Archive for the 'Movie Review' Category

Movie Review: House of Dark Shadows

Sometimes movie titles are wrong. For example, a better title for The Fly might have been She Didn’t Like How the Accident Left Him. Or Boris Karloff’s The Mummy might have better been titled After All That, She Still Escaped. Hmmmmm. I can feel a real roll coming on. How about this for the first Alien movie? Only Her Underwear Made the Terror Pause. Seems like a lot of monsters have girl trouble, doesn’t it? I sure know how that feels. Then a better title for House of Dark Shadows would no doubt be: Woman Trouble Again for Barnabas.

Dr. Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall)

Problem #1: Dr. Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall)

Problem #2

Problem #2, Seen Here Being Ignored by Barnabas

The movie very roughly follows the Barnabas Collins book I reviewed not too long ago. Of course, Barnabas originated from the popular gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. Barnabas Collins (played by Jonathan Frid) is awakened by a grave robber, and approaches the Collins family in the guise of a long lost cousin from England. Naturally, before long, all the ladies of the house are fawning over him. For better or for worse, Barnabas falls for a different girl who reminds him of his lost love, Josette (who threw herself off a cliff when she discovered the secret of his curse.)

Most of the characters spend the bulk of the movie unaware that Barnabas is a vampire. The only person who puts two and two together has such an annoying speech affectation that nobody will take him seriously. Dr. Julia Hoffman, however, manages to put the pieces together. Here is her “Aha!” moment:

dr-puts-it-together-1-DSCN4849

Barnabas Collins - Dr. Puts it Together.

Barnabas Collins IS A VAMPIRE!I see!

It turns out that the good doctor lets her emotions get in the way and devises an antidote to the vampiric cells in the bloodstream of Barnabas Collins. Before long, she is administering shots to Barnabas, who, of course, uses her like a door mat.

Barnabas is in love with Maggie Evans (played by Kathryn Leigh Scott) and the shots the doctor has been giving him allow him to walk around in daylight for the first time in hundreds of years.

Problem #3

Problem #3

Such a cute and seemingly carefree couple. But can Barnabas find true happiness? One would hope so. Now that Barnabas has found his love again, he will stop at nothing to make her his bride. Barnabas is my man. The movie is admittedly kind of a stinker. Netflix doesn’t carry it, and my rat army could only find it in VHS. There are, however, some great atmospheric shots, a lot of bad drama, a dash of fakey medical jargon, some shooting of silver bullets, and a really excellent vampire staking scene.

Barnabas Collins Atmosphere

It just so happens that the folks at The Obscure Hollow have posted some great shots from the movie, and it looks like they got their hands on a better copy of it than I did. So you should go check it out.

Creepy Factor: 2 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 2 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 2 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 4 out of 5

Final result: Truly, the world should have a taste of the Real Thing before Tim Burton and Johnny Depp give Dark Shadows a try.

House of Dark Shadows – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) – 1971
Dark Shadows Soap Opera and Barnabas Collins on Amazon

Thanks for reading another one of my movie reviews. Hopefully next time I review a nice juicy horror novel with loads of Weird Erotic Tension.

Published on July 29, 2009 in Movie Review. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Movie Review: Coraline

Welcome to another movie review at darkinthedark dot com. At some impressionable point in my young monsterhood I had the distinct misfortune to be exposed to a virulently wholesome substance known to mankind as the “After School Special.” These were TV shows where kids would learn that people who misbehave are fated to be confronted by their parents and later be treated in a stern but ultimately loving and forgiving manner. I know I’m not the only one to bear scars from these shows. I recently heard a grown woman complain that every time her mother hugs her, she gets an After-School Special flashback and pulls away. What does this have to do with Coraline? We will soon find out.

Screen shot from Coraline 5

Before I get too deep into the review, I have some things I have to make clear:
1) I read Coraline when it came out and enjoyed it.
2) I avoided all the hype about this movie to the point where I refused to read anything about it or watch any of the trailers. I didn’t even know it was in 3D!
3) Thanks to Pixar and Aardman studios I expect BIG things out of animated movies.

The basic story is that Coraline has just moved with her parents into a rental house that also contains some strange neighbors. Coraline is bored with everyday life and feels neglected by her busy parents. While exploring her new house, she ends up discovering a passage to a sort of mirror world where everything is magical and everyone loves her. In the other world there is an “other mother” and “other father.”

The Other Mother (also known as the Beldam) is a very interesting character. In the beginning of the movie, the Other Mother is actually pretty hot, and seems loving and friendly. The Other mother cooks delicious food and does special things for Coraline. But as the movie goes on, the Other Mother changes, and not for the better.

Coraline Screenshot 4

I think the number one problem with this movie (and with the book) is that its baked-in wholesomeness kills the suspense and makes the proceedings inevitable. While it is offbeat and creepy, underneath all that delicious darkness is a cloying After School Special morality-tale flavored sweetness. I was also left wishing we could find out more about the Other Mother. How old is she and what is she really? At the end the Beldam changes into something resembling a spider.

Here are the good things:

It’s in 3D. This made it really fun. There were parts of the movie where people in the theater (including me) were ooh-ing and ah-ing out loud at the cool 3D. Definitely awesome.

It has some insane and magical spectacles. Whenever I see a Pixar movie or something by Aardman Studios (who do the Wallace and Gromit films) there is inevitably some point where I am shocked and amazed at how imaginative and brilliant they are with their medium. With animation, the sky’s the limit. Coraline has several scenes (all orchestrated by the Other Mother) where they really take full advantage of the medium, especially one featuring the crazy neighbors from downstairs in their theater playing a mermaid and Venus from Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus.” Just brilliant.

It has some darkness. There is a lot of darkness. Rats, rot, and general darkness. For example, the “other father” becomes imbecilic at the end. Half in a sad way and half in a creepy way. If you know me you know I love the dark.

Coraline screenshot 3

And that’s kind of the way it is. It was good. My friend the Diabolical Doctor Francois liked that one of the main characters was a cat. And this is definitely a movie where if you’re even considering seeing it, you have to have to have to see it in a theater. Otherwise you may as well just not see it. (Update: Go here to download my Papercraft Coraline Doll.)

Creepy Factor: 4 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 2 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 1 out of 5 (unless you’re into old ladies with enormous bosoms in body stockings) Also the Other Mother is kind of hot in a Jan Svankmajer-meets Cruella DeVille way.

Coraline – Based on a book by Neil Gaiman – Directed by Henry Selick – 2009

Purchase Coraline DVDs on Amazon

Don’t miss my central source for information on Coraline: Coraline Central.

Published on February 7, 2009 in Movie Review. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Movie Review: Grindhouse

This isn’t a book or music review, but I’m bending the Dark charter a bit today because I’m a member of Final Girl’s Film Club and this is my entry for this month’s Film Club choice, Grindhouse (2007.) Many of you probably already know that it’s a double-feature of Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof.

I think the filmmakers set out with several common goals. There may be more, but the ones I caught were:

  • Use a lot of the same actors in both movies.
  • Have both films reference each other in clever ways.
  • Express nostalgia for watching old films in theaters.
  • As part of the nostalgia use effects to imitate what a film used to look like after it had been shown a lot. So both films use things like scratches, sloppy retitles, and spliced-out parts to look old.

There’s something about sexual politics and emasculation going on in both these movies too, but I decided not to cover that.

Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror

Wow I loved this movie. There are several sub-plots to it but the basic gist is this: A military biological weapons project goes wildly awry and a town in Texas is over-run by zombies who are hungry for brains. The result is suspense, gore, violence, crazy stop-motion effects, and hilarity. Choice moments include:

Horrible Infections Catalogued

Horrible Infections Catalogued

…and…

All that pole dancing finally paid off!

All that pole dancing finally paid off!

I had to edit my list of favorite moments down quite a bit so as not to bore you with screenshots. The moment I keep coming back to in this movie is the part where Dakota, the maybe-lesbian anesthesiologist who is trying to escape her psychopath doctor husband, shares a funny and tender moment with her son, and tells him to be careful with the gun she just gave him (with instructions to shoot his father if he shows up.) She says. “Be careful where you point that thing. You’ll blow your own face off.” Then she gets out of the car and hasn’t made it ten feet before you see a flash from the car and hear the gun go off. I haven’t figured out how, exactly, this scene encapsulates the whole movie, but for me it does. Probably because it takes a horror standard (the wise boy and his panicked, caring mother) and turns it on its ear.

Be careful with that.

Be careful with that.

I also have to say that I loved how Rodriguez used the “old film” effects in a purposeful manner. There are several choice scenes where the film jitters, develops streaks, warps out of shape, or gets “jammed” and burns through in ways that add depth to the movie. Also, the ending credits are simply beautiful.

Creepy Factor: 4 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 5 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 2 out of 5

Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof

I have to say up front that besides the inevitable Pulp Fiction, I am not a fan of Quentin Tarantino, so for this film I decided to set my baggage aside and give it as fresh a viewing as I could. I had my work cut out for me, it appears, especially because Netflix said I was going to hate it.

Uh Oh. 2.5 stars?

Uh Oh. 2.5 stars?

Netflix turned out to be right, but not for the reason I expected. Death Proof is agonizingly long, boring, and stupid. By stupid, I mean that all the dialogue is stupid and everything everyone does is stupid and boring. Tarantino knows how to make an interesting movie with sly dialogue so this turn of events makes me think he set out to make a dull, stupid movie on purpose.

XXXX lap dance = *YAWN*

XXXX lap dance = *YAWN*

The dialogue is about who is and isn’t sleeping with who, who is in this month’s fashion magazine, who isn’t drinking and who is (and how much.) The lap dance is boring. Even the final chase scene is rendered impotent by someone yelling the already-tired-in-2007 phrase “tap that ass!” over and over and over and over.

Om Nom Nom Nom

Om Nom Nom Nom

For me the most disturbing part of this movie was watching Stuntman Mike (played by Kurt Russell) eat nachos. Another thing I liked about this film was the Technicolor-like opening credits. Oh – and for some reason I was fascinated when Stuntman Mike put eye drops in his eyes, and then also where he stopped to sneeze but then didn’t. (This may sound like I’m joking but I assure you I’m serious.) See? I found three nice things to say.

Besides the coloring, Tarantino decides to use his “old film” effects almost randomly, and they end up mostly pulling the viewer out of the scene to remind them that they are watching a film, not a movie. Perhaps most annoying to me is that Tarantino decides to pull a Tarkovsky and insert a seemingly arbitrary black and white scene into a color movie. The black and white scene chronicles another several dull minutes at a convenience store.

Creepy Factor: 1 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 2 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5

Grindhouse – Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez – Dimension Films – 2007

View Planet Terror at Amazon
View Death Proof at Amazon

Published on January 11, 2009 in Movie Review. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .