Red Mist

It’s always been popular to pitch a new idea for a film as a combination of two things that already exist. The famous “______ meets ______” formula helps make it easier for studio executives and fans alike to digest the fresh concept by comparing it not one but two things that they know in advance. Of course, there are some inherent flaws in this system: it instantly states that there is little originality in the new project, as it rips off two works, and those original works will invariably be far superior to this hybrid child. When I watched The Red Mist, I couldn’t help but view it as “I Know What You Did Last Summer meets Shocker.” Considering that I was never a big fan of the former (though Lois Duncan’s novel is quite a good read) and many fans of the latter don’t find it to be among Wes Craven’s best work, that does not bode well for the film. Though moderately enjoyable, director Paddy Breathnach’s final product offers nothing that hasn’t been done before, in two separate movies.

The film begins with mentally deficient hospital worker Kenneth in the morgue, intercut with scenes of what I inferred to be young Kenneth watching a woman get beaten to death by her lover. Kenneth has a knack for playing with his camera phone, which becomes a key plot point later, though Breathnach leaves the obsession underdeveloped (similarly, Chromeskull had an obsession with recording things in Laid to Rest, which I recently reviewed. An odd coincidence, or a trend in horror?) Cut to a scene where a group of med students lose a patient in a simulated operation. Catherine is automatically going to be our Heroine, because she’s the only who cares about this, and she’s pretty but a little on the plain side. Kenneth, though, apparently thinks she’s gorgeous, as he films her, fully clothed mind you, in the ladies’ locker room. Later, when our group has to prove that they’re every cliche of college students, they go to blow off some steam at a local bar and party a lot more than they should. When Kenneth arrives, they blow him off. But after a series of events, they manage to damn near kill him. Catherine wants to call an ambulance and do the right thing, because she’s obviously the Good Girl, but Sean suggests they leave him to die, and under resistance, that they dump him on the road in front of their hospital. He does so because he’s obviously the Careless Affluent Jerk. All parties swear they will never speak of the event again, because this is obviously I Know What You Did After You Failed the Simulated Operation.

The second act takes the film in a totally different direction. Catherine tries some radical, unproven technique on Kenneth’s comatose body, because she is so obviously the Savior/Helper. Unfortunately, she’s not exactly the Great Doctor; so she inadvertently gives Kenneth the ability to exert his will from beyond his own body. This can only get ugly, because in true Shocker fashion, Kenneth has so obviously become the Beyond the Door of Death Killer. In predictable fashion, he invades the bodies of several other people and does his best to dispatch the group of so obviously Hot & Trendy Med Students.

Even if this movie were not a concoction derived from two ill-fitting parents, there are several other inherent problems with it. Every character down to the last comes straight from the Generic Stereotype Generator. Cardboard cut outs populate this film, which does the predictable plot no favors. Given these limitations, the actors do little to expand on the character types. Only Arielle Kebbel does anything to distinguish herself from her one-dimensional character, as her facial expressions and voice convey concern for Kenneth, but even then the character is thin. The film’s biggest sin, though, is that it gives me nobody to sympathize with. First it asks me to root for a retard stalker who’s potentially harmful, and then it asks me to shift my sympathies to a group of snotty brats who almost kill said retard. If I didn’t like Catherine (hey, I’ve always been a goody goody myself), I would’ve shut this movie off 20 minutes into it. But even her character cannot save the film from being so-so at best.

The one thing I really liked about the film was the recurring motif of Catherine running. Metaphorically, at the beginning of the film she’s running into the problem at the bar; later, she’s alternately running to try and fix things, or running away from the bar incident. This also showcases the film’s location in Northern Ireland, as she runs on rainy days where foreboding sky always threatens rain. Interestingly, there’s plenty of mist in the film, but not a drop of it is red. The film’s original title was Freakdog, a reference to Kenneth’s nickname, and a more fitting moniker.

The DVD showcases a few extras. “The Making of RED MIST” is a suitable title for the behind-the-scenes featurette, because it’s as creatively bankrupt as the rest of the film; it runs 21 minutes long, and is exactly what you would expect from something bearing that title. At least Arielle Kebbel looks really cute in it. She looks just as appealing in “Arielle Kebbel (‘Catherine Thomas’): Extended Interview,” which is, to no surprise, an extended interview with the actress. She’s not likely to win an Oscar, but at least I know she’s invested in the character and the script. It runs about nine minutes long. At four minutes, “The RED MIST Cast in Northern Ireland” rounds out the package. Kebbel compliments the country, and I wonder if it’s possible for her to have a negative thought about anything. This is a fluff piece at its finest.

