THE RAVENOUS aka LES AFFAMES (Canada/France - 2017; US release 2018) Written and directed by Robin Aubert. Cast: Marc-Andre Grondin, Monia Chokri, Micheline Lanctot, Marie-Ginette Guay, Brigitte Poupart, Charlotte St-Martin, Edouard Tremblay-Grenier, Luc Proulx, Patrick Hivon, Didier Lucier, Robert Brouillette, Martin Heroux. (Unrated, 103 mins)
At this point, is there anything innovative that can be done with the concept of the zombie apocalypse? Sure, there's an occasional TRAIN TO BUSAN or THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS that showcase some unique ideas in its narrative but ultimately, they all end up at the same place. The Quebecois, French-language LES AFFAMES, now making its US debut as a Netflix Original film under the title THE RAVENOUS, takes the somber, arthouse approach and is more concerned with creating an appropriately bleak and very downbeat mood (other than one darkly humorous running gag that does succeed in lightening things up a little). The story follows several people who connect and eventually end up at an isolated farmhouse: Bonin (Marc-Andre Grondin) just had to kill his best friend Vezina (Didier Lucier) after he was bit, the two lifelong chums busting each others' chops to the end (Vezina: "No wonder you prefer Roger Moore over Sean Connery"); Celine (Brigitte Poupart), who periodically stops her car and cranks the radio to attract a zombie just so she can let off some steam by hacking it apart with a machete; Tania (Monia Chokri), who's freed by Bonin after he finds her tied to a bed as a precaution after she's bitten by a dog; aging insurance salesman Real (Luc Proulx), who buddies up with shotgun-toting teenager Ti-Cul (Edouard Tremblay-Grenier), bonding over the sad fact that they had to slaughter their turned families; and Zoe (Charlotte St-Martin), a little girl apparently orphaned and taken in by Bonin and Tania after they hit the road. Bonin, Tania, Zoe, and Celine all find refuge at the home of Bonin's mother Pauline (Micheline Lanctot) and her partner Therese (Marie Ginette-Guay). Once they realize the house is in the direct path of an approaching horde of zombies, they abruptly flee, eventually encountering Real and Ti-Cul as they desperately try to reach another safe area.
There's a few scattered bits of splattery zombie mayhem, usually in the form of a shotgun blast to the head, but Aubert isn't really interested in that. When someone gets infected and has to be killed, it usually happens offscreen. We only see the aftermath of some of the attacks. And the zombies have some human qualities that Aubert never really fully explores: they can feel physical and emotional pain (when Celine kills one zombie, its child shows up looking bereaved and devastated), and they can think (there's one creepy bit where a zombie child has camouflaged itself in some trees waiting to attack Vezina). Aubert's bigger concern is presenting the new reality of these characters, like the need to keep quiet, as even the slightest noise or movement is enough to attract an infected (this same idea is central to the upcoming A QUIET PLACE). The focus on the day-to-day, hour-by-hour survival recalls last year's divisive IT COMES AT NIGHT, and there's the obvious shout-outs to George Romero (thanked in the closing credits) and some ambient soundscapes that are reminiscent of THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE, but Aubert has more cineaste aspirations. He captures some effectively eerie images of endless fields and dirt roads in rural Quebec, with several long, static, almost still-life shots, surreal imagery and, later, a fog-choked finale--things that qualify as total Andrei Tarkovsky or Michelangelo Antonioni hero worship or possibly an homage to the prog rock album cover artwork of Storm Thorgerson.
Despite all the arthouse smoke and mirrors, at the end of the day, LES AFFAMES is still pretty much LE WALKING DEAD--just another zombie apocalypse movie, no matter how hypnotic it gets on occasion. It still requires its characters to do stupid things, and has too many predictable jump scares where people are standing there, looking around, camera panning to the left, to the right, to the left, and then a zombie appearing on the next pan back to the right, or a zombie jumping into the frame to scare someone who, logically, should've seen them approaching since it's nothing but open space around them (this Sergio Leone trick and the left-right pans are repeated a few times). The film received significant acclaim in French-Canadian circles, earning five Canadian Screen nominations (Canada's equivalent to the Oscars), including Best Motion Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress for Poupart, who does get one really good scene where she expresses disgust with herself for still being alive only because she went to get a manicure while her husband and three kids were killed by attacking zombies who barged into their house while she was gone. Ultimately, LES AFFAMES is a mixed bag. It has its points of interest and gets a boost from some arresting imagery, but the references and the homages sometimes get a little too cute and self-satisfied, and Aubert needed to do some deeper exploration with the notion of what makes these zombies different from all their other genre brethren.
BURIAL GROUND aka THE NIGHTS OF TERROR (Italy - 1980; US release 1985) Directed by Andrea Bianchi. Written by Piero Regnoli. Cast: Karin Well, Gian Luigi Chirizzi, Maria Angela Giordan (Mariangela Giordano), Simone Mattioli, Antoinetta Antinori, Roberto Caporali, Peter Bark (Pietro Barzocchini), Claudio Zuchett, Anna Valente, Renato Barbieri. (Unrated, 85 mins) The success of George Romero's 1979 masterpiece DAWN OF THE DEAD led to an explosion of zombie knockoffs from Italy, where it was released as ZOMBI. This flood of the undead essentially helped establish the iconic status of Lucio Fulci, whose ZOMBI 2, aka ZOMBIE (1979), CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980), and THE BEYOND (1981) are arguably the greatest of all post-DAWN Italian zombie movies. Almost every journeyman Italian genre vet got a chance to crank out a cannibal zombie gutmuncher: Umberto Lenzi's NIGHTMARE CITY, aka CITY OF THE WALKING DEAD (1980); Marino Girolami's ZOMBI HOLOCAUST (1980), and its retooled 1982 American variant DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D.; and Bruno Mattei's HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD, aka NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES (1980) are just a few examples. BURIAL GROUND, one of the most memorable films from the early '80s Italian zombie craze, came from veteran sleaze merchant Andrea Bianchi, whose credits include the trashy 1975 giallo STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER, the grim western-themed 1976 polizia CRY OF A PROSTITUTE, and the softcore (or hardcore, depending which version you see) 1979 possession sexploitationer MALABIMBA, aka THE MALICIOUS WHORE. Anyone even remotely familiar with Bianchi's work knows to expect trash, but BURIAL GROUND is in another dimension altogether, hitting the ground running, introducing one nonsensical element after another. It settles into more familiar zombie territory in the middle, but then the third act comes along and just takes everything into total jawdropper territory, collapsing into all-out insanity by the climax, where you see exactly why a diminutive man in his 20s had to be cast as a little boy. There's no shortage of reasons BURIAL GROUND has become a cult classic, but young Michael is at the top of the list. Ask anyone who's seen BURIAL GROUND and they'll know exactly who and what you're talking about.
