'The Uninvited'

I have mentioned in the past that Americans suffer from a sort of trauma or syndrome which makes them unable to enjoy a decent movie unless it is spoken in their own language. After dwelling a while on this, I think there's a little more to this trauma (other than money, of course. Money is present in every instance). I think Americans must have some sort of problem with the Axis producing movies out of more or less original ideas when they've been adapting comics and cartoons into film for years now. As such, as soon as someone from that part of the world makes a decent, high-grossing movie, America is quick to do the same, or take the same concept and remake it. Envy does kill: the deformed incubus of this process is a lousy, unfinished-looking movie, with its corners cut so that one concept can easily be absorbed by the minds of a completely different culture from the one that spawned it. If not, take a look: Honogurai mizu no soko kara (2002) became Dark Waters (2005), Ju-On (2002) turned into The Grudge (2004), Chakushin ari (2003) was sent to the West as One Missed Call (2008), Ringu (1998) went The Ring (2002) and I'm only mentioning a few. And of the aforementioned, I only liked The Ring, both as standalone movie and remake.

Following in this tradition, The Uninvited, having dropped on my lap this very year, is a remake of a Korean movie called Tale of Two Sisters, which won several awards in Fantasporto 2003. I came to watch it when everyone else did, about two or three years later. I enjoyed Tale of Two Sisters, but it wasn't an epiphany. It's not like the first time I watched Ju-On and spent a week with nothing else in my head. It's not like being twelve, watching The Exorcist for the first time and instinctively knowing this is one of the movies that revolutionized the industry. But it was an interesting movie, with an ending twist I did not completely guess. It kept me amused and I'd sit through it again happily. If this had made my top 20 favorite movies, I might be angry as a crow at the idea of a remake. But as it is, I can't help but simply feel nauseated and annoyed.

So, much like Tale of Two Sisters, The Uninvited tells you the story of a teenage girl who has just returned home from a mental hospital after being convicted over grief for the death of her mother and attempted suicide. She comes home to her father, her sister and their evil stepmother, who used to be Mum's nurse. The problem is, our heroine can't remember the circumstances of her mother's death, and little by little it starts dawning on her, as the ghost of her mother keeps haunting her, that the stepmother might have had a little bit to do with that. Then you have a pretty shitty twist ending. Charles and Thomas Guard did this, their first theatrical movie (which is always a good bloody sign), with Emily Browning as Anna (psycho teenage haunting victim, and you also know her from Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events), Arielle Kebbel as Alex (her feisty sister who does a lousy job keeping up with her Korean counterpart, previously seen in The Grudge 2) and Elizabeth Banks as the stepmother Rachel Summers (seen very often in romantic comedies, which is also a good fuckin' sign!) I should warn you at this point that SPOILERS will haunt you if you keep reading from here on, so if you're yet to watch this and you don't like them, you know what to do.

(I also want to leave you a note that this movie should't be confused with 4 Inyong shiktak, a 2003 Korean flick which also came to the West under the name The Uninvited. What I'm reviewing here is the 2009 American version of Tale of Two Sisters, just so we're clear.)

First of all, the concept of hauntings is common to both Western and Eastern cultures. It may change slightly, but it's common (in Japan ghosts walk funny and make odd noises, and in Indonesia you have pocong which comes wrapped in its own shroud, we at this side of the globe seem to like unseen ghosts better - the poltergeist, for instance). I was sort of glad that The Uninvited decided to keep cultural visions of ghosts separate: in this, every ghost you see looks Western, no ladies in white crawling and doing odd noises for us. So, from here on, all we need is to transplant the concept and we're done, okay?

Nope. Seemingly, the premise behind the Korean version is also too complicated for American audiences. So they did take the best part of the concept away: trying to figure out when you have hallucinations and when you have ghosts. After my second watch of Tale of Two Sisters, I realized that this was slightly more complicated than it seemed at first. Since I knew what was coming - Soo-yeong has been dead all along and the stepmother might or might not have had an affair with Soo-mi's father, yet she definitely doesn't live in the house - Soo-mi might be hallucinating of her sister and the stepmother, or she might hallucinate about the stepmother and be haunted by her sister's ghost, or she might take up personas of both at different times (in the dinner party scene, Soo-mi obviously took up the persona of her stepmother), it's pretty open to interpretation. The movie does its best to subtly tell us that there are ghosts in the house, namely Soo-yeong and the girls' mother, since people other than Soo-mi see them and they can't all be hallucinating.

On their attempt to tone down the original story (or perhaps trying to complicate it to show some creativity, I'm not sure) screenwriters managed to make a split personality movie. What was the problem with keeping this movie about the four people who actually matter: the two girls, their father, and the stepmother? Instead, you get two misshaped subplots: one about Anna (playing Soo-mi's part) and a would-be boyfriend, which adds absolutely nothing to the situation and seems like an excuse to slide in two or three more spooky scenes that aren't all that spooky; and the huge - nay, humongous subplot about the murderous, identity-changing stepmother. In The Uninvited, the stepmother is pretty much real, and apparently, she does hold an affair with Anna's father, having moved in with him. What may or may not be real is the fact Anna gets haunted by a little girl and two boys who were murdered by her stepmother while she was destroying the life of another family before coming into Anna's. And by the end of the movie, we're hinted towards the "not guilty" - Anna was influenced to believe this by another patient in the mental hospital. So... what for?

One of the cool things in the Korean movie was that Soo-mi hated her stepmother for three reasons: thinking she was taking her mother's rightful place (since the stepmother pressured the father/helped commit the mother to a mental hospital and thus led the mother to commit suicide the very day she was supposed to be taken there) and harming Soo-yeong (since Soo-yeong tried to save her mother when she found her hanging in the closet and ended up suffocating when the closet came crashing down on her) but also transferring her own feelings of guilt (everyone heard the closet crashing and nobody bothered to see what was going on, and Soo-mi attempts to place all the guilt she feels for not checking on Soo-yeong into the stepmother persona). What you end up with is a very subtle and passive-aggressive hatred which, considering none of these people is actually present, sounds even more apeshit if you try to face all dialogs having in mind the only people there are Soo-mi and her father.

In the American version, Anna is the sole responsible for the accident that took her mother and sister's lives. No suicides, and the stepmother was actually having an affair with the father already. She attacks the stepmother all the same, but because of an imagined fear that she might be a murderer. The whole "murderer stepmother" subplot doesn't seem to fit well anywhere! The Uninvited ends up being more confusing and less interesting. Before, you had an easy-to-follow plotline that was highly subjective. Now, you have a pretty objective, one answer only, hard-to-keep-track-of plot!

Let me also sneak this in: what the fuck sort of unimaginative title is this? Oh, it matches the unimaginative poster like ugly shoes to an ugly purse. Right. I'm sorry.

