Film: Maniac is a loose remake of Bill Lustig’s classic 1980 horror film of the same name starring Joe Spinell and Caroline Monroe. He it’s retooled by Alexander Aja (who also remade The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha 3D) and Gregory Levasseur and directed by P2’s Franck Khalfoun, the updated story goes like this:
Mannequin restorer Frank (Sin City’s Elijah Wood) has a few problems: no friends, migraines, Oedipus Complex and a penchant for murdering and scalping women, and then using their removed hair as wigs for his shop dummies.
His life may be changing though as he has met a young photographer Anna (Safe House’s Nora Arnezeder), with whom he strikes up a friendship, but will his deadly urges allow this friendship to flourish?
The most remarkable aspect of this film is the POV aspect in which it is shot. This isn’t Blair Witch Project, shaky-cam stuff either; this is genuine, internet-porn styled POV that takes place from the standpoint of the antagonist, rather than the stock standard ‘found footage’ style which requires the addition of a hamfistedly inserted video camera. In this film, you are IN the murderers head, and seeing from his eyes, not as a witness, but as the perpetrator. In seeing his life through his eyes, we also see his mental point of view, and the way his unhinged brain interprets events. This device adds a touch of realism to the film, and the style is like the third person writing seen in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho which tells you everything that YOU DO. It was so effective that New Zealand’s censors banned the film saying a wider release would be ‘injurious to the public good’.
Now THAT’S the type of notoriety horror movie makers used to enjoy!
The soundtrack has some impressive subtleties to it as well. First I have to praise the synth score that occasionally kicks in which felt like a nice nod to the original. The real treat comes from Wood’s performance combined with the sound engineers. Listen closely when he is arguing with himself and you’ll hear an ‘extra’ voice coming trough the speakers. The combination of this and Wood’s POV performance makes for a disturbing yet sympathetic lead man.
Speaking of the 80s, there are a few other nice nods to the original: a description of an online sleeve bag that may fit Joe Spinell’s appearance may have been a little offensive, but in one scene the killer sees a reflection of himself in a car door, and it emulates the original ‘erection’ poster nicely.
Wood’s performance as Frank is amazing too. When you consider he is really only seen in reflections or in flashbacks or on occasion to show time lapse or to see the release he gets from Murder, he has a genuine presence in this film. Even when he isn’t seen, he is generally heard, as there is a constant sound of his breathing which weighs heavily in every scene. It seems he was made for this role as his sudden acts of violence, which won’t disappoint gore fans, are completely offset by his almost child-like looks and mannerisms.
When this came out I thought this was an effective thriller that was given a greater identity with its unusual way of telling the story.
Score: ****
Format: Its impossible to fault the picture and sound quality of this bluray. The 2.35:1 image is crystal clear and the lossless 5.1 DTS-HD audio is immersive a necessary for the effectiveness of the film.
Score: *****
Extras: The disc starts with trailers for Lovely Molly, Come Out and Play and Room 237. Extras offered include a series of interviews with Kalfoun, Aja, Woods and Arnedezer which reveal some of the ideas behind the remaking of the 80s classic.
Disappointingly there is no documentary revealing the way the film was made, which I would have liked to have seen
Score: **
WISIA: Whilst it is a good movie, I can’t see me watching it again.
Ok, I’m sorry but I needed to get that out of my system. That damned song is such a part of The Addams Family lore and legend that I felt I needed to get it out early, but now I’ve written it I’m afraid it’s revealed exactly what I thought of this film.
By do you want more than that amusing ditty to explain my thoughts on the film?
Ok, seeing as how you asked nicely…
A young Morticia and Gomez share a wedding kiss
The Addams Family were created by 20th century cartoonist Charles Addams in 1938, and were first published in the New Yorker as a series of single panel jokes that show a bizarre gothic family, including husband Gomez, wife Morticia and children Wednesday and Pugsly, along with Uncle Fester and Grandmama (and later on housekeeper Lurch and additional family member Thing) musing on the marvels of modern life in middle class America.
This cartoon went on to spawn a hit, and legendary, TV series starring John Astin and Carolyn Jones, as well as a cartoon and special guest appearances on the cartoon Scooby Doo, not to mention two hit films starring Raul Julia, Angelica Houston, Christopher Lloyd and an amazing Star turn by then young actor Christina Ricci as Wednesday… and a couple of lesser known efforts like the Tim Curry and Darryl Hannah led film.
This isn’t to mention that their entire look and lifestyle has influence an entire fashion culture of goth, and I’m sure every man and woman wished for a romance and dedicated partner like Gomez or Morticia!