Filmed in 1979 but belatedly released in the US in the fall of 1985 by the short-lived Film Concept Group, a company co-owned by mobster-turned-Christian motivational speaker Michael Franzese, BURIAL GROUND has group of mostly unlikable assholes converging on a remote villa in the country. They're the guests of Professor Ayres (Renato Barbieri), a madman-bearded idiot who ventures into a crypt on the property and is promptly killed by some really decrepit-looking zombies. This happens despite his pleading with them "I'm your friend!" Even by walking dead standards, these zombies are a pretty sorry lot, looking like Blind Dead cosplayers and shambling about in subpar makeup and tattered clothing. But they're nevertheless resourceful, proving adept with makeshift weapons and having the wherewithal to find other entrances into the villa when the hapless heroes barricade themselves inside. Ayres' guests are a rather interchangeable lot, largely unconcerned with Ayres' mysterious absence and opting to get busy between the sheets. That's especially the case for MILF-y Evelyn (Mariangela Giordano) and her new husband George (Roberto Caporali), who are interrupted as soon as they're alone by Angela's son Michael, a creepy kid with his pants pulled up entirely too high and played by one Pietro Barzocchini, who will forever be immortalized under his Anglicized pseudonym "Peter Bark." Michael doesn't like George. In fact, he doesn't like any man around his mother. So in the midst of the undead carnage, Bianchi and screenwriter Piero Regnoli give us a skincrawling Oedipal nightmare scenario where impending doom at the hands of flesh-eating zombies means Michael may only have a short window to seduce his sultry mom. Bianchi's handling of the zombie mayhem has some intermittently effective moments, but it's mostly pretty standard and eventually repetitious, until the last five minutes which, once seen, can never be unseen. Frankly, as much as I love BURIAL GROUND, there's a much more interesting film that could've been made had the focus been on Evelyn and Michael. That's a backstory that needs telling.
BURIAL GROUND opening at a first-run theater
during a slow weekend in Toledo, OH on September 6, 1985
Bianchi gets some mileage out of his effective use of the ornate Villa Parisi, a frequently seen house in Italian genre fare, most notably 1974's BLOOD FOR DRACULA. He also has a game heroine in 42-year-old Giordano, a veteran C-lister with a career going back to the mid-1950s before she found a niche in post-HERCULES peplum of the early 1960s. Giordano was romantically involved with BURIAL GROUND producer Gabriele Crisanti at the time, and starred in several of his productions during their relationship. These included numerous sexually explicit horror outings like the aforementioned MALABIMBA (in which Giordano plays a nun who decides the best way to exorcise the demon possessing her niece to have some hot lesbian sex with her), 1979's GIALLO A VENEZIA, 1980's PATRICK STILL LIVES (where she was on the receiving end of a vile death-by-fireplace-poker), and 1982's SATAN'S BABY DOLL. Giordano and Crisanti would part ways soon after, and her most prominent post-BURIAL GROUND roles were in Michele Soavi's THE SECT, aka THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER (1991) and as a resurrected Bathory-like countess after the titular Spanish punk rock group in Jess Franco's KILLER BARBYS (1996). Bark's film career went nowhere and he fell into obscurity not long after BURIAL GROUND (there's a great YouTube clip of Bark as a backup dancer for singer Gena Gas on Italian TV in 1979), though he has been making some European festival appearances in recent years thanks to his Michael infamy. There's footage from one on Severin's new deluxe Blu-ray release of BURIAL GROUND, which is easily the best this shoddy film has ever looked. One of the greatest bad movies of all time, BURIAL GROUND is must-see Eurotrash of the highest order, with Michael and his ludicrous transgressions, the over-the-top gore, the gratuitous T&A, the careless continuity errors, the blipping and blooping synth score, the bad dubbing, the awkward dialogue ("Mother! This cloth...smells of death!"), and the misspelled on-screen text at the conclusion, a "profecy" warning of the "nigths" of terror.
On the heels of 2014's pleasant but decidedly minor MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT, Woody Allen turns in another inconsequential trifle with IRRATIONAL MAN, where he essentially recycles the Martin Landau half of 1989's infinitely superior CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS and parts of 2005's MATCH POINT. The 80-year-old Allen cranks out so many movies that it's getting harder to keep track of the less significant ones, and while no one's expecting him to blaze new trails at this point in his career, it's not unreasonable to expect something a little more than the lukewarm leftovers served up with IRRATIONAL MAN. You know when a legendary rock band starts getting a little long in the tooth and instead of new albums, they just start releasing collections of unreleased tracks and outtakes that weren't good enough to make it on previous records? That's where Allen's at now. It looks and sounds like a Woody Allen movie, but he doesn't even seem engaged with the material. It's a serious Allen film, one that involves murder and deception, but he makes no effort to generate any suspense or tension, and for perhaps the first time in his career, the only humor is unintentional in the absurd way he keeps repeatedly playing The Ramsey Lewis Trio's "The 'In' Crowd." It's almost like he used it as a temp track and forgot to put the intended music in the finished film. Regardless of the situation, the only music you'll hear is "The 'In' Crowd," and its inappropriateness becomes amusing until it grows so utterly grating that you'll never want to hear it again.
Woody's protagonist is Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix), a depressed, alcoholic philosophy prof doing a guest lecturer stint over the summer semester at the fictional Braylin College in Rhode Island. Burned out and creatively blocked, Abe ambles through his job in a drunken blur and shows little interest in the advances of married colleague Rita (Parker Posey). He strikes up a friendship with Jill (Emma Stone in her second straight Allen film), an intelligent student whose paper he legitimately admired, and her constant talk of Abe eventually drives a wedge between her and boyfriend Roy (Jamie Blackley), especially when it's obvious she has feelings for the troubled Abe. While at a diner, Abe and Jill eavesdrop on a conversation in the next booth, where a woman is in tears over an unsympathetic judge who she says is deliberately hassling her in court, siding with her husband and likely awarding him custody of their children after their divorce. It's at that moment that Abe feels the spark he needs to get his life back on track: with no motive and no connection to the woman or the judge or any of his cases, he's going to kill the judge, committing the perfect crime and completely getting away with it. There's lots of talk of moral quandaries and references to Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky and Crime and Punishment, but IRRATIONAL MAN never gets going and never seems like it's heading anywhere. Allen's dialogue is trite and repetitive. He used to really have a knack for human interaction and astute observation but he's reached that Stanley Kubrick/Terrence Malick/George Romero point where it's obvious he doesn't get out much anymore, demonstrating no feel or understanding for how universities in 2015 operate or how college students even talk (not even a charming actress like Stone can sell a line like "I enjoyed making love with you"--what young person says "making love"?), and one scene where Abe attends a college party is just embarrassing in its utter disconnect from reality. Phoenix is uncharacteristically dull here and Allen is just going through the motions in a way that recalls 2012's TO ROME WITH LOVE, one of his worst films. Though it's definitely bottom-five Allen, IRRATIONAL MAN isn't quite as bad as that or 2003's ANYTHING ELSE?, but even in those duds, his personality periodically made its presence known. IRRATIONAL MAN has none of that: it's a Woody Allen film that feels like someone else trying to make a Woody Allen film and not getting the job done. It's bland and listless and Allen doesn't imbue it with any of his signature wit or insight. He doesn't let his funny side show and he keeps his misanthropic side under wraps. There's just nothing here and no reason for him to make this film other than he thinks he has to make a new one annually. The last year without a new Woody Allen offering was 1981. Maybe taking a year or two off to regroup and recharge would do him some good. (R, 95 mins)
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE GHOST DIMENSION
(US - 2015)
The latest, least, and hopefully last of the trendsetting found-footage franchise is the worst yet, the sixth film (seven if you count 2010's Japan spinoff PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: TOKYO NIGHT) in a series that ran out of gas halfway through the first sequel. In the hands of writer and eventual director Christopher Landon, the son of iconic TV star Michael Landon and a once-promising screenwriter (Larry Clark's ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE), the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies proceeded to create an increasingly convoluted mythology surrounding Katie, the heroine in the first film played by Katie Featherston. With the exception of the TOKYO NIGHT offshoot, which still hasn't been released in the US, Featherston has turned up in all of the sequels at some point, including the allegedly unrelated Latino-aimed spinoff PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES, which may as well have been titled PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 5. While Oren Peli started things off, he left after the first movie and the franchise pretty much became Landon's baby once he was hired to write PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2, then wrote and produced 3 and 4 (both directed by the CATFISH guys) before directing THE MARKED ONES himself. Landon did nothing but drag this series out past the point of anything resembling relevance (even though everyone's quick to point out that oscillating fan bit from 3 is pretty cool), and even he had the sense to jump ship for the latest, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE GHOST DIMENSION, which is directed by series editor and short-straw-drawing Gregory Plotkin. The series has seen diminishing box office with each successive entry, so as a last-ditch attempt to lure people back and make the franchise a thing again, they did the obvious: made it in 3-D. After a slow start, the almost-nonstop plethora of 3-D effects might've made this work a little bit better in theaters, but Paramount shot themselves in the foot by announcing a drastically-shortened 53-day VOD window (compared to the typical 90), infuriating the major cinema chains, who responded by refusing to show the movie. As a result, GHOST DIMENSION only made it to about 1600 screens compared to 3000-3500 it would've been on under normal circumstances. It still managed to gross $18 million, but the word of mouth was toxic, and this vacated indie-owned theaters pretty quickly.
