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Transmissions to Earth: HEADLESS EYES (1971)

Posted in "So Bad They're Good" Movies, 2012, 70s Horror, Bad Acting, Gore!, Killers, LL Soares Reviews, Low Budget Movies, Psycho killer, Trasmissions to Earth with tags 70s Sleaze, bad acting, Bo Brundin, Eyeballs, Headless Eyes, Homicidal Maniac, Kent Bateman on August 9, 2012 by knifefighter

TRANSMISSIONS TO EARTH
Column by L.L. Soares

Well, we’ve got another very strange horror movie from the early 1970s this time around, from the era when incredibly strange movies were pretty easy to find.

HEADLESS EYES (1971) begins with a robbery. Arthur Malcolm (Bo Brundin) breaks into a woman’s apartment while she is sleeping and digs through her purse. When she wakes up, he tries to strangle her (“I just need $65 for my rent!”), but she’s able to grab onto a nearby spoon and jam the handle into one of his eyes. Arthur starts screaming over and over “My eye! My eye!” as he crawls across the floor, out the window, and down the fire escape. When he gets down to the sidewalk below, he cowers on the ground shouting, “My eye! My eye!” as a crowd gathers around him. His eyeball is hanging out of its socket.

Needless to say, right off the bat, this movie is hilariously bad.

We then see Arthur later on. He’s wearing an eye patch and is making weird pieces of art, that all seem to involve eyes. A mobile hanging from the ceiling features lots of hanging eyes. He freezes eyes in ice in his freezer. He imbeds more eyes in plastics and creates strange sculptures. Meanwhile, some maniac is going around killing women and scooping their eyes out with a spoon. Any idea who the killer could be?

When he’s not running around the streets of New York, convinced that someone is chasing him, he’s breaking into apartments and killing women for their precious eyes. There’s nothing subtle about this guy, and he doesn’t even try to be inconspicuous. When a woman is murdered on a rooftop in his neighborhood, Arthur is only able to get one of her eyes out before he almost gets caught. Later on, he’s part of a crowd while a TV journalist reports about the murder. Arthur even digs the lady up later at the cemetery, so he can get her other eye!

Whenever he kills anyone, he tells them “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry,” and tells their eyes that “soon you will be preserved forever!” He has some ugly art gallery that looks like a junk shop (he lives in the apartment above it). At one point, a former girlfriend comes by to see how he’s doing. She gives him a speech where she talks about his never trusting her because she was a rich girl who wanted to date a famous artist, and he tells her how the “accident” that took his eye, changed him. That it brought out another person who lived inside of him. He starts ranting, and she gets disgusted and leaves.

There is nothing normal about this guy. He might as well have a sign around his neck that says “I kill people and cut out their eyeballs to make bad art!” At one point he follows a blonde actress to an audition for some sleazy producer (the guy’s “office” is a small room in an apartment building). When the man leaves, Arthur breaks in so that he can look through the headshots and find hers, with her address on the back. He writes it down, intent on paying her a “visit.” Of course, the producer’s ugly old secretary comes back to work around this time and catches him, ripping off his eye patch. He goes wild, strangling her with her own gaudy necklace (and of course takes her eyes!)

Crazed “artist” Arthur Malcolm taking a brief break from cutting out people’s eyes!

Despite the fact that the death toll continues to rise, and Arthur’s behavior continues to get worse, the cops have a hard time solving the case. The one cop who does track him down finds him almost by accident, and isn’t smart enough to finish the job.

A young art student named Gingy keeps stopping by his shop. She tells him he’s a brilliant artist (she must be high or something) and she wants to learn how to make sculptures in plastic like he does (something they don’t teach at art school). At first, he blows her off, but she’s persistent and he agrees to meet her at a lighthouse where she goes to get away from everyone and work on her art assignments. When he goes there, you think the girl might be in danger, but instead, they go for a walk and discuss art. For the first time, Arthur laughs and seems normal, and you think maybe he has a chance to show some kind of human emotions again. But not long after he leaves her, he goes back to his old, murderous ways.

HEADLESS EYES is a pretty insane, low-budget flick. I’m sure it played at grindhouse theaters in the 70s, even though the company that made the VHS tape, Wizard Video, claims it was “too shocking to show in theaters and was made to go directly to video.” There’s an awkwardness to it all that makes you wonder if it’s a bad Italian horror movie dubbed into English. There are names in the credits: Ramon Gordon, Kelley Swartz and Mary Jane Early, but you have no clue who played what character.

Star Bo Brundin actually went on to get roles in legitimate Hollywood movies like THE GREAT WALDO PEPPER (1975) starring Robert Redford and the 1979 disaster movie, METEOR, as well as lots of TV shows like the original BIONIC WOMAN series from the 70s, FALCON CREST, and THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO.

Director Kent Bateman made a couple more low-budget flicks before working for television, directing episodes of FAMILY TIES and VALERIE’S FAMILY in the 80s. A little more digging will reveal he was also the father of actor Jason Bateman!!

Despite the fact that his behavior continues to worsen, the cops are baffled by Arthur’s crimes.

The fact that the movie is so low-budget sometimes works in its favor; there are times when Arthur’s psychotic antics seem especially creepy. And the repetitive score is actually kind of eerie, when it doesn’t grate on your nerves.

HEADLESS EYES ends with a scene in the meat packing district, with Arthur stalking that poor blonde actress (who appears to be delivering a bag of heroin to someone – we can’t be sure, but at first maybe she thinks he’s a cop following her – but it turns out he’s something much more dangerous). The final scene takes place in a cold meat locker, with sides of beef hanging from hooks.

There’s not really very much about HEADLESS EYES to recommend it. It’s a bad movie with bad acting and a pretty much non-existent storyline. Yet, if you like this sort of dreck, you might find it strangely entertaining. I would say it’s of the “so bad it’s good” school of filmmaking, but I’d be lying. It’s just bad, and it never comes full circle to being even close to “good.” But, on some level, I think I enjoyed it.