From here on, you already know a movie cannot stand on its own legs if said legs are sound effects, special effects and acting. Especially this sort of sound effects (unimportant. Dramatic chords here and there, it would be just as bad if there was none), special effects (I see decomposed and deformed bodies are in again. Funny, I thought that had gone away with the 70's. Also, blue is the new "realistic", like brown in gaming) and acting. Let's face it: most actors in this are way out of their league. Kebbel is the only one that's ever been in a horror flick before, her part in Grudge 2 was minor, and even if The Uninvited asks for more presence, her part is still very small. Even if she did want to add up to the movie, there aren't many ways in which she could. Browning wasn't all bad, but again: this movie can't stand up on her alone.

Overall, it's a bad counterpart to Tale of Two Sisters. Watch that if you're looking for an hour's worth of entertainment, forget about The Uninvited and don't give a cent to watch this. It's one of those bland, flavorless and American-oriented flicks I find unimaginative and not really worth any money or time. I've lost the time up until now. Don't do the same!

'The Alphabet Killer'

People have realized a while ago that murderers are fascinating people. They have different modus operandi, different callings, some are spur of the moment people, some plan ahead, some stage their corpses in different ways, some eat them and some rape them, or all of the above if you're dealing with a true blue batshit psycho. Over the years, several movies have been made based on the life and times of different serial killers: about three or four different criminals were used for Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs and a whole (very boring) film depicted the way of the Zodiac killer. All of these usually have a small sentence at the bottom of their movie poster saying "Based on a True Story", so that we can go home a little more uneasy, knowing that somewhere at this very moment, someone is squashing a prostitute into a tub like an orange and bathing on the resulting gore with a rubber duckling.

The Alphabet Killer (2008) is a serial killer flick. The very tag line of this is also "Based on a true story", but you and I can't be fooled, especially after being told pearls such as The Exorcism of Emily Rose and A Beautiful Mind are also based on true stories. Perhaps a more correct way to put it would be "Ever So Slightly Based On True Stories Which We're Not Positive If Ever Really Happened In the Way We Portray". Still, after watching it, I must say I understand why that sentence was included in the advertising and at the beginning of the movie. It's an excuse, of course. It's the screenwriters and production saying that they can't help it if it's an 1h40 bore, because the story IS boring.

The plotline follows detective Megan Paige, played by Eliza Dushku... Paige is trying to catch a criminal known as Alphabet Killer... a guy who kills young girls with the same initials. You know: the first victim is Carla Castillo, then you have a Wendy Walsh, and then a Melissa Maestro... while this actually is based on a true story, it is the weakest MO for a killer I have ever heard about. On a weak attempt to make the story a little more interesting, we're given a subplot of detective Paige struggling with schizophrenia-slash-ESP so she is discredited, dramatic, suicidal and suffering from a bad case of the shakes. Long story short, she sees victim's ghosts. You will also see quite a few SPOILERS from here on forward, so if you actually want to take a look at this, stop reading before I start with the really heavy complaints.

The plot is already very limp. Apparently obvious clues that even the crew of TV's CSI could pick up (or their average audience members for that matter) are forsaken in favor of giving the impression that detective Megan Paige is a tortured genius of investigation. From the moment you have two or three victims with so much in common, including the church they go to, the movie should've been over: pattern is found, killer is found, end of story. Police departments are actually a little bit smarter than that. It baffles me how nobody else could find out that all three girls frequented the same church, so that detective Paige can do it at a point in the movie where pretty much everyone thinks she's a loon. I like to call this a manipulated plot: whoever wrote this loved Megan Paige and made up their whole story around her. They chose to have all other cops on this case apparently wanking around to give the impression she is actually the only officer who does some work around there. A work that ceases being recognized from the moment she starts going nuts.

Concerning the schizophrenia or ESP subplot... I can understand why it was put here. Schizophrenia and ESP have become increasingly popular in cinema on the past few years. With a weak plot built around an unsavory character, screenwritters wanted something that would spice up the story. It is obvious to me they were going for ESP, especially after the intro speech Paige gives off-screen at the beginning of the movie: in a case like this, everyone you want to talk to is dead. In the meantime, they decided to try and balance things towards schizophrenia, and failed miserably because the charade was killed on the first minute of screening. The ability to contact the dead, get driven mad by them and eventually being haunted by them forever and ever in the mental hospital should have perked up the story a little, make it more interesting, hide the very obvious ending twist... but it didn't. Audience is used to ESP on a story at this point, and they've seen it portrayed much better than it is here.

And what we have here, overall, is a poor use of a tried-and-true resource. This is not a whole movie made about ESP and ghosts, what matters here is the killer, and as such, ESP has to be used in moderation and at the right times. It should subtly lead our "heroine", provide hints perhaps, push her a little when she's about to give up on a particular lead. ESP in The Alphabet Killer was used as a way to get cheap thrills and descredit Paige (again - a manipulated plot). If indeed the ghosts of the victims wish Paige to solve the case, why do they pop at at the worst times, making her cower in fear and get locked up in a mental hospital?! What is the point of the whole church scene, other than scare the living lights out of Paige?! I mean, it's not even particularly imaginative: little girls, looking dead, black contact lenses, it's a wrap!

You can spot this killer about a mile away from a certain point in the movie, too. Always suspect a guy who shows up in a killer movie with the sole purpose of being the person closest to the lead actress and who has an apparently obvious reason NOT to be the killer. I usually do. There are no more good mysteries: it's usually the person who has obvious reasons not to be the killer, or someone cleared as a suspect at the beginning of the investigation. Eighty-five or so percent of what I've seen lately is like that. And, of course, since the real case has never been solved, the story cannot end well: Paige is finally locked up, tortured by the ghosts, and closes the movie saying that she must get out to catch the guy. Bullshit ending for a bullshit ending twist. Gee, the killer was the person the lead character trusted the most! I never saw that one coming!

The music is overdone for this movie. I feel like everyone thinks they're John Williams at this point. Effects, like I typed before, are sorta cheap. And now, ladies and gentlemen, my biggest complaint about this bloody thing. Brace yourselves. I am going to very much enjoy this, and I hope so will you: here comes.

Eliza Dushku is the biggest fuckin' flaw in this flick. There you go.

Before watching The Alphabet Killer, I decided to read some reviews. Disliking official newspaper and magazine reviews, I took to the Internet. The Internet is just as flawed, make no mistake, but people here seem to be less stiff about saying they wasted two hours of their time on Earth watching bullshit. I was frankly amazed at what I got: everyone kept writing that Eliza Dushku was the star of this. Eliza Dushku made the movie worthwhile. Eliza Dushku was amazing in this, and, quote, "soooooo pretty". All the while, I was asking myself: who the fuck is Eliza Dushku? After watching the movie (and already thinking Eliza Dushku sucked), her face did seem somewhat familiar, but I couldn't really put my finger on it. I once again took to the Internet and... oh fuck. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Angel. Tru Calling. The Unholy Trinity of Poorly Thought-of TV for Teens.

