Haunted Vinyl

Alas — Charlotte Bronte died 156 years ago. And the brand-new film version of Jane Eyre isn’t playing anywhere in the area. Don’t they know a Gothic tie-in when they see one?

The Evil Dead (1981)

Bruce Campbell is so good on TV’s Burn Notice as Sam — a wisecracking, hard-drinking, ladies’ man of a retired shadowy government operative — it’s like he’s been the character all his life. Of course, that’s very much not so, but it was still almost startling to see him recently at the very way-back of his career, in the original Evil Dead.

In the later films, especially Army of Darkness with its “primitive screwheads,” Campbell’s Ash pushed the limit of how big a jerk a protagonist can be and still get an audience to root for him. In the first one, his Ashley pushed in the opposite direction: the hero was soft-spoken, compassionate, and refreshingly passive. One of my favorite scenes puts him in the background, uncertainly clutching an ax, while his buddy fights off his demonically possessed girlfriend. For once I thought, if this actually happened, I wouldn’t know what was going on. I wouldn’t jump to assume I should start mutilating my friends. This edition of Ash actually deals with bizarre supernatural threats as reasonably as a person could be expected to.

I was also amused by the scene in which Ash attempts to recite a Greek toast at dinner, but stumbles over the pronunciation.  The origin of the famous “maybe I didn’t say every single little tiny syllable”?

Despite its flaws, and some obviously low-budget acting on display, I’ve always been fond of Evil Dead for being the closest thing to a straight horror film in the series. And, well, at this point in history, nothing much else needs to be said.

Night of the Demons (1988)

I must have picked up this video box a hundred times at the old videostore, looked at the cover, pondered, and finally said “Naw.” Now I’ve finally broken down and watched it, I can say that I should have trusted my instinct, since it turned out to be a pretty generic entry in the subgenre of dumb teens endangering themselves.

There are some good points to the film, however: the opening cartoon credit sequence is pretty cool. Star Mimi Kennedy has a great “I’m possessed by a demon” dance scene in front of a fireplace, and her whole big-haired ’80s/Goth gown look is not bad either. That’s Heathers‘ Kurt Kelly (actor Lance Fenton) as the Final Girl’s date (just as much of a jerk as he would be to Winona Ryder). Most importantly, I’m always happy to see Linnea Quigley, no matter what the circumstances, and here she has one of her most iconic scenes, on a par with the Dance of the Chainsaw from Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. It involves a lipstick, and some prosthetic toplessness, and that’s all I care to say.

Come to think of it, while this is actually pretty inept on all levels, when compared to Quigley vehicles like Nightmare Sisters (top on my list of Terrible Movies I Can’t Defend In Any Way, But Of Which I’m Inexplicably Fond), it actually looks like a movie. A bad movie, yes, but at least not like something shot on video in someone’s garage.

House of Frankenstein (1944)

Divine Providence seems to be aiding mad scientist Dr. Niemann (a hypnotic Boris Karloff) in his desire to carry on the work of his hero, Dr. Frankenstein. First, a collapsing building springs him and his murderous hunchback assistant from prison. Then they conveniently stumble on a traveling Chamber of Horrors, whose owner they quickly dispatch, leaving them to travel at will with Dracula’s bones in the back. (The late lamented Professor Lampini was no charlatan, even though nobody would be able to tell any random skeleton with a stake jammed in its ribs from the real thing). They even find the original monster frozen in the ruins of Frankenstein’s old castle, along with clinically depressed wolfman Lawrence Talbot, who helps them find the doctor’s old notes.

Niemann is well on his way to revenging all the wrongs done him, with a scheme that involves a shell game of brain-swapping, but a hunchback/wolfman/gypsy girl love triangle is going to thwart his plans. Hunchback Daniel rescues dancer Ilonka from an abusive employer, and she’s nice to him in return, but she clearly prefers the gloomy “Larry.”  I laughed out loud at a delightful scene in which Larry broods, while the rather Basanti-like Ilonka sits next to him, chattering and beaming brightly all the while.

This film packs in a ton of action, even going off on a tangent with a bunch of extraneous characters menaced by John Carradine’s resurrected Dracula (a much more distinguished role for him than the one he played in Nocturna, Granddaughter of Dracula), and still gets it all done in 71 minutes. And it’s no real spoiler to say that it all ends with an angry “burgermaster” and a torch-wielding mob. Just like it should.

