ARRRR, CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS, JIM LAD
Well, it's now fourteen years since the first Pirates Of The Caribbean hit the world's screens and after all this time it's probably an unreal expectation that they might somehow try anything new or unusual. Instead they've played it very safe: more Johnny Depp doing more of That Silly Voice and Those Silly Mannerisms with That Silly Hair, more idiotic knockabout, more wet romance between a couple of drippy new leads (at least Kaya Scodelario is more feisty than Keira ever was), more A-list star villainy, bigger and longer action sequences and battles that would have presumably been twice as exhausting in 3D, more ghoulish horror effects work that's at the very top of the 12A rating. The stuff they didn't really bother with in the earlier films - some level of coherence in the plot, actual interesting characters, decent gags - they're twice as not bothering with in this one.
As far as an actual narrative is concerned, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge (originally known as Dead Men Tell No Tales but retitled for no immediately obvious reason) basically consists of various assorted characters trying to track down the legendary Trident Of Poseidon. Henry (Brenton Thwaites) needs it to break the curse that's keeping his dad (Orlando Bloom) on the Flying Dutchman, Barbarossa (Geoffrey Rush) and whoever's representing the evil British Empire this time out both want it so they can rule the oceans, cursed captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) is after it to break the curse that's left him and his crew permanently zombified since a young Jack Sparrow (Depp) forced them through a magic portal. Sparrow is now destitute and permanently drunk, without a ship or crew, and has given up his enchanted compass, allowing Salazar through into the real world. Meanwhile Carina (Scodelario) has a secret map that will lead to another map "that no man can read", but she's been sentenced to death for witchcraft...
Why have the evil Brits condemned Carina to death for "witchcraft" when they use a genuine witch to track down genuinely supernatural objects? Why don't they believe a word of Henry's story when they already know Salazar always leaves one man alive? It makes very little sense, obviously, but then it's not supposed to. It's supposed to be summer blockbuster fun: two and a bit hours of gosh wow monsters and loud music and special effects and fighting and Johnny Depp bimbling about and babbling that sends you out of the multiplex convinced you've had a great time. But have you really? There's a pointless celebrity cameo in there that absolutely kills any goodwill you might still have towards the film: David Beckham's turn in King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword didn't set the bar particularly high for this sort of thing but boy, does Paul McCartney sail comfortably underneath it.
Is this really the best use to which Disney can put two hundred and thirty million dollars? If you're going to spend that kind of money on a movie (rather than medical research or disaster relief, say), why not push the galleon out and try for a great one? Sure, the first film in the series was pretty good fun. But the sequels never went anywhere interesting after that: Pirates 2 is particularly awful; Pirates 3 marginally better but idiotically overlong, and Pirates 4 managed to regain some ground by dropping the blathery romantics entirely and moving Depp's comedy support to the centre. And now: they've brought in new blathery romantics as well as rekindling the old ones, and Sparrow is just an annoying, slightly tiresome and frequently drunk idiot. Oh, sure, there are nice moments (so there should be, at that price), the best of which is an extended bit of business with a guillotine, but the sea battle in which Sparrow and Salazar are leaping from one ship to the other and back again feels like it goes on for ever. More, much more of the same, and more still to come: the film ends with a possible teaser for a further instalment (already listed on the IMDb). Gee thanks.
**
Saturday, 27 May 2017
CRUEL INTENTIONS 2: MANCHESTER PREP
CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS
Confession: it wasn't until after I'd watched (or, more accurately, fidgeted through in an increasingly visible state of annoyance and irritation) this and looked it up afterwards to see if there was any justification for such a colossal waste of an evening, that I found it's not actually a sequel, but a prequel, to Cruel Intentions. It's an origins story that seeks to explore how the hateful, amoral dicks and bitches from Roger Kumble's updating of Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Choderlos De Laclos' original novel is uncredited this time) got that way in the first place, and thus there's no satisfying conclusion.
Douchebag Sebastian (Robin Dunne) transfers to an exclusive New York prep school, sent to live with his dirtbag father who's remarried to a phenomenally wealthy socialite (Mimi Rogers). She has groomed and moulded her daughter Kathryn (Amy Adams!) into a sociopathic ice-bitch with no empathy or feelings for anyone but herself, and events quickly spiral towards all-out war between her and her more laid-back new stepbrother, who has a romantic eye on the headmaster's daughter...
Plot twists that make absolutely no sense, characters who aren't interesting or attractive in their amorality and vicious scheming, and a sour ending in which the bad guys win (albeit one that's setting up the characters for a film that's already been made) make Cruel Intentions 2: Manchester Prep a film that's difficult to like, and the occasional softcore sex scene and the dubiously incestuous flavour to the central relationship (they're step-siblings only by marriage) don't perk things up enough. The cruelty and coldness worked in the first film, but this rehash is one instance where I spent much of the second half shouting abuse at the screen. There's a third entry in the series by other hands that's only slightly connected to these two, and is not currently on my rental queue.