Unless you have the capability of viewing this in 3-D at home, the standard DVD version is a complete fiasco, a blurry, globby mess as the spirit that's haunted everyone for the last five movies now manifests itself and hovers around the frame as "Tobi," an ectoplasm that looks like a shapeless version of the jungle camouflaging by the title creature in PREDATOR. Video-game designer Ryan (Chris J. Murray), his wife Emily (Brit Shaw), and young daugher Leila (Ivy George) move into the house once owned by Katie and sister Kristi's spirit-conjuring grandma (respected stage actress Hallie Foote). Ryan's comedy-relief hipster brother Mike (Dan Gill) and Emily's friend Skyler (Olivia Taylor Dudley, in her second terrible horror movie of 2015 after THE VATICAN TAPES) come to visit, and they find a box in the basement with an oversized 1980s camcorder and some VHS tapes. The camcorder still works, and when looking through its viewfinder, Ryan sees the gloopy, formless ghost surrounded by cosmic dust and debris, and after watching Katie and Kristi's childhood paranormal encounters on the VHS tapes, he concludes that this camcorder is rigged to record spectral matter (and even more incredibly, was somehow able to record in 16x9 HD in 1988). Of course, "Tobi" makes contact with Leila, and eventually she becomes possessed, which brings in a priest (Michael Krawic), who proclaims "This isn't an exorcism...it's an extermination!" Resorting to 3-D is bad enough, but trying to scrounge a few nibbles at the empty EXORCIST ripoff trough is just pathetic. And all the while, Ryan and Mike never stop filming. Even the easy jump scares come up weak this time around, and since Plotkin and the visual effects team "show" a lot of Tobi so they can maximize the 3-D, what's really here is a dull, found-footage version of POLTERGEIST, which we need about as much as that POLTERGEIST remake that came out earlier in 2015. Abysmal in every way save for one inspired moment when it becomes clear to Ryan that Katie and Kristi on the 1988 VHS tape are watching Mike and him watch them, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE GHOST DIMENSION should be the wheezing death rattle of this moribund franchise. The fact that it took four screenwriters (including two writers of the found-footage EXORCIST knockoff THE TAKING OF DEBORAH LOGAN) to come up with this should be an embarrassment to the entire Writer's Guild. (R, 88 mins)
SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
(US - 2015)
Another Paramount release that fell victim to their ill-advised shortened VOD-window botch and was banished from major cinema chains, SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE was directed and co-written by Christopher Landon, and while it isn't anything spectacular, it's at least an improvement on anything Landon accomplished while running the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise into the ground. There isn't a whole lot left to be done with anything related to zombies at this point, and SCOUTS isn't giving SHAUN OF THE DEAD any competition as the world's best comedic zombie homage. It's about on the level of the intermittently amusing but forgettable ZOMBIELAND, only with grosser and raunchier hard-R gags that usually involve genitalia. Three high-school sophomores--sensitive nice guy Ben (Tye Sheridan), horndog Carter (Logan Miller), and overweight dweeb Augie (Joey Morgan)--are the only three childhood holdovers still actively involved in their Boy Scouts program. Carter insists it's time to grow up since, as he puts it, "all girls turn into sluts junior year." Carter talks Ben into ditching Augie and going to a senior rave instead of their final Scout campout, and when their badly-toupeed, Dolly Parton-obsessed scoutmaster Rogers (an underused David Koechner) is turned into a zombie, they find the entire city infected as they make their way to the rave so Ben can rescue his lifelong crush, Carter's older sister Kendall (Halston Sage), who's dating total douchebag Jeff (Patrick Schwarzenegger--yes, his son). Along the way, they meet tough strip-club waitress Denise (Sarah Dumont), who teaches them how to man up. SCOUTS is harmless enough and it moves fast and has a few funny moments amidst the expectedly juvenile toilet humor. But it almost always goes for easy gags like having the three scouts, armed to the teeth with makeshift weapons they assembled after raiding a hardware store, taking out a rave full of zombies to the tune of Scorpions' "Rock You Like a Hurricane." Where's the joke there, other than teen audiences recognizing a familiar '80s hair metal staple? At least BORDELLO OF BLOOD's use of Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" as former comedian Dennis Miller took out a bunch of vampires with a holy water-filled Super Soaker was set in something that looked like a ballroom. Instead, SCOUTS is a film that gives you the spectacle of 89-year-old Academy Award-winner Cloris Leachman as a zombified crazy cat lady neighbor, pulling Miller's pants down and trying to take a bite out of his bare ass. Is this really the best Hollywood has to offer Ms. Leachman in her eighth decade in show business? (R, 93 mins)
MAGGIE (US/Switzerland - 2015) Directed by Henry Hobson. Written by John Scott 3. Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Abigail Breslin, Joely Richardson, J.D. Evermore, Douglas M. Griffin, Jodie Moore, Bryce Romero, Raeden Greer. (PG-13, 95 mins)
Once upon a time, the idea of Arnold Schwarzenegger starring in a zombie movie would mean plenty of action, horror, and the expected shouting of "Aim fah da head!" In his bumpy transition back to full-time acting since a decade in politics, Schwarzenegger hasn't enjoyed the box office blockbusters he had in his heyday, with only THE EXPENDABLES 2 and THE EXPENDABLES 3 being big moneymakers, though ESCAPE PLAN was a modest hit, but those were group efforts done with Sylvester Stallone and others. Elsewhere, the enjoyable THE LAST STAND and the dismal SABOTAGE were met with utter disinterest and absolutely tanked, and served as further proof that the geriatric action guys don't do well solo anymore (witness Stallone's fun BULLET TO THE HEAD bombing as well). Perhaps that's why Schwarzenegger chose now, at the age of 67, to take on the most unusual role of his career in MAGGIE, a moving, character-driven drama that happens to take place during a zombie apocalypse.
