L. L. SOARES

 

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MORE MOVIE REVIEWS

Here are some more past movie reviews I wrote. Most of these were written for the now-defunct webzine WEIRD TIMES and first appeared there in print in 2003 and 2004:

 

|||||||||| EYES WITHOUT A FACE||||||||||||

I have to admit, I love rediscovered gems. I remember back in 1989, when they re-released Herk Harvey's 1962 classic, CARNIVAL OF SOULS for a brief run at art house theaters. At the time, I hadn't seen the movie before, but I had heard about it for years. When I finally saw it, and on the big screen to boot, I was blown away by it. The fact that this movie got a second chance to shine was a real thrill for a lot of horror fans.

Right now, a similar re-release is happening with the 1960 French film, LES YEAX SANS VISAGE, known on these shores as EYES WITHOUT A FACE, directed by Georges Franju. This is another film I've wanted to see for a long time - while it is often sighted as a classic of the horror genre, it has been out of print on video for a long time now, and has yet to come out on DVD. This was one of those films that I was chomping at the bit to see, but which I didn't have access to until now.

EYES WITHOUT A FACE is a minor masterpiece that definitely deserves to be sought out by horror fans. Some of the best horror movies are the ones that focus more on atmosphere and visuals, and in that respect, Eyes Without a Face is very effective. It is a haunting, at times even poetic, film.

It begins with a woman disposing of a body in the river. We later learn that this is Louise, the assistant to Dr. Genessier, an expert in reconstructive surgery. Louise had once been one of the doctor's patients, and is now his loyal servant, even willing to break the law for him.

As for the reason behind the cadaver, we learn that Dr. Genessier 's daughter, Christiane, was in a car crash which hideously damaged her face. The good doctor goes about acquiring other faces to give to his daughter. Unfortunately, the process results in murder, and when Christiane's body rejects the new flesh, it needs to be repeated.

While she waits for a suitable "donor," Christiane walks around their mansion, wearing an expressionless mask that gives her a ghostly appearance. Scenes where she just moves around the house in her mask are visually arresting.

As events proceed, we wonder if she will ever get a new face of her own, and how many donors Dr. Genessier will have to go through before he finally succeeds. And what about the angry dogs caged in the basement, which Genessier uses as guinea pigs?

There isn't an excessive amount of gore, but there is a well done surgery scene which reminded me a lot of similar scenes on the plastic surgery show NIP/TUCK (on the FX channel). Aside from this, though, the film is rather subtle.

As the police get closer to solving the case, Dr. Genessier races to finally solve the riddle of giving Christiane a face she won't reject. Will he do it in time? I won't give anything away, except to say that I really liked the ending of this one.

That Franju's quiet little horror film has been given a good dusting off and a chance to be seen again is a very good thing, but it is only appearing in very limited release, and it probably won't be coming to a theater near you unless you live in a big city. However, since they went to the trouble to release it to theaters at all, can a definitive DVD version be far behind? This movie has been lost to American movie lovers for a long time. It's about time we had the chance to finally see what the film historians have been talking about.

 

||||||||||| DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004)||||||||||||

Let's get something straight right off the bat about the new DAWN OF THE DEAD movie. It is not a remake of George Romero's 1978 classic. Aside from the mall, and lots of hungry zombies, this is a different movie entirely.

However, since the comparisons are inevitable (both films do share the same title, after all) let's look at why Romero's original is such a classic. Despite a low budget, Romero had a great script, solid actors, and characters you really cared about. When someone died in the original DAWN OF THE DEAD, you were affected. The raw look of the movie also added to its sense of atmosphere - that this might actually be happening in the real world - which showed what a major talent Romero was, transcending his own budgetary limitations.

Also, Tom Savini's special effects were amazing. There was a no-holds barred attitude towards gore in the original - remember, when Romero's film was first released it got no rating due to violence. They released it anyway and used the lack of rating as a marketing point. This was a pretty ballsy move back in 1978 (and it would probably be even more ballsy today), but it was also in sync with the spirit of independent filmmaking that Romero was a part of.

