You know what movie should be remade? Drive-In Massacre...

Remakes. They've been dime-a-dozen for years, and the success rate isn't exactly high. Generally they've brought in box office bucks, but money doesn't equal quality – nor genuine purpose. The problem with remakes remains thus: beloved icons of cinema history (some of them bonafide franchises unto themselves, many of them within the horror genre) are re-heated to simply trade on an established name. Cynical business sense in abundance, but artistically and from a fan's perspective, it's frequently devoid of true merit. Add to this the fact that we horror fans possess a particularly potent brand of curiosity, a curiosity that convinces us to spend money to see these remakes simply to see how they compare to the original films, even though the result is typically that the original remains to be the best. Remakes today almost never produce a greater film than the original.

A quick perusal of my DVD and Blu-Ray collection that's weighing down my walls, reveals numerous examples of films that have been remade, of films that are themselves remakes.

Some of these remakes are decent (or even pretty good), but simply don't touch on the power and status of the original films. Night of the Living Dead 1990, Halloween 2007, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003 are all examples of this level of the remake strata.

Far below that we have turgid and even quite cynical rehashes, such as Dawn of the Dead 2004 (vapid, devoid of intelligence, all mouth and no trousers), Day of the Dead 2008 (no, just no), The Fog 2005 (again, no, just no), A Nightmare On Elm Street 2010 (a poorly paced and pale imitation of the film that gave life to New Line Cinema, cobbled together from badly executed sequences pinched from Craven's original), and The Thing 2011. The last one is technically a “prequel” (and a pointless one at that as we know exactly what will happen to the Norwegian camp), but it attempts to re-tread John Carpenter's 1982 footsteps so often (while completely ignoring the alien's modus operandi in the process) that it's clearly a remake that wants to hide inside an imitation.

Click "READ MORE" below for more remakes, and why Drive-In Massacre would be a worthwhile candidate for another going-over.

Hextuple Bill Mini Musings: June 2011...

His Girl Friday:
I've wanted to see this Howard Hawks screwball comedy for quite sometime. Indeed I'm surprised it wasn't shown during my film course (although we did watch another screwball comedy - Bringing Up Baby), and I'm pleased to report that the dialogue was as machine-gun-fast and whip-smart as I'd hoped. It's a marvel unto itself, the dialogue and the delivery. Cary Grant's newspaper editor is still fascinated by his now ex-wife Rosalind Russell (who's about to head off and marry another man and leave her sharp journalistic wits behind), and over the course of the film he pulls out every dirty trick he can to keep her in town and lure her back into her passion for the newspaper game. A mighty fine example of the screwball comedy.


99 Women:
Prior to this point, I believe the only Jess Franco movie I'd ever seen was Oasis of the Zombies (a movie so bad it's kind of good) ... although I have also seen the superior Zombie Lake (which Franco co-wrote). This is an earlier example of the 'Women In Prison' genre, and it boasts an aggressively lurid synopsis that has you believe it's a grot-filled sleaze epic ... when in fact it's anything but. Positively tame for the most part, the back-of-a-fag-packet plot consists of 99 women stuck in an island jail run by a sadistic Warden. Not an awful lot happens, there's an escape, then everything goes back to normal. Best reserved for die-hard Franco-fans.


The Card Player:
After the rather disappointing The Stendhal Syndrome, and the solid Sleepless, I was quite pleased to find that this Argento giallo flick from 2004 was pretty decent. A maniac is on the loose, challenging the police to win at games of poker to save the lives of his potential victims. While the climax is curiously void of tension (it's a touch wacky, to boot), and the plotting is typically light when it comes to characterisation and motivation, it moves along at a decent pace and manages to involve you for the most part. Naturally its far from Argento's heyday, and while Sleepless was better, it's not an atrocity by any means.


