Double Bill Mini Musings: Cenobites and Centipedes...

Hellraiser III Hell On Earth:
I've long since lost count of how many Hellraiser flicks there have been (apparently there are now nine with a remake also planned), but until now I'd only seen the first two, and the fourth. The third, on the other hand, I have had sat on a videotape (from when it was shown years ago on TV) and have never gotten around to it. Then I spotted it on the Horror Channel and figured I'd give it a go.

However, while the first two came during the 1980s when horror movies were doing really quite well, this third entry came in the early 1990s (1992 to be specific) when the genre was, mostly, dying on its arse. There were some good (even great) entries such as Candyman (also 1992) - which was brutal and horrifyingly good - but this was very much an exception, because more often than not we were getting dross such as Halloween 6. Hellraiser 3 is more along the lines of dross ... it feels dated, and not in a charming way, it's not in the least bit chilling (let alone scary), and the plot is a big "so what?"

Pinhead is trapped in a piece of art work, bought by a scumbag club owner, and after a couple of splashings of blood (and a massacre of the club's patrons) hell is unleashed upon the earth ... which means a couple of streets and a building site. In amongst it all is a female reporter, plagued by nightmares about her father who was KIA in Vietnam, looking for her big story. The plot jumps around, and at times the characters exhibit little in the way of motivation, joined-up-thinking or common sense, and as for Pinhead ... well, he's certainly not the intimidatingly cruel force that he was in the original movie. In short, I didn't care for it.


The Human Centipede (First Sequence):
Trading entirely on the inventively grim title (indeed it constitutes the entire plot), Tom Six's stylish but surprisingly empty shocker isn't quite the ... *sigh* ... "torture porn" flick that you might be expecting. The idea of three people being connected mouth-to-butt by a mad doctor (who used to be the world's number one corrective surgeon for conjoined twins) is gruesome enough on its own, and as such it's mostly left up to your imagination. The really gruesome elements are inferred, rather than shown, or indeed they're hidden behind bandages.

Speaking of the demented surgeon, Dieter Laser's performance (as Dr. Heiter) is clearly the high point of the movie - it's a wonderfully disturbing projection - so it's a shame that the rest of the film doesn't match in quality or intrigue. Particularly in the third act, there were some really dumb scripting moments, and you can't help but feel that the high concept was the real attraction. The look of the film is impressively artistic, and the pace is generally quite good, but the mad doctor is lacking enough motivation, and the two girls (two thirds of the sequence) are nothing but vapid and annoying party girls.

So it's nowhere near as gross as the pitch suggests, visually at least, and while Laser's crazy surgeon makes for a genuinely arresting screen presence, the rest of the movie is sadly a bit lacking. See it for the intrigue, see it for Laser's performance, but don't expect any lasting investment.

Aliens of the Deep...

What with the coming of Avatar - and indeed the return of James Cameron - I figured it was about time I got off my arse and checked out those couple of undersea documentaries he made early on this decade. First through the letter box was Aliens of the Deep, and what is definitely the weaker of the two documentaries.

That said, it's still fascinating. A mixture of technological and natural eye-saucering. It doesn't carry the same poised, descriptive and imaginative commentary as David Attenborough does in the exemplary Planet Earth and Life (both of which have featured undersea episodes, covering some of the very creatures gawped at in Aliens of the Deep).

Nothing particularly deep, but alluring to those of a James Cameron fandom persuasion, and those who want to get a taste of the experience of deep sea exploration.

The Day The Earth Stood Still 2008...

Aye, a bit behind on this one - but it's not exactly like it's worth rushing to see. Far from it - just "worth a watch", especially as I've recently seen the original 50's version ... unsurprisingly, it's a case of the original movie "for the win".

The remake starts fairly promising, with a thankfully quite faithful update of Gort - but it all quickly goes downhill once Klaatu Reeves legs it with micro-biologist woman and her snotty-little-know-it-all-gets-in-the-way-snide-bastard step-son tagging along for the ride, which is basically staggering from one place to another evading the authorities.

There doesn't feel like there's any real purpose in their farting around, it all seems to be set up to stall for time so that Klaatu Reeves can learn that mankind is worth saving by using micro-biology woman and her shitty little step-son as unintentional ambassadors for human kind.