In the world of “______ meets ______,” The Red Mist could easily have been titled “I Know What You Did Last Summer meets Shocker.” If only as a film it weren’t Mixture of Two Ideas meets Mediocre Filmmaking. Kebbel shows some promise, so hopefully her next film will be Arielle meets Better Movie.

--Phil Fasso

Posted by RobG at 07:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Zombie Death House

John Saxon would have been well suited to direct an episode of Miami Vice. At least that’s the conclusion I formed after watching his sole directorial effort, Zombie Death House. Though it sounds like a low budget effort from the Italian zombie cycle, it actually bears a much stronger resemblance both in plot and visual flair to Michael Mann’s saga of Crockett and Tubbs.

The movie starts off with ubiquitous guest star of every late 70s and early 80s TV staple Dennis Cole (the name won’t ring a bell, but if you’re my age, his face will conjure memories of The Love Boat and Fantasy Island). His character, war veteran Derek Keillor, has taken a job as a chauffeur for mobster Vic Moretti, played to the hilt by Anthony Franciosa (Saxon likely cast Franciosa because the two had previously paired on Dario Argento’s Tenebre, which, though not Argento’s best work, is far superior to Zombie Death House). When Keillor dumbly starts fooling around with Moretti’s blonde bombshell of a girlfriend, the mob boss decides to frame Keillor for a murder and rig the jury to make sure he ends up in the big house. As this movie is more concerned with its cheesy “wrong man convicted” plot than monsters, a car chase that could have been drawn straight from one of Cole’s guest spots on Charlie’s Angels is totally befitting. And Saxon delivers just that.

As if this elongated setup that has nothing to do with zombies won’t upset enough fans, when Keillor arrives at the jail, he encounters some of the most insulting stereotypes ever committed to film. There’s the calculating warden; the tough talking corrections officer who belittles the prisoners with clichés; a few Latinos who look spray painted three shades of brown, wearing the requisite red bandanas; the Caribbean prisoner who’s got a thick accent, and a ganja plant scrawled onto his cell wall; and the oh-so-flamingly gay “girlfriend” of another prisoner. And then there’s Michael Pataki. People of my age will likely remember him most as Ivan Drago’s handler in Rocky IV. Just as memorable, but for quite different reasons, is his role in Zombie Death House, in which he: portrays Moretti’s jailed brother, wears a black half shirt and later a pink button up right out of Olivia Newton John’s wardrobe in Grease, falls into an accent that is sometimes Russian, sometimes Italian and occasionally his own American. The character is so offensive in its stereotyping of gay males that it far outshines the already mentioned characters. Horror movies are often littered with thin characterizations, but this film goes out of its way to hurt several different groups with those who inhabit its plot.

Ah, the plot. It’s only about a third of the way through the film that the cause for the zombies of the title comes into play. Saxon himself plays yet another stereotype, the cold scientist who uses humans as his lab rats. It seems his experiments turn people into deranged lunatics who, oddly enough considering the title, are not really zombies. Only toward the end of the film does the movie provide them with any real undead behavior (tearing and devouring the living, as well as a thousand hands jutting through bars, waiting to rip more of the living to death). But this hardly matters as the zombies are really just an excuse for a jailhouse riot, in which the prisoners overthrow the corrections officers and try to break out. Throw in the requisite hot but intelligent female scientist who’s been working under Saxon’s evil hand unknowingly, and this makes for the worst “Take Your Kids to Work Day” the warden could ever have possibly foreseen. And yes, I mean the plot actually has the warden take his kids to work, to add some extra emotional investment from the audience for the protagonists. Unfortunately, even this desperate plea for sympathy falls flat.

Throughout all this, Cole carries himself as seriously as he did on any episode of Trapper John, M.D. It’s a heroic effort, but a wasted one, as there is absolutely nothing for a horror fan to sink his teeth into here. Saxon should have removed the flimsy zombie subplot, kept this under its original title Death House, and made this a Steven Seagal-type jail escape action flick, which is obviously what it wants to be.

There are no extras on this film, unless one considers the really annoying song from the end credits, which plays over the scene selection. But hey, it really should be the Miami Vice theme.