Unfortunately, no dead horse can go unflogged and so a new version of The Addams Family has being released into the world. This time we have a more child-aimed CGI film featuring the voice talents of Oscar Isaacs, Charleze Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz, Finn Wolfhard, Nick Kroll, Bette Midler and Snoop Dog… yep, cause the kids LOVE that rap musics… and playing Cousin Itt. They must have had too much money to spend on voice talent to waste Dogg’s distinctive voice on a character that sounds talks in little more than pops and whistles like Keyop from Battle of the Planets!
In this take of the Addams Family, we see all the subtlety of the theme of ‘being yourself’ thrown out the window, which the writers have done the extraordinary thing of making it both sublime and stupid
Welcome to Assimilation!
Our story sees our heroes living in their very haunted house on the top of a misty hill over looking the town of… are you ready?… Assimilation, which is a model American town built by the TV renovation star, Margaux Needler (Allison Janney from I, Tonya), who is a horrible combination of an American midwestern Tammy, and your average complain-to-the-Mánager-haircut Karen, maybe with a handful of Mattel’s Barbie thrown in for good measure.
The Addams family’s house doesn’t quite fit in with her idea of the town, and so she starts a campaign to change the aesthetics of it. This has come at quite a bad time though, as Wednesday and Margaux’s daughter, Parker (Elsie Fischer) have started a friendship and their fashion styles have started to crossover, with Wednesday starting to wear pink and white, and Parker… well, becoming more ‘Wednesday’… actually, becoming more Souisix Souix.
Not only is this happening, Pugsley is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah styled coming of age celebration which involves a rather extensive dance involving a family scimitar, but Pugsley’s a modern Addams, and relies less on blades, and more on explosives… will the family turn their back on tradition in favour of the boys more modern was of execution?
Of course, as you can see, this film involves all of the things one would expect from the Addams Family, but it all falls disastrously flat. Not just because it is the SAME thing almost every time they trundle out the franchise but also because they don’t sell it well. It’s ok to do the same thing over and over; cinema goers actually expect it (that’s why there is so many remakes and sequels), but rather than make it blatant, try dressing it up differently. The idea of making the ‘assimilation’ of the Addams Family was probably fun and seemed like a good idea, but it flat out was not.
Whilst we are talking about assimilation, the flat out rip off of the live action movie’s ‘Mamoushka’ for Pugsley’s coming-of-age party was almost offensive to the writer’s of that film. It offered nothing except for an opportunity for the character designers to come up with some occasionally clever but mostly bad other members of the family.
Most of the vocal casting is on point, aside from the aforementioned Snoop Dogg appearance, except for Pugsley. In casting a Stranger Things actor, who are so hot right now, there is a requirement to perhaps overuse them, and the character of Pugsley, who is better as a foil for Wednesday, comes across as an anxiety-stricken mishmash of Kevin McAllister from Home Alone, and as a slow-mo fuelled, John Woo supercop, and it all falls flat. I would have rathered seen a shorter film with all the Pugsley stuff cut out.
Wednesday is a difficult sell in this film also. Not because they changed the character, and some of the comedy from her ‘assimilating’ is actually quite funny, but because, in my experience, so many teenage girls seem to talk in bored monotones, and unusual haircuts are the norm. When Parker makes her dramatic change to Addams style, her character doesn’t change really at all: bored, hates her parents etc etc. Even though this was aimed at kids, maybe the better idea would have been to make it more about young Morticia and Gomez, which is how the film starts, and their courtship. He’ll, if you really HAVE to revive this franchise and you hire Theron and Isaacs, why not do it live action: they would look great together onscreen in these roles!
I liked the character design in the film as rather go for a more realistic style, they really emulated Charles Addams’ art, but modernised it somewhat. At times the characters almost feel like animated toys due to their grotesque appearances (even the normal ones) and it is almost jarring when you see a close up, for example, of Morticia’s skin and can see it’s not made of clay or plastic.
Another thing that really irritated me more than I can explain is the use of a couple of songs in the film. Firstly, at one point we see Lurch sitting at the piano, and instead of his usual moans sings in perfect tones, and the other is the song used in the appearance of Cousin Itt. Seeing as it is Snoop Dogg performing the character, they choose to use the song ‘Drop it Like it’s Hot’ but as it’s a kids film, blank out the words ‘bitch’ and ‘weed’… if you are going to use a Snoop song, pick one with no swearing or drug references, or another song altogether.
There is some pretty obscure film references peppered throughout the film, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers, various Universal Frankenstein films and the Man Who Laughs.
Essentially, this film is terrible, and if you want to introduce your kids to ANYTHING Addams Family, this should be the horrible secret, hidden in the attic, and fed a bucket of fish heads once a week.
Score: *1/2
The menu screen for The Addams Family Bluray
Format: This review was done with the Australian Bluray release, and both the 1.85:1 image and the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 are impeccable.