There were layers in the first movie. It was much more than just about zombies and scares. There was a very strong sense of humor to the proceedings, especially scenes that focused on the zombies themselves, wandering around the mall. There was also a satirical point to the whole thing. Romero was making a statement about consumerism, about the society he saw around him at the time. And things haven't changed very much since then.

Of course, all these extra layers of meaning have been jettisoned in the new version.

This time around, the dead start to rise again one morning, hungry and violent. Nobody knows why. Things happen fast as Sara Polly's nurse meets up with a cop (Ving Rhames) while running away, and they find three more survivors (including Jake Weber, whose name you might not recognize, but who also played Dr. Crower in one of my favorite shows, AMERICAN GOTHIC). In no time at all, these five people are standing outside of a mall, thinking this might just be their salvation from the horrors around them. Once inside, they have to deal with three security guards who aim to make the mall their own little fiefdom. Then a truckload of new people show up - with at least two who have been bitten by the zombies. That's when things start getting dangerous again.

They sure have an easy time of taking over the mall in the new film. In the original version, they had to barricade all the entrances and then get rid of all the zombies wandering around inside. This time, it's been done for them by the time they find the mall. Also this time around, the zombies move fast and animal-like, like the ones in 28 Days Later. I don't know why, but for some reason the slow-moving zombies in Romero's original worked better for me. They seemed harmless and kind of silly at times, the way they stumbled around, but once they got their hands on you, you were hamburger. Maybe the speeded up version is safer too, since you don't get to see their carnage as closely.

One thing in the new movie's favor is that, for a slick production, there is a surprising emphasis on characters here. You don't care about them as much as the original (for one thing, there are too many of them now), but they aren't all throw-aways either, which is unusual since characterization is often one of the first things jettisoned in a Hollywood horror movie.

There's liberal use of violence, including a squirm-inducing chainsaw scene. Compared to the original film, though, it's feeble, Romero didn't get a rating for his original for a reason. He had scenes of people being pulled apart and entrails being ripped out. There's nothing that graphic here. But it's a movie that deserves its R rating and it's not shy about showing a little blood.

One odd change. In the new film, after someone dies from a bullet wound and it is not clear whether it's a headshot, another character says that you only come back if you died from a zombie bite, and that appears to be the case. But in Romero's film all the dead came back, and the only way to remedy it was a shot to the skull. I don't think the new rules are an improvement. It also brings up a "chicken and the egg" argument about where did the first zombie come from if no one was there to bite him? Also, if it has to be a bite, then how did most of the world turn into zombies over the course of just one night?

Oh, and make sure to stay through all the end credits. Once they roll, the movie is not over, and you may miss something important. This ending sequence is also pretty effective - probably because its filmed on video and jettisons the slicker (i.e. safer) look of the rest of the film.

Is it worth going to see? Well, it's fast, it's bloody and, for what it is, it works. Then again, I'm a big fan of the original and I went into this movie with low expectations, expecting it to suck, and it was better than I'd expected. But I don't think the name of this thing should be DAWN OF THE DEAD. It doesn't have the storytelling skill or the ambition of Romero's film. It just hasn't earned the name.

I liked it better than 28 DAYS LATER, though, which seemed similar to me in a lot of ways, but which, in the long run, seemed like an art movie director slumming in the horror genre. All I can hope is that this movie does well enough to get a studio to finance the real deal -another George Romero Dead movie - which is long overdue, and maybe even get Hollywood looking around for other interesting zombie properties, like Brian Keene's novel THE RISING, which would make one helluva flick!

 

||||||||||| HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES||||||||||||

I've gotta admit, I was waiting a long time for this one. After all the hype about Universal being too afraid to release HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, and Rob Zombie having to find another distributor (Lion's Gate), there was no way a movie could live up the reputation this one had. Despite some flaws, however, it's a lot of fun.

