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Friday Night Knife Fights: AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON VS. THE HOWLING (Conclusion)

Posted in 1980s Horror, 2012, Classic Films, Friday Night Knife Fights, Werewolf Movies, Werewolves with tags , , , , , on January 27, 2012 by knifefighter

FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS:  THE HOWLING (1981) vs. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981)
PART 3 (Conclusion)
With Michael Arruda, L.L. Soares, Mark Onspaugh and Nick Cato

MICHAEL ARRUDA:  Welcome back everyone to the third and final installment of our HOWLING vs. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON debate.  For the past two Fridays, our panel of Cinema Knife Fighters has been trying to determine which one of these werewolf classics is the better movie.  I’m joined, as always, by L.L. Soares; and L.L., our bout between these two films has become somewhat lopsided, as AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF won the past couple of rounds and now leads THE HOWLING by a score of four rounds to one.

L.L. SOARES:  I’m not surprised.  While I like both movies a lot, I think we’re going to find that AMERICAN WEREWOLF is the better movie of the two.

MARK ONSPAUGH:  Don’t count your werewolves before they transform!  THE HOWLING is every bit as good as AMERICAN WEREWOLF and then some, and if you guys would listen to me, you’d understand why.

LS:  Be quiet, you!  We haven’t even introduced you yet!

MA:  That’s right.  L.L. and I are joined once again by Mark Onspaugh and Nick Cato.  Thanks, guys, for being here on three successive Fridays.  Having fun?

MO:  Definitely.

NICK CATO:  Always a pleasure to talk about these movies.  And it’s a cheap date.

LS:  What?  No flowers?  No beer?

MO:  It’s been awesome, except my movie THE HOWLING hasn’t been doing that well in our debate.

MA:  That’s okay.  There’s still plenty of time left.  On that note, let’s get back to the business at hand.  It’s our final segment tonight, so before we go home this evening, one of these two movies will emerge as the winner.

On to Round 6.

The question is:  Which film is scarier?  Nick, let’s start off with you.

NC:  I found THE HOWLING much scarier than AMERICAN WEREWOLF.

MO:  Way to go, Nick!

NC:  But then again AMERICAN WEREWOLF was a dark comedy of sorts, so I’m not sure how scary it was trying to be.  But THE HOWLING is scarier.

LS:  I didn’t really find either movie all that scary, but I guess THE HOWLING is the more visceral story. There’s a clear-cut representation of good and evil. In AMERICAN WEREWOLF, that line is more blurred, and the movie also balances out horror and humor extremely well.

I think THE HOWLING is more scary in a “meat and potatoes” way. AMERICAN WEREWOLF, however, is more satisfying over all, in my opinion. But I give this one to THE HOWLING.

MA: I’m with you in that I honestly don’t find either film all that scary, and to me, that’s a weakness of both movies. I’d call it a draw, here.

MO:  THE HOWLING is definitely scarier.  Even if some of the characters weren’t werewolves, they’re not people you’d want to be stranded in the woods with.

MA:  That’s true.

Well, believe it or not, THE HOWLING won this Round as all three of you cited it as being the scarier film, and I called it a draw.  Round 6 goes to THE HOWLING.

MO:  Aaaawwwoooo!!!  THE HOWLING is coming back!

MA: Yep, it has closed the gap somewhat, but AMERICAN WEREWOLF still leads 4-2.

On to Round 7.

Which film, if any, belongs in the same conversation as older classics like THE WOLF MAN (1941) and Hammer’s THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1961)?

LS:  Well, I think AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON definitely belongs in the same class as the older classics. It’s one of the best werewolf movies ever made. Even superior to something like CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1962).

MA:  Whoa! Hold onto your wolfsbane!

Better than CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF?  I don’t think so.

Oliver Reed in CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1961), a great werewolf movie, but it really has nothing to do with this debate.

LS:  Who asked you? And since when is CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF such a cinematic titan?

MA:  Well, when ranking werewolf movies, I think it’s topped only by THE WOLF MAN.

LS:  That’s the problem  – you’re thinking again. As usual, you’re wrong.  I like CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, but both of the movies we’re discussing tonight are just as good, if not better.

MA:  I disagree, but that being said, since AMERICAN WEREWOLF is a contemporary, updated tale with a devilish sense of humor, it is the more entertaining movie of the two, but I like the werewolf make-up on Oliver Reed so much more than the werewolf in AMERICAN WEREWOLF.  It’s just the better werewolf movie.

LS:  AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON blows CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF out of the water.  Besides, what do you know?  Has HAMMER FILMS ever made anything you didn’t like?

MA:  I’m sure I could come up with one if I thought about it long enough.

MO: Hey guys, isn’t this a battle between AMERICAN WEREWOLF and THE HOWLING? 

LS: Yeah, since when did this turn into a debate about CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF?? If you want me to tear apart what’s wrong with CURSE, just say the word, because it’s far from a perfect movie.

MA: That’ll be a debate for another night.  Okay, let’s get back on topic.

LS (to MO):  You really like THE HOWLING, don’t you?

MO: Yes!

LS: And I have to say, I don’t want to completely bash THE HOWLING. The truth is, I like it a lot, too. While I think AMERICAN WEREWOLF is better, I think THE HOWLING is still a classic of the werewolf genre and belongs in the same group with THE WOLF MAN, too, especially if Arruda is including CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF in that group. So I would say that both THE HOWLING and AMERICAN WEREWOLF fit the bill as genre classics.

YAAARGH!


MA:  Well, regarding the two movies we’re discussing today, I strongly prefer AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF.   However, I’m not sure I’d include it in the same conversation with THE WOLF MAN or CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, which are my two favorite werewolf movies.

And I feel the same way about THE HOWLING.

The main reason?  The weakest links of both these movies are the werewolves in them.  Without decent werewolves in either movie, I can’t consider either one as a classic werewolf movie.  I think AMERICAN WEREWOLF is a notch below THE WOLF MAN and THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, and THE HOWLING is several notches below.

So, my answer is neither.

MO:  I completely disagree with you.

Both films pioneered makeup effects, and both have a tragic protagonist.  If you are having a conversation about important werewolf movies (as opposed to the dozens – it seems – HOWLING sequels or VAN HELSING) then you need to include both of these.

MA:  I think our answers just cancelled each other out.

MO: You’re killing me, man!

NC:  I’d include both, too.

MA:  Well, I say neither, and the three of you say both. So Round 7 goes to both movies.

LS: Give them each a point!

MA: Okay, so now AMERICAN WEREWOLF leads THE HOWLING 5 to 3.

It’s time for the Final Round, when we ask: All things considered, which one is the better movie?

Now, remember, just like in real boxing, even though one fighter may be ahead on points, he can still be knocked out in the final round.  So, there’s still hope for THE HOWLING.

MO: And how would that work exactly?

MA:  In this round, we’re picking which one is the better movie, and so if we all picked THE HOWLING, that would be considered a knock-out.  Mark, why don’t you get this final round started?

MO:  Except for Baker’s awesome transformation, the make-up on the victims (including a terrific decapitation) and Griffin Dunne’s hilarious portrayal of undead best friend Jack, I have to give it to THE HOWLING.  If the final werewolf in AMERICAN WEREWOLF had been better with more screen time—.  Naw, I’m still going with THE HOWLING.

NC:  Despite being a fan of horror comedies, I think THE HOWLING is the better werewolf film, as AMERICAN WEREWOLF is slowed down by a couple of non-wolf side-plots. So, like Mark here, I’m also picking THE HOWLING.

LS:  I think AMERICAN WEREWOLF is the better movie, hands down. But THE HOWLING has a lot going for it, too. I think the two films make a great double-feature.

MA:  No surprise here, I’m going with AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON.  It has the better script, the more memorable characters, and I like its story much better than the one told in THE HOWLING.  Both movies attempt to update the werewolf story to modern times, and both succeed, although AMERICAN WEREWOLF succeeds more.
Had AMERICAN WEREWOLF been able to include a scary, ferocious, and realistic looking werewolf in its movie, it would be one of my all-time favorite werewolf films.  I love everything about it except for the actual werewolf.

LS: Yeah, I gotta agree that the final werewolf is a letdown.

MA: So, our Final Round is a draw, as Mark and Nick chose THE HOWLING, while L.L. and I chose AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. So each one gets another point.

That means that our final tally is AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON -  6  and THE HOWLING – 4.

Which means the winner of tonight’s FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHT is AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON.

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON wins! Hurray!

LS:  As it should be.  It’s the better movie.

MO:  Nope.  It’s THE HOWLING, but I’ll concede that AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF OF LONDON is very good, and I can see why you guys chose it.  You’re just wrong.  (laughs).

MA:  Well, before we come to blows here, it’s time to say so long, because we’re out of time.  So for the final time tonight, thanks guys!

NC:  You’re welcome.

MO:  Any time.

LS:  Any place!  Especially if it has a bar!

MA:  I’m Michael Arruda, and on behalf of L.L. Soares, Mark Onspaugh, Nick Cato and myself, thank you all for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you next time on FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS!

Good night everybody!

—END—

© Copyright 2012 by Michael Arruda, L.L. Soares, Mark Onspaugh and Nick Cato

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UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING

Posted in 2012, 3-D, Cinema Knife Fights, Hot Chick Movies, Just Plain Bad, Vampires, Werewolves with tags , , , , , on January 23, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING (2012)
By Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(The Scene: An Expo inside a huge conference building, demonstrating the latest in 3D technology. The room is full to capacity.)

LEAD ENGINEER: Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourself to be wowed. This is truly a historic day. I present to you the newest phase in 3D entertainment. Watch. (Points towards movie screen behind him. Aims remote control device at his laptop.)

(Voice from behind the screen—a man crying out— “Get away from there! What are you doing? Wait— no. No! NO!!!)

(A screaming man bursts through the screen, obviously having been thrown against his will. The audience gasps, and the man lands in the lap of a beautiful woman in the first row. The man quickly stops screaming.)

(L.L. SOARES and MICHAEL ARRUDA step through the huge rip in the screen, dragging a wheeled cart full of cream pies, which they promptly throw at the LEAD ENGINEER and his associates.)

L.L. SOARES (to audience): Yep, folks, the latest in 3D technology! So life-like you’ll swear it’s real! Impressive, ain’t it?

MICHAEL ARRUDA (to audience): Aren’t you glad you’re finding this out now, before you have to shell out the big bucks at the movies?

LEAD ENGINEER (wiping cream pie from his face): Not funny!

MA: Neither is paying extra for 3D.

LS: Stop ripping us off!

(Audience applauds)

MA: Nicely said. Let’s go review our movie. (They leave Expo and head out onto the street.)

LS: I’m surprised you didn’t pick some futuristic setting of our review of today’s movie, UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING (2012).

MA: That was one of the problems I had with the movie. The setting wasn’t all that vivid. In fact, I hardly remember it. These city streets will suit us just fine.

So, today we’re reviewing UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING, the fourth movie in the UNDERWORLD sa—series, (Yikes, I almost said “saga.”) chronicling the latest adventures of the vampire warrior Selene (Kate Beckinsale), as she continues her fight against both werewolves and humans.

When this one begins, Selene has been frozen inside a huge laboratory in a state of suspended animation for the past twelve years. She’s being studied by a group of scientists led by Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea). Of course, if she were to remain in a frozen state, we wouldn’t have a movie, and so she awakens, kills a bunch of humans, and promptly escapes.

LS: Actually, this one begins with a future where humans have finally discovered that werewolves and vampires exist after the first three movies, and have been steadily exterminating them. So the vampires fight the werewolves, and both of them fight the humans armed with “ultra-violet and silver” weapons. Then it goes into the whole “suspended animation” storyline.

MA: So, yes, even after 12 years of suspended animation, Selene wakes up to find that the secret battle between vampires and werewolves is still going on, even though the humans deny they still exist. Secret battle? These creatures have been battling for centuries and humans have never seen them until now? That’s because, in this series, humans must be blind. Carnage is everywhere, but no one notices anything.

(In an alley behind them, a werewolf mauls a screaming man, unnoticed by MA & LS.)