A Town Called Panic:
Fellow Brits might be familiar with those Cravendale milk adverts featuring a jumble of plastic toy figures (all stop motion animation) ranting at the top of their lungs about how mad-for-milk they are. Well this is that - but an entire feature film (in French), featuring Horse, Cowboy, and Indian. It's gleefully childish (in the best possible way) in its almost bedtime story-like narrative - Cowboy and Indian seek to build Horse a BBQ for his birthday, requiring 50 bricks, but they accidentally order millions of them, which leads onto a bizarre journey (which at one point involves a giant snowball-flinging Mech-like metal penguin piloted by scientists). Beautifully shot, the animation is simple - but joyously so - indeed it reminds you very much of your own playtime when you were a child (minus the barmy French characters shouting feverishly). It's a film for all the family and it's highly recommended you check it out.


A Nightmare On Elm Street 2010:
Wes Craven's franchise-starting 1984 original had an inventive idea driving the properly crafted narrative, and it introduced us to a pitch-perfect new face of terror (well, until he turned into a cartoon character marketted - bizarrely, even perversely - to children as a cuddly rogue at the height of his popularity). Samual Beyer directs his film debut like a music video (he's best known for the video to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Green Day's "American Idiot" videos). Like a music video it's impatient to get going (the movie begins at minute zero with us already in a nightmare), and due to the rush you care little (if at all) for the protagonists.

On the one hand it wants to rip-off the famous moments from Craven's decidedly far superior original, and on the other it wants to branch out ... but whenever it does, it hints at an idea that could have (in the hands of a talented screenwriter who cared about motivation, characterisation, tension building, and pacing) created a really interesting new take on a well-worn genre legend. Then it goes and blows it, time and again, and just cobbles together a bunch of vaguely connected dream sequences (none of which are scary, let alone chilling, nor mildly cool). Half of the cast feel totally disconnected (more like celebrity wannabes, than anyone interested in acting), and the other half that have any talent are totally wasted (I'll be interested to see Roony Mara take on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo under the superior direction of David Fincher, and Kyle Gallner in Kevin Smith's much-talked-about chiller Red State).

Only one sequence - a flash back to how-and-why Freddy got fried - holds any intrigue (indeed, a talented screenwriter could have crafted a deeply dark origin story), but that doesn't save the movie from being a heartless, witless, and completely-and-utterly pale immitation of Craven's iconic original. Presentationally it feels like an imitation of the Friday 13th remake, which in-turn was an imitation of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, and The Amityville Horror remake (all produced by Platinum Dunes ... or 'The Remake Assembly Line' as it should be known). These Platinum Dunes movies have dropped in quality consistently with each new product that's foisted upon the horror community (notorious gluttons for punishment, whose curiosity inevitably kills the cat) from good-but-still-inferior-to-the-original, to downright woeful.

Jackie Earle Hayley is also wasted here - under a supposedly 'more realistic' (yet entirely unconvincing, nor frightening) mask - with a dud script and a director who blows his load almost immediately revealing too much of Freddy early on (several times). This could have been a golden opportunity to make a dark origin story that avoided the content of the original almost entirely, but instead this is just another cash-hungry, churned-out, load of old bullshit. Avoid it like the plague, and let's hope they don't make a sequel to it!


Salt:
Angelina Jolie, a CIA agent, discovers she is an undercover Russian sleeper agent and goes on the run in this far-fetched, but briskly entertaining actioner. It does a relatively decent job of keeping you guessing (enough at least) throughout most of the movie, the action is entertaining, and the punchy running time stops it from outstaying its welcome. It's no classic, but it's a fun way to spend 90 minutes.

Flavours of the Month: November 2010...

LOOKS:

The Walking Dead - as you will have noticed I have been putting up my thouhts about each episode every week, so you can read what I've thought of this spiffing new undead TV series from AMC.

Twin Peaks - the Horror Channel has been having a David Lynch season this month, and the tentpole of it has been the showing, from start-to-finish (at the time of writing it's still part-way into season two), of Twin Peaks. I had never seen it before, but knew of it, and being a fan of the videogame Alan Wake, it's interesting to see where various elements of that game came from (indeed the creators are big fans of Lynch's dream-like drama).