As a director of a Miami Vice episode, I suspect John Saxon would have flourished. Alas, Zombie Death House builds itself as a horror film, and as a director of a zombie movie, Saxon is merely guilty of directing a prison riot film. Sentence passed.

--Phil Fasso

Posted by RobG at 07:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Zoltan: Hound of Dracula

Where I grew up, there were four families that owned Dobermans within eight houses. One of my formative memories from childhood was when the next door neighbor’s Doberman broke out of the fence that divided our properties. Shooting like a bullet at my mom, the dog leapt into the air, teeth at the ready. In the split second the dog had been in the air, my own German Shepherd Heidi had fired across the side lot, leapt into the air herself, and caught the Doberman by the throat. She thrashed the dog around until, bested, it rambled home whimpering. Heidi saved my mom from serious injury that day, and probably saved her life. As this story shows, dogs can be scary. They’re predators with sharp teeth designed to tear flesh, and they run much faster than we humans do. So having a vampire dog should only increase the potential for fright. Now we would have a super fast, sharp fanged undead monster out to suck blood and turn both people and dogs into walking corpses. Done right, this could be an intriguing concept. Done wrong, the result would be... well, Zoltan: Hound of Dracula, a vampire dog movie that is more boring than watching silver spray paint dry (I’ll get back to that in a bit).

The film begins in an indiscriminate country, with some unnamed army blowing up the countryside for no other reason that to further plot. Unearthing a crypt, the soldiers enter and find the walls lined with the tombs of the Dracula family. As all but one soldier remains in the crypt, an aftershock causes the wall to spit out two of the coffins it holds. The soldier opens the coffin, and pulls out a wooden stake from the corpse, an act that awakens... Zoltan! Hound of Dracula! (Yes, this is one of those movies in which the characters commit ridiculous acts merely to move the plot along. But hey, did you think you were getting into cerebral fare when you decided to read a review of a movie titled Zoltan: Hound of Dracula?) Dispatching the soldier, Zoltan then provides the audience with his history through a flashback. Read that again. The dog has a flashback. His memories tell of how his master’s house fell victim to none other than Count Dracula himself. When Zoltan tries to protect his master, the Count attacks him. He goes on to drain some blood from the dog’s master, Veidt, who conveniently occupies the other coffin that the explosion broke free. Together, master and pet travel to America to find Dracula’s last living descendent, so they can continue to exist, as they are only half-vampires and will perish without him. Please do not ask me to explain this, as the plot is so convoluted and inane, I’m convinced the screenwriter couldn’t explain it. But then, did you expect something of Shakespearean proportions from a flick titled... Zoltan: Hound of Dracula?

Even as preposterously silly as the plot is, this movie could have at least entertained had it gone one of two routes: giving a knowing wink to the audience, or speeding things up and playing on the audience’s fear of dogs. Unfortunately, it does neither. It plays the material straight, glorifying itself in ridiculous dialogue, a run of the mill horror score and constant shots of Zoltan with teeth bared and ears flopping, all of which are sure to elicit unintentional laughter from the audience. Worse, once the film brings the characters to America, it really bogs down, as Dracula’s last living descendent, Mike Drake, takes his family camping. What the film really cries for are a bunch of quick cut attack scenes that play on the speed of a demonic dog, followed by lots of throat tearing and bloodshed. In their place, it offers long scenes of Drake and his family involving themselves in the most mundane acts, in daylight no less, and Veidt’s constant commands of “Wait, Zoltan.” A slowly paced vampire dog film that takes itself seriously has zero chance of success.

And then there’s Zoltan himself. The uncredited dog gives a standard performance, but the filmmakers do everything to pull away from his effectiveness. More pitiful than the aforementioned “frightening” close ups is the vampire dog’s appearance. Somebody took it upon himself to paint the poor dog silver. Laughable, yes. But a spray painted dog is what this film has to offer (Remember again the film’s title). Not that the other performances in the film help dredge up any scares. As a Van Helsing imitator, Jose Ferrer gets outperformed by his fedora. The scariest thing about Reggie Nalder, Veidt, is his performance as Barlow in Salem’s Lot, which is in another film. And then there’s Michael Pataki. Imagine my surprise when I immediately followed my viewing of Zombie Death House with Zoltan and realized he was in both! In Zombie Death House he portrayed a flamboyantly gay prisoner. Here, he plays not only Dracula’s descendent, but the Count himself! He’s not likely to make anyone forget Lugosi or Langela.