One good thing about Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (1981): if anyone asks what’s the worst debut film by a future Academy Award-winning director I’ve ever seen, I’ll have an answer that springs to mind. Poor James Cameron was far, far from being the King of the World when this mishmash of fake blood, family drama, and T & A was made, although a good portion of it does take place underwater — a hint at the direction of Cameron’s later career. The film also fortuitously brought him together with Lance Henriksen (very young, but still weird-looking), with whom he’d work on much, much better films, like The Terminator and Aliens. Henriksen is the best actor in the movie; no surprise, he’s that kind of actor. But he really stands out here among the clumsy “comic relief” characters, and the languid topless chicks whose dialogue — I can tell by looking at them! — is being dubbed from Italian.

In fact, many commentators claim that Cameron only shot portions of the film, including the scuba-diving stuff, giving him a first-time director’s credit, and the Italian producers an American name for marketing purposes. So he may not really be the one to blame for the movie’s ineptness. However, I do want to know who to give credit to for the absolute insanity of the fish attacks, because it was worth sitting through just to get to them.

They’re not piranhas, technically. They’re mostly grunion, that have been genetically combined with other fish, including piranha and flying fish, in order to create killing-machine fish that can survive in any environment.

How those wacky government scientists thought they could control these beasties for military purposes is never explained. But they did breed a hardy species, one capable of living in the body of a corpse, inside a morgue freezer, no less, for at least a day. At which point it can fly out of a wound, attack someone else, then smash through a glass window and fly off to safety. Wow!

This scene was truly laugh-out-loud funny, as were most of the scenes of piranha carnage. Bathing the fish in red light, giving them a loud whirring noise, is clearly meant to build suspense about them. But when these big, rubber-looking things fly out of the water and latch on people’s necks, nothing could have really prepared us for the sight.

I realize I haven’t mentioned the plot, but it’s hardly relevant. Various shenanigans take place at a Caribbean island resort, and then someone gets eaten during a dive class. Lance is the Sheriff Brody character, but it’s his estranged wife, a handy marine biologist, in the Matt Hooper role. The resort guests plan to party hard the night of the grunion run, but the fish have other plans. Oddly, when the time comes, the two factions, one group in tropical shirts, with tiki torches, and the other whirring loudly and stirring up the surf, seem like they’re marching head-on into battle.

I’d put this in that hallowed category of “I can’t possibly recomment, but am glad I watched.”

A neon sign blinks "Hotel Transylvania." An aggressively deadpan young woman in a flowing gown strides down the corridors of a Gothic castle. In the background, a particularly repetitive disco song is insisting that "love is just a heartbeat away." (It’s a Gloria Gaynor tune, and you can watch the whole opening here).

Welcome to the world of Nocturna, Granddaughter of Dracula (1979). The lovely but expressionless title character tells us up front that she’s "in no hurry to get married." Wow, even vampire chicks get the pressure from their families! She’s busy running the tourist trap hotel at the ancestral castle, where she’s just hired the Moment of Truth, a multi-musician ensemble whose songs are surprisingly pretty good — closer to the Motown soul than the bad disco I was expecting (but don’t worry, that’s en route). Nocturna singles out the blondest (and I have to say, most Jason Stackhouse-like) guy in the group to flirt with, with tragic results. I don’t mean anything to do with the plot — I mean his dancing. Here’s the clip, which is labeled "Hot Disco Vampire Dance."

At least that’s not boring, unlike the following "love scene." Then the movie grinds to a halt while Bonet takes an excruciatingly long bubblebath, running the gamut "from nakedness to nudity," as her werewolf assistant (billed as Brother Theodore) describes it, while he watches her from a keyhole. For those of you it might make more bearable, the nudity does go on and on.

As she scrubs, she ponderously voice-overs: "Now I have fallen in love with a mortal man. What is going to happen to me?" One Hot Disco Vampire Dance with Generic Blond Dude, and all the dubious vampire/mortal love stories throughout history become instantly more plausible in comparison. She mentions her "eternity of bloodlust and murder," but it’s no spoiler to say the worst thing she does in the movie is some disco dancing. Which I guess is evil enough in its own way.