Avatar 3-disc (Blu-Ray) - if only every studio/distributor would tell you in advance that a kick arse version of a movie on disc was coming later on. Fortunately Fox and James Cameron put it out on front street that Avatar would be getting a super-duper home video release in due course (when they were launching the vanilla disc). Naturally, being a whore for making-of documentaries and special features in general, I bided my time and finally I got my mits on Cameron's eco-actioner. It may not be in 3D this time, but now I get to view it without the 30% loss in brightness/contrast (such as you get with 3D glasses) and with 16 extra minutes (which, handily, you can view on it's own if you want to).

As far as the new footage goes, some is mere extensions, but quite a bit of it provides worthwhile new content and background. We get to see what Earth has become (providing good grounding and context, as well as visible reason, for mankind's actions on Pandora - it's a nice Blade Runner-esque counterpoint too), and learn more about Augustine's school and her relationship with the Na'vi. You can still see plotpoints coming from miles away, but Cameron's work has often (if not always) worked in popular broadstrokes. In short, it was great to get back to Pandora.

Toy Story 3 2-disc (Blu-Ray) - I never got to see it in the cinema, and I'll blog about the film separately, but it was great to finally get to see Pixar's latest, and well, that moment (if you've seen it, you'll know what I mean) was jaw dropping. That entire sequence was jaw dropping in fact. Bravo Pixar. Bravo.

The American Nightmare - I've seen Adam Simon's documentary on the American/Canadian horror flicks of the 1960s and 1970s several times over the last several years, and it's still a joy to watch. Informative, incisive and creepily stylish in its construction. A must-watch for any fan of the horror genre.


SOUNDS:

Airbourne "Runnin' Wild" - I already had the vice-rock group's second album, so it was about time I caught up with their debut. Fast, loud, wild and all about women, drink and everything in between. Inspired by the sound of AC/DC, it's a thrashingly good time.

Angelo Badalamenti "Twin Peaks Theme"/"Laura Palmer's Theme" - unsurprisingly, having gotten into Twin Peaks at long last, Badalamenti's dreamy score has become one of the constant sounds of November for me.

Godspeed You Black Emperor "Moya" - I'd always wondered what that mournful-then-energised music was in The American Nightmare, but I finally found it, and it's mesmerising.


VIBES & FLAVOURS:

Solitaire - sometimes when I'm listening to shows from the SModcast Podcast Network I'm not doing all that much, but then I remembered about Solitaire (which I used to play quite a bit in the 1990s), and I've become oddly fascinated by it again. It took me ages to get a win on it initially however as I kept running into dead ends - frustratingly so - fortunately the vagaries of a computer software's random card dealing didn't last long and I've been enjoying this little trip down memory lane.

Dead Rising 2 - I've got it for the 360, but I'm not good enough at it to do the story (or the rest of it anyway), so I got it for the PC so I could use cheats to just run around having all sorts of fun - and, importantly, actually get to play the story mode. You might think that slaying thousands upon thousands of zombies with a Light Machine Gun (or a Humvee) would get boring, but you'd be wrong.

STALKER: Call of Pripyat - I was a big fan of the original STALKER game (Shadow of Chernobyl), which provided the best atmospheric dose of gaming that year (2007, if memory serves), and while the follow-up (Clear Sky) was a bit disappointing towards the end it again provided that jolt of The Zone that we "STALKERs" crave ... in 2007 I got into the whole thing in a big bad way with the game, and the movie and book upon which it was based (not to mention absorbing documentaries about the real "Zone" itself). Anyway, it's been on the to-do list for a while, but I finally got around to it.

Unfortunately the DirectX 9 graphics are nowhere near as good as they were in Clear Sky (no doubt to push the DX10/11 technology), and while the pace is a bit slow so far, I'm getting into the world of STALKER all over again. It might be feeling a bit dated and too-samey to the previous two games, but you can't deny the lure of lurking around the rotting ruins of "The Zone".

Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday 13th by Peter M. Bracke - I got this for my birthday and I've only just gotten around to it, and boy will it be a long old read. Nevertheless I've covered the first two movies in the long-running franchise. It's a must-have for any fan of the franchise as it's crammed with behind the scenes photos and mountains upon mountains of information from those involved.

Flavours of the Month: August 2010...

A bit earlier this month, and I'm trying out a new style of doing this monthly blog post.

