The Walking Dead 4.10: "Inmates" (2014) directed by Tricia Brock
A catch-up episode with most everyone we didn't see in "After." Daryl and Beth are camping in the woods; Maggie, Sasha, and Bob are wandering around looking for Glenn at Maggie's insistence; and poor Tyreese amusingly has ended up with a pack of little girls to take care of, including a screaming baby Judith. Towards the end, Carol emerges out of nowhere to join Tyreese and the girls. Is that what the otherwise pointless plague plot was all about? So that there would be a little extra drama when these two meet up again?
The Walking Dead 4.11: "Claimed" (2014) directed by Seith Mann
While Michonne and Carl hunt for supplies, Rick is surprised when he hears men entering the house and quickly hides under the bed. What follows is a handful of scenes brimming with tension as we wonder if Rick will be noticed by the men, who are so not-nice that one chokes another into unconsciousness over a bed to sleep in. It's been quite a while since the show had remembered that strangers in this post apocalypse can be just as scary as the walkers (and I'm not talking about ego-maniacs in tanks). Great episode.
Bride of Frankenstein (1935) directed by James Whale
My 4-year-old wanted to watch a movie, so I suggested this one. She'd been unfazed by The Mummy and I thought she might get a kick of of the best monster movie that Universal had to offer. Watching the movie through the eyes of a child is fun.
She had to hide her eyes at the beginning when Frankenstein emerges from the water and kills Maria's poor dad and mom, which is a pretty scary way to start the picture. She was enthralled by Dr. Pretorius' little creations, giggling at the silly king. She wanted to hide her eyes again when Frankenstein encountered the blind man, but I convinced her that the scene was not scary at all. She thought it was great when Frankenstein began to learn to talk. That, more than anything, humanized him for her, I think. At the end, we both enjoyed imitating the Bride's weird head movements to make each other laugh.
The Walking Dead 4.12: "Still" (2014) directed by Julius Ramsay
A character-building episode for Daryl and Beth. They fight, they learn more about each other, they become closer in the end. It's the Walking Dead version of a "Locked in a Room" episode and exists entirely to put more punch into what happens in the next episode.
The Walking Dead 4.13: "Alone" (2014) directed by Ernest R. Dickerson
Daryl and Beth settle into a mysteriously clean and well-stocked funeral home. They irrationally decide this is nothing to worry about and proceed to live there without a care. Somewhere else, Maggie irrationally decides to abandon Sasha and Bob and search for Glenn on her own. Sasha irrationally decides that living alone is a smart idea and abandons Bob, who is trying to catch up with Maggie. This show never fails to disappoint by making its characters -- who've lived in this world for years now -- make dumb choices in order to advance the plot.
When a Stranger Calls (1979) directed by Fred Walton
"We've traced the call and it's coming from inside the house!" A classic climax to an urban legend. But, how do you make that into an entire 90 minute movie? Well, Fred Walton and company turned it into a cat and mouse chase between the insane caller and a former cop. Somehow, it works.
What elevates this film above others of the same type are the performances. Charles Durning isn't given a lot of background for his character -- he's a private detective and a former cop and that's about it -- but he infuses his character with subdued rage and a burning desire to catch the child-killing madman. The character of Tracy, who seems at first to be either incidental to the story or a likely murder victim, is given life by veteran actress Colleen Dewhurt. Tracy is hardened, but not entirely heartless, and wears a permanent look of weariness in her eyes. She's fascinating to watch. Tom Beckley, as the madman, is made to be oddly sympathetic as he aimlessly walks the streets of L.A. looking much like a kicked puppy. It's one of the most real portrayals of a psycho killer I've seen, particularly in a horror movie from this era. Director Fred Walton ties these performance together with some wonderful cinematography and expertly paced tension.
I wish I'd taken the hint from the very first clip shown in Terror in the Aisles and watched this one long ago.
The Walking Dead 4.03: "Isolation" (2013) directed by Daniel Sackheim
It's always the little, stupid things that bother me about this show. I can easily buy zombies. That's fun. I can't buy a real, medical doctor being such a dipshit, even if he is sick, that he would fail to cover his cough and spray diseased blood all over an old man's face. What the hell? My 4-year-old knows better than that. If the writers wanted to show how much Hershel was risking, surely they could've thought of something a little better?
The Walking Dead 4.04: "Indifference" (2013) directed by Tricia Brock
Yay, a road trip episode! The prison setting is so dull, it's nice to get out and see the worn world outside. No comment on the lack of abandoned cars blocking the roads, the mysteriously mowed lawns, and the dustless/spider web-less houses. A show can only do so much.
I also cannot express how little I care about Bob the alcoholic's alcoholism and the supposed drama that it creates. It's hard to think of a more cliched, "very special episode" character flaw. Let the dude drink. It's the end of the world.
Tales from the Crypt 6.05: "Revenge is the Nuts" (1994) directed by Jonas McCord
One of the lesser Tales episodes. A man running a home for the blind treats his residents cruelly and gets his just desserts. Isaac Hayes is in this one, but even he doesn't make things particularly fun outside of a lame Shaft joke.
Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game (2014) designed by Ben Cichoski & Danny Mandel
Board game night again. In addition to playing Dead of Winter again (I won!), we also tried out the new deck building game based on the Alien movies. We've already played its cousin, Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game and that one is pretty fun. In these deck building games, you start with a hand of weak cards and use their printed currencies to either buy strong cards from a shared pool or attack bad guys. As the game goes on, you'll start to get better and better hands as you buy more and more cards for you deck.