Why was I so excited about this one? Well, ya' see, my favorite time periods for horror movies are the 1930's and the 1970's. The 30's were when Universal were at the height of their powers, churning out classics like the original FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA and THE MUMMY, one after another. These are amazing movies that still hold up just fine. They're studies in light and mood and atmosphere, and despite the restrictions of the time, they are powerful stuff. Then the 70's were when the studios lost their domination over movies, and independent filmmakers started flexing their muscles. It was a time of George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD, Tobe Hooper's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and Wes Craven's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. Suddenly horror was actually disturbing! It was intense and violent and there weren't any limits anymore.

Do you remember the first time you saw the original TEXAS CHAINSAW? I've got to admit, that first time we see Leatherface, when he pulls that metal door to the side and hits one of the guy in the head with his hammer, and he just drops to the floor and starts spasming - it's one of the most intense scenes in horror movie history. I mean, that really scared you! It was unexpected, it was severe, and it went further than you were used to seeing on the big screen. No matter how many times I've seen CHAINSAW since, I can't recapture the way I felt the first time I saw that scene. But I remember how powerful it was.

The bad news is that HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES is no way in the same league as CHAINSAW, but it's definitely a homage to it. And if Zombie's movie seems a little too over the top at times, and the humor a little too much (verging on self-parody), he can be forgiven for his shortcomings. If the balance of humor and horror is a little off sometimes, at least he tried to juggle the two, and it's not that easy. At least he had enough ambition to do something that's a breath of fresh air.

After the 80's turned the slasher film into generic, assembly-line product, and the 90's brought us the ironic wink wink of SCREAM (Wes! What happened!!), it's been a long time since we got to experience some real bonafide horror when going to the movies. This is hardcore horror. Distriburing imagery, hopeless situations, blood and cruelty. This is the goods that have been absent too long from the cookie-cutter product Hollywood has been spoonfeeding us. Fuck pablum! I want some meat and potatoes!

Horror is supposed to make you uncomfortable. And while there have been a rash of interesting subtle horror films lately (from THE SIXTH SENSE to THE OTHERS to THE RING), there hasn't been much hardcore horror to fill the gullets of those of us who grew up in the 70's.

HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES may not be an absolute fucking feast, but it's a pretty good meal after such a long wait.

The plot is basic as all hell. Two couples traveling across country looking for weird roadside attractions comes across Capt. Spaulding's Museum of Horrors. The good Captain tells them about the site where local serial killer, Dr. Satan, was hanged. It's a short drive from the Museum, so the couples go to check it out. From there, they stumble across a rather insane family in the middle of nowhere after their tire blows out (heh heh). But it ain't so much about the plot. It's about the execution. Sure it's derivative as hell, but Rob Zombie grabs the ball and runs with it.

There are a lot of cool actors in this one. There's Sid Haig (the great 70's actor who was in everything from SPIDERBABY with Lon Chaney, Jr. to COFFY with Pam Grier), in full clown makeup as Capt. Spaulding, Karen Black (70's staple and star of classics such as TRILOGY OF TERROR) and Bill Mosley (Chop Top from TEXAS CHAINSAW 2). Even a cool new face: Walt Goggins, who plays Shane on one of my fave shows, THE SHIELD, appears as a no-nonsense deputy.

Like I said, the flaws mostly revolve around the balance of horror and humor. Sometimes the humor verges on self-parody, and the crazy family seems a little too over the top at times, but it's a definite homage to stuff like CHAINSAW (they even got a Grampa!), and you'll laugh as much as you scream. Although, I gotta admit, it could have been a lot scarier. (But I'll reserve final judgment for the uncut DVD version).

Some of the stylistic elements reveal Rob Zombie's roots as a music video director, too, like his frequent use of negatives, animation, old movie clips and slo-mo. Some of it works, but some it comes off as a bit too self-conscious. But this is Zombie's first feature film as a director. And frankly, I thought it was a kick-ass debut, showing this guy has a lot of potential for the future. He's not quite as successful as a screenwriter, though. Maybe next time, it wouldn't hurt if he had a tighter, scarier script.

But, hell, once things get gruesome, you're in for a non-stop rollercoaster ride. And as long as you can forgive the lack of logic in some parts, you're going to find this movie to be a whole lotta fun.

