Ed Wood (1994)
It is ironic that Tim Burton's best film is about a man who many recognize
as the worst director in the history of cinema. Although I personally
have found many of Wood's films entertaining, one can't deny that they are
difficult to follow and that many of the scenes do not make a whole lot of
sense. Regardless, the guy believed in himself, was able to attract
strange people, and had an affinity for women's clothing making him the 
perfect
subject for Tim Burton. The tale that Burton tells begins with Glen or Glenda
and also covers both Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 From Outer
Space. These are the logical choices for a Wood biopic as they
are the most well-known of his films and allow for Burton to
concentrate on the relationship between Ed and Bela Lugosi with
plenty of fodder for interesting scenes thanks to the amazingly interesting
group that were drawn into the world of Mr. Wood. Casting for this film is
near perfect with Johnny Depp as Ed, Martin Landau as Bela, Lisa Marie as
Vampira, George 'The Animal' Steele as Tor Johnson, Sarah Jessica Parker and
Patricia Arquette as Ed's women, Jeffrey Jones as Criswell, and Bill Murray as
Bunny Breckinridge. These guys are the bigger names but you also have a
variety of other characters that comprised Wood's circle of friends/crew who
seemed to believe in what he was doing and some of whom are still working
today. While the tale of Ed and his friendship with Bela is the stuff of
b-movie legend, Burton does not dwell on the negatives such as Lugosi's drug
addiction and barely mentions Ed's downfall but instead has Depp play that
character in an animated, almost cartoonish manner which leave you feeling
upbeat and alive rather than bummed out and depressed as it could have turned
out. I have enjoyed this film a number of times and although Tim Burton
has has his share of hits and misses, I think he should always be
proud of paying tribute to one of Hollywood's
most notorious losers and making him a hero.
Metal: A Headbanger's Journey (2005)
I walked into this one expecting a feature length Heavy Metal Parking
Lot and walked out thinking that I have experienced the best music
documentary that I have seen and most certainly the definitive documentary on
heavy metal. Our guide through the world of metal is Victoria, BC's
Sam Dunn: a headbanger who is proud of it and who takes it upon himself to
travel the world and study both the history of metal and why it has become such
a target over the years. The journey begins in Europe and proceeds to
take us through England, Norway, New
York, LA, Germany, and more. Now, the
thing that makes this so cool is that Dunn is indeed a fan himself and you can
feel his excitement when he gets to interview some of his idols including Bruce
Dickinson, Tony Iommi, and Ronnie James Dio. We are also treated to
countless interviews with everyone from Lemmy to professors to Vince
Neil to members of Girlschool. Some of the more entertaining
interviewees included Dee Snider and Rob Zombie who seemed to have a great
sound bite everytime he was on screen. Dunn uses a chart to show how the
different subgenres link together and focuses on the history of metal, the
fans, the different styles, the PMRC era, and some time on the black metal
scene in Norway that has caused a lot of controversy with church burnings and
satanism. The fact that Dunn is cruising the world and seeking
out these people makes things much more interesting that a standard talking
head music documentary and he draws the viewer in to really feel like you are
part of something bigger and essentially part of the film yourself. As Dickinson so eloquently
put it in the film, "you should be able to make that guy at the back of
the arena feel like you are talking directly to him". For people who
have grown up loving metal, Dunn makes you feel like this and makes you feel
like you are part of something bigger and makes ! you feel proud. It
brought me right back to listening to "Flaming Youth" and thinking I
could take on the world. I was also totally amazed at the music
rights they got and while we hear everything from Slayer to Motorhead to
Cinderella I have to say that the most powerful moment came near the end
when the quiet part of "Master of Puppets" engulfed the
theatre. This moment brought me right back and made me realize just
how great and lasting some of this stuff is and was also an
interesting statement on no matter how much people change, you
can never take away the music and how it makes you feel. To me,
heavy metal is the only music style that can do
this with such power and it somehow all comes together in that
moment.
Decoys (2004)
Killer space babes are always a nice treat. They are
all the better when they kill when mating with earth men and end up turning
their victims to ice from the inside out. This is the premise of Decoys,
a surprisingly good Canadian horror flick that took the formula of the dime a
dozen teen horror flick and managed to make it interesting. Rather than
just focusing on creepy set pieces, this one actually tried to have a plot
involving a guy named Luke (Corey Sevier) and his conspiracy theories
about the local sorority girls after he sees one of them shoot tentacles from
her chest while being serviced by her topless friend with a can of liquid
nitrogen. He tries to convince his friends Roger (Elias Toufexis) and
Alex (Meghan Ory) but they have their reservations about his accusations.
