Going to Hell in WV

19th January Episode 50 [yes; I didn't wait for post #50 to do 'Episode 50'; bite me, it's fun!]

Things I now know about West Virginia:

• Lots of Mines of one type or another
• Brad Dourif (born in Huntington, WV; son of a paint and dye factory owner)
• Large numbers of hardscrabble miners unaccountably voted for sleek, privileged East-Coaster John F Kennedy rather than for Hubert Humphrey in the 1960 Democratic Party Primary. With NO SUGGESTION of corruption or anything.
• The Blue Ridge Mountains of (cf: Lonesome Pine, The; On The Trail Of)
• It contains the literal gate to Hell.

Yes, the Hellmouth is not based in Sunnydale; or Louisiana; or New York, or New Jersey, or even Milton Keynes; it's below a museum and former Sate Prison in WV; thanks for clearing THAT up, Episode 50! (Though I'm not certain I wish to base any major theological decisions on a film that has its born-again character reference The Exorcist as the origin of its 'Call us Legion for we are many' reference, rather than the, you know, BIBLE. Crack a book once in a while, movie, eh?).

What we've got is a remake of Legend of Hell House, with the idiots going to an obviously haunted location at the behest of sinister wealthy person, with vaguely debunk-y notions, then are harshly disabused of them as BAD THINGS commence to happen.  Except here we have two competing groups of idiots (one not-Ghosthunters 'skeptic' lot with their cute little EMF meters and their leader with a TRAGIC BACKSTORY, and one set of deliverence-ministerers led by a floppy-haired humourless dick and his floaty Deanna-Troi-lite 'psychic'), rather than one.

Hell House's queasy sexuality has been purged, and replaced here with a rather toothless 'yay Jesus' small-r religious subtext.  Since the TRAGIC BACKSTORY involved a dead sister resulting in a LOSS OF FAITH which has driven debunker-boy away from the big JC and into the soiled arms of rationality, and which he must OVERCOME in order to RECONNECT WITH HIS FAITH, to have the spiritual strength to fling a crucifix, drive off the one demon rather boredly cavorting in the gateway, like a stripper covering someone else's Wednesday afternoon shift and seal the cheap-CG Hellgate. Clearly a victory for the angels... I guess...?  Though not for Mr Sinisterwealthyperson from the beginning, who was rather hoping they'd disprove the existence of Hell, since he's dying, and is sure to be headed there for his many sins in life; the last shot of the film is him viewing the idiots' conclusions, and weeping profusely.  Or perhaps he was PZ Myers, and he'd just finished reading the script.

The Lovefilm thumbnail and DVD cover is a filthy. filthy lie, by the way; though there is some footage shot from the cameras the idiots bring in with them, this is NOT by any definition a 'Found Footage' film. Sufferers from motion sickness can rest easy; as for the rest of us...

After all this...THIS, I decided to watch a Miramax film.  No, really! Come back later, and see.

Chokeslammed through an elevator roof in the Bioshock Hotel

15th January  See No Evil

The last two entries were products of my desire to finally get my Lovefilm 'Watchlist' below 100 entries, but this one is from my last pre-owned-DVD/Blu-Ray shopping trip.  Sadly, its shelf-stale nature means that unless I find a time portal that runs back to 2007, I've missed the closing date for the competition on the insert: win a trip to Wrestlemania and meet lead actor, pro wrestler and possible future political figure Kane (Yes, I'm a smark; what of it?). The Big Red We-Had-To-Get-Jerry Lawler-to-stop-saying-'Retard' himself plays Jacob Goodnight, and oh my goodness if only that was the silliest thing about this movie.

Oh look; here's an impractically large and architecturally confused old building (a burnt-out hotel this time) mostly created in CG! and who should be hoving into view but an ethnically and culturally diverse co-ed group of foulmouthed criminal youths trying to knock some time off their various sentences by 'volunteering' for some cleanup work.  But oh noes! the Bioshock-2-looking halls are prowled by a physically imposing filthy man bearing the emotional scars of a religious fanatic mother, and wielding some would-be iconic and hideously impractical weapon (big old hook on about ten feet of chain, since you don't ask; at least it's not ANOTHER power tool, and the big chap trades it in for a more sensible axe partway through.  Post Jack Torrance, I believe it's now compulsory for anyone using an empty/abandoned hotel as a killing ground to do so with a REALLY BIG AXE).

