Shadow Of The Vampire

I’m not sure when I first saw Nosferatu.  It may have been in one of my film classes at WV State or it may have been at one of the local libraries.  I do remember watching it, however.  When I first heard about Shadow of the Vampire on the Internet back in 1999, it sounded interesting.  It revived memories of the silent classic around which the film is based.  The plot of Shadow of the Vampire is that Nosferatu director F.W. Murnau (played by John Malkovich) hired an actual vampire to portray Count Orlok in his film.  The actor was Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe). 

There have been many urban legends about Schreck and Nosferatu and Shadow of the Vampire uses those myths to weave its tale.  I remember reading in Famous Monsters about some of these, including one that claims Max Schrek may have been a stage name as Schrek is German for “fear”.  I don’t know if this is correct, but the IMDB lists Schreck as the actor’s birth name and lists several other films that Schrek appeared in.

Shadow of the Vampire’s trailer makes it out to be almost a comedy, but I didn’t find much of it comedic.  It is not really much of a horror film either as there aren’t many scares to found in the film either.  It is a decent drama about making a movie.  The conceit of pretending that Max Schreck truly was a vampire is amusing and allows for a nice little “what if” spin.  Dafoe does a wonderful job as Schrek and Malkovich is equally wonderful as Murnau.

I was a little disappointed in the film, but mostly because it was sold as a form of comedy, and I as I stated, there really aren’t many humorous moments in the film.  In fact one of the bits that works as a bit of dark humor in the trailer with Murnau telling Schrek that he can’t kill his camera man plays completely natural in the film itself.  The acting is great.  The makeup and all the technical aspects are dazzling, but the script just left me a little unsatisfied.  I give Shadow of the Vampire 2 stars.

Red Eye

The first Wes Craven film that I remember seeing was Deadly Blessing.  I saw it at the Plaza East and really enjoyed it.  It was very well made and sufficiently creepy.  Later on I saw Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street and many other Craven films.  I enjoyed almost every one of his films that I saw.  When Red Eye came out to theaters, I missed it.  I wasn’t really going to many films at the time, so it wasn’t as if I was purposely shunning the film.  When it came out on DVD, my daughter wanted to see it, but I wasn’t ready to plop down $20 for it, so I waited for a copy to come in to the pawn shop.  When Wills got a copy, I bought it and added it to the collection, but I never sat down and watched it.  I’m not sure if my daughter did or not.

I have been trying to check out some horror movies since Halloween in so close, and I decided that even if it is a thriller more than an actual horror movie, Red Eye was a Wes Craven film and that was good enough for me.  Plus it was around 90 minutes.

Red Eye takes place almost entirely on an airplane.  Young hotel employee on her way up, Lisa Reisert played by Rachel McAdams, is on her way back to work after attending a funeral out of state.  On her way to boarding she meets Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy) and is surprised to find herself sitting beside him on the flight back home.  Unfortunately as she soon learns, his presence there as her seat mate was not a happy accident.  Jackson works for a group that specializes in political assassinations and the like.  He has one of his men stationed outside the house of Lisa’s dad, Joe (Brian Cox), and plans to kill him if Lisa doesn’t call and arrange to have his political target moved to a different hotel room where he can be more easily disposed of.

The plane ride becomes a contest between the two with Lisa wanting to save her father’s life, but not wanting to play any part in having politician Charles Keefe (Jack Scalia) and his family killed.  Craven does a wonderful job of creating tension using the screenplay written by Carl Ellsworth to great effect.  For a film that seems inherently limited by its own structure, Red Eye proves to be a surprisingly effective thriller. 

The DVD provides a couple of well done featurettes on the making of the movie as well as a gag reel.  Many of the behind the scenes folk have cameos as airline passengers or hotel guests and the featurette points out many of them.

I really enjoyed Red Eye and give it 3 stars.  It’s very simple, but very effective.

Masters Of Horror: We All Scream For Ice Cream

I was looking for some short DVDs and I figured since it is getting close to Halloween, horror movies would be a good thing to check out.  We All Scream For Ice Cream was another horror short from the second season of Masters of Horror.  This one was directed by Tom Holland who did Child’s Play and Fright Night.  I remember really enjoying Fright Night when I first saw it at the Keith Albee theater, so I had hopes for this one and for the most part it didn’t disappoint. 

