Just Tell Them The Devil Made You Do It...

As any reader of this blog knows, I am quite fond of Joe Hill.

His new novel Horns comes out today. And you might recall I'm was quite fond of it as well.

If you happen to be walking by the book store and want a peek at the most twisted, sad, and laugh out loud funny tale of revenge, grief, and the supernatural that you'll get all year, pick up Horns.

Just remember... You can't always get what you want.

The House Of The Devil

This Post has been seized by the Glorious People's republic and will be redistributed to The Final Girl's Film Club. All Hail.


House Of The Dead seems to be going through a mini backlash. After the enthusiastic theatrical reviews, and the positively SQUEE! Levels of excitement broadcast when it was announced that the film would be given a VHS release, the DVD reviews of House Of The Devil have been almost cagey. Most review, seem to run along the lines that, while the film has an effective build up it fails to pay off.

I’d respectfully like to ask what these critics are smoking and where can I get some. As House Of The Devil is the most satisfying horror experience I’ve seen in years. It earned its early fame by being a recreation of late seventies early eighties Let’s Scare Jessica To Death/ The Messiah Of Evil style zoom friendly horror. But the amazing thing is you eventually stop thinking of House Of The Devil as a gag and just immediately except it as a film.

In case you haven’t heard House Of The Dead is the story of Sam, who looks so much like a young Margot Kidder that it borders on uncanny. She’s a college student desperate for her own place who takes the job as a babysitter for an odd couple who seem desperate to get out of the house for the night. Things start to get weird when the husband played by Tom Noonan in a sublimely disturbing performance, drops the bombshell that its not a child she’ll be watching but an old woman. Things just get more disturbing from there. Jocelin Donahue is superbly vulnerable as Sam. Noonan gets his freak flag flying, being utterly unsettling by being unfailingly polite, never raising his voice even under the most desperate of circumstances.

But its really director Ti West who emerges as the star of the film.

Most genre filmmakers, not just horror, seem absurdly terrified of the set up. To a certain extent its partially the fault of the splatter punks of the 80’s like Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, and Dan O’ Bannon. But while their gag a minute enthusiasm spoke to their natural energy as filmmakers, the pale copy cats of today, your pre Frozen Adam Greenberg’s, The Sperig Brothers, and Jonathon King; for example seem motivated only by the fact that they are terrified their audience is a bunch of ADD addled idiots who will reach for their Xbox controller once their hands stop shaking from all the Mountain Dew they’ve injested. Its all pay off all the time, but once you get to a certain point all of that pay off becomes meaningless. And what you’re left with is a film that fails to connect on any level and devolves into a meaningless tableu of gore shots and shock moments all in the vague hope that they’ll stumble across something outrageous enough to get someone talking (Hello close up of a sheep biting off some guys cock). And its this calculation that makes the whole endeavor so patently joyless. When Sam Raimi mixed the Three Stooges with the Grand Guignol it felt like the actions of an irrepressible prankster who just couldn’t help himself. When Peter Jackson had his hero crawl through the head of an alien and out his “arse”, or have a bunch of muppets engage in hard drugs and kinky sex, or had his hero crawl his way out of his undead mother’s womb, it felt like the work of a genuine mutant. Now its all calculation.

What I’m trying to say is that the first hour of House Of The Devil only has two or three scares, but Goddamnit they actual do scare, because West not only isn’t afraid of set up, but relishes it. And the impact these scenes have has way more effect then an entire film that’s nothing but a montage of grotesqueries. Perhaps its fitting that West has the best use of a gun I’ve ever seen in a horror movie (Trust me you’ll know it when you see it). Everything about his filmmaking is deliciously perpendicular.

Which isn’t to say he doesn’t know how to pay off either, because trust me, despite popular opinion he does. The end The House Of Devil is a nightmarish phantasmorghipha of nightmarsish pay offs and sinister implications. Yes House Of The Devil is a pastiche. But its one that plays for keeps.

They don’t write em like this anymore.

EDIT

Because I am a huge fucking nerd I couldn't help but buy House Of The Devil on VHS. And though this did lead to Amazon delivering the film two weeks late. It looks awesome.



Here's a closer look



And yes I do own Coven on VHS. Because I'm straight up Gangsta that's why.

I'd Spell It Out For You Only I Can't Spell

I'm saving the writeup for something I'm planning later in the year. But Its Valentine's Day which means I'm watching The Apartment. Every year single or with someone I set aside a bit of time to watch Wilder's melancholy little valentine. Still my favorite movie ever made about love, which now that I think about it explains a lot. If you don't have anything better to do, there's a lot worse ways we spend the day.