*
Confession: it wasn't until after I'd watched (or, more accurately, fidgeted through in an increasingly visible state of annoyance and irritation) this and looked it up afterwards to see if there was any justification for such a colossal waste of an evening, that I found it's not actually a sequel, but a prequel, to Cruel Intentions. It's an origins story that seeks to explore how the hateful, amoral dicks and bitches from Roger Kumble's updating of Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Choderlos De Laclos' original novel is uncredited this time) got that way in the first place, and thus there's no satisfying conclusion.
Douchebag Sebastian (Robin Dunne) transfers to an exclusive New York prep school, sent to live with his dirtbag father who's remarried to a phenomenally wealthy socialite (Mimi Rogers). She has groomed and moulded her daughter Kathryn (Amy Adams!) into a sociopathic ice-bitch with no empathy or feelings for anyone but herself, and events quickly spiral towards all-out war between her and her more laid-back new stepbrother, who has a romantic eye on the headmaster's daughter...
Plot twists that make absolutely no sense, characters who aren't interesting or attractive in their amorality and vicious scheming, and a sour ending in which the bad guys win (albeit one that's setting up the characters for a film that's already been made) make Cruel Intentions 2: Manchester Prep a film that's difficult to like, and the occasional softcore sex scene and the dubiously incestuous flavour to the central relationship (they're step-siblings only by marriage) don't perk things up enough. The cruelty and coldness worked in the first film, but this rehash is one instance where I spent much of the second half shouting abuse at the screen. There's a third entry in the series by other hands that's only slightly connected to these two, and is not currently on my rental queue.
*
Tuesday, 23 May 2017
KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD
CONTAINS SOME GAS-FIRED (GAS-FIRED BOILERS, SPOILERS)
Cor blimey, guvnor, strike a light and no mistake, come and 'ave a butchers at what His Bleedin' Nibs Lord Sir Guy Of Ritchie has done now, it's a right ****in' palavar, me old china, oi-oi, apples and pears, chim chimernee... Really. It's basically a London gangster movie, only nominally relocated to the fifth century but with giant fire-breathing pachyderm things at the start, an octopus demon and cor blimey, guvnor, it's David Beckham. Acting. (Some have mocked the film for this specifically, but it's not significantly worse or more jarring than everything else that's going on throughout.)
In this version Arthur is spirited away from Camelot Castle as a toddler, following a coup by his wicked uncle Vortigern (Jude Law), and ending up as an urchin living in a London bordello. Over the years he becomes a streetwise, hard-but-fair lovable rogue (Charlie Hunnam), wheeling and dealing and ducking and diving to the extent you do honestly expect the Minder theme tune to crash in at any moment. But The Sword has been found: the legend states that only the rightful King can pull it from the stone and Vortigern is having every man of the right age brought to Camelot to give it a tug. Next thing you know he's in a cave with Djimon Hounsou and mysteriously accented mage Astrid Berges-Frisbey and reluctantly manning up to reclaim the throne....
King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword is obviously utter tosh, in modern dialogue and modern slang (with one of the most clangingly out-of-place F-bombs in years), with CGI monsters and converted 3D action sequences crammed into a scenario where they don't really belong. Nor does the snappy, blokey, geezery banter and backchat that Ritchie wasn't able to include in his two Sherlock Holmes films or The Man From UNCLE (or presumably Swept Away, the DVD of which is still sitting in my to-watch pile). Obviously any kind of music score beyond the earliest of folk songs is going to be historically anachronistic, but Daniel Pemberton's score includes thumping techno that bolts the film too firmly to this era instead of that: a pity, since other cues of a more traditional variety (both in terms of traditional-sounding period instruments and the traditions of film scoring in general) work much better.
Still, it's not awful: it's moderate fun in parts if you can get into it but I don't think "moderate fun in parts" is anywhere near enough if they're going to try and spin this out to a six-film franchise. It's too long and never finds the right tone between Lord Of The Rings magic/fantasy and battle scenes, and cheery cockernee knockabout full of people with names like Goosefat Bill and Wet Stick. Entertaining enough as a throwaway one-off but really we don't need to be doing this again in a hurry.
**
Cor blimey, guvnor, strike a light and no mistake, come and 'ave a butchers at what His Bleedin' Nibs Lord Sir Guy Of Ritchie has done now, it's a right ****in' palavar, me old china, oi-oi, apples and pears, chim chimernee... Really. It's basically a London gangster movie, only nominally relocated to the fifth century but with giant fire-breathing pachyderm things at the start, an octopus demon and cor blimey, guvnor, it's David Beckham. Acting. (Some have mocked the film for this specifically, but it's not significantly worse or more jarring than everything else that's going on throughout.)
In this version Arthur is spirited away from Camelot Castle as a toddler, following a coup by his wicked uncle Vortigern (Jude Law), and ending up as an urchin living in a London bordello. Over the years he becomes a streetwise, hard-but-fair lovable rogue (Charlie Hunnam), wheeling and dealing and ducking and diving to the extent you do honestly expect the Minder theme tune to crash in at any moment. But The Sword has been found: the legend states that only the rightful King can pull it from the stone and Vortigern is having every man of the right age brought to Camelot to give it a tug. Next thing you know he's in a cave with Djimon Hounsou and mysteriously accented mage Astrid Berges-Frisbey and reluctantly manning up to reclaim the throne....