"You have no right to love. You can use men for nourishment only!" Grandpa Dracula tells her. Nonetheless, she runs off with the boyfriend to New York, where she stays with an old family friend named Jugula — yes, as in Vein. It’s Yvonne De Carlo, looking obviously more mature, but still as beautiful as when she played Lily Munster. "In my time, I’ve seen so many broken-hearted vampires," Jugula says, and come to think of it, so have I! Usually because of their unfortunate tendency to fall for the same human beings they snack upon.

Nocturna, though, thinks that the power of love, combined with the power of disco, is in fact beginning to turn her mortal. "When I hear music, I become transformed…at those times, my reflection can be seen in mirrors." That’s something I don’t think they tried on Dark Shadows, or Angel, or Forever Knight. We do know that Angel was secretly fond of Barry Manilow, but that didn’t do the trick.

The gals go to a meeting where creatures of the night discuss the problems of the "urban vampire," including the amount of hypoglycemia in the population. When confronted by a policeman, they all turn into cartoon bats and fly away! The cartoon bat effects are totally quaint and adorable, and that’s the point when the movie really started winning me over. Shortly after that, there’s a great scene of Nocturna frolicking through Times Square to the tune of Vicki Sue Robinson’s "Nighttime Fantasy."

A sweet little caption pops up over her head there that says, "Oh wow such a lovely city, isn’t it?" Agreed. And special thanks to the diverse group of crazy people who’ve posted snippets of this hard-to-find film on YouTube.

A young Sy Richardson (of Repo Man fame) turns up as a flamboyant character called RH Factor, pushing a sniffable blood product (what could that possibly imply, in the ’70s?), and running a vampire massage parlor (more nudity).Then the later disco scenes, with the camera in the middle of the dance floor, make it look like it would be fun to dance there, and live it up in a strobe-lit bacchanalia! So despite its very obvious flaws, the movie definitely has points in its favor.

This was obviously a labor of love — starring, executive produced, and "based on an original story by" belly dancer Nai Bonet. She gives the impression that she’s reading the script phonetically, but she’s pretty, and has a big smile. It’s the kind of part someone like Charisma Carpenter (speaking of Angel) could have made something of, although she probably wouldn’t have done the bubblebathing.

Nocturna’s bimbo boyfriend was played by Anthony Hamilton, an Australian model and ballet dancer who died in 1995. Crazy IMDB tidbit: "Cubby Broccoli tested him as the new James Bond when Pierce Brosnan was at first unable to get out of his Remington Steele contract to play the role. According to some reports … it was agreed by both Hamilton and Broccoli that the former’s known homosexuality would work against him in the role." This is also mentioned on numerous other sites. I wasn’t surprised by the gay part — when RH Factor scoffs at Nocturna’s non-vampire boyfriend by saying "You got yourself a straight man," my reaction was, well, not exactly.The idea that he’d be a creditable Bond, though, seems like a stretch, but admittedly, Nocturna probably wasn’t the best showcase for his acting skills.

Poor John Carradine plays Dracula, griping about his dentures. Unbelievably, this movie came out the same year as Monstroid! Another of the finest awful movies in which Carradine played thankless supporting roles.

More clips:

The Moment of Truth tune "Love at First Sight"

And a scene I think of as "Disco Jealousy"

Tragically still unreleased on DVD, copies of the film occasionally turn up on Amazon or eBay with reasonable prices. Just don’t get it confused with the Spanish animated film from 2007, which is usually the first thing to come up in a search. And really, don’t mix that one up with Granddaugh

If this

poster

doesn’t make you want to watch the craziness that is Hausu (House), then nothing will…

Odd, disjointed bunch of film-watching lately. The usual, in other words. Here’s a few highlights:

Chi Bi, a.k.a. Red Cliff (China, rated R, 2008)

The cute young cops of Chungking Express (Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro) have grown up to be the handsome warriors of Chi Bi. Nice! Especially on the Takeshi Kaneshiro front. The movie’s so epic and awesome, I immediately ordered the box set containing the 2,340 pages of novel it’s based on (Three Kingdoms, also called The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, attributed to Luo Guanzhong). I’m still cliff-hung, though, since I haven’t had time to watch Chi Bi II yet.