If you can actually find this movie somehow, view it at your own risk.

-END-

NOTE: Despite the fact that the opening credits call the movie, THE HEADLESS EYES, every video box I’ve ever seen lists it as simply, HEADLESS EYES.

Once this movie starts, you’ll beg it to end!

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Suburban Grindhouse Memories: DRIVE-IN MASSACRE (1976)

Posted in 70s Horror, Drive-in Movies, Killers, Nick Cato Reviews, Psychos, Slasher Movies with tags bad acting, Drive-in Massacre, grindhouse movies, Robert E. Pearson, slasher films on March 22, 2012 by knifefighter

SUBURBAN GRINDHOUSE MEMORIES
Great Title—But That’s About It!
By Nick Cato

Just before the home video boom of the early 80s, there was a minor outbreak of 70s horror films being re-released theatrically, usually on double bills with a new feature. Before most of us had VCRs, I was lucky enough to see the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) and a host of others on the big screen in glorious re-releases, and I still wonder if this wasn’t some kind of testing stage for upcoming home video companies to see what forgotten trash they could repackage for VHS. Or something.

I can’t recall what new slasher epic was the main feature (I’m thinking it was HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW (1983)?), because my excitement was for the opening film, DRIVE-IN MASSACRE, a 1976 or 1977 (depending on who you believe) oddity that was promised to be released soon on VHS within the pages of FANGORIA magazine. Having no idea what to expect, the title alone got my juices flowing, as did the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE-type opening sequence. But it wasn’t long before the suburban audience in attendance at the (now defunct) Amboy Twin Cinema were openly insulting the talentless cast of this nearly gore-less slasher flick (but now that I think about it, considering this was originally released in 1976/7, just before the outbreak of “slasher” films, perhaps the producers of this dreck were looking at it as a murder mystery? Who knows?)

For some reason that’s never explained, a psycho is stalking people at a California drive-in theater. For another unknown reason, the killer’s weapon of choice is a long sword, which he uses to decapitate his (or her, we’re never told) first victims, one as he leans out of his car to adjust the volume box (NOTE TO KIDDIES WHO NEVER WENT TO A DRIVE IN: volume boxes were located outside your car’s window, although they usually attached right to the window itself. Perhaps not in California?). I’m thinking the killer could’ve been an escaped schizophrenic ninja? Nah…whoever “wrote” this screenplay didn’t bother with a standard plot, let alone something as cool as a schizophrenic ninja. For gorehounds, this is the only kill in the film that even shows a bit of sauce; otherwise, DRIVE-IN MASSACRE has about as much on-screen violence as CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG (1968).

Thank goodness for the two hefty cops who are on the case. The comic relief they provide is the sole reason any exploitation completest might even bother to seek this out (unless you get off on the sight of an ugly janitor with big, fake jewelry and a sports coat that’d make Bozo the Clown commit suicide). The detectives get nowhere after questioning the theater’s owner in what has to be one of the worst dialogue exchanges ever captured on film. The theater owner also offers a few laughs, as he HATES everyone he’s asked about: I’m assuming the Klan themselves would deem him too hateful to join their organization. In-between a couple of lame kill scenes, our pudgy officers decide to dress in drag in an attempt to find the killer: just WHY they decide to do this is anyone’s guess, but it leads to a couple of giggles and filler chase scenes. WHY do all these low budget films pad themselves with chase scenes? And WHY are they never exciting (one chase takes place inside of a dimly lit warehouse and is shot so slowly several audience members took the opportunity to refill their sodas or visit the restrooms. I’m thinking a few just gave up and left).

Along with a horrendous soundtrack (including an opening soft-rock song that was too lame to be included on any old K-TEL compilation album), DRIVE-IN MASSACRE ends with an attempt to scare us by claiming the killer has never been caught…and that he might be in the theater you’re currently in…sitting right next to YOU!

Good grief…why do I continue to be fascinated with this junk?

(WARNING: Horror of horrors! DRIVE-IN MASSACRE is slated for a remake with filming to commence in the fall of 2012. Ut oh…)

Robert E. Pearson stars as Austin, the funkiest janitor in horror film history. Robert went to that Drive-In in the sky in 2009.

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ARE YOU SCARED 2

Posted in 2011, Garbage, LL Soares Reviews, Psycho killer, Sequels, Serial Killer flicks with tags ARE YOU SCARED 2, Are You Scared?, bad acting, Bad Movies, John Lands, Kathy Gardiner, Offscreen killing, Russell Appling, sequel, Tony Todd on January 25, 2011 by knifefighter

ARE YOU SCARED 2 (2009)
Movie Review by L.L. Soares

If you read this week’s Cinema Knife Fight column, where Michael Arruda and I reviewed the movie ARE YOU SCARED? (2006), you might think things can’t get much worse than that one.

You’d be wrong.

Despite all its flaws, and the fact that it was a pretty blatant rip-off of the SAW movies, the first ARE YOU SCARED? at least had a coherent plot, and you could tell what was happening throughout. In other words, it made sense, even if it was a bad movie.

ARE YOU SCARED 2 doesn’t even attempt to tell a coherent story.

First off, I don’t even know why this one is billed as a sequel. It has absolutely nothing to do with the first movie. Even though the villain of the first one, Shadow Man (Brent Fidler) survived at the end of the first movie (sorry to spoil that for you, folks!) and could easily have continued his story in this one.