A Day At The Movies: The Wolfman, Up In The Air, The Book Of Eli

The original The Wolfman is one of the first films I can remember loving. But I was excited when the remake was announced. I was eager even. Despite the spotty track records these updates have, Bram Stokers Dracula is a film I have issues with, to put it lightly, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is so bad I have literally never been able to watch anything directed by or starring Kenneth Braunaugh without feeling white hot peals of residual hate. Benicio Del Toro is one of my favorite actors, and he heads films all too rarely. I’m a big Andrew Kevin Walker Fan, and was eager to see Mark Romenack pay off on the promising One Hour Photo. Add in Rick Baker and well we’ve got a deal. And then…

Faithful readers know that I’m not one for Hollywood gossip. Leave the backbiting treacle to the Finkes and Hiltons, I’m in it for the movies bub. So perhaps you will give me the benefit of the doubt if I step back for a moment and marvel at the production of The Wolfman. A chain of events so ghastly, that I have a feeling that once a few non disclosure agreements wear off, the best book about Hollywood since The Devil’s Candy, might be in it.

No one seems to quite know how The Wolfman got just so fucked.

It all seemed like such a sure bet while the movie was gearing up for production back in 2006. A script by a keen, though lately unheard from talent who had already proved himself adapt at Gothic Horror with Sleepy Hollow, an ambitious unproven director, a cast to die for, and a special effects wizard coming back to revisit the monster that made him famous and prove that practical effects can stand up with the best CGI.

Then it all suddenly went to shit.

Next thing you know, said young ambitious director is fired replaced by Journeyman Joe Johnston, the script is being rewritten, and Baker’s handcrafted effects are being overhauled with CGI. This all happens two weeks before production is slated to start. You can’t help but wonder just what lead to all of that.

As if that wasn’t enough, the film’s slated release of 2007 gets pushed back. A lot. Remember when the cast was at Comic Con, touting what they thought was a finished movie? From what I’ve heard, the entire film basically ended up getting reshot. Twice.

So finally here comes The Wolfman, three years late, God knows how much over budget. With a Rotten Tomatoes score sagging around 30%. I don’t doubt that I’m not the only one wondering What the fuck happened.

So to say The Wolfman arrives with some baggage is an understatement. That it works at all is a miracle.

I don’t know if I can call The Wolfman a good movie, but it is a spectacularly silly one and at times a ridiculously entertaining movie. By the time the film climaxes with a duel fought in what I can only describe as Werewolf Kung Fu, I was shaking my head in dismay with a big goofy grin on my face.

The film stars Benicio Del Toro as a successful actor who returns to his estranged family after years away in the aftermath of his brother’s death. His father, Anthony Hopkins lives in a dilapidated old mansion where he spends his day carving huge gooey slice of ham so he can wrap it in the scenery to munch on. He’s joined by fellow landscape culinarists Geraldine Chaplin and Hugo Weaving, and they all sit down and have themselves a nice little banquet.

As if to prove that every action has an equal but opposite reaction, Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt underplay their roles to a perverse degree. Just as well, had they gone off the reservation too, the film might have turned into a miniature black hole. Unfortunately, their inability to strike sparks really robs the film of whatever chance it had to gain some tragic weight. The main problem with The Wolfman aside from its rampant silliness, is that for all the intestines on display it never gets in your guts. The film is kind of displayed in microcosm by the dreadful asylum scene at its center, chronicling the month of Del Toro’s imprisonment in a wildly flailing mishmash of imagery, and attempted comedy. It throws everything at the wall and nothing sticks. Likewise the film throws subplot after subplot at the viewer hoping to intrigue and never quite catching.

Still, the sequence does climax with the films best sequence in which Del Toro transforms infront of a lecture hall of flabbergasted observers, and then tears them apart. Scenes like this and the wolf’s first attack on a gypsy camp combine a kind of pulp lunacy, with a wicked sense of humor, some well staged monster shots, and gore gags worthy of early Sam Raimi (The Wolfman is a surprisingly gory film on the whole. It more then earns its R).

While I was dismissive to him before, Joe Johnston on the rare occasion where he’s engaged by the material, like say The Rocketeer can bring it he’s obviously a man who loves by pulp storytelling (which makes him in my mind the perfect man for Captain America). And the scenes where he gets to treat Victorian London, with its gargoyles and opera houses like his own personal parkour set, or drape the moors in billowy fog are obviously a delight for him.

Still these scenes are few and far between, and it all devolves into so much Werewolf Kung Fu. The Wolfman could have been a better movie, its practically there beneath the surface. But I don’t know if I would like it half so much if it was. I have the oddest affection for this film. It’s the kind of affection one has for an idiot child true. But love is love.


