Killer-Baby Double Feature

In case you haven't heard, hold onto your top hat, because they made a remake of It's Alive.  That's right.  Larry Cohen's 1974 horror classic about a mutant killer baby on the loose.  This version stars Bijou Phillips as the mother.

I'm sure she has a movie where she's not a drunken slut, but it's not this one!

Bijou Phillips is a grad student who gets knocked up by some guy.  Her progressive, forward-thinking, (baby fodder) roommate urges her to get an abortion but her mind is made up.  She quits school, moves out to a remote cabin with the baby-daddy and his handicapped little brother.  There's complications and she ends up having the baby a month or two early.  While they're preforming the c-section the baby leaps from her vagina or wherever babies come from onto the throat of the doctor and nurses.  Bijou Phillips sees the whole thing but lies to the police and claims some Puerto Rican guy did it.  Ha, no, but can you imagine?

Anyway, Bijou Phillips isolates herself from her friends and family to take care of the monster baby.  People just keep finding ways to come to her house--doctors, police, psychiatrists.  They all end up getting eaten by the baby.  At some point, you have to imagine that the idea to--oh, I don't know, shut the goddamn door to the baby's room crosses Bijou Phillips' mind, but no.  Eventually her roommate shows up and reminds her that she'd tried to abort the baby using some Chinese herbs she ordered off the internet or some shit, but the little guy just held on in there.  There must be a lot of freak babies roaming around China.

This was in poor taste.

Recognizing that all the baby's murders were, in fact, her fault, Bijou Phillips burns the cabin down with her and the baby inside of it, thus setting women's rights back a handful of years.

In the same week, I watched Grace.  This one is about a pregnant vegan/hippie/former-lesbian who loses her baby in a car crash along with her husband.

Your period waits until you're wearing khakis.

She decides to carry the baby rather than deliver it still-born.  Her mother-in-law, who has a fascination with breast-feeding (stick with me here), all but forces her family doctor down the woman's throat.  Instead of going to a hospital, she chooses to go with a midwife, whom she knows and has some suggestive relationship with.  Eventually she delivers the fetus, which miraculously revives once it's out. She names it Grace.

Immediately, the baby starts attracting flies.  The mother hangs up fly-catchers instead of taking her to a hospital.  Things kind of escalate from there.  The baby refuses the wheat-grass soy-based whatever the mother feeds it, but when she tries breast-feeding, the baby bites her.  This is the only way she can get the baby to eat.

The mother-in-law by this point is insane.  She has a breast pump under her bed and makes use of it.  She's convinced that the mother is a lunatic and tries to catch her screwing up so she can legally take the baby away.  The mother, in the meantime, starts feeding the kid beef's blood, because that's the only rational leap one can take in these situations.  In any case, the baby doesn't take to it and continues to only drink the mother's blood.  The midwife is concerned about her (and it's revealed they were once lovers), but every time the mother tries to call the midwife, the midwife's younger girlfriend intercepts the call.

Shit finally starts to go down.  The mother kills the mother-in-law's doctor and tries to feed his blood to the baby.  No go.  The mother-in-law herself shows up, sees the dead body, and is naturally disturbed.

Kind of like that, yeah.

She shoots the mom or something, and the midwife comes to rescue her.  In any case, the movie ends with the two women--the mother and the midwife--driving an RV across America in bad butch-wigs and cut-off flannel vests.  The kid is like two or three now, and the final shot is of the mom's mangled breast. I think this movie tried to have a point but I can't seem to find it.  I guess--vegans are retarded?

I just don't know anymore.