Score: *****
Extras: This release does have a few extras on it.
There is four deleted and extended scenes, which the film neither benefits from having in or out. All of the excised bits were obviously dumped quite early as they only appear as rather basic animations.
Charades with Thing is quite possibly one of the worst ‘games’ I’ve ever seen on a DVD or Bluray.
Life of a Scene explains how storyboards eventually become the final product.
Welcome to the Family would be a decent little making-of featurette if it were longer.
Addams Family Throwback is a barely one minute look at the odd occasion where the film takes elements of Charles Addams’ original cartoons and incorporates them. I’m not sure how important they ACTUALLY thought this is as the extra goes for barely a minute. It was nice to see Addams’ art, though.
Thee is also videos for Haunted Heart by Christina Aguilera and My Family, which doesn’t seem to be credited, but they are really just bits of the movie with the lyrics displayed over the images,
Score: ***
WISIA: *dahdahdahdah Heck, No!
Morticia is horrified by Wednesday’s fashion choices.
Film: As a movie obsessive and technically a hoarder, I’m always looking for a new movie to buy, and if something cheap or unusual crosses my path I’m willing to give it a go.
I found this film, Countdown, at a local retailer and honestly it caught my eye for no reason other than I thought it was a collection of episodes of the Jimmy Carr comedy games how 8 Out of Ten Cats Does Countdown.
It’s obviously not, but I just saw the word ‘Countdown’ and became excited.
What we have here though is a film written and directed by Justin Dec, and starring Once Upon a Time’s Elizabeth Lail, Jordan Calloway from Riverdale and Black Lightning, and Peter Facinelli, best known as Maxwell Lord from the Supergirl Tv series, or Carlisle from the Twilight saga, which owes a LOT to both j-horror and the Final Destination series.
Our story tells of a student nurse, Quinn Harris (Lail) who meets a patient who has downloaded an app which predicts his death, and that he claims is responsible for the death of his girlfriend. Quinn tells her co-workers and some of them download it, finding that they have multiple decades to live, but Quinn’s phone tells her she has 2 days, 22 hours, 37 minutes and 12 seconds left to live.
Whilst it unnerves her, she doesn’t think to much of it until she does some research and finds it has a history, and that it can’t be deleted off her phone, and even when she replaces her phone… the app finds its way back.
Upon buying a new phone, she meets Matt Monroe (Calloway) who is also haunted by the app and together they discover that they violated the Terms and Conditions on the app and that’s why they have such little time left.
They seek the assistance from a priest, Father John (P. J. Rourke) who tells them the app is actually a curse put on them, and they attempt to seek a resolution…. but how many people will die…?
This film owes a lot of what it is to the tension found in films like the j-horror classics Ring, The Grudge, one Missed Call and even the American film series Final Destination, but with pretty solid storytelling, and engaging cast and a generic, albeit well-designed ‘bad guy’, it doesn’t feel like it just attempted to copy them flat out.
It does contain a few American jump scares, but they aren’t ‘cat in a cupboard’ ones. Also, there are some creepy scenes that even made me cringe… having to unlock a phone by holding it up to a corpses face will sit with me for a while, for sure and there is a foot trauma scene that I can barely even think about.
All in all, this film was a lot of fun, scary and creepy, and for a blind buy I was pleasantly surprised.
Note: make sure you wait in the credits to see the Tinder date mentioned earlier in the film by the phone shop manager.
Score: ****
Format: This film was reviewed with the Australian, region B Bluray release and was presented in a perfect 2.40:1 image with a matching DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio.
Score: *****
Extras: No extras for you!
Score: 0
WISIA: Even though this film was reminiscing of other horror franchises I found it totally engaging and will definitely watch it again.
Film: There is no doubt that William Sachs has made a mark on oddball, lowbrow filmmaking. He’s given us such cult titles as Galaxina, Hot Chilli, Van Nuys Blvd., and of course this film, 1977’s The Incredible Melting Man.
Sachs apparently isn’t very proud of this film though, as he claims the studio interfered with its production quite heavily (if you watch the commentary on this release, he spits quite a fair bit of venom at the re-editing and over-simplification of the story which honestly, by the sound of his description, would have been a far more interesting film.
That’s not to say, though, that this movie isn’t a gem of cult cinema, even though both it, and its main character, are a bloody mess.
After a disastrous mission to space, astronaut Steve West (Alex Rebar), returns and is immediately quarantined and hospitalised as for some reason, his body has started to lose its structural integrity.