Anyway, the plot point in this movie is Selene discovers she has a daughter, Eve (India Eisley), a vampire/werewolf hybrid, who also escaped from Dr. Lane’s lab. In fact, it was Eve who awakened Selene from her frozen beauty sleep. Selene must protect her hybrid daughter from werewolves who want to kill her, humans who want to study her, and other vampires who want to give her up to get the werewolves and humans off their backs. What’s a vampire mom to do? Well, this vampire mom’s answer to everything is to shoot everybody in her way, which is entertaining for about one or two action scenes, but for an entire movie? I don’t think so.

I didn’t like UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING at all. To be honest, I’m amazed that an action movie can be this boring. I mean, we’re rivaling TWILIGHT boredom here. I know why that series is boring. Nothing happens in it. But here, we have a lot of action scenes, so how can that be dull?

LS: I was wondering that myself. This movie is about 90% action, and yet I still had to pinch myself a few times to stay awake. What is your theory, oh Jedi?

MA: I think it’s because the actions scenes aren’t imaginative. There’s nothing cinematic about them. As I watch Selene battle werewolves and men in body armor, I feel as if I’m watching a video game. That gets old real fast.

LS: I don’t know what it is. I normally love vampires and werewolves. But in these movies, I just couldn’t care less. Here are a few signs I noticed about when a movie with vampires and werewolves suck:

1)      When the vampires and werewolves are rival gangs always fighting each other. Whenever you see this in a movie, run. It means there’s no horror aspect involved and what you’re watching is just a glorified gang movie, and not necessarily a good one. (And just guess who the “Bloods “are in this gang war?)

MA: I agree. I’ve yet to see a vampire gang vs. werewolf gang storyline I haven’t hated.

LS: 2) Whenever you see a movie where werewolves are referred to as “Lycans,” run the other way. They do this in the TWILIGHT SAGA too. It’s become a trendy nickname for werewolves in all of the worst movies. Obviously short for lycanthropes, the first time I remember hearing it was back when role-playing games were all the rage. And that’s part of the problem. As you noted, these kinds of movies seem more like video games than movies. Screw lame-ass Lycans – I want my werewolves back!

MA: The movie also tells a boring story. The whole rival gang thing again. Vampires vs. werewolves vs. humans. Who cares!

(A vampire and a werewolf step out in front of MA & LS.)

VAMPIRE: We care!

WEREWOLF: Why don’t you care? Audiences love vampires and werewolves! What the hell is wrong with you guys?

MA: That’s a big part of the problem. Vampires and werewolves make up so much of movie history. You guys have a lot to live up to, and you’re just not doing it.

WEREWOLF: Why not?

LS (to WEREWOLF): Part of the problem is you look like a 3D Scooby Doo, you goober!

WEREWOLF: Hey! I thought we looked scary in this movie.

LS: Well, at least you’re not just oversized animated wolves like in the TWILIGHT movies. At least you look like a cross between wolf and human – the way friggin werewolves SHOULD look. But you’re still pretty hokey and not very scary-looking. Let’s face it, in the UNDERWORLD movies, the werewolves still look incredibly fake.

MA: A bigger part is your writers aren’t giving you anything memorable to do, other than fight, fight, and fight. Yawn!

VAMPIRE: How sad.

LS: Now get out of our way. We have a movie to review. (Vampire and werewolf sadly walk away, hanging their heads in shame.)

MA: As I was saying, it’s a boring story. If you’re going to tell a story about these creatures, can you at least make it interesting? Give us some memorable characters, some decent motivations, something that will enable the movie to make an impression.

LS: Which brings to mind the HBO series TRUE BLOOD. This show is also about vampires and werewolves (and lots of other supernatural creatures), and yet it doesn’t suck. Why? Well, a big part of it is that we have memorable characters. We have believable motivations. We have three-dimensional people here, who we care about. TRUE BLOOD is the exact opposite of crap like TWILIGHT and the UNDERWORLD movies.

MA: What do we know about Selene? She likes to kill. She was in love with a werewolf hybrid. She has a daughter who she fights to protect. Okay, this isn’t bad. We know a little bit about her, but it’s not enough to make her interesting. Why does she like to kill? Is she sadistic? Wronged? She’s fighting to protect her daughter. Why? Because that’s what all mothers do? She seems pretty happy running around blowing away werewolves and humans with guns. Why would she want a teenage girl following her around?

LS: Her motivations are clearer if you’ve seen the other movies, but not by much. For me, the worst aspect of the UNDERWORLD films is that I like Kate Beckinsdale a lot. She first caught my eye back in 1998 in Whit Stillman’s indie drama, THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO. I think she’s hot as hell. I think she’s a good actress. The idea of her being the star of a horror movie should fill me with joy. But it doesn’t. Because these movies are so damn AWFUL. There’s just something about poor Kate that doesn’t work in horror movies. Remember, she was also in the 2004 special effects crapfest, VAN HELSING (which you just know would have been a 3D crapfest if it came out today). Wait, let me rephrase that. For some reason, there’s something about Kate that doesn’t work in BAD horror movies, and unfortunately that’s the only kind she gets to star in. And as long as the UNDERWORLD movies continue to rake in the dough, that’s not going to change anytime soon.

Kate Beckinsdale could easily have been one of my favorite actresses. She’s the complete package. But her movie choices have been abysmal. And every time I see an UNDERWORLD movie, I curse the direction her career has gone in.

MA: Wow, you must really like her.

LS (wipes a tear from his eye): It’s a sad business, I tell you.

MA: And why does Dr. Jacob Lane keep Selene and other vampires frozen for more than a decade? Why is he studying them? He’s looking for a cure? For what? Shouldn’t he be in DAYBREAKERS (2009) then? Why not just kill the vampires? Why not go into private practice?

LS: Because Dr. Lane has a secret. And it’s such a pulse-pounding, shocking secret that it has us on the edges of our seats……NOT. I won’t reveal the secret here, but most viewers will see it coming a mile away, and it sucks. Stephen Rea was another actor with a brilliant future ahead of him. This is the same guy who starred in indie classics like THE CRYING GAME (1992) and the underrated THE BUTCHER BOY (1997). A real actor’s actor. And now he’s in dreck like this. Hell, he was even in a very good werewolf movie once – Neil Jordan’s 1984 flick, THE COMPANY OF WOLVES. It’s just too sad to see such talented people reduced to such garbage!

MA: The other characters, including young Eve, Selena’s daughter, I just didn’t care about. And the werewolves and vampires, they’re like the Storm troopers in the STAR WARS movies. They’re there just to be killed.

LS: I actually liked Eve. She’s not very well-developed as a character, either, but when she gets mad she turns into something that looks an awful lot like “Demon Bobby” from the 1977 TV-movie, DEAD OF NIGHT (Mark Onspaugh reviewed that one last August). I thought it was kind of cool she didn’t become just another CGI werewolf.

India Eisley as Eve in UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING

"Demon" Bobby from the 1977 TV-movie DEAD OF NIGHT!

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

MA: As you would expect, the 3D effects add nothing to this one other than a few extra dollars to the admission price. Sure, the movie looks good in 3D, but you know what? It would have looked just as nice in 2D.

LS: Dude, you saw it in just 3D? Lucky you. The best showing time-wise for me was an IMAX 3D version. Cost me $18!!

MA: Wow. I thought I had it bad!

LS: Did it look good? Yeah, sometimes. The 3D effects weren’t always evident – let’s face it, the 3D in this movie sucks – but it was on a nice big screen with Dolby sound. I’m sure that made me hate it a little bit less – but it wasn’t worth the outrageous effin’ price. Because a turd covered with bright lights and whistles is still, unfortunately…..a turd.

MA: I also wasn’t impressed by the special effects. The werewolves are nothing to write home about. Yes, I agree that they are better than what we’ve been seeing in TWILIGHT, but that’s not saying much. CGI werewolves look like cartoons.

LS: Yep. Although I have to say one thing here. There is a scene toward the end where Selene is up against a gigantic werewolf, and even though the monster looks fake as hell, I kind of enjoyed that battle. Maybe it’s the IMAX talking, but that scene rose above the rest for me.

MA: Yeah, that was a decent battle, but by that point in the movie I was scraping the bottom of my popcorn bag in search of un-popped kernels.

LS: And at the same time as that fight, the cool-looking “Monster Eve” gets to fight with Rea’s character (who has since revealed his shocking secret). I dunno, that whole sequence was the only time in the movie when I felt I was even close to enjoying myself.

(A GROUP OF TOURISTS approach MA and LS, taking pictures. One of them steps up close to them)

TOURIST 1: Yes, these are the two guys who jumped out of that 3D movie back at the Expo! They still look so life-like. I feel like I could reach out and touch them!

LS (slaps her hand away): Keep your paws off us, you damn dirty ape!

TOURIST 1: I’m not an ape! What is he talking about?

TOURIST 2: Bad acting, that’s what I say.

(LS and MA start throwing pies at them again, and they run away)

MA: UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING was directed by Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein. It took two people to direct this movie?? Are you kidding me? Even better, it took four people to write it. The screenplay was written by Len Wiseman, John Hlavin, J. Michael Straczynski, and Allison Burnett. Wiseman has lots of experience on this entire series, because he directed the first two movies in this series and received story credit for all four of them. That’s nothing to be proud of, let me tell you!

LS: Oh my God. J. Michael Straczynski helped write this? He actually has some talent. How the hell did he get suckered into this thing?

MA: I hadn’t seen any of the movies in this series until last week, when I rented the first UNDERWORLD (2003) to try to get a flavor for the series. That flavor was boredom. The first movie was also an uncreative snooze-fest. I’m almost insulted by the lack of imagination that goes into these movies.

LS: Lucky you. You only watched one other movie. I’ve seen all of the movies in this series. I guess I just always end up having to review them for some reason. And they all suck. They’re all boring. They all blur together and congeal like a giant blob of boring mucus. And I keep tricking myself when a new one comes out. I tell myself – hey, Kate Beckinsdale is in it. She gets to wear a form-hugging latex bodysuit. She’s one of the most beautiful actresses out there. How bad can the movie be? I always forget how bad the previous ones were and go anyway, and I am always disappointed. It’s just a revolving door of shame.

MA: Yep, the only redeeming value to UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING is that Kate Beckinsale is hot in her shiny costume. She’s got that Emma Peel thing from the THE AVENGERS – 1960s British TV-show going for her. She’s VERY easy on the eyes. Of course, everything in this movie is CGI created, so who’s to say we’re even looking at her real body? They just could have tacked her head onto an animated one. The things you think about when you’re bored in the movie theater!

LS: And, let me make another comment here. There is a scene where Kate escapes from a chamber where she’s been frozen for 12 years. She’s naked. She slithers out from a frosted up glass tube (frosted, so we can’t see anything worthwhile) to fall onto a floor covered in icy mist. In other words, she’s nude, but we don’t get to see anything! I’m not saying she has to show us the goods. But these movies are so friggin bad, it would have at least been a nice treat to see something that would have redeemed the ticket price! Throw us a friggin bone at least for sitting through this crap!

MA: So, yeah, Beckinsale is hot in this one, but she was actually so much better in CONTRABAND (2012) which I saw last week. That was a movie where she was actually allowed to act. Here, she just looks good and struts around shooting werewolves. But even her hot gun-carrying strut grows annoying after a while.

And I agree with you that Stephen Rea, an excellent actor, is completely wasted here as Dr. Jacob Lane, as well. It’s a dull role, and even someone with the talents of Rea can’t do anything with it. Nobody else in the cast did anything for me, as they all played like cardboard video game characters.

UNDERWOLD: AWAKENING is mind-numbing. I give it one knife, and it gets one knife as opposed to 0 knives because Beckinsale looks so good, and I don’t mean that to be a sexist comment. Her Selene is attractive and for a short while she’s fun to watch, but not for an entire movie with nothing else to offer. As both an action movie and a horror movie, UNDERWOLD: AWAKENING is an epic fail.

LS (imitating MA’s voice): “Beckinsdale looks so good, and I don’t mean that to be a sexist comment.” Look at you—Mr. Politically Correct. I’m not ashamed to say it’s not a sexist comment—it’s a friggin true comment.

MA: I agree it’s a true comment. I just don’t want to sound like I’m saying Beckinsale is only good because she’s hot. Although it doesn’t hurt that she is! (laughs).

LS: And—surprise! —I gave it the same rating. For the exact same reason. Kate is the only thing to recommend about this movie, and even that is self-defeating – because if people go see this movie for Kate, it will make money, and she will be condemned to make more bad movies that are beneath her considerable talents!

I also give it, one solitary knife.