God I'm Bored

Rampo Noir

The Netflix selection for this week has been Rampo Noir, a series of four short films all based off the writer, Rampo Edogawa.  All the stories feature in some way the actor Tadanobu Asano.  The shorts are all beautifully shot and directed by different directors, the stories strange and eccentric the way only Japanese films are.  The first short is called "Mars's Canal," which has no audio.  A naked man wanders around a swamp, remembering a lover who may or may not be dead.  It runs about five minutes.  Basically, it's a lingering shot of a pond and the naked man spliced with a cutaway scene of the man beating the crap out of a woman.  It's actually hard to tell them apart, which also brings doubt to who exactly is beating the crap out of who.  I think that's the point, though.  It sets the mood of the rest of the movie, which is "Good God, this is going to be an excruciating two hours, probably for very little pay-off."  I was worried that it was going to be too weird to appreciate the horror, but I was pleasantly surprised.

"Mirror Hell" shows a serial killer obsessed with the making of hand mirrors.  This one was "eh."  It had the feel of a mystery or whodunit.  In any case, he makes the mirrors with some kind of stone that vibrates at a high frequency, so anyone who stares at their reflection long enough in one, their face is microwaved.  I was disappointed that the audience never sees the faces.  I can't decide whether to put this down under microwave-death or not.  The conclusion of this one--in which the serial killer jumps through a two-way mirror while being interrogated is the high point of the film.  From there, it's a descent into utter insanity.

The next one, "Caterpillar," depicts the relationship between a sadistic woman and her crippled, veteran husband.  Look carefully at that sentence because it is tricky.  The man has no arms or legs, and no ability to speak.  His wife beats him with a riding crop when he puts up a fuss.  She divides her time between her husband and a young man living in the same mansion.  He's some kind of artist.  The segment concludes with the revelation that the wife actually dismembered her husband so that "he wouldn't have to return to war."  She allows the young man to take her arms and legs, and it ends with him pushing her in a baby carriage into the sunset.  So romantic.

The film ends with "Crawling Bugs," in which a germophobic young chauffeur falls in love with his charge, a famous stage actress.  He spies on her while she's with her lover, who apparently loves to do dirty things with her--as in, putting leeches on her and rubbing her feet with rotting vegetables.  Like you do.  The chauffeur wants to rescue her from all of that, and he does so by killing her.  He keeps the corpse, only to be horrified that she starts to rot.  He makes several attempts to stop this from happening, including painting her with acrylic paint, but it is revealed that the fantasy land he lived in was, you know, fantasy.  He's actually keeping her in his apartment.  This one ends with the police dragging him across the room where he's keeping her, and where he had placed his head into her swollen body cavity.  Yes.

Because Rampo Noir gave me more than a few "aw-AWWW" moments, I have to give it a few stars.  Three or four.  I feel guilty using the same scale I use with American horror movies for this one, since it is something completely different.  Victim count and breast count are moot because, while there is nudity, it isn't meant to titillate, and it doesn't concern itself by making a high body count.  I would recommend this to the impatient (it is over 2 hours long), but if you have a few hours to devote to watching Rampo Noir, I would recommend it, just so you can see something entirely different from what you've ever scene.  However, knowing my audience, I can safely say that none of you would like this movie.

Horrorfest 2009 - Part One - Dying Breed

Maybe I will start a series of reviews over the Horrorfest (8 Films to Die For) for 2009.  The first one I chose (with Mom and Dad, naturally) was Dying Breed.  A lot of familiar faces in this one.  First of all, we have Leigh Whannell; that is, Adam from Saw.  Alongside of him we have Nathan Phillips, who starred in Wolf Creek.

"Shit."

The premise is pretty simple.  Four people go off looking for some extinct cat or something out in the wilderness of Tasmania.  The story, however, is pretty convoluted, and I was left with a kind of "eh?" reaction by the end.  The Last Girl is obviously the blonde.  Her sister lived out in the wilderness for some time about twelve years ago, but she was found dead in the river.  Of course, blondie must finish her life's work, which is finding  a creature that no American has ever heard or cared about.  They live out in the bushes, but something else lives there too.  The "Pieman," who apparently makes people into pies.

Poof!