King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword is obviously utter tosh, in modern dialogue and modern slang (with one of the most clangingly out-of-place F-bombs in years), with CGI monsters and converted 3D action sequences crammed into a scenario where they don't really belong. Nor does the snappy, blokey, geezery banter and backchat that Ritchie wasn't able to include in his two Sherlock Holmes films or The Man From UNCLE (or presumably Swept Away, the DVD of which is still sitting in my to-watch pile). Obviously any kind of music score beyond the earliest of folk songs is going to be historically anachronistic, but Daniel Pemberton's score includes thumping techno that bolts the film too firmly to this era instead of that: a pity, since other cues of a more traditional variety (both in terms of traditional-sounding period instruments and the traditions of film scoring in general) work much better.
Still, it's not awful: it's moderate fun in parts if you can get into it but I don't think "moderate fun in parts" is anywhere near enough if they're going to try and spin this out to a six-film franchise. It's too long and never finds the right tone between Lord Of The Rings magic/fantasy and battle scenes, and cheery cockernee knockabout full of people with names like Goosefat Bill and Wet Stick. Entertaining enough as a throwaway one-off but really we don't need to be doing this again in a hurry.
**
SATANIC
CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS
By now we're well used to the main characters of quickie teen horror movies not just being thick as an extraordinarily large number of short planks, but eye-rollingly stupid to a near-suicidal degree. The old gag about "hot teenagers get stoned and play with a ouija board in the spooky old house at midnight" isn't a joke any more, it's practically a pitch for a studio franchise. Maybe we're just getting fed up with it down here on the ground, but in a world with four Sharknado movies the anti-idiot signals just aren't getting through.
Satanic is a prime example of dimwit cinema: two couples head to Los Angeles, either to watch a sitcom taping or en route to the Coachella Arts Festival (the script doesn't seem sure) but really they're in town to check out famous crime scenes such as the Sharon Tate residence (they've also specifically booked a hotel room that was the site of a notorious suicide). For no reason beyond idiocy they decide to follow the creepy owner of an occultist bookshop, where they promptly stumble upon what looks like a Satanic ritual...
It isn't a total disaster by any means: it's got a couple of nice moments and the Final Girl's fate is suitably grim and horrifying, and there's a weird timeloop dropped in towards the end for no obvious reason. But it's as forgettable and undistinguished as any one of a hundred low-budget horrors, and it can't get past the fact that the four main leads are so facepalm stupid as to render them impossible to empathise with. Missable in the extreme.
**
By now we're well used to the main characters of quickie teen horror movies not just being thick as an extraordinarily large number of short planks, but eye-rollingly stupid to a near-suicidal degree. The old gag about "hot teenagers get stoned and play with a ouija board in the spooky old house at midnight" isn't a joke any more, it's practically a pitch for a studio franchise. Maybe we're just getting fed up with it down here on the ground, but in a world with four Sharknado movies the anti-idiot signals just aren't getting through.
Satanic is a prime example of dimwit cinema: two couples head to Los Angeles, either to watch a sitcom taping or en route to the Coachella Arts Festival (the script doesn't seem sure) but really they're in town to check out famous crime scenes such as the Sharon Tate residence (they've also specifically booked a hotel room that was the site of a notorious suicide). For no reason beyond idiocy they decide to follow the creepy owner of an occultist bookshop, where they promptly stumble upon what looks like a Satanic ritual...
It isn't a total disaster by any means: it's got a couple of nice moments and the Final Girl's fate is suitably grim and horrifying, and there's a weird timeloop dropped in towards the end for no obvious reason. But it's as forgettable and undistinguished as any one of a hundred low-budget horrors, and it can't get past the fact that the four main leads are so facepalm stupid as to render them impossible to empathise with. Missable in the extreme.
**
Thursday, 18 May 2017
ALIEN: COVENANT
CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS
It's a shame, it really is. The idea of Ridley Scott going back to the Alien Universe again, with a film that ties together Alien (which everyone loves) and Prometheus (which, admittedly, only I and a few others loved), is one of those genuinely exciting events in cinema, like a new Brian De Palma thriller or a new Bond / Star Wars / [insert name of favourite auteur and/or franchise here]. Having managed to keep myself pretty much unspoiled until the first showing on the first day, I waited impatiently outside through the ads and trailers: please be good, please be good, please be good....
And it was - kind of. But the trouble was that it wasn't significantly better than good: Alien Resurrection was good. (Hell, up to a point Alien Vs Predator was solidly enjoyable, if admittedly dumb.) Alien: Covenant isn't any better than good and it damn well should have been. Certainly there were several moments when I was really enjoying it, but thinking about it afterwards on the way home I realised that few of them were to do with the film itself. Rather, it was the callbacks to Alien (and, to a lesser extent, Prometheus): familiar imagery, familiar setups, familiar music, while the new stuff suddenly felt a lot less interesting. There's a cosy pleasure in seeing the ship's crew bicker and argue the way they do on the Nostromo, in the spraying water and clanking chains that hark back to Harry Dean Stanton's big moment.