The plot thickens when a hockey jock is found frozen with a perma-boner and the
local police get involved and Luke has to prove his innocence with! the police
while also trying to expose the mystery of the ice cream lovin' sisters.
I am not a big fan of recent horror movies as they all seem to follow the same
pattern and I find them to be increasingly unsatisfying in recent years. Decoys
is one of a handful of low budget light horror films that I have enjoyed lately
and this is mainly due to the fact that some effort was put into the script,
the performances were good, and while the idea was not totally original,
director Matthew Hastings managed to make it fun and interesting with a few
surprises thrown in. One strange thing about this flick was that I found
the two supporting girls (Kim Poirier and Meghan Ory) were way hotter than all
the other girls in the movie. I don't think this was intentional but
Poirier's brief scene involving an ice slide and vodka certainly didn't
hurt. Anyways, I completely misjudged this one by the trailer when it
first came out and that is why it has! taken me so long to see it. Also,
don't be scared off by the token pop punk song that plays over the opening
credits, the rest of the soundtrack was actually quite good and fit in
with the film.
Shadow: Dead Riot (2005)
The thought of combining a women in prison movie with a
zombie movie occurred to me a couple of years ago. Writer Richard Siegel
obviously had the same idea and somewhere during development, the filmmakers
also thought it would be a good idea to throw in a whole lotta kung fu
fightin'. While this seems like an exploitation/horror fan's dream movie,
I kept feeling like there was something missing throughout the film. As I
saw this at a festival screening, I am hoping that perhaps the movie is
still going to have a few finishing touches before a final DVD release.
Tony Todd stars as Shadow, a convicted killer who is about to die by lethal
injection but explodes instead. Cut to twenty years later where the
prison that Shadow resided in has become a women's prison complete with a
warden who has some strange rehab ideas, horny guards, an unethical doctor, and
our hero Solitaire (Carla Greene) trying to fight her way through the
ranks. After the above average shower scene and an appearance by Misty
Mundae, I was starting to really get into this. The WIP theme continues for
a while but eventually Shadow returns with a pack of zombies to amp up the gore
level and give Hong Kong director Derek
Wan a plenty of opportunity to showcase the fight choreography of Tony
Leung Siu Hung. There are a number of memorable moments of gore including
a long of decapitations, exploding heads, ripped out throats and hearts, a
bitten nipple a la Burial Ground, a killer fetus, and more! It
is not surprising that the screenplay was written by Fangoria editor Michael
Gingold and while he managed to come up with some inventive set pieces, the
script as a whole was a little weak as there were times when the film dragged a
bit and there was also a lot of things unexplained. Nevertheless, we are
not watching something like this to discuss the metaphors of big boobs for the
state of the world, we! are looking for nudity and gore. On this front
the film delivers in spades. In this respect, I found this to be similar
to Media Blasters previous (and first) release Flesh For The Beast but
I found this one to be a lot more exciting. This would be a great
midnight movie or one to watch with some friends and beer. Look for
Seduction Cinema girls Ruby LaRocca and Barbara Joyce as some of the inmates.
The Big Doll House (1971)
Although there were some women in prison movies before this one such as Jess
Franco's 99 Women and Lee Frost's Love Camp 7, The Big Doll House
is the film that established the genre as a successful exploitation subgenre.