RUN RABBIT RUN!


||||||||||| MAY||||||||||||

There's a lot to like about the new movie MAY. It's about a lonely girl who never really learned how to behave normally in the outside world, and her attempts to make friends. Unfortunately, she has a real problem maintaining relationships.

Angela Bettis is great in the title role, and it's to her credit that she keeps May Canady likeable throughout, even when she's doing nasty stuff with scissors and scalpels. You really grow to care about her and want things to work out well for her. But you just know they won't. This is being billed as a horror movie, after all.

May works as a veterinary assistant at an animal hospital. While on her lunch break, May spots a mechanic, Adam, who works across the street (played by Jeremy Sisto, who's been poking up a lot lately, between playing Billy on the HBO show SIX FEET UNDER and also appearing recently in WRONG TURN). She notices that Adam has beautiful hands, and finds him very attractive. But she's not at all sure how to make contact with him, so she starts to follow him around.

In her attempt to get Adam's attention, she also undergoes a makeover. She gets contact lenses; she puts on make-up. Slowly she builds up her confidence level. But her first contact with Adam comes in an awkward scene in a restaurant. When he falls asleep at his table, May sneaks over and rubs her face against his hands. (Oh, she also has this fetish about people touching her face - a desperate need for human contact).

He wakes up and is not fully sure what happened, but he finds her attractive, and this leads to a few dates, which get progressively weirder. In fact, early on, she asks Adam if he finds her weird, and he says "Yeah, I do. But I like weird. A lot."

This guy has no fucking idea what he's getting into.

He thinks she means she has dark tastes like he does, with his Argento obsession (he has to leave after they have lunch one afternoon to go see Argento's TRAUMA" playing at a local theater, and he has a photo of the girl with needles taped to her eyes from Argento's OPERA). In one touching scene, they use a stage knife to take turns pretending to stab one another, and it's actually an effective form of foreplay.

But things get much weirder from there, too much so for poor Adam, who bails (and proves that he isn't half as "into weird" as he claimed to be). Outside her door, in the hallway, he then hears her shouting at Suzie.

Oh yeah, Suzie. Suzie is a porcelain doll who, for many years, is May's only friend. Her mother gave her the doll when she was a child, and to make things even more twisted, she's not allowed to ever take it out of the glass case it comes in. You could tell her mother was strange when, in flashback, the mother winces and gets angry when May opens her birthday gift (Suzie) and doesn't open the wrapping paper the right way, thus "ruining" it. May's mother was probably the kind of woman who puts plastic covers on all the furniture, too. The connection between May and Suzie is very strong, obviously because May sees Suzie as another version of herself, always unable to really touch another person.

So, May wants Adam back but doesn't know how about getting him. At the same time, Polly (wonderfully played by Anna Farris of SCARY MOVIE, the new receptionist at the animal hospital where May works, starts to come on to May after working hours. Being so hungry for love, she starts up a relationship with her, too, but this runs into problems when she catches Polly with other women. Suddenly, May doesn't feel so special anymore.
It's at this point that May kind of snaps and she sets about "finding" a friend that won't hurt her anymore.

The funny thing is, the May we see early on, the one who is awkward and has glasses, is the good May. She's odd but sweet. It isn't until later on, when May undergoes her makeover and becomes more attractive and self-confident (and therefore "normal") that she shows her dark side off.

Her first victim is a punk played by James Duval (from Greg Araki's movies), and he has a tattoo that tells us exactly where things are going. In fact, while I found the ending a bit predictable, but it worked. And it's an interesting variation on 70's/80's horror films like MANIAC and DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE.

There's also a strange interlude where May volunteers to help with a class of blind children. At first, it seems totally unnecessary, but in retrospect, it does have imagery that resonates within the rest of the film, especially the scene where May brings Suzie in for "show and tell" and her glass case finally gets shattered.

Bettis also played CARRIE in the recent television version of Stephen King's classic. While I wasn't a big fan of TV movie - I thought Brian DePalma's original film was just fine and didn't need a remake - I thought Bettis did a convincing and sympathetic job in the role, and she shines in much the same way here, playing another damaged girl who's capable of being quite dangerous.