Turns out, Eliza Dushku was Faith in the first two, and lead actress of the last. That's from where I knew her: I actually watched the first few episodes of Tru Calling. She belongs to that generation of young actors nobody wanted to see outside of TV... or even inside it! Sarah Michelle Gellar, David Boreanaz, Jennifer Love Hewitt, you know what I mean. Unfortunately, all of them were already catapulted onto the big screen, and so was Eliza Dushku. And back me up here: they can barely pull acting skills to manage more or less comic teenage TV series, let alone a bloody movie! And The Alphabet Killer stands as the why. Dushku acts her part as if she was very conscious she is doing a shit character in a shit plot for a shit movie. Someone told her, on set, that she should do the face she did in Tru Calling whenever she had to run... constantly (I mean do the same face constantly, because she spent over half the airing time of the episodes acting as if she had explosive dhiarrea). No emotion, and the few she attempts to show (accompanied by close-ups, of course, so people can actually see the subtle changes in expression that aren't there) are so fake she would do best to use a Richard Nixon mask. She blows chunks!

(And she's not that pretty either, IMHO. I can do the same effect on my eyes if I take twenty minutes to apply my make-up.)

The movie is not worth watching. Plain and simple. Remember Room 6, which I reviewed a while back? I am tempted to put them together, although The Alphabet Killer is slightly more agreeable visually and has slightly better effects. But seriously now: not worth watching. Go watch a better serial killer movie. Go watch The Black House (2007). Go watch Voice of a Murderer (Geu nom moksori, 2007), that was nice too.

'Cujo'

I wanna leave very clear here that I am not a fangirl. I have brushed (vigorously and with enthusiasm) on the border between fangirlism and keeping most of my braincells intact, and as such I have made it through 20 years of fandoms with only a few minor vocabulary quirks, a couple of strange (if awesome) hairdos and no tattoos of the Federation logo, Wolverine claw marks, Freddy Mercury's face, Dragon Ball #3, Triforce, Raistlin's eye or The One Ring. I do, however, like Stephen King's books a lot - which does not bar me from admitting the man managed to tap the key to primordial and irrational fears once, and has been tapping it so often for so long and with such strenght it's now stuck and melted down to bullshit. But I shall approach that in its own article, for now, let's get to the point.

I tend to look back at a time when Stephen King's books weren't bullshit and he still had the gift with love. The man could pick up a ride in the subway, arguably the most boring moment of your day, and make it so that you'd soil your pants just thinking about it without resorting to any of the existing clichés. It is because of this I love Cujo - it could happen to anyone whose balls Murphy decided to bust on a Monday.

So Cujo shows you the worst days of Donna Trenton and her son Tad's life. Which would be, locked inside a car for days in the peak of August while a rabid St. Bernard keeps close watch waiting for the moment to rip away a steak off their frail, soft bodies. Directed by Lewis Teague in 1983 (Lewis Teague being responsible for the very funny if Indiana Jonesque The Jewel of the Nile in 1985), it featured Dee Wallace (recently seen in Halloween's remake), Daniel Hugh Kelly (in its debut, although he would later show up in several TV series and Star Trek: Insurrection) and Danny Pintauro (as little Tad, being hired for the series Who's The Boss? afterwards. Also did anyone else find it odd his last name is "Pintauro" and the car he and his would-be mother get stuck in is a Pinto?)

From here on, as usual, rabid SPOILERS will be watching closely, so close this browser window if you have no interest in ruining movies for yourself.

I liked Cujo for several reasons, aside from the fact it is a situation likely to happen to anyone with industrial amounts of ill luck (like, for instance, me) and it having been made in the 80's, before the era of the CGI. It was beautifully made, making the best use of trained dogs and effectively explaining the setting in the first ten minutes without a single line of dialog: this is a huge dog who gets rabies and it's only a matter of time until something horrid happens. It is also a movie that, if made by Disney, would feature a series of close shots of the dog's eyes implying a "Kill Me" wish as if the dog was actually conscious in there somewhere and actually wanted to stop ripping throats off people. And probably a shot of its teenage owner crying as someone lifted a double barrel onto its poor, disease-altered nose. Which would be wrong, because that's not how rabies acts, and would turn an otherwise decent thriller into a tearful drama.

Instead, you get the fairly faithful picture of what a St. Bernard with rabies is like. It's a huge dog, a heavy dog that usually wouldn't harm a fly but which happens to be mad. Sure, it's not anyone's fault (but his asswipe owner's, who didn't give it proper shots, and the man dies - badabing), surely not the dog's, but this is hardly the time to pity it - it wants to kill you! This is a problem with modern day horror: it somehow wants to make you see situations from the threat's point of view. And I do, really. This is not an evil dog, it's a sick dog, but that doesn't alter the fact it wants me dead!

There is also a subplot-like story about Donna Trenton, our heroine du jour, who has a successful, loving husband and an adorable 4-year-old, but still decides to cheat. Her husband finds out about it as he is about to leave on business, and so they're in bad terms by the time she is faced with the dog. I still don't know how I feel about this, seeing as apparently she is cheating out of boredom (and I can empathize with doing stupid stuff because you're bored out of your bloody mind, but that's not the point). The point is: how does a tragic-romantic subplot fit in a story about a maddened dog? Normally, it wouldn't: this is about Donna, her son, the fact nobody will be around to miss them for a few days and the fact there's a rabid dog wanting to kill her. Unfortunately the novel version of Cujo is as easy to find in national territory as the Ark of the Covenant. So I don't know if there is more to this subplot than reinforcing the Trenton couple relationship by placing her in danger's way or leaving the impression that people who do bad things, like cheating, get bitten in the ass by karma. But still, it is a welcome break from normal Hollywood romantic subplots in which the protagonists live in the perfect, flawless marriage before the shit hits the fan on them. So it's something I usually dislike, but in comparison to the mainstream way of doing it, it actually becomes a colorful marshmallow in an otherwise undiscernible sea of bland toasted oats.

At this point I should probably bring out that this was made in the 80's and what we nowadays understand as "mainstream way of doing things" wasn't set in slabs of stone yet. Go 80's.

Subplot issues apart, the acting is pretty good from the leading cast, and the dialog is actually bearable. The only line I found offensive to my intelligence was that the dog's owner, shortly before dying at the jaws of his own pet, decides to clarify what's happening in case they're showing this movie to a retarded audience: "Cujo? Oh my God... you're rabid!" I could hear the cynical moviegoer in the back of my head clapping tediously and making me chuckle, facepalm and yell obscenities (not necessarily in this order), but I can let that one slide since the character's own irresponsability towards Cujo, who of course trusts his owner to take care of him, is repaid in full when he dies a gruesome death.

The soundtrack is as it should be: secondary. Nobody cares for the soundtrack of Cujo as they would for, say, Star Wars. It's a thriller, it doesn't need an epic soundtrack (Saw, I'm looking right at you: nice music, bad timing), it just needs something that will help with ambience from time to time and this is exactly what it does. I'm glad to see that at a point, not everybody in the movie making industry were complete dolts.

