Obscure Beauty: Morvern Callar (2002)

"This is dedicated to the one I love..."

Invasion of the Retro Posters!

Jenny Gets on Top

"An expose of the record business!"

Her single --
and her short shorts
-- are about to drop!

Zapped

Charles (now literally) in Charge

Whirlpool

"She died with her boots on...
and not much else."

Deserved.
Who goes into a whirlpool with their boots on?

Teenage Mother

Starring:


Female Trouble's Dawn Davenport!

Love Airlines

"At last you can come aboard!"

The nuts and nuts are complimentary.

New entries into the
TITLE HALL OF FAME...



Come Ride the Wild Pink Horse

"Bored, thrill-hungry...
They shop for sin!"

They're a little old to be
riding the mechanical horse at the grocery store...

Diary of Knockers McCalla

"A book so hot its cover should be made of asbestos!"

Sample Diary Entry:

"If I get married, no one will ever take my name..."

Auteur Update

The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito) is said to be Pedro Almodovár's "horror" film. As is typical of his career though, that genre can barely define or contain his style and sense of humor. The style of the trailer is another topic altogether. The soundtrack pops and veers over absurd imagery involving tiger suits and basement hose downs. While it seems to give away some bigger plot points, its manic meld more or less conjures questions like, "What the hell was that all about?" As should be expected, the mood is dazzling, the colors pop, and Pedro's storyline seems to soar and startle in equal measure.



Antonio Banderas returns for his sixth collaboration with Almodovár, a place where he's found his most fruitful roles to date (apologies to the Puss in Boots fans). I didn't create and dutifully enforce "The Law of Desire for Antonio Banderas" without damn fine reason...


It should be interesting to see if he once again falls into the mold of playing completely lovable psychotics, such as the sensual stalkers of Law of Desire and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, or his gentle attempted rapist from Matador. Being a man is more than enough to make him seem dastardly in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. (And Labyrinth of Passion remains my one unseen Pedro picture, considering it's caught in the labyrinth of unreleased titles in the US.) Playing with guns, making skin suits and abducting pretty ladies is enough to verify Banderas' psychotic side, and he does look lovely as ever.

Paredes, Banderas, Almodovár and Anaya at Cannes

His lovely leading ladies are played by Elena Anaya (Talk to Her) and fellow Almodovár veteran Marisa Paredes (All About My Mother, The Flower of My Secret, High Heels), while cinematographer José Luis Alcaine has captured some of Pedro's most seductive and sensational images with Volver, Bad Education, and Antonio Banderas naked in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! It promises to be a horror film with heart... clad in a skintight tiger suit.



David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method looks to pair the the heated psychosexual dueling (and dualing) of Dead Ringers with a historical period piece. However, if this trailer were a Rorschach blot all anyone would see is Oscar-bait. That generic music swell completely stifles the madness and masochism we know is more to Cronenberg's style. It's a safe method I suppose to avoid the more sordid subplots with eyes on the acting prize, but this trailer couldn't be more confining if it were a corset.



You don't need a monocle to see that Michael Fassbender makes for a dashing lead as Carl Jung, tightly tailored and touting an oddly entrancing moustache. Together with Cronenberg favorite, a dapper Viggo Mortensen (as Sigmund Freud), well... One can only hope they experience a Freudian slip.


Oh, and Keira something or other is all messed up in the head... It seems to have all the period opulence with even more opulent actors, and enough headplay to burst your head Scanners-style. But that's just my professional opinion.

Psychology Quiz:

Jung or Freud?

Something Rank (#4)

4 Fiends, 36 Feuds, Frequent Flaying

Previous Entries:
(#36-33) (#32-29) (#28-25)
(#24-21) (#20-17) (#16-15)
(#14-13) (#12-11) (#10-9)
(#8-7) (#6-5)

(#4) Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)

"Miss me?" - Freddy Krueger

Wes Craven's razor sharp return is a film-within-a-film-within-a-franchise. A meta horror exercise that directly recalls those halcyon days when we first met Freddy Krueger. Once a janitor spoken of only in hushed tones on the playground is now an icon spoken of with such high regard by his leading lady. A bedtime boogeyman having reached the heights of Santa Clause or King Kong.