One more thing. Sitting in the theater, watching this one in 3D and IMAX, it reminded me of the last time I’d seen an IMAX/3D flick, the last RESIDENT EVIL movie, RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE (2010). And it amazes me that the more I think about it, the more it seems like it’s the same exact series. They both feature hot chicks shooting guns (in Jovovich’s case, it’s her indestructible character, Alice). They both have awful scripts and seem more like video games than movies. And both that last RESIDENT EVIL movie and this new UNDERWORLD movie end at a point where we are forced to endure the damned TO BE CONTINUED moment, where it’s clear the whole movie has just been setting us up for the next sequel. We’re like a room full of suckers playing the “find the ball under the cup” shell game, and wondering why we keep losing.

The only difference is, the RESIDENT EVIL movies are actually a tiny bit more fun, and I don’t hate them as much. But really, these are the same exact thing, except in UNDERWORLD it’s vampires and werewolves and in RESIDENT EVIL it’s zombies and the mysterious Umbrella Corp.

Which leads into the revelation that the next RESIDENT EVIL movie will be coming out this year as well. It’s just déjà vu all over again.

MA: Yeah, and as if to rub it in, the theater played the trailer for the next RESIDENT EVIL movie before the new UNDERWORLD movie started. Lardy-flippin-dah! Though I agree with you that the last RESIDENT EVIL movie was better than this movie.

Well, that’s it for now. See you next time here at Cinema Knife Fight!

LS: And remember, an inflated ticket price is a terrible thing to waste.

-END-

© Copyright 2012 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Michael Arruda gives UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING ~ 1 knife!

LL Soares also gives UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING ~ 1 knife!

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Friday Night Knife Fights – THE HOWLING VS. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON – Part 2

Posted in 1980s Horror, 2012, Animals Attack, Classic Films, Friday Night Knife Fights, Horror, Werewolves with tags , , , , , on January 20, 2012 by knifefighter

FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS:  THE HOWLING (1981) vs. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981)
PART 2 (of 3)
With Michael Arruda, L.L. Soares, Mark Onspaugh, and Nick Cato

From THE HOWLING

MICHAEL ARRUDA:  Welcome back, everyone.

Tonight it’s PART 2 of FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS:  THE HOWLING (1981) vs. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981), where our panel of CINEMA KNIFE FIGHTERS attempt to decide which of these two werewolf classics is the better movie.

Once again, L.L. Soares and I are joined by Nick Cato and Mark Onspaugh. Thanks again, guys, for being here.

MARK ONSPAUGH:  No problem.

NICK CATO:  As long as I don’t have to howl at the moon anymore.

MO:  Not into howling at the moon?

NC:  No.

L.L. SOARES:  What’s the matter with you, Nick?  Not into howling at the moon?  What kind of a werewolf fan are you?

NC:  Sane.

MA: Okay, after two rounds in PART 1, both these films were tied one round apiece. Ready, guys?  It’s time for Round 3.

Which film has the better cast of characters?

LS:  I think Dee Wallace is pretty good in THE HOWLING, and she has some interesting supporting actors like Patrick Macnee (Steed from the classic AVENGERS TV show from 1961 – 1969), character actor Slim Pickens as the sheriff, and even old-time horror icon John Carradine as a strange old man. The rest of the supporting cast is pretty good, too.

I also like that there are a lot of fun cameos in the film, including director Roger Corman as a man waiting to use a telephone booth, Corman regular Dick Miller as a bookstore owner, Forrest J. Ackerman as a bookstore customer, and even screenwriter John Sayles as a coroner.

But there are some weaker characters, too. Don McLeod as T.C. is just such a stereotypical creepy character that he doesn’t seem believable at all. And Elizabeth Brooks, as the seductive Marsha Quist, certainly looks the part, but isn’t a very good actress in this movie (it is her film debut, however, to be fair).

Don McLeod as T.C. Quisp in THE HOWLING.

That said, the acting in AMERICAN WEREWOLF is just that much better. David Naughton is terrific as the lead, David Kessler. Griffin Dunne steals every scene he’s in as David’s buddy Jack Goodman (even after he’s dead) and provides a lot of humor in the story, and I have to admit to having a crush on Jenny Agutter as Nurse Alex Price back when I saw this in the movie theater as a kid.

MA:  Me, too. And I relived that crush all over again when I rewatched this one.

MO (howls):  Aaaawwoooo!!!

LS:  The acting chops are just a different level in this movie, while THE HOWLING seems more like a B-movie you’d see at the drive-in (although better than average for those kinds of flicks).

It’s also funny to note that there’s a scene in THE HOWLING where Dee Wallace’s character is trapped in a car while werewolves slam into the doors and try to get in. This mirrors another movie she would star in two years later, CUJO (1983), where her character was in much the same situation.

MA:  So, are you saying that you like the cast in THE HOWLING better, but you prefer the acting in AMERICAN WEREWOLF?

LS:  Actually, no. I like the cast of THE HOWLING, but the cast of AMERICAN WEREWOLF is superior in just about every way.

MA:  Nick, how about you?  What do you think of the casts?

NC:  I’m with L.L. on this one. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON has the more interesting cast, especially the dead friend, Jack.

MO:  You guys are both wrong.

While I think David Naughton, Griffin Dunne and Jenny Agutter were all good in AMERICAN WEREWOLF, how can you compare them to a movie with Patrick MacNee, Slim Pickens and John Carradine? And Bob Picardo is amazing as “Happy Face” serial killer Eddie; as are awesome “bad girl” Elisabeth Brooks as Marsha and Don McLeod as redneck psycho T.C.

I love the whole dynamic of werewolves who are joyously evil vs. scared victims, some of whom come to embrace their bestial nature, and the pompous psychotherapist (MacNee) who recommends the worst course of therapy imaginable…  I go with THE HOWLING.

MA:  I dunno, Mark. I think I’m siding with L.L. and Nick.

MO:  The horror of it all!

LS:  When you’re right, you’re right!

MA:  I’ve always liked the characters in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF better. David Naughton is OK as David Kessler, the werewolf.

L.L, you said you thought Naughton was excellent as David, but I’ve always found him running hot and cold in this movie.

LS:  What do you know!

MA:  I like it when he’s being goofy, but other than the transformation scene, he doesn’t have the angst and pain of a guy who’s now a murderous beast.

But I agree with you that Griffin Dunne steals the show as David’s undead friend Jack. And I also really like Jenny Agutter as David’s love interest, Nurse Alex Price, and John Woodvine is also memorable as Dr. Hirsch. They all deliver solid performances.

Griffin Dunne as Jack Goodman in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON provides comic relief, even after he's dead.

Interestingly, David Schofield, who plays a dart player in a key scene in the movie, was also in the recent remake of THE WOLFMAN (2010) as a police constable.

I agree that THE HOWLING has a more impressive cast, with Patrick Macnee, Kevin McCarthy, John Carradine, and Dee Wallace in the starring role, but I’ve never warmed up to the characters. As such, I prefer the cast in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF OF LONDON.

Since L.L., Nick, and myself all chose the cast of AMERICAN WEREWOLF, Round 3 goes to AMERICAN WEREWOLF, giving it a 2-1 edge over THE HOWLING.

Next up, it’s Round 4, and the question is, which film’s director does a better job, Joe Dante on THE HOWLING, or John Landis on AMERICAN WERWOLF?

MO:  It’s interesting, both directors are known for their senses of humor – and Dante peppers his film with werewolf references and even a cartoon Big Bad Wolf.

MA:  You’re right, but I think the humor works better in AMERICAN WEREWOLF than it does in THE HOWLING.

MO: Funny you should say that because I actually see AMERICAN WEREWOLF as a tragedy.

MA: It is a tragedy. It just has a lot of funny parts in it.

MO:  And I see THE HOWLING more as a “monster picture.”

Both are entertaining, but I find THE HOWLING darker and scarier – and that’s often what I look for. So, I go with Dante and THE HOWLING.

LS:  Like I said before, Dante gives us an above average drive-in movie. But John Landis gives us something more, with more believable characters and just a higher standard of writing and directing. While I like what Dante did on THE HOWLING, I don’t think you can compare it to AMERICAN WEREWOLF in the directing category. Landis was at the top of his game.

David Naughton in a dream sequence from AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON.

MA:  I agree.

MO:  What am I going to do with you two guys?

MA:  I definitely prefer Landis’s work on AMERICAN WEREWOLF. He created the more memorable transformation scene, and the opening bit when David and Jack are attacked on the moors is probably the most suspenseful scene in the movie, and far more suspenseful than anything in THE HOWLING.

I also thought Landis was far more successful pulling off the comic relief, as there are many humorous moments in AMERICAN WEREWOLF.

All in all, I’m going with Landis.

MO:  Nick, help me out here, dude.

NC:  I wish I could, but when it comes to these two directors and their work on these two movies, I don’t have a clear preference. I’m calling it a draw.

MA:  All right, Round 4 goes to AMERICAN WEREWOLF, giving it a 3-1 lead over THE HOWLING. It’s starting to pull away.

Round 5. Which movie has the better screenplay?

I’ll go first.

Hands down, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF. No contest. It’s a very creative screenplay, and includes off-the-wall humor and some memorable scenes with Griffin Dunne as a walking dead man.

I did like how THE HOWLING included in-joke character names, like Dr. George Waggner (the name of the man who directed THE WOLF MAN (1941), Terry Fisher and Fred Francis [two of Hammer Film’s more famous directors. Fisher directed Hammer’s THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1962)], and Erle Kenton (who directed HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944) and HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945).

In terms of story and characters, though, I prefer AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF to THE HOWLING.

LS:  Funny enough, I just read the original novel of THE HOWLING before watching the movie again recently – it’s by Gary Brandner – and I was surprised how much the movie changed the story. Not all of the changes make sense – since there are very strong motivations in the novel that are not as clear-cut in the film. I’m surprised by this, because the script was written by John Sayles (along with Terence H. Winkless), and Sayles has a reputation for being an above-average screenwriter—and has had an accomplished career since as a director—even for a movie like this. I actually wish it had stuck more to the original story.

The main changes are the fact that Karen White is a news anchor and a local celebrity (in the book, she was just an average woman), and that the “retreat” she goes to after an attempted rape is some kind of group therapy getaway (in the book, it was a small town that the Whites go to recover from Karen’s actual rape – no attempted in the book). It just seemed that the characters were stronger in the novel. While I don’t hate all the changes the movie made, I just think it’s a so-so script, when it could have been a really good one.

In comparison, John Landis’s script for AMERICAN WEREWOLF is smarter, his characters are more fleshed out, and the motivations are more believable. So AMERICAN WEREWOLF wins the screenplay competition hands down.

MA:  Well, Mark, here we go again. Are you going to side with THE HOWLING on this one?

MO:  Actually, I have to admit the writing is a bit better on AMERICAN WEREWOLF.

NC:  Yes, AMERICAN WEREWOLF has an excellent screenplay.

MA:  Round 5:  AMERICAN WEREWOLF. It’s now up 4-1 over THE HOWLING.

And believe it or not, that’s all the time we have here tonight.

MO:  Already?  Man, that went by fast.

LS:  And see, Nick, you didn’t even have to howl!

NC:  I’ll let you guys do the howling.

MA:  Join us again next Friday night for the third and final installment of our HOWLING vs. AMERICAN WEREWOLF bout. Will AMERICAN WEREWOLF continue to beat up on THE HOWLING?  Or will THE HOWLING come from behind and win with a knock-out?

Tune in next Friday night to find out.

Good night everybody!

—END Part 2—

© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda, L.L. Soares, Mark Onspaugh and Nick Cato

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CKF COMING ATTRACTIONS FOR JANUARY 2012

Posted in 2012, Action Movies, Cinema Knife Fights, Coming Attractions, Pagans, Vampires, Werewolves with tags , , , , , , on January 6, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT – COMING ATTRACTIONS
JANUARY 2012
by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(The Scene: A giant tree on a hillside. A group of pagan worshippers proceed towards the tree, chanting. Awaiting them, MICHAEL ARRUDA & L.L. SOARES.)

MICHAEL ARRUDA (to LS): Aah, your followers, come to worship you.

L.L. SOARES:  What can I say? When you got it, you got it!

MA (shaking head): You got it all right. By the looks of that crowd, you better hope we don’t get it! They look like they’re in the mood for a good old-fashioned human sacrifice.

LS: What’s wrong with that?

