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jefeparigi
Reviews
Eagleheart (2011)
Chris Eliot = Most Underrated Comedian of Our Time
Hilarious show! I've been a loyal fan of Chris Elliot ever since his days on Late Night with David Letterman and the cult favorite Get A Life. Yes I even saw Cabin Boy in the theater! Eagleheart is testimony that Chris Elliot still has it after all these years. I can't think of any other comic actor that's been as consistently funny as he has for nearly thirty years. Maybe it's the fact that he's never gotten famous enough to ruin his edge. I think that's a good thing.
Anyways, I think Eagleheart rules! Just the right blend of stupidity and genius...and gore....and weird sh*t that doesn't make any sense. Kudos to the producers and filmmakers for really nailing the look and style of typical "crime" shows, too. I've been recommending this to all my friends and I hope more people watch this so that more episodes get made.
Nukie (1987)
Oh the Humanity!
BTW the above rating is on a "it's so bad it's good" scale.
I recently watched this movie after reading all the user comments about Nukie. Some of these writeups had me peeing in my pants I was laughing so hard...especially the one guy who said, "I hate God for allowing Nukie to be made". That sold it for me. Call it perverse curiosity, if you will...the same curiosity that drives one to watch such films as Faces of Death or I Spit on Your Grave.
This movie is certainly atrocious, but I wouldn't say it's totally unwatchable. My friends and I regularly get together to have "Awesomely Bad Movie" viewings and make fun of them in Mystery Science Theater fashion. This one managed to keep the laughs rolling. I mean, a few people walked out of the room when the chimpanzee started talking, but that was perhaps the only lowpoint. The rest is just a pure mindnumbing, jawdropping, "what the f*ck?", knee-slapping good time.
I would like to comment, though, how much Nukie was pissing me off. He did absolutely NOTHING to help anyone in this movie. He terrifies the villagers by possessing vehicles with his powers, knocks pots and pans all over the place, causes earthquakes. How about when that kid got bit by the snake? Nukie didn't do sh*t about it. Yeah, he put on a good fireworks show, though. Or when him and the kid are travelling by foot for days, and then finally he gets the bright idea to turn them both into balls of light so that they can travel faster. Or what about the very end when they're reunited and then they turn into balls of light and fly off. Why the f*ck didn't they do that in the beginning? I seriously wanted Nukie and his brother to die in this movie. They are such disgusting-looking creatures. That scene where Nukie goes over the waterfall I stood up really excited hoping that he'd get killed. He survived though. Damn.
My one friend says, "This is absolutely the worst movie I've ever seen. This includes pornos". I want to force Rob Zombie to watch Nukie. I think it's the only thing that can possibly terrify him.
Live Freaky Die Freaky (2006)
The Claymation Episode of Conan O'Brien Had Better Animation than This Piece of Crap
Before I begin my review, I would just like to point out that I am quite the purveyor of underground, campy, and tastless entertainment. Even though I just turned 30, I still have an adolescent sense of humor: I loved Team America and I watch South Park religiously. Based on the clips from the website, I didn't have very high expectations of Live Freaky Die Freaky, but was hoping at least for something along the lines of Meet The Feebles: some trashy obscene fun in a medium typically reserved for children's entertainment.
My main problem with this movie is just how low budget and amateur it is. This movie should be a lesson to not attempt stop motion animation unless you actually have the money and talent to back it up. As mentioned in the title of this review, the animation is about as bad as the Late Night with Conan O'Brien special that was done in claymation form. They put no effort whatsoever into sculpting the characters' bodies. It basically looked like a second grader rolled clay really fast in his hands to form arms and legs. Perhaps I would have found the pornographic scenes to be more shocking and offensive if they hired real artists to do the job. Instead it was just kinda silly and immature, like the "naked lady" bodies I'd make out of clay when I was 7. I think in any given scene there is never more than one thing moving on the screen, this includes eyes blinking and mouths moving. And in some scenes NOTHING is moving. You're just looking at still pieces of clay.
I'll admit, I did laugh a couple of times, but for the most part the scenes were way too drawn out. It was kind of like a high school play where everyone involved is more concerned about getting through their lines vs. actually making the scenes work. After the 50th time Sharon Tate's gay friend makes a "c*ck joke", it gets really tiresome.
Other random complaints: -The music is not very good at all. I like musicals, but only when they put real time and effort into making good songs. -This movie was not filmed, it was made with a videocamera. The theater just screened it on a projection TV. This always kinda bugs me when I pay $10 to see a movie. -What's the deal with this being in black and white? The trailers on the website were in color. Kind of misleading. -Why did they decided to start and end the movie "in the future" (the future is basically a man in a robe wandering the desert for a couple of minutes). It seemed like another pointless plot element.
I think anyone who has written a good review about Live Freaky Die Freaky is either an employee of Hellcat Records (who otherwise produce some fine bands) or in someway connected to the production of this film. Either that or they are too young to have seen enough bizarre cinema that is actually good. This is the type of movie that at the most will be watched by stoners in the background of their college dorms....for about 5 minutes before they say, "This sucks, let's watch Dead Alive". Meet the Feebles was very low budget and very trashy and I wouldn't say it's a great movie, but at least you can see a certain level of talent in Peter Jackson's directing.
Instead of watching Live Freaky Die Freaky, I recommend finding the bootleg video of Davey and Goliath episodes in which someone redubbed the audio to have more vulgar content. That is probably 10 times funnier and has better animation.
Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005)
Not Amazing, but 100 Times Better than Exorcist: The Beginning
I just saw this a couple of nights ago at a media screening in New York. There are no spoilers in this review.