Director Lucky McKee did a fine job on this, his feature film debut. To say I liked May would be an understatement. I thought this was a solid, well-acted horror movie, and one that tried to do things a little differently. For some reason it reminded me most of another story of angst-ridden girls, Ginger Snaps, and like that movie, this one delivers the goods and is definitely worth checking out.

 

||||||||||| BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR||||||||||||

Back in 1985, a little movie came out, with little fanfare, called RE-ANIMATOR. I remember seeing it in a theater in a little town I'd never been to before. The only thing I had to go on was that it was based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft. Beyond that, I had no idea what I was in for.

I think I was hooked as soon as Richard Band's theme music began.

While I figured that the movie probably didn't have much in common with the source material (Lovecraft would have been appalled at the nudity alone), it was an incredibly entertaining film on its own merits. A big reason for this was the central performance, the part of Dr. Herbert West, as played by Jeffrey Combs, an actor I had never heard of back in '85. He played Dr. West as a fanatic whose only interest in life was raising the dead. This could easily have been a one-note character, but Combs added a dark, deadpan humor to the role, and made Herbert West all his own. It also didn't hurt that the first film had David Gale as Dr. Carl Hill, West's arch-enemy, in another amazing performance.

RE-ANIMATOR went on to to become a big cult movie, warranting a double-disk DVD "Special Edition" earlier this year. And Herbert West, as portrayed by Jeffrey Combs, has gone on to become a legendary character in horror cinema. The movie spawned a sequel, BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR, which reunited Combs and Gale (but which went straight to video). While the first film was directed with manic glee by Stuart Gordon, the sequel was directed by Brian Yuzna (who produced the first one). It was fun, but paled in comparison to the first one. Now Yuzna is back, directing a second sequel, BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR, which actually had a short release in some small theaters across the U.S.

Taking the train to a neighborhood I had never been to before, to see Beyond Re-Animator in a small theater that mostly shows foreign films and the occasional horror or exploitation movie, I felt a strong sense of déjà vu.

This one is "Herbert West Goes To Prison." It starts out with one of West's re-animated dead guys breaking into a house and killing a girl. Her brother, who she was babysitting at the time, witnesses the murder, and also finds a vial of the glowing green fluid Herbert West uses to raise the dead. The kid grows up to become the prison doctor at the institution where West is serving time. He wants to follow in West's footsteps and does everything he can to help West to further his experiments (I guess it doesn't matter than West was responsible for the death of his sister).

This one was a lot of fun. It's always great to see Jeffrey Combs on film, especially when he is playing his most famous role. And he's as deadpan funny as ever (although there didn't seem to be enough of him this time for some reason). This time around, West has figured out a way to save the electric spark which is the soul leaving the body, and he's found a way to put that spark back into the re-animated dead (soul transference!) - the idea being to give them real consciousness again instead of just being mindless, violent zombies.

Dr. West's experiments lead to a prison riot, during which dead prisoners, guards and the warden himself are all re-animated by West's famous green fluid. It's total anarchy by the end, including a man who's missing from the waist down, a (living) prisoner who mainlines the green goop until it rips him apart (and he still wants more!), and a re-animated penis being chased around the prison by a re-animated rat! Also, the prison doctor's girlfriend, a newspaper reporter, gets raised from the dead with the soul of the sadistic warden inside her (it gets real messy from there).

Like I said, it's not in the same league with the original, but it's fun on its own. And the cast is pretty good, despite that fact that the movie was made in Spain with mostly unknown Spanish actors. Obviously this was done to save money. I missed the late David Gale as Dr. Hill, though. There wasn't a strong enough villain in this one to take his place.

Yuzna (who also directed another favorite horror film of mine, the underrated classic Society) does a servicable job here, and I enjoyed this movie throughout. It's not a masterpiece, but it's a very enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half.

This movie is going to be hard to find in theaters (where I am it was just playing in one theater, out in the middle of nowhere, for one week only), but it should be coming out on DVD very soon . If you're a fan of the original, this one is definitely worth a rental.

