Let's Dance!

Dance of the Dead (Masters of Horror, 2005)
Director- Tobe Hooper
Starring- Jonathan Tucker, Jessica Lowndes, Robert Englund

Peggy (Lowndes) works for her mother in a diner in a post-apocalyptic society. Since her sister died, her mother had become very overprotective and very bitter. A couple young punks show up wanting burgers and coffee, and while her mother practically shoves them out of the door, Peggy feels a strong attraction to one of the punks, named Jak (Tucker).

Later that night, Jak shows up and invites Peggy to a party out of town at the Doom Room. Peggy sneaks out and they go to the Doom Room, where Jak and his buddy sell "The M.C." (Englund) blood, which he injects into corpses and reanimates them to dance for an audience.

While there, Peggy discovers that one of the dancers is noneother than her own sister, who she thought was dead. She grabs her, and she & Jak exit the club quickly. The M.C. catches up with them just as Peggy's mom finds her, and Peggy finds out that her mom sold her sister (before she died, in fact) to The M.C. In a fit of disgusted rage, she gives her mom to The M.C., then gives her sister proper burial.

For a Masters of Horror flick, this isn't half bad. I didn't care for Ryan McDonald's acting, personally, but the plot moved along pretty well. Englund always provides a slightly creepy character, he didn't disappoint. The ending was predictable, but not bad.

Rating: 3.5/5 Bonedaddies.

A Silver Age Justice League Movie!

Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)
Director- Dave Bullock
Starring- David Boreanaz, Neil Patrick Harris, Kyle MacLachlan

Set in the 1950's, the Justice League is undergoing a change, what with the Korean War and all. Politics play more of a role here than in other DC cartoons, and some of the characters don't get along quite as well. Superman is something of a government patsy, while Wonderwoman helps out Vietnamese woman who were terrorised by guerilla fighters. Flash quits the biz after being relentlessly pursued by the government, J'onn J'onzz is trying to live a somewhat normal life as a human, and Batman is, as always, the Gotham Knight.

The team is more or less reunited by the surfacing of The Centre, a Lovecraftian being that appears to want to take over the world--standard Justice League material. J'onzz is also haunted by the U.S. government, which is aware of his existence and is planning a mission to Mars piloted by Korean vet Hal Jordan.

J'onzz is captured, Jordan's shuttle (which he discovers is equipped with nuclear weaponry in case of hostilities) malfunctions, and he gets saved by Superman while the shuttle explodes upon entering the atmosphere. He is later taken by a mysterious aircraft to a site where a figure lays dying on the ground. The figure is revealed to be a Green Lantern, who has deemed Jordan worthy of the Green Lantern ring and bestows him with the power of the Corps.

Superman takes on the beastly Centre and gets knocked into the sea, not to be seen again until close to the end of the movie, where he is saved by Aquaman, whose introduction in the movie is embarrassingly brief.

This movie seems to represent a change from the Golden Age to the Silver Age of comics, and of society as well, apparently. It was nice that I didn't recognize the voices of big named celebrities, even though many contributed. I liked that Batman was still a dark figure, but I didn't like the evolution of his look.

I also liked that it more or less remained faithful to the Darwyn Cooke comic it was based on. The political subject matter is toned down just a bit, some characters were still phased out, but all in all it turned out to be a great movie.

Rating: 3.5/5 Bonedaddies.

I Wanna Be A Rockabilly Vampire!

Rockabilly Vampire (1996)
Director- Lee Bennett Sobel
Starring- Stephen Blackehart, Paul Stevenson, Margaret Lancaster

Yay, a Troma movie! One doesn't expect Oscar material from a Troma movie, but damned if they're not fun to watch. This particular one is about Iris (Lancaster), a girl in love with 1950's culture and whose obsession with Elvis attracts her to an "Elvis lookalike" vampire named Eddie. His story? Back in the 1950's, Eddie was on his way to an Elvis lookalike contest when his brother, Wrecks, 'put the bite on him' and made him a vampire. Now he's on the run from his brother, whose second bite can put Eddie under his power for eternity.

If that isn't bad enough, Iris gets continually hassled by the landlord's son, who wants either rent money or nookie in order to let her stay in her apartment. Soon Wrecks and his crew find Eddie and Iris and come knocking to claim his second bite.

Though funny at times, the acting is actually pretty bad, and as far as Troma movies go, this one is pretty tame on the blood.

Despite the acting, the concept is fun, the plot runs along fairly smoothly, and the music is just awesome. I could have used more variety, but what I had to listen to I was happy with.

Rating: 3/5 Bonedaddies.