The plot involves a childhood prank gone horribly wrong that resulted in the death of ice cream selling clown Buster played by William Forsythe.  When one of the kids moves back into town after growing up and having a family of his own, Buster shows back up and starts killing the ones responsible for his death using their own kids and a voodoo doll-like ice cream treat.  When the kids bite into the ice cream which is shaped into a human likeness, their parent melts into a big puddle of runny melted ice cream.

I enjoyed We All Scream For Ice Cream, and like Valerie on the Stairs it has some decent making of featurettes.  One deals with the making of the film while the other deals with how the make up effects were pulled off.  Both are worth watching.

I give We All Scream For Ice Cream a 9 on the Night Flight scale as well.  I remember reading that they wanted to concentrate more on monsters for season 2 of Masters of Horror, and with the demon in Valerie on the Stairs and the killer ice cream clown in We All Scream For Ice Cream, they have a couple of decent ones.  Both of these episodes were much better than some of the season one episodes.  I’m sorry they never produced a season 3 although Garris did work on Fear Itself for NBC and a Masters of Science Fiction series that I missed.

Masters Of Horror: Valerie On The Stairs

I was really excited when Showtime announced the first season of Masters of Horror.  13 short horror movies directed by the masters of the field.  I looked over the names; Tobe Hooper, John Landis, Joe Dante, Don Coscarelli, Stuart Gordon, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Takashi Miike, Dario Argento, John McNaughton, and three names I didn’t recognize which included Lucky McKee, William Malone, and Mick Garris. I soon learned that Mick Garris was the executive producer for the series and was sort of the creator of the project.  He had also directed a couple Stephen King adaptations.  His episode didn’t actually hold any great anticipation for me, but it turned out to be a fairly decent one never the less.

For the second season of the show, I ended up missing every episode except for The Damned Thing and Family.  I kept my eyes open and figured I would grab the box sets at some point.  I never have gotten the box sets, but I have picked up a few of the single DVDs that Anchor Bay released.  What’s funny is that somewhere along the line Anchor Bay got bought out by Starz, so all the season 2 DVDs have every reference to Showtime removed as far as I can tell.

Valerie on the Stairs was Garris’ season 2 outing.  It was based on a story by Clive Barker that dealt with a house set up as a boarding home for unpublished writers to work on getting their projects written and published.  A new tenant moves in and starts hearing and seeing things.  He soon finds out that the building is haunted by a tortured young woman and the demon that loves her but keeps her enslaved.  Both of these beings were the products of failed writing done in the building with such a passion and intensity that it brought them to life.

I enjoyed the story and with Tony Todd playing the demon known as “The Beast”, I was extremely pleased.  Clare Grant as Valerie does a wonderful job in this short time to show us the frightened victim side of Valerie where she is roaming the halls naked and being sucked through walls by the demon, as well as the vindictive spirit side where she is calling in The Beast to destroy those writers that created the tortures she had to endure and that kept her imprisoned in the building by never finishing the novel.  Tyron Leitso does a decent job as the new writer who falls in love with Valerie.  The writing group that brought these dark characters to life consists of Christopher Lloyd, Suki Kaiser, and Jonathan Watton.

The disc includes a nice making of documentary which shows how they pulled off the amazing climax.  It also includes a featurette on jump shots which are designed solely to make the audience jump out of their seats.  Both are very well done and interview all the right people.  My only complaint disc wise was the huge amount of trailers on the front of the movie.  Normally I love trailers, but it seemed like we were getting trailers for all of the season 2 episodes as well as selected season one episodes.  I eventually hit the menu button and skipped past several of them.

I thought this was a pretty decent Masters of Horror, and much better than Garris’ season one episode.  I give it a 9 on the Night Flight scale.

Dennis Miller: All In

Several years ago the wife and I drove to Frostburg, MD to see Dennis Miller live.  He was supposrting his then recent “Off White” album.  The night we went to see him, he had a cold/flu thing and his opening act, Denny Dillon’s Sheer Art Attack, ended up going on after him so that he could get medicated and get in bed sooner.  His show was hilarious and very intelligent.  Dillon’s show was amazing.  There used to be some videos of Dillon’s act on You Tube, but the last time I looked I couldn’t find them.  He would come on stage and while music played, he would throw paint on a canvas and end up painting a perfect portrait of the artist whose music was playing.  As I said, it was amazing.  I thank Dennis Miller for introducing me to Mr. Dillon’s work.  Sadly he died a few years later.