LOOKS:

Blade Runner - finishing off that 5-disc DVD box set.

Everybody Loves Raymond - repeats during lunch time.

Creature Comforts - repeats recorded from late night ITV2.

Friday 13th: Parts 2, 3 and 4 - what with it being a Friday 13th, they showed several of the films from the franchise. I'd forgotten how relatively tame the second movie was, with its really brief moments of violence, I finally got to see the third movie in its full 2.35:1 original aspect ratio (rather than the grainy Pan & Scan 4:3 VHS I've been used to), and to round things off I got to see the uncut version of the fourth movie.

SOUNDS:

Alan Wake OST by Petri Alanko - the perfect compliment to thinking about the game a lot (and giving the prequel short film Bright Falls another viewing).

The Black Angels "Passover" - linked to Alan Wake with the opening track "Young Men Dead", I've really gotten into this 'rock dirge' album.

VIBES & FLAVOURS:

I finally got around to, and finished, reading "Driven to Distraction" by Jeremy Clarkson. As is customary at Christmas, any self-respecting Top Gear fanatic will end up with one or more books written by one or more of the presenters. "Distraction" was an epic tome; a weighty hardback too large for comfortable reading ... but once I got back into the style of Clarkson's aritcles I enjoyed it as I always do.

I've been getting some good prep work done on "Allen Bridge" - my next script - but there's plenty left to think about. Speaking of scripts, "Summer Road" was finished off and posted off to the BBC Writersroom.

Finally there's been a lot of summer time painting and decorating going on (a task I'm good at, but find utterly mind-numbing), as well as some rather late (or rather early) spring cleaning - I've been digging through my chock-full cupboard, weeding out junk for recycling and items for charity shops. On top of all that my entertainment centre in the corner of my room has changed significantly. My trusty 21 inch Samsung CRT has been replaced with a 24 inch Goodmans HDTV ... my Naiko VHS player has been swapped-out for a 12 year old Sony monster chock-full of bells and whistles ... and to cap it all off the hand-me-down DVD player that had been gradually going on the fritz has been replaced by a Samsung Blu-Ray player. I've even got a new cable for my Xbox360 so I can game in HD.


It was the announcement - after three years of waiting - of the home video release of the theatrical version of Grindhouse that pushed me over the edge. The 2-disc DVD has no new extras, whereas the Blu-Ray has all the existing ones and a whole shedload of new content ... and as a huge Grindhouse fan, it was the straw that broke the camel's back - I had gotten utterly fed up of home video releases of movies I was most looking forward to buying getting shafted on DVD in favour of Blu-Ray. Some other examples would be Cop Out, Kick Ass, and Iron Man 2. I'm an extra features whore (especially for making ofs, particularly if they're feature length), and so that Grindhouse announcement was the last straw and more than three hundred quid later, here I am!

Slasher flick revisiting, and Nightmare on Elm Street 4,5,6,7...

So I've been into a right old slasher flick rampage of late - what with the Friday 13th and My Bloody Valentine remakes coming out, it got me thinking about revisiting some of the slasher flicks I'd only seen once or twice on DVDs that were otherwise collecting dust on my DVD shelves - I'll point out that I saw Friday 13th 2009 in the cinema back in February, which is when this slasher revisiting rampage started.

I'll also point out that back in my teenage years, and then again during my time at uni when DVD exploded big time, I was frequently watching slasher flicks ... and that last year I had a whole Halloween franchise revisit ... but you know how it is, there's so many movies out there, that you just happen to stop watching certain flicks or certain sub-genres for a while through no actual intention, it's just how it goes.

Anyway - I started off, after the Friday 13th remake, with My Bloody Valentine (the original), then there was (in no particular order), Madman, Nightmare In A Damaged Brain, The Burning, and Maniac ... then I fished out Friday 13th Part 5 as I'd only seen it once on the DVD that had otherwise been sat around for a few years not getting watched at this point ... then I got the His Name Was Jason DVD, which in itself was great, and in a wider context got me all hot and bothered to rewatch some of the Friday 13th flicks again - I ended up doing all of them (but not in full chronological order, oddly enough).