Shot in Louisiana two years ago, from a script by first-time screenwriter John Scott 3 that's been bouncing around Hollywood for several years, the low-budget MAGGIE opens in the midst of a viral outbreak that's rendered the major cities deserted wastelands. The government has turned the inner cities into quarantine zones for the infected, who have an average of eight weeks from the point of infection before they fully "turn" into flesh-eating zombies. Maggie Vogel (Abigail Breslin) left her home for the city after becoming infected from a bite on the arm, but as the film opens, her father Wade (Schwarzenegger) has spent two weeks trying to find her before locating her in a barely-staffed hospital. Wade's intent is to take her home but the doctor advises him to return her to the quarantine zone when she enters the final stages before her turn. A proud, self-reliant farmer and Christian family man, Wade will not hear of letting Maggie die alone, surrounded by strangers and other infected, instead insisting on having her live out her final weeks at home with him and her stepmother Caroline (Joely Richardson), who sends the couple's two younger children off to stay with her sister while Maggie undergoes her turning.
The grieving process already underway, Maggie is relatively normal for the first few weeks, but as her body slowly decomposes and rots, and her increased sense of smell draws her to human and animal flesh, she has moments where she can still be a normal teenager. She laughs and reminisces with her dad, usually about her late mother. She hangs out with friends, some of whom are infected and in the early stages of turning. Through it all, Wade does his best to keep a stiff upper lip and be the rock that he's always been for his little girl, but it often proves too much to bear. He's already lost his wife (her death predates the outbreak, so while it's never specified and doesn't need to be, she likely died of cancer) and since he refuses to turn Maggie over to the medical teams in quarantine--which gets him into hot water with the local sheriff--he's burdened with the task of killing what was once his daughter when her transformation is complete.
MAGGIE is an extremely dour, downbeat film, shot in dark, muted tones with a grim, funereal mood throughout. The "turning" is a powerful metaphor that will resonate with anyone who's seen a family member or friend face the last stages of a terminal illness. They'll recognize the overwhelming helplessness felt by Wade, who's always been there to protect his family but seems lost facing the realization that there is absolutely nothing he can do to make Maggie better. With his craggy face and his shoulders slumped with age (which didn't work to his advantage in SABOTAGE), the stunt casting of Schwarzenegger is inspired and spot-on. We've always taken leaps and allowed a generous amount of wiggle room when it comes to his acting. Even when he's playing US military guys or Texas sheriffs, his appeal and his screen presence have helped audiences overlook the often cumbersome Austrian accent and his occasionally awkward line deliveries that fans often endearingly quote (think "Get to da choppah!" or "It's not a too-mah!"). Schwarzenegger delivers a low-key performance that's unlike anything he's done before, and the fact that he's playing an Austrian-accented rural farmer never once becomes a distraction. His scenes with an excellent Breslin are often very touching, especially when he tells her how much of her mother's spirit she has in her, or when, on the ride back after an unpleasant checkup with the doctor midway through her turning, he makes her smile by playing a tape of Oscar Brown, Jr's "Maggie," and the shared look between the two conveys the kind of warmth and fond memories that words don't need to express.
Scott 3 and debuting director Henry Hobson (who designed the opening credits for THE WALKING DEAD) never let things get maudlin or sappy. Maggie's decline is treated matter-of-factly and comes as no surprise to anyone, as the outbreak's been ongoing and they've seen it all before (recognizing Wade's staunch refusal to quarantine Maggie, her doctor's last bit of advice to him is "Make it quick"). We see a couple of shambling zombies but the apocalypse has already taken place, with big city highways deserted and fields in the outlying areas seemingly constantly ablaze. MAGGIE turns the focus on an element of zombie lore that's been largely unexplored outside of the slow turning of Scott H. Reiniger's hot-dogging Roger in George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD (1979): the time between infection and transformation. But even then, Roger didn't have time to get sentimental ("You got a hell of a lot more to do before you can afford to lose me") and despite the same certain inevitability that Maggie faces, promised "I'm gonna try not to come back." Wade and Maggie face her fate with bravery and her final act demonstrates a level of compassion not usually found in the genre, proof that no matter how sick you become and how much your body degrades and turns against itself before it finally dies, you're still you and that sense of who you are can never be completely taken away. MAGGIE isn't a typical summer horror movie, and it's surprising that everyone involved on the business end didn't force Hobson to turn it into one (Schwarzenegger was one of 21 credited producers, so he obviously believed in the project). It's a small film that Lionsgate recognized wouldn't be a commercial hit, which is likely why they relegated it to their arthouse Roadside Attractions division and released it on VOD. And that's fine, because a thoughtful, offbeat film like MAGGIE will cultivate an audience over time and remain relevant and effective much longer than a by-the-numbers zombie shoot 'em up with a quipping Ah-nuld and shitty Bulgarian CGI ever would.
THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS (Belgium/France/Luxembourg - 2014)
With 2010's AMER, the French filmmaking team of Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet wore their love of the Italian giallo on their sleeves, fashioning an extremely stylish film whose visual intoxication was largely smoke & mirrors obscuring the fact that they didn't have much to say other than "We really love early Dario Argento movies." Though it contained obvious homages to Argento and Mario Bava, and eventually featured the belated appearance of a black-gloved killer, AMER wasn't so much a giallo as it was a filmmaking experiment that co-opted the style of the giallo, much like Peter Strickland's frustrating BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO (2013). Forzani and Cattet have returned with THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS, and it's an altogether more satisfying experience, even if they let their story unfold with little regard for narrative flow or a coherent plot. STRANGE COLOUR is the kind of trippy descent into madness where everything might be imaginary and almost nothing makes sense, but it doesn't matter. It's a triumph of style over substance, and it would seem that since AMER, the filmmakers are at least attempting to pay lip service to the idea of plot mechanics and committed themselves to utilizing the giallo style for something that could be mostly deemed a giallo. Of course, there's the endless visual references and the appropriation of the era's score cues by the likes of Bruno Nicolai, Ennio Morricone, Franco Micalizzi, Nico Fidenco, and Alessandro Alessandroni, but every scene and every shot is a small masterpiece of dazzling artistry. Whether the filmmakers are using a Brian De Palma split screen, conveying the claustophobic, walls-closing-in psychological terror of Roman Polanski's "Apartment Trilogy" (REPULSION, ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE TENANT), staging an innovative and highly-choreographed Argento-style murder (hearing noises in the apartment above, a man drills a small hole in the ceiling and sneaks into said apartment while his wife listens with a stethoscope and hears the killer's steps approaching her husband as she witnesses the murder through the hole in the ceiling), or simply granting us the sight of a few Lucio Fulci maggots, their love of that era of Italian thrillers bleeds as profusely as the victims onscreen. THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS is probably a love-it-or-hate-it proposition and those unfamiliar with gialli may scoff at the perceived pretentiousness of it all, but even if you're not a fan, it's awfully difficult to not be seduced by the virtuosi filmmaking on constant display.
Dan Kristensen (Klaus Tange, who has a striking resemblance to Willem Dafoe) returns from a business trip to his lush, ornate building and has to break his door in when it's chain-locked from the inside and his wife Edwige (Ursula Bedena) is nowhere to be found in the apartment. None of the neighbors have seen her and instead, they complain to the building manager (Sam Louwyck) about Dan. Incredulous detective Vincentelli (Jean-Michel Vovk) finds Dan's story increasingly difficult to believe, and doesn't buy his claims of a mysterious bearded man (Joe Koener) sneaking into his apartment when none of the other neighbors have seen him. As Edwige's absence goes on and all manner of psychosexual imagery abounds, Dan's grip on reality and sanity slips as he, Vincentelli, and the building manager all have their own neuroses exposed, all involving an alluring mystery woman known as "Laura," while a mad killer makes their way through secret corridors behind the walls, emerging from hiding to stab people in the head. Argento is the chief influence here, especially with the production design of Dan's apartment building evoking Mater Tenebrarum's NYC stronghold in INFERNO (1980), and Dan's discovery of a dark secret behind a false wall and his misreading of a vital clue being callbacks to DEEP RED (1975). But there's more: certain portions recall the fashion gialli of Sergio Martino, whose THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1971) and YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY (1972), along with Giuliano Carnimeo's WHAT ARE THOSE STRANGE DROPS OF BLOOD ON JENNIFER'S BODY? aka THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS (1971) helped coin the film's awkwardly verbose title. Dreamy, slo-mo shots of beautiful women with long, Medusa-like hair draped over pillows are straight from Fulci's A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN (1971). THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS does get too obfuscating for its own good on occasion, especially the long, circular sequence where an hallucinating Dan keeps buzzing himself into the building, and there's a few instances where Forzani and Cattet hit a wall and the film has to get itself back on track. They don't break any new ground here, instead mining decades-old material and presenting it in a way that's fresh, alive, and fascinating. It makes little sense in terms of linear plot, but it doesn't matter. Let THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS wash over you and cast its spell. It's an enigmatic, nightmarish, and stunningly beautiful film. (Unrated, 102 mins; also streaming on Netflix Instant) DEAD SNOW: RED VS. DEAD (Norway/Denmark/UK/US/Iceland - 2014)
After licking the wounds incurred from 2013's HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS, his disastrous attempt to break into Hollywood, Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola goes back to his roots with an English-language sequel to his 2009 cult zombie hit DEAD SNOW. Intermittently amusing but not nearly as much as it thought it was, DEAD SNOW nevertheless got a lot of love from the horror community with a style that attempted to emulate early Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson as a group of vacationing skiers encountered an army of resurrected Nazi undead. The last thing the world needs is one more zombie movie, but Wirkola surpasses all expectations with bigger-budgeted and wildly inspired follow-up that's got something to offend everyone. Beginning moments after the events of the first film, sole survivor Martin (Vegar Hoel, promoted to co-writer with Wirkola and co-star Stig Frode Henriksen) manages to get away from the horde of flesh-eaters led by zombified Nazi Gen. Herzog (Orjan Gamst) and winds up in a hospital, where he's accused of killing all of his friends and can't convince the cops that the zombies did it. Doctors have also surgically attached what they think is Martin's right arm, which he chainsawed off immediately after he was bitten. The reattached arm actually belongs to Herzog, and now Martin's right arm has immeasurable strength and the ability to reanimate the dead by touch. He escapes from the hospital and makes his way to a nearby town, which is exactly where Herzog's army is heading, still following Hitler's orders to invade and destroy. With the cops on his trail, Martin befriends barely-closeted local museum employee Glenn Kenneth (Henriksen) and adopts an affable and helpful zombie sidekick (Kristoffer Joner) that he can keep putting in dangerous situations and revive if necessary. They're soon joined by a trio of nerdy American siblings calling themselves The Zombie Squad--Daniel (Martin Starr of FREAKS AND GEEKS, PARTY DOWN, and SILICON VALLEY), STAR WARS-obsessed Monica (Jocelyn DeBoer), and brainy Blake (Ingrid Haas)--and they get additional help from a reanimated--and still pissed-off--Russian platoon for a BRAVEHEART-style throwdown where nothing is too over-the-top.
DEAD SNOW: RED VS. DEAD is one of the few zombie comedies that comes close to replicating the anarchic, anything-goes, fuck-you-if-can't-take-a-joke spirit of Peter Jackson's DEAD ALIVE: anyone can be killed in any number of hilariously horrifying yet slapsticky ways, whether they're infants in strollers or geriatrics in scooters; resourceful zombies yank out some guy's intestines so they can siphon gasoline from a bus to a tank; Martin spends the entire film covered in blood and there's no shortage of inventive ways Wirkola has him forgetting to realize his own strength with Herzog's supercharged arm, with a disastrous attempt at CPR on a little kid being particularly memorable and gross; endless impalings, smashed heads, and creative and incredibly gory zombie kills, and in one truly off-the-rails segment, a female zombie coming back to life and screwing her still-grieving boyfriend, all to the tune of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart." I didn't really get all the love DEAD SNOW received from fans, but DEAD SNOW: RED VS. DEAD is an improvement across-the-board, in every aspect. It's the PUNISHER: WAR ZONE to DEAD SNOW's THE PUNISHER. Fun performances all around, and it gets a lot of mileage from its visiting American cast members, who help make this the most oddly-appealing zombie-battling ensemble this side of SHAUN OF THE DEAD. Back home after an ill-fated Hollywood sojourn, Wirkola gets it right and delivers the gonzo line-crosser that the first film should've been. (R, 100 mins)
FRANK (UK/Ireland/US - 2014)
Inspired by Welsh journalist Jon Ronson's brief late '80s tenure as the keyboardist in Frank Sidebottom's band, FRANK updates the setting to the present day and gained some film festival notoriety as the indie where Michael Fassbender spends 95% of the film wearing an oversized papier-mache head. The head is almost identical to the one sported by "Frank Sidebottom," a character played by British comedian/performance artist/musician Chris Sievey (1955-2010) from the '70s well into the '90s. The film, co-written by Ronson (who also wrote the book The Men Who Stare at Goats, and was played by Ewan McGregor in the 2009 film version), centers on Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), a would-be songwriter who lucks into a gig filling in with an experimental, avant-garde band called The Soronprfbs when their keyboardist has a breakdown. Fronted by the eccentric Frank (Fassbender), whose own bandmates have never seen him without his mask, the Soronprfbs take off to a seaside cottage in Ireland to work on a new album with manager/producer Don (Scoot McNairy). The rest of the band--theremin player Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal), bassist Baraque (Francois Civil), and drummer Nana (Carla Azar)--have little use for Jon and his mainstream, pop aspirations, and even though Jon offers them his life savings to work on the album after they run out of money, they allow him no creative input. Eleven months of isolated living go by before Frank is comfortable enough to begin recording, and Jon, who has been secretly posting their sessions to social media and building the band's brand, has endeared himself to Frank and convinces him to take the band to SXSW. Arriving in Austin on a wave of underground hype thanks to Frank's unique stage presence, the Soronprfbs promptly implode over Jon's increased influence on their sound. This turns the band into the unplugged duo of Frank and Jon as Jon is forced to function as caretaker for the delicate and damaged frontman, who has his reasons for adopting his unusual persona.
Director Lenny Abrahamson keeps FRANK quirky to a fault for most of its running time, and the humor in the defiantly uncommercial, inaccessible, Captain Beefheart-inspired songs quickly runs out of steam. It does gain some significant traction in its late stages once things turn serious as Jon gets to the root of why Frank is the way he is, and Fassbender is such a gifted actor that he can turn nothing into something and create a fully-developed character with his face concealed for most of the film, just on the basis of body language and his muffled vocal inflections. Fassbender is very good and McNairy gets some laughs as the dour, depressed manager with an unusual sexual fetish for mannequins, and while it gets better as it goes along, FRANK is just too aggressive in its bid for prefab cult appeal and too blatantly pandering in its need for the loving embrace of the hipster crowd. (R, 95 mins)
RAW FORCE (Philippines - 1982) Written and directed by Edward Murphy. Cast: Cameron Mitchell, Geoff Binney, Hope Holiday, Jillian Kesner, John Dresden, Jennifer Holmes, Rey King, Carla Reynolds, Carl Anthony, John Locke, Mark Tanous, Ralph Lombardi, Vic Diaz, Camille Keaton, Jewel Shepard. (R, 86 mins)
Fans of early '80s grindhouse and late-night cable have largely kept RAW FORCE to themselves over the years, but that's likely to change with Vinegar Syndrome's release of the film in a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. A revival of the MIAMI CONNECTION sort is likely, and while both are equally ridiculous, RAW FORCE at least knows it's ridiculous. Writer/director Edward Murphy is interviewed in the release's accompanying retrospective, and says "It was a movie for 17-year-old boys...and it probably still is." Probably the best Philippines-shot B-grade T&A actioner that Roger Corman never produced, RAW FORCE has a winking and very tongue-in-cheek attitude, mixing action, horror, comedy, and gratuitous nudity into a jawdropping plot that's equal parts kung-fu epic, DAWN OF THE DEAD, Nazisploitation, raunchy slob comedy, GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, and THE LOVE BOAT. Anyone taking this seriously is completely missing the point: RAW FORCE is the kind of sleazy exploitation gem that demands to be resurrected on the midnight movie circuit.
Members of the Burbank Karate Club--including Mike O'Malley (Geoff Binney), John Taylor (John Dresden), Go Chin (Rey King), and Los Angeles cop Cookie Winchell (Jillian Kesner)--are on a cruise organized by dotty Hazel (Hope Holiday) and captained by the disgruntled Harry Dodds (Cameron Mitchell), that runs afoul of the jade trading operation of nefarious, Hitler-mustached villain Speer (Ralph Lombardi). When Speer gets wind of the cruise stopping at Warrior's Island, he dispatches his incompetent underlings--who look like a Village People tribute act--to stop them, which only results in a bar fight where the kung-fu Love Boaters handle them with ease. Speer's jade operation is a cover for his lucrative sex trade, abducting and supplying girls for a sect of monks (led by Filipino exploitation fixture Vic Diaz) that live on the otherwise deserted island. But even that's a cover for what's really going on: the island was settled by this sect in 1779 as the burial ground for disgraced martial artists, and the monks are there to watch over the kung-fu zombies who require the flesh of young women to survive. Not even Speer's henchmen are aware of the truth behind his operation, and when they abduct cruise member Eileen (Carla Reynolds), the Burbank Karate Club and gun-toting Capt. Dodds take action. Because they're...the RAW FORCE!
There's some spirited and occasionally impressive fight choreography in RAW FORCE if it involves people actually schooled in martial arts, like Kesner (FIRECRACKER) or King. With most of the actors, however, it looks awkward and not-very-rehearsed, which of course only adds to the enjoyment. Like the filmmakers, most of the actors--particularly Lombardi as the evil Speer--seem to be in on the joke. RAW FORCE has such a pronounced sense of anything-goes giddiness that it's indicative of what might've happened if Filipino exploitation legend Cirio H. Santiago was clever enough to make a self-aware spoof of his own trash movies. In that sense, it almost belongs in the same category of self-conscious New World titles like HOLLYWOOD BLVD (1976) and PIRANHA (1978), but if anything, RAW FORCE is more ridiculous and cartoonishly over-the-top than almost anything Roger Corman was releasing in the early '80s, GALAXY OF TERROR worm-rape notwithstanding. It's not enough to have martial arts fight scenes and topless beauties throughout (including I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE's Camille Keaton and future DTV erotic thriller mainstay Jewel Shepard in tiny roles), but RAW FORCE take it several steps further by throwing in a Hitler surrogate as the primary villain along with evil, clapping, cackling monks and a kung-fu zombie army. And it ends with Dresden's Taylor breaking the fourth wall and winking at the audience as a title card promises "To Be Continued..." thereby essentially all but openly stating that yes, RAW FORCE is a comedy.
BINNEY!
The cast is only as good as they have to be, though Lombardi, who obviously saw THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL and patterned his performance on Gregory Peck's Josef Mengele, chews the scenery with gusto, and the always-appealing Kesner is enjoyable as the tough-as-nails Cookie. Dresden is the nominal main hero, even though sporadically-employed 1970s TV actor Binney is more prominently-billed in what turned out to be his last role before retiring from acting at 37. It's great fun watching a grumbling Mitchell, who appears to be nowhere near the vicinity of sober, bitching his way through his role, endlessly griping about the lack of maintenance on the ship and the penny-pinching cheapness of Hazel's cruise operation--it's almost as if it's his own personal running commentary on being a once-promising 1950s leading man reduced to appearing in movies like RAW FORCE. With some of the film's financing coming from the Philippines' San Miguel Brewery, Mitchell (1918-1994) was the biggest name the producers could afford, and Holiday--Mitchell's girlfriend according to Murphy, even though she was married to character actor Frank Marth from 1967 until his death in 2014--presumably was part of his deal as they worked together on several D-list exploitation titles in the 1980s, including KILLPOINT (1984) and the MST3K favorite SPACE MUTINY (1988). Holiday had prominent supporting roles in the Billy Wilder films THE APARTMENT (1960) and IRMA LA DOUCE (1963) before she was relegated to TV and drive-in gigs.