In addition to Alien, there's a lot of Blade Runner in here: the film even starts with a close-up of an eye. That's synthetic David's (Michael Fassbender) eyeball, as he discusses God, creation and what it means to be human with his own creator Weyland (Guy Pearce, unbilled). The bulk of the film concerns the colony spaceship Covenant decades later, carrying two thousand colonists and a cabinet full of embryos to a new planet seven years distant. The crew, including synthetic Walter (Fassbender again), are woken from cryosleep by a chance shockwave from a nearby star; while effecting repairs they pick up a transmission from a previously undetected planet. This might make a better colony site than their original destination, but clearly there's someone or something already here...
It looks good, and so it should because that's really what Ridley Scott does so well. The creature attacks take a while to show up but they do pack a punch, partly because they're not all facehuggers and chestbursters as we've seen before, and they don't stint on the blood and gore. I'm generally a sucker for any movie with people running around spaceships and space stations (well, almost any movie) and all that's fine. But the use of Jerry Goldsmith's and Harry Gregson-Williams' thematic material from Alien and Prometheus respectively really does show up Jed Kurzel's utterly uninteresting original score (and cueing it up afterwards on Spotify revealed it as barely listenable), and the final plot twist is so blatantly obvious it's a wonder the audience weren't yelling it at the screen. There's also a peach for connoisseurs of those clunky "hmmm, do you think THAT's going to be important later on?" moments (which also happily doubles as another nod to Blade Runner).
I really wanted to love it and I'd have been perfectly happy to have just really liked it - but the more I think about it the more it just comes across as okay and an Alien movie by its original director really needs to be more than just okay. One of the reasons I liked Prometheus so much was because it did go off in different directions to Alien and had more intellectual ambitions (even if they weren't fully realised), full of questions of humanity and the meaning of life rather than bickering about their bonus payments - bickering which fits perfectly in Alien but wouldn't have done in Prometheus. This time around Fassbender's synthetics are more annoying than before; there are still too many characters to keep track of and only about half of them (particularly captain Billy Crudup, terraformer Katherine Waterston, pilot Danny McBride) get significant moments in the light, and ultimately the monster stuff is more interesting than the philosophising, which had its place in Prometheus but really doesn't seem to fit here. More than anything else Alien: Covenant is a disappointment because hopes were so high and, unlike Prometheus (and the first three Alien movies), I find I have no desire to watch it again.
***
It's a shame, it really is. The idea of Ridley Scott going back to the Alien Universe again, with a film that ties together Alien (which everyone loves) and Prometheus (which, admittedly, only I and a few others loved), is one of those genuinely exciting events in cinema, like a new Brian De Palma thriller or a new Bond / Star Wars / [insert name of favourite auteur and/or franchise here]. Having managed to keep myself pretty much unspoiled until the first showing on the first day, I waited impatiently outside through the ads and trailers: please be good, please be good, please be good....
And it was - kind of. But the trouble was that it wasn't significantly better than good: Alien Resurrection was good. (Hell, up to a point Alien Vs Predator was solidly enjoyable, if admittedly dumb.) Alien: Covenant isn't any better than good and it damn well should have been. Certainly there were several moments when I was really enjoying it, but thinking about it afterwards on the way home I realised that few of them were to do with the film itself. Rather, it was the callbacks to Alien (and, to a lesser extent, Prometheus): familiar imagery, familiar setups, familiar music, while the new stuff suddenly felt a lot less interesting. There's a cosy pleasure in seeing the ship's crew bicker and argue the way they do on the Nostromo, in the spraying water and clanking chains that hark back to Harry Dean Stanton's big moment.
In addition to Alien, there's a lot of Blade Runner in here: the film even starts with a close-up of an eye. That's synthetic David's (Michael Fassbender) eyeball, as he discusses God, creation and what it means to be human with his own creator Weyland (Guy Pearce, unbilled). The bulk of the film concerns the colony spaceship Covenant decades later, carrying two thousand colonists and a cabinet full of embryos to a new planet seven years distant. The crew, including synthetic Walter (Fassbender again), are woken from cryosleep by a chance shockwave from a nearby star; while effecting repairs they pick up a transmission from a previously undetected planet. This might make a better colony site than their original destination, but clearly there's someone or something already here...
It looks good, and so it should because that's really what Ridley Scott does so well. The creature attacks take a while to show up but they do pack a punch, partly because they're not all facehuggers and chestbursters as we've seen before, and they don't stint on the blood and gore. I'm generally a sucker for any movie with people running around spaceships and space stations (well, almost any movie) and all that's fine. But the use of Jerry Goldsmith's and Harry Gregson-Williams' thematic material from Alien and Prometheus respectively really does show up Jed Kurzel's utterly uninteresting original score (and cueing it up afterwards on Spotify revealed it as barely listenable), and the final plot twist is so blatantly obvious it's a wonder the audience weren't yelling it at the screen. There's also a peach for connoisseurs of those clunky "hmmm, do you think THAT's going to be important later on?" moments (which also happily doubles as another nod to Blade Runner).