Instead, ARE YOU SCARED 2 starts off showing us a group of fun-loving idiots who go around digging up hidden suitcases all over the place. They’re professional scavenger hunters and the group we’re watching, “Team DNA,” is one of the best (or so we’re told). They’re made up of four friends: Dallas (Tristan Wright), Andrew (Chad Guerrero), Taryn (Andrea Monier) and Reese (Kathy Gardiner). They check the Internet each day for new challenges, and are given coordinates by strangers to the next hidden item. The “prizes” can be anywhere – we first see them navigating through a junkyard to find a cache in the trunk of a rusty old car. And they film their exploits and post them on their site, where they actually have a following (!). The girls even do “sexy chat’ on the site.

So you think, “Okay. This new movie has nothing to do with the first one – which was bad anyway – so all we can go is up, right? The fact that this movie is a complete departure from the first one’s plot is a good thing, right?”

Wrong.

This time, we see another guy in an isolated room watching a bunch of computer monitors. This time it’s not Shadow Man, though. This time it’s CANDYMAN (1992)! Yes, Tony Todd himself appears in this movie for some bizarre reason (Can’t he get better roles than this?). He follows these morons’ scavenger hunts online, and decides he wants to be in on the fun. So he posts the coordinates to his spooky old house online (the scavenger hunters have no idea who posts each hunt – it could be anyone). Team DNA decides to accept the challenge and track down the coordinates to the house and get inside.

From here, the movie just plunges into complete sewerage.

The kids find the hidden suitcase pretty fast in one of the upstairs rooms. But it has a severed arm handcuffed to it. They assume the arm is fake and find a ton of money inside the suitcase. So they’ve hit the jackpot, right? Not so fast. Sleeping gas fills the room and knocks them out. And when they wake up, they’re part of a brand new game. This time, instead of a scavenger hunt, it’s hide and seek.

It turns out they’re not alone in the house. Also hiding inside are two nutjobs (Mark Lowry and Dallas Montgomery). One talks constantly in a Southern accent and always seems to be on the verge of crying. The other one is a hulking Leatherface wannabe in a skull mask. Tony Todd is their “boss” (in the credits, he is just called “Controller”), and tells them to hunt the kids down and kill them. All the while, Todd is filming the goings-on for his own internet reality show – which caters to the underground snuff film crowd.

The psychos hunt the kids. The kids wander around the house with a GPS unit that Todd has provided for them, trying to get out and avoid the killers. And Todd watches and films everything that goes on in the house, and in the surrounding woods, with surveillance cameras that are posted everywhere.

Reese, who’s actually very pretty, gets captured first and tortured by Southern Guy, while Skullface tracks down the rest of them. There are a lot of close calls, violent confrontations, and twists. Some of the kids are driven to tap into their dark sides. But it all culminates in utter stupidity.

First off, I have absolutely no clue why Tony Todd is in this movie. Technically, he runs a snuff site and wants to make money off the footage. But why is Tony Todd the ACTOR in this one? It appears as if most of his scenes were filmed separately (until one of the kids finally find him towards the end), and amount to him sitting in a chair, watching computer screens and talking to himself. That is, when he’s not spouting soliloquys to his pet turtle, Timothy. Most of his scenes seem completely incoherent. Sure, he’s still got one of the best voices in the business, and could make anything sound great, but the dialogue he’s forced to expound here is just ludicrous. It’s like someone on an acid trip wrote down a bunch of gibberish and then gave it to Tony to say in his scenes alone.

The psychos could be interesting, but they’re not. Southern Guy just pretty much tries to imitate Edwin Neal’s performance of Chop Top from the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974), talking in a strained voice and making all kinds of goofy faces. First he does something horrible and then he begs his victim to forgive him. Then he does something else sadistic. I have to admit, it’s more of an effort than this movie deserves, but not enough is done with this character. Skullface has a nice spooky presence but most of his scenes just involve him breaking doors in and crashing through walls. Nothing all that scary. It would have been nice if the insane characters had a bit more of a backstory or a smidgen more character development. Who are these people? How did Tony Todd find them? I guess it really doesn’t matter, after all.

The kids, the main characters — the ones we’re supposed to identify with — are completely annoying. You don’t once think “I hope these kids live.” They’re just idiots. Reese, while pretty enough, is incredibly whiny and you’re glad when she’s captured. But her friends don’t even seem to care. At one point they have a chance to get away, but they go back. Not because they want to save Reese (hell, they don’t even acknowledge she may be in trouble), but because they want revenge on the person who did this to them. Poor Reese! It makes sense that we don’t care about her, but you think her friends would!

Aside from the fact that the kids are horrible actors, that the dialogue throughout is dumb, that the psychos just aren’t scary enough, that Tony Todd’s scenes force him to say nonsense (in a very cool voice), and the production values aren’t very good (this isn’t filmed anywhere near as well or atmospheric as the first one, and instead opts for a more “reality TV” look that is just lame). Aside from all that, we don’t even get to really see most of the kill scenes! A lot of the time, I had no idea what was going on. Someone would be struggling with a psycho or getting tortured, and you’d see their face, but the real damage is done off-screen and you have NO IDEA WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THEM. I found this completely annoying and stupid. No matter how bad the first movie was, it at least took the time to show you a drill boring through someone’s forehead or an axe chopping someone’s head off. But in ARE YOU SCARED 2, most of the gore happens off-camera and we don’t even get to enjoy it!

Andy Hurst, who directed the first ARE YOU SCARED? isn’t even around for this one. Sure, we pointed out he did an awful job, but compared to ARE YOU SCARED 2, the first one was a work of genius! In the second movie, the culprits are John Lands and Russell Appling, who both wrote and directed the movie. I only mention them, because frankly, we should know who turned out a movie this bad, and perpetrated this crime against cinema.

By the end, I realized I’d just completely wasted 94 minutes of my life. Of course, I should have known better. The first movie was bad enough. You’d think I would avoid the second one like the plague. But I was curious to see just how bad Part 2 was. And I wanted to see what the great Tony Todd had to do with the storyline. Todd is the one I feel worst for – the guy is a talented actor and deserves a lot better than this crap. Won’t someone making a good movie hire this guy for Chrissakes? And not just for a cameo like in HATCHET (2006)!