Miller didn’t die, but his act has changed to the point it almost seems like the old Dennis Miller has died as well.  Back when we saw Miller, his comedy was more left leaning.  He poked fun at Clinton, but the jabs with true vitriol were directed at Newt Gingerich and the Republicans.  Somewhere around the time of the 9/11 attacks, Miller changed his politics and began talking about Democrats like a man talking about an ex that he particularly despises.  You know, the one he refers to with the C word or the B word 99% of the time.  The telling moment in Dennis Miller: All In was when he tells the audience that all politicians are idiots or crooks, but then he only mentions liberal Democratic politicians.  As a West Virginian, I took special umbrage at his remarks about the recently deceased Robert Byrd.  He tries to paint Byrd as a crazy old man that needs to be put in a home, but Byrd was one of only a small number of politicians that had the balls to stand up and speak against going to war with Iraq, especially in the manner in which we did.  And guess what, Byrd was right.  I didn’t always agree with Robert Byrd, but I certainly respected him and I admired his arcane knowledge of the laws, by-laws, and rules of the Senate.  Miller makes a crack about Byrd needing to go home to WV and get a job as a greeter at a KKK-Mart.  Yes, as a youth Byrd was a member of the KKK, but he grew up and denounced his racist past, something I can’t recall the late Republican Senator Strom Thurmond ever doing.  Of course Miller doesn’t have any issues with Thurmond’s civil rights stance because that might knock him out of getting another appearance on FOX News.

In case you haven’t noticed, I tend to be much more a liberal, and that may color my views on Miller’s new style of comedy.  Basically, I don’t think he is as funny.  I expect my comedians to joke about all the insanity in politics all the way up to the President no matter which party they happen to be in.  Everybody made fun of Clinton, and he was a big boy and he could take it.  George W. Bush was a different story.  Miller gives him a free pass with the exception of a dig at the way he pronounces “nuclear”.  I just didn’t find his act all that funny because of his blatant partisanship.  Miller is certainly entitled to his own opinion, it’s just not one that I share.  He claims that even if we find the war in Iraq to be wrong or immoral or we’re against it for any reason, that we need to shut up and not say so in public.  In public, we should be praising the decision to invade a sovreign country.  I’m sorry, Dennis.  I believe in a little thing called Freedom of Speech.  Lenny Bruce would be very disappointed in you.

I would normally rate a comedy special on the Night Flight scale, but for the first time, I don’t think I can possibly do that.  I disagreed with Dennis so much, that it biased my opinion about the rest of his act.  You can try and check your own biases at the door, if you choose to watch it.  In fact if you happen to be of a right wing conservative mind set, you might think he’s hilarious.  Personally I feel like one of those people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers who has been confronted with someone that looks like their family member, but just isn’t quite the same.

Live Animals

I had never heard of Live Animals when I saw the DVD case at the pawn shop.  I’m not sure why I decided to give it a shot.  Perhaps because it was only $2.  Perhaps because it was only about 84 minutes.  Perhaps because it was a horror movie and Halloween is coming.  What ever the reason, I picked it up and decided to pop it in the DVD player.

Live Animals was not made on a huge budget, but that actually works in its favor.  The actors are pretty much unknowns.  The sets are pretty limited which helps create a sense of being detached from society.  The plot involves a farmer and his assistant that kidnap young people and sell them into slavery.  The farmer brags about how he breaks horses and how he has learned to break people as well.  We see the results of some of his “breaking” as he has his assistant cut out the tongue of one of the guys for cussing him and being obstinate.

I can’t say that Live Animals is a great film, but it is much better than it has any right to be.  The acting by the twenty somethings is pretty weak, but John Still and Patrick Cox turn in very believable performances.  Cox in particular has one scene that is way out of character for hulking killer Edgar, but the actor makes it work well enough that suspension of disbelief is not totally destroyed.  It involves leaving keys and weapons where they can be accessed by the prisoners.  The girls have a couple of nude or topless scenes as they are “cleaned up” (i.e. hosed down) by Edgar.  They do a fine job with those scenes.

If you’re looking for a slightly creepy little film to toss on over Halloween, Live Animals isn’t the worst choice you could make although be warned it does start off a bit slow.  I give it 2 stars.  Part of me feels it’s more deserving of 1 3/4, but I think the performances of Still and Cox earn it enough good will for the other 1/4 star.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

I love the movie Used Cars.  It is one of the funniest movies from start to finish that I have ever seen.  Once I realized that The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard was also about used car salesmen, I knew it had a huge measuring stick to go up against.  The Goods focuses on one particular type of used car salesman; the ones that car lots bring in when they really need to make a lot of sales.  John Landis did a fantastic documentary on one of these used car warriors called Slasher.  It was a very entertaining film and it showed some of the tricks of the trade.  The Goods didn’t use all the tricks that Slasher used like the $50 car that is for the most part a piece of junk the dealer should be paying to have hauled away, but they created some that were funny and yet plausible like the salesman that buys the customer’s car as a trade-in and then sells it back to him at a mark-up 40 minutes later.

