Reality Horror? Dahhh...

Sometimes we just don't know what to think.

Suicide Girls has been a strange punk/hip/sexy website for a long time. Reality TV has become a staple of broadcasting over the last decade or so. And horror movies are as old as movies themselves. But ... all three at once? In a single movie?

Here's the nearly inexplicable hook for Suicide Girls Must Die, opening next week:

"Twelve sexy, edgy, beautiful women from the famed SuicideGirls website shoot a pin-up calendar while staying at a remote cabin in Maine. One by one, the girls start disappearing, leaving the others scared and running for their lives. Seen through the eyes of both hidden and the girls' own cameras, this unscripted story captures the ladies - all non-actors and unaware their every move is being recorded - in the first reality horror movie of its kind."

Directed by ... ah ... "Sawa Suicide." Uh-HUH And starring  Amina, Daven, Evan, Fractal, James, Joleigh, Quinne, Rigel, Roza, Sawa  herself, and of course the ever-popular Roach.  

We will absolutely avoid any silly, punny titles like "The Blair Bitch Project" or "Pornographic Activity." Instead, we'll just share the trailer and take one of the girls' advice: "Don't wear glasses or have sex with anyone."

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RiffTrax: MST3K 2010

We loved Mystery Science Theater 3000.  It was the perfect marriage of bad science fiction and horror and syspense movies with the smart-assedness that got us into so much trouble all the way through high school.  And it was a sad, sad day when MST3K left the telewaves some time back.

But there's good news on the intertubes.  Mike Nelson,Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy --  Mike, Crow, and Servo from the affectionaltely remembered Satellie of Love -- are back doing damage in RiffTrax, a growing bunch of cool "commentary" MP3's that are, basically, MS3K in a can.  They regularly riff on everything from Halloween to Aliens; they've also brought in a bunch of guest riffers, from Weird Al Yankovich to Neil Patrick Harris and beyond.  And best of all the Riffs themselves are cheap -- like $3.99.  If you don't own the movie being riffed, you can Netflix it for pennies and enjoy the experience for mere centavos her giggle.

A small sample: here's The Boys speculating on a young John Carpenter coming home from a hard day of making the original Halloween ... illustrated, of course, by a scene straight out of Halloween.  

It's fun, it's inexpensive, and it makes everything old new again -- and even better.  Rifftrax rules.

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May the Best Wolfman Win

The Benicio del Toro Wolfman opens today to decidedly mixed reviews (our favorite, from the often insight What Would Toto Watch: "Where  did we put that silver bullet again?"), but one thing is undeniable: our culture loves the icon of the Man-Beastt.  

Other, far better popcult polymaths than us have already put together nearly endless lists of lycanthropic antecedents in the media, beginning with the 1941 Lon Cheney Wolfman (upon which the del Toro Wolfman is oh so loosely based) to The Wolfen, American Werewolf in London, The Howling, She-Wolf of London, Werewolf By Night, Silver Bullet, The Monster Squad, Wolf Lake, Wolfie of The Groovie Ghoulies, and on and on and on.  But what's the real attraction here?  Why does this cultural icon continue to have such lunatic (literally!) attraction?

It's something more than multiple personalities, or more precisely with the Jekyll and Hyde phenomenon, or the acknowledgment of each human's darker, bestial 'inner self.'  At some level, it's really -- strongly and simply -- about raw madness, about losing control, and the endless fascination with watching a man go insane, right in front of you.

Unfortunately, the imagery of transformation that was so powerful when it was created by Universal more than 75 years ago has lost much of its impact with age; it's sad to recall that some of the most vivid and durable reiterations of the image, from Teen Wolf to the Lycans, were partial or complete parodies of the horror-movie cliche.  But the hallucinatory strength of the wolf did get a much-needed revivification in animator Tom Hope's remarkable animated short, The Wolfman.  Made more than ten years ago, it's a six-minute reminder of  just how all-fired crazy the idea of a human becoming a wolf really is, and why we love it so.

Watch it here or hop on over to YouTube.  But believe what we say: you can get all the wild-ass excitemen tof The Werewolf, and probably more than The Wolfman (2010) can offer, right here in this powerful little package.  

Click below, but .. .bewaaaaaare ... 

