May 8, 2010

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

So Michael Bay and his boys over at Platinum Dunes have decided that they need to take another iconic horror franchise and give it the reboot treatment. And if you really think about it, he seems to be the man for the job. Everyone seemed to love his redo of Texas Chainsaw Massacre (I freaking hated it though) and then there was the whole Friday the 13th (I re-watched it and it’s not as good the second time around) so why wouldn’t they take a shot at Nightmare on Elm Street? Unfortunately, they don’t do a very good job with it.

Lets start with the children. In the old Nightmare, the kids feel like a group you could relate to, they’re mostly honest kids dealing with crap. The new kids though, for some reason I can’t grasp, feel like they’re all going to break down and cry the entire time. The main female Nancy, played by Rooney Mara, is an artistic girl that just doesn’t fit in with anyone else in high school. She thusly spends a lot of time in her room, drawing up dark, edgy pictures of scary faces. In short, she makes me want to vomit. The whole movie I was just waiting for her to pull out a razor blade and go to town on her wrists in some excuse to deal with the world. The male lead isn’t much better I’m afraid. Quentin, played by Kyle Gallner, is the whiniest horror character I’ve seen in a long time, and maybe ever. He seems like all it’s going to take is one little thing to push him over the edge and he’ll break down and cry about how horrible the world is. The supporting characters aren’t too bad, granted you never see them for too long at once, unless they’re about to get killed. In all, the characters are lacking.

But in all honesty, the star of the show is Freddy, and I must admit that for the most part I was happy with the way Jackie Earle Haley played the character, but there were some parts that just brought him down. His make-up is very odd, something about it just doesn’t look right, and I couldn’t figure out what it was until one of my friends said something about it. He described it as some kind of Freddy Krueger and Alien love child, and the longer I think about it, he’s pretty damn close. The way he played the character also created some issues for me. The whole time the company was promoting the film, all I seemed to hear was about how this was going to make Nightmare on Elm Street serious again, and how they were going to move away from the campy horror of the old ones. They had me sold through most of the story until almost the very end. There is a part where Freddy is chasing Nancy through dream world. She turns a corner and attempts to run down a hallway, but because she’s in dream world, the hallway flood turns to liquid and she starts to sink. As she’s swimming away Freddy rounds the corner, looks at her and says, “Now that’s what I call a wet dream”……I’m sorry, can someone else please explain to me where/how that fits the whole “serious” aspect they were trying to cash in on?

Quick side note, I don’t know why everyone seems to be in love with the fact that they give you back story in the remake, because they give you the exact same story in the original. On my DVD it’s chapter 17 in the select a scene and it’s entitled “Mommy killed him”. Talks about how he was a child killer and they trapped him in a boiler room and set the place on fire, so it’s not like this back story is anything new to the series.

Now then, speaking of the back story of Freddy, this is another thing that the movie screws up. In the original we find out Freddy is a child killer, and that the parents wanted to get revenge on him. It’s not that he killed any of their children, just the fact he killed little kids. In the new one, they make him a child molester, and he knew all these kids back when they were 4 or so. But when the parents find out about what he does, they track him down and set him on fire, and then separate all the kids so they forget about Freddy. I guess the thing that pisses me off is the fact it seems like everyone was sitting in on a meeting for the movie and said “hey we have this original story that people know….but fuck it, let’s try to do something different.” The parents in the new film really don’t have any reason to set him on fire either. In the original it’s justified because Freddy get’s out of prison because someone signs the search warrant wrong, so the parents hunt him down. In the new one though, they basically admit that they never go to the police, never tell any authority, they just hunt him down and murder him because they can. There is a point where Quentin asks his dad if there is any evidence, and his dad just looks at him, but never answers the question. This led me to believe for about another 45 minutes of movie that they killed him in cold blood. Look I don’t have kids, and I’m not saying that child molesters are awesome people, but to just run out and set someone on fire on the assumption that he did something seems a little out there.

The killings are decent, but nothing to really write home about. Some of them follow the original, and some of them are new. If you’re looking forward to seeing how they do the killing of Johnny Depp’s character, the whole getting sucked into a bed and then shot back out as a bloody mess, sorry but they don’t do it. Yes you read that correctly. They. Don’t. Do. It. Honestly this was probably the biggest letdown of the entire movie for me. I was really excited to see how CGI was going to make this the best part of the film and then it didn’t happen.