So what's a giant bald virtual-mute with a head full of maggots [yes, really] to do, when all he wants to do is lay tripwires and work on his collection of jars of homeless people eyeballs, but can't move for these young people with their tattoos and their baggies of dope, and their making out and their hula hoops and their rumble seats?  Making things worse, the McManus nominally in charge of the male miscreants is the cop who invaded Big Hooky's previous crucifix-slathered lair in the pre-credits scene and tried to fix his clock with a bullet in the big old dome; didn't work, obviously (though bullet wound = skullhole full of maggots because gross visuals always beats logic, as 63% of all horror films made since 2000 have established), and was-a-cop loses a partner and a forearm to a free-swinging axe.

Then there is doping, and swearing, and foreshadowing and some sorts of attempts at character;  then they split up and go to bed, nerdy computer criminal fellow and Black Man Called Tyson [wince] go looking for a supposed safe full of cash, and the film settles in to a comfy rhythm of killscreamrunstalkscreamkillrepeat, until only arseholes remain - (which isn't a spoiler, since there were really only arseholes there from the start).  For the killspotters, (and you all know who you are) who really only watch slasher movies for the creative kills, we have some hookings, some eyeball-pluckings, some spikings, a chokeslamming into the roof of a lift (as advertised), and the standout; someone being killed by having their mobile phone shoved down their windpipe. Mostly practical effects, too, until the end, which gives real effects the big finger in favour of an entirely CG Kane.  Much to the detriment of the film, since it's not only a harsh shift in visual tone, but it's the quality of CG that wouldn't pass in a PC game cutscene from 2006 (except possibly in an EA game, since they appear to have lately replaced their QA department with a dusty room full of old chairs, an overhead printer and an elderly hedgehog called Colin).  Too bad.  Might be acceptable if you have low standards, or poor eyesight, or you crank your contrast right down; only you can decide if you can get past it.

But, is it scary? meh...is it trying to be?  It's more gross than anything else.  Though I have to say I've never found Kane frightening at all.  I mean, obviously he is BIG (I imagine if he was stood on your foot, you'd know all about it), and he does have an...interesting face, with possibly more planes and angles [not this one] than any three regular-person faces, but he's never struck me as anything but a large, sweet chap making a scowly 'grr' face, possibly for the amusement of their child. That's just me, though, I know.

So tomorrow; I don't know yet; since it's Date Night, I'm allowing my dear spouse and helpmeet to pick the movie.  Odds that it will be Lawrence of Arabia? 3/2 and dropping.

All fur coats and nylon knickers

14 January 2014 (Later that day) Strip Nude for Your Killer.

After that title, do I actually need to say anything else? Apart from, it's Blood and Black Lace if everyone in it, male and female, was a...well, let the Ayatollah of RocknRolla say it for me...

Following a model's death during a botched abortion, who is the motorcycle-helmet-and-black-leathers slasher (looking like if Dario Argento sponsored a MotoGP team) switchblade-ing up vapid trollops and sleazy sexual predators alike in and around the Albatross [no, really] photo modelling agency in never-clearly-specified-but-probably-Milan?  

Can it be the predatory-lesbian agency owner? 

Or her Paul Bearer-looking lech of a husband-in-name-only? 

Or Edwige Fenech and her amazing cropped hairdo and nylon undies combo, as a photographer who secretly just wants to be a model? 

Or her sort-of boyfriend, a photographer introduced picking up a wannabe model at a swimming pool and getting her out of her bikini and into a public sauna room sex scene with an alacrity that would make an 80s New York bathhouse habitue dizzy [my legal team advises me to assure you that this is definitely NOT the Terry Richardson story]? 

Or the other photographer, who 'doesn't have much to do with women'?

Not telling!  Half the fun of these not-Bava films is being absolutely positive the culprit is him (or her, or they), only to have that be the very next victim.  The OTHER half, of course, is swooning over the groovy pads, counting the number of prominently-displayed J and B bottles (four), and grooving on the amazing theme music, which here is never more than 5 seconds away from breaking down and giving in to its urge to become 'Papa Was a Rolling Stone'

Film sets out from the first scene to be as 70s Eurosleaze as possible, with the first shot, and the about-to-be-botched abortion, from between the hapless girl's legs, looking up, with only the careful positioning of the OBGyn's head preventing it from becoming a Jess Franco film ("Why the doctor have an afro? Oh...that's not *his* hair...").  Then we're off through a whirl of switchblade stabbings, attempted rape, domestic abuse, blackmail, voyeurism, aforementioned predatory lesbianism, reckless driving, petty larceny, implied incest, and many 70s-style real breasts and abundant pubic regions, while police bumble along in the background and the actual detecting business is picked up by civilians for no particular reason, and the culprit is identified mainly by being one of the four-or-five speaking roles left alive by the end.  The few survivors seem remarkably untroubled by the grisly murders of almost everyone they know, and the film ends with an unsubtle joke reference to anal sex. Classy!