The golden scene in Cujo is delivered about midway through the movie. I find it absolute gold because I know the hand of Murphy when I see it, and I can see it so clearly in this scene that I was able to tell he chews on his fingernails. In this scene, Donna and her son are inside the Pinto, having driven it to a mechanic workshop in the middle of nowhere because it's in dire need of fixing. The car further proves it's a piece of crap by dying at the workshop door. Shortly after, the dog shows up, and the thriller per se begins: Donna is stranded inside a car in the peak of August with her infant son. After a while, she decides to check if the car will start after cooling off, and she is given a chance: the car actually starts! In this setting, any of us would get out of dodge without so much as a blink. But this is not what Donna does: instead, she turns the car around, looks at the St. Bernard like she's a nose hair away from flipping the bird at it, insulting its mother and blowing tailpipe smoke right up its nostrils, and utters a very smug "Fuck you, dog". Of course, Murphy doesn't like smug, so he decides to repay it: the car dies again, this time for good. For me, this is absolute, Murphy-made gold.

The worst scene would probably be a half-hearted attempt by a police officer to save Donna and her spawn. A single cop drives into the workshop and leaves the car to check out the surroundings. He would eventually spot Donna and her son inside the Pinto and help them. But of course Cujo, lost in the annals of hydrophobia, thinks otherwise, and charges for the police officer (dare I say, like a cop to the box of donuts?). So... you are an armed police officer and there's an INCOMING RABID ST. BERNARD, what do you do? Pull out old Mabel and shoot it before it reaches you would probably be your answer... but not this particular police officer's. Instead, he decides to run, and since Cujo is arguably in a better shape, the cavalry goes to smithereens before even realizing there was a problem.

In conclusion, it is a movie worth watching, it will keep you interested and it's well-executed, and probably one of the nicest adaptations of a Stephen King novel to movie, like The Shining or Carrie. It is also the man's favorite, that alone should say enough. If you're giving, say, Desperation or Rose Red a thought, I would advise you to check this first. It's much better, has much less pretention and it's from the time Stephen King wrote good novels and decent movies were made out of them (anyone who mentions Maximum Overdrive will be murdered horribly with gold clubs and gum).

'Dead End'

Dead End is rather obscure. I've been looking for information regarding it and it's a pain in the crack. The directors are ghosts (pun obviously intended), the actors are hard to track and try as I might, I can't find the fuckin' theme song anywhere. Which is a pity, because I actually like it.

Here's what I found. Apparently two men, called Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa (I knew it couldn't be made by Americans...) both directed and wrote this, Andrea being a little more popular than his partner in crime and having also written and directed a movie called Big Nothing (2006). As actors are concerned, by far the most known is Ray Wise, playing Frank. You will recognize him from Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003), Good Night and Good Luck (2005), probably 24 (playing Vice President Hal Gardner), and the Western adaption of One Missed Call just last year. Plating the mother, Laura, you have Lin Shaye from Snakes on a (Motherfuckin') Plane. Mick Cain and Alexandra Holden are TV series actors, the Lady in White starred also in American Beauty (1999) and that's about it. This movie appears very early on any of their careers and apparently did a lot of good for them all. In fact, it won its directors several awards and a nomination in Fantasporto. I can see why: you look at this from a distance and you honestly think, like I did, it's gonna suck...

If you ever took a countryside trip somewhere during the night, you know it's spooky. It's miles and miles of trees, not one car in sight, no lights, nobody to help you if something happens. And if you're taking a trip, let's say, South, you know a good part of your way will be made in a straight line, in the middle of miles and miles of trees. It's spooky shit country. Scary stuff is begging to happen. And the USA, who have some of the most crowded cities in the world, and some of the greatest lengths of free woodland crossed by roads known to Man, is the perfect place for something like this to happen. Dead End is about a family on their usual yearly pilgrimage to Grandma's house for Christmas dinner. The father decides to take a shortcut through the countryside, and eventually the whole family finds itself trapped in a looping road, which seems to go nowhere, while a ghostly woman dressed in white and a black car seem to chase them about, killing one by one. At this point the movie is already pretty spoiled, so I'm gonna leave my usual SPOILERS alert here. Don't want to have this one wrecked for you? Don't read past the red. And this is the sort of movie that really spoils if you know the story.

What happens here is explained in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This family is caught in a pre-death dream. They all doze off inside the car -including at one point the father, who is driving. The car crash they think they nearly had, they actually did have. And in the dream, they proceed to die one by one, presumably in a way representative of how they died in reality, and usually starting from the one who was killed faster (mauled into shit) onto the one who survived the longest (heart attack, we assume), up to the sole survivor. I liked how this was done, because not only this logical order was respected, but even the entities haunting the family in the woods have a meaning: the lady in white was in the car they hit, and the man in the black car was the one who reported the incident and called an ambulance for the sole survivor of the crash.

While actors are pretty much unknown, I did like the acting. A lot. A lot indeed, keep in mind this is the B-series, and we were taught not to expect much from that. All my five R go to Lin Shaye, who did one of the freakiest death scenes I had ever seen, and looked positively terrified (or insane) throughout the whole thing. The weakest actor, in my opinion, was actually the first to go. Cheers!

The sound is amazing. You hear all sorts of noises while the family is stranded in the road. Common woodland sounds, odd background music, strange stuff from everywhere... I mean, turn the lights off and the sound up and try it. It was one of the few movies I showed my family they watched in complete silence from the beginning to the end: no comments, no jokes. And, once again, this is a B-series. Went straight to video. I found it by sheer chance because, as you can see from the above picture, the cover is nothing special. Nothing that would've caught your interest up first. Reeker (2005) was much inferior and had a much more mysterious cover, in my humble opinion. So what happened here? How is it this managed to be awesome where others fail?

It went by everything I have been saying throughout the years. Good usage of a small budget: they can't show a lot of things because they don't have the cash for awesome special effects, they keep most stuff hidden. In fact, this is one of those movies where it doesn't make much sense that you see a lot of stuff. We're in the middle of nowhere and it's dark...

Then, not over-complicating the plot. You don't have the budget to manage a lot of things, so don't add a lot of things. A family, a car, two antagonists, one stretch of woodland road as scenery. They're going to their Grandma's, they get stuck, they die, small twist at the end (in fact, a twist within a twist, if you fast-forward the credits and see the small scene right after them), that's all. Nothing big. The creators realized that this wasn't supposed to be impressive. Nobody needed to get out of this movie commenting on the awesome effects or the actors they've seen here and there: the movie just had to be a good, run of the mill movie, and that's what they did.

Third pointer: if you got away with one good movie, don't make any sequels. Up until now, everything okay. I'm glad there's a movie that proves my theory that the bigger the budget, the bigger the chance to mess up. Dead End is easily downloadable and also rentable, so check it out.