I really wanted to love it and I'd have been perfectly happy to have just really liked it - but the more I think about it the more it just comes across as okay and an Alien movie by its original director really needs to be more than just okay. One of the reasons I liked Prometheus so much was because it did go off in different directions to Alien and had more intellectual ambitions (even if they weren't fully realised), full of questions of humanity and the meaning of life rather than bickering about their bonus payments - bickering which fits perfectly in Alien but wouldn't have done in Prometheus. This time around Fassbender's synthetics are more annoying than before; there are still too many characters to keep track of and only about half of them (particularly captain Billy Crudup, terraformer Katherine Waterston, pilot Danny McBride) get significant moments in the light, and ultimately the monster stuff is more interesting than the philosophising, which had its place in Prometheus but really doesn't seem to fit here. More than anything else Alien: Covenant is a disappointment because hopes were so high and, unlike Prometheus (and the first three Alien movies), I find I have no desire to watch it again.
***
Wednesday, 17 May 2017
DEATH CURSE OF TARTU
CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS?
In news that should surprise absolutely no-one, a film which Shock Xpress once listed as one of the fifty most boring movies of all time (and which I freely admit I only watched because Shock Xpress once listed it as one of the fifty most boring movies of all time) turns out to be one of the fifty most boring movies of all time. Cinema has been awash with lousy films throughout its history, and it's true that some of them are fun despite their terribleness (while many claim they're fun precisely because of their terribleness, an argument I've never been entirely convinced by). Many more of them, however, are just simply terrible.
Exhibit 1,568: Death Curse Of Tartu is a (literally) bog-standard horror cheapie from 1966 in which a bunch of utter fools wander around an allegedly cursed Indian burial ground. The legend states clearly that Tartu is a shapeshifting witchdoctor who can transform Manimal-style into any of the local wildlife and wreak hideous vengeance on any who disturb his eternal resting place in a miserable Florida swamp. Four of the group are cardboard teenagers who couldn't spell "archaeology", much less practise it, instead preferring to go swimming in the creek and dance about in their underwear. Eventually Tartu stops manifesting as a snake, shark or alligator, clambers out of his casket and fights the survivors: it doesn't go well for him and then the film stops.
Much of this is indeed cataclysmically boring and its loss to British audiences since the decline of the VHS market (it's never been upgraded to a DVD release in this country) is frankly nothing to get despondent about. Sole point of moderate interest is an orchestral music score which (tribal drums and chanting apart) sounds way too good for a schlocky Z-picture for the bottom half of a drive-in double-bill, and I spent way too much of a limited lifespan trying, without success, to find whether it was tracked in from somewhere else, because it sounds like it cost twice as much as the whole film. The only other note of trivia is that there's a brief shot of a Miami Beach hotel at the end which is the same hotel seen near the start of Goldfinger. Shock Xpress were right. The real curse of Tartu is actually sitting and watching the damned thing.
*
In news that should surprise absolutely no-one, a film which Shock Xpress once listed as one of the fifty most boring movies of all time (and which I freely admit I only watched because Shock Xpress once listed it as one of the fifty most boring movies of all time) turns out to be one of the fifty most boring movies of all time. Cinema has been awash with lousy films throughout its history, and it's true that some of them are fun despite their terribleness (while many claim they're fun precisely because of their terribleness, an argument I've never been entirely convinced by). Many more of them, however, are just simply terrible.
Exhibit 1,568: Death Curse Of Tartu is a (literally) bog-standard horror cheapie from 1966 in which a bunch of utter fools wander around an allegedly cursed Indian burial ground. The legend states clearly that Tartu is a shapeshifting witchdoctor who can transform Manimal-style into any of the local wildlife and wreak hideous vengeance on any who disturb his eternal resting place in a miserable Florida swamp. Four of the group are cardboard teenagers who couldn't spell "archaeology", much less practise it, instead preferring to go swimming in the creek and dance about in their underwear. Eventually Tartu stops manifesting as a snake, shark or alligator, clambers out of his casket and fights the survivors: it doesn't go well for him and then the film stops.
Much of this is indeed cataclysmically boring and its loss to British audiences since the decline of the VHS market (it's never been upgraded to a DVD release in this country) is frankly nothing to get despondent about. Sole point of moderate interest is an orchestral music score which (tribal drums and chanting apart) sounds way too good for a schlocky Z-picture for the bottom half of a drive-in double-bill, and I spent way too much of a limited lifespan trying, without success, to find whether it was tracked in from somewhere else, because it sounds like it cost twice as much as the whole film. The only other note of trivia is that there's a brief shot of a Miami Beach hotel at the end which is the same hotel seen near the start of Goldfinger. Shock Xpress were right. The real curse of Tartu is actually sitting and watching the damned thing.
*
Tuesday, 16 May 2017
FANGS
CONTAINSSSS SSSSOME SSSSPOILERSSSS
Staggeringly dull seventies obscurity in which fully half the movie goes by before anything happens, most of it takes place in the dark anyway and what little you can see is half lost in the murk of a dodgy transfer to a medium-definition YouTube upload from something that wasn't exactly shot in sparking 70mm in the first place. There's really nothing to be gained from slogging through Fangs except a thorough waste of a Monday evening, and any points it might earn from its arrant silliness it loses for sheer, petrifying boredom and more John Philip Sousa than any sane person would ever sit and listen to in a lifetime.