Just to preface this, I am a HUGE fan of the Exorcist. It is the greatest horror movie ever made, and perhaps one of the greatest films ever made period. With no major expectations, I saw the Harlin version last year just hoping for a somewhat scary sequel movie. I cannot tell you how irritated I was by it. I was so annoyed that I actually wrote a letter of complaint to Morgan Creek Pictures demanding my money back. What bothered me the most is that Exorcist: The Beginning made no effort to keep the same aesthetics as the original. The 1973 classic had very little gore or special effects. It was more about strong directing, good sound editing, and building mood and atmosphere. Harlin's version, on the other hand, was more of an action movie along the lines of The Mummy or Van Helsing, only with more R rated thrills: loads of gore, loads of special effects, none of it the least bit scary.
Well, once I found out about the Paul Schrader version I became obsessed with wanting to see it. From what I heard it was more in the spirit of the original Exorcist and more of a "thinking man's film". Plus it was written by Caleb Carr, author of one of my favorite novels: The Alienist. I was even more excited when I found out they were releasing it in the theaters this year.
So onto my review...
I wasn't exactly "blown away" by Dominion, but it's 100 times better than "The Beginning". It at least maintains those aesthetics that I described above. It's not a straight up horror movie, there's probably only 2 or 3 real scares in the whole film, but those scares are far more terrifying than any of the cheap fun house type thrills that Harlin's version has to offer.
Although the big scares are minimal, there's loads of creepiness in the movie. It manages to make you feel uneasy the whole way through. I didn't have a hard time falling asleep that night, but I did wake up in the middle of the night kind of bothered thinking about some of the weird images that were burned in my brain.
From the beginning, what I liked immediately is that it was kind of grainy and looked like a 15 or 20 year old movie. There was something old fashioned about the style of film-making which made me feel like I truly was in Africa during the 1940s....much more so than the other slick Hollywood version. The cinematography is excellent. Much like a David Lynch film, you need to see it on the big screen because there's so much detail to enjoy that can be missed on a small television screen. My favorite scenes revolve around the archaeological expedition of an ancient temple buried in Africa. As they're exploring the catacombs under the temple, there's some bizarre faces carved into the rock. They don't jump out and say, "boo!" but they creep you out as your eyes discover them on their own terms.
I definitely took this version much more seriously. It's a very emotional film: many scenes managed to make me feel upset, bothered, unsettled, and sometimes even disturbed. Even simple scenes like people getting shot were so much more upsetting in their treatment. It also was successful in getting me to think about god, religion, and faith the same way that the first Exorcist did.
Of course Dominion does have it's flaws:
-Some of the acting could have been better and I can understand the need to do some recasting. The Nazi officer in the beginning wasn't the least bit intimidating. And Father Merrin's assistant Father Francis had sort of a Keanu Reeves quality about him. That's probably the biggest advantage that the first Exorcist has over this film. When you watch that movie, the actors are much more convincingly terrified. And that's what makes a great horror movie. Fear is a learned response. If the viewer is convinced that the actor is scared, then he/she gets scared, too. There's no substitute for good acting, not with all the special effects in the world.
-There's very little special effects in this movie, but the few scenes that do have CGI are really bad. There is no reason to use computer effects to portray animals such as jackals, cattle, scorpions, etc. Get the real thing or use puppetry. This movie did not need special effects.
-The ending climax scene, the confrontation between Father Merrin and the devil, could have used a little bit more intensity. I felt like he got through that scene much too easily, considering that in the first Exorcist, one priest died and the other was brought to near death during the exorcism. Stellan Skarsgard didn't even break a sweat! William Friedkin would have worked him to the ground. This scene kind of reminded me of a Star Trek episode.
If you are at all interested (and are still reading this), these are my personal letter grades to the Exorcist films I have seen:
Exorcist (1973) A+, Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) F, Dominion: A Prequel to the Exorcist (2005) B-
Although not perfect, I think 75% of Dominion was salvageable. There was no reason to scrap it and make an entirely different, much worse version. With some minor changes, Dominion could have been raised a whole letter grade into a very scary, very respectable, and probably very successful installment into the Exorcist franchise and at much less cost, too.
Tourist Trap (1979)
SUCKED!
I am shocked at how many good reviews of Tourist Trap I am seeing here. I just watched this for the first time on DVD last week. I consider my self quite a horror buff, which means that I am REALLY picky when it comes to horror movies.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVED the creepy mannequins in this movie. I thought that Tourist Trap got off to a great start. You got your "young" vacationing teenagers looking for a good time (Tonya Roberts is SMOKING!). That opening scene where that guy gets locked in that abandoned building and all the mannequins laugh at him and kill him was great.
What really ruined this movie was the ridiculous premise that Chuck Conners was telekenetically controlling the mannequins. Even more ridiculous is the ending when he grabs the guy's arm and transforms him into a mannequin. WHAT THE F*CK?!!! It seems to me that if someone had that much control over matter, he could wreak MUCH more havoc on the world than sitting in that abandoned tourist trap waiting for the occaisional lost traveller. He seemed so down and upset about the government building that highway. Why didn't he use his powers to stop them? Then maybe he wouldn't be so miserable. Or, why doesn't he just walk into a department store and control the mannequins to rob, murder, and plunder as he pleased. No jury in the world would be able to convict him, either.
I just hate horror movies that make no sense. Oh, and that mask he was wearing was a total ripoff of leatherface.
This movie sucked, but it was still 10X better than Cabin Fever.