'Room 6'

When watching horror movies, you sometimes have to deal with sorts that are tricky to handle. You have straight-to-video flicks, the B-series, the slasher movies (some people enjoy them, I don't like 'em to much), the fake snuff films, the ones who don't really mean to be serious (nicknamed "zombie comedies", since the best part of them involves zombies in one way or another), the bullshit that was considered awesome decades ago and now frankly sucks... still, I watch all this (so you don't have to!) Why do I watch it all? Because mainstream also fails a lot, and sometimes, you hit a movie in the straight-to-video which, like Dead End, manages to be mighty decent. So you see, even amongst a pile of rubbish, you manage to find pearls from time to time. But the movie I bring to you today, sadly, is not a pearl. It's bunny droppings from 2006.

Room 6 is a complete flatline flick. One of the most boring things I've ever seen, and on horror I've seen plenty. Christine Taylor (you remember the blonde from Zoolander? Well I should've seen her resume before watching the movie. If I had known she was in fuckin' Friends, I could've guessed this was gonna suck bad) and Jerry O'Connell (let's see... Kangaroo Jack, Scream 2, Police Academy 5, Stand by Me... ah yes. His face is very familiar) star as two people involved in the same car crash. Their loved ones get taken into a hospital, but nobody wants to reveal to them where this hospital is. Because it is a Hellish pit where they are both going to be killed horribly. As if this wasn't enough, la Taylor (for flick purposes, Amy) is dead scared of hospitals ever since she was a little girl, due to a mysterious issue involving her father. And now, in order to get her boyfriend back, she needs to walk right into the worst of them all. The movie was directed by Michael Hurst, also responsible for such (master)pieces of shit as Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud and House of the Dead 2. He not only directed this, he also wrote the damned thing. Now, if you're still interested in watching this steamy pile of manure, I'll be doing SPOILERS up ahead. Go watch it, go vomit, and then come back to listen to me type similar complaints to yours.

First and foremost, why the fuck did I watch this in the first place? Well, read the intro... and also, keep in mind yours truly thinks hospitals are creepy as crow. Maybe I've played a level too many of Silent Hill, and maybe I've hated hospitals from the bottom of my gut ever since I've known of their existence. They're horrifying as is, without a horror plot. There has to be something to this, I thought. There has to be something you can like amongst it. Also, have you ever heard of free association? It's something you usually can't avoid doing. Room 6's title reminds me of Session 9 and I figure - maybe they're similar. This is the biggest mistake you can do when picking a movie... and after all these years, I made it. The title was enticing... although the cover was shit for the birds. The "demonic face" school of horror movie covers is older than me.

What upsets me the most is that hospitals have a good potential for horror, and it's always wrecked somehow. This time? Satanists and blond, big-boobed vampires. Two of the three horror movie things I hate the most. The third is last-minute thought of endings, and I'll get to that in a few paragraphs. This movie is of the kind I refer to as "flatlines". Nothing happens, and what happens, you saw coming. Seriously: midway through the movie, I was guessing every scene. All the nurses are hot? Lesbian vampires. It seems to be a constant since Bram Stoker's Dracula and one of the staples of every cheap, poorly thought-of horror movie. Woman afraid of hospitals because of an issue with her dad? Can you guess? She pulled the plug on him. Whoa, difficult! And wait, there's a twist: the guy who's trying to help her? He's in on it too! Damn, I didn't see that coming at all! Bullshit...

Effects are hideous. I've seen better stuff zapping through Buffy the Vampire Slayer last week! But that's not the problem, I mean, effects don't make a movie. It's how they treat them. People have a budget for a movie, right? They have a budget, they need to pay the actors, take care of sceneries, camera crew, directors, screenwriters, all that stuff. It's normal they can't afford medium quality effects. First rule of the horror movie: if you can't show it right, don't show a lot of it, audience will fill in the blanks. Some movies gain in showing their prime attraction. Movies like Jaws, or Alien: we came in to see it. We want good, close shots of it. But when you only have generic demons and monsters to show, it may be a good idea not to show it too close, because you'll be compromising the quality of the mystery. You ever see Angel? (and why on Earth do you?) That's how the effects on this kidney stone wannabe were! What am I looking at? A horror movie for little kids?

Alright. I even tried to see it from another perspective. For a straight-to-video, it's bad, but maybe... just maybe it was meant for a specific audience. Like the aforementioned Angel, that was meant for a specific audience... one I don't wanna meet, but specific all the same. Maybe this was actually aimed at little kids... or not. See, Tales from the Crypt was aimed at young audiences. And effects weren't half as bad as in this shit. 1989 to 2006... only proves my theory. Even in the little things that don't matter globally... we've got stupider on the past two decades.

And when you finally need to wrap up the ending... what the fuck? Twenty minutes from the ending, you have a paralyzed bloke and a blonde running from vampire nurses. Fifteen minutes from the ending, the same blonde and the not-so-paralyzed anymore guy are running for the hills. What the fuck? Wasn't he paralyzed? And she just walks inside the room and takes him away, no struggle, no obstacles? Want more? They walk out the hospital door, so what now? The hospital is still there, they're both out or so it seems... badabing, pre-death dream. You're granted a final scene of Amy dying in the car crash after saving her boyfriend from certain doom! I have seen this trick well done. This is not it: why does she die? About three minutes before she does, she's talking fine, she's saying she "passed the test" (I swear on my best pair of sneakers, the script is just... it's like everything else: stale, boring, predictable), she looks mildly affected but not fuckin' dying! Why is it every screenwriter who doesn't know how to wrap up a horror movie gives you the "dream" bullshit? They give ill name to those which actually do this sort of thing well!

If you wanna take a gander at it, by all means, download the piece of shit. But don't pay for it: not worth your dough. It belongs to that group of poorly though, poorly conceived, poorly scripted pieces of crow you have to find in all styles from time to time.

'Tales from the Crypt'

I wanna review something entertaining and slightly longer than a regular movie. I've been watching a lot of shit lately (oh, people, have I been watching a lot of shit... stay tuned to the blog, you'll see), and when I've watched a lot of shit on a row, I usually seek solace in oldies, noir films, Alfred Hitchcock, the works... and a series or two which are dear to me. MST3K is one... and Tales from the Crypt is another. That's what I came here to talk about today.

What's so great about Tales from the Crypt? What isn't? Cheesy, made-for-TV special effects, 20 minutes worth of entertainment, a mascot so disgustingly cute only HBO could have aired it originally and no censorship whatsoever. No FCC bullshit on this one: in one episode of the fourth season, you get full frontal nudity the sort you'll have a hard time getting on cinema. And disembowelments, eyes falling out of sockets, cut fingers, zombies rising, killers, werewolves, voodoo priests, mutants, witchdoctors... and even all the classical mistakes: cameraman on the back, mic overhead, the works. Unacceptable in a serious flick. Great for laughs on a horror comedy series meant for impressionable teenagers.

All the stories on the episodes of Tales from the Crypt come from the same place: five comic book sagas published by EC Comics: the series' namesake, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, Crime SuspenStories and Shock SuspenStories. All aimed at the same impressionable teenagers. The comics ran all through the 50's (uuh, vintage) and the TV series went from '89 to '96, counting a whooping 93 episodes. It's nothing, if you take into account House M.D. counts 106 episodes as of now and it's not over yet, but during the first half of the nineties and being a series aimed at such a short audience, it managed pretty well.