Alien turned out to be far, far harder than Marvel. We were thoroughly stomped by the bugs in the two games we played. We chose to play the scenario that mirrors the first movie, which meant recruiting Ripley, Dallas, Parker, and Lambert cards from the pool to fight the aliens and complete the three movie-related objectives. Unlike Marvel, you each play a character in Alien who has a set amount of health (I chose the synthetic). As aliens escape into the board's combat zone, they cause you to draw strike cards. Strike cards have gory artwork of various alien attacks (a tail through your middle, an acid burn, etc) and wear down on your character's health very fast. While there are ways to heal yourself (or others), those opportunities were rare. The aliens easily killed all three of us playing in both games from these attacks.
Brutal game. We may play a variant next time that has fewer gotcha cards mixed into the bad guy deck and see how this goes.
The Walking Dead 3.12: "Clear" (2013) directed by Tricia Brock
Though Rick, Carl, and Michonne return to the Grimes' hometown, we see nothing familiar from the pilot episode. How about Rick walking by and seeing an even more decomposed bicycle girl zombie? She's like this series' Bub or that zombie with worms in his eyes on the poster of Zombie 2. C'mon, man. Missed opportunity.
There was a great mini-story in this episode: the backpacker. Rick and company drive by a poor guy with a hiking pack on. He screams for them to stop and briefly chases their car as they ignore him. Later, the car gets stuck and the backpacker nearly catches up. They again ignore the poor guy and leave him behind. During their return trip after their adventures in town, they spy a giant splatter of gore on the road near the guy's backpack. No one says anything. This is truly the grimmest part of the world they now live in. Forget the skirmish between the prison and Woodbury. That stuff hardly matters. Being so paranoid of other, living people that you ignore their cries for help; that you don't care whether they getting eaten or not; that you can turn away from all of this and go on with your day... the loss of humanity is the true tragedy of the zombie apocalypse. This is something the comic series captures incredibly well and I'll glad to see a glimmer here.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I can understand the freakout the film caused back in 1980. The movie doesn't really have a plot. It's just a sleazy-looking Joe Spinell killing and scalping woman after woman as he talks to himself. If there's a story here, it's that the best we can hope for is that crazies like Frank will eventually descend into madness and despair deep enough to kill themselves. My gut says this film was just slapped together as a series of special effects/gore pieces in order to enter the then-new slasher market, with Spinell creating the abused and insane Frank as a way to connect everything and show off his acting chops.
Then, of course, there's the utterly bizarre relationship between Frank and Anna. Grabbing her address from her bag in Central Park, Frank shows up unannounced at Anna's apartment. Rather than freaking out ("How did you get my address!?"), she invites him in and quickly agrees to a date. It's so absurd -- especially given the, ahem, major difference in attractiveness between the two -- it's tempting to interpret this as Frank's fantasy. If that were true, that makes his killing of Anna's model friend Rita a fantasy, as he wouldn't have really been at the photo shoot to grab Rita's necklace. In fact, the entire last half of the film would have to take place in Frank's head. Knowing that Caroline Munro was given the part of the "heroine" of the film by her producer husband, I think this bit was simply shoved into the movie because they needed the guy's $200,000 to finish the thing.
Vintage Tom Savini gore effects (the shotgun blast is truly excellent) and Spinell's manic performance are really the only two reasons to watch this film these days. Even so, you'll still feel like you'll need a shower once the end credits begin rolling.
Maniac 2: Mr. Robbie
This promo reel is on the Maniac blu-ray (and DVD, if I remember). Joe Spinell plays Mr. Robbie, a children's show host haunted by the letters he receives from children about the abuse they suffer. It's only Maniac, Part 2 in the loosest sense, but I would've liked to have seen the full feature. Spinell killing child abusers in a slasher style? Yes, please.
Like The Fly and The Thing, this remake is so good it diminishes the original. Every thing that was wrong or didn't make sense or wasn't done well in the original is completely repaired in the remake. This is how you do a remake.
I was worried that the first person gimmick might quickly wear out its welcome. I was thinking of how motion sick I got when I watched [REC] some years ago. No worries. The first person perspective is shot with a steady-cam, making the images flow nicely. It also matches how our brains actually work: our mind smooths out the jumpy visuals fed to it by our eyes.
And, it's not a gimmick. Like the reverse chronology of Memento, the first person perspective is necessary to understand the main character's experience. This is the closest you can come -- well, short of certain illegal substances -- to insanity. It's very intense at times. We're forced to ride in this man's head as he does all sorts of things, from the horrible to the horribly awkward. Certain small touches sell the idea very well. Frank will sometimes gets distracted and glance away from a person talking to him. His eyes drift downwards towards Anna's breasts. He stares at people for too long. It's very realistic and I'm very impressed at how well it came off.
What they've done with the story, compared to the original, if fairly amazing. They've stuck very close to the original story, but gave it a real structure and filled in the numerous gaps. Most significantly, Frank's relationship with Anna actually makes sense this time out. She's an artist into mannequins. Frank has a shop full of mannequins. That they share a common interest goes very far into explaining why the beautiful Anna hangs out with the creepy Frank. From there they make Anna into Frank's desperate attempt at normalcy. Though, having see and heard the world through Frank's unstable senses, we as the audience know this will not end well.
They referenced the controversial poster for the original (above) in the movie using a distorted reflection of Frank on the side of a car (left). I am blown away. This is a reflection -- no pun -- of just how the respectful the remake is of the original. It's these little things. They use the same names (Frank, Anna, Rita). The beats of the plot mostly follow the original (Rita's experience in her apartment with Frank, a woman separated from her friends and chased in a subway, the mannequins coming to life at the end), but they cut the things that don't actually contribute to the story (the shotgun killing of the couple, the prostitute). Hell, even the color scheme of this version's poster is a riff on the colors of Frank's walls in the original (teal and purple). They didn't have to do any of this. That they did makes it feel like they found a crappy thrift store painting of a clown, cleaned it up, added some things, and created a disturbing portrait of Pennywise in its place.
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