Shhhhh...ut the Movie Off

Incident On and Off a Mountain Road (Masters of Horror, 2005)
Director- Don Coscarelli
Starring- Bree Turner, John DiSantis, Ethan Embry

Ellen (Turner) must use every survival tactic she learned from her abusive, crazy exhusband (Embry) to escape the maniacal serial killer she comes to know as 'Moonface' (DiSantis). After inadvertantly running right into his yard populated by crucified victims, all missing eyes, she faints and gets herself caught. She wakes up in time to have an annoying coversation with "Buddy", an old captive who lives inthe basement and is looney as hell, then she must watch as a hapless victim gets her eyes drilled out.

I have very little good to say of this movie. I've actually learned to expect little from the Masters of Horror series, but every time they manage to take me to new levels of disappointment. Where do I start?

First, it's awfully convenient to have had a crazy survivalist husband with conspiracy theories in the same woods as a maniacal freak without even knowing it. It get even more stupid when Ellen wastes all this time making boobytraps when she could have simply run from the guy. Or if she found the nerve to fight, she should have fought him. Either way, she wasted a lot of time trying to be clever.

Buddy's acting was bad. His constant dialogue and switching from one subject to another and singing was annoying and badly delivered. Moonface jumping majestically onto the road made me think a 6th grader originally wrote this script for a comic. The director was more obsessed with making a bunch of noise, apparently to distract the viewer from the fact that this is just a stupid movie. Ethan Embry's acting was good until he suddenly decided to rape his wife (To exploit her weakness? To teach her a lesson? I don't really get why he did it except that the director needed more reason for the viewer to hate him).

The ending could have been cool, except Bree Turner's "trying to sound cool" acting screwed it up. Moonface could easily have been a mountain man, another abusive guy, etc. There was nothing exceptional about his character, and I was initially led to believe there should have been.

Rating: 1/5 Bonedaddies.

A Movie By Many Names...

Tower of Evil (1972)
Director- Jim O'Connolly
Starring- Bryant Haliday, Jill Haworth, Mark Edwards

This movie somehow went through several different names before ending up with Tower of Evil: Tower of the Living Corpses, Beyond the Fog, Horror of Snape Island, Because the Phoenician God Continues to Kill?, who knows what else?

A woman saved from a mysterious tower/lighthouse recovers memories of what happened to her and how her friends got killed. Archaeologists searching for Phoenician treasure venture out to the tower and find ore bodies. I find myself wondering at this point: are they planning on taking the treasure and studying it? Donating it to a museum? I certainly hope their professional ethics were considered.

I was also surprised to realize this plot was slightly similar to a webcomic I had drawn long before I ever set eyes on this movie! My webcomic didn't have all the nudity, though. The nudity and sex scenes were a positive addition. The acting was so-so. There were some creepy moments, though. The corpse in the rocking chair, the being who creeps up behind the young idiot with the crown, the old hermit.

It wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be.

Rating: 3/5 Bonedaddies.

Day of the Remade Dead

Day of the Dead (2008)

Director- Steve Miner

Starring- Mina Suvari, Nick Cannon, Ving Rhames

This movie is very loosely remade from George Romero's original Day of the Dead. It keeps the conflict between military and science alive like the original, but in this one the zombification process is quick, and the zombies act like rabid dogs who can jump and climb ceilings. It's up to a couple soldiers and a couple civilians to work their way to the lab where it all began, where they confront the doctor who had initiated the top secret project that led to the zombie outbreak.

The doctor, being one of the first to become a zombie, was apparently smarter than the others, and had the slight upper hand by being able to direct the other zombies. He would succeed, except that one of the zombies, previously one of the ragtag group trying to fight the zombies, remained loyal to his living team.

There were a couple good things about this movie. First, the jerky motion of the camera, while at times nauseating, attempts to pull the viewer into the movie, making him/her one of the group.

Second, I like the thought put into the viral idea. An infected person starts out with flu-like symptoms, then gets terrible nosebleeds. Soon the victim completely siezes up, staring catatonically into space for a few moments before "awakening" and turning completely rabid.

I also have to admit that I like when there isn't a lot of screwing around with back-stories here. Everyone is stuck in the situation, everyone is trying to figure out how to deal with it. It stays in the present and doesn't dwell on origins, like an episode of Lost.

I don't like the overly convenient variation in the time it takes to go from nosebleed to zombie-it seems like the director wasn't really expecting viewers to pay attention to that.

Ving Rhames play somewhat of a bit part, Mina Suvari is okay in her role. Nick Cannon plays up the "oh, it's because I'm a black man" to an annoying degree.

The zombies are oddly combustible. The way they go up like a matchbook makes me wonder how the outbreak got so out of hand in the first place?