Did you really expect anything beyond a trailer that runs too long and gives away the entire movie as an extra? But the film does qualify for the Horror Movie Relocation Program, under the inaccurate title Dracula’s Dog. I guess Veidt’s Dog wasn’t going to sell any tickets.

Zoltan might have been effective had it acknowledged its silly premise and played off it, or attacked the audience as that Doberman tried to attack my mom. Instead, it offers a spray painted Doberman as the center of a torpid plot. Unless you’re in the mood for bad offbeat cinema, avoid as you would a dog bite.

--Phil Fasso

Posted by RobG at 07:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MURDER LOVES KILLERS TOO
dir: Drew Barnhardt
Region1 DVD (2009)
Review by Danny Price

I’m not going to lie to you, I’m in love with this movie. I managed to catch it at the A Night of Horror Film Festival in Sydney Australia way back last year and I literally fell for it. The entire audience was laughing hard enough to bring the house down, I myself was on the floor in fits of hysterics. So you can imagine my immense desire to get my hands on it again, a year past before the DVD arrived on my doorstep. It was a long wait, but worth every second in the end.

Murder Loves Killers Too begins familiarly enough, five good looking friends are en-route to an cabin in the middle of the woods for a weekend of booze, sex, drugs and rock n’ rock. They rock up unaware that they’re not alone, you see Big Stevie has picked this particular weekend to his own ends, his however is pure business, pure bloodletting, gut spewing, limb removing business. One by one Big Stevie picks off the kids, leaving Aggie to defend for her life. And that’s where I’m going to end it because t go any further and even hint at the hilarity that is to come would be a sin.

It looks and feels like an old school 80’s slasher, and I’ve got to admit that when I first saw it I figured it was going to be little more than your run of the mill slasher movie, fun sure but nothing different. I’m proud to say that I was quite wrong. Murder Loves Killers Too is quite different, it’s never too smart to be funny and never too funny to be smart, it’s a solid blend of both worlds and results in a hell of a splatterific good time.

Moving onto the DVD side of things. First of all I’d like to address something, I was shocked to learn that the film runs for a rather short 70 minutes. I can tell you right now, watching it you would be able to tell. The film draws you in and delivers such a romping good time that it’s length never factors into it. If that’s not praise then I don’t know what is.

The Making-of Murder Loves Killers Too, gives an insight into the inner workings of the film. There’s interviews with the cast and crew who talk mostly about the shoot itself as well as their experiences. It’s a welcome change from the majority of making-of out there that are more self-fellating and overly congratulatory then actually insightful and informative.

Director’s Notebook, is a cool little featurette on the director himself. Drew Barnhardt talks about the experience making his first feature, the kills, as well as the creation of the films story, messing around with the all to familiar slasher film formula. I can’t wait to see more from this guy in the future.

Creating a Killer, is a short featurette on the killer Big Stevie and Allen Andrews, the actor that brought the loveable fellow to life. If you like I loved every second Big Stevie was on screen you will dig this. He’s such a cool spin on the slasher killer concept, the average, everyday Joe that likes to kill.

Music to Murder By: Scoring Murder Loves Killers Too, is about the films fantastic score, featuring Ryan Franks (the films composer) who goes over the scores creation and it’s use. Music and sound being the most important part of any horror film worth its salt. It goes over the various, trademark horror sounds and how they created the films catchy theme.

Title Madness, is a video of Director Drew Barnhardt reading out the many, many, MANY titles they worked with before finally settling on Murder Loves Killers Too. There are quite a few gems amongst the dozens of horrendously cliché or bland ones. It’s funny, if a little long.

Rounding the DVD off is a good photo/artwork gallery which includes some of the kick ass poster art, there’s also the Theatrical Trailer and it comes with a mini poster for the movie. What the DVD is missing is an audio commentary, which would have been sweet. Overall it’s a nice neat package for a movie that’d worth buying if it’d been a bare bones release. Get this movie, get a bunch of beers, get some friends and watch this bitch on night, fun times are to be had. - Danny Price

FILM: 4.5 out of 5

DVD: 3 out of 5

Posted by RobG at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

RED SANDS

My original review of this film was going to be way more scathing. After my first watch I knew there had to be more to this film so I decided to take a look at the DVD extras. I now know of extenuating circumstances that caused the film to subpar. A film that could have been a 5 out of 5 is now a 2 ½ out of 5. With that said on to my review.