Cameron Mitchell (1918-1994)
It was even worse for Mitchell by the early 1980s. He stayed busy but was a long way from Happy Loman in the big-screen version of DEATH OF A SALESMAN (1951), or playing the older brother of Marlon Brando's Napoleon in DESIREE (1954), or clashing with James Cagney over Doris Day in LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME (1955). Though he might still turn up in some all-star disaster movie like THE SWARM (1978), gigs for Mitchell in major-studio films dropped drastically by the late 1970s. Around the same time as RAW FORCE, Mitchell had a showy, cigar-chomping supporting turn with an Oscar-nominated Peter O'Toole in MY FAVORITE YEAR, which marked his last appearance in an A-list big-screen project. Mitchell continued making movies and was still guesting on TV shows like FANTASY ISLAND, MAGNUM P.I., KNIGHT RIDER, MURDER SHE WROTE, and SIMON & SIMON, and in miniseries like DREAM WEST (1986), but things like RAW FORCE and KILL SQUAD were pretty much the state of his career in the 1980s. In 1983, Mitchell even co-starred with John Leslie and Veronica Hart in the hard-boiled hardcore porno DIXIE RAY, HOLLYWOOD STAR, which was cut down into an R-rated softcore version retitled IT'S CALLED MURDER, BABY. Though Mitchell didn't partake in any sex scenes, it was very rare for a well-known, mainstream actor to appear in a XXX film (similarly-skidding '50s tough guy Aldo Ray co-starred with Carol Connors in the 1978 porno western SWEET SAVAGE), even if he would later claim he was unaware that it was going to be hardcore. No matter how many lowly, disreputable jobs he was offered, Mitchell never stopped working (eight credits in 1987 alone!) and while he was usually hired to overact and would often appear to be drunk, he would occasionally demonstrate that he still had that fire in his belly and would turn in an interesting and unexpectedly strong performance when no one was looking in something like THE OFFSPRING (1987). He died from lung cancer in 1994, never achieving a big comeback. Mitchell's final role came in Steve Latshaw's no-budget horror film JACK-O, released straight-to-video over a year after his death.
RAW FORCE marked Murphy's filmmaking debut, and he only made one other film, 1985's HEATED VENGEANCE, starring BATTLESTAR: GALACTICA's Richard Hatch. In the bonus features, the gregarious writer/director, who left movies to becoming a practicing attorney, talks about living as an expat in the Philippines after serving in Vietnam. He found work as a bit player in a slew of Filipino exploitation titles before stepping behind the camera. Like his cast, Murphy knows RAW FORCE is a stupid movie, but you can see the enthusiasm emanating from Murphy now and immediately see why RAW FORCE is so much fun. Murphy might be a bit too enthusiastic and reveling in the newfound attention that Vinegar Syndrome is bringing him. He talks about Holiday being Mitchell's girlfriend, but never mentioning her husband. Instead, he names Jonathan Winters as Holiday's ex-husband, and that was never the case. Winters was married once, to the same woman from 1949 until her death in 2009. Murphy claims to be good friends with Winters, even saying Winters was brought along by Holiday and Mitchell to a dinner meeting for a potential RAW FORCE II (it was never made, despite the joking promise at the end), yet he's surprised when offscreen interviewer Elijah Drenner informs him that Winters is dead (he died in 2013). I'm not saying Murphy is telling tales out of school--maybe Winters stepped out on his wife with Holiday, who knows?--or indulging in some full-of-shit revisionist history like Mark Damon claiming it was he, and not Roger Corman, who directed 1961's THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, but it's possible that he misspoke and is simply confusing Jonathan Winters with someone else. It's also hard to believe Winters would even entertain the notion of accepting an offer to co-star in RAW FORCE II, unless he was just tagging along to get a free dinner out of it.
Not as good as EUROPA REPORT but still far better than STRANDED, THE LAST DAYS ON MARS is, like those films, another throwback ,'80s-inspired outer space horror outing that only managed the get the slightest of theatrical releases. This one tries to be a thinking person's sci-fi film along the lines of EUROPA REPORT, MOON, and SUNSHINE, but it works best when it's content to be a straight-up B-horror movie. Indeed, MARS gets off to an extremely brisk start for these kinds of things, barely establishing most of the characters before they start getting offed one by one. Then, faced with a lot of time and too few people left to kill, things slow down to the point where it becomes a crushing bore. It almost feels like director Ruairi Robinson and screenwriter Clive Dawson have more highbrow things in mind but decided to get the commercial obligations out of the way first and finding nothing else on their plate to fill the second half of the movie. They should've slowed down and paced themselves for the long haul. And have fun with it--this should've been titled SPACE ZOMBIES or even MARS NEEDS ZOMBIES and just rolled with it.
On the last day of a six-month international mission to the red planet, crew member Marko (Goran Kostic) is investigating trace evidences of life when a crater opens up and sucks him under the Martian surface. Captain Brunel (Elias Koteas) leads some of the crew on a search, and they lose Dalby (Yusra Warsama) in the process. While Brunel and a few others are still out, a zombified Marko and Dalby turn up at the ship and try to kill the others. As the infection spreads and the dead crew members revive to attack, second-in-command Campbell (Liev Schreiber) is forced to find his inner Ripley and take control. LAST DAYS works best in the early going, and it starts so well that it just barrels through its limited number of actors and grinds to a halt right when it should be gaining momentum. It's a backwards approach that might've worked if the filmmakers had anything significant to say, but this isn't exactly hard sci-fi we're dealing with here. It's zombies in space but somehow finds a way to screw it up. With location shooting in the vast deserts of Jordan, LAST DAYS looks terrific, the interiors on the ship have an effectively claustrophobic atmosphere, and the cast (Schreiber and Koteas are good, and there's also Olivia Williams, Romola Garai, and Johnny Harris) is unusually credible for such standard genre fare. It's suspenseful and engrossing for about 50 minutes before its slow, shambling stagger to an unsatisfying conclusion. Universal put up some of the budget, but must not have seen much potential, opting to hand the US distribution rights over to Magnet, who dumped it on 13 screens for a $24,000 gross. (R, 98 mins)
COLD COMES THE NIGHT (US - 2014)
The late, great Anthony Perkins' son Osgood Perkins co-wrote this drab, tired would-be film noir that offers no suspense and no surprises other than a shockingly bad performance by the usually infallible Bryan Cranston. Using the dual crutches of fading eyesight and a garbled Russian accent, Cranston is Topo, a money mule on a delivery with his dumbass nephew/driver Quincy (Robin Lord Taylor). They stop for a few hours' sleep at a shitty motel run by widowed Chloe (Alice Eve), who lives on the property with her daughter Sophia (Ursula Parker of LOUIE). The motel primarily functions as a brothel for the local hookers and a safe haven for drug dealers, overseen by corrupt cop Billy (Logan Marshall-Green), an ex of Chloe's who gives her a cut of his proceeds (Chloe, of course, has a heart of gold and the illegal activities are just a way to make ends meet). When Quincy attacks a hooker and both are killed in the melee, his Jeep--with the money Topo was supposed to deliver--is impounded by the cops, led by (who else?) Billy, who searches the vehicle and makes off with the loot he finds inside. Desperately needing his money and helpless with his poor eyesight, Topo kidnaps Chloe and forces her to help him recover what belongs to his employers.