Not only his body is melting, his brain is too, and he escapes the facility and starts a rampage across the countryside, become more monster than man, killing everyone in his path, but can he be stopped? Is there some way to stop his threat, or will he eventually melt into nothingness…
This film is interesting insomuch it’s a tragedy dressed up as a gore movie. The tragedy of All-American hero West’s mutation as he loses his identity and becomes violent is a horror staple. The effects are expectedly gruesome and gooey and the film is well-worthy of its status of cult movie… and the addition of Cheryl ‘Rainbeaux” Smith certainly nails down that title.
It’s a silly film but it’s certainly a fun film to watch.
Score: ***
Format: The film is presented so bright and clear considering it’s age. It’s presented in 1.85:1 with a 2.0 mono audio.
Score: ****1/2
Extras: As Arrow usually do there is a cool couple of extras floating around on this disc.
Commentary by William Sachs is fairly detailed look at the film. His recollections are interesting, and occasionally quite scathing against the directors.
Super 8 Digest Version is quite a revelation. As a kid I used to see the ads in Famous Monsters for ‘Super 8 home video’ versions of horror films and I was always interested to see one. Well, here we have the Incredible Melting Man one!
Interview with William Sachs and Rick Baker is enlightening and entertaining, and it’s nice to see that neither of them take the film too seriously. Interestingly in a world where some films are being criticised by ‘proper’ filmmakers for being nothing more than ‘theme park rides’ it’s nice to see that Sachs wholly embraces his film as being exactly that. Unfortunately if you’ve already watched the commentary, some of the stories and anecdotes are repeated.
Interview with Greg Cannom is only very brief, and honestly could have been incorporated into the previous extra, but it gives an insight into Cannom’s involvement.
Promotional Gallery is another name for ‘stills gallery’, but at least this one is for the posters and lobby cards for the film.
Original Theatrical Trailer is exactly what it says on the box. Remember when there was just one original theatrical trailer and not a leak, a sub-teaser, a teaser, trailer 1, trailer 2 and a red-band trailer? Maybe older films had better luck at selling themselves because they were better films? Who knows.
Score: ****
WISIA: It’s extraordinarily goofy so it deserves multiple watches!
Film: When is a children’s horror anthology not a children’s horror anthology? When it’s handed to Andre Øvredal, director of Troll Hunter and The Autopsy of Jane Doe, of course! Add production duties from Guillermo Del Toro makes for an even more of an event!
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is based on the children’s book series by Alvin Schwartz, of which the first was published in 1981. Schwartz was a folklore and urban legend enthusiast so the stories from the three volumes that were published feature those themes very heavily, and some of the tales may seem somewhat familiar.
This films isn’t like a regular anthology film though. For one thing, it takes about six of the original stories from Schwartz’s books and shoehorns them together into a single story, so there is no abrasive change of cast and the connecting tale is well written and thrilling.
The story takes us to 1968, Mill Valley, at Halloween, and three friends, bookish Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti), gentlemanly Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and wiseass Chuck (Austin Zejur) decide to get revenge on the town bully, Tommy (Austin Abrams) for years of abuse, but it backfires when he has an accident, damaging his car.
The three friends hide in a drive in movie theatre (playing Night of the Living Dead too, I might add) and hide in the car of a drifter named Ramón (Michael Garza) who protects them from Tommy and his friends and as a reward, they take him to look at a local infamous haunted house.
Once there they find a book that belonged to Sarah Bellows (Kathleen Pollard) the previous occupant of the house filled with stories and Stella, being an aspiring writer, steals it.
Once she gets the book home, though, she finds that the book is writing itself in blood and that the stories within are killing or maiming people in the town. They try destroying the book but it seemingly can’t be destroyed and has attached itself to Stella, so they start investigating Bellows to see if they can find some way to exorcise it… but how many have to get hurt before they do it?
Øvredal has created a spectacular piece of art with this film. It looks beautiful and every scene is extraordinarily set like a delicate painting. The special effects and make up effects are extraordinary and take from the original books artist David Gammell and are wonderfully accurate, especially Harold the scarecrow and the woman from the red room.
I did find though, probably like the scandal surrounding the books themselves where they were regularly banned from libraries as they were maybe a bit too scary for kids, that the movie wasn’t quite a kids film and yet wasn’t quite adulty enough to be totally engaging. What I did find is that if you did read these books as a child you would probably find them more engaging than someone who hasn’t read them. Nostalgia works that way.
If I’m really going to be picky about the film it’s the inclusion of the walkie talkies. It seems to me whenever a film is set in a time where there’s no mobile phones they do the ol’ walkie talkie thing. It’s boring and unnecessary and I don’t believe kids today think it’s either cool or even a thing that was ever done.
What this film does have is a wonderful cast with a beautiful vision that occasionally felt like it was attempting to preach to converted people, rather than gather new lambs to the flock.