You'll like this if: You're old enough to remember the 70s, or you wish you were (but not in a tiresome Austin Powers-hangover way; if you're that person, you're an arse, and you're not allowed to watch this film.  Go on, piss off. No-one likes you anyway).

You'll hate this if: you're the chap who complains when the killer shown throughout the film in tight-fitting leather is obviously not remotely the actual culprit unmasked at the end; or you're Andrea Dworkin

This film is as old as your writer, and even more unfashionable and dubious.  Worth another watch? Worth MANY; if you need a reason to rewatch after tracking the plot holes and/or ogling the many implant-free 70s breasts have palled, and the mid-70s Italian interior design and fashions can't persuade you, then I don't know who you are, and we have no way to communicate.

Tomorrow's film has important advice: don't raise your child in an incredibly perverse and repressively religious environment; they'll grow up to have poor hygiene and develop a fungal nail infection.  Also, they'll probably kill people and collect their eyeballs.  Mainly the nail thing, though, because that is just icky.

Started badly, then...

14 January 2014: Sensored [Yes, Blogger autocorrect, do you think I don't KNOW? Go away now, wiggly red line]

First 'official' of the 500, and it's meh.

Robert Picardo is a suburban solid citizen, or maybe he's a torture-killer, or maybe just a torturer, or maybe an undercover CIA operative, or maybe a children's book author, or maybe a schizophrenic who made it all up, or maybe all of them because why the heck not?

Yes; one of THOSE films: "main character is crazy, so go to hell narrative continuity or resolution!" and consequently an unsatisfying experience.  

I like me some Robert Picardo, lord knows; not quite enough to suffer Voyager on an even semi-regular basis, except for the Brad Dourif episodes, and Threshold (the 'Paris goes faster than light, devolves into a reptile, kidnaps Janeway, reptiles her and they have freaky newt babies' one, which is so terrible that it goes through terrible, passes awful, pauses briefly in hilariously bad, then slingshots right back to terrible again; I refer interested parties to the SF Debris review, and ), but I do like him, and he continues the tradition of being the best thing in mediocre material.  Here he gets to be cold, brutal, savage, tentative in his approaches to the socially over-enthusiastic redhead over the street, dry, emotional. Everything but a song-and-dance routine.  

I can't criticise any of the performances, in fact; Picardo,or asthmatic CIA bloke, or overly-forward neighbour woman; even generic main torturee is less unbearable than is usual (good grief, I'd have him as best man at my wedding compared to the please-die-soon charisma-vacuums cluttering up the Hostel films)...I just wish I cared, and that the writer or director did, at least enough not to undermine them for the sake of one more bloody Russo swerve.

Worth another watch? Unless I really missed something; no

One good thing? Picardo aside...Managing to have a not-annoying child actress

One bad thing? That underwhelming ending.  Like Beef, I know the difference between drug-real and real-real, and thanks for telling me that I've just wasted 70 minutes becoming invested in characters you can't even be bothered to resolve properly.  I'm not that guy, you know; I can stand a bit of ambiguity, and I don't need Simon Oakland to turn up and tell me that the man we've just seen try to kill someone while dressed as a woman likes to dress as a woman and kill people, but come ON.  Did you have an ending for them, and could we not have that instead?  Hmph.  

This film made me grouchy, so I had to move on to a mid-70s Italian Bava knockoff; so I could guarantee many characters would be naked at some point, most would be dead by the end, and it would AT NO POINT be a dream.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Nearly-New Year,

So: since we have a whole new year, and everything, and is the traditional time when people make resolutions they'll break before Valentine's Day, I've made one too.

It WAS going to be a film a day, but since I began two weeks late, that would be an unimpressive 350 films; pfft, we can do better than that!

500 films in 2014.  

Also, god above or below help me, 500 NEW films (since I have no self-control, and would end up watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre (of COURSE the original, silly) three times in a day.  Again.

So, a three-step process:

- Find new film

- Watch new film

- Blog new film

It's only 10 a week, two a weekday; or one a weekday, and a weekend binge. I know it can be done.  

Whether it SHOULD, is a whole other matter.

Is it fear of plagiarism...

...That keeps me from the keyboard?

No; one can't steal from an empty cupboard

Is it lack of time?

Not when I have four hours a week to watch pro wrestling (not including PPVs, old matches and Rope Break)

Is it lack of opinions?

Good GOD, no!

Well then...

Resuming, I suppose?

Yep.

She does enunciate very clearly, though...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=aIoSlM1np1M

Look, she was in Friday the 13th: The Series, so that counts as a horror connection.

Besides, her 'British?' accent made my spouse whimper like a tiny girl, so into the horror blog she comes.