If I was Klaatu, I'd have bitch-slapped that snotty little kid for being a gigantic, arrogant pain in the arse - why is it, that kids in movies and TV, often end up being such know-it-all shits that just fuck everybody's day up? You'd have also thought that micro-biologist woman would have explained to her snotty little WoW-playing step-brat that his KIA father was a military engineer, not some arse-kicking GI Joe knock-off ... i.e. kid, you shouldn't demand that mankind destroy an alien visitor "just in case" - a complete 180 from the original movie, which had a kid with some intelligence and faith ... even if his relationship with Klaatu was damn-near paedo-like in this day-and-age of 'paedo's are everywhere!' fear.

Bung in a toothless role for Kathy 'bust an ankle or two' Bates, and a shoe-horned-in appearance by John Cleese as "the professor" - a character who is introduced so poorly you wonder if they lopped out five minutes of "why the fuck are you, Mr Matrix, erasing all my very complicated equations from my chalk board? ... oh you're an alien? ... and this is the answer to my questions? oh okay then" - none of that, and then step-brat goes and thoroughly fucks up everyone's day ... and you've got a rather luke warm hodge-podge soup.

Strange that it's only after Klaatu senselessly slaughters two helicopters, pilots-and-all, that step-shit realises "hey, this Klaatu guy isn't bad" ... indeed, what an utter little bastard.

Then Gort is chucked out the window in favour of that crap you saw in the trailer of trucks and baseball fields getting rinsed by grey clouds, and mankind gets handed the shittiest ending of all.

**SPOILER START**

We'll let you live and develop your way of life, but we're gonna royally screw up your technological advances, industry, incredibly important scientific research, and economy by somehow disabling all power - WHAT. THE. FUCK?!

Then the movie just cuts out ... seriously, what the crap was that turd-pile?!

**SPOILER END**

So aye - decent start, but then it all turns into a mush of nonsense and running around (script before plot, not plot before script, unfortunately), and it ends on a completely rubbish note ... without enough Gort, nor some of the most famous words in cinematic history - Klaatu, Birata, Niktoo - WHY REMAKE A GREAT FILM AND THEN NOT USE THOSE WORDS?!

See - visually flash, utter nonsense.

The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)...

I've still not seen the remake - and nor did I want to until I'd seen the original film. Well, now I have seen the original, so I'm all open for seeing the remake now for a good old compare-and-contrast sesh.

I really enjoyed TDTESS, and the simple old-school pleasures of a classic flying saucer and the imposing figure of Gort, and indeed I could now fully enjoy the gag from Evil Dead 3 about "klaatu, berrata, ni-*cough-cough-cough*".

In fact, I watched TDTESS with my Dad, who had seen the movie when he was a young lad in the cinema upon a second run of the film, and we both revelled in the chuckles that hindsight provides.

Obviously it was a totally different world back then - these days "Carpenter" would be automatically labelled a paedophile at the very mention of taking the leading lady's young boy out for the day around the city - but clearly not so back then.

It really is a cinematic classic however, and the plot holes don't matter in the end (e.g. why only two measily guards outside the spaceship, why did nobody take a picture of 'The Man From Mars' with his helment off etc), because this film deeply speaks for the time in which it was made. The fresh threat of Communism and the recent discovery of atomic energy.

Indeed, the idea that "Carpenter" and Gort are merely policing the galaxy and suggest we'd be wise to quit our warring ways is interesting - for once the alien invader isn't the bad guy, and in this case it is planet earth who is seen as the bad guy.

It's also interesting that both sides look down on each other - we earthlings cock our brows at "Carpenter" as he surely has no idea how complex human society is, and he vice-versa treats us similarly in terms of earthlings being basic animals playing with primative tools.

The conclusion however - essentially, "don't be violent under the fear of galactic violence" - left food for thought, and having recently re-watched A Clockwork Orange, the theme and idea of "choice" came into play. For a race of space-men so advanced, they still resort to threats to cease a threat. There is no choice for mankind. We are threatened, in a somewhat bullying way, to be peaceful or we'll all be blown up.

You don't choose to live peacefully, you only decide to out of fear - mind you, the film doesn't go that far or gets into such a meaty issue.

It'll be interesting to see how the remake handles the original, and as I watched it I was thinking to myself how certain images or sequences could easily be translated into our world 50-odd years on. But importantly - which one will have the purest vision.

While TDTESS 1951 was no doubt populist in its general presentation, it was quite something for its different take on the alien invader story while everybody else thereafter would indulge in gleefully exploitative notions of giant ants, 50ft women and so on.