MA: Nothing. As long as we’re not the sacrifice!

Anyway, let’s start our CKF COMING ATTRACTIONS column for JANUARY 2012. Nothing like being excited about a movie that I’m most likely not going to see. I’m talking about THE WICKER TREE, which opens to a limited release on January 27, meaning most likely I will not get a chance to see it.

LS: I’m not sure when it will open around me, either, but I’m sure as hell going to see it when it does.

MA: THE WICKER TREE is the long awaited sequel to THE WICKER MAN (1973), the classic movie from the 1970s, starring Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland, and Edward Woodward. It features one of my all-time favorite performances by Christopher Lee. THE WICKER MAN was directed by Robin Hardy, and Hardy is at the helm again here for the sequel. He even wrote the screenplay based on his book, COWBOYS FOR CHRIST.

This is one is definitely the most exciting movie release in January, as far as I’m concerned – and I would really like to see -  but I have a feeling it won’t be playing anywhere near me.

Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.

LS: You can say that again. Can you believe it’s 2012 already!!

MA: We’ll kick off January by reviewing two movies for you. L.L. here and Nick Cato will be reviewing the new exorcist thriller, THE DEVIL INSIDE, and I’ll be reviewing the Dennis Quaid “evil mortician” thriller, BENEATH THE DARKNESS. (to LS) Since you’ll be reviewing THE DEVIL INSIDE, why don’t you tell us a little bit about that one?

LS: Well, based on the trailers, this one looks like another fake documentary-style film like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, but about demons and exorcisms. Just like another recent exorcism movie, THE LAST EXORCISM. I liked that one a lot. And I hope this one is even half as good. The trailer has promise.

MA: As I said, that same weekend I’ll be reviewing BENEATH THE DARKNESS, a movie that looks pretty silly. The only thing I’m looking forward to is Dennis Quaid being cast against type as the psycho bad guy. He’s usually the goodie-goodie hero, so it might be refreshing to see him play the villain for a change.

Other than Quaid, it’s got a primarily young cast, a bunch of twentysomethings playing teenagers, which unfortunately makes me think this one might play out like some of those dreadful recent Wes Craven movies – MY SOUL TO TAKE anyone? Ugh! Let’s hope it’s better than this!

LS: I’m surprised you didn’t want to review THE DEVIL INSIDE. It looks good to me. But I don’t know anything about BENEATH THE DARKNESS. Hope it’s at least entertaining for you.

MA: Well, it’s not like I refused to see THE DEVIL INSIDE. The trailer just didn’t do anything for me. It made it look like yet another EXORCIST rip-off. I liked THE LAST EXORCISM too, but that was the exception to the rule. And since we have two movies to cover, and you and Nick really wanted to see THE DEVIL INSIDE, I went with BENEATH THE DARKNESS.

On January 13, ( John Harvey and) I will be reviewing the new Mark Wahlberg thriller CONTRABAND, while L.L. here will be at home entertaining his followers.

(Pagans start skipping and dancing around the tree.)

LS (smiling): Life is good.

MA: Anyway, I’m looking forward to CONTRABAND. It looks like a hard-hitting, gritty action thriller, a story about a former smuggler—Wahlberg—battling a drug lord to protect his family. Could be cliché, but in the right hands, this one could also be very compelling.

I like Mark Wahlberg a lot, and I’m hoping this will be another in his line of notable performances, along the lines of THE FIGHTER (2010) and THE DEPARTED (2006).

LS: What about THE HAPPENING (2008) and the PLANET OF THE APES remake (2003)?

MA: Nobody’s perfect! CONTRABAND also features Kate Beckinsale, who we’ll also be seeing in the latest UNDERWORLD movie this month, as well as Ben Foster who was so memorable in 3:10 TO YUMA (2007) and was also in 30 DAYS OF NIGHT (2007).

LS: Foster was also really good in 2011’s THE MECHANIC, with Jason Stratham, too.

On January 20, we’ll be reviewing the latest in the UNDERWORLD series, UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING. I haven’t been too impressed with these movies so far. They’re basically about gangs of vampires and werewolves (they’re called Lycans here) who are at war, with humans caught in the middle. And the way they’re filmed, the emphasis is on action, not horror. In this sequel, a hybrid child is born and everyone’s nervous what that will lead to. It stars Kate Beckinsdale, who I normally like. But I haven’t liked her much in this series. Still, at least it’s not TWILIGHT.

MA: I’m not looking forward to this one either. I haven’t seen the previous three movies. I kept away because they all looked pretty dumb. Maybe I’ll check them out on DVD before we see this one.

Also coming out on January 20 is the new thriller HAYWIRE, a story about a female super soldier seeking revenge against the folks who betrayed her. This one’s got some star power behind it, as it’s directed by Steven Soderbergh, who just directed the disappointing CONTAGION (2010) but whose long impressive resume includes early hits like SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE (1989) and ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000).

The impressive cast includes Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, and Michael Fassbender. Gina Carano plays the lead role of the female super killer. It looks like an adult version of last year’s HANNA to me. I liked that one. I’m hoping I’ll like this one too.

LS: Yeah, I haven’t heard much about this one, either. But it sounds like it has potential.

MA: On January 27, it’s the limited release of the aforementioned THE WICKER TREE, so limited that, most likely, I won’t be seeing it.

LS: Well, I hope I get to see it.

MA: What I will be seeing will be the Liam Neeson thriller THE GREY. THE GREY is the story of plane crash survivors who find themselves stranded in the Alaska wilderness having to fight for their survival against a pack of hungry wolves. I can’t say that I’m overly excited about this movie, but it might be good.

LS: Yeah, I’ve seen the trailer for THE GREY a few times, and it doesn’t look all that great to me. Plane crash survivors trying to stay alive in the frozen north with hungry wolves hovering nearby. This one could go either way, I guess.

MA: I usually like Liam Neeson. It’s just that he’s made so many movies, there’s been a decent number that I haven’t liked as well. Recently, I liked him in the thriller UNKNOWN (2011), as that was a fairly entertaining movie. And I liked him in CHLOE (2009), but he was forgettable in CLASH OF THE TITANS (2010). But, then again, he can be forgiven for this since everyone was forgettable in that movie.

This is the guy who played Oskar Schindler in SCHINDLER’S LIST (1993). It’s been a while since I’ve seen Neeson do something as memorable as that.

And I guess I find it hard to get excited about a movie called THE GREY. It’s like THE BLAND. Or THE VANILLA. It’s just not doing it for me.

Well, that about wraps things up for us here.

(The crowd of pagans begin to grow loud.) Uh oh. The natives are getting restless. (to LS) Why don’t you do something to quiet your minions?

LS: Certainly. Hey, everybody shut up and listen! We’re done here. Go home!

MA: That was tactful. (The crowd starts to throw things at MA and LS.) This isn’t good. Well, I suppose we should be grateful they’re not into human sacrifices.

(Several in the crowd begin setting up an altar.)

MA: Then again, I think it’s time we leave.

LS: Hey, look, they’re setting that big tree on fire! That’s pretty!

MA: Run!

LS: You always spoil the fun!

MA: Stay if you want to, but I’m going home.

(The pagans start to smear their faces with lamb’s blood, and passing out weapons)

LS (suddenly seems nervous): Well, we do have those movies to review.

MA: Okay folks, we’re outta here. See you next week at the movies!

(LS & MA flee, as the Wicker Tree goes up in flames.)

—END—

© Copyright 2012 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

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Cinema Knife Fight Presents: THE WORST MOVIES OF 2011

Posted in 2011, Cinema Knife Fights, Ghosts!, LL Soares Reviews, Michael Arruda Reviews, Vampires, Werewolves, Worst-Of lists with tags , , , , , , on January 3, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT:  WORST OF 2011
By MICHAEL ARRUDA & L.L. SOARES

(THE SCENE:  A majestic movie theater, filled with well-dressed guests.  MICHAEL ARRUDA & L.L. SOARES sit on the stage in front of the movie screen.)

MICHAEL ARRUDA:  Welcome back to the second half of our end of the year column.  Last time out, L.L. and I gave you our picks for the TOP 5 BEST FILMS of 2011.  Now it’s time for us to unleash our picks for the WORST 5 MOVIES OF 2011.

L.L. SOARES:  For the BEST OF column, our audience was filled with personalities from the movies we saw, all hoping for a chance to be selected as one of the year’s best.  Let’s see how many brave souls have stuck with us now that we’re uncovering the stinkers of the year.

(Camera pans over audience, which is still filled to capacity, and includes superheroes, apes, aliens, vampires, cowboys, assassins, and Daniel Craig, busy having a 3-way conversation with a Goth girl with a tattoo, some cowboys and aliens, and some ghosts.)

LS:  Still packed?  These guys are braver than I thought.

MA:  I think that giant cannon you have aimed at the exit has something to do with it.

LS:  You think?

MA:  Let’s get this party started.  You went first last time, so I’ll go first this time.  Again, tonight we’re looking at our picks for the TOP 5 WORST MOVIES OF 2011.  My pick for Number 5 is—(reaches into his jacket and begins to pull out an envelope.  An arrow flies by his head, piercing the screen behind him.  MA  puts the envelope back into his jacket.)

DYLAN DOG:  DEAD OF NIGHT.  This was one weird movie, an attempt to bring horror and comedy together that just didn’t work.  Based on an Italian comic book, this bizarre tale of a private detective, played by Brandon Routh, who makes it his business to keep the peace among the city’s warring population of vampires and werewolves, wasn’t funny enough to be a successful comedy, not quirky enough to be campy, and it wasn’t scary at all.  Plus it told a far-fetched story that was hard to swallow.

I also hated the title, as it makes the movie sound like a kid’s cartoon.  Coming up next:  DYLAN DOG AND SCOOBY DOO MEET THE SPACE GHOST!  Gag!

Granted, I didn’t hate this movie, but it was so mediocre, mild, and underwhelming, there’s no way I could keep it off this list.

LS:  Well, I can’t chime in here, because I didn’t see this one. Although I did hear it was pretty bad. Thanks for confirming that – so I don’t have to see it.

My Number 5 pick for Worst Movie of 2011 is PRIEST. I had to sit through the trailer like 14 times (I think the movie’s release date was delayed a few times). The trailer showed us the entire story. So, by the time I saw the movie, I already felt like I’d seen it 15 times already!  And every single time —it sucked. In a future where the Vatican has taken over the world, vampires are the big threat that church-trained assassins have to take down. Based on an anime. Sponsored by Ambien. I can’t tell you how excruciating this was to sit through. Easily one of the most boring movies of 2011. I just didn’t care about any of the characters at all.

MA:  I’m with you.  In fact, I think I disliked PRIEST  more than you did, since it’s a little closer to Stinker Number 1 on my list.  So, I’ll comment more on this one in a bit.

LS:  My Number 4 pick is THE ROOMMATE. Take Barbette Schroeder’s SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, cast it with younger girls and have it take place on a college campus—oh yeah, and make it as dumb as possible—stir briskly, and you have this awful, cliché attempt at a horror movie, starring TV actresses Leighton Meester from GOSSIP GIRL and Minka Kelly from the short-lived CHARLIE’S ANGELS reboot. I heard that director Christian E. Christiansen was deported back to Denmark after he made this one. (just kidding). But man, it was awful.

MA:  This one didn’t bug me as much as it bugged you.  I remember it being more mediocre than awful.  I also remember liking the acting in this one, especially the two leads, Meester and Kelly.  While you hated THE ROOMMATE, I just found it VERY average.

It narrowly missed the cut for my TOP 10 Worst Movies of 2011.

My pick for Number 4 is DREAM HOUSE starring Daniel Craig.  Craig has had a notable year.  We saw him in three movies this year, and all of them made our lists.  COWBOYS AND ALIENS made my Top 5 Best Movies List, and THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO made your Top 5 Best Movies List.  But with DREAM HOUSE, he hits rock bottom.  To be fair, Craig is fine in this movie, so it’s not him.  It’s everything else.

LS: Yeah, right.

MA: Of course, the most notorious thing about DREAM HOUSE was its trailer, which gave away a major plot twist!  This twist takes place about half-way through the movie, and since I knew about it beforehand, the first half of this movie was a complete waste of time.  Nice going guys!  Way to go!  Give away the film’s major plot twist before the audience sees the movie!

