wonky chronology, played out like a Smiths song drained of irony. Alas, before long Barnabas awakens in 1972 to meet his distant relatives and dissipated hangers-on, and the mere presence of pasty-white, pink-shaded, ginger-wigged Helena Bonham Carter as family psychiatrist Julia Hoffman is enough to break the spell. Carter’s mannered and carefully sculpted weirdness alerts us that this is yet another wax museum standing in for a film no one had the heart to finish.

Friday the 13th: From Crystal Lake to Manhattan [Ultimate Edition DVD Collection] + Friday the 13th [Uncut]|Friday the 13th Part 2|Friday the 13th Part 3 3-D – Blu-ray Discs

Posted in1980s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Revenge

FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980)
**½/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound B-
BD – Image A Sound B Extras B+
starring Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram
screenplay by Victor Miller
directed by Sean S. Cunningham

F131capby Alex Jackson

“Do you think you can get through the summer?”

“I don’t think I can get through the week.”

One look at the teenagers in Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th and we can see they’re displaced, without religion or identity. Shallow, dim, they don’t have any past and they don’t have any future. Their existence is entirely ephemeral and half-developed. Their lives consist solely of pot, sex, and menial work. We know that they’re really talking about life in the above-quoted exchange–life as a biological process that will come to an abrupt stop for most of them by the end of the week, if not by the end of the summer. They think they’re just talking about work and boredom.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2012) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Esoterica, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Beyond4

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras F
starring Michael Rogers, Eva Allan, Scott Hylands
screenplay by Panos Cosmatos, inspired by the book Be Your Self by Mercurio Arboria
directed by Panos Cosmatos

by Angelo Muredda Panos Cosmatos claims he wasn’t allowed to watch R-rated movies as a kid and had to make do with the lurid box covers he saw on video store shelves. Rising above those less-than-ideal conditions, the first-time helmer and son of famed Cobra and Rambo: First Blood Part II director George P. Cosmatos makes an auspicious debut with Beyond the Black Rainbow. As befits its retro title, this is a bravura pulp homage that recreates the feeling of a preteen creeping down the hall to catch a sidelong glance of the bygone genre cinema pulsing out of the living-room TV and painting the walls orange. Still, it’s best approached not as a found object from that time, but as a mood piece–a sustained exercise in atmospheric nostalgia for what LCD Soundsystem eloquently called the “unremembered ’80s.”

TIFF ’12: Antiviral

Posted in2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Film Festivals, France, Horror, Mystery, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller, TIFF

*½/****
written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg

by Bill Chambers Featuring more close-ups of needles piercing flesh than a booster-shot training video, Antiviral, the debut feature by Cronenberg offspring Brandon, takes place in a world evolutions ahead of TMZ, where fans pay to have themselves infected with viruses extracted from their celebrity crushes. (“Biological communion,” the film calls this process–a phrase that links father and son filmmakers as efficiently as a paternity test.) The slightly repulsive Caleb Landry Jones is Syd March, a rogue technician for The Lucas Clinic who breaks protocol by contaminating himself with the disease that is rapidly, unexpectedly killing superstar Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon), making him a target of Hannah’s family–who figure he’ll be useful in their search for a cure–and fans, who want to watch him expire as a proxy for their beloved Hannah. Yes, it’s pretty silly.

Jaws (1975) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Spielberg

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A+
starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary
screenplay by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, based on the novel by Benchley
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Walter Chaw What’s not mentioned in very many conversations about Jaws is the pleasure it takes in work. That it’s one of the most influential films of all time–a picture commonly identified as the one responsible for the studio summer-blockbuster mentality–is a given by now. The miracle of it, though, is that it gets better every time you see it. I have the movie memorized at this point; I can recite it like a favourite song. I still jump when Ben Gardner appears in the hole in the hull of his boat, and I still laugh when Hooper helps himself to Brody’s uneaten dinner. More than a fright flick, Jaws is a beautifully rendered character piece, establishing Spielberg as–a little like Stephen King, oddly enough–a master of the easy moment. (They’re artists I’ve conflated in my head for their popularity with and influence on a generation of people my age.) It’s a little nasty, too, Jaws is, in throwaway moments like the one on the beach where, after a giant fin appears in the water, Spielberg cuts to a group of old men picking up their binoculars. They’re there to looky-loo; they’re expecting carnage. It’s not a Hitchcockian moment of audience critique (though it functions that way), but a brilliant character beat expressed with Spielberg’s savant-like visual genius. But above all, Jaws is about function and work–not unlike Star Wars, the final nail in the New American Cinema, will be two years later.

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) [Unrated Director’s Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1990s, 2012, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: John Frankenheimer, Horror, Satire, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Islandofdrmoreaucap1

**½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras F
starring Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk
screenplay by Richard Stanley and Ron Hutchinson
directed by John Frankenheimer

by Walter Chaw This is a tough one. As an avowed if guarded fan of director John Frankenheimer, his involvement with The Island of Dr. Moreau is something like a gobsmacker. Sure, he’d ventured into genre before with the ridiculous Prophecy, while, arguably, his two best films–The Manchurian Candidate and Seconds, his masterpiece–are genre pieces, too. But I think at the time, bringing in Frankenheimer three days into a troubled shoot to replace that assclown Richard Stanley was more an act of expediency than of ingenuity. If New Line thought they were getting a closer, they were right; if they thought they were getting someone who could corral the downward-spiralling Val Kilmer, they were less right (“Will Rogers never met Val Kilmer,” Frankenheimer famously said). What they probably weren’t expecting was that Frankenheimer would turn in something that, though critically-savaged at the time, had some legs. No, The Island of Dr. Moreau isn’t a whole, falling apart as it does in the last half-hour or so, but it is the sort of movie that hints at larger issues and boasts enough indelible moments to deserve another look. Truth is, only movies this odd and discomfiting earn this amount of misdirected ire. It’s not to say there’s not a lot wrong with the film, but rather to suggest that the chief criticisms of it being strange and “a mess” aren’t among them.

Dexter: The Sixth Season (2011) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2011, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Horror, Television, Thriller

Dexters6cap1

Image A Sound A+ Extras D+
“Those Kinds of Things,” “Once Upon a Time…,” “Smokey and the Bandit,” “A Horse of a Different Color,” “The Angel of Death,” “Just Let Go,” “Nebraska,” “Sin of Omission,” “Get Gellar,” “Ricochet Rabbit,” “Talk to the Hand,” “This Is the Way the World Ends”

by Bill Chambers LIGHT SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. My favourite episode of “The Incredible Hulk” is the two-hour premiere of the second season, “Married.” One of the unfortunately-few instalments written and directed by series creator Kenneth Johnson (a genuine pulp talent), it sees David Banner falling in love with the terminally-ill shrink (Mariette Hartley won an Emmy for the role) helping him contain the Hulk, a hypnotic process that involves David visualizing the Hulk trapped in a giant birdcage in the middle of a pristine desert–a tableau that clearly inspired the dream vistas at the outset of Tarsem’s The Cell. Kindred spirits, they eventually marry, but although unleashing the Hulk protects her from harm when external forces threaten her life, it can’t save her from the Grim Reaper. “Married” ends on an unusually hopeless note as a young boy who befriended the doctor informs David he’s going to devise a cure for her disease when he grows up and David more or less tells the boy he’s deluded. One of the most devastating pieces of genre television ever produced, it really could’ve been the series finale. Unfortunately, the show continued long enough to lapse into self-parody and longer still. Much like “Dexter”–though come to think of it, that happened about halfway through the pilot.