Anyway, things start to go bad once they're actually out in the woods, as things are wont to do.  Not that things were much better in the little town they stopped at first, which is full of dangerous inbreds wielding banjos (kind of).  None of them have real teeth, but it's actually plot point.  Because, you know, they eat people.  So their dentures have been sharpened.  Yes, that's right.  Even the creepy little girl's.  (OBVIOUS SPOILER: the girl is blondie's sister's kid).

Besides dining on these backpackers, they seem just as intent on screwing them to deepen the gene pool.  So, all around bad time for these people.  This movie is basically a hybrid of Wrong Turn and Deliverance (but in beautiful scenic  Australia!)  There's a gratuitous scene of puppy slaughter in which some haggard woman smashes the heads of inbred puppies in.  Foreshadowing?  Yes, indeed.  Anyway, this movie rushes towards a confusing climax.  The Pieman is apparently still alive (after about what? a hundred years?  But to be fair, one of his eyes is wonky) and he's chasing them and the villagers are chasing after them, so they have a show down on a bridge.  Not wanting to be raped and have her teeth ripped out, blonde tosses herself off.  Adam-from-Saw is naturally upset.  The police show up and the entire thing is "busted," but not before the puppy-killer kills herself for some inexplicable reason.  So Adam-from-Saw is drinking to tea, and, surprise, it's drugged.  He wakes up in some shack somewhere and is molested by some guy, and for a tense moment, it seemed he might get Deliverance treatment.  But no, they reveal that blondie is still alive and in the same predicament as himself.  The door closes on her screaming while the creepy little girl gets all up in his grill.  If you know what I mean.

So, overall: poor gore.  There's an intestine scene and someone gets shot in the face with an arrow (and survives).  It's not scary and the rape thing just kind of makes it awkward.  Would I watch it again?  Probably.  The production values are pretty good, and the acting is decent.  Low nudity, but there's also a low victim pool, so at the halfway mark in the film I start to ask, "Can these people die already?"

If I had a rating method, I'd give this a three, because I know the rest of the Horrorfest is going to be terrible.  Anyway.

It's Only a Movie... It's Only a Movie

Which is the tagline for the film The Last House on the Left, of course. "But Christina," I hear you asking, "what about the job?" Well, I don't know yet. What you ought to be asking instead is, "Christina, what about the weenie-biting?" Oh, I'll tell you all about the weenie-biting. For one thing, it isn't there.

What's happening to this guy? Well, he's certainly not getting his penis bitten off.

The story goes something like this: two girls go out to score some pot and end up going to the wrong place. Four criminals (two guys, a girl, and a junkie in the original) kidnap them, steal their car, rape them, kill them, and leave them for dead out in the forest--the forest where one of the girls just happens to live. You know, on the last house on the left. The four criminals go to the house looking for shelter for the night. One of the girls manages to crawl back home where her parents find her body. The parents then take their revenge. The mother lures one outside with promises of oral sex. Then guess what happens.

Now, I'm not going to insist that the 1972 version of The Last House on the Left was socially-conscious, but after watching two girls get raped and murdered, yeah, it's kind of satisfying to see the rapist get emasculated. In the 2009 version, every part of the movie--the rape and the revenge--was scaled back a bit, which made the entire thing unnecessary and anti-climactic, much like every other horror movie remake this side of Rob Zombie's Halloween. The junkie was replaced by a troubled teen (that kid in Gladiator, I now realize), and there are other strategic changes as well. That's not to say it was terrible. It was actually pretty good, considering, and probably the best horror movie I've seen in a while (and there's been a lot of them). I'm not sure if that's sad on my part or the industry.

The castration scene, which was probably the most memorable scene of the original, was replaced by microwave death. It almost didn't happen, but when it did, it was magical. The placement and timing of the scene was what made it special. I can't imagine what critics had to say about it, and I don't really care. Horror movies are about people getting their heads exploded in microwaves and their hands chewed off by garbage disposals. The Last House on the Left doesn't forget that, at least--not like every PG-13 horror movie ever made. I'm looking at you, Haunting in Connecticut.