But even without this spoiler, the film is pretty lame.   Craig plays a writer who quits his position at a publishing house to write a novel and in so doing spend more time with his family.  Of course, family time becomes spooky time as they seem to be visited by ghosts, but there’s a twist (which those of us who saw the trailer already knew), and what Craig learns horrifies him and changes the plot’s direction, as he seeks out not a ghost but a murderer who’s very much alive.

DREAM HOUSE is supposed to be a haunted house/ghost story, but the ghostly elements are all peripheral at best.  It eventually becomes more of a psychological thriller, but it fails here too because it’s not very thrilling.  David Loucka’s weak screenplay is eventually done in by an even more ridiculous and extremely convoluted ending.

DREAM HOUSE is a complete fail.  I didn’t like it at all.

LS:  Well, I have to agree with you there, except I hated it even more than you did. DREAM HOUSE was Number 2 on my list. So I’ll get to it later.

MA:  Number  3 on my list for Worst Movies of 2011 is the awful thriller PRIEST, which you already talked about, since it was Number  5 on your list.

I can sum up what’s wrong with this one just by reviewing its plot.  PRIEST takes place in an alternate world where vampires and humans have battled for centuries, but the humans have finally won the battle because they have a secret weapon: warrior priests.   Nuff said.  Actually, the story goes on as the vampires kidnap the niece of the most famous priest warrior, and he of course must rescue her.  Blah, blah, blah.

PRIEST has a horrible story, unexciting visuals, no character development, and the icing on the cake?  It was in 3D.

PRIEST was one of the more forgettable movies of the year.  In fact, I’ve already forgotten about it.  You should too.

LS:   Dammit, I forgot that PRIEST was in 3D, so we had to even pay extra money to be bored to death!! Yeah, this one smelled so bad the projectionist had to wear a gas mask.

My Number 3 pick is a movie I was excited to see beforehand. And it was a complete letdown. I’m talking about PAUL. I was actually looking forward to this one. It stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the stars of such great indie comedies as SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ. Unfortunately Pegg’s co-writer and director on those movies, Edgar Wright, has nothing to do with PAUL. Maybe that’s why it’s so damn awful. This time around, the director is Greg Mottola (who actually directed SUPERBAD and ADVENTURELAND, so he’s not that bad!), and this one is a big mis-step for everyone involved. Pegg and Frost play two sci-fi nerds who pick up an escaped alien in their RV in the middle of the desert. The creature, named Paul, has the voice of Seth Rogan and looks like your typical gray, big-headed Roswell extraterrestrial. In theory, this sounds pretty good, but the movie itself has almost zero laughs, except for Kristen Wiig as a fundamentalist’s daughter who has a hard time accepting that there’s other intelligent life in the universe. But otherwise, you can hear the crickets. Some movies just should never have been made.

MA:  I didn’t see PAUL.  I forget the reason I wasn’t available to review it that weekend, but after reading your negative review, I decided to skip it altogether, or at least save it for a rental.

LS:  My Number 2 pick is a movie you’ve already talked about – DREAM HOUSE. Daniel Craig lives in a house with the ghosts of his wife and daughters. Daniel Craig finds out that he used to be in a sanitarium, but he doesn’t remember it. Daniel Craig finds out everyone thinks that he killed his family. Daniel Craig solves the mystery. Meanwhile—I struggle not to nod off. This movie had a lot of twists and turns, but in the end it all amounted to a big pile of stupid. Easily the worst movie Daniel Craig has made so far.

MA:  I can’t argue with you there.

My pick for the Second Worst Film of 2011, A VERY HAROLD AND KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS.

As much as I’ve really enjoyed the recent slate of raunchy Rated R comedies to hit the big screen in the past few years, I didn’t like this one.  I have no problem with raunchiness as long as it’s funny, and that was the major problem I had with this movie:  it wasn’t funny.  The gags were vulgar and raunchy, but they weren’t making me laugh, and I guess the point I’m making is it wasn’t because they were vulgar and raunchy; it was because the comedy just wasn’t sharp.

I know they were going for the Cheech and Chong-style humor here, but there were far too many drug references.  Again, it’s not the fact that it was a drug reference.  It was that it wasn’t funny.  They did the same thing with male genitalia.  Every joke either ended as a drug reference or a male genitalia reference.  Can’t make this joke work?  Hmm.  Let’s just end it with a line about getting high, or have someone say something like “Hey, is that your dick?”  Lowest common denominator, bottom of the barrel writing.

And it was in 3D no less.  Ugh!  A VERY HAROLD AND KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS makes coal in a stocking look pretty good!

LS:  I liked the very first HAROLD AND KUMAR movie. I didn’t see the second one. And I’m sorry I saw this one. I actually like the characters, but you’re right, this one was not funny. I think I laughed twice. And the preachy “these stoners need to grow up and be responsible adults” storyline just bored the hell out of me. I don’t see a HAROLD AND KUMAR movie to see responsible adults. I see it because I want to laugh. But their 3D CHRISTMAS movie didn’t make me laugh enough.

Well, on to my Number 1 pick. And it is THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1.  I know this is an obvious choice—but it really was the worst movie I saw in 2011. With no real plot (except Bella gets married, Bella gets pregnant, Bella has a baby) to speak of. Boring doesn’t begin to describe this one. And it’s so bad they had to cut it into two parts, so we’re not even done with the TWILIGHT series yet. NOOOOOOO! I was just surprised it wasn’t in 3D.

MA:  My pick for the WORST MOVIE of 2011?  No surprise, it’s also THE TWILIGHT  SAGA– BREAKING DAWN- PART 1.

If I could just shriek right now, that would just about cover my feelings, both towards this movie and the entire series.  And as you said, it’s not done yet!  We have one more of these turkeys due out in 2012!  Someone stop the madness! 

I haven’t liked any of the TWILIGHT movies, but I may have hated this one most of all.  First off, what an awful title! It takes longer to say the title than to summarize its plot!  Moody girl marries bland vampire, pregnancy troubles follow.  There you go folks. Let’s move on to Part 2 and hope we can add the tag line, “and everybody dies.”  That would be a satisfactory ending.

LS: The ONLY satisfactory ending. Except, since most of the characters are vampires, dying wouldn’t get rid of them.

MA: THE TWILIGHT  SAGA– BREAKING DAWN- PART 1 was yet another awful entry in probably the most boring movie series I’ve ever watched in my life.  The first third of this movie is simply a wedding.  Then it moves on to Bella’s and Edward’s honeymoon—can you stand all this excitement? —and then it finishes with Bella’s life being in danger due to complications arising from her supernatural pregnancy.

There are too many things wrong with this movie (and this series) to talk about here, but I’ll just summarize them all by saying none of the other movies on my list today even come close to the dread inspired by this horrid waste of film.  I know these movies appeal to a very specific niche, and that’s fine, but would it be too much to ask to offer  something— some spark of creativity, humor, horror, anything!— to make it palatable to those of us outside this niche?  Because as these movies stand now, they offer nothing to the general audience of moviegoers, other than an-after viewing headache due to overwhelming boredom.

I’d rather sit through Breaking Wind than BREAKING DAWN.

LS:  Well, at least we agreed on the Worst Movie of 2011. You know there are a lot of bad movies in a year when SCREAM 4 comes out, and it doesn’t make my Top 5 of the worst movies.

MA:  How true that is!  I really thought I’d see SCREAM 4 on your Top 5 list.  It was Number 7 on my list.

LS: It was Number 6 on mine.

MA: Well, that wraps up another year of movies here at CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT.  With the exception of the movies we discussed today, I’d say that, all in all, 2011 was a very good year for movies.

LS:  Well, as usual, I had a Top 10 of Worst films, rather than a Top 5. So there were a lot more bad movies than just these. But I’ll list the rest of mine in a separate column .

MA:  Yeah, I had more than five on my WORST list too, but I also had a whole bunch of movies that I really liked, close to 20, on my BEST OF list.  That’s more than usual for me, which is why I said it was a good year for movies.

MA: Thanks everybody for joining us.  We’ll see you in 2012!

(The cannon explodes, blowing a huge hole through the exit doors.)

MA (to LS):  What did you do that for?

LS:  I just wanted to get the New Year started with a bang!

MA:  Okie-dokie.  Well, folks, there you have it.  Another explosive ending to a CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT column.

(Everyone in the room runs screaming through the hole to get away)

—END—

© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

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CHILLERAMA (2011)

Posted in 2011, Anthology Films, B-Movies, Campy Movies, Drive-in Movies, Horror-Comedies, Just Plain Fun, Werewolves, Zombies with tags , , , , , , , on December 6, 2011 by knifefighter

CHILLERAMA (2011)
Movie Review by L.L. Soares

There is a long history of great horror anthology films: from 1945’s DEAD OF NIGHT, featuring an early version of the tale of a ventriloquist dummy come to life (starring the great Michael Redgrave); to the EC comic book adaptations from Amicus Studios for TALES OF THE CRYPT (1972)—featuring no less than Joan Collins and Peter Cushing! —and THE VAULT OF HORROR (1973); to the George Romero/Stephen King classic, CREEPSHOW (1982). There were even more of these kinds of things on television, with anthology shows like TWILIGHT ZONE, NIGHT GALLERY, THE OUTER LIMITS and TV-movies like Dan Curtis’s TRILOGY OF TERROR (1975).

So it was kind of cool to see a CHILLERAMA (2011), a new compilation film, come out, featuring several up-and-coming horror movie directors, It just recently became available on DVD and includes short films by Adam Rifkin, Tim Sullivan, Adam Green and Joe Lynch. I was really looking forward to this one after seeing clips on the Chiller channel over a buddy’s house. But is it in the same league as those other movies I mentioned above? Let’s see, shall we?

The film takes place during the final night of a drive-in movie theater, where a quadruple feature is being shown on the giant screen.

First off, there’s “Wadzilla” by Adam Rifkin. Rifkin actually made his name in the 90s, and gave us such previous films as INVISIBLE MANIAC (1990), the quirky and kinda cool (this has got to be a cult movie) THE DARK BACKAWARD (1991), and THE CHASE (1994) with Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson being chased by cop Henry Rollins. More recently, he wrote the screenplay for the awful live-action movie version of UNDERDOG (2007). As you can see, his output so far has been kind of uneven.

“Wadzilla,” is actually a pretty funny little flick, where a guy with a low sperm count named Miles Munson (Rifkin himself), goes to see the not exactly ethical Dr. Weems (Ray Wise from TWIN PEAKS) and is given a medication that turns what few sperms he has into gigantic, slimy monsters who leave his body in a painful exit and grow to mammoth proportions, intent on impregnating the world. With Sarah Mutch as Miles’s potential love interest, Louise (she certainly is a very understanding gal), and Eric Roberts as “The General,” who is trying to take the monster down. “Wadzilla” looks as low-budget as it probably was, and yet it does have its moments. A nail-biting (wash those hands, first!) conclusion featuring the Statue of Liberty is both inspired and repulsive. Not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, “Wadzilla” is at least a fun time and a decent way to start things off.

Next we get “I Was a Teenage Werebear,” probably the most ambitious of the collected films here. It was directed by Tim Sullivan, best known for giving us the Herschell Gordon Lewis remake 2001 MANIACS (from 2005) and its sequel 2001 MANIACS: FIELD OF SCREAMS (2010). Sullivan specializes in a kind of “wink wink” horror comedy style that I’m not normally a fan of. But more on that later.

“Werebear” is the story of high school heartthrob Ricky (Sean-Paul Lockhart, supposedly a one-time porn star), who seems to have everything, including a hot girlfriend, Peggy Lou (Gabrielle West), but who really yearns for “Rebel Without a Cause” wannabe, Talon (Anton Troy), who is always flanked by two leather boys and is always looking for trouble. Ricky’s a good boy, but the heart wants what it wants, and soon he’s snuggling up to Talon, who turns out to be a “werebear” an ursine variation of a werewolf (obviously), and whose flunkies turn into big hairy leather men (that “other” definition of a “bear”) with the coming of a full moon. Not only does the movie attempt to use horror metaphors for a story of a young man’s discovery of his sexual identity, it also does so with lots of musical numbers.”I Was a Teenage Werebear” has a lot of heart, but story-wise I found it to be the weakest of the three short films. It probably doesn’t help that I’m not a fan of musicals. But if a mix of I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF and GREASE, with two boys in love, sounds like your kind of thing, you’ll want to see this one.