Freddy Krueger has expanded beyond the dreams of Craven and into the nightmares of filmgoers across the decades. But with that revelation comes the knowledge that Freddy's grotesqueries have also become like a recurring dream. Some scares maybe, but we all saw it coming. Over the years the restless nights of Elm Street teens seemed more and more to the fault of a clumpy mattress. With a deviously clever device in mind, Craven strives to make the ultimate fanboy revival and finally put the series to slumber. Acknowledging its own historical horror legacy, fully embracing its fanbase, and bringing back its original cast -- as we know them now and as their iconic characters -- Wes Craven's New Nightmare goes through the looking glass of the original Nightmare film, through the ground glass of a fresh lens.

Heather Langenkamp plays Heather Langenkamp as she deals with her own hesitations of reviving Nightmare's original Final Girl, Nancy, and rejoining the grisly franchise now as a parent. Meanwhile, genre veteran Robert Englund digs his claws into Freddy both old and new. He paints himself as a reclusive LA painter and a freshly menacing Freddy that splatters Tinseltown blood red. John Saxon, too, returns to once again scowl on the sidelines -- supporting his co-star Heather, but disapproving still of his on-screen daughter, "Freddy Krueger. Yeah, right..." New Nightmare continually folds in on itself, shredding realities, leaving Freddy to rule the realms with his iron fist.


As Nightmare's ultimate creative force, Craven also folds himself into the film's many meta layers, preparing within the film a script for Freddy's final face-off. He speaks of writing Freddy throughout the years as, "Keeping the genie in the bottle." All the while the monster has surpassed its creator and is squeezing through the celluloid cracks into our "reality." The Craven within the film would be pleased to know he's written one of his most sophisticated screenplays, one that saw the self-referential suspense of Scream several years earlier. It's worth every bad dream he had.

With Wes Craven's New Nightmare we finally have a savvy satire of the Nightmare franchise, and an innovative horror film just the same. One that surprises and startles even as it embraces its tongue-in-cheek nature. Quite literally given Freddy's love for tongue action (he makes another dirty phone call and is rightfully tongue tied over the lovely Miss Langenkamp). It's also a unique spin on a classic fairy tale -- a morbidly modern variation on Hansel & Gretel. Think Ambien instead of bread crumbs, and a gothic, rotten candy house with a spacious oven. Freddy Krueger, like the child-hungry witch, is still a legend worthy of the playground. While Freddy may have overshadowed his master, Wes Craven's still a true master of horror.

The Face of Fear:

Killer Looks:

1) Freddy Krueger:
Post-surgery and pleased with his new look.

2) Robert Englund:
At home and at the office.

3) Swallowing the Heavens
4) Vomiting into Hell

My Thoughts Exactly...

Up Next: #3

The janitor cleans up after those damn, filthy kids...

Virgin Viewings: Not Undead In Bed

L.A. Zombie (2010)

"written" and directed by Bruce LaBruce

Times are HARD on the Boulevard.

Well fuck my still beating heart... I don't often find myself reviewing art/gore/porn films. Nor films wherein a still beating heart is liable to get fucked. Never doubt the curiosities of current filmmakers. Mildly-notorious queer moviemaker Bruce LaBruce is back with his unique cultural commentary by way of hardcore sex and splatter. My commentary: there's no way Francois Sagat would be homeless in LA for long. He'd quickly be cast in a film much like this one.

"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk..."
Sunset Boulevard with their dicks out.

Adult gay film thespian Francois Sagat stars as a schizophrenic homeless man with washboard abs and a tattooed skullcap left adrift in the City of Angels. Believing himself to be a zombie (alien? demon?), Sagat feels free to consume amidst all the vast concrete consumerism. Crash victims, corrupt businessmen and the shanty town homeless... No one is spared LaBruce's sideline commentary or Sagat's undead violation. In the spirit of Romero's Dawn of the Dead, replacing its Monroeville Mall setting with a soiled mattress in the LA River. Social satire cum actual cum shots. Deep penetration with illusions of going deeper. Truth is it might just be about a really hot homeless man having sex with corpses. Or a film about Francois Sagat walking around LA with a boner and grumpy face.


