May 21, 2012

Wild Zero

By Wednesday's Child

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I think Wild Zero is a vehicle for an actual rock band called Guitar Wolf, a Japanese punk band who look like American 50s greasers. They’re like the Ramones, except not ugly. I can only think of two other such rock band vehicles: Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park and Dark Floors. I’d rank this in between the two, since Dark Floors scared the shit out me and Kiss…Park is crap.

Anyway, the band has a dispute with a ridiculous-looking club owner that results in a Mexican standoff, until a doofus named Ace accidentally provides a distraction that allows the band to win the argument. The lead singer gives Ace a whistle to call for help and they become blood brothers. Different and previously unconnected people fight zombies caused by either an alien invasion, or meteorites, the next day. It takes 20 minutes to see a zombie, but only 20 more until someone figures out that you shoot them in the head. Ace meets the love of his life, then discovers she is a he. Which is fine, but the movie makes a point out of it so I’m including it in my synopsis. Guitar Wolf in spirit form tells him not to be an asshole because love is love. One character happens to be an arms dealer. Eventually everyone meets up for a zombiethon.

It’s a cute, sweet love story with decent, head-exploding gore and zombies, right? More of a “look at the ridiculousness of this set piece” than “I’m laughing until I pee” comedy, and pretty much a ready-made, out of the box cult classic.  None of the actors appear to have had that silly operation where they sew their eyelids open, which is a plus, but I don’t listen to punk unless I’m being real nice to a punk fan I just started dating (and I’m married now and don’t have to be nice) so that’s a minus. I enjoyed the mid-movie argument about who had seen a zombie movie when they were trying to figure out what to do. The women were all attractive in a non-plastic way. I mean, you can’t complain about me not getting the movie if I admit that I don’t get it, unless there’s nothing to get. I would say that this is the least Japanese Japanese movie I’ve ever seen, but can you really separate the country and culture from the movie? Oh, well. It’s safe to say that if you like zombie comedies, you’ll like this.

I don’t fucking know, y’all. I mean, here I am, I’ve lived my whole life in the American south, but I’m as liberal as you can possibly be about anything an American can be liberal about, but due to economics and laziness (but not a total lack of first-world privilege) most of my multicultural experiences come from people who have traveled here from other places and from movies. All that is to say, I am not worldly enough to put Wild Zero in context, but I’m not insensitive enough to dismiss it entirely. I know enough not to bite the hand that feeds me, especially when that hand is slinging electrified guitar picks that can kill a horde of zombies.

7 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in 00s Horror, Japanese horror, Zombies

May 18, 2012

Frankenstein’s Daughter

By Wednesday's Child

Frankenstein’s Daughter is a 50s drive-in monster movie. The best you can do with a flick like this is enjoy the 50s music, clothes, hair, and acting, and make fun of the script. I’m usually at a loss when it comes to writing about 50s horror, but I do enjoy watching it, if for no other reason than to enjoy a rousing version of the MST3K home game.

The producer obviously said, “I want a Frankenstein monster, and I don’t care about anything that leads up to it.” The synopsis therefore doesn’t matter, but I’ll give it to you anyway.

A really stupid old scientist and his equally brilliant niece Trudy live with the uncle’s assistant, Mr. Frank, and the assistant’s assistant who is posing as the gardener. Frank is actually Mr. Frankenstein, the grandson of the original mad scientist. The title refers to the monster Frank makes out of Trudy’s bitchy cockteasing frenemy Susie, even though the monster is obviously played by a man. But there are two monsters, because for no good reason I can determine, Frank keeps dosing Trudy with some kind of Jekyll/Hyde drug that makes her turn really ugly and run around outside in her bathing suit scaring people.

Some of the common Frankenstein tropes are here, although the brilliantly tragic subtext of the original story is completely missing. This Frankenstein has the usual belief that his entire family is made up of geniuses who need to be vindicated, but there’s no other reason for wanting to create life, and he’s not at all a sympathetic character. In fact, no one is. And without the subtext, all you have is some asshole who woke up one morning and decided to sew a bunch of different dead people’s body parts together and shock them back to life.

So if you like Frankenstein movies, 50s movies, or movies with a lame song and dance number that pops up in the middle of the film, you’re in luck. Everyone else can either sit back and enjoy the nostalgia, wait for the annoying friend character to get pushed into the pool, mock the movie mercilessly, or some combination of the three.

5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in 50s horror, B-movie, Frankenstein Friday

May 17, 2012

The Unholy

By Wednesday's Child

Before I get into the specifics of The Unholy, in the interest of saving lives, we need to make a new horror movie rule. I have seen this rule flaunted in too many horror movies, and it has caused the deaths of countless horny, stupid characters. I’m laying it on the line, so here it is: a beautiful, naked woman is never going to appear out of nowhere and let you touch her. Not if you are Bill Clinton, not if you are Mick Jagger, not if you are Edward Sparklepants Cullen, not even if you are a pile of cocaine in Motley Crue’s hotel room circa 1983. If a beautiful, naked woman appears from thin air, your ass had better start running, because she is a demon.