Will TDTESS 2008 feel cold and corporate? Will it feel too flashy, too smoothly made? Will it blow it all and churn out another lame-arse remake, which is usually the case of late when it comes to remakes of cinematic classics. When I see the 2008 version, I'll be sure to ponder these thoughts.

The Last Man On Earth...

First there was Richard Matheson's book I Am Legend, then came this - The Last Man On Earth - starring he of that great voice and 'tache, Vincent Price. Then it was the recently departed Charlton Heston gruffing up the silver screen in The Omega Man ... then the mediocre, dripping-with-Hollywood big budget Will Smith pop-corner I Am Legend. The Will Smith flick is pretty good for the first-half-up-to-two-thirds, then it all just goes rather arse as the CGI monsters with their silly rubbery jaws go yomping around and all tension, intelligence and effort goes right out the window. A missed opportunity for post-apocalyptic greatness ... next stop, the adaptation of World War Z, which could quite possibly be an astounding zombie apocalypse epic ... or it could suffer the same fate as I Am Legend's recent incarnation, or worse. Tracking back and we have The Omega Man, which upon first viewing I really liked, it certainly has that 1970's charm when films could hold a simpler thrill without being absolutely idiotic. However, upon a recent re-watch, I was much less impressed, I'm genuinely shocked to say. It is showing its age worse than I originally recall, the music is almost entirely camp and out-of-step with the over-all pace, and the brotherhood of infected nut-jobs don't play out as well as they once did. They bitch about the machines of man, right before they roll out a complex catapult to fling fireballs about ... then again, there's no reasoning with nutters. That said, it's still a great little flick, but nowadays it feels too cheap to have really pulled off what it set out to do, as well as the fact that it ignores the majority of Matheson's book. Indeed, the Will Smith version of Legend feels more like a 'no-more-than-based-on' adaptation of the book mixed with a hefty dollop of a remake of The Omega Man, with a dusting of 'lets make the monsters really shitty CGI things' zest. Track back even further to the mid-60's and we find ourselves with Vincent Price as The Last Man On Earth. An incredibly faithful adaptation of Matheson's cultural landmark book it most certainly is, a big budget extravaganza it sadly is not. Evidently it's a mish-mash of American and Italian filmmaking (originally it was going to be a British Hammer Horror effort), seemingly foreseeing the likes of Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (aka Zombie Flesh Eaters) and other such cheapy combination horror flicks. Price isn't exactly the Robert Neville in the book, mainly due to the main man's underlying reputation as a mad cackler and entertaining scenery chewer (he was gleefully so in The Pit & The Pendulum, which I fortunately got to see at the Bristol Bloodbath 2006 film festival, in true grindhouse fashion on a rickety old print which broke down twice - it was certainly a memorable viewing which took me back to my Uni days watching the old prints of classics like The Maltese Falcon, or some Godard flick when the reel got jammed and the projector burned out the film...) ... hmm, gotten carried away with a tangent, ah memory lane... Anyway, Price is perhaps 90% the Neville we know from the book, although he's now Robert Morgan. It's sad in a way because this, still the most faithful adaptation of I Am Legend, is such a low budget affair. Again, the process of aging hasn't been especially kind, but the downsides of a cheap-as-chips, USA/Italian partnership is clearly the harshest mistress standing over this otherwise solid film. Many performances are wooden, lazy or just unskilled (meanwhile Price is overtly dramatic, but a comparative thespian of legend). The production value is rock bottom - either that or Morgan is a magician and can drive a car at night and at day at the exact same time. It really is an incredibly cheap film, insanely cheap sometimes, which is the main flaw. However, as previously stated, a wonderfully typical turn from Price and the sincere nature of the adaptation ends up making this quite possibly the best I Am Legend re-telling. At the very least, it is in terms of storytelling. Meanwhile, the Will Smith version pimps great visuals (aside from the awful compu-monsters) but a story that holds few resemblances to the source material, ultimately raping it in the third act. As for The Omega Man, it's somewhere in the middle. Middling production value, middling script and retrospectively rather camp, even kitsch. Perhaps, if only, instead of Smith's I Am Legend partially remaking The Omega Man, it could have looked a decade further back and taken several pages out of TLMOE's book. Maybe the fourth book-to-film adaptation will get it properly right? Any Hollywood players with bundles of cash who fancy giving me said green backs would easily tempt me into doing it justice. Scale and story, both of which are intensely important for this particular tale.