So no, when I was watching ARE YOU SCARED 2, I was NOT scared. Not for a second. But I was annoyed and sad by the time the credits rolled. Because I realized I was dumb enough to sit through this one.

As for a rating — how many knives I give this one — let’s just skip it this time. To talk about giving this one a rating is a joke. I can’t believe I watched this one right to the end.

-END-

MY SOUL TO TAKE

Posted in 2010, 3-D, Cinema Knife Fights, Slasher Movies with tags 3D, bad acting, Bad Movie, bad script, Max Thieriot, My Soul to Take, Riverton Ripper, wes craven on October 11, 2010 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: MY SOUL TO TAKE (2010)
by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(THE SCENE: a covered railroad bridge nestled snugly in the New England woods, hidden partially by an eerie fog. Close-up reveals MICHAEL ARRUDA and L.L.SOARES on bridge peering over the edge at the water below.)

LS (with a rock in his hand): I’m telling you, even from this angle, you can still skip a rock (fires rock off bridge).

(From below a hideous scream rings out.)

MA: Yeah, if you skip it off a guy’s head, like you just did. Isn’t that cheating?

LS: Nope. Anything in the water is fair game. Your turn.

MA: I dunno. I don’t think now’s the best time, not when there’s a cub scout troop practicing swimming drills down there.

LS: Wimp.

(From behind them comes the sound of heavy footsteps. They turn around to see a huge, hulking figure running towards them on the bridge.)

HUGE FIGURE: I am the Ripper!

MA: Didn’t someone say in the movie, MY SOUL TO TAKE, that the best way to get rid of this guy was to spit in the water?

LS: A better idea would be to spit in this creep’s face!

MA: Actually, an even better idea would be— (lifts rock, and he and LS hurl rocks at charging Ripper, hitting him directly in the head, knocking him out cold.)

LS: Some villain!

(LS goes over and proceeds to kick the unconscious villain repeatedly)

MA: Aren’t you overdoing it a little?

LS: NO! I don’t remember being this angry leaving a movie theater in a long time. This guy deserves it.

MA: Well, actually I was thinking that if the guy you’re kicking had been in the movie more, I might have liked it more. So, maybe you ought to stop.

LS: Yeah, I’ll stop. TOMORROW! (keeps kicking)

MA: Nothing like kicking a serial killer when he’s down. Anyway, we’re here today to review MY SOUL TO TAKE (2010), the new Wes Craven horror movie.

MY SOUL TO TAKE is about a group of seven 16 year-olds who live in fear, or at least they say they do, of the ghost of the Riverton Ripper, a serial killer who was apprehended and presumably died on the night they were all born. The Ripper had multiple personalities, and on the night he was caught and allegedly killed, the personalities or souls supposedly jumped ship and hid inside the bodies of the seven babies born that night. That’s the legend that the teens, for some reason, celebrate each year.

LS: Where did this whole concept come from anyway? That they have to celebrate the Ripper’s death? That they have to create some kind of elaborate “purging” ritual? And they’ve been doing this for years It’s just bizarre.

MA: You said it. I didn’t get this at all. And it’s talked about so matter-of-factly, as if it’s homecoming weekend or something.

When these teens start dying one by one, the “mystery” which ensues is who exactly is doing the killing? Is it one of the teens possessed by the ghost of the Ripper? Is it simply the ghost of the Ripper himself? Or is it the actual Ripper, still alive all these years later, since his body was never found?

Does anyone really care? I know I didn’t.

LS: That makes two of us.

MA: MY SOUL TO TAKE has a lot of problems, but the biggest by far is I didn’t buy its story for one second. Let’s start with the basic premise of the Ripper, and how his personalities supposedly entered the teens when they were newborns. For this to be true, then the Ripper would have to be dead, for how else would a soul leave a body if it weren’t dead? Yet, the film also hints that the Ripper might not be dead, since his body was never found. Since these two storylines can’t both be true, it makes it very difficult to believe either one. It comes off as fake drama.

LS: Fake? That’s being charitable. It comes off as just plain dumb.

MA: I also didn’t buy the teens’ obsession with this thing. They perform a ritual year after year by the river where the Ripper supposedly drowned, to keep his spirit dead, but why? The film doesn’t show us why they’re so upset by all this to the point of obsession. The Ripper was killed the night they were born—Okay, sure—but they didn’t live through what he did. Is the town so obsessed with the killings that it has spilled over onto these kids? It’s something the movie doesn’t really show us. I just didn’t buy it.

LS: There’s also a some stuff about California condors and Native American mythology that just seemed hokey in the context of this movie.

MA: The teens were largely forgettable and came off like a bunch of walking hip clichés. The lead, Bug (Max Thieriot) wasn’t bad, and he actually grew on me as the movie went on. I found him creepier and creepier, as we began to see sides of him that indicated he just might be the one who’s doing the killing. Thieriot’s performance isn’t bad either. Actually, none of the performers were that bad in this one.

LS: I think you’re being charitable again. Most of the performances here are walking clichés. You can’t blame the actors for the most part – they do what they can with underwritten, lame characters. But Thieriot, in particular, is very grating. And he gets more so as we learn more about him. Bug’s entire life is a series of twists and turns he’s not aware of. From whether or not he was hospitalized in the past, to who his sister is, to who he himself really is. Every revelation is supposed to be a surprise, but instead it just made me dislike this character more. And the scenes where he goes into a strange kind of trance and imitates things other people have said (imitating their voices and mannerisms as well) was completely annoying. I think I actually hated this character.

MA: To me, the bigger problem, sadly, was the screenplay by Wes Craven.

The characters and story seemed to me to be a lame attempt at being hip, an attempt to recapture the cleverness of SCREAM (1996) and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984), but in this case it just doesn’t work, because the story is not believable.