Then a poll on Homepage of the Dead - about picking your favourite slasher icon (Jason, Freddy, Michael or Leatherface) got me intrigued in going back to Nightmare on Elm Street 4 through 7 - movies I'd only seen once-a-piece many years ago (the first three I've seen more than once each though), so, without further delay, some thoughts...

Nightmare 4: The Dream Master - it's pretty tame, the kids are annoying, they're poorly written, Freddy is miles away from being scary or intimidating, and I just couldn't help but be continually annoyed (for this and the two following movies) by the lead telling all their friends about Freddy - if they didn't do so, their friends wouldn't have a clue about Freddy, so therefore the lead is murdering their chums by proxy ... silly bastards. Also - Freddy raps in the credits ... oh dear lord.

Nightmare 5: The Dream Child - thoroughly sick of "Dream" sub-titles now, plus it's a direct follow-on from #4, which was naff anyway - plus, it's decidedly NOT scary ... while the dream elements are creative, I don't find them scary, nor especially interesting ... also, how come everybody falls asleep in the blink of an eye? I wish I could do that, but no, it always takes at least ten or twenty minutes to actually drift off. Plus, Freddy is far from scary or intimidating - he's just stupid, but still the best part of the movie ... then, once again, more end credits rapping - geeeeeeeez.

Nightmare 6 ... or rather Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare - oh my fuckbeans, this is bad ... I mean really, really bad. It's not scary (again), the dream sequences have gotten more ludicrous and downright shit (such as the videogame sequence with a horrendous Power Glove advert-cum-spoof), Freddy is a complete joke, the script is awful, the acting is pish - especially by that black-haired woman who turns out to be *sigh* Freddy's daughter from when he tried to 'be a family man' (with added childhood abuse flashbacks for extra cheese) ... she is really shit - "aaaaaaaarrrrggghhhh ... oh wait, my hair's flopped over my right eye, let me break the moment completely and move it out of the way ... ahem ... aaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh" ... I mean for fuck sake ... then there's that bullshit with the 3D glasses.

Oh, and the bullshit about killing Freddy - with a few knives and a pipe bomb - WHAT THE FUCK?! That's how you kill him? If you can't kill him by burying his bones in sacred ground, or by that weird shit in the church in #4, or whatever it was in #5, how is a few knives and a pipe bomb gonna do it?

Nightmare 7 ... or rather Wes Craven's New Nightmare - a pre-cursor to Scream in many ways, it's actually quite interesting, but sadly it takes too long to really get moving. I feel it could have been 15 minutes tighter with ease, or how about putting a bit more Freddy into it - who, while only really there in the second half, is finally scary again - no more Power Glove gags, no more rapping, no more "oh just forget he was a child killing kiddy fiddler as we sell soft toys of him to children far too young to watch these movies" - no - he's bad ass once again, rocking a kick ass trench coat and boots and sporting a genuinely fucked up face (the make up in 4 through 6 was crap) ... the dude's scary again.

Now - as is the trend - A Nightmare On Elm Street is getting remade. Is this necessary? Of course not, but it's happening, and at least they've got the dude that played the decidedly messed-in-the-head Rorschach filling the sharp-fingered one's boots. Let's hope they at least make it scary, and make Freddy a dark and disturbing figure.

His Name Was Jason...