Score: ***
Format: This review was done with the Australian Bluray release of the film. Presented in a beautiful 2.39:1 image, with an amazing DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack, both of which, as you would expect, are wonderful
Score: *****
Extras:I was very excited to see the amount of extras on this disc but quickly discovered they were a series of small featurettes, barely 5 minutes in length, that probably could have been stitched together into one below average 40 minute or so ‘making of’. It appears that they were all just advertising bits that have been thrown on here as ‘extras.
A Classic Transformed looks at the original stories.
Creature Vignettes takes a peek at the designs of each of the creatures, but each bit only runs for about 60 seconds, if that!
The cast and crew interviews see discussions about the film from Øvredal, production designer David Brisbin, Del Toro, producer J. Miles Dale, costume designer Ruth Myers and cast members Zajur, Rush, Pollard, Garza, Colletti and Natalie Ganzhorn (who played Ruth). Most of these interviews have sound bytes used in the other featurettes. Also, it’s frustrating when you hear an interviewee talk about something ‘previously mentioned’ that you don’t get to see.
Dark Tales briefly discusses how this film are a mix of a horror film and an Amblin film of the 80s.
Rebels With a Cause is about the development of the scares for the film.
Red Spot Clip is a summary of Ruth’s curse, stemming from a spot on her face she gets from when a spider bites her.
Score: **1/2
WISIA: Yeah, I can probably see myself watching this again.
Film: The Eighties, some say, was horror’s heyday! The popular psychopaths had their violent ways with hundreds of horny, drunken teens, aliens attacked, the dead had their day and the coenobites walked the earth. Occasionally, though, there were hiccups that penetrated the serenity, flies in the gory soup, and this is where we find April Fool’s Day!
April Fool’s Day starts with the usual college student stereotypes (played by Ken Olandt, Amy Steel, Jay Baker, Deborah Goodrich, Griffin O’neal, Thomas F. Wilson (yep, THE Biff Tannen), Leah Pinsent and Clayton Rodney), full of tomfoolery and April Fool’s Day hoaxes, waiting patiently to catch the ferry to the secluded island retreat owned by their friend, Muffy St. John’s family.
Muffy (Deborah Foreman), the gorgeous heiress who invited them all is excited to see her friends come to her family’s home, but as the weekend goes on, her attitude, and her appearance, starts to change. Some of the friends start to disappear, and those who remain start an investigation that sees that St. John has a horrible family secret… and upon arriving on the island, the secret could result in a murderous rampage that may leave them all dead?
Written by Danilo Bach (Beverly Hills Cop) and directed by Fred Walton (When a Stranger Calls, which he also co-wrote), April Fool’s Day is the little film that could, but didn’t. It tries too hard to stand out in a crowd of slashers and sequels by trying to be cleverer than what it is, mixing too much comedy with not enough tension and ultimately becoming an experiment that failed.
I have to admit to also getting a cheap thrill in seeing Amy Steel in this film as well! Steel had been in Friday the 13th Part 2 (and 3… kind of) and the Friday films were and are favourites of mine and she was a pretty resourceful final girl in that film, so I looked forward to seeing more of her. I have to say though, I looked at her filmography and even though I had seen some of the other things she had been in, I didn’t realise and these are the only two appearances that really stand out!
Containing no gore, no tension and even more tragically, no nudity, this film has far too much levity for it ever to be taken seriously or to enter the annals of exciting and legendary 80s slashers. The cast is full of annoying characters though Wilson is one who almost raises a smile with his hi-jinks and pranks, but the biggest April Fool’s prank of them all is the one played on the viewer, for wasting 85 minutes of their valuable time.
Score: *
Format: Cinema Cult and their inconsistent grey covers have really not done anything to help this release of this film. Straight up it has NO chapter list and the menu is just the Shock! emblem with a ‘play’ button, and you can only even find that menu screen if you fast forward to the end, which is easily done as there is only 1 chapter on this disc: the whole film.
This disc is presented in a shoddy 1.78:1 image with an ok 2.0 audio track. The whole film looks like is is nothing but a port of a 15 year old DVD release which was probably just a port of the VHS release because no one could be bothered to waste their time on this film.
Score: **
Extras: None.
Score: 0
WISIA: Please, PLEASE, I implore you to not give any of you precious attention to this film.
Film: I never used to be a fan of horror comedies because I didn’t like the juxtaposition of laughs with horror. Actually, I still don’t really believe that the horror/comedy exists: horror/ comedies are just comedies with monsters and or gore in them.
Having said that, some of my favourite movies are horror comedies. Movies like Shaun of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead and Re-animator hit this amazing balance between the ridiculousness of the situation, humans ability to laugh in the face of danger and blood and gore.
Unfortunately a lot of horror/ comedies fail because they can’t hit that balance; The Spierig Brothers’ Undead was one of those for me. It had a few funny lines, but essentially it fell flat as either horror or comedy.