I finally got to see Up In The Air, after all the hype and subsequent backlash, and I was glad I did.

Reitman gets a lot of doubters, but I find him to be one of the finest filmmakers of his generation. While many are incensed by the comparisons some throw to Wilder, I think they ring true.

Like Wilder, Reitman makes films that are slyly sophisticated and adult. Like Wilder he has an expert eye for dissecting people and their appetites, but enough compassion to keep his films from flying into full blown misanthropy. Like Wilder he brings out the best of his actors coaxing multi faceted performances from people too used to coasting. Like Wilder his style is confident and singular without being off puttingly showy. In short Reitman is a classy filmmaker, who creates mature films about adults. To my mind that makes him a Goddamn endangered species and a director to be protected and treasured.

I don’t have much to say on the film , that hasn’t been already said. Clooney continues to make the best out of his persona. Vera Farmigan exudes a persona of intelligence and sex that made me realize that I had completely underestimated her, and Reitman’s budding ensemble (Jason Bateman, JK Simmons, and most gratifyingly Sam Elliot) all step up to the plate and do excellent work.

It’s a human scale story that shocked me with its literacy and genuinely shook me with some of the turns its story took. It has the courage to leave its protaginist lost, only now he actually knows it. And as the old saying goes, How terrible is wisdom that brings no profit to the wise.



The Book Of Eli ended up surprising the hell out of me. Dumped in January to fair to middling reviews I wasn’t expecting much, but ended up being kind of blown away by it. It just snuck up on me, which doesn’t happen all too often anymore.

Eli is the kind of smart, original genre filmmaking I keep begging to see, and now that an example of it has shown up, I can’t help but wonder why it isn’t a bigger deal. I mean this is a film with Denzel Washington, battling Gary Oldman in the kind of operatic baddie performance he hasn’t given since Hannibal. It’s a fully realized world stylishly directed by the Hughes (filmmakers who’ve been silent for far too long) its got a great design with real life to it, a couple of set pieces that are just killer. And, oh yeah its got fucking Tom Waits in it. Sounds like a slice of fried gold to me. I can’t help but think it’s a bit of a classic, a minor classic to be sure, but this is the kind of film that ends up as a secret handshake between true lovers of the genre.

Now of course there is the Jesus element here that seems to be pissing people off. I have to admit, I don’t get it. I’m a practicing Catholic, and that’s not the first time I’ve mentioned it on this blog. I say that not to try and convince or convert anyone, I’m fairly against proselytizing in any form, but because I always feel its important if one is to be an honest critic to let their biases be known.

My point is only this, why is that people seem to think that Christian themes belong only in horrific amateur productions like Fireproof, or safe Pabulum like The Chronicles Of Narnia. Is it really so inexcusable for a genre movie to deal with Christianity? Much less an R rated genre film? Why? The film handles faith in what I thought was a mature and thoughtful way. It certainly doesn’t shy away from religions dark side or support an unthinking version of faith. We’re talking about one genre film that has the gal to bring up Jesus, amid about a billion secular Terminator Salvations and Transformers 2s, but from the way some of the detractors have been talking you’d think that you could hardly pass a multiplex door without hearing “Onward Christian Soldier” blasting from it. I’m not saying you have to like it, or have to believe in it. I’m just saying it was refreshing to watch a film that didn’t treat me like an idiot for having faith, nor try to exploit me by being sickeningly congraluatory about it like Kirk Cameron and his risible cronies. Instead it’s a film that asked intelligent questions about the nature of faith and the place of the divine in a place seemingly devoid of hope. Is that really something to get pissed aboutl?

Of course none of that would matter if the film itself wasn’t so damn entertaining. Post Apocalyptic films are a favorite genre of mine. They’re also one of the toughest to do right, and one of the easiest to do lazily (And you have to love the shout out the film gave to A Boy And His Dog). Eli takes the time to fully think out its world and its implications. The world its denizens and their way of life have all been fully thought out.

Washington embodies his roll with his trademark mix of effortless resolve, sly humor, and easy authority. He’s matched by Gary Oldman, one of my favorite actors excelling in pleasure of doing what he does best, aka being utterly terrifying without ever once leaving the realm of the possible. Even Mila Kunis does a credible job. Her relationship with Denzel, that of an eager apprentice and dubious mentor rather then romantic coupling creates an oddly credible bond. And not to spoil anything but should their be a Book Of Eli 2 following her kicking ass and spreading order across the ready to reform continent I would be more then down. A lot of credit goes to the script by first time writer, Gary Whitta who never settles for two dimensions even giving such throwaway roles as Ray Stevenson’s lackey and Michael Gambon’s friendly cannibal surprisingly deep.