The formula in this film was repeated numerous time throughout the 70's and
80's and much like the music of the Ramones, I still love them all even though
the differences are minor. Judy Brown stars as Collier, a murderess who
ends up in a prison in a banana republic after she murders her wealthy
husband. Collier is soon introduced to her cellmates who consists of cute
but tough blonde Alcott (Roberta Collins), den mother Grear (Pam Grier), junkie
Harrod (Brooke Mills), political prisoner Bodine (Pat Woodell), and cat lover
Ferina (Gina Stuart). These are the usual suspects who became the
stereotypes for most of the films to follow. There were also two kinds of
women in prison (WIP) films; those that take p! lace in America and
those that take place in a third world country. This is one of the latter
with the country of choice being the Banana
Republic. Anyways, once we are introduced to the main characters the
standard WIP tomfoolery ensues including the requisite group shower scene, the
creepy doctor, a catfight between Greer and Collins which turns into mud
wrestling, whippings, a swirlie, the sadistic female warden and her equally
sadistic sidekick, an escape attempt, a food fight, and a couple of guys (Sid
Haig and Jerry Franks) who get involved with the ladies. This is a
great entry into the WIP genre and has since become an exploitation classic
that is deserving of it's reputation as it also tries to give the characters a
little more depth than being mere sex objects. A lot of these girls went
on to a number of 70's b-movie's most notably Pam Grier in her blaxploitation
classics. Roberta Collins is one of my favorites of the 70's cult
actresses as she has been in Unholy Rollers, Death Race 2000, and a
number of other great flicks and she dominated this film in terms of attitude
especially when she tells Franks to "get it up or I'll cut it
off". Head guard Kathryn Loder was the villain in Foxy Brown and
kind of looks like Barbara Steele. Sid Haig became somewhat of a cult
figure and has been rescued by Rob Zombie when he was cast as Captain Spaulding
in House of 1,000 Corpses. This was shot in the Phillipines
which explains the ethnicity of the guard's and also explains why Cirio
Santiago is an uncredited producer on the film. The theme song "Long-Time
Woman" was sung by Pam Grier and was reprised in Quentin
Tarantino's Jackie Brown.
Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
When I first saw this movie it was in a theatre and I didn't
like it at all. I figured I would give it a second look on video as I
seem to be one of the only cult movie fans who despised this movie. This
was a good thing for me to do as I realized that I missed a performance by
Bruce Campbell that shows how far this guy has come from when he first drove up
the road to that cabin in the woods. Campbell stars as Elvis (aka. Sebastian
Haff), a old man who can barely walk and is pretty much confined to his bed at
the old folks home. He joins forces with Ossie Davis who is portraying a
"dyed" JFK and together they try to come up with a way to destroy a
mummy who is sucking the souls out of the asses of the residents of the rest
home. While the plot sounds like a silly b-movie, director Don Coscarelli
(Phantasm) has a lot more going on here. Elvis provides a
melancholy voiceover that has a few jokes but spends a lot of time pondering
loss of youth, regret, and the inevitability of death. These reflections
were surprising in a film like this and I missed a lot of this in the
theatre because I was just waiting for the mummy and for Bruce Campbell to be
bounding around in a jumpsuit. If that is what you are looking for, you
may find yourself feeling a little let down. On the other hand, if you
want to see what Bruce Campbell is capable of while still maintaining his cool
cred, this is a flick that you can't afford to miss. Don't get me wrong,
the movie was still humourous and had things like flying cockroaches as
exploding mobile homes but the difference from most b-movies is that the characters
are taken seriously by the writer, director, and the actors. The result
is that even though the situation is silly on paper, it is played straight and
the legitimacy of Elvis and Jack is left open to interpretation. The end
result is a completely original movie that will be remembered more in the years
to come. The monster was designed by KNB and the original story is from
Joe Lansdale. Look for Reggie Bannister (from the Phantasm
movies) as the rest home manager and Daniel Roebuck (River's Edge) as
one of the hearse guys.
The Beast Of Bray Road (2005)
The Asylum has been improving with each of their in-house
productions and this is no exception. In fact, I think this may be my favorite
of the movies they have put out this year. This film finally improves on
the pacing problem that has plagued some of their other films and carries you
through better than a lot of the stuff that the major studios have been
crapping out. This time around the featured monster is a werewolf that is
thankfully done with practical effects. Sure a guy in a
suit can look a little cheesy at times when you are working with a
low budget but it is a lot more believable than the the computerized
monsters that usually dance across the TV screen these days. Anyways,
this werewolf (based on a supposedly real creature in Wisconsin) is terrorizing a small town
and doing things like ripping people in half or gutting them. A new big
city sheriff (Jeff Denton) is out to get the wolf with the help of his
deputies and a cryptozoologist named Quinn. It is funny how these strange
scientists always show up in movies like this like there is one in every
town. I personally have never met a cryptozoologist but it sounds like
a pretty cool job. Getting back to the film, we also have a trio of
redneck brothers causing trouble, a drunk chick who gets her head ripped in
half, and a brief set of boobs from a girl who wants to pose for a camera
phone. All in all, this was an above average b-movie from writer/director
Leigh Scott that is making me start believing the rumours that this company is
going to take over the space that Full Moon left vacant.
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