 

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||||||||||| THE MATRIX TRILOGY: A CRITIQUE||||||||||||

(Originally appeared in HELLNOTES, December 18, 2003)

 

I actually enjoyed the first MATRIX movie. Even though the bulk of its ideas were already cyberpunk novel clichés by the time the movie was made, it seemed like something fresh and new on the big screen. The basic premise, that this world is a dream, dates at least as far back as Plato's allegory of the Cave. In this case, our sleeping selves are in a far future dominated by sentient machines, who use comatose humans as batteries to fuel their machine cities. In our world, computer hacker Neo (Keanu Reeves) learns the truth and is awakened in the future in order to aid the human rebels there in their war against the machines. What the first film lacked in originality, it more than made up for in style.

Since the first film, THE MATRIX has become almost more of a phenomenon than a series of movies. Unfortunately, this isn't always a good thing.

I liked the first film because it had a solid story, and it worked well as a single, self-contained film. MATRIX: RELOADED, the second film in the series, took a different tack, with a bigger emphasis on action. The story this time focused more on Neo as a messiah for future mankind, and the filmmmakers, the Wachowski Brothers, seemed all too eager to expand on these "deep" concepts of the first movie, and end up veering into pretention. Everything was suddenly being played out in BIG letters. Everything was important. Neo held the fate of the human race in his hands, after all. This time around we get some answers, especially from the Oracle, a computer program in the form of an old woman who knows what will happen before Neo does (and answers questions in riddles such as "You already made your choice. Now you have to understand why.") and The Architect, a mysterious figure who appears near the end of the film and claims to be the creator of the Matrix (this imaginary world that we, the sleepers think is the real world). Unfortunately these exposition scenes are also the least exciting, almost bordering on tedious. And, while they do provide some answers, they also create more questions. In changing the scope to biblical proportions, Reloaded lost the more human elements of the first film. THE MATRIX wasn't really about humanity anymore, it was about characters more akin to gods.

In becoming bigger, though, the Matrix series did not become better. The action scenes in RELOADED are amazingly done, in fact, a highway chase in the second half of the film is perhaps one of the most impressive car/motorcycle chases in film history, but the story left a lot of people feeling cheated. And the acting started to show how just plain awful it was. We expect Keanu Reeves to be limited - he's actually learned the lesson of the less he says, the cooler he appears to be. But Laurence Fishburne's robotic delivery contrasts the fact that he is supposed to be a human in a world dominated by machines. Whether this is intentional or not, it's actually pretty annoying. And the "passionate" love affair between Neo and Trinity is almost laughable, because the two lovers are as passionate as cold fish.

Another problem is that because of some computer animation, especially in the big showdown with the villainous Agent Smith, the second movie also takes on the feel of being more of a giant video game than an actual film.

Which brings us to the new film, MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS. I actually prefer this one to RELOADED, but there are still plenty of flaws, including more pretense, and more bad acting. Whenever the film got quiet, with scenes of just dialogue, the script was so bad that people in the audience with me were laughing out loud, especially a scene where Trinity, Neo's great love, dies (for the second time in the series!). The dialogue of her death scene (a death that seems to take forever) is pretty sappy.

But, on the upside, there are some exceptional special effects. The machines' attack on Zion, the last human city of the future, and the ensuing battle, looked great but went on way too long (how long can you watch giant guns shooting squid robots?). Neo's visit to the robot city is also visually arresting, and almost worth the price of a ticket alone. And Neo's final showdown with Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving, the one actor who seems to be having the most fun in these films), where a thousand Agent Smiths look on as Neo goes up against a super Smith, once and for all, is another highlight. At this point REVOLUTIONS looked more like a superhero movie than a science-fiction film, but that's not necessarily a negative. These were scenes of visual artistry, and were definite high points, but by the end I still left the theater feeling hollow, because while the special effects are impressive, they are not strong enough to make up for the lackluster storyline.

REVOLUTIONS moves quickly for the most part, and there are enough pretty images to keep the eye occupied. But story-wise, I really don't feel that either RELOADED or REVOLUTIONS had enough interesting things to say to warrant their getting made.

 

 

ALL CONTENT ON THIS PAGE © 2003 & 2004 by L. L. Soares