The Princess and the Frog (U.S., rated G, 2009)

Against all odds, Disney has finally made a movie for me. Yes, I could have spent a lot more time with the old hoodoo lady in the swamp, who was much more interesting than the schmaltzy musical romance and the cute anthropomorphic critters. But it was great to see the 1920s New Orleans setting. Even better, Dr. Facilier (great name!) joins the villains of Live and Let Die and Sugar Hill (which I saw advertised as Sugar Hill and Her Zombie Hit Men) in the select list of Baron Samedi-looking bad guys. Plus, he’s voiced by Keith David, formerly an important member of the John Carpenter Players. Yup, that’s the sound of a They Live fanatic squealing over a Disney picture. It sounds just as strange as you’d expect.

Shimotsuma Monogatari, a.k.a. Kamikaze Girls (Japan, 2004)

Motorcyles, fight scenes, and frilly dresses — together at last! I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie where the plot was driven so openly by clothes, and that’s just one of the reasons for my wild enthusiasm. Oddly detached teenage Momoko spends her time fantasizing about her ideal life in 18th-century Versailles, and all her money on elaborate "Lolita" style fashions from her favorite Tokyo shop. Needing cash, she advertises some old bootleg "Versach" clothes her father had tried to sell, and meets tough-talking, long-coated Ichigo, who belongs to an all-girl biker gang.

The film is full of stylized humor and strange asides, even breaking into anime for flashbacks. It kind of reminds me of Muriel’s Wedding, even though it’s completely different in every way. Momoko ignores Ichigo and Ichigo bullies Momoko, but eventually a friendship develops. As the characters use fashion to give their lives meaning, the film depicts the paradox of expressing individuality by embracing what could seem like stereotypical identities, and it ends up being crazily inspirational. In addition to just plain crazy.

Truth in advertising: the girl does, in fact, have a dragon tattoo, but even more so, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009) is full of Men Who Hate Women (a more literal translation of the actual Swedish title).

Random thoughts:

Swedish is a very strange and alien-sounding language to me, and it’s odd to think that my great-grandparents would have spoken it. (Another set spoke the closely related Norwegian). I have no twinge of connection at all. A couple of generations, and it has nothing more to do with me than any randomly selected language in the world.

While they were at it, the characters seamlessly dropped the occasional English word and phrase into their Swedish, making me wonder if people call that "Swenglish."

There were also the subtitle oddities, like when the guy says he thinks his niece was murdered, and the protagonist says "Murdered?" The vowel sound was slightly different, but the word was clearly "murder." It’s not like this is an unusual phraseology: it’s a perfectly rational conversation. But someone typing up those subtitles said to themselves, "Hmmm, I don’t like the word ‘murdered.’ Let’s say ‘killed’ instead." I mean, it’s not inaccurate. The words are basically synonymous. But I still wonder what they’re thinking when they clearly say one thing and the subtitles say another.

But about the actual movie (and I doubt I need to tell anyone that there’ll be spoilers): I had some of the same reaction as I did when flipping through the book. There’s a pretty horrible level of violence against women — probably the closest I want to get to a Hostel film — and that’s particularly off-putting in something that gets talked about for its "feminist" slant. Although it was interesting to see so many respectable grandmotherly types packing the theater for a film full of brutal rape and murder. But they must have known what they were getting into, since every respectable grandmotherly type in my Obscure Midwestern Town has read the book.

Anyway — the thing about the level of violence, and the fact that the film almost seems to revel in the abuse heaped on poor Lisbeth Salander (who I find myself wanting to call Lisander), albeit so it can revel in her turning the tables on her abusers: it occurred to me that this a story about violence against women, as explored by men, for men. I think it annoyed me that Lisbeth, despite being the Girl of the title, was more of an object in the narrative, acted upon, than the subject or point of view character I’d have preferred.

But that may be part of the strategy. There’s a lot of material about rape and misogyny that’s already directed at female audiences. Here, Mikael is the identification character for the audience, and he comes to understand how bad the situation is for some women via the literal mystery (in mystery novel terms) of what happened to Harriet, and the mystery (in more psychological terms) of what happened to Lisbeth.