No nudity. The most you get a girl in short-shorts and a tight t-shirt running around, but that’s really about it. You do get Nancy in the bathtub, but just like in the original they don’t show you anything. Damn right?

The last thing I’m going to talk about in this monster of a post is how the title is completely wrong. You see I imagine that with a title like A Nightmare on Elm Street, I’m going to see characters that are on Elm Street get harassed all the time. Really though they stay on Elm Street for about 15 minutes of the entire movie, and then they run all over town. The funny thing is, it’s the girl that doesn’t even live on Elm in the original that gets killed on Elm in the new one.

Well it looks like I’m back and I had a lot to say. Here quick I’m planning to get a review up for a movie called Spirit Camp that I caught about a week ago, and I plan on putting up a review for a movie that’s absolute crap, but still holds a spot in my heart.

ACTING --2-- HUMOR --3--
BLOOD/GORE --3-- NUDITY --0--
STORY --2-- FREDDY --3--
OVERALL RATING

--2--

May 5, 2010

Brainwaves (1983)



If you live in the world of only Region 1 DVDs, then you’re really missing out. I recently purchased multiple region-free players for older friends of mine who have yet to make it into the internet age, and the list of DVDs for me to pick up for them grows by the day. While many of these movies are either out-of-print or have yet to be released here in the states, Europe, Asia, and the UK have them aplenty. So, for under a hundred bucks, you can enjoy better prints of your favorite movies presumed to be lost on DVD format, or if you’re a hi-def high roller, a multi-region blu ray player will only set you back a few hundred, if not less. Quite a small price to pay for boundless entertainment!

As my purchases for them start rolling in, I'm taking time to watch some before passing them to their rightful owners. My first feature, although a Region 1 from Image Ent, but now out-of-print, was Ulli Lommel’s Brainwaves. This thing screams 80’s straight-to-video b-horror in sound, body, and picture quality, but did get some airtime on HBO back in the day. Some of you may be familiar with Ulli’s more recent films: BTK Killer, Diary of a Cannibal, Green River Killer, and Black Dahlia (all available from Lionsgate). Most of these are crap, but offer boobs and violence in place of coherent storytelling. While I liked Green River and BTK, I usually steer far away from anything Lommel does, because I know I'll regret the hour and a half I wasted on subpar cinema (which sadly, I do often), and Brainwaves is no different, as it appears that he has yet to hone his talent, even decades later. Sure, if you’re a fan of bad movies, then Ulli’s your man, but other than boobage, I couldn’t justify another reason why I continued to watch this film.

The premise is simple, another organ transplant gone awry. In this case, a chick gets hit by a car, busts her head on the windshield, and is rushed to the hospital. Unable to come out of a coma, a new procedure is used to help her regain consciousness, the brainwaves of a recently deceased person. But, it’s a murder victim’s brain that is used, so the transplatee has dreams of the grisly death (death by boombox in a bathtub) over and over. Based off her flashbacks, her husband becomes quite the detective and figures out the whole thing, but the killer has come back to finish off even the memory of what he’s done, only to meet his own demise (but possible rebirth as a future organ donor).

This is totally intended to be watched on VHS, and can be picked up on Amazon for under $5 (and that's with shipping). Sadly, the DVD has a MUCH higher ticket, but looks like a VHS transfer, so blow the dust off your VCR if you can't seem to fight the urge to buy it. I’m sure this is one of those titles that sparked curiosity while sitting along side other horror VHS box art, but sadly, it doesn’t even live up to what it suggests. Yet another case of the misleading marketing team winning. Next on my list is Death Spa, which has yet to get an official U.S. DVD release, but the PAL version is rather enticing, even if the movie is straight garbage, as it focuses on only a portion of the original coverart, which is a classic.

The original
The Revised PAL


ACTING --3-- HUMOR --1--
BLOOD/GORE --1-- NUDITY --2--
ULLI GOODNESS --1-- COVERART --2--
OVERALL RATING

--2--