One of the reasons I felt The Goods worked so well was its top-notch cast.  Jeremy Piven, Ving Rhames, David Koechner, and Kathryn Hahn are the sales crew brought in to bring up the sales.  The local crew they are brought in to assist includes Tony Hale, Ken Jeong, and Charles Napier.  We also meet the family that owns the lot led by patriarch Ben Selleck, played by James Brolin.  The rest of the family includes Wendie Malick, Rob Riggle, and Jordana Spiro.  Spiro plays daughter Ivy Selleck who is engaged to Paxton Harding (Ed Helms) the son of a competing used car dealer played by Alan Thicke.  Helping to further raise the comedy talent quotient is Craig Robinson as DJ Request (a DJ that refuses to take requests) and an unbilled Will Ferrell as McDermott, the sales team’s former DJ who dies in a horrible sky diving accident that had me laughing out loud sitting by myself in the living room.

The plot is pretty simple.  The mercenary sales force comes in and motivates the local crew.  They buy lots of TV and radio spots to promote the event and bring in a minor celebrity to help sell the event.  The rival dealer makes a play for the lot and they end up making a wager that they will sell every car on the lot by the end of the weekend.  It is the whacked out characters and their interactions that make the film.  Helms for example is also part of a boy band, or as he calls it, a man band since all the members are grown men.  Brolin has a crush on one of Piven’s sales crew but it isn’t the busty red-head, it’s Koechner.  Piven has his eyes on Spiro’s Ivy despite her engagement to Helms.  And Hahn has the hots for Brolin’s son Peter (Riggle) who although he is in a huge man size body is actually only 10 years old and suffers from a glandular disorder that makes him large.

The Goods is not as laugh packed as Used Cars, but it is still pure good old raunchy fun done extremely well.  I didn’t see the film when it was in theaters, and it appears that I was not alone in that.  The trailer and the marketing didn’t do a good enough job of telling the potential audience what they were in for.  That is terrible for audience attendance, but it makes the film that much more enjoyable when you can walk in and no practically nothing about the film.

I give The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard 4 stars.  Any flaws it has I can overlook by the virtue of two incredibly funny scenes that had me laughing.  I mentioned that one was the skydiving scene.  The other one also involves Ferrell, but this time with a pair of singing black angels with dirty mouths.  Definitely check this movie out, and if you see Used Cars available, make it a double feature.

Ryan And Sean’s Not So Excellent Adventure

Occasionally I run across a DVD that I have never heard of and I love it.  District B13 was one of those films that just blew me away and I knew nothing of it when I bought it.  The Sasquatch Gang surprised me by being a charming little unknown family film.  Kelley Baker Angry Filmmaker Inc. Short Films introduced me to the works of Kelley Baker and through them to the engaging person behind the production and his other works.  Those are the moments you treasure.

Then there are the movies that disappoint you.  King of the Lost World was one of those films.  It was bad, but it was still more entertaining than my choice for the worst film of all time, The Telephone with Whoopi Goldberg.  I like Whoopi, but The Telephone is a boring piece of garbage.  My wife and I rented the VHS of it ages ago, and neither of us could believe how bad it was. ( Of course that didn’t stop me from picking up a copy on DVD.)  I mention all of this because I have now found a DVD that has earned it own special title.  Ryan and Sean’s Not So Excellent Adventure is without a doubt the absolute stupidest film I have ever seen. 

Ryan & Sean looked like it might be funny in the same way the Do It For Uncle Manny surprised me and was actually a half-way decent film.  No such luck here.  The plot concerns a down on his luck movie producer (Michael Buckley) that has 30 days to come up with a hit movie or he is off the lot.  He and his partner Ink (Melvin “Shorty” Rossi) stumble upon a pair of Asian Internet You Tube stars named Ryan and Sean.  He decides sight unseen and script unwritten to hire Ryan and Sean for his next project.  It also turns out that one of his other employees is a self-proclaimed biggest fan of the duo and sets out to get close to them any way possible.  The character played by Ryan Click is known as T.S.M., The Stalking Mangina.  If you think the humor couldn’t get any lamer than that, you’re in for a shock.  The film is punctuated by a host of lame jokes.  One of the duo keeps breaking the fourth wall and talking to the audience while the other one asks who he is talking to.  The pair gets filmed in front of a green screen sitting on a motor scooter and different backgrounds are placed behind them.  Then chase scenes involving the two in front of a knock-off of the Hollywood sign get stuck in during scene changes in place of fades or wipes or any other sort of normal edit. 