Fitting Pieces Together: Giallo, Zombies, and Job Hunting

For those of you that don't know, giallo refers to a type of Italian film, described by wikipedia as being "characterized by extended murder sequences featuring excessive bloodletting, stylish camerawork and unusual musical arrangements." These are typically crime/mystery dramas, although they have come to refer to thrillers and horror films. This week's Netflix selection features Dario Argento's Inferno, the second installment of his "Three Mothers" series: films focusing on the occult but are also somewhat mysterious in that you have to play spot-the-witch. This part of the series is vastly inferior to the first, Suspiria, but much better than The Mother of Tears, starring Asia Argento's terrible Italian accent. Sitting here I can barely remember specific scenes of the movie, which either means I was dead at the time I watched it or it simply wasn't a memorable movie and as far as I can tell, I have a pulse, so it probably wasn't the former. I do remember a man who looked a lot like Billy Drago drowning a bag of cats in a shallow river, falling, and being eaten alive by rats. It happens to all of us.

No, this weekend has been dominated by zombies. First, I watched Night of the Living Dead (1990 version), which was directed by George A. Romero, then Return of the Living Dead, which was not. NotLD was followed by Dawn of the Dead and so on, while RotLD spawned two or three sequels of the same name. You've probably heard it said that people who are scared of zombies are afraid of people, and that's true if you look at movies like Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (though not technically a zombie movie because the people aren't dead; they're diseased) in which the zombies are juxtaposed with the living and there isn't much difference.

Pictured above: Your aunt Maude. Also: LIVE BRAINS!

This all culminated in American Zombie, a mockumentary that promises gore and doesn't deliver. It's real popular these days to make zombie comedies, even though it started with RotLD twenty years ago (1985). I understand the phenomenon; it's hard to do anything original with zombies with people like Romero around, but my patience is wearing thin. American Zombie was uninspired and very obviously playing off the zombies-are-just-like-us scenario. Unfortunately, they did it so well that the movie was actually boring. There was no zombie in this zombie movie.

Tomorrow, I will know whether or not I got the job at CCHD. The results will be published along with a review of Haunting in Connecticut, and surprise! it's not all terrible.

Chinese Movies Are Mostly Bad. Mostly.

Such is the thought running through my head. I mentioned earlier (to Tessie) that a lot of it is due to the lack of or subtle musical cues throughout most of the film, and the fact that most of them end with some kind of swelling, melodramatic number at the very end, usually after someone dies. Almost always someone dies, and I'm not feeling very compassionate today, so what some generous reviewer on Netflix called "the Chinese Brokeback Mountain" had little effect on me. I found myself reading the member reviews for I Know Who Killed Me instead, which is the Worst Movie I Have Ever Seen (including The Grudge, The Ring, and that one Halloween movie that wasn't about Michael Myers).

It's been a long time since I've seen a decent horror movie, really. Both the remake of Friday the 13th and My Bloody Valentine (IN 3-D!!) were pretty terrible. F13 pushed me over my tit-limit for the night (six nipples), and while MBV in 3-D!! had some good gory scenes, I gave the script more credit than it deserved. It pulled the old "this is so obvious that you won't guess the end because it's too obvious" trick. Kind of like the old Fear Street chapter-books by R.L. Stine. It's always the protagonist chick's crazy nerdy stalker.

The next movie on my list is The Last House on the Left. I have said many times that I only want to see if they left in the castration (penectomy?) scene where the mom bites the killer's weenie off. However, the trailer did show someone's head in a microwave, and God knows I haven't seen a good microwave death since Ghost in the Machine--over sixteen years ago. (You know the one--the serial killer dies during an MRI test when the machine is struck by lightning, trapping his soul forever in what the 90s thought of as "cyberspace." Somehow, the chick's address book [back when people had those] gets lost in there too, so the killer starts killing her friends through increasingly complicated methods by sneaking in through their electronic devices. Which, at the time, was limited mostly to dishwashers and other household appliances.)

But in any case, I hold very few hopes about The Last House on the Left. More as it develops.