The third film is “The Diary of Anne Frankenstein” by Adam Green. Green is best known for his films HATCHET (2006) and HATCHET 2 (2010), as well as the “stuck on a ski-lift during the coldest night of the year” flick FROZEN (also 2010). And, as you can tell from the title of this one, it’s an exercise in bad taste humor. In this one, Adolph Hitler himself (the tall and lanky Joel David Moore, who was also in Green’s HATCHET, and who is perhaps the goofiest-looking Hitler ever captured onscreen) steals a young girl’s diary, which shows him how to create life. His resulting “monster” is a golem-like creature called Meshugannah, played by Kane Hodder—who you may know as the guy who played Jason Vorhees from FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD (1988) up through JASON X (2001), and who also played killer/monster Victor Crowley in Green’s HATCHET films. While running amok, the creature kills lots of Nazis and pretty much wrecks the place. He even dances! Despite lots of bad taste jokes, “Diary” has the best production values of the bunch. It’s also filmed in spooky black and white!

There’s a very short fourth film, called “Deathication”(say it aloud to get an idea what it’s about), which strives to be nothing more than a complete piece of gross-out humor, which thankfully doesn’t overstay its welcome, as it gets “cut off” after about five minutes.

Linking all these films is the connective tissue of another film called “Zomb-B-Movie” by Joe Lynch, which involves the last night of a drive-in movie theater (as mentioned above), owned by Cecil Kaufman (Richard Riehle, who you’ve seen as everything from Principal Ed Rooney from the FERRIS BUELLER TV series from 1990 to 1991, to Tom Smykowski in 1999’s OFFICE SPACE, to, most recently, playing Santa Claus in HAROLD AND KUMAR’S  3D CHRISTMAS (2011)). There are also several other cars-full of characters who find love and others who just cause trouble. Lynch’s only other directing credit before CHILLERAMA is for WRONG TURN 2:DEAD END (2007), but he does a serviceable enough job tying everything together.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the last night of a drive-in theater without zombies, and a guy who digs up his dead wife and attempts to have sex with her in CHILLERAMA’s very first scene (what a great way to start things off—well, at least is establishes the tone of the film right away) , is turned into a festering zombie and when he “accidentally” masturbates into the butter for the drive-in’s popcorn (turns out he’s the projectionist!), it transforms almost everyone watching the movies on the big screen into flesh-eating ghouls who alternate between killing and having sex with everything they come across (the fact that they spew blue goo reminded me an awful lot of Tobe Hooper’s recent zombie novel, MIDNIGHT MOVIE).

I had a mixed reaction to CHILLERAMA, mostly because it gives us more of the self-conscious horror/comedy stylings that have been running rampant lately—most notably in the other films by the same directors involved in this one. A lot of these younger filmmakers were clearly influenced by late-night viewings of movies by people like Herschell Gordon Lewis and Ted V. Mikels, and yet they failed to learn an important lesson. Those older directors, no matter how goofy their films, tried to play it straight for the most part. Any laughs were mostly unintentional. They were really trying to scare their audiences—believe it or not. A lot of this new generation of horror directors try to recapture the feel of the bad old movies, but do so in a way that is very conscious of their goofiness. That’s why I call this subgenre “wink wink,” because the directors are in on the joke and want to make sure you are, too. For the most part, I am not a fan of these kinds of movies, because, by trying to be both horror movies and comedies, they often are neither horrific nor funny. And I really can’t stand a director winking at me.

That said, CHILLERAMA is better than average for this kind of stuff and actually delivered some laughs (though no scares). It was fun, in a dumb “midnight at the drive-in” kind of way, and for that reason, and because there really hasn’t been a good horror anthology film in a long time – and this one was entertaining, at least – I give CHILLERAMA two and a half knives. If it sounds good to you, you should consider renting it.

However, imagine how much better a movie like this could be if it was done seriously and really tried to scare the pants off you? I guess I’ll have to keep waiting for that one.

© Copyright 2011 by L.L. Soares

LL Soares gives CHILLERAMA ~two and a half knives.

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THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1

Posted in 2011, Cinema Knife Fights, Just Plain Bad, Sequels, The Twilight Saga, Vampires, Werewolves with tags , , , , , , , on November 21, 2011 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT:
THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN – PART 1 (2011)
By Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares


(THE SCENE: A clearing in the forest, richly decorated for a wedding party. As a young bride and groom prepare to exchange vows before their adoring guests, which include family members, vampires and werewolves, a twin-engine plane flies by low overhead. Inside the plane are MICHAEL ARRUDA and L.L. SOARES. )

(MA hurls tomatoes down at the crowd, while LS fires coconuts at them. Amidst the gasps and screams, they spot a film crew and take particular care to pelt the movie makers.)

MA (shrieking): STOP MAKING THESE MOVIES!!

LS (shouting crazily): DIE! YOU SICK BASTARDS! (Bonks the director on the head with a large coconut.)

(DISSOLVE to a tropical island setting. On a beautiful picturesque beach, an elegant beach house awaits the bride and groom. A banner flies overhead which reads “Welcome Vampire Lovers! Werewolves please check your shirts at the door.”)

(The twin engine plane has landed on the beach. LS approaches the beach house alone.)

LS: Hey, Michael! Where the hell are you? One second he’s with me, and the next he’s gone! He sure is acting weird today. I’ve never seen him this upset. I know he didn’t want to review this new TWILIGHT movie, but he better have not chickened out on me. I don’t feel like doing this review alone.

(The door to the beach house is open, and LS enters.)

LS: Michael? You in here?

(A frying pan flies across the room and plunks LS in the head.)

LS: What the—?

MA (looking crazed): You son of a bitch! This is all your fault!

LS: Calm down! (looks at bent frying pan) Now look what you did. You ruined a perfectly good frying pan!

MA: “Let’s review BREAKING DAWN,” you said! “We owe it to our readers,” you said!

LS: It’s true!

MA: I don’t care! I hate these movies and never want to see another one again! You bastard! (Fires a giant spatula at LS, who ducks out of the way.)

LS: Hey! This is good kitchen equipment you’re ruining!

MA: Too bad! I want you to say it!

LS: Say what?

MA: That we’re never seeing another TWILIGHT movie again.

LS: I can’t say that. Besides, there’s only one more. (A ladle flies past LS’s head and crashes through a window.) You know I’m right. You just need to calm down and start thinking with a clear head. (Three giant onions whiz through the air towards LS. He catches one and starts eating it like an apple.) Brings tears to my eyes. Look, the sooner we finish this review, the sooner we don’t have to talk about it anymore. Want me to start? Would that help?

MA: NO! I’m starting. I’m gonna make this as quick as possible. I’m not wasting any more of our time on this crap.

LS: Take a deep breath and settle yourself down. Here, want an onion?

MA: NO, I DON’T WANT AN ONION! (takes a deep breath) As you can see, I’m crying already. (takes another deep breath)

Okay, I can do this. I’m ready.

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN – PART 1 is—first of all, what a ridiculous title! Who calls a movie a saga? Really, imagine if George Lucas had done the same: THE STAR WARS SAGA: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK – EPISODE 5 PART 1 SEGMENT 2 STARS 4. Idiocy!

Anyway, this latest installment of the TWILIGHT SAGA, as you would expect, picks up where the last one left off. Bella (Kristin Stewart) and vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) are getting married, so the first third of this movie is—the wedding. Now, doesn’t that sound exciting?

LS (snoring and suddenly wakes up): Wha? What? I swear I wasn’t sleeping!

MA: At the very least, jilted werewolf lover Jacob (Taylor Lautner) —who, by the way, wastes no time taking his shirt off, as it is ripped off within the first few seconds of this movie!—could show up to wreak some jealous havoc, but we can’t even have that. No, the ever-so-noble Edward actually arranges for his arrival as a surprise for his sweetheart Bella. Can I vomit now?

LS (vomits into a bucket): Okay, now you can have it (Hands MA the bucket)

Yeah, in the very first scene Jacob runs out of the house, rips off his shirt and turns into a giant lame-ass CGI wolf, running into the woods. Why is he so upset? Because he got an in invitation to Bella’s wedding! He’s lost her forever! Boo hoo! But when he pulls off his shirt, all the tweeners in the audience screamed. Let’s face it; this guy doesn’t have to be able to act. What he does isn’t acting, it’s undressing.

And yeah, you’d think from this first scene that he’s all angry about the wedding, but he still gladly shows up at the wedding reception as Edward’s secret “wedding gift” for Bella. Jacob and Bella even dance together in the woods, as Edward looks on.

How friggin stupid!

MA: After the wedding, as logic dictates, it’s time for the honeymoon, on a tropical island much like this one, so the second third of the movie is—the honeymoon. How’s that for excitement? Still with me folks? I thought I might have lost you since this is such thrilling stuff.

LS (reading a book): What? Are you still doing the review?

MA: Now for the fun part (Not really….The fun part was when I ran out of the theater screaming as soon as the end credits began to roll.) Bella strangely becomes pregnant, and immediately starts “showing”—which, of course, isn’t possible because they just consummated their marriage like a second ago—but it turns out the pregnancy is very “wrong,” as they somehow know that Bella is carrying a strange baby, even though they haven’t taken her to see a doctor.

LS: I have never seen a series that is more anti-sex than the TWILIGHT SAGA. Up until now, Edward refuses to have sex with Bella because he’s afraid he’ll hurt or kill her, because he’s this big strong vampire and she’s a fragile little human. So what happens on the first night of their honeymoon? They have sex. Why couldn’t they have done this before? Edward promises to be as gentle as he can, and the house gets trashed in the process—wow, what a passionate lover! (LS yawns) —yet Bella isn’t harmed or killed. So I guess all of the teasing the series has done up to this point was complete crap.

But there has to be a reason why sex is still bad, so Bella gets suddenly pregnant with a monster baby that is eating up all the nutrients in her body and making her sicker and sicker, and supposedly they barely did it! To have full-on, complete sex, they have to both be vampires. So even a tiny bit of sex is enough to ruin Bella’s life! Maybe she should have really considered becoming a nun!

But they are both soooooo in love!

I have never seen characters like this before. The scariest thing in all of the TWILIGHT movies isn’t vampires or werewolves. It’s sex! These movies seriously need to grow up.

MA: Suddenly, Bella’s life is in danger, and so all of Edward’s vampire family—and Jacob and his werewolf buddies—rush to her aid for the final third of the movie, where Bella is sick in bed while the world waits on her hand and foot.

I think I’ll throw up now.

LS: Again? Please turn your head. These are new shoes.

But you didn’t mention that the werewolves aren’t really there to help or protect Bella (except for Jacob and two of his dopey sidekicks). The rest of the werewolves are hanging around because they’re there to kill Bella and her unborn child. Why?

It’s some kind of violation of the treaty between vampires and werewolves for Bella to have a hybrid baby, or some such garbage.

MA:  And that’s why I didn’t mention it.  Because I would have had to say the words “vampire/werewolf treaty.”

LS:  I never fully understood why they couldn’t just leave her alone. They’re supposed to try to prevent her from having the child—but the Cullen clan and Jacob protect her—and then, once the child is born, they’re supposed to kill it. Why don’t they just go back to playing football without their shirts? I never saw such stupid werewolves in my life. Why do they even care?

MA: This movie is so bad and so stupid I’m really having a difficult time even standing here talking about it, because, really, there’s nothing more to say than it sucks and don’t waste your time or money.

But if you really want to know what’s wrong with it, read on.

There’s not a single character I like in this series. They’re all incredibly shallow and boring. And Edward’s vampire family has got to be the saddest vampire clan in movie history. First off, their make-up is ridiculous. They’re all pale with incredibly bad haircuts, they look like vampires. How is it possible that nobody in the “real world” of this movie knows they’re vampires? Of course, the werewolves have no problem knowing who’s a vampire and who isn’t, meaning the humans in this series must be incredibly stupid.

LS: That goes without saying. All of the human characters (like Bella’s friends and family) are mostly around to act dumb and provide comic relief.

But you’re right—the vampire are so obviously vampires with their incredibly pale skin which just looks like clown make-up. They’re just stupid-looking. Oh yeah, and red contact lenses when they’re angry. Spoooky! Oh, and they carry around big heavy things like they’re superheroes. Wow.

At least I don’t see them “sparkling” in the sunlight anymore. I guess they forgot about that in this installment of the saga.

As far as there not being one single good character in the series, I disagree. I still like Jessica Cullen (Anna Kendrick), only because I think Kendrick is the cutest chick in the movie, and she can actually act (although she isn’t given much chance to do that). I have no desire to talk about any of the other characters, though, because they’re all pretty boring.