This film, Little Monsters, is a winner though. Written and directed by Australian actor/ director Abe Forsythe who previously gave us the Ned Kelly comedy Ned (2003) and Down Under (2016), Little Monsters tell of Dave (Alexander England), a washed up worker who is constantly at war with his girlfriend until they finally decide to call it quits.
With nowhere to go, he moves in with his sister, Tess (Kat Stewart) and her son, Felix (Diesel La Torraca) where he proves to be not the best influence on the boy, especially when he discovers that Felix’s teacher is the stunning Miss Caroline (Lupita Nyong’o), and volunteers to chaperone the children in his class on an excursion to Pleasant Valley, which has a petting zoo and mini golf, but also, for a limited time, the 5 times Nickelodeon kids award winning entertainer, Teddy McGiggle (Josh Gad).
What starts as a delightful excursion becomes a nightmare as the American Army base next door has a breakout of zombies who find their way onto the theme park grounds. Very soon, Miss Caroline, Dave, Teddy and Miss Caroline’s class find themselves holed up in the souvenir shop, surrounded by the undead, with seemingly no way out!
Will they all survive?
I admit to have blind bought this Bluray for two reasons, the first is you just have to put the word ‘zombie’ on anything and immediately I’m interested. The other is Lupita Nyong’o. For me she was about the only thing I liked about the Black Panther movie (well, her and Shuri), and she shows some amazing skill playing both Adelaide and Red in the Jordan Peele science fiction/ horror movie Us.
After watching it though, I also have to take my hat off to Josh Gad, who plays Teddy with a gleeful delight at first before revealing his deplorable true colours, and make for a hilarious ‘jerk’ character. That’s not to take away from Alexander England either: Dave is one of the most irredeemable characters prime for redemption ever seen in a comedy.
The type of zombie that appears in the film is the slow, non-tool using type, but part of the script suggests that there are lots of types as one of the American Army guys asks ‘Fast ones or slow ones’ which was a nice truce in the war between running and walking zombies.
The best thing about this film though is how damned funny it is. It starts like a stoner comedy and switches so easily to a horror comedy/ romantic comedy that you barely notice where the change is… and that’s not to cast shade on the imbues either: they look amazing, considering most of the budget must have been spent just on the international cast members!
I really can’t recommend this film enough. It’s been a long time since I laughed out loud at a co edgy, let alone a horror/ comedy!
Score: *****
Format: Little Zombies is presented in an absolutely perfect 2.35:1 image, and a cracking DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1.
Score: *****
Extras: Nothing.
Score: 0
WISIA: There is so much happening in this film, and it’s so bloody funny, it deserves multiple watches!
Film: I’ve never EVER been a fan of Stephen King’s books… now that’s not to say I don’t like his ideas, I’m just not a fan of the way he writes. I prefer Richard Laymon, Shaun Hutson and James Herbert for my horror books. Anyway, I’ve always been a fan of the adaptations of King’s books; I guess the summarising of one of his tomes makes his stories easier to swallow.
I did enjoy the first version of It (you know, the one with Tim Curry as Pennywise) and I admit I only watched it initially as a curio to see John-Boy Walton (Richard Thomas) in something other than The Waltons or Battle Beyond the Stars, and I found it to be a fun story.
I did attempt the book and gave up.
Anyway, I loved the first part of the ‘do-over’ of King’s novel. I thought it was well cast, and entertaining… did that echo into the sequel/ chapter 2?
Let’s get to the story first.
It’s 27 years after the events of the first film, and the Loser’s Club has long since disbanded, with all the members spread out, far away from each other, the memories of what happened that summer with Pennywise, the demonic clown (Bill Skarsgård) long faded… but not to one member.
Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa) has stayed in the town of Derry, remembering what happened, and when the evil starts creeping back into the town, he contacts all the Losers, Bev (Jessica Chastain), Bill (James McAvoy), Ben (Jay Ryan), Ritchie (Bill Hader), Eddie (James Ransone) and Stan (Andy Bean) and asks them to return and help him fight the threat of Pennywise again.
U fortunately for them, in the 27 years that Pennywise has been dormant, he dreamt of nothing bu them, and fortunately for him, Hanlon has accidentally delivered them to him and his evil shenanigans…
I was so excited for this film. Honestly, I can’t tell you how much, and that excitement grew the more I heard of the cast who we being employed: Chastain, McAvoy, Heder… I couldn’t believe the names that were being suggested. Well, I could: the first film had been such a success I’m sure any actor would have loved to have had their name attached to its sequel.