Somewhere out in a desert small town, an assortment of halfwitted locals bully and victimise snake breeder Les Tremayne (North By Northwest, The Slime People): the smug, hypocritical preacher, the obese, redneck storekeepers, the newly-married best friend who strangely wants to spend his evenings getting it on with his hot young poledancer bride instead of sitting around listening to The Stars And Stripes Forever on repeat in the company of a rambling hillbilly lunatic, even the local schoolteacher with a secret sexual fetish for snake fondling. No, really (it's called ophidicism, apparently). Eventually, of course, he snaps and starts using his collection of snakes to torture and kill his persecutors.
It's incredibly glum, with a satisfyingly bleak ending, but it takes far too long to get going, Snakey Bender (Tremayne) is a fantastically annoying villain, the soundtrack (occasional synth tracks and endless bloody Sousa marches) actively made me want to punch someone and none of his hideous victims are worth shedding a tear over. It doesn't make much sense - the local cop is an imbecile who can't remember a six-digit licence plate for ten seconds and doesn't find it remotely suspicious that all these people mysteriously left town at the same time, and no-one notices the increasing pile of the victims' cars at the bottom of a cliff - but it doesn't really matter since it's all so indifferently put together. Also known as Snakes, and nothing to do with the (somehow) even more boring Rattlers.
*
Staggeringly dull seventies obscurity in which fully half the movie goes by before anything happens, most of it takes place in the dark anyway and what little you can see is half lost in the murk of a dodgy transfer to a medium-definition YouTube upload from something that wasn't exactly shot in sparking 70mm in the first place. There's really nothing to be gained from slogging through Fangs except a thorough waste of a Monday evening, and any points it might earn from its arrant silliness it loses for sheer, petrifying boredom and more John Philip Sousa than any sane person would ever sit and listen to in a lifetime.
Somewhere out in a desert small town, an assortment of halfwitted locals bully and victimise snake breeder Les Tremayne (North By Northwest, The Slime People): the smug, hypocritical preacher, the obese, redneck storekeepers, the newly-married best friend who strangely wants to spend his evenings getting it on with his hot young poledancer bride instead of sitting around listening to The Stars And Stripes Forever on repeat in the company of a rambling hillbilly lunatic, even the local schoolteacher with a secret sexual fetish for snake fondling. No, really (it's called ophidicism, apparently). Eventually, of course, he snaps and starts using his collection of snakes to torture and kill his persecutors.
It's incredibly glum, with a satisfyingly bleak ending, but it takes far too long to get going, Snakey Bender (Tremayne) is a fantastically annoying villain, the soundtrack (occasional synth tracks and endless bloody Sousa marches) actively made me want to punch someone and none of his hideous victims are worth shedding a tear over. It doesn't make much sense - the local cop is an imbecile who can't remember a six-digit licence plate for ten seconds and doesn't find it remotely suspicious that all these people mysteriously left town at the same time, and no-one notices the increasing pile of the victims' cars at the bottom of a cliff - but it doesn't really matter since it's all so indifferently put together. Also known as Snakes, and nothing to do with the (somehow) even more boring Rattlers.
*
Thursday, 4 May 2017
PHANTASM: RAVAGER
BOYYYYYYY!!!!! CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!!!
Not to beat about the bush here, but this fifth Phantasm movie, the first in nineteen years, is a frankly unworthy note on which to end the series. It's one of those films that very quickly shuffles between any number of alternate realities - dreams, flashbacks, stories, all in someone's mind, all in someone else's mind, some, none or all of the above and possibly two at a time - leaving the audience unsure where we are and what's reality. This has always been a central idea in horror movies, whether just tricksing about with the borders of fantasy and reality or for a cheap it-was-all-a-dream shock moment, and there are movies out there that aren't much interested in an airtight narrative - Videodrome, or even the original Phantasm - but in this instance it reaches the point where it feels like homework and you can't be bothered picking through it all.
In order to fully appreciate Phantasm: Ravager I actually spent the previous day running the first four movies back to back, since I hadn't seen the third and fourth entries since their VHS rental releases. Like a lot of franchises it goes on for at least one film more than necessary: in chronological order they're good, better, better than I remembered and pants respectively, with the second one easily being the most impressive in the series though I have a certain fondness for the cult original's weirdness. The frankly ever-unappealing Reggie (Reggie Bannister) is still wandering the desert, on the trail of the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) and looking for his friends Mike (A Michael Baldwin) and Jody (Bill Thornbury), all returning regulars through the series (though Baldwin was briefly replaced by James Le Gros in Phantasm II). Or is he?
Much of the previous movie took place in the desert where Mike, struck by the franchise's USP flying silver spheres at the end of Part III, was apparently developing Tall Man abilities of his own - but now it appears that the whole saga has been taking place inside Reggie's imagination and he's sitting in a psychiatric hospital being visited by an entirely human Mike. Or is he really in a future hellscape of American cities levelled by giant spheres in the Independence Day manner, and he's fantasising about living in a care home as an escape from the apocalyptic horror?