MA: Bella, Edward, and Jacob have to be the dullest love triangle in film history. They wouldn’t know passion if it came up and bit them in the ass. I’d believe The Three Tenors had fallen in love before I buy the feelings of these three!

These three characters are about as fleshed out and well-written as three blind mice. The performances don’t help either. Robert Pattinson as Edward is the best of the three, but Edward the vampire is so vanilla-boring he makes Bela Lugosi seem like Hannibal Lector. His “noble character” shtick makes me sick. In a flashback, where we learn more of Edward’s past, we see that he killed and drank blood from murderers only, and even though Bella points out that he probably saved some lives by killing these bad guys, Edward still feels guilty about it. “But they were still human beings!” Hand me another barf bag, please!

LS: All three of these characters are so good and so noble, why don’t they just have a threesome already, since they’re all so loveable? Or better yet, how about some monster hunter finally shows up and puts them out of their misery? God, I hate these characters!

MA: Kristen Stewart, who I believe can act, is just so damn annoying as Bella. Her face seems permanently stuck in a depressed expression. She looks like she needs to spend her days writing brooding accounts in her personal diary. And Taylor Lautner is just plain awful as Jacob the werewolf. As you would expect, the CGI werewolves look just as bad as they have in the previous movies.

LS: Yeah, in this series, werewolves are just giant cartoon wolves. Lamest werewolves ever!

MA: I STILL have no idea why everyone in these movies is so interested in Bella, and frankly, I find it incredibly annoying. This has got to be one of the worst parts of the movie—of the entire series, actually—that there are always hordes of people trying to look out for, or help, Bella. Why? She’s BORING, people! Is she incredibly funny? No. Is she a screw-up who we feel sorry for? No. Is she bold and daring, and a kick-ass heroine who’ll really gives it to someone who’s out to get her? No. What is she then? Someone who needs to be taken care of by the dashing princes in her life (CUE: “Awww.”) She’d be annoying even in real life, but it’s even worse that it’s a movie, since movies are supposed to entertain us.

Bella’s so damn boring.

LS: You’ll get no argument from me. I hate all three of them. Another big problem with this movie is that it has no real villains. No outside characters come in and are clear-cut bad guys. Unless you consider Bella’s monster baby – but even that isn’t a villain, it’s just a vampire baby trying to stay alive in a puny human’s inadequate womb. When it’s born (at this point, I couldn’t care less about spoilers—this movie doesn’t deserve it), it’s so cute and sweet, you wonder why anyone would be afraid of it at all. So all of the “conflicts” here are pretty much meaningless: the werewolves want to kill Bella and her baby for reasons that are completely idiotic and contrived; the vampires and Jacob stand their ground; and any actual fighting is kept to a minimum.

The only real tension revolves around whether Bella should keep the baby or not: Edward wants to get rid of the baby because he knows its birth could kill Bella—who he has finally married and loves so much—while Bella refuses to do anything to harm the baby. This argument is more passionate than anything else in this dull movie.

Frankly, I wish someone would just get rid of the lot of them!

Oh yeah, and the big “shocking” final scene is one anyone could see a mile away. You don’t have to have read the books to figure this one out, especially since there’s a PART 2 still to come out. So much for any semblance of suspense.

MA: So, make sure you thank screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, who’s written the screenplays for all of the TWILIGHT movies, novelist Stephanie Meyer who wrote the books which these movies are based on, and director Bill Condon—give them all a nice big “thank you” by NOT seeing this movie.

Yeah, I know. It’s not going to happen. I’m sure the movie sold out across the nation this weekend. I know the three showings at my local theater the day I went were all sold out, and there wasn’t an empty seat in the theater I was at.

LS: Yeah, I went to see it early in the afternoon and the evening showings were all sold out already. And the showing I saw was packed to the gills. The TWILIGHT movies will be a money-making juggernaut til the very end. And I still have no clue why anyone can eat this stuff up without getting food poisoning.

MA: Because they’re hardcore fans of the series.

For the rest of us, stay away from this bland nonsense! I give THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN – PART 1— ZERO KNIVES and rank it as one of the worst movies I’ve seen this year.

LS: I keep seeing these movies and think “This can’t get any worse.” But I swear—each movie is worse than the one before it—and this one is the worst one yet. It pretty much has no story to it. It’s just a wedding, a honeymoon, and a (difficult) birth, involving characters I can’t stand. I had to force myself to stay awake at times, because it’s also too long. I wish there were more ways to explain just how horrible this movie is. But words fail me.

So I give THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1 a rating of negative 1 knife. Yes, NEGATIVE. As in, they owe me a knife for sitting through this sludge. I can only imagine how much more horrible PART 2 will be.

MA: I’ll save you the trouble.  It’s going to suck.  So, why don’t we just agree now to skip it?

LS:  That would be unfair to our readers who enjoy what we have to say about these films.  (to audience) I have to admit the real reason we see these films is the joy I get  knowing Michael has to sit through them. But then again, so do I!

(To MA): We better get out of here before the “vampire lovers” arrive.  Let’s just go to a bar and wash the memory of it from our minds.

MA: That’s the best thing you’ve said all day.

LS:  I thought “Die! You sick bastards!” was pretty good.

See you next time folks. Anything we review next week has to look terrific after this pile of dung.

END

© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Michael Arruda gives THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1 ~ zero knives!

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LL Soares gives THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1 ~ negative 1 knife!

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CKF COMING ATTRACTIONS – NOVEMBER 2011

Posted in 2011, 3-D, Apocalypse Films, Cinema Knife Fights, Coming Attractions, Highly Stylized Films, Horror, R-Rated Comedy, Vampires, Werewolves with tags , , , , , , , on November 4, 2011 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT – COMING ATTRACTIONS
NOVEMBER 2011
by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(The Scene: A beach full of bikini-clad college girls on Spring Break, and yeah, there are guys on the beach too, and they’re not wearing bikinis.  L.L. SOARES sits on a beach chair wearing an oversized pair of 3-D glasses.  MICHAEL ARRUDA approaches him, sipping some lemonade.)

MA:  This sure is a strange setting for November.  And shouldn’t you be wearing sunglasses, not 3D glasses?

LS:  I’m wearing 3D glasses because I’m getting ready to see two 3D movies this month, A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS, and later in the month, the much anticipated sequel, PIRANHA 3DD.  And what’s this I hear that you might miss both these movies?

MA:  Well, I hope not to, but November is shaping up to be a strange month for me.  First up, on November 4, as you said, it’s A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS (2011).  I know very little about these movies, so why don’t you start us off.

LS:  Harold and Kumar are a couple of stoner guys who have had a couple of previous adventures in HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE (2004) and HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY (2008). I’ve only seen the first one so far, but it was pretty funny. I am curious to see what trouble the guys get into for their Christmas movie. I’m not usually a fan of holiday-themed movies, but this one could be fun.

MA:  Well, the trailer is hilarious, so if I do get a chance to see it, I’ll be looking forward to it.

Next up, on November 11, we’ll be reviewing 11-11-11 (2011), a neat looking horror movie that could go either way— could be really stupid, or it might just be a pleasant surprise.  I’ve seen a couple of trailers for this movie I thought were just mediocre, and I’ve seen a couple where the film looks pretty cool, so we’ll find out.

It’s written and directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, the guy who directed SAW II (2005), SAW III (2006), and SAW IV (2007).  Gag!  I’m sure you’re more excited about this connection than I am.

LS:  Eh, I dunno. The SAW movies were a bit of a snooze overall, but this one could be okay. I don’t know an awful lot about it, except that the number 11 shows up a lot and it has something to do with the possibility of a doorway opening from Hell into our world, or something. But I guess I’m curious about it. I just hope it’s better than the Jim Carrey “obsessed with numbers” movie – THE NUMBER 23 (2007)

MA:  We’ll both be at a convention and book signing that weekend in New Hampshire, and so there is an ever so slight possibility that we might not review this one.

LS:  The horror!! Yeah, we’re going to have to play that weekend by ear.

MA:  But something tells me we’ll find a way.   Also opening that weekend is IMMORTALS (2011), a rather silly looking movie.  We hope to have someone reviewing this one as well.

LS:  Yeah, hopefully someone will be brave enough to review IMMORTALS.  It looks kind of hokey to me – definitely “inspired” by the look and feel of the movie 300 – but it is directed by Tarsem Sing, who previously gave us such visual spectacles as THE CELL (2000) and THE FALL (2006), so maybe it won’t be as one-dimensional and boring as it looks in the trailer.

(Suddenly, there is wailing and moaning, as a great dark cloud appears over the beach, blocking out the sun.  People on the beach start screaming and run away in panic.)

LS:  What is it?  A great white shark? A school of piranhas, maybe?

MA:   Nah, it’s just TWILIGHT:  BREAKING DAWN PART 1 (2011).  Yep, folks, it’s the fourth movie in the TWILIGHT SAGA, in all its boring glory.  Even better, they had to split this one into two parts.  Oh goodie!  (More screaming from the beach.)  This horror (fights back tears) opens on November 18.

I can’t believe we’re going to sit through another one of these turkeys.

(THANKSGIVING TURKEY runs by.)

TURKEY:  Hey, don’t insult me!

LS (holding an axe):  Keep running Butterball!  I’m hungry!

TURKEY:  Gulp!  (Flees)

MA:  I really have nothing I want to say about TWILIGHT:  BREAKING DAWN PART 1 other than I’m dreading it.  Seldom have I been as bored in the movie theater as I’ve been watching these TWILIGHT movies.  Maybe I’ll bring a book with me this time.

LS:  The thing is, I hate these movies, too, and I can’t wait until they’re done. But people seem to enjoy it when we review the TWILIGHT movies and tear them apart. So I guess we’ll be going to see the final two after all. I hope BREAKING DAWN is better than the previous movies in the series, but I’m not betting on it.

And we wrap up November with PIRANHA 3DD (2011), which opens on November 23.  This time around, it’s directed by John Gulager, who gave us the low-budget FEAST movies (the first one was in 2005) -I guess Alexandre Aja, director of the last PIRANHA movie, was too busy this time. I like Gulager and I like the franchise, so I’m expecting this one to be a lot of fun, but I’m pretty sure you hated the last one.

MA:  Yeah, I didn’t like the last one all that much.  I thought it was too interested in boobs and gore, rather than thrills and chills.

Anyway, this happens to be Thanksgiving weekend, and since I’ll be spending it with family, I might miss this one.

LS: Yeah, since that’s a holiday weekend, we might have to play that one by ear, too. Very busy month ahead of us, I guess.

MA: Well, that wraps things up here. And look, the sun’s coming back out.  It looks like it’s going to be a good beach day after all.

LS (looking around and seeing an empty beach):  But where is everybody?  The sun’s out, and we’re finished talking about TWILIGHT.

MA:  Maybe they’re worried about PIRANHA.  I’m sure they’ll be back soon.  It is kinda weird though.  Oh well.  We’ll see you folks next time.

(Camera pans to reveal a horde of Thanksgiving turkeys all carrying axes standing behind MA & LS.)

LS:  Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?

—END—

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Pickin’ The Carcass: WOLVESBAYNE (2009)

Posted in 2011, Michael Arruda Reviews, Monsters, Pickin' the Carcass, Vampires, Werewolves with tags , , , , , , on August 31, 2011 by knifefighter

PICKIN’ THE CARCASS:  WOLVESBAYNE (2009)
By Michael Arruda

 

Welcome to another edition of PICKIN’ THE CARCASS, that column where I scour the juicy horror movie carcass looking for delectable morsels I missed the first time around.

Today’s feature, WOLVESBAYNE (2009), now available on DVD, is about as satisfying as a cookie crumb.

WOLVESBAYNE can be summed up in three words:  vampire –werewolf – feud.  Need I say more?

A realtor named Russell Bayne (Jeremy London), who starts out in the beginning of the movie as a greedy son of a bitch (but then later, when he becomes a werewolf, enjoys an even more stunning transformation into a nice guy), unsuccessfully tries to convince a woman Alex Layton (Christy Romano) to sell her store to him.  How many times have we seen this plot point?  Fortunately this movie doesn’t spend much time on this cliché.  Alex, who says she “sees” things, warns Russell that he’s in danger, and since he’s still in SOB mode at this point, he takes her words as a threat and tells her what she can do with her warning.