What's amazing is that while most stories in Tales from the Crypt episodes are, well... made for impressionable teenagers... some of them are actually very nice. One of my favorites, for instance, is about a guy who makes a living by dying, since he has nine lives, stolen from a cat. On his last performance, he's gonna be buried alive, and only once inside the coffin and six feet under does he realize that he might have gotten his maths wrong. Another such is about a paranoid man who is convinced that his wife is cheating on him with his best friend. One night, after some heavy drinking, he decides to kill both - and afterwards discovers he might've made a mistake. And how about a modern, female-oriented version of McBeth? Or a crook who after thirty-something years actually starts listening to his conscience - and it won't shut up. Some of them are outstanding, if you look at the worst episodes of it and the audience to which they were planned.

Furthermore, try looking at a list of all the big names involved in acting out the episodes on this. Tim Curry was on an episode (one freaky as crow episode), Brad Dourif too, and Whoopi Goldberg and John Rhys-Davies, Meat Loaf, Iggy Pop (as himself, pretty much), Slash, Joe Pesci (I wanna say "as himself" too, but he's in the sort of part he does best), Adam "I'm-the-goddamn-Batman" West, Demi Moore, Christopher Reeve, Brad Pitt, Benicio Del Toro, holy shit! The series is packed with big names. So if you can stand the cheese, and manage not to build up huge expectations, I would advise everyone to take a look at some episodes. Some stories are really interesting, and it's nice softcore horror for those still starting on the genre or those who want a break from the heavier stuff.

'1408'

If one thing there is as old as the belief in ghosts, haunted houses must be it. People seem to believe, and it is further reinforced by paranormal investigators, most ghosts and apparitions are restrained to a space they inhabited in life, or where they died. As such, haunted spaces arise easily, particularly in places charged with heavy emotional energy: sanatoriums, hospitals, Victorian mansions. With the sort of life people lead nowadays, the haunted spaces change to adapt: houses become apartments, studios, lofts and rooms. Today, I wanna talk to you about 1408, which is, in Samuel L. Jackson's own line, not haunted but "an evil fuckin' room". By Sweden director Mikael Håfström, with screenplay based off a short story by Stephen King, 1408 dropped on our laps in the merry year of 2007. Samuel L. Jackson needs no introduction whatsoever, and you can probably recall John Cusack from Being John Malkovitch (1999) or Con Air (1997). It all begins with Mike Enslin, thriller author and fake haunting debunker. Having traveled all across USA territory uncovering hauntings, he is given a scoop about room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel, NY, and being the firm skeptic he is, he decides this is another one he will debunk for his new book. However, fifty-six people have already died inside the bedroom, none of them able to last more than an hour inside without losing their mind or dying - by suicide, murder, or even more bizarre, natural causes. And as soon as he enters the room, just like so many before him, Mike's own issues start coming back to him: his daughter, prematurely dead, the wife he left without an explanation, and the father he holds an unsolved argument with. I think I spoiled it enough as plot goes, so I should warn you now that even more SPOILERS will be flying your way from here on. If you're the sort that dislikes having the movie wrecked for you, stop reading now.

I walked into watching 1408 with some expectations, of course, I've had my share of haunted house flicks. I must say this completely blew everything I was expecting, and proved to be closer to The Shining than to Poltergeist (and no, the reference didn't escape me with Cusack's line about rivers of blood. Scripwriters gave Stephen King a long, firm nod there). Enslin actually solves the mystery of room 1408 right at the movie's beginning: ten minutes after walking inside the room, a trip through Hell begins which takes 60 minutes to be completed. Enslin is taken through several layers of it, which pretty much follow Dante's model of Hell. When the journey is finished, everything starts anew, so he is pretty much stuck in the same time period: he cannot leave the room in any way, he cannot call for aid and his only way out of it is the same many before him have chosen: to "check out" by committing suicide.

If they didn't tell me this was based off a Stephen King story, I might have gotten there. The plot and characters are very like something he'd do. The main character is a writer. Sure sign of Stephen King's presence right there, you can find this in other movies based off his work easily: IT (1990), The Dark Half (1993), The Shining (1980), Salem's Lot (1979), Stand by Me (1986), Misery (1990), and several others. Enslin leads a fairly normal life until the day something odd happens in his presence or he walks into a freakish situation: this is King's trademark style. Flashbacks are also one of Stephen King's most used tools, both for novels and movies, and it's used quite often in 1408 as well. Finally, King is no strange to character death. In fact, the endings of his books and several of his films are usually marked by the death of a character. There is something that is much unlike Stephen King-based films, however: the quality of the flick. I am used to watching Stephen King-based flicks which are made for TV, or as a mini-series... or overall made over ten years ago, which nowadays is the same as made for TV quality. Having seen, let's say, Rose Red (2002) which was made as a miniseries, I was very positively surprised with 1408.

You'll find many signs of haunting which are classical, and if you're the kind that always wants something new, you're in for a slight disappointment. The tap that spurs water all of a sudden, spectral voices, radio and TV coming on without human intervention, bleeding walls, little kid ghost, paintings that change, Enslin thinking he's out but he's not, electronic devices going to Hell, all of these are classical. I still like how the main character deals with the shit happening to him, however: Cusack is very good on this. While being frightened looks very legit, what comes across better is frustration. As sound goes, another pleasant surprise. I particularly like the slightly disturbing, slightly unnerving tunes we get from time to time. They don't become loud enough to deter you from what's happening, they don't spoil what's happening next (the "scary music = spooky shit a-comin'" syndrome). Usually, the tunes are used for marking and enhancing events instead of predicting them. You also have a theme song of sorts, We've Only Just Begun by The Carpenters. I already thought that band was creepy, now I'm sure! (I'm dead serious, have you taken a good look at Karen Carpenter's pictures? Shit...)

I have found, during my lurking around forums about the movie, there seems to be a second ending, in which Mike is supposedly alive and his wife hears the recording of their daughter's voice. I can't seem to find this anywhere, as I've seen the other ending: Mike's dead and the room is torched down. I also found out a lot of people seem to be calling this a horrible flick because it didn't scare them. On that part I must sadly agree: the movie disturbs slightly, it's odd, but not necessarily scary. It's pretty good, there were a couple scenes that actually made me a bit spooked, but not scared. A third issue very present in forums seems to be that the tale is better... well, having seen so many adaptations, folks, I can tell you it's hard to find an occasion in which the written word isn't better than the movie.