 

The Best thing about Legion isn't in the movie at all ...

... it's Craig Ferguson's recent interview with Adrianne Palicki (pictured at left).  Probably best known for 50 episodes of Friday Night Lights (yawwwn .. sorry, did we drop off for a moment?) she is making a bit of a splash, don'tcha know, in the Rush neighborhood, first by playing the diner waitress who is unwittingly pregnant with the next messiah (jeez, how many times have we heard that one?), and next appearing in the remake of Red Dawn, coming this November (bigger!  Better!  This time it's the Russians and Chinese who parachute in and take over America! Much scarier!)  Turns out Adrianne is not only gorgeous, she's smart as a whip, too; she stands up to Craig's classic, "oooh, I rehlly don't cayah," Scottish 'tude  Brash, funny, uncensored -- a real dame, and we likes her.

And there are plenty of reasons:

• She was in John Woo's unsold pilot of the Lost in Space reboot (ahh, Penny!)
• She was in the also unsold Aquaman pilot
• She was Kara, that is Supergirl, on Smallville
•  She was in a Will.i.am music video
• She was Sam Winchester's immediately murdered girlfriend on the first episode of Supernatural

 Catch her interview here, preserved forever on YouTube.  Meanwhile, her own site isn't much more than a place-holder at the moment ... but we'll be watching for her.

Go, Wolverines!

Deadgirl: the most depressing zombie movie EVER

Zombies are fun, aren't they?  Gosh, yes!  Just look at Zombieland, or Shawn of the Dead or even Fido (which is really pretty good). Even look at I Am NOT Infected, here on the web (which we love). Laugh a minute, those shambling, decomposing, corpsefolkken. (We just made that up, but it sure sounds cool.)

But once in a while it's nice to remember the cultural antecedents of the Walking Dead -- you know, back when we shuddered at the dead part.  The idea of bodies physically rising from the grave, even as they rotted away, with no brain but an undying hunger for human flesh -- that was was supposed to horrify and repel us, remember?  For the most part, however -- absent 28 Days Later, which revived the brand a bit, albeit in fast motion -- we've  become inured to the whole concept.

C'mon.  Zombies are fun.  

Until you see Deadgirl.

In fact, Deadgirl has more in common with the bleak, existential "high school as Bergmanesque death camp" genre of filmmaking that has depressed us for years now than it does with Zombieland.  Think The River's Edge, or Brick -- both excellent films, but absolutely unremitting in their hopeless and almost lifeless view of life for the contemporary teenager.  Deadgirl shambles through the same territory, with a slow but relentless plot, a set of horribly convincing characters and portrayals, and a grimy, gray production design that gives "depressing" a whole new level of depth.

The plot is simple enough: a couple of bottom-of-the-barrel no-account teens, ditching school and looking for trouble, break into the sub-basement of an abandoned hospital (asylum, maybe?) and find what looks like the almost-freshly-deceased body of a teenage girl -- an exotic, even wild-looking girl they've never seen before.  She's strapped down every which-way, slightly blue and not breathing ... but as they go for a closer look she snaps to life and attacks them as best she can: with her teeth.  Mindless, roaring, twitching, she's obviously not dead at all and pretty damn crazy ... but she's not quite alive either.  And best of all .. she's theirs.

Rape, kidnapping, necrophilia ... all the very worst that lies just under the repellent surface of really serious zombie movies is here in stomach-churning profusion.  And though the ending may seem as inevitable as an oncoming freight train, you really, really don't want it to happen.  Please.  But it does.

Made for about a buck fifty by people you never heard of, Deadgirl is available on DVD and has been out for a while now.  And if you want to get a sense of just how undeniably creeeeeepy the whole "zombie" thing was back in the days of White Zombie and the original Night of the Living Dead, here's your chance.  Just plan to take a shower right after you watch it.

The Best Horror/Comedy on the Web: I Am Not Infected

For almost a year now, I Am NOT Infected has been telling the story of three ... well, total jack-asses, really -- trapped in a deserted L.A., inhabited by themselves, a dwindling number of really stupid zombies, and not much else.  And given that, it's amazing how much trouble they can get into while accomplishing almost nothing in the way of self-preservation. 