I was reminded of those days in the ’80s-’90s when there was a lot of academic furor over misogyny, with women reading Andrea Dworkin, and arguing that all men are rapists. Well, all men aren’t rapists; all sex isn’t rape. But rape and violence do exist, and in Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the protagonists are decent men who aren’t rapists or killers themselves, but are forced to confront the evil committed by other men. The two prominent women in the story have faced it directly (and it’s probably on purpose that those women are so different, one being a social outcast, the other growing up rich and privileged). The two men (the sympathetic friend/lover Lisbeth finds, and the kind, nurturing relative who couldn’t imagine the abuse suffered by his beloved niece) have to learn about it, and align themselves with the women against evil.

If misogyny and violence against women are part of a society, it’s because the society tolerates it in some ways, to some extent. There’s almost certainly some symbolic value in the fact that here, the killer didn’t flounder into this out of alienation or general psychological traumas. He was literally taught that women were his to abuse and kill. So the metaphors are about the responsibility of men within the society.

Also, sadly, most people aren’t motivated so much by abstractions. They almost always care more about things that affect them directly, or could. Which is why women are generally more aware of violence against women, and for men, a good motivational starting point for their concern is the fact that it could happen to women they care about.

Obviously, with this kind of discourse, this wasn’t a feel-good film that I’ll be re-watching for entertainment value. If you’re up for a grim, well-crafted movie with Swedish subtitles, then go for it. I’ll add that star Noomi Rapace was really great in the title role, and none of the American actresses whose names are being thrown around for an American remake seem in any way up to her level. We’ll see…

"I have a foreboding!"
"You always have a foreboding."

About ten minutes into Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (2009), based on the super-popular series of novels credited to protagonist Darren Shan, my judgment was: Something Wicked This Way Comes updated for a new generation, with a vaguely Tim Burton sensibility. Not that those are bad things. The movie eventually gets to aspects reminscent of Carnivale, Phantasm, and even, weirdly, Revenge of the Sith, but the atmosphere is good and moody, the stylized visuals have loads of panache, and I have to cheer for the freak-friendly message.

Plus, master character actor John C. Reilly rules as Crepslie, the cynical, world-weary, and still good-hearted vampire who takes in the clean-cut teenage Darren, who’s fallen into the middle of a battle between warring vampire factions (as does with his troubled best friend Steve).

In a nutshell, the film illustrates the eternal battle between good and evil by way of the two main adaptions to being a social misfit, a freak to the world at large. Darren is the good son who does what he’s told, getting good grades, and generally accepting the future that his parents have laid out for him. Steve, on the other hand, has a chaotic home life, and feels more overtly like a misfit with no future.

Darren’s family doesn’t necessarily understand him, but they do love and nurture him, so when he heeds the call of his own freakishness (his love for spiders is basically what leads to all the trouble), he’s already got a better head on his shoulders. That helps him to accept a good mentor, and end up as a well-adjusted person who’s accepted himself as he is, for all his freakishness, regardless of what anyone else might think.

Steve, on the other hand, remains defensive about his freakishness. He’s used to being isolated and unsupported, so when he falls in with bad company, he feels accepted. They encourage his darker side, hardening him until he crosses the line into committing murder.

The power of the symbolism is in the fact that the boys’ freakishness isn’t a metaphor for anything specific. It’s not being demographically different, it’s not being gay, it’s not a sensitive or artistic nature — but it could be any of those things. Anything that makes kid feel they’re not like everybody else, especially if they don’t see "College! Job! Family!" as the only goals in life.

Since all I was really hoping for was at least a little bit of spooky carnival ambience, which the movie delivered on, I was surprised to find it working on a deeper level. Guess that’s why the books were so popular, huh? Too bad they’re unlikely to make more movies.

And what’s up with Willem Dafoe turning up in the last two vampire movies I’ve seen? He played the Nosferatu character in Shadow of the Vampire, too. At this rate, he’s going to have his own vampire film festival!

Jennifer’s Body (2009)

I never saw the critically-acclaimed Juno – I couldn’t bear that "doodle that can’t be undid, homeskillet" bit in the trailer. Shudder! But I was interested in Diablo Cody’s follow-up, because I’m willing to give a lot more benefit of the doubt to a gory tale of demonic possession. Even when it’s named after a Hole song. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m not surprised that it flopped, mainly because it’s much more in line with Heathers or Twin Peaks than, say, the current crop of Friday the 13th remakes, and those were cult phenomena.

Jennifer’s Body follows a pair of mismatched Minnesota girls who’ve been best friends all their lives. Wallflowerish Needy is played by Amanda Seyfried, who shone as both the wild, charismatic flashback girl in Veronica Mars (hey, shades of Twin Peaks again!) and as the sensible daughter appalled by her own family on Big Love. Sexy, domineering Jennifer is played by Megan Fox, showing more range than she did in Transformers. One night, they go out to see an upcoming indie band, and before you know it, the roadhouse burns down, a human sacrifice goes awry, and Jennifer starts eating high school boys (with the side effect, Needy notes, that "her hair is amazing").

Everything about the scenario has metaphoric weight. What do you do when someone you love seems to turn into a demon? This is, sadly, a real-life situation many people have to face; it’s just usually not so literal. It’s a good touch that Needy is actually on the scene, watching helplessly as her friend makes her fatal mistake, after which she will never be the same again. Then there’s the Satan-worshippers, prepared to sacrifice others — anybody, really — for the most shallow of ambitions (they want to be the next Maroon 5). Heedless actions have unforeseeable consequences all over the place. And, of course, the prettiest, hottest girl in school becomes a literal man-eater. Driven by insecurity and emptiness, she preys on others to make herself feel alive.

Maybe that’s actually a little too much metaphor, with the emotional undercurrents a little too close to the surface. But I didn’t find it too heavy-handed, and after all, a lot of teencentric horror films never get past the symbolic meaning that "sex can be dangerous." And it does, in fact, work as a compact, fairly gory little horror film, so no complaints on that score.

P.S. On Big Love, Seyfried plays Bill Paxton’s daughter. He of course starred in the demon-hunting family drama Frailty. Apparently, it runs in the family!

Sometimes, low expectations are a reviewer’s best friend. I knew nothing about the new release Daybreakers, except that it had vampires in it, and they weren’t romantic. Really, that’s all the selling point I needed. So I was surprised when the opening credits revealed a very respectable cast — Sam Neill, Willem Dafoe, and heck, since I’m feeling generous, I’m going to include Ethan Hawke in that category. And despite its terrible reviews, I found it to be a fairly entertaining afternoon at the movies.

The implausibility of the long-standing cinematic idea – that anyone bitten by a vampire becomes a vampire – has often been noted. Before long, wouldn’t they become overpopulated? Wouldn’t they run out of food?

That’s the premise of Daybreakers, which handles the scenario fairly cleverly. The best part of the movie is all the incidental detail, which makes the vampire-dominated world seem a lot realer than anything I saw in the Underworld films. There’s a grungy derelict holding a cardboard sign that reads "Starving, Need Blood." Ads exort patriotic young men to "Make a Difference" in the Vampire Army, tracking down the remaining humans to feed the population. When car doors are opened during daylight hours, a computer voice chimes "Warning: UV alert." For a movie that mainly runs on car chases, explosions, and some fantastic bloody carnage, it’s obvious that someone thought hard about how civilization would cope with converting to a vampiric way of life.

The film even — and this really surprised me — has an almost Romero-like allegorical quality. Obviously, after the human race got over the initial shock, they assimilated the drastic changes that went with becoming Undead, and went on, more or less, with life as usual. Once almost everyone has become a vampire, people are as loath to disrupt the status quo as they would have been before. As for the remaining humans, well, majority rule seems like a fine idea, until suddenly the majority is vampires who want to drink you dry.

Hawke’s glum protagonist is a reluctant vampire, who empathizes with the humans and wants to find a cure, or at least a good synthetic blood that vampires can drink instead. There’s a (admittedly stereotypical) corporation more interested in maintaining its profits, and a conflict with his gung ho brother, who was floundering in life, but found purpose in unlife. He accidentally makes contact with an organized human resistance, who believe they can change the vampires back, and then the plot takes several crazy turns, but as Dafoe’s character points out, none of them are crazier than the idea of dead people walking around in the first place.

Daybreakers isn’t the greatest vampire movie anyone is going to see, but certainly, I don’t know why anyone who liked Blade wouldn’t like it. And you have my word: nobody sparkles.