Out of the collection of 'franchise slashers' - the main three being Freddy, Jason, and Michael (with Leatherface hovering around in fourth place - at least in terms of sequels anyway) - it has always been Jason Voorhees who was my favourite. Freddy is alright, but he's too based around quips and chit-chat, plus he turned into a joke far too soon - not to mention too large of a cultural figure, which is especially disturbing considering he's originally a child-murdering paedophile! Beyond part 3 there's bugger all point in watching a Freddy movie - I mean part 6's 'death by map' says it all really. Michael Myers, my second place slasher figure (tied with Leatherface admittedly) - he's silent, but deadly, with a penchant for heavy breathing behind an iconic, but creepy-as-fuck, mask. #1 rules, #2 is decent, #3 (while not including Myers or a Myers-a-like AT ALL) is surprisingly good, but then #4 comes along and it all turns to shit - shit mask, boring plots, and Michael Myers just becomes a pale immitation of what he once was. H20 vaguely increased the franchise's standing somewhat, but it was massively in debt to Scream, and then of course there was the 'sequel that dare not speak it's name' - Halloween 8. Nuff said really. However, Rob Zombie came along with his remake - and yes, it's most definitely a Rob Zombie movie, and while flawed and not up to the standard of Zombie's original effort The Devil's Rejects, I still dig it. One of the best things the remake did, was make Michael Myers scary again - he regained his standing as a formiddable foe, a position long since lost by shoddy sequels. Leatherface - well, TCM#1 is simply a genre classic of epic proportions, nuff said. TCM#2 is gleefully OTT in every respect. TCM#3 has its moments, but ends up drifting wide of the mark. TCM#4 ... "real sequel" my arse, quite frankly. TCM2003 - it was never going to be a patch on the original, and it wasn't - but you know what, I quite like it on it's own you know? The follow-up to TCM2003 was completely unnecessary though. Now - the main man himself - Jason Voorhees. He's got the coolest look, including his burlap sack hillbilly-ish outing in #2, he's got the second-coolest signature weapon in the shape of his trusty machete (nothing beats a screaming chainsaw, natch), he's got the coolest name, coolest signature theme (two echoed half-words and everybody knows who you mean), and the greatest number of cool sequels. Also of particular interest, Jason was merely talked about in #1, and then only seen in a 'final scare' dream sequence - it was his mother doing the slaying. Freddy, Michael, and Leatherface never had that to contend with that when they showed up on the scene. But let's just whip through the Friday 13th franchise with my brief thoughts, shall we? #1 - gore-ific fun. Teenage camp counsellors getting offed in the woods, Jason's crazy-ass mother, Savini's masterful gore effects, it really kicked off the 'slasher set at a camp' craze, and the introduction of Manfredini's fantastic score. #2 - Jason turns up, and rocks the burlap sack look with style. Classic kills, classic plot of - yep - camp counsellors in-training being picked off one-by-one, a cast of interesting-but-simple characters that you like watching - and well, a legend is born. #3 - 3D playfulness, Jason gets his signature hockey mask, funky themetune, it picks up right after #2, plus I got to to-and-fro a couple of emails with Larry Zerner a number of years ago concerning the alternate ending, which was cool ... mind you, Miner's directing skill seems to have taken a nose-dive since #2 as it's an endless succession of characters seeking out strange noises and being scared to do so because we the viewer knows something might happen - but they don't know, so why are they creeping around with a scared look? Plus the dialogue is awful, and that hippy chick's 'scared' moment is nothing short of laughable. However - Jason rocks up and you get basically 30 minutes of awesome to cap-off a kinda rocky flick. #4 - follows #3 directly which is just awesome, Savini is back, the characters are again interesting-but-simple (and genuinely entertaining), it looks great, Crispin Glover gets the best death - and dance, Jason gets killed, it looks fantastic, the woods are dark, scary and it's lashing down a storm when shit kicks off - which is how the franchise works best. #5 - aye, it's not good really is it? At least it still looks like #4, so this is the last time we'll see the night-time lit and shot in such as a way as they had been doing ... and, well, there is some nice totty throughout. Certainly the lowest point in the franchise thus far unfortunately. #6 - JASON LIVES! The birth of 'zombie' Jason, Alice Cooper on the soundtrack, pure OTT fun, Thom Mathews being thoroughly 1980s, and I have fond memories of watching it on Christmas Day many years ago (it was a present, along with...) #7 - Jason's best un-masked appearance - the effects are simply jaw-dropping - Kane Hodder's first character-defining entry, telekenesis is an interesting addition, some nice totty, a last hurrah for the 'kids having a house party' plot ... such a shame that it was neutered by the MPAA - the uncut footage would have made it much ballsier. #8 - the last properly good Jason movie, one could argue - although calling it "Jason Takes Manhattan" is a bit daft when it takes an hour to get to the Big Apple, and the whole 'kids voice, vomits lake water, turns into boy Jason' bit at the end was just stupid, and again the MPAA stuck their stupid nose in and neutered it - still though, this is Hodder's finest moment as Jason - the dude just rocks throughout - it's amazing how much joy you get out of him punting a ghetto blaster down the pavement ... everything in Manhattan rocks, if only they'd had some more cash to extend all that ... the themetune of "The Darkest Side of the Night" kicks ass, Jason's 'pruned and soggy' look is cool, it's nowhere near as shoddy as I originally thought it was when I first saw it as a teenager, and despite it's flaws I'm now quite fond of it. #9 - the gore is cool, and any time Kane Hodder is on screen I'm liking it ... then they come along and think 'outside of the box' and forget to bring Jason with them, so instead we get a bunch of twats we don't care about whatsoever farting around being chased by Jason's soul ... ugh ... then there's the distracting inclusion of a couple of Evil Dead references in the final act, Jason getting taken to hell, the utterly daft "Final Friday" moniker (New Line were never going to buy a franchise to kill it off, sheesh!) and the seed for a turd-festival "VS" mash-up happens. #10 - I enjoyed the idea of 'Jason in space', but converse to my thoughts 'then and now' on #8, #10 isn't as good as I once thought ... anyway, the final appearance of Kane Hodder who simply IS Jason is good, there's some nice kill gags, some interesting ideas (even though Uber-Jason doesn't look as cool as he should really). Freddy VS Jason - a spin off, rather than a franchise-follower in my view, it was complete gash when I saw it and I've never been back. Cringey Nu-Metal soundtrack, not at all scary, it's got 'that one out of Destiny's Child ... I think' in it, it's too slick, Kane Hodder isn't in it anymore and ugh ... I just didn't care for it at all ... at least it had Monica Keena in it though. Friday 13th 2009 ... well, you can see my thoughts on that here: http://deadshed.blogspot.com/2009/02/friday-13th-2009and-another-rant-about.html