Should have listened to Alex, Russell.  Later that night, he’s attacked by a werewolf, and when he himself becomes a werewolf—and a nice guy— Alex decides to help him.  Why?  Well, it turns out that Alex used to be a werewolf, and so she knows that as a werewolf, Russell is now a target of the vampires, who are in the middle of a feud with the werewolves.  The evil leader of the vampires, Von Griem (Mark Dacascos) is hell-bent on resurrecting the ultimate vampire leader, a female vampire named Lilith (Yancy Butler), and to do this he has to collect a bunch of artifacts and other cool items that Indiana Jones would be interested in.  Following this?  There’s more.

To help Russell fight back the vampires, Alex enlists the aid of famed vampire hunter Jacob Van Helsing (Rhett Giles) and his followers.  Just why the vampires are so interested in Russell is never clearly explained, or maybe I was just daydreaming at that point, since this plot was oh-so-compelling!

WOLVESBAYNE is a ridiculously silly and unrealistic movie that is totally unsatisfying as a horror movie, which is too bad, because the film looks good, and the actors do a fairly good job with what they have to work with.

The story is just flat out awful.  Whatever happened to the days when werewolves and vampires were scary?  Since when did they start acting like elves and hobbits?  What’s next?  Vampires and werewolves go to Congress?  Romeo and Juliet as a vampires vs. werewolves story?

Leigh Scott wrote the screenplay, and it’s full of one unrealistic conversation after another.  When the characters interact about normal everyday things, the story works, but as soon as the dialogue shifts to vampire/werewolf feuds, vampire/werewolf treaties and talisman treasures, all bets are off, and it loses me.

Scott also wrote FRANKENSTEIN REBORN (2005), another film I didn’t like.

If just one person involved in this movie had said, “we want our audience to believe what’s going on in our story,” there’d be hope for this movie.  It’s as if the people who made WOLVESBAYNE assumed people will never believe this so let’s not even go for believability.  Wrong assumption.  The best horror, no matter how outlandish it seems on the surface, must be believed for it to work.

The werewolf make-up here, what little we see of it, isn’t bad, and Russell Bayne’s initial transformation scene is pretty good, but WOLVESBAYNE doesn’t even come close to being a decent werewolf movie.  The werewolves here, especially Bayne, do absolutely nothing.  No Larry Talbot angst, no werewolf ferocity, just a feud with vampires.  Boring.

The acting’s not bad.  Jeremy London is pretty good as main character Russell Bayne, though I don’t understand why it is that he starts out like a jerk, and by the end of the movie he’s a nice leading man.  Maybe turning into a werewolf actually helped his disposition!  London has a “Brendan Fraser” thing going in this movie, though he never matches Fraser’s leading man charisma or physical presence.

London also has the misfortune of saying the most ridiculous line in the whole movie.  When he meets Jacob Van Helsing, he says with a straight face, “Van Helsing?  I’ve heard that name before.”

Christy Romano is actually pretty hot as Alex Layton, and better yet, she’s a pretty good actor and does a nice job with the role.  Mark Dacascos looks good as the evil vampire Von Griem, and his performance is pretty good too, but sadly, he doesn’t get to do all that much in terms of evil vampire stuff.  Yancy Butler as the queen vampire Lilith— Lilith? Didn’t she used to be on FRASIER? —is okay, but she didn’t really make much of an impression.

As famed vampire hunter Jacob Van Helsing, Rhett Giles is good-looking and sufficiently dashing, but his performance is simply standard.  He does have a cool name though.  In fact, Rhett Giles is a much cooler name than Jacob Van Helsing!  Giles has experience playing Van Helsing.  He also played Jacob Van Helsing in DRACULA’S CURSE (2006), and he played Abraham Van Helsing in WAY OF THE VAMPIRE (2005).  Giles also played Dr. Victor Frank in FRANKENSTEIN REBORN (2005), a silly modernization of the Frankenstein tale.

WOLVESBAYNE was directed by Griff Furst, and as silly and forgettable as this movie is, I wouldn’t say it’s because of the director.  The movie looks polished, and some of the scenes are handled well, like the initial attack scene where Bayne is bitten by a werewolf, but so little happens in this movie, and later, when the action involves werewolves feuding with vampires, I just didn’t care.

A weak and ridiculous story is the fatal flaw of WOLVESBAYNE, not the director.

If you like fantasy tales about werewolf gangs fighting vampire gangs, you might find WOLVESBAYNE slightly interesting.  But if you’re like me, and you like werewolf horror movies, WOLVESBAYNE is anything but and should be avoided like wolfs’ bane on a full moon.

—END—

© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda

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Friday Night Knife Fights: TWILIGHT vs. SAW vs. SCREAM – Part 2

Posted in 2011, Friday Night Knife Fights, Garbage, Psycho killer, Sequels, Slasher Movies, Vampires, Werewolves with tags , , , , , , , on May 27, 2011 by knifefighter

FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS- Free-for-all Cage Match
TWILIGHT vs. SAW vs. SCREAM:   Which one of the three is the WORST series? Part 2 (Conclusion)
By Michael Arruda and L.L.  Soares

 …..Previously, on FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS:

 (the camera buzzes as the film rewinds, then starts again)

MICHAEL ARRUDA:  Moving onto our next question, if you were allowed to improve one of these franchises, which one would you like to improve, and just how would you improve it?

L.L. SOARES:  The way to improve these movies is to simply stop making them.

(A gargantuan cheer erupts from the audience, and suddenly LS is receiving a standing ovation.  Even MA stands to give him a hand.)

MA:  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

LS:  I know.

(film fades to black)

And now the conclusion to FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS:

(The camera starts again. The audience’s ovation finally dies down)

MA:  Welcome back to FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS.  L.L. and I are continuing our discussion of TWILIGHT vs. SAW vs. SCREAM, attempting to determine which one of the three is the worst series overall.

Now, LL, you were just saying that the best way to improve these movies would be to simply stop making them.

LS:  Why continue making crap?  End these things and put us out of our misery.

At least the SAW franchise claims to have done this. A new SAW movie always came out around Halloween time for years, but that’s gladly over with. Instead, we’ll get a new PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movie every October.

How about something new and different, instead of retreads?

MA:  Unfortunately, that’s the Hollywood formula.  As long as the retreads keep making money, Hollywood will keep churning them out.

I definitely agree with you on this point, that the best way to improve these franchises is to stop making them. However, if I had to choose one I’d want to improve, I’d choose SCREAM.  I’m not interested in touching either TWILIGHT or SAW.

To improve the SCREAM movies I would tweak the SCREAM formula by having the hip in-the-know-about-horror movies banter spoken only by characters whose lives aren’t in danger.  As soon as these characters are threatened by the masked menace, I’d have them react realistically, meaning they’d be scared to death, and they certainly wouldn’t be making wisecracks about horror movies.  That’s how it is now, and it kills any authenticity these stories might otherwise have.

And that’s all I have to say on the subject.  I’m not really all that interested in improving these series.  I’d prefer they’d just go away.


We’re getting closer to our goal of choosing the worst of the three.  Of the three series, which one has been the most painful to sit through?

I’ll go first this time and answer my own question, and I’m going to cheat a little bit here, as I’m choosing two.  See, for me it’s a tie between TWILIGHT and SAW.

By far, TWILIGHT has been the most boring series to sit through.  Never in my life have I experienced boredom at the movie like this.  It’s awful!  I would pay someone to stop making these films, they’re so dreadfully slow and painful.

But as horribly boring as TWILIGHT has been, SAW has been just as painful, but for different reasons.  For me, it comes down to the subject matter of these movies.  I just don’t enjoy horror tales built around torture.  Seeing people suffer agonizing tortures just because, and the films really don’t justify Jigsaw’s actions, is not my thing.  How can you justify Jigsaw’s actions anyway?  Even if he had just cause, what he does is indefensible.   Jigsaw and his antics are about as fun as the flu, and as realistic as DYLAN DOG.

LS: See, this is where I have a problem with your argument, because, as far as I know, you haven’t seen that many of the SAW movies. I know I’ve had to review them alone for years. I’m guessing you only saw one or two of them. So it’s not really fair that you judge all of them if you haven’t seen them. On the other hand, I’ve had to sit through all of the movies we’re talking about.

MA:  Not fair?  What, are we on the playground?  You’re right.  I haven’t seen as many of the SAW movies as you have, but I’ve seen enough.  Are you telling me that in the later films things get better?

LS:  I’m saying that Jigsaw does have a justification for his actions—however lame—and that is he’s trying to put bad people in a life-and-death situation in order to wake them up and make them change their lives.

MA:  What a thoughtful guy!  And I already knew this, as this plot point was in the films I saw.

LS:  I admit, this gets tired fast, but it is how he justifies his actions. I don’t think it’s any more stupid than every character in a SCREAM movie suddenly being an expert movie critic or Taylor Lautner taking off his shirt every five minutes in the TWILIGHT movies.

To be honest, the SAW movies just don’t bother me as much as the other two series do. I find the movies brainless, but entertaining. And they don’t repulse me like the SCREAM or the TWILIGHT movies do. The SAW movies may not be great, but I don’t mind them that much.

MA: At least SCREAM, for all its faults, has a set of recurring characters I enjoy watching, and the first movie had a good sense of humor and some decent thrills.  I can’t find anything redeeming about TWILIGHT or SAW.

LS: Who needs “redeeming?” I just want to be entertained. The SAW movies are the only ones that even come close to doing this. So they’re the lesser of three evils. And while you enjoy watching the recurring characters in the SCREAM movies, I despise them all and wish they’d just die already. So not everyone shares your affection for those dumb-ass characters.

As for me, I’d say the worst of the bunch is a draw too, but between two different movies.

The SCREAM movies because they irritate the hell out of me, and the TWILIGHT movies because it’s torture trying to stay awake while watching them.

MA:  And now for the big question, the final question of the night, when we decide the winner— or loser— of tonight’s competition:  which one of the three- TWILIGHT, SAW, or SCREAM— is the worst series?

LS:  The worst of the three is a tie between the SCREAM movies and the TWILIGHT movies.

MA:  There seems to be a lot of ties tonight.

LS:  They are bad in different ways. The SCREAM movies feature annoying, self-aware dialogue that doesn’t sound natural and thinks it is much cleverer than it is. Also, with each sequel they become more and more like the lame sequels they make fun of.

MA:  True.

LS:  The TWILIGHT movies, in comparison, don’t even try to be scary, because they’re not horror movies at all. They’re romance films playing dress up. And they’re abysmally boring.

MA:  Also true.

Okay, my turn to pick the worst.

I’m going to go with the SAW movies as the worst of the three because they have so little to offer.  Mindless violence, gruesome pointless tortures, and no story or decent characters whatsoever, the SAW films rely solely on the gross-out for their horror points, and this just doesn’t cut it—heh, heh— for me.

As much as I abhor the TWILIGHT movies, they don’t turn me off like the SAW movies.  They just put me to sleep.

With SCREAM – I actually like the characters, and the story in the first one was a good one.  Even though they’ve gone downhill since the first movie, the SCREAM films are still not as twisted and sick as SAW or as boring and dull as TWILIGHT.

So, my pick as the worst of the three is SAW.

It looks like then, since I picked SAW, and you picked both TWILIGHT and SCREAM, that we have a three way tie.

LS:  Let’s be honest here. They all suck.

MA:  I guess that’s apropos, that they each received a vote for The Worst Series.

With just the two of us here tonight, it would have been difficult to pick just one worst series anyway, unless that rarity of rarities occurred, and you and I agreed, and we both chose the same movie.  Maybe we’ll do this again sometime with some guest panelists.

LS:  I hope not.  I really don’t want to talk about these movies again anytime soon.

MA:  I agree with you there.  Still, there may have to be a rematch at some point.

So, hopefully nobody out there is disappointed, but tonight’s results reveal a stalemate.  Which one is the worst series?  It’s a draw, as TWILIGHT, SAW, and SCREAM all received one vote, meaning, they’re all horrible!

There are no winners here tonight, only losers.

LS: I guess I need to get off the stage then.

MA:  My prayers have finally been answered.

Well that wraps things up from here.  This has been FRIDAY NIGHT KNIFE FIGHTS.  I’m Michael Arruda, and on behalf of L.L. Soares and myself, thanks for joining us tonight.  Good night, everybody!

—-END—

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