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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A Hawaiian, an Australian and a Brit Walk Into a Car Wash ...

There's nothing wrong with The Crazies, Breck (Sahara) Eisner's new remake of an almost-completely-forgotten George Romero quasi-zombie movie of the early Seventies.  There are a few pretty cool scenes, some credible acting, and decent production values throughout. The script itself has some real logic problems and fuzzy continuity, but the feeling in general, with more than 0% positive reviews clocking in on Rotten Tomatoes, seems to be, "What the heck? It's just a friggin' zombie movie, dude!" 

A minor but mildly interesting thing is that the main characters in this survival-slash-government-paranoia actioner are all salt-of-the-earth Midwestern types; the story takes place entirely in a small Ohio town, population 1,200 and something (think of it this way: they keep talking about escape to the Big City ... of Cedar Rapids).  However, not one of the three principals is actually from the continental United States, and two are from much farther away.

Timothy Olyphant, playing the earnest and admirable sheriff in a bad place, is best known as Seth Bullock in HBO's rather amazing series Deadwood, in which he played an earnest and admirable sheriff in a bad place.  Tim was born in Hawaii. His wife, the town's doctor, is played by the radiant Radha Mitchell, an Australian actress best known for kicking ass a little more efficiently a few years back in Pitch Black.  And the most convincing and 'regional' role in the mix in Joe Anderson, playing Olyphant's deputy Russell.  Anderson is British, though he's been hanging around American movie-makers for a while now. He's probably most memorable to Rush-types as one of the ill-fated tourists in The Ruins (but then weren't they all ill-fated?).  Only Danielle Panabaker, in a decidedly secondary (and sadly temporary) role, could lay claim to some kind of Midwestern roots -- if you consider Georgia the Midwest.  It's just worth nothing that the most convincing, even quintessential "American" roles are taken here by people that are anything but.  And they're all actually pretty good.  (They all have pretty good horror-movie pedigrees, too: not just Mitchell's Pitch and Anderson's Ruins, but Panabaker was a principle in the remake of Friday the 13th, and even Olyphant did his horror duty, as a major player in The Perfect Getaway earlier this year and in the best-forgotten film version of Stephen King's Dreamcatcher n the fortunately dimmified past. The Crazies opens today, Friday the 25th.  You can see one of our editors' take on it over at ScriptPhd, or a different (and far more sarcastic) version here at The Rush, in Contrariwise.

 

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!)

 

Great Moments in Special Effects

Giant Shark Eats 747.  No, really. 

There is absolutely nothing to recommend SyFy's recent Saturday Night original movie, Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus.  In fact, it may be one of the worst pick-ups that SyFy has foisted upon us, and that's taking into account such crap-bad classics as Mansquito and Frankenfish.  Even the, ah, stellar performance by former teenybop singer Debbie "Deborah" Gibson and a bunch of B-level Canadian actors you never heard of couldn't elevate this muddled, boring, and ultimately embarrassing piece of work. 

Except ...

Except this may be the only time you ever get to see a shark eat an airplane.  A big airplane, like a  727 or an L-1011.  But after all, it's a big shark, too.

As the years go by, we may remember M-SvGO not at all ... except, for this:

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.

del Toro and Vampires Invade New York. Yay!

A jumbo jet lands at JFK, but instead of rolling up to the jetway it stops dead in the middle of the tarmac.  Its windows are shut.  Its radio is silent.  And everyone inside, lying there in the dark, is dead.

It is the first evidence that something has gone terribly wrong in the world -- of the arrival of vampirism in the modern world. And it is only the beginning. As the promo copy says:

In one week, Manhattan will be gone.

In one month, the country.

In two months -- the world.

Vampire-invasion novels are making a major return this year and next, beginning today with the hardcoverpublication of The Strain, the first in a trilogy by renowned horror/ adventure director Guillermo del Toro and Hammet Award-winning novelist Chuck Hogan (Prince of Thieves).

This is serious horror-adventure, much more in the vein -- sorry -- of Stephen King’s classic Salem’s Lot or Richard Matheson’s original I am Legend than the quasi-romantic Twilight series or urban-fantasy romps of Laurel K. Hamilton and her own dark breed.  And del Toro comes to the field with some great prior experience; he director Blade II, created and directed The Devil’s Backbone, Mimic, both Hellboys, and the amazing Pan’s Labyrinth, while Hogan has already proven himself as a consummate stylist and storyteller.

Modern-day vampires is a substantial horror subgenre in its own right.  You could go all year and read nothing but -- some of it actually very good, like Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire series or Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s wonderful wrought historical novels feature Le Comte de Saint Germaine and his spawn.  At any given moment, those friggin' bloodsuckers are inhabiting at least one of the top ten spots on the best-seller list and/or the box office over-achievers, but this is the first time that the movie-guys and the writer-guys have gotten together ... and given del Toro’s already well-established oddness in imagery and conception, this could turn out to be one wonderful hell-ride.

It should be about a day and a half before the film options are announced, though if del Toro himself takes is on we’ll have to wait in line – he’s already committed to directing the two-movie series of The Hobbit for Peter Jackson -- but in the meantime: the bad boys are back.  Enjoy.