LS: This might be the worst script Craven has written so far. And it shows the influence of frequent Craven collaborator Kevin Williamson (SCREAM, CURSED), whose work I can’t stand. But Craven has done an amazing feat here, he’s written a script that makes Williamson look good in comparison.

MA: I don’t know. CURSED (2005) was pretty bad.

LS: You’re right.

MA: But back to MY SOUL TO TAKE. The characters here weren’t believable at all. We have the ultra-religious girl Penelope (Zena Gray) who is so cliché I felt insulted. You know, you can be religious without acting the way she acts in this one, like she’s from Venus or something.

LS: Poor Penelope! You know, if any Christian groups ever feel the need to protest a movie—they should be going after flicks like this one. MY SOUL TO TAKE presents us with a religious character who is so stereotypical, badly acted and over-the-top, that it’s insulting even to those who aren’t the target. She just seems nuts. She talks only in a kind of badly written “bible-speak” and seems to be some kind of attempt at satire on Craven’s part. Instead, she comes off as a very irritating and unlikable character. When the Ripper finally kills her off, it’s a relief, and yet you wish it had happened sooner.

MA: Then there’s Fang (Emily Meade), a goth girl who seems to run the entire school, bullying and controlling everyone around her like Michael Corleone’s granddaughter. When she first appears in the movie, she comes out of nowhere. She’s nowhere to be found in this story, and all of a sudden, bang! She’s a major player, and then, also out of nowhere, she turns out to be Bug’s sister! If this movie went on any longer, Darth Vader would have shown up to announce that he’s their father!

(DARTH VADER appears on bridge.)

DARTH VADER: Listen guys, I am NOT their father.

MA: That’s good to hear.

DARTH VADER: Join me on the dark side?

LS: Hey, buddy, we’re already there.

DARTH VADER: Really? Then, I guess I’ll be moving on.

MA: If you hurry, you’ll catch Yoda. He crossed this bridge a little while ago.

DARTH VADER: I shall crush the rebellion!

YODA(from other side of bridge): Idiot, you are, and your mama, crush I shall!

DARTH VADER: Why you little…(races towards end of bridge in pursuit.)

LS: Fang is another totally over-the-top character who just doesn’t seem real. There’s one scene where she punches Bug repeatedly, and it almost looks like a UFC brawl all of a sudden! I didn’t understand or beleive this character for a minute.

MA: And what’s with the names? Bug? Fang? Was the shooting title for this one ATTACK OF THE INSECT SNAKE PEOPLE?

The movie gets off to a bad start with an opening that plays like a tutorial on how not to make a good horror movie. It’s the old “you can’t kill me” routine we’ve seen so many times before it’s not funny. The Ripper is shot, stabbed, shot again, blown up, you name it. He should be deader than dead, but like the Energizer Bunny, he just keeps on going.

LS: What is he, Rasputin?!

The prologue scene was absolutely awful. The more things they do to this guy, the more likely he is to suddenly jump up and appear to be unhurt! At the end of the scene, when an ambulance crashes and the supposedly wounded Ripper somehow gets away (his body is nowhere to be found), I wanted to get up and leave the movie theater, and the story really hadn’t even started yet!

MA: There’s also no central villain here, and this certainly hurts the movie. When we see the Ripper, he’s cool-looking. He’s one creepy dude. But we hardly ever see him, and that’s because the movie is too busy making us wonder who the killer is. I mean, it might not be the Ripper at all. It could just be one of the teenagers in a costume. The result is we hardly ever see the Ripper, and when we do, we’re not even sure if he’s the real deal, which is too bad, because a strong villain would have helped this movie.

LS: When the kids have their purging ritual early on, a big part of it is that one of the chosen kids (whose birthday it also is) has to “defeat” the effigy of the Ripper – in this case a giant puppet. With its long hair, spooky face, and leather duster, it looks kind of formidable, but it’s just a puppet. When we see the Ripper in action later, he looks exactly like the hulking puppet. How is this the case? Did the person who created the puppet know exactly what the killer would look like 16 years later? Is it just a costume? Did the puppet come to life? Or is it just a visual from the killer’s perspective (this is how he sees himself?) This is just filmmaking at its worst.

MA: Nor is there much of a hero. The main hero, a police officer, does next to nothing in this movie, and the teens just aren’t defined enough to make them heroic.

LS: I thought Bug was supposed to be the hero – the one we were supposed to sympathize with – although I didn’t find him very sympathetic.

(SPIDER-MAN swings past them.)

SPIDER-MAN: It makes no Spidey-sense for Bug to be the hero. The only bug hero allowed in the movies is yours truly!

LS: Bug-off, Wallcrawler! (throws a rock at him as he swings by)

SPIDER-MAN: Sheesh, just trying to provide some levity. You look an awful lot like one of my villains, by the way.

LS: As for Officer Paterson – the police detective you mentioned – he’s played by Frank Grillo, who played pretty much the same exact role in the recent ABC television series THE GATES. Where he was kind of interesting in the TV show, he’s completely wasted here. His character is not developed at all, and there’s really no point to him in the movie, except to be “the obsessed cop who won’t give up.” Grillo deserved better.

But so did the rest of the cast. I didn’t like one single character in this movie. They were all stereotypes from other teen horror films. Their dialogue and motivations weren’t believable. And the entire story is told in such a superficial, over-the-top way, that you don’t once find yourself being sucked into the story and believing any of it.

MA: The ending of this film, which I thought was horrible—as it’s a tidy neat little package all wrapped up with a pretty bow—tries to convince us that something heroic has happened, but it sure doesn’t feel that way.

LS You’re right, the ending was a complete cheat. I knew who the Ripper was going to be really early on, and I kept hoping I was wrong. But I wasn’t. Any chance for this movie to redeem itself at the end and surprise us was completely wasted.