COLD COMES THE NIGHT just never works, whether it's the inconsistency of Topo's eyesight (he can't drive, he can't count money and can't see to write anything on a piece of paper in front of his face, but he's a point-blank crack shot and can get the edge on several people who can actually see), the cartoonish ludicrousness of Cranston's accent, which is less like a BREAKING BAD badass and more like Evil Yakov Smirnoff (at one point, he pulls a gun and orders someone to "Shut fuck up"), or the complete lack of urgency in the slumbering direction of co-writer Tze Chun, who never gives this any sense of pacing, energy, or logic. Watch the scene where Billy pulls Chloe and Topo over for a traffic stop, swearing at them over his PA speaker in the middle of town, in no way behaving like a dirty cop who knows how to keep a secret. There's ultimately no reason for Topo to be blind or Russian other than to indulge Cranston with a character who comes off more like an SNL parody than a credible, threatening villain. There's so little here that the film actually ends at around the 78-minute mark, but there's an absurdly slow-moving, 12-minute (!) closing credits crawl to pad this thing out to 90 minutes. Cranston is uncharacteristically off his game here, but Marshall-Green (PROMETHEUS) is worse, and KIDS star Leo Fitzpatrick is wasted in a nothing role as a second driver who taxis Topo around. A bland misfire, the thoroughly forgettable COLD COMES THE NIGHT opened on just 16 screens in January 2014, pulling in a paltry $17,000. (R, 90 mins)
This long-shelved horror/western hybrid is best known as the movie Wesley Snipes was working on in Namibia when he was indicted on federal tax evasion charges. Filmed mostly in 2006, GALLOWWALKERS (then without the "s" on the end) suspended production while Snipes returned to Florida to meet with attorneys and deal with his legal issues. The judge allowed him to return to Namibia to finish shooting and then there were additional reshoots in 2008. Snipes worked on three more films in the meantime (THE ART OF WAR II, BROOKLYN'S FINEST, and GAME OF DEATH), then served most of his three-year prison sentence before being released in April 2013. All the while, GALLOWWALKERS languished in a state of incompletion, with missed release dates in 2010 and 2011. It's finally out, quietly dumped on DVD seven years after most of it was shot, and it's hardly a triumphant "comeback" for Snipes. This was obviously an extremely troubled production and despite Snipes being allowed to go back to Namibia to finish his scenes, it's clear that the star's offscreen issues caused more of a disruption than the filmmakers let on. In its released state, GALLOWWALKERS is an incoherent mess, riddled with choppy editing, extended stretches where Snipes is offscreen, much voiceover narration by Snipes' character--almost always a last ditch desperation move to tie loose plot threads together, but that, coupled with Snipes not doing the narration is a good indication that the filmmakers were still frantically putting Band-Aids on this thing long after they lost access to their star. The plot has to do with Aman (Snipes), a bounty hunter in a strange desert purgatory where a curse put upon him causes those he kills to come back from the dead, forcing him to kill them again. He's on a quest of vengeance after his wife is gang-raped and killed by psychotic outlaw Kansa (Kevin Howarth) and his men, so he recruits hotshot gunfighter Fabulos (Riley Smith) to help him out after the undead Kansa and his zombified gang return.
It's hard telling what director/co-writer Andrew Goth is going for with GALLOWWALKERS. It's a hodgepodge of BLADE, UNDERWORLD, and splatter spaghetti western, with visual and dialogue shout-outs to Sergio Leone (Charles Bronson's classic "You brought two too many" line from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is quoted here), and some of the surreal visuals in the very slowly-paced opening hour almost bring to mind what a hypothetical "Alejandro Jodorowsky's FOR A FEW ZOMBIES MORE" might look like. Characters wander in and out of the story, Kansa and his zombies look different from scene to scene (I think there's two concurrent timelines going on here, but it's never really clear), one guy looks like the sinewy Frank from HELLRAISER and another looks like THE TOXIC AVENGER, and other than a couple of inspired action scenes that are too little, too late, the only real positive of GALLOWWALKERS is the impressive widescreen cinematography of Namibia's stunning desert landscape. Sixth-billed Patrick Bergin, once a leading man opposite Julia Roberts and now just mixed in with no-name co-stars without even the dignity of an "and Patrick Bergin" credit, shows up for five minutes as a marshal and is immediately killed (Hollywood tried to make Bergin happen from 1991-93 and he was just flatly rejected by moviegoers--was it the mustache?), and wrestling fanatics might be interested in seeing Diamond Dallas Page in a small role, but ultimately, GALLOWWALKERS is just a misfire that was probably too doomed to salvage. The notion of Snipes as a cursed gunfighter being pursued by his resurrected victims is an interesting metaphor for a man trying to outrun the ghosts of his past, but even after seven years, GALLOWWALKERS still feels thrown-together and unfinished. It's too bad, because there's some good ideas here that Goth, for a variety of reasons (many not his fault), can't bring together. (R, 92 mins)
AFTERSHOCK (US/Chile - 2013)
Taking a break from following Quentin Tarantino around and acting like Chester to QT's Spike, Eli Roth produced, co-wrote, and stars in this would-be disaster epic that was filmed back-to-back in Chile with his still-unreleased THE GREEN INFERNO, an homage to the Italian cannibal films of the late 1970s/early 1980s. A sort-of EARTHQUAKE for the extreme horror crowd, AFTERSHOCK gets off to a laborious start, spending its interminable opening 35 minutes on what plays like a dull HANGOVER knockoff, with Roth as an American partying in Valparaiso with two Chilean friends (Ariel Levy as Ed Helms and Nicolas Martinez as Zach Galifianakis). They hook up with some girls (Andrea Osvart, Natasha Yarovenko, and Lorenza Izzo) and hit some clubs. There's drawn-out attempts at character development: Roth is a single dad, Levy is still pining for his ex, Osvart and Izzo are sisters with unresolved issues, and Martinez is an inexplicable chick magnet. Finally, a massive earthquake hits and chaos reigns as Valparaiso quickly turns into hell on earth.
To his credit, co-writer/director Nicolas Lopez gets the lead out once disaster strikes and the group finds themselves on the run from a band of thrill-killing convicts from a nearby prison, and there's an admirably cruel and unpredictable randomness to the order in which the cast members are killed off. The tag line of AFTERSHOCK's poster is "The only thing more terrifying than Mother Nature is human nature," and unlike a lot of disaster films where everyone sets aside their differences and pulls together in full "triumph of the human spirit" mode, this film opts for the misanthropic "everyone is an asshole looking out for #1" route, and in that respect, in today's culture, that's probably a little more plausible. But Lopez and Roth don't really explore the psychological elements that they hint at, and it takes so long to get to the main plot that once it gets going, it feels like they're in a rush to get to the end. They get lazy (watch how the streets go from jam-packed to empty with no explanation) and a plot twist involving an additional character who joins the group doesn't really make much sense. There's some scattered moments in AFTERSHOCK that work very well on a visceral level for gorehounds (one person poking their head out of a manhole cover only to have it immediately squashed by a speeding car), and Hungarian actress Osvart seems to be trying a lot harder than any of her co-stars, but a lot of the CGI effects are weak and it feels less like a cohesive film and more like an excuse for Roth and his boys to party in Chile (and not just the boys: Selena Gomez has a pointless cameo) and shit out a movie in their spare time. Most of the same cast and crew worked on THE GREEN INFERNO, so let's hope everyone was a little more focused when they made that one. (R, 89 mins)