For LaBruce it seems a "pointed" film and thus so is Sagat's demon/zombie member that spews blood upon climax. It's more playful fetish material for those who thought the Nekromantik films were lacking in explicit gay sex (I know I did) and some nods toward topical issues. It certainly begs the topic of what makes for sufficient erotic material. Plenty of members, some of them dismembered.


This is all for arousal but equally a critique of that. Protruding fangs and genitals airbrushed in aqua makeup, soaked in plasma. You haven't seen this many open wounds being pounded since David Cronenberg's Crash. Beautiful men with fresh gaping holes, although some of them bloody and caused by bullets, in your garden variety XXX porn scenarios. But an admirable variation has its hot and sweaty scenes take place outside the auto shop and inside the cardboard box of a dead homeless man. Socially conscious gay porn.


Erection, revulsion, pretension, repeat. The obvious visual appeal is spread evenly with all things repellent. Yet perhaps that's the point of all this for Bruce LaBruce -- other than having a more legit reason for Francois Sagat hanging out naked on set. If you're busy flogging, his films would like to flog back.

I'll Always Know What I Did This Summer...

... Which is to say, I wasted it. Weighted it down and sunk it into the ocean with its last breath while watching this series' devolution from slasher staple to strange crossbreed CW series of Scooby Doo. I'll Always Know why it took me this long to actually watch this sequel. I'll Never Quite Know why I wanted to in the first place. It's the kind of sticktoitiveness rarely seen outside of fisherman prepping for annual Fourth of July slaughter.

But I really don't possess the ability to waste any more time than this film already has. I'm inspired by its unique blend of boredom and Attention Deficit Disorder.

Random Things I'll Always Know...
from
I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer

1) I'm charmed/wary of any credits in spooooky font.


2) David Checel is apparently a method editor. So devoted to his craft, he took an actual rusty hook to the film print. It's MTV-ready with flash montages and its cast walking arm-in-arm Network-promo style.

3) I'll give any film credit where credit is due.

Insert shots! Lovely. Legitimate atmosphere happens when you least suspect it, and when you're careful not to blink during another flash-cut montage.


4) The Gist: A legend of a killer with a hook for a hand, intense carnival footage, a skateboarding accident with a man dressed in rain gear, nonsensical ties to preceding films, close. As CHARACTER MODEL #421 explains, "The Fisherman. Every Fourth of July he gets out his hat and slicker, he sharpens up his hook… Runs wild.” A legacy for the ages.


And sparing us actual flashback footage, CHARACTER MODEL #421 details, "We all thought it was a big hoax, but it turns out to be based on a real guy. Fourth of July, this guy goes crazy and kills a bunch of kids in this little fishing town. Supposedly it was some kind of revenge. A year later he goes after them again, on some island in the Caribbean... They were all stalked for a few days before July 4th."

More of the same! Now with a hyperactive shrug!

5) What does killer fisherman Ben Willis do the other 51 weeks out of the year? Why scrapbooking of course.


And while Ben was once equally regarded for his killer penmanship, even he's evolved to the texting age.


Even stranger that those texts were actually sent by a gh-gh-gh-GHOST! ...Not the barn party invite. Seriously, Kim? WTF 4RLZ FML

Ben Willis continues making fishsticks out of hapless teens... from beyond the grave! He's also gotten soggy and bloodshot. He'd fit right in with the Elizabeth Dane crew over in Antonio Bay.


We've seen Ben lose his sister and son sometime around becoming an employee at the Tower Bay Bahamas resort, sometime before becoming a cautionary killer, sometime before becoming roadkill. And sometime before deciding that Fourth of July is a great day to celebrate America by murdering just a small portion of it.

6) Ben Willis: legend of folklore and harbinger of horseplay at the pool.


He's like Candyman gone sour... and straight-to-DVD for a damn good reason.