The Jawa-like slaves in cowls return, the flying spheres return, and the Tall Man himself is an agreeably strange and sinister bogeyman figure. The canvas is much bigger, particularly towards the end, and the music score is much louder (happily using the same theme). But I kind of miss the wonky, shonky charm of the first two films: they'd got the goriest moments and the loopiest, most imaginative ideas, and they didn't have the dreaded CGI blood spurts as they do this time around. They were messy but fun, with a terrific villain, and this is messy and not much fun. Perhaps it's not much of a disappointment after the fourth one, but it's certainly a long fall from the series' early heights, and it's odd to see the regular performers in a franchise still doing it over a third of a century later. The imagery under the end credits suggests what a final Phantasm chapter might have looked like if they'd had the money to do it, but in the event it's sadly underwhelming and uninteresting. A muted final note for what was once one of the more intriguing and off-kilter horror series.
**
Not to beat about the bush here, but this fifth Phantasm movie, the first in nineteen years, is a frankly unworthy note on which to end the series. It's one of those films that very quickly shuffles between any number of alternate realities - dreams, flashbacks, stories, all in someone's mind, all in someone else's mind, some, none or all of the above and possibly two at a time - leaving the audience unsure where we are and what's reality. This has always been a central idea in horror movies, whether just tricksing about with the borders of fantasy and reality or for a cheap it-was-all-a-dream shock moment, and there are movies out there that aren't much interested in an airtight narrative - Videodrome, or even the original Phantasm - but in this instance it reaches the point where it feels like homework and you can't be bothered picking through it all.
In order to fully appreciate Phantasm: Ravager I actually spent the previous day running the first four movies back to back, since I hadn't seen the third and fourth entries since their VHS rental releases. Like a lot of franchises it goes on for at least one film more than necessary: in chronological order they're good, better, better than I remembered and pants respectively, with the second one easily being the most impressive in the series though I have a certain fondness for the cult original's weirdness. The frankly ever-unappealing Reggie (Reggie Bannister) is still wandering the desert, on the trail of the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) and looking for his friends Mike (A Michael Baldwin) and Jody (Bill Thornbury), all returning regulars through the series (though Baldwin was briefly replaced by James Le Gros in Phantasm II). Or is he?
Much of the previous movie took place in the desert where Mike, struck by the franchise's USP flying silver spheres at the end of Part III, was apparently developing Tall Man abilities of his own - but now it appears that the whole saga has been taking place inside Reggie's imagination and he's sitting in a psychiatric hospital being visited by an entirely human Mike. Or is he really in a future hellscape of American cities levelled by giant spheres in the Independence Day manner, and he's fantasising about living in a care home as an escape from the apocalyptic horror?
The Jawa-like slaves in cowls return, the flying spheres return, and the Tall Man himself is an agreeably strange and sinister bogeyman figure. The canvas is much bigger, particularly towards the end, and the music score is much louder (happily using the same theme). But I kind of miss the wonky, shonky charm of the first two films: they'd got the goriest moments and the loopiest, most imaginative ideas, and they didn't have the dreaded CGI blood spurts as they do this time around. They were messy but fun, with a terrific villain, and this is messy and not much fun. Perhaps it's not much of a disappointment after the fourth one, but it's certainly a long fall from the series' early heights, and it's odd to see the regular performers in a franchise still doing it over a third of a century later. The imagery under the end credits suggests what a final Phantasm chapter might have looked like if they'd had the money to do it, but in the event it's sadly underwhelming and uninteresting. A muted final note for what was once one of the more intriguing and off-kilter horror series.
**
RESURRECTION OF THE MUMMY
ARISE, SPOILERS!
There's a comedy trailer online called "Hell No": a spoof horror movie trailer in which everyone does the smart thing and makes the sensible, rational decisions. (It's actually been online since 2013 but coincidentally resurfaced this week on my Twitter feed.) Decisions like not going into the abandoned mental asylum with a ouija board, like not splitting up in the spooky old house, like cops waiting for backup. Because the dimmest of horror movies have frequently relied on the simple trick of dropping a bunch of clueless idiots, all of whom can be relied upon to ignore even the most basic common sense, into a scary situation and then just watching them charge around screaming and making astoundingly bad choices. Sometimes they're so stupid that it becomes self-defeating: there's no real horror when they had it coming. Serves them right.
As dimbulb horror goes, Resurrection Of The Mummy is pretty underpowered. A gaggle of nubile Egyptology researchers (led by an obviously shady professor who's also the father of the dimmest of them) investigate the hidden pyramid of The Nameless One, despite the warnings of an Unspeakable Evil, the killing of their guides by the military and the fact that they don't have permits. Oh well, what could possibly go wrong? One of them brings some weed to help with her confinement issues (why would you go into practical Egyptology in the first place if you're claustrophobic?), they split up, they wander off in an unmapped maze of burial chambers and death traps, going back to look for their companions...
It's maybe not the worst pyramid-based Z-horror on the shelves (that could well be 2005's Legion Of The Dead), but it's still twaddle, obviously, though fairly painless and mercifully short at 77 minutes including a very slow end credit crawl. It's also surprisingly sexless: the girlies may all look like cheerleaders in their day clothes but they're covered up enough and there are no boyfriends to kinkily make out with behind the sarcophagus. And the mummy design is pretty effective, though the CG effects are as duff as expected. Overall it's hardly worth the effort, but it's not something to get angry about and I didn't resent the 50p to buy it in my local CEX. Originally called The Mummy Resurrected, emblazoned on the screen and artwork in a font that suggests it's a belated entry in the Brendan Fraser franchise (they wish); the UK packaging and onscreen title card are completely different.
