“…and when is this most tragic of melancholy topics most poetical? When it most loosely alludes itself to beauty.”
Here it is, the long awaited return to horror for director Francis Ford Coppola. This is something I have been waiting for since I first saw Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Needless to say, my expectations couldn’t have been higher. The idea of Coppola and Tom Waits working together again was enough for me. At least that’s how I felt before hand.
It was the expectations that ruined this film for me. If it had been from any other director the problems found within wouldn’t have been so glaring. It’s not the cheesy looking CGI that bothered me, it was a problem of story.
While this was marketed as a vampire film, it was the vampire element itself that brought this whole story crashing down. We have a struggling writer who comes across a great story of a priest who isn’t willing to let his children’s souls be damned by the goth kids across the lake, so he does the unthinkable. Here is the best part of all this, through dream sequences he is told this story by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe also teaches him (and us) a thing or two about writing. My question to you is, where do vampires fit in? They don’t.
What I described to you is interesting enough on it’s own, adding vampires to it muddied the waters just a tad too much. I just hope this wasn’t an attempt to capitalize off of recent trends…but if that were the case they would have been zombies.
Enough negativity, there were certain things that worked for me. Poe, for example, was brilliant. When he sits our hero down and explains to him how he wrote The Raven, my jaw hit the floor. This film should have just been Poe, the priest, and our writer. Too high concept, too little attention to story.
You can make up your own mind on how you feel about the look of the dream sequences. That is matter of taste and to me it was delicious. It felt surreal but not ridiculous.
Go see this film for Edgar Allan Poe, not for the vampires. If Hall Baltimore is the “bargain basement Stephen King,” then Twixt is the “bargain basement ‘Salem’s Lot.”
Jennifer's Body, where do I start, with “her Body” or with the movie? I think I’ll start with her body, since it was the only likable thing about the movie and Megan Fox so graciously lent that body to the title role. I guess for any horny teenager or two Meagan Fox alone was worth the price of admission.
Unfortunately, most horror movie fans require a little more than a pretty face and a sexy body to satiate them when it comes to their horror movies. Sure the movie was bloody and there was plenty of gore. But did it live up to all of the anticipation?
If you haven’t seen it, Jennifer’s Body, classified as a dark comedy horror movie and directed by Karyn Kusama is about a young lady Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) who is taken over by a demonic spirit after being offered up in sacrifice to satan by a indie band of rock star wannabees named Low Shoulder, lead by Adam Brody (The O.C.) who sell their souls to the devil in exchange for what every rock star dreams of, fame and a endless supply of “green backs”.
Oh, and if they can get a girl or two along the way I’m sure that would be nice too. And as for the later, there was only one girl that these guys had their sights set on but ironically not for what most guys would want such a pretty girl for.
They initially meet when Jennifer and her friend, Anita Needy (Amada Seyfried) decide to go to the bar where the band was supposed to be playing. In an attempt to seemingly get Jennifer alone, the band or possibly satan himself (who knows) set a mysterious fire that burns the bar to the ground.
As the band endeavors to make their escape they ask Jennifer to go with them despite her friend’s pleas dissuading her not to. The guys then take her to a place in the woods where they will have the ceremony. After they offer up Jennifer to their “God” they notice that something goes terribly wrong.
They were mistaken in thinking she was a virgin and apparently in order for the offering to produce the desired result the female sacrifice had to considered pure and untouched by another man.
Jennifer subsequently shows up at her friend Anita’s home and is in her kitchen at the refrigerator down on her knees when she comes in and finds her. When Jennifer turns to see her she looks absolutely grotesques.
In the days following her unfortunate encounter Jennifer takes on the appearance of a very ill person, far from the very beautiful, sexy girl we see earlier in the movie. Another effect of her unfortunate “date with the devil” is that she finds she has an uncontrollable appetite for flesh, human flesh.
So she begins to flaunt her sex appeal in an attempt to seduce unsuspecting young men so that she is able to get them alone. Once she gets them alone and they are all hot and bothered she then attacks them feeding on their flesh, but not in the way they were hopping for.
If you think a movie isn’t good enough to sit all the way through in the theater you certainly won’t want to see it again in any other form. My point is this, Jennifer’s Body is a “one and done” kind of movie, too painfully bad to even want to see on cable or on DVD. Yes it was that bad, In fact, in my opinion one of the worse horror movies ever.