The post-Halloween round up - part 2...

Additionally I checked out "SAW IV", which from the off I felt was unnecessary. To be honest it was tied up nicely at the end of the third film, but they've found a way to keep it all going (albeit a bit of a naff one, just find a new apprentice in pretty much the same way as before).

I am a huge fan of the original "SAW", it was fresh, unique and the ending left my jaw on the floor (although not hacked off in a pool of blood thankfully). The follow-up however, I didn't really like. The premise wasn't as good, the characters were cut and paste bastards - whore, junkie, whiny little bitch teenager, panicky white collar worker, school-of-hard-knocks black guy and so forth. No wonder it wasn't as good, it was based on Bousman's own script for a completely different film, and James Wan did not have a hand in the script (only Leigh Whannel). However, those two chaps did have their hands in the script for "SAW III", which produced a much better film than "SAW II" I feel, the ciclical nature of the film - treading alternate and unseen angles of plot from the first two films - was what I enjoyed most ... and yes, rotted-pig-slush-device-thing was the grossest thing I've seen for a long time.

As for "SAW IV", with damn near everybody from the previous three films slaughtered - including the main man himself - you just think, what's the point? Sooner or later everyone is going to die, even if they do escape a trap, they'll just be brought back and continue to not think outside of their own boxes so they'll just get hacked up again. With the first three, particularly the first and to a lesser extent the third, you actually cared and wanted people to escape their fates (I could have barely given a thrupny toss about those in part two, bar Donnie Wahlberg).

Another gripe is the sheer scale of the tricks, devices and so on. The scale of the devices is getting a bit silly now, particularly the main set piece in this fourth outing. It's just too big, too flashy and too designed. The great thing about the first film was it was just some grotty old bogs in a grotty old tiled room and the premise of their predicament was fairly simple, yet still terrifying and horrific.

Inevitably this was going to happen to the franchise, everytime you show a bit more and get a bit more outlandish, you have to go further the next time...but can't you just make it more mentally torturous than visually icky? 100 ick units and 0 mental units (to use a bizarre equation I've just cobbled together) is nowhere near as good as 50 ick units and 50 mental units.