More then anything Eli plays like a post apocalyptic Samurai film, with Washington making for one hell of a Yojimbo, set in a rich world. It’s a world made up of equal parts George Miller, Japanese Anime, and Harlan Ellison without being beholden to any of them. It is in short a kickass genre movie. And though many of us share different faiths, we all subscribe to the religion of badass cinema. And we can all say Amen to that.

Piranha 2: The Spawning

Having never seen Piranha 2, James Cameron’s debut film, I decided to use the current Navi obsession sweeping the nation as an opportunity to check out Piranha 2. After all this is James Cameron we’re talking about, teamed with Roger Corman. This is also Piranha we’re talking about, possibly my all time favorite movie to come from the Corman stable.

The orginal Piranha is a wicked black comedy/creature feature from Joe Dante. Infused by Dante’s anarchic sensibilities, possessing a likable cast, scripted by the absurdly over qualified John Sayles, and with a vein of exceedingly nasty black comedy (Kids and Puppies, not safe) Piranha is simply put a great time at the movies. With a similarly over qualified pedigree could a neglected little masterpiece be hiding behind the cheesy title and bargain basement production values?

No.

Still I liked it better then Avatar. I’m being facetious, (or am I?) but Piranha 2 is such a bizarrely incompetent film, bungling on so many level’s that I’d would be surprised the director managed to learn to tie his shoes on his own, never mind becoming the man I consider to be one of the greatest cinematic innovators of all time.

In terms of acting, production values, and scripting, Piranha 2 is barely a step above porn, and it features about as much nudity and sex as your average porno as well. The film starts out with a couple engaging in some vigorous underwater fucking only to be eaten by large angry fish. As promising of an opening that may be, the film falls into a disappointing lull from which it never recovers. Hope you enjoyed that shot of mutant piranahas because it’s the last time you’re going to see them for about forty minutes.

The rest of the film is spent at a hoighty toity tropical beach resort where we get to watch the wacky antics of whoever wandered onto the set that day. Most of the film follows Lance Henrikson (playing a standard hero which is a bit like watching Christopher Walken play a romantic lead) as the resort’s harbor cop who must stop the mutant Piranahas, his estranged wife as the diving instructor who stumbles upon the mutant Piranha’s, and their annoying moppety son whose taking a rich family out on a boat tour and is often in danger of being eaten by the mutaunt Piranhas.

When I say it takes a long time to get to the Piranahas I mean it takes alooooooonnnnggg time to get to the Piranahas. We instead get to watch the antics of the Islanders which are broad even by Corman standards. Including Gold diggers! Old Horny Women! Bikini Clad Grifters! Jovial Rastafarian Dynamite Fishermen! And a Manager who describes everything in disturbingly graphic sadio masochistic terms! Thank God we have their shennagins or else we might have been forced to watch boring stuff. You know like killer mutant flying fish!

Of course when the piranhas do attack its hardly an improvement, the chintzy effects and laughable amateurish acting creating a nightmarish litany of scenes like this.



And This



OK that last one was pretty cool

Yes as you may have gathered the Piranha’s have no problem being mobile on land for reason’s too stupid to relate..

Thanks to such scenes where Henrikson crashes his helicopter with little reason Piranha 2 does in the end work as camp if nothing else. Barely. As much as I hate to admit it Piranha 2: The Spawning Is an entertaining film, but not something I’d attempt with less then six beers on hand.

Barton Fink

With 90 minutes of soul violence that is A Serious Man just released on DVD, perhaps it’s a good time to revisit the Coen brother’s other Squirm enduing existential fable Barton Fink (For a trilogy of Coen flavored despair watch with The Man Who Wasn’t There but take care to remove the razor blades and sleeping pills from your house first).

While Fink isn’t quite as excruciating as A Serious Man, if only because its title character is a lot more deserving of some karmic realignmen.



It’s still a sweaty turn of the screw. A film about claustrophobia of the mind. Barton is a New York writer who after a successful, but terrible and pretentious play, is summoned to Hollywood. What initially looks like a big break soon turns into a waking nightmare, as Barton develops a monstrous case of writers block and is assigned to write a “Wallace Beery Wrestling Picture.” A line I’ve been quoting to stupefied looks for about ten years.