The cast are mostly fine, though one of the problems of the script is that the old friends quickly return to their young personas, and whilst I understand that the objective was to make the adult the evolutions of the child actors, what really happened was that they just emulated them. I’m not sure if the removal of the maturity of some of the characters was deliberate, but it was annoying, and having adults act like children didn’t sit well at all, especially the bickering between them.
The first film had, even with some of its over the top scenes like the leprous hobo, still somewhat of a subtlety to the nature of the scares that Pennywise provided. All the horror of the first film are thrown out the window and the horror and fear is forced upon you over and over to the point that it becomes boring. Again, if it was a script decision to increase those scares because the adults would be harder to frighten, it wasn’t telegraphed well enough. Much like Freddy Kruger in later Nightmare on Elm Street films, Pennywise and his ghouls and ghosts feels overexposed somewhat in this film.
If I’m going to be really picky, there is a cameo by Steven King which lasts far too long and the movie really slows down to play it out.
Overall, the highs of the first film were not present in this sequel, and this movie was mediocre at best, which is so surprising considering it was basically made by the exact same people. The irony here is that one of the characters, who is a writer, is constantly concerned that his stories don’t end well.
I have no doubt with the success of it the studio is already thinking of The Conjuring-styled prequels showing Pennywise haunting earlier times in a cash-grab: no doubt we shall eventually be subjected to Pennywise: Origin, but I hope not.
Score: **
Format: This film was reviewed on the Australia release Bluray which is presented in an impeccable 2.39:1 image and a matching Dolby Atmos True-HD.
Score: *****
Extras: There’s a whole disc of extras!
The Summers of IT Chapter One: You’ll Float Too looks at the casting of the kids and Pennywise, and the making of the first film.
The Summers of IT Chapter Two: IT Ends reflects the casting of the adults and the continuation of the portrayal of Pennywise.
Pennywise Lives Again looks deeper at Bill Skarsgård’s portrayal of Pennywise and discusses his thought son the success of the character.
This Meeting of the Losers’ Club Has Officially Begun looks at the meeting of the child actors and their adult counterparts.
Finding the Deadlights sees Stephen King talk about the nature of fear and then monster under the bed’.
Some of the interview footage is repeated from one extra to another which is somewhat disappointing. I’m constantly surprised that these extras are made into these stupid ten minute bites instead of a decent 40 minute documentary.
Score: ****
WISIA: Pennywise and I are done, I’m afraid. Divorce proceedings to follow quickly.
Film: If you’ve been reading this blog for the last few years, or read my reviews over the past 10 years, or even listened to my podcast, you may notice two things that I say over and over again.
1. My favourite movies mostly come from the 1980s
2. I am not a fan of Steven King’s writing.
The weird thing about these to things is that they do intersect: I really like all of the Stephen King novel based movies. It’s true. I’m a fan of the man’s ideas, but not of his execution. Do I feel bad about it? No. Would I watch any film based on a Stephen King novel at any time of the night or day? Yes.
I know that this wasn’t the first King translation I ever saw because I KNOW that I was taken to the cinemas to see The Shining by my parents at the ripe old age of 10 which launched both my fear of fathers and my love of breasts. This film, 1984’s Stephen King’s Children of the Corn (yes, that’s the official title) must have been very close to being the next one. I was watching a lot of horror in the early eighties so realistically it could have been this, or Cujo, or Carrie, but I can’t be sure.
What I can be sure of was that I definitely saw it when it first came out on VHS in Australia, and it probably made me a fan of the ‘abandoned town’ as a setting for horror films!
Anyway, the story of Stephen King’s Children of the Corn (SKCotC) begins with a mass murder in a small diner of all of the adults by the children of the town. One boy witnesses it and chooses to make an attempt to escape the town which is now being controlled by teenage religious zealots, led by Issac (John Franklin) and his thuggish sidekick Malachai (Courtney Gains).
Tragically he doesn’t escape, but he does make it to a highway where young lovers, Burt (Peter Horton) and Vicky (Linda Hamilton) come across his body, and this leads them to the town where they are terrorised by the children, and threatened to be sacrificed to something called ‘He Who Walks Behind The Rows’.
Will Burt and Vicky escape, or will they be sacrificed to… well, whatever ‘IT’ is…
This is as eighties as a film can get, but it has some amazing ideas and some truly threatening scenes. I remember when I first saw it I was reminded on the classic Star Trek series episode ‘Miri’ but that was probably just a teenage me associated two cool things together.
King’s story here was adapted by George Goldsmith (Blue Monkey) and its a solid thriller made real by the direction from Fritz Kiersch which visually tells of the desolation of remoteness of farmland and their communities, and just how easily one could drop off the map if not tended to appropriately. It’s also a fascinating look at the manipulation of religion by its leaders.
Score: ***1/2
Format: This film was reviewed with the 88 Films Slasher Collection Bluray, which was presented in 1.78:1 and with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio track, both of which were surprisingly good considering the age of the film.