The sheer thought of the predicament in the first "SAW", plus the adequate (and at the time actually fairly extreme) gore was an ideal combination. No doubt this won't be the case for "SAW V" or "VI" (which are to be shot back-to-back apparently - not a good sign, most back-to-backs usually suck, and this late in the day as well - have they not seen "Return of the Living Dead 4 & 5"?!)

But to end on a higher note, what I did enjoy about "SAW IV" was the continued way the franchise circles around the same area of events and characters, minor parts from earlier films become main parts (with varied success), and events flash back to earlier events as well as parallel events. You could say that the "SAW" franchise is the new "Friday the 13th" franchise for the 2000's, but in terms of horror in general, at least this franchise seeks to link the films together with at least some depth and complexity.

I appreciate what they're doing with the franchise immensely, but they really need to look back at the first film and regain control over themselves before it gets completely ludicrous and out-of-hand. The best way to make a good sequel is to properly understand the films that preceded it, rather than the cliche of "bigger this, this and this".

21 hour Friday...

http://www.tcm.ac.uk/RVE26dae6fc87f24277a0e4c150e6708b3c,,.aspx

http://www.edmundjolliffe.com/page15.htm

My second time working for Chris Smart of Silva Productions was yesterday, filming a performance of "The Handless Maiden" by students and Opera performers at the Trinity College of Music in London, a bloody long day indeed, so here's the breakdown of my bloodshot-eyed-day:

Thursday night - watch about 35 minutes of BASEketball after getting hot under the collar for it after hearing Trey Parker and Matt Stone talk about it during various South Park commentaries that I'd be listening to over the last couple of weeks (I'd seen the film a few times before). Then two hours of comedy genius. Mock the Week and Saxondale on BBC2, then Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip on More4 (why-oh-why did they cancel this show in America, are they feckin' idiots?!)

Then odd to bed to attempt an early night at just after 11pm (I'm definitely a night owl sort - or at least, not an early riser), but come midnight I still wasn't asleep. Then, the horrid noise of my mobile phone giving me a wake up alarm at 4:50am (I need plenty of time to warm up for a day, especially one this early starting and long in duration). I was surprisingly quick to get up, probably because I'd barely gone to sleep and had maybe scratched together a frequently interrupted and unsettled 4 hours of kip (I'm the sort of person who just simply needs 8 hours).

I watch the rest of BASEketball and get breakfast, grumbling at the fact it isn't even dawn yet. The sun does come up and I do final equipment checks before getting picked up by Chris at 7am. We barge it to London - a city which I famously despise and resent in equal measure, a city which I've not been to in about 6 years. The last 12 miles of the journey takes TWO HOURS due to London traffic and a SatNav which can't cope with dense urbanisation and is about 10 to 20 seconds behind real time, so wrong turns aplenty in London.

What a hodge-podge London is. We had to drive through most of it, and not the glamorous side, at best the normal and mundane, at worst, the broken down and depressing side - full on East Enders, haha. Traffic and people within the traffic are officially insane, like a diluted version of India - people just barge out into traffic whether they're in a vehicle, on a bike or on foot. I'm entirely glad I wasn't driving.

We get to the Trinity College of Music, on the South bank of the Thames just after 12pm and set about getting our gear set up and meeting the people involved in the project. We do some interviews in the afternoon, and then the main performance kicks off just after 6pm - an Opera, performed and crewed by a mix of able-bodied and disabled folk, a story about a poor family who accidentally sell their daughter to the devil. Afterwards there was a Q&A and a demonstration of how a Wii-mote was used to provide signals to one of the blind performers to guide them in their movements around a pre-set track.

After all that, we have to pack up the lights and then set off at around 9pm for a less-than-trouble-free journey out of London, although this time getting to see the posh side and some of the sights - The Oval, the place where they're doing the BBC Proms (forget the name now - Albert Hall?), the Apollo, Parliament & Big Ben, the West End, Harvey Nicholls and so-on.

A long-ass journey later, I arrive home just before 1am. I proceed to cover up those bloody lights on my new extension lead which have been belching light out into my room for the last week (I kept forgetting to cover them up). I then decompress, watched a bit of Gone in 60 Seconds on ITV2+1 and then nodded off around 1:50am for a nice, long kip-in until 11:15am.