What’s more he finds out that his hero is a drunk whose been publishing his secretary’s work under his name for the past ten years, his friendly neighbor, played by John Goodman in a performance equally funny, scary, and somehow monstrously pitable, has some serious issues, he’s wanted for a murder he’s reasonably sure he didn’t commit, there’s a head shaped box that has appeared in his hotel room, and his hotel might be a literal door into hell. Why its enough to make a fella say, “Heil Hitler”.

The Coen’s make this all work by giving the film such a twitchy sense of paranoia. The film generates a sense of unease that’s almost Lynchian, but as unlike Lynch’s dream logic everything here makes a horrific kind of sense. Its some of the Coen’s most stylisitically rich work (which really is saying a hell of a lot. There’s a fever dream intensity to the film, the falling wall paper that clings to the wall with viscous vile looking glue. The screening of the dailies, from another wrestling film" Devil On The Canvas", for Fink the screen reflected off his glasses. The wrestler getting up a seemingly infinite amount of times roaring “I will destroy him” as he lunges towards the camera is one of the Coen’s most nightmarish scenes. I don’t know why but I’ve always found something about it to be utterly hypnotic.

The film is aided pitch perfect performances by Steve Buscemi, John Mahoney, Tony Shaloub, Judy Davis, and Michael Lerner who all find just the right pitch of unsettling to play their characters at. And of course there is Turturro’s committed, to say the least, performance.

Fink is as open to interpretation as The Big Lebowskwi, is Fink a parable for the rise of the Nazi’s, a kind of Dante’s Inferno with Fink meeting the human avatar’s of vice? Or is it simply a rancid little Hollywood satire, blasting at both the institution and those who think themselves above it? Whatever its meaning, Fink remains an unsettling masterpiece.

The Five Fingers Of Death

Five Fingers Of Death is in many ways the prototypical Kung Fu movie. All the pleasures of the genre, naïve callow heroes, blind avengers, strange techniques, exotic training, dorm room philosophy, dastardly villains, flamboyant fodder, and of course jaw dropping Kung Fu, are present and accounted for.

Its appropriate then that Five Fingers Of Death (or King Boxer as its known in China) was the first Kung Fu movie given wide release in America (Predating Enter The Dragon by six months) its such a perfect summation of the genre’s pleasures, that it makes for a perfect ambassador. (And an influential one, Kill Bill Fans will get a nice surprise, Tarantino actually does a superlative commentary track with the great Elvis Mitchell on this one.)

The Five Fingers, tells the story of a young martial arts student, sent to learn The Iron Palm Technique at a distant dojo. There he finds himself drawn into a long standing feud between his master’s honorable school, and the one of the biggest douche to ever run a martial arts school. Through his colorful mercenaries, the giant douche has been in control of the martial arts in the area, but with the arrival of Lo Lieh, he even goes so far as to hire the sneaky sneaky Japanese to help him achieve victory (Warning this like many Chinese films made in the first few decades after World War II does not have a view of The Japanese that one would call PC).

The story is nothing you haven’t seen before, complicated only by the jealousy of a passed over student and the loyalty of a Dance Hall girl who is ultimately, and disappointedly rejected for the girl back home. But once again that’s kind of the point, the ease and skill with which Five Fingers Of Death puts itself through the paces is kind of astounding in its own way. When a dishonored blind man seeks to redeem himself with great vengeance and furious anger, it’s the most ass kickingly awesome dishonored blind man seeking redemption through great vengeance and furious anger that you’ve ever seen. When there’s a training montage, there’s a hell of a training montage, with Lieh dipping his hands into real hot coals. When there’s a fall it comes with a torture scene that’ll make you squeamish despite not showing anything. And when it comes time for Lieh to lay waste to a roomful of his enemies or decimate a villainous master… Well brother I believe you get the picture.

While Lo Lieh doesn’t have the natural charisma of say Bruce Lee, Sonny Chiba, Jet Li, or Jackie Chan, what he lacks in flashiness he makes up for with sheer competence. They don’t try to make Lieh a superman, he gets his ass roundly handed to him more then once in this thing. But It’s clear that Lieh can do everything that we see him do (Well up to a point I doubt if you where to break his hands by beating them with Iron Bars for a few hours he’d come up smiling after a brief convalescence, nor do I believe he can make his hands actually glow. But you get the point). He carries himself to with an ease and confidence only experience can bring.

(That man's hands are glowing! What in God's holy name would possess you to fight him?)

As an entry point into a genre that is often so inexhaustible that it can be intimidating, Five Fingers Of Death is more or less perfect (though modern viewers might find it a little slow at first their patience will be rewarded). As a reminder to the hardened fan of just about everything fun about the genre its works perfectly as well.