**
There's a comedy trailer online called "Hell No": a spoof horror movie trailer in which everyone does the smart thing and makes the sensible, rational decisions. (It's actually been online since 2013 but coincidentally resurfaced this week on my Twitter feed.) Decisions like not going into the abandoned mental asylum with a ouija board, like not splitting up in the spooky old house, like cops waiting for backup. Because the dimmest of horror movies have frequently relied on the simple trick of dropping a bunch of clueless idiots, all of whom can be relied upon to ignore even the most basic common sense, into a scary situation and then just watching them charge around screaming and making astoundingly bad choices. Sometimes they're so stupid that it becomes self-defeating: there's no real horror when they had it coming. Serves them right.
As dimbulb horror goes, Resurrection Of The Mummy is pretty underpowered. A gaggle of nubile Egyptology researchers (led by an obviously shady professor who's also the father of the dimmest of them) investigate the hidden pyramid of The Nameless One, despite the warnings of an Unspeakable Evil, the killing of their guides by the military and the fact that they don't have permits. Oh well, what could possibly go wrong? One of them brings some weed to help with her confinement issues (why would you go into practical Egyptology in the first place if you're claustrophobic?), they split up, they wander off in an unmapped maze of burial chambers and death traps, going back to look for their companions...
It's maybe not the worst pyramid-based Z-horror on the shelves (that could well be 2005's Legion Of The Dead), but it's still twaddle, obviously, though fairly painless and mercifully short at 77 minutes including a very slow end credit crawl. It's also surprisingly sexless: the girlies may all look like cheerleaders in their day clothes but they're covered up enough and there are no boyfriends to kinkily make out with behind the sarcophagus. And the mummy design is pretty effective, though the CG effects are as duff as expected. Overall it's hardly worth the effort, but it's not something to get angry about and I didn't resent the 50p to buy it in my local CEX. Originally called The Mummy Resurrected, emblazoned on the screen and artwork in a font that suggests it's a belated entry in the Brendan Fraser franchise (they wish); the UK packaging and onscreen title card are completely different.
**
BERSERKER: THE NORDIC CURSE
CONTAINS SPOILERS
There's not much to say about yet another dumb 80s horror slasher in which a sextet of teenage morons are set upon by an immortal Viking lunatic in a bearhide cape. The aforementioned morons, out for a long weekend of camping in the woods (famous for its legends of Olde Norse monsters) and as much sex, beer and pot as they can get, trek out to the wrong camping lodge, argue, wander off into the woods to have sex, find corpses left over from the opening sequence, run around screaming, and injure themselves while charging through the undergrowth. Meanwhile someone or something is picking them off....
After a while you get bored with them and their colossally uninteresting antics, and you end up looking around the flat wondering which household items you'd most like to shove into their heads*, particularly with regard to lead dumbass Josh who's so arrogant, charmless and tiresome I would have been happier if the entire running time of Berserker: The Nordic Curse had just been devoted to him getting his skin clawed off in loving close-up.
There's absolutely nothing surprising, nothing unusual: everyone does everything they're expected to do in a cheap join-the-dots teenkill movie. Of course there's going to be a campfire scene in which one of them explains the scary legend and another leaps hilariously out of the darkness to scare the girl. Of course they're not going to take any notice of the sheriff or the campsite owner (George "Buck" Flower). Of course they're going to have sex in the woods in the middle of the night. They have to, it's the law. Events aren't helped by indifferent picture quality on the British DVD release and some genuinely, awesomely terrible rock songs. Made in 1987.
* Tin opener, metal coathanger and Allen key.
*
There's not much to say about yet another dumb 80s horror slasher in which a sextet of teenage morons are set upon by an immortal Viking lunatic in a bearhide cape. The aforementioned morons, out for a long weekend of camping in the woods (famous for its legends of Olde Norse monsters) and as much sex, beer and pot as they can get, trek out to the wrong camping lodge, argue, wander off into the woods to have sex, find corpses left over from the opening sequence, run around screaming, and injure themselves while charging through the undergrowth. Meanwhile someone or something is picking them off....
After a while you get bored with them and their colossally uninteresting antics, and you end up looking around the flat wondering which household items you'd most like to shove into their heads*, particularly with regard to lead dumbass Josh who's so arrogant, charmless and tiresome I would have been happier if the entire running time of Berserker: The Nordic Curse had just been devoted to him getting his skin clawed off in loving close-up.
There's absolutely nothing surprising, nothing unusual: everyone does everything they're expected to do in a cheap join-the-dots teenkill movie. Of course there's going to be a campfire scene in which one of them explains the scary legend and another leaps hilariously out of the darkness to scare the girl. Of course they're not going to take any notice of the sheriff or the campsite owner (George "Buck" Flower). Of course they're going to have sex in the woods in the middle of the night. They have to, it's the law. Events aren't helped by indifferent picture quality on the British DVD release and some genuinely, awesomely terrible rock songs. Made in 1987.
* Tin opener, metal coathanger and Allen key.
*
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