MA: I did like the photography. I thought the movie looked very good. I loved the shots of the town (a fictional place called Riverton, Massachusetts), and it did look like it was shot in New England.

I liked the image of the railroad bridge in the fog and the scene early on, where one of the teens is attacked by the Ripper on this bridge, was my favorite scene in this movie by far. Sadly, it’s not a very long scene.

But that’s really all I liked. Nothing Craven did as a director in this one did much to scare me, and the writing, the story, I thought was way off. It just wasn’t honed in as much as it needed to be. Take the multiple souls inside the teens for example. There’s a lot that could be done with this. That’s a scary idea. Unfortunately, with the exception of Bug, we don’t really see this concept in action. Had the story concentrated on each teen and each soul inside that teen, then that would have been interesting.

LS: But that would have meant some actual character development.

MA: And, of course, the story couldn’t do this because one of the arguments it was making was the killer might still be alive, and all this soul stuff could be crap and untrue.

LS: MY SOUL TO TAKE was one of the few times where I left a movie theater actually in a foul mood. I felt like I’d been taken for a ride – a bad one at that – and that, on top of that, the driver stole my wallet. I hated the story (like you said, any potentially good ideas were squandered), the characters, the dialogue (which was often hilariously bad) and the directing. I will go so far as saying that, compared to MY SOUL TO TAKE, the TWILIGHT movies seem like art.

MA: Wow! You must have REALLY hated this movie! Worse than TWILIGHT? I dunno, I can’t really agree with you here. The thing with the TWILIGHT movies is I’ve seen worse movies, but very few movies have ever done as good a job boring me to death as the TWILIGHT films. They were dull to the point of insanity.

LS: I thought the trailer for this movie looked bad. I was wrong. The actual movie is ten times worse. This is Wes Craven at rock bottom, and I thought that had happened with CURSED, the awful werewolf movie he did with Kevin Williamson which DIDN’T HAVE ANY WEREWOLVES IN IT.

MY SOUL TO TAKE is downright cynical. It doesn’t treat any of its characters like real people, and it doesn’t presume that the audience has an ounce of intelligence. And we can’t blame Williamson this time, because Craven wrote the script for this one all by himself.

MA: I just didn’t buy MY SOUL TO TAKE. I give it 1 ½ knives. Unless you’re really bored with nothing to do, there’s no need to see this one. Oh yeah. I failed to mention it was in 3D. That should tell you how much of an impact the 3D had here.

LS: This movie was in 3D? Oh yeah. I remember paying an extra four bucks for glasses. However, not once did I feel I was watching a 3D movie. Even the silly old “something jumping out at you” trick wasn’t used here. The only thing you notice is once in a while there’s a bit more depth-perception. Even the 3D is a complete rip-off, because it’s obvious this was not meant to be a 3D movie. There’s a scene in the trailer where a hand lunges out at you – something you think would be an obvious 3D effect —and yet, in the actual movie, it wasn’t. Everything about this movie feels like a cheat.

I didn’t dislike MY SOUL TO TAKE. I despised it. And I’m not giving it any knives at all. In fact, the way I see it, Wes Craven owes me a whole set of knives for sitting through this garbage.

MA: All right then, we’re finished. Let’s get off this bridge before they decide to make a sequel.

LS: If they make a sequel, I swear I’m tossing someone off this bridge.

MA: Remind me to be absent for that review.

(MA & LS walk off bridge and disappear into the fog.)

—END—

Michael Arruda gives MY SOUL TO TAKE - 1 and a half knives

L.L. Soares gives MY SOUL TO TAKE - NO KNIVES!

11 Comments »

THE HAPPENING

Posted in 2008, Cinema Knife Fights, M. Night Shyamalan Movies with tags bad acting, bad script, m. night shyamalan, mark wahlberg, movie, waste of time on December 16, 2009 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: THE HAPPENING (2008)
by Michael Arruda and L. L. Soares

(The scene: A vast field of grass. MICHAEL ARRUDA and L. L. SOARES stand in the middle of the field. A wind suddenly arises and pushes through the tall blades of grass)

LS: Oh no, it’s the wind!!

MA: Run away! Run away!

(They both run around the field, trying to avoid being touched by the wind.)

MA (trembling): Look out for that tree!

(A quick shot of a maple tree.)

(LS stops dead in his tracks.)

MA: What is it? Are you losing focus? Are you receiving signals to kill yourself?

LS: No, I’m realizing how stupid this all is.

MA: I agree. And on that note, why don’t you tell the people about M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie, THE HAPPENING.

LS: Certainly. Although, I wish I didn’t have to. I really can’t believe that I sat through this one with a straight face. I mean, in retrospect, it’s pretty damn absurd. Did he really expect us to swallow this one?

(MA points to the sky. They look up to see cream pies falling from the sky. A pie each hits MA and LS in the face.)

MA (licking cream): I don’t know, but I’ll swallow this. Delicious!

LS (wiping cream from his face): Mine’s lemon meringue! M. Night Shyamalan, the man who gave us THE SIXTH SENSE and SIGNS, now gives us yet another elongated TWILIGHT ZONE episode. This time, it’s called THE HAPPENING. And no, it’s not a party where a bunch of hippies take LSD. If it were, it might actually be entertaining.

The movie begins promisingly enough. All of a sudden, people start acting weird and committing suicide in droves. A woman plunges a hair pin into her throat. A bunch of construction workers leap to their death from a high building. A policeman shoots himself in the head. What the hell is going on? At first, nobody knows, and the country panics. Or rather, the east coast does, since that’s where all this craziness happens. For once, California is spared.

Mark Wahlberg plays a robot – er, a high school science teacher – named Elliot Moore-

MA: I liked Wahlberg. As a teacher myself, I thought he nailed the classroom teacher persona rather well.

LS: Wahlberg is a convincing teacher? Where do you teach – the robot academy? But c’mon, most teachers have to be more animated than this guy!