I am a huge fan of Military Movies. I love men on a mission world war II movies like the Dirty Dozen and The Guns of the Navarone. I love Vietnam movies like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. I’ve even enjoyed films about our recent military ventures like Jarhead and Black Hawk down. I especially love military horror movies. In fact my favorite horror film of last year was Outpost, a military horror film from the UK staring Ray “The Punisher” Stevenson. I couldn’t help but throw Red Sands on my Netflix queue. It happened to arrive during the week The United States handed Iraqi national security back to the Iraqi military. That same week Barrack Obama launched the first military campaign of his presidency in an attempt to do what the Soviets could not, take control of Afghanistan. You may have missed these big news stories because Michael Jackson died. So you should go to CNN.com and read about them. These two major events provided me with the perfect mindset to pop in Alex Turner’s Red Sands.

Red Sands is set in Afghanistan in 2002. Its about a group of Army guys sent to a stone house out in the desert to observe a road that is believed to be used by the Taliban. On their way to the house they accidentally unleash a Djinn or genie which makes them relive horrible things they did in their lives and then starts killing them off usually by pitting them against each other. If you didn’t know that was the plot of the film going in, there is a title card that explains it before the movie starts. In case you miss that title card the wiener translator for the army guys explains it again with a piece of expositionary dialogue. During my first viewing this seemed like Djinn explanation over kill. While listening to the commentary track writer Simon Barrett explains that it was studio who wanted to add the title card because they felt the audience would have been unclear as to what the villain in the film was. So the studio is half to blame. Before the wiener translator rattles off what a Djinn is, one of the army guys says, “he went to college and shit”. They don’t teach Djinn at college unless he learned about Djinn while playing D&D in college. I feel the translator character would have worked much better as an Afghan. Had the character been local it would have made more sense that he had some knowledge of local mythology. During the commentary Barrett says he saw the translator character as someone who had taken a 6 hour class in the Dari. I don’t think they would teach people about Djinn in a six hour army language class.

Director Alex Turner mentions that he is unhappy with many of the computer generated effects in the movie. I can understand why. His least favorite is one where the CG Djinn scurries off into the night and sandy wind. Yes, this shot looks bad, but it didn’t take me out of the movie. As a viewer I don’t hold low budget direct to DVD films to the same standard that I do big budget theatrical releases. The boring characters were more than enough to take me out of the movie. Every character in this film is a military movie stereotype. There is the hero who is just following orders but will always try to do the right thing. There is a wiener translator, an Italian guy from New York. (He is a nice throw back to the World War II movies where there would always be an Italian guy from Brooklyn named Brooklyn.) Then there was a southern Redneck, which is needed in every army picture, a ghetto black guy, and the soldiers are lead by a black guy who is channeling Jamie Fox’s character from Jarhead. It is totally possible that all the characters are supposed to be generic but I have seen them all before. These characters bored me. The reason why I like Outpost so much is because I hadn’t seen all the characters before. The black guy in Outpost isn’t ghetto black. He is from Africa and had been fighting wars since he was 13. There are people like that from Africa; American audiences just don’t get to see them in every movie. There was a Southern guy in Outpost who wasn’t a racist idiot. He actually was smart and had some cool lines of dialogue.

All things considered there are some cool things in this film. I enjoy all the flash back dream sequence moments where the soldiers are reliving the bad things they did. There is a friendly fire incident that the translator was involved in that has some cool gore and a cameo by Adam Gierasch, who is a great director. I like all the scenes with the Djinn who is disguising itself in the Afghan girl that shows up in a sandstorm during the night. There is one scene where she appears to be seducing the redneck character. Later in the film the redneck rapes the girl. The ambiguity of weather the girl seduced him or if he just let urge get out of control is definitely one of the story’s high points. My favorite part of the film is when the shit finally hits the fan and Djinn has turned all the soldiers against each other. Our hero must now engage in a deadly game of cat and mouse if he is going to survive. This is great because it takes place at night and the wind is whipping all this sand around. It was a great way to set the climax of the film. I was really into the film toward the end.

All and all I am glad I gave Red Sands a chance and a second chance on top of that. It is definitely worth checking out if haven’t seen a lot of military cinema. If you haven’t the characters will be exciting and fresh to you. If you have seen a lot of military films, knowing that you’ve seen all the characters already may help your enjoyment of the film. My final piece of advice is definitely watch Red Sands before you watch Outpost. - by resident BAD KID John Torrani

Posted by RobG at 08:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)