Score: ****
Extras: There’s a couple of extras on this disc:
The original trailer for the title film, plus trailers for Don’t Go In The Woods, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Live Like A Cop Die Like A Man, Mother’s Day, Slaughterhouse, Trancers and Splatter University.
The Life, Legacy and Legend of Donald P. Borchers is a fairly thorough, 90-odd minute documentary about the movie producer, Donald P. Borchers, who produced this film as well as Vamp, Tuff Turf and Angel. It’s really an interesting insight into the Hollywood machine as well as Borcher’s actual career.
Score: ***
WISIA: Its a Stephen King classic and demands to be watched more than once.
Film: It’s the best horror film ever made. Review finished.
Oh, you want more… sigh, ok then.
I first saw this film when it came out on VHS in Australia and was immediately and utterly taken by it. It didn’t just excite my brain cells, I found almost a soul mate within the confines of the little plastic video case. I liked horror before I saw this film, but afterward, I loved it.
I didn’t just love THIS film though, it turned me on to the writings of H. P. Lovecraft and more horror writers, both modern and old. It turned me from being a horror casual to a horror obsessive.
This film was directed by Stuart Gordon, who wrote the screenplay with Dennis Paolo (From Beyond, Dagon) and William Norris (mostly known as being an actor). The story was based on Lovecraft’s stories from the 1920s, but modernised and made into a gory, gooey horror movie with a wry sense of dark humour.
Re-animator tells of a medical student named Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) who has moved to Miskatonic University to learn more, and further his research after the death of his mentor Dr Gruber. At Miskatonic, he moves in with student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) to whom West eventually reveals he has developed a reagent that’s can reanimate dead tissue, and bring the deceased back to life, though the life is a monstrous, violent, animalistic one,
Their experiments put them at odds with the Dean of the school, Dean Halsey (Robert Sampson), and his daughter Megan (Barbara Crampton), who also happens to be Cain’s girlfriend, and the object of obsession of Dr Carl Hill (David Gale), who also is the subject of West’s ridicule due to his ideas about human brain death.
Very quickly, the body count rises, and the lives of all concerned begin to fall horribly apart…
There is so much that is perfect about this film. Gordon’s direction of the script is perfect, and every performance is nailed and every scene is exciting and moves the story along at quite a fast rate.
The cast is excellent. Combs’ West is the maddest of mad doctors, Abbott is the most flaccid of accomplices, Crampton is the most loveliest of female lead (and I must admit to having a massive crush in her even all these years later) and David Gale… well, David Gale is the best Vincent Price like villain that was ever not played by Vincent Price.
This edition reviewed is the Umbrella Entertainment version, under their ‘Beyond Genres’ label, which contains two version of the film on it. The first disc has the original 86 minute ‘uncut’ version, chock full of chunky violence and blood and gore. The other disc contains what is called the ‘Integral’ cut, which has all the gore, but also some extended scenes from various cuts of the film that exist, which adds almost 20 minutes to the films length: not all of which is necessary, but most of which creates more layers to the film, especially the ‘anti-love’ triangle that develops between the three main leads… it’s not a triangle, but instead one of obsession and ownership.
Umbrella’s edition of this film also has an epic Simon Sherry cover that looks incredible too, and even better as the animated menus on disc 2!
Like I said, this is my favourite horror film of all time, and whenever anyone asks me what horror film is my favourite, without fail I say this one, as I believe it’s a must watch.
Score: ****** (yep, six stars: not an error)
Format: Reanimator was reviewed on the region B Bluray from Umbrella Entertainment, and it’s is easily the best this film has ever looked. It is presented in a 1.77 image, with a 5.1 audio.
Score: ****
Extras: Heaps of extras on this 2 disc extravaganza!
Disc 1
There are two audio commentaries, one by director Stuart Gordon, and the other by producer Brian Yuzna, and stars Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Bruce Abbott and Robert Sampson. Both commentaries are interesting and engaging.
Re-animator Resurrectus is a retrospective documentary about the film, and is a pretty complete investigation of the film.
There is also a series of extended scenes, which are unnecessary but still work when put back into the ‘Integral” cut of the film, and a deleted scene, which I am not quite where it would have fit in the film, but was an interesting watch anyway.
Disc 2
On this disc there us a series if interviews with Gordon, Yuzna, Paoli, Music composer Richard Band and Fangoria editor Tony Timpone. These are interesting, but the stories start to repeat themselves over the course of the extras.
This disc also has a bunch of trailers and TV spots.
Score: *****
WISIA: Simply, I think it’s the best horror film ever made and I watch it regularly. Honestly I could probably perform the whole movie as a one man show.
Digital Retribution 