MA: Maybe you weren’t paying attention (slaps LS’s wrist with a ruler). I found him animated enough.

LS: Anyway, Wahlberg takes part in a mass exodus out of Philadelphia to the suburbs because all these suicides appear to be taking place in the big cities. Along for the ride are his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), math teacher Julian (John Leguizamo), who is also Elliot’s best friend, and Julian’s 8-year old daughter, Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez). They get as far as a small town in the middle of nowhere before the train stops, and everyone has to get off. When asked why, the conductors say they have lost all contact with the outside the world.

Not knowing what to do, the stranded people try to find ways out of town. They gather in a local diner and watch the news. When it’s clear that whatever is killing everyone is branching out from urban areas to small towns, they realize they have to keep moving.

(A giant carrot jumps on LS and they wrestle on the ground. LS throws it off)

LS: Hey, didn’t I see you in an episode of LOST IN SPACE? Get outta here, before I make a salad!!

(CARROT runs away)

LS: Where was I? Oh yeah. Wanting to find his wife, who was headed towards Princeton, Julian separates from the rest of them and leaves his daughter with Elliot. Along the way, Elliott and Alma try to repair their damaged marriage, and bond with little Jess.

At first, everyone thinks that the mass deaths are some kind of terrorist attack, but as it goes on, they realize it’s something much more bizarre. Somehow, the planet earth is rebelling against its human parasites and is killing them off using the toxins of various plants. Normally, I wouldn’t reveal this since it would be a big spoiler. Shyamalan is known for his famous twist endings, after all. But this time around, we find out what’s “happening” pretty early on, and there’s no big twist at the end.

MA: It’s not much of a spoiler. Technically, the film never states with certainty that the plants are responsible. While it is strongly implied, the story leaves open the option that it’s just one of those things that will never be explained. Like your taste in movies, for instance.

LS (sneers and goes on) The toxins are carried on the wind, so every time there’s a big gust of wind, people start acting strange and then killing themselves off. The first symptom is confusion/ disorientation. In the second stage, victims become incoherent. And the third stage is death.

My two main problems with this movie are the characters and the plot. The characters are just about all annoying. Wahlberg plays his role like he’s an android. Deschanel isn’t any more animated. In fact, they don’t seem to show any real emotion until the very end, and by then it’s too late. I don’t get any sense that I know these people, or that I should care about them. Throughout the film, they remain one-dimensional. And there’s something odd about Walhberg trying to play a nice, innocent everyman. He’s just not believable. I’ve liked him in a few movies like BOOGIE NIGHTS and I HEART HUCKABEES. Some directors can just get interesting performances out him. But most can’t.

Other characters along the way include two teenage boys, Josh (Spencer Breslin) and Jared (Robert Baily, Jr.). But I cared even less about them. The only interesting character at all is an insane hermit lady (Betty Buckley, yes the mother from the old 70s show EIGHT IS ENOUGH) who takes them in for awhile and seems very capable of violence.

The plot, as it is, is ludicrous. I really liked the scenes where people kill themselves – I thought they were very effective and the movie starts out really good. Especially powerful were a guy who goes into a lion cage at the zoo and offers himself up as dinner (the lions are happy to oblige), and a guy who turns on a giant riding lawn mower and then lays down in front of it. But no matter how powerful and disturbing these moments are, they’re quickly forgotten so we can move forward with the lame plot.

And once Wahlberg and company figure out that the wind is dangerous, they always try to stay one step ahead of it, which starts to seem incredibly silly. Suddenly, everyone is terrified of the wind! I’ve seen old Roger Corman B-movies that were scarier!

It doesn’t help that Shyamalan feels the need to give us a moral with our story. He’s always been an incredibly preachy director and THE HAPPENING is no exception. His ham-handed pro-environment message actually takes all the fun out the proceedings rather effectively.

MA: I didn’t mind the message, probably because I agree with it, and I didn’t find it all that preachy.

(Behind MA, a group of trees jump and down and cheer.)

LS: As I’ve said before, I really liked Shyamalan’s films THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE. But from SIGNS on, I’ve just lost all my trust in Shyamalan as a director. The stories he has to tell just aren’t very compelling. And his infamous “twists” have become pretty laughable. Any promise this guy showed early on has drifted away on the wind.

One thing that surprised me was that the showing I went to was a full house. You’d think that after getting burned on bad movies like THE VILLAGE and LADY IN THE WATER, audiences would have gotten smart to Shyamalan’s tricks and stopped spending money to see his movies. No such luck.

MA: I wouldn’t worry about this too much. As I walked out of the theater, a man next to me said loudly, “That was horrible!” I had to laugh.

Anyway, I agree with you here. I didn’t like THE HAPPENING either, but not always for the same reasons you didn’t like it. You thought the characters were annoying. I liked them. As I said earlier, I enjoyed Wahlberg. I found having a sensitive lead character in a movie refreshing, rather than the usual macho hero.

LS: It would have worked better with another actor.

MA: I also enjoyed Zooey Deschanel as Alma. I thought she was quirky, and I liked her. I didn’t find them as one-dimensional as you did, and I was caught up in their relationship, although I have to admit that the scene near the end with the two of them expressing their love to each other because they expected to die made me want to throw up.

I also agree with you about Betty Buckley’s performance. She scared the crap out of me! It says something that a crazy old lady is scarier in this movie than the film’s main menace.

To me, the acting wasn’t the problem here. It was the storytelling.

This movie worked best as a series of images. The people falling from the sky— scary. That image definitely evoked horrible memories from 9/11 and the bodies falling from the towers. People hanging themselves from trees, and the images you mentioned, like the man at the zoo with the lions. These images worked. They were truly creepy! However, you can’t make a successful movie based only on a few creepy images.

LS: That’s exactly what I said. The suicide imagery is very effective. But the actual story stinks.