Ryan Click seems to be auditioning to become the next Jim Carrey as in addition to his heavily bearded (think Rip Van Winkle) Mangina, he also plays a cop, a waitress, a Sweeny Todd-like barber/stylist, and other roles.  As for Sean Fujiyoshi and Ryan Higa, they perform bad lip synch, bad parody, and bad boy band dance moves.  They also provide plenty of fart jokes.  Oh and since Ink also happens to be a little person, Ryan and Sean unload a ton of short jokes as well.

The film is like a 6-year-old’s sugar rush caught on film.  Forget logic if you dare to watch this disc.  I swear I think my IQ probably dropped from watching this film.  Imagine a group of kids making a movie with jokes that only they think are funny.  That is this film, except the kids are old enough that they should have known better.

I would like to point out that although this is without a doubt the absolute stupidest movie I have ever seen, it still doesn’t unseat The Telephone as the worst of all time.  I can actually imagine this being a great stoner comedy.  Not a comedy about stoners, but a comedy for stoners.  I can see them laughing at one of the guys constantly waking the other up by farting in his face, or by them calling for a reservation at an empty restaurant that refused to seat them without a reservation and using the name “Pissedoff”. 

Ryan and Sean’s Not So Excellent Adventure gets 1/2 a star if you are sober and have even half of a brain.  If you are impaired through use of recreational aids or mental illness, your rating may be higher.  Ryan & Sean did have one redeeming value.  After watching it, I thought maybe I could make my own movie.

Bill Maher: Victory Begins At Home

Victory Begins At Home is the last of the Bill Maher DVDs I currently own.  The DVD presents his one man show which was apparently conceived to go hand in hand with his book When You Ride Alone Bin Laden Rides With You.  Several of the propaganda posters from the book are used as backdrops for sections of his show.  I love these WWII style posters.  I actually have some real WWII propaganda posters in the collection somewhere and I have a couple of the spoof ones in magnet form on the refrigerator.  I do not currently have a copy of Maher’s book with his posters, but I should shortly as I just ordered one on eBay from Armadillo Books.  I also love and collect armadillos, so I figured it was a sign and smacked that “Buy It Now” button.

Victory Begins At Home tackles the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the politics around these issues.  It also touches on other topics, but this is the centerpiece of the show.  I tend to agree with Maher on most political issues, so his humor is often preaching to the crowd.  He says something and I agree, so it’s funny.  He makes a point about how Bush sold the war and I find myself agreeing and ready to laugh along.  I’m not sure how the humor would translate with someone who actually liked Bush and thought that he did the right thing taking us to war in Iraq.

Maher also takes his jabs at religion, but he still seems more tolerant of religion than he does on Real Time.  He spends more time on pedophile priests than on actual religious doctrine and beliefs here.  He does make a point however to discuss the differences between Muslim extremists and Christian extremists. 

I definitely recommend checking this one out, and be sure to watch the bonus feature which contains a Q&A with the audience.  I don’t know if it was the editing on this segment or what, but I was actually very disappointed in that several times Bill seemed to take a lesson from the politicians and sidestep 95% of the question.

Victory Begins At Home gets a 9 1/2 on the Night Flight scale and is probably my favorite of the three DVDs of Maher’s that I have reviewed.  I hope Big Lots gets another batch of HBO Specials this fall.

Bulldog Drummond Escapes

I decided to try out one of the other crime solvers on the AMC disc with Ellery Queen.  I opted to go with Bulldog Drummond over Mr. Moto purely because Drummond was shorter.  I was actually surprised at how fast and fun the film was.  There is plenty of banter back and forth, a decent mystery and a performance by Ray Milland unlike anything else I have seen him do.  Most of my experience with Milland’s work has been as the bad guy or a serious role.  I think of The Lost Weekend or Frogs.  I was pleasantly surprised at how easily he could slip into the adventurous detective.

Sadly this was Milland’s only outing as Drummond, although several more films were made.  I look forward to checking out some of the other films in the future.  Bulldog Drummond Escapes gets 2 3/4 stars from me.