Back to the movie. This particular naked lady demon has killed two priests in two years in the same church in New Orleans. Now, Father Michael (Ben Cross) has been assigned to the church to fight the demon because he has on his resume the experience of falling from a great height without being injured, having been thrown out a hotel window by one of the lesser T-Birds from Grease 2. The demon tempts people with the sin they most desire, then kills them in the act of committing that sin. In my case this would probably be signing a three-year lease on a Cadillac, but for these priests it’s touching naked ladies.

This would probably be most enjoyable schlock if the dialogue wasn’t even worse than what comes out of the “script” of an Italian horror movie.  This dialogue is stinky. Ben Cross can’t save this crap with the help of Hal Holbrook as the archbishop and Ned Beatty as a homicide cop, never mind a club owner played by the guy from Death Bed who gets the skin flayed off of his hands. I mean, this dialogue makes Dardano Sacchetti look like Tennessee Williams.

But I’m a sucker for supernatural horror, and I can’t totally hate a movie that has discount dry ice in the sanctuary, hallucinations, nightmares, bleeding eyeballs, midgets in monster suits, a nightclub full of devil worshippers, a really disgusting instance of reverse communion, a nod to 1977′s The Sentinel fully vigorous enough to give you whiplash, and a long-distance phone call from hell! And this was in 1988, when long distance meant you were gonna be hurting when that bill came! At least they didn’t call collect.

What does this mean for our 8-pack rankings? I have to put this one above Class of 1999, even though it’s probably a worse movie if you look at it objectively, because I have such a bias towards demonic horror. And with that we come to the end of our journey through the 8-pack. The rankings, from bottom to top: Ghoulies 3, Class of 1999, The Unholy, Slaughter High, Waxwork, 976-EVIL 2, Chopping Mall, and C.H.U.D. 2. This weekend, I’ll be off to WalMart to pick up another horror pack to fill up some more Thursdays.

Before I go, has anyone ever wondered why there’s never been a big budget, four-star horror movie filmed in New Orleans? I might be missing a movie due to my Swiss cheese memory, but all I can think of is The Beyond, which, although I love it, is one whose flaws you have to overlook. I know some people make a case for Angel Heart, and if you try to tell me Interview With the Vampire is great I’ll just order you off of my lawn, but New Orleans is possibly the creepiest place in America, and it deserves an Exorcist/Rosemary’s Baby quality film.  Someone get to work on a screenplay to fill this need.

11 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in 80s horror, B-movie, demons, Lionsgate Horror Movie 8 Pack, Thrifty Thursday

May 16, 2012

Society

By Wednesday's Child

This is undoubtedly the most nauseating movie I’ve ever seen. Not because the practical effects are realistic, although they are impressive, but more because of my ability to suspend my disbelief and really buy into the idea of humanoid, shapeshifting, incestuous, rubbery sexing people-eaters.

This tale of a suspicious teenager, adopted into a family of such creatures who are part of the titular Society, was supposedly a big hit in Europe. In the U.S. it’s more of a little-known cult movie. This is probably because the film is the most graphic indictment of capitalism ever to grace the screen, and Europe is known for having a generally more socialist bent. And because in the U.S., if you’re not rich, chances are you believe you have the chance to become rich.

There’s a huge temptation, possibly of the sour grapes variety, to view all those with money as some sort of evil creatures who want to figuratively consume the poor, and that is certainly one reading of the film. I’d go further and say that the film is almost too kind, and that the evil glee the Society shows is born of a fantasy among the poor that the type of decadent rich people the film portrays actually consider the poor at all. Then, of course, if you’re a conservative, you could say that Society stands for the leftists who would prefer for everyone’s resources to be sacrificed for the good of all rather than focusing on the individual. It’s whatever you prefer, really.

More likely, in my opinion, there are some nice rich people who worked hard and deserve their good fortune, and some mean ones who are buttheads. Or shapeshifters.

Or you might say this is an interesting, campy, satirical body horror cult classic. Now I’m going to drink a Coke and continue to hope that I don’t actually throw up.

7 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in 80s horror, body horror, cult movie

May 15, 2012

Meteorites!

By Wednesday's Child

Has this ever happened to you? You’re watching a TV movie and thinking to yourself, “This would be great if it only had more Australians struggling to do American accents!” Well, then you should see Meteorites!

Meteorites! has classic plots colliding like falling space rocks into the Earth: every disaster movie cliche you can imagine rockets unstoppably towards a former cop who can’t get over the death of his partner and a greedy mayor who doesn’t want to warn the townsfolk of the meteorites! because there’s a festival going on. As a bonus, the festival is a UFO festival. There’s also a sleazy tabloid reporter, a home invasion, teen romance, a beauty pageant, a hermit with a heart of gold, and a person who gets killed by one of the meteorites! leaving only a pair of smoking shoes behind. And if all that isn’t enough for you, Luke Duke himself, Tom Wopat, is on the scene. I loved this movie! It’s fast-paced, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. You could even say that, at least with me, it was a big hit.

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in 90s sci fi, cheese, television, TV Tuesday

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