MA: See, I don’t think it’s the story. I have no problem with a plot about wind and plants being a menace. I thought it was creative. The problem I have is that everything just stalls out.

LS: It stalls out because shots of plants and the wind aren’t compelling. And they aren’t scary.

MA: I disagree. I thought those shots were creepy and set up a mood that was ripe for a kick-ass second half.

(MA picks an apple off a tree and it suddenly has an angry face)

TREE: Do I go around picking things off you?

MA: If I had an apple dangling from my arm you might! Go back to Oz!

The story was set up perfectly by all the images we found scary, but when it came time for the payoff, it just didn’t deliver. At the very moment when things should be picking up, they die out. There’s no pacing towards the end. Okay, it’s the wind, it’s the plants, but what do these phenomena do? I’ll save you the cost of a ticket— nothing. But they could have. The first half of THE HAPPENING is crafted very meticulously and works, but by the time we get to the farmhouse, all those images and creepy scenes we enjoyed are nowhere to be found. The only thing scary is Betty Buckley as that crazy old lady. The story at that point needed to be taken to a higher level. Something REALLY scary should have come out of the woodwork for the last third of this movie, but it doesn’t.

To use a baseball analogy, it’s akin to loading the bases with no outs, and then having the scoring threat fizzle and only scoring one run on a harmless ground out.

LS: A baseball analogy? Are you trying to put me to sleep?

MA: Hmm, there’s an idea!

THE HAPPENING would have worked better as a 4-hour TV miniseries a la one of the Stephen King adaptations, where we could have followed a bunch of characters on their exodus to safety. It would have been more compelling, and we would have had time to learn more about the threat. Of course, such a story would still need a better payoff.

LS: They’re also making a big deal out of the fact that THE HAPPENING is rated R, like this is something important. Wow, finally a Shyamalan movie aimed at adults! Not really. The only reason it got an R is because of the gore of some of the suicides. And even that is done quickly – for the most part he doesn’t dwell on the more gruesome scenes. This is especially ironic since Shyamalan was the guy, back in 1999, who ushered in the era of the PG-13 horror movie with one of the few good horror flicks with that rating, THE SIXTH SENSE.

MA: I also thought the R-rating hype was humorous. This film played much more like a PG-13 movie. Even the scenes you mentioned were hardly of the intensity we usually see in an R rated movie.

(THE LORAX jumps out from behind a bush)

LORAX: I’m the Lorax, I speak for the trees!

LS: Okay, okay. We’re listening. What do the trees have to say?

LORAX: (blushes) Um…I forgot.

MA: Oh, go away!

I’ve been down on Shyamalan’s recent movies as well, but to give him some credit, I thought this story was creative, and the movie creepy. It just didn’t have the intensity to sustain it to the end. The feel of this movie reminded me somewhat of Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS (1963), taking an otherwise harmless thing (birds then, wind and plants here) and making them a threat. I’m not a big fan of THE BIRDS, but this film came towards the end of Hitchcock’s career (sort of- he worked for another 13 years but only made 5 films in that span) and certainly didn’t tarnish the immense body of work the famed director left behind.

LS: What are you talking about? THE BIRDS is a classic! Hitchcock took everyday creatures we don’t think twice about and made them genuinely scary. How can you compare a powerful film like that this flaccid flick?

MA: Simple. Because THE BIRDS isn’t all that powerful. I don’t place THE BIRDS among Hitchcock’s best.

LS: And you comment on MY taste in movies? THE BIRDS is terrific! It’s funny that you should mention Hitchcock, though. One thing they have in common is that Shyamalan loves to make clever cameos in his films. This time I didn’t remember seeing him, so I made sure to wait for the credits – and yep, Shyamalan plays “Joey.” Who is Joey? He’s a character who has a crush on Deschanel’s character and keeps calling her cell phone. We never actually see Joey, but at one point we hear his voice on the phone saying “Hello, Hello.” How clever!

MA: Good job. I completely missed that.

LS: Well, I guess this is preferable to LADY IN THE WATER, where Shyamalan gave himself the role of savoir of the human race!

MA: Getting back to my previous point about comparing this to THE BIRDS. Don’t get me wrong. I like THE BIRDS better than THE HAPPENING, but the point I was making was that Hitchcock could be forgiven for making an average thriller because he had made so many extraordinary movies already. On the contrary, I’m not so forgiving with Shyamalan. His body of work is still very small. While he certainly is talented, he needs to make a string of solid movies in order for him to deserve the amount of hype which usually surrounds his films.

THE HAPPENING is not that movie. It’s about as solid as a gust of wind.

LS: It’s not even a gust. It’s a soft and boring breeze. A minor film for a minor director. At this point, he has more failures than successes.

What’s sad is that Shyamalan does have talent. His movies always have at least a few very compelling scenes, and he always hires talented cinematographers – his movies look great. But he can’t seem to follow through with his plots and give us something truly satisfying. I still think that the big problem is that he’s a good director, but an awful writer. Instead of writing his own scripts, He should leave that to someone with more ability. I think if he just stuck to directing, he’d turn out a much better product.

And I actually find it frustrating that this guy continues to get funding for his movies, and still gets wide releases, while true masters like Romero and Argento have to take the crumbs of limited release. Even Romero’s so-so new flick DIARY OF THE DEAD is a work of genius compared to THE HAPPENING. I just don’t understand how studios continue to get hoodwinked by this guy.

MA: One answer may be that a film with an environmental message is probably a better sell than a blood and guts movie about zombies. I wouldn’t call Shyamalan a minor director either, or even a poor writer. He’s too talented. I’m confident he’s got more work worthy of the term “classic” left in him.

LS: Care to put that in writing?

(LS hands MA a pen. As MA prepares to write on a tree, a loud growl is heard, and the tree suddenly is holding axes in its branches.)

MA: Um, some other time.

(They run away)