Rating: 2/5 Bonedaddies.

RIP Dimebag, 4 Years

Did You Take This Woman?

The Corpse Vanishes (1942)

Director- Wallace Fox

Starring- Bela Lugosi, Luana Walters, Tristram Coffin

This movie illustrates the classic tale of a mad doctor who sends young brides poisonous orchids on their wedding day which kills them, then kidnaps them before they make it to the morgue/funeral home so he can use their bodies to keep his wife alive. And he'd get away with it, too, if it weren't for a meddling female journalist who wants to make her big break.

It reminds me just a bit of the Curious Dr. Humpp. I actually don't mind what appears to cheap lighting & cinematography. It gives it a simple but effective appearance that makes it more fun to watch. The acting is about as cheap, but fun to watch nonetheless. Lugosi delivers okay as a mad scientist, Angelo Rossitto adds a bit of dimension as a creepy assistant, though he isn't treated very well by the doctor.

My favorite part about this movie is finding out that the doctor and his wife sleep in coffins next to each other, almost a grisly parody of mid-century family morality. It almost makes up for the ending: The journalist has a friend pose as a bride, foils the scheme, but then gets kidnapped herself by the doctor and saved in the nick of time by a fellow journalist whom she falls madly in love with. Afer the story is out, she gets married and her boss jokes about how now that she's proven herself a great journalist she's giving up her career to be a homemaker. Seriously? You break a story about a mad doctor, get caught up in all the danger, and in the end you quit so your husband can carry on, even though he hasn't yet reported on a story of that same magnitude? I can be chauvenistic at times, but even I thought this was pure sexist drivel.

Rating: 3/5 Bonedaddies for the severely dated ending.

Bored to Death

Scared to Death (1947)
Director- Christy Cabanne
Starring- Bela Lugosi, George Zucco, Molly Lamont

A dead woman in a morgue narrates the tale of how she came to be dead. It starts with her being very unhappily married and paranoid about her husband and father-in-law trying to kill her. Other characters are introduced, like a disgraced cop trying to regain a little glory despite the fact that he's a vapid oaf, and a mysterious doctor who has a strong dislike for the press.

It's an interesting concept for a story, but it unfortunately delivers little. Every character is trying to have a personality all at once, while none actually succeed. Lugosi is surprisingly lame and comes across more like a mysterious drama instructor than a mysterious doctor. I recognized Angelo Rossitto from Freaks, but he did nothing special here, as well.

Overall, there was no creepy aspect in this movie--not even the blue/green mask inthe window. And Bela Lugosi doesn't work well in color. Thank goodness the movie was short.

Rating: 1/5 Bonedaddies.

Sunrise On a Strange Relationship

Sunrise (1927)

Director- F.W. Murnau

Starring- George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston

A farmer's affair with a city girl (Livingston) has strong repercussions when, after having lured him once again from his home for a lakeside tryst, she pleads with him to live with her in the city.

Anses (O'Brien) is tempted but reluctant, so the city girl suggests he murder his wife, Indre (Gaynor) and make it look like an accident. Anses agonizes over the decision all night, deciding by morning to carry out the grim deed. He offers to take his wife for a boatride, and though she seems weary of his demeanor, she agrees in the hopes that he's trying to salvage their relationship.

Once out far enough on the water, however, she realizes his intentions as he lunges at her. He gets close enough to strangle her, then sees by the fear he's inspired what a monster he's become. Once back on land, Indres flees back into town with Anses close behind, pleading for her forgiveness. It isn't until they find themselves crashing a wedding in progress that she finally forgives him, and everything afterward becomes honky-dory. They hit he town, enjoy a fair, then take a boat ride home.

During the ride home, a storm hits, and Indres is thrown from the boat. Anses believes her dead, and when he hears the familar whistle of the city girl he once thought he loved, he goes crazy and tries to strangle her. Thankfully he's informed his wife is still alive and runs to her, and the two live happily ever-after.

The scripting was presented on screen very creatively (like the letters 'drown her' waving across the screen into the water), the music had an ominous tone, and the movie itself is impressionistic--something Murnau was a master at in his movies. Having the 'villian' whistle a mysterious tune (though you can't hear it in this movie) is something he would employ in M just a few years later. The characters used facial expressions well, and I was surprised to see that even hairdressers in the 1920's were effeminate.

I could have done without the second half, however. I understand how well the movie came together by the end, especially showing Indres floating on the very reeds Anses had tied together to use himself when he killed her. I just didn't like the super-happy second half and ending.

Despite the second half, though, I loved the movie for Murnau's talent for setting a disturbing mood.

Rating: 4/5 Bonedaddies.