It certainly was heavy on what Hollywood thinks audiences desire to see most, and that being sex and violence. But sex and violence isn’t an automatic receipt for box office success, not when you consider the power of “word of mouth”.
I haven’t heard any rubbles of a possible follow up to the movie and for good reason; the movie should have never been made in the first place. And to think of the producers possibly making audiences sit through another poorly conceived story is in a word, “frightening”, more frightening than the movie was itself.
We’ve all seen certain movies that we don't mind watching over again, and each time we see them they remind us exactly why we liked them in the first place. Well, for me Halloween is that kind of movie.
Halloween is a story about a murderous-escaped mental patient, named Michael Myers, who returns to his fictitious home town of Haddonfield, Ill. on Halloween in order to continue his homicidal predilection discovered by his parents when he was six years old, after killing his older sister.
Halloween was made in 1978, but still remains one of the best horror movies ever made. Here are just a few reasons I believe why.
Halloween: The night he came home.
The first thing I must say was John Carpenter's and Debra Hill's decision to write a horror movie using Halloween as the backdrop. They figured out that if done right they could maximize the latent potential for terror, suspense and horror that creating a movie surrounding the holiday could present. And baby, was it done right. The result, 29 years later, the movie has become a cult classic and is considered by many to be the forerunner to most of the horror movies of the 80's and beyond.
A Star is born.
Jamie Lee Curtis played Laurie Strode, the wide-eyed innocent and awkward teen who took on Michael Myers, and although she along with movie-goers was absolutely scared out of our minds, she gave Michael Myers as much as he could handle. For someone who hadn’t had one single role on film to that point, and although Ms. Curtis was very critical of her performance, I can’t image this movie being as good as it was with out the young actress in the role.
Mr. Myers the Doctor will see you now.
It’s been said that, no matter the type of movie, you really don’t have a story without a well written antagonist. And as for Halloween, the role of the antagonist was played exceptionally well by late actor Donald Pleasance. Donald played Dr. Sam Loomis, the doctor who had the daunting task of treating Michael Myers when he was a kid. And because of his knowledge of his patient, he knew if he ever was set free from the hospital, he would without question return to his home town, and the end result, would be as predictable, people would surely die. You get the sense from watching the Dr. Loomis’ character on screen that he was very much obsessed with ridding the world of the “evil” that was Michael Myers. Christopher Lee, a very good character actor in his own right, if I’m not mistaken was originally offered the role but it obviously went to the man who with out a doubt did it justice.
The Man under the Mask
There have been many others to play the role of Michael Myers in the sequels that followed but none did it like Nick Castle. He was the perfect embodiment of John Carpenter’s vision for what he saw as “pure evil”. In order to really appreciate this man’s stellar performance one must only see him in all of his gory. Sorry, in all of his glory.
What’s the Boogey Man?
The main thing that made this movie so good was John Carpenter’s ability to capitalize on our “child-like” fear of the “Boogey Man”. The Boogey Man is every kid’s worse nightmare. Nothing scares children like the boogey man. Kids always believe that despite what their parents tell them, the boogey man does in fact hang out under their beds and in their closets, waiting and lurking in the shadows to snuff out their little lives. Kids revere their parents, at least most do, and may even be afraid of them from time to time but, as for the Boogie Man, they are truly afraid. And for this reason the Michael Myers character is in a sense an archetype, in that he is the fullness of the only individual who scares us like no other. This is how John Carpenter envisioned him. He did, however, refer to him differently when he was writing the part. The website, pitofhorror.com says of Michael Myers, The Shape is what John Carpenter referred to Michael Myers as in the script. Throughout the movie you only see the outline of Michael lurking in the shadows, non-descript and very much a "shape". Now you tell me, who does that sound like to you?
Ok, die already will you!
What I remember most about this movie, when I saw it for the first time, was that it was truly frightening, of course any 14 year old kid would think so. I guess it was something about the large imposing masked man wielding an equally large kitchen knife, looking to take any and everyone’s life, and do it with relative ease. A man, I might add, who refuses to die on more than one occasion. Clearly Lauie Strode was unaware of one simple fact about the boogie man and it was this, no matter how hard you try you absolutely cannot kill him. Okay Michael Myers may not have been the actual boogie man, the infamous purveyor of terror, but he was however, one scary ass dude. One I don’t mind watching over and over again in this terrific movie.