Finally... what the Hell was wrong with 1408. This seems to be the most criticized thing in the movie. Theories about drugged drinks and dreams were shot everywhere across the Internet, but Samuel L. Jackson's explanation seems to be the closer to the truth: it's an evil room. I dislike it too when things go about unexplained, but not like 1408. I dislike it when things happen out of nowhere, for instance, like the last thirty minutes of anything by Takashi Miike. I dislike it when things start off being logical and then go to smithereens at the end because screenwriters got stuck. I dislike it when the solution for a big mystery comes out of nowhere, or it's too obvious and the main cast didn't see it, this is the "lacks of explanation" I dislike. You could say it's lack of consistency I dislike. But you don't see it here: the manager doesn't know what's wrong with the room, only something is. Mike can't figure out what's wrong with the room either. Nobody can figure out what's wrong! Consistent from beginning to end! And let me tell you, kudos to Stephen King as unexplained shit is concerned. Try reading some of his tales: it's mostly unexplained.

It's a very decent movie, overall, one you can enjoy easily over a pack of chips (it's something like 90 minutes long). Don't hope to be too scared, though, it's entertaining and interesting, but not overly scary. But it's well-made and you'll probably like it. Give it a shot: it's even in YouTube in several parts.

'Silent Hill'

Every time a movie based off a game is announced, I have a strange, morbid curiosity to watch. Something that nears the sick, I would say. It's the same curiosity that is in us all, when we see a car crash by the side of the road and are compelled to slow down and absorb in all details of the scene, no matter how horrifying they are. This is me, when a movie based off a game - especially, a game I like - is announced.

I had seen a lot of game-inspired and game-based bullshit in the last few years before 2006. Resident Evil burst its ugly face through the big screen in 2002. As a big fan of Code Veronica, I sorta hoped the movie could be saved by borrowing from it, but... as it turns out, it tried to follow the original games, only without most of the things we liked about them, including Jill Valentine on a lead role. In 2003, it was House of the Dead, whose director oughta be hung upside-down and beaten blue with plastic mallets by creepy clowns. Another instance of Resident Evil came out the following year, and just before the one we care about for this review, in 2005, we had Doom and the most horrible of the lot: Alone in the Dark. Don't believe me? The producer and director is Uwe Boll, who is known for horribly mauling motion pictures. Including BloodRayne (2005), Postal (2007) and the aforementioned House of the Dead.

And so, crow help us, we reach 2006 and Silent Hill's own moment of damnation and disgrace on being adapted to the big screen. Or rather, 2007: we in Portugal waited exactly one fuckin' year for the movie's release on national territory. The first thing I recall doing is checking for whose names were involved. Because if Uwe Boll had been within ten miles of it, I would be going postal myself. Writer Roger Avary had previously worked in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, though, and director Christophe Gans took care of one strange movie I actually liked watching, Le Pacte des Loups. I thinks to myself that this may not be as bad as it first looked. Not wanting to wait a year to watch it, I actually took to the Internet, and a good friend of mine managed to find me a copy before it hit theaters.

(Let me sneak in this: the picture I posted isn't the real poster for Silent Hill, this is. I hate it. It was most voted on an Internet poll and that's how it came to be the official poster. Of all the good stuff they could've added to a movie poster about this, they picked that piece of crow. Go figure.)

The plotline of the movie follows the original Silent Hill game. Rose da Silva (which would be the female equivalent to the game's Harry Mason) is a woman whose adoptive daughter Sharon (in the game, Cheryl) is having nightmares and begs to be taken to the abandoned resort town of Silent Hill. Desperate for help, Rose promptly drives her daughter to town, only to have her vanish after a car crash on the outskirts of the town. When Rose wakes up, though, the town is packed with monsters and creatures. In order to find her daughter, Rose must now solve the untold story of the town. And as of this paragraph, those who are still waiting to give it a look should be warned of incoming SPOILERS to it.

First and foremost, my favorite part of the film happens within the first 20 minutes. Let me show you exactly why. Check out this helpful piece I found in YouTube.



... see what I mean? The intro scene is reproduced almost to perfection, like the first-person shooter scene in Doom. From here on, however, we're gonna have a few problems with keeping up with the game. Gans started well, but he didn't keep it up. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't looking for a complete live-action version of the game. But frankly, there are a few pointers on the plotline that were changed, possibly to provide a better understanding of the whole story of the town (which would only become clear towards the third game of the franchise) and also to cater to more sensible audiences but... I don't think they are such good changes, and most of them have only made the story more complicated than it needed to be for the non-gamers.

For starters, the whole idea of a cult to a local God disappeared. Whatever is wrong in the town of Silent Hill happened because a local cult was trying to give their God a physical form. The leader of the cult, Dahlia Gillespie, offered her own daughter Alessa to be a host who would birth the God. The preparations for the birthing involved scorching the girl alive so that she would know pain and suffering. The more pain she met, the more powerful the God's physical form would be. In the movie, Dahlia Gillespie is not the leader of the cult: her sister, Christabella, is. I don't know why this was done; possibly the fact they thought it too shocking for a mother to burn her own daughter alive, or an attempt to make a reference to the name Christabella, which only appears on the comic book Silent Hill: Dying Inside. Whatever it was, it shifted the focus from the parallel made in the game: Dahlia the parent who mistreats her child, and Harry (or Rose) the parent who goes to great lenghts to save his child. It also defeated the purpose of the cult itself: in the movie, they don't care for a local God. They burn Alessa because they think she's a witch. So I'll risk saying it's a plain Dark Ages version of the Catholic church.

Like in the game, it is hinted that Alessa has a special feat of her own. ESP maybe, like it was hinted in Silent Hill: 0rigins. That power, heightened by the dormant God inside her, created the alternative town. When her power was completely unleashed, the dark version was created. In the movie, however, the God comes to Alessa after she's been burned, for no apparent reason. Now it may just be me, but I think this is overcomplicating the plot, and leaving no explanation as to why the local God came for Alessa.

Another issue that was in great discussion in forums about the movie was the presence of Pyramid Head, by far the most treasured monster of the franchise. In the second game, Pyramid Head came to punish James Sunderland for the murder of his wife, which he had repressed until he came to town. The monsters only exists in relation to Sunderland, and once Sunderland accepts what he's done, Pyramid Head ceases to have a point and disappears. If there's no James Sunderland in the movie and, as we've seen, this follows the story of the first game, why did they put him in there?

Well, because he is by far the most treasured monsters of the franchise. Fans expected to see a cameo of him somewhere, like they expected to see monsters they'd recognize from the game: Lying Figure / Straightjacket makes a cameo, the Nurses are classical and common to all games but the fourth, the bugs were also popular for the first two games, Grey Children... they did manage to make his presence logical, though. He is punishing the people locked inside alternative Silent Hill, and trying to make them accept they have scorched an innocent child. For as long as they deny it, he will chase after them. So his presence isn't all that farfetched. And I don't think, as was discussed in several forums, his presence is tied in with the bugs. In the movie, we see Pyramid Head first emerging from a swarm of insects, dragging a recently dead figure whose symbolism is lost (all of Pyramid Head's deaths are symbolic for Sunderland in the game). But that doesn't mean he control them, or that he only shows up when they do...

Either if you have played the games or not, you will love two things about this movie: soundrack and sound in general (except for Johnny Cash' Ring of Fire, everything was taken directly from the games, including the mechanical sounds you hear in dark Silent Hill, a trademark of the franchise) and special effects. This is why I was happy Gans was directing the movie: he doesn't rely too much on CGI. Of course the bugs are made via computer, the final scene of the movie featuring Alessa / God is mostly CGI, as is the scenery of dark Silent Hill, there weren't a lot of ways around that. However, the rest of the monsters are actors in costume. Pyramid Head, Janitor and Straightjacket included. I particularly liked the nurse scene: Rose comes across a corridor that is blocked out by some twenty nurses. As is demonstrated, monsters in Silent Hill react to the light, so Rose does what many of us have tried to do during the games: try to Solid Snake her way past the nurses. I like the fact Gans didn't cheap out on the scene by placing four or five real nurses, and multiplying them via computer. All nurses were real actresses, and did a wonderful job at playing monster nurse, I might add.

Finally, I also would like to address the cryptic ending of the movie, in which Rose and Sharon return home, but are nowhere to be found by Rose's husband... who happens to be sitting right next to them on the couch. Technically, the God took a hold of Sharon after the massacre, so Rose and Sharon got locked inside alternative Silent Hill forever. I find the explanation provided by getting the Bad ending in the first game much more reliable, seeing as they managed to leave the town. In this ending, the whole game was a pre-death hallucination: Harry Mason died in the crash at the beginning of the game, much like what happens in the movie Jacob's Ladder (1991). Rose and Sharon also died in the crash. Only their spirits have returned home, and of course, Rose's husband can't find them.

Overall, Gans made a good job on the conversion, even with all the plot changes, it's a movie gamers can be proud of and one of the best adaptations out there. And if you don't know the franchise, you are likely to enjoy the movie even more than someone who does. It's worth a view either way, so if you're not willing to rent or download, do a search for it on YouTube, in high definition, sit back with a bag of chips and enjoy yourself.

'Hellblazer'

I remember the first time I picked up a Hellblazer comic. That image on the left? That was the cover. Hellblazer # 25, in Brazilian, at an age where I had never heard of John Constantine and for me, DC comics was all about Captain America. It was a time where every two or three days, I'd leave school, hit the store and try to find something to read during Chemistry (that was always lost from day one anyway). It usually takes me about an hour to go through six or seven comic books, so you see, one every two days was a mastery in self-control.

There were a lot of comics with the usual heroes clad in spandex and with awesome powers. And then there was this. Possibly some of the creepier shit allowed to go on a comic book cover back in the day. I picked it up, went through a couple of pages, and brought it home with me. After I read it once, I re-read it until I knew it by heart, and from then on, began scanning the shelves for it. Even after Pops gave away my whole comic book collection without my permission, this number got saved. When I finally found the time and availability to download the English version of the comic, you have no idea how happy I was to finally read this as the writers had intended it to be.

Hellblazer is all about John Constantine -detective, exorcist, regular English badass... and not Keanu Reeves. If the name doesn't ring a bell to you, try going to the club and picking up the movie Constantine, which is an adaptation of Hellblazer to the big screen. Like most adaptations from comic books, it sucks on toes if you're familiar with the original. Constantine is a chain-smoking guy caught between several layers of Hell on Earth, who solves cases and problems related to the paranormal because he can see paranormal shit. We're hinted from some sources that this is not something that he alone does, but that his lineage has been doing for centuries. In a number of Sandman, an ancestor of Constantine was contacted by Morpheus to recover his son's head during the French Revolution (the comic book would be Sandman: Distant Mirrors - Thermidor and the ancestor's name was Johanna Constantine -tell me you didn't see that coming...) All manners or weird shit happen in his comic book. I absolutely adore it.

Several good people already had Constantine on their hands. He first showed up on Swamp Thing, and from then on, he's been picked up by Gaiman (from Sandman), Grant Morrison (The New X-Men), Garth Ennis (Punisher) and countless others. His comic books never fail to impress. Strangely well-written, they regularly feature something most comics only pick during highly dramatic moments: a very good narratorial voice, which often not only describes what is going on in the panels, it also offers insight on thoughts and feelings of the involved parties in a fashion reminiscent of post-modern English literature. You know T. S. Elliot? His Wasteland was written using a similar manner of narrator. The art was very nice, the coloring made in strong tones and little variety, much like those comics meant to be in black and white that later are inked. I could argue DC comics are cheap bastards, but then again, they're still publishing in the original templates. Plastic paper pages and heavy coloring is Marvel's department. I should at this point mention I liked Vertigo comics very much (especially the compilations), which belonged to DC and among other good things, published Hellblazer.

Of course, the movie Constantine (2005) couldn't hold a candle to it. Like many lately, it's a decent, even pretty good movie, unless you're familiar with the real John Constantine. Like Silent Hill (2007) for those who never played Silent Hill, and the American The Grudge (2004) for those who never saw the original Japanese Ju-On (and as a punchline, it's the same director on both languages). And let me tell you, they went all out with the movie. It's the whole of mankind on the line in the movie. Usually the comic manages to afflict little more than a whole city. But hey, I cut them some slack: the city of Los Angeles has enough shit as is, to be cursed by demons on its own. Terminator 2 (1991) was set in Los Angeles, Transformers (2007) was set in Los Angeles, Pulp Fiction (1994) was in Los Angeles and so were half the sitcoms I liked to watch. Damn, it's one cool city. (on a related note, I just imagined Terminator bursting inside the Cheers! pub and killing everyone there, except for Maria de Medeiros who gets saved by Bumblebee).

I do resent a little that Keanu Reeves was picked for the part. I never liked the man a lot both for his face and as an actor, but since The Matrix he's never been without a job. I also resent Peter Stormare being picked for the part of Satan. Not that he's a bad actor, on the contrary. I liked him in The Big Lebowski and Birth, and saw him in a shitload TV series including Prison Break, he's a very decent actor, he has a cool voice, but I think he wasn't very well picked as Satan. When I think of the Price of Darkness, that's usually not what comes to mind. I expected someone not as old and a little more charisma. I did understand why he was picked, however: Lucifer was an angel after all, and I think production was trying to make their Infernal Majesty something that we could believe had been an angel, only he's spent the last thousands of years in the slammer. On that view, they did a good job. Loved Tilda Swinton as the archangel Gabriel (you probably remember her as the White Witch in Chronicles of Narnia), and yes, it is a woman. Awesome job make-up did on making her look genderless. Very well-picked and very well worked with.

Overall, I like the comic better. It's definately worth a look, if you have nothing better to do.

For Generations to Come

Do you have any idea how many installments of Halloween there are? Nine. Eight movies and one remake of the original, by Rob Zombie, that reared its ugly mug last year. And there are even more of Friday the 13th: thirteen if you count Freddy vs Jason, but let me pick up Halloween since, sadly, I know it a little better.

The first one came out in 1978, and given the year and director, it was a pretty decent flick. John Carpenter is a director whose movies can fall on two categories: pretty good, or very lousy. As for the 70's, don't