For more than 27 episodes, I Am NOT Infected has told a surprisingly subtle and complex story, with a new ep every two weeks or so (and continuing: the current installment is less than two weeks old).  And it is, by turns, apalling, hilarious, icky, exciting, and just plain weird. 

But rather than describe it endlessly, just go look.  It's one of the best-made and least-known horror web show around.  Let's viralate this mother!  (Did we just make up a new verb?  Well, it's about time SOMEbody did!)

 

3 out of 4 critics don't like Jennifer's Body...

 

Megan Fox, on the other hand, is perfectly fine.

There was a fair amount of buzz out and about re: Jennifer's Body, the latest in America's endless stream of multiple-murder teen horror flicks. This time, it was enlivened by the presence of ultrasupermegahottie Megan Fox in the title role and screenwriter Diablo Cody, of Juno fame. The basic premise sounded cool, too: gorgeous, popular cheerleader Jennifer is lured into the forest and assaulted by the high school football team (or most of it), but doesn't die: she comes back inhabited by a shapeshifting demon with needle-sharp teeth, bent on revenge. Or is it ... justice?

...Unfortunately, the final mishmash -- commonly described as a cross between Mean Girls and I Know What You Did Last Summer -- hasn't gotten a whole lot of love from critics or viewers. About two out of three of the reviewers didn't care for it. Peter Howell of the Toronto Star says, "Jennifer's Body comes across as Diablo Cody lite, something she seems to have dashed off in-between talk show appearances and updating her MySpace page with her latest caustic witticisms." (Oooh, jealous much?) Ty Burr of the Boston Globe observes, "Jennifer's Body falls into the dispiriting category of dumb movies made by smart people, in this case a glibly clever writer and a talented director who think a few wisecracks are enough to subvert the teen horror genre." Rafer Guzman of Newsday says it best: "Last year, a ... horror flick called Teeth, about a ... girl who had incisors where she shouldn't, covered this territory with more creativity, complexity and humor. Jennifer's Body, for all its promise, could use some of that bite." And even the critics who give it a luke-warm thumb's up damned it with faint praise, using words like, "common, doesn't deliver, serviceable" while excusing it as a send-up, an allegory about women's empowerment, or just "one of those movies that you'll like if you like this sort of movie." Yeah, that's why we go to see horror movies: to see something really, really serviceable.

Probably the most interesting thing about Jennifer's Body is what's going on around it -- the growing backlash concerning Megan Fox's alleged brains and bad attitude, jealousy or skepticism about Cody Diablo as a celebrity screenwriter. Seems like there's more entertainment to be had reading the jibes and counter-jibes at Fox from anonymous Transformers crew members, or even well-reasoned contemplations of the life of times of Ms. Diablo, like Desson Thomson's recent piece in The Wrap.

Buyer Beware: Skip Stephen King Goes to the Movies

The Rush loves Stephen King.  You have to; he's the, ah, king of modern horror and then some -- a complex writer who can make real, human stories that can still terrify and fascinate, and still occasionally gross you out just for fun.

So we won’t blame Steve for this; we can't. But the fact is: you shouldn’t buy Stephen King Goes to the Movies. It’s a total rip-off. 

Way back in the distant, spider-webbed past, Steve wrote a truly wonderful book about horror in film, in print, and on line (hmmm ... familiar ...) 

Danse Macabre  is, thankfully still in print, like damn near everything the man ever wrote.  It remains a classic in the field, and well worth a reading or re-reading.  And at first glance, it's easy to think that this new original paperback might be some kind of sequel to that wonderful book of essays; after all, it’s been 33 years. 

But it ain’t.  At all.  It's really just PUBLISHER's excuse to put out a book of often-reprinted King short stories and novellas that served as the basis for some of his best and worst of his cinematic adaptations, each preceded by the teensiest, tiniest little commentaries from King.  And not even very insightful commentaries, for that matter (for instance, we still don't get to find out what he thought of Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining, dammit.)

If you're a King fan, do yourself a favor: take five minutes, stand in your local bookstore, and read the measly few original words right then and there.  You won't even have to find a place to sit. Then put it back and save your money, 'cause you have almost certainly read every single other word in this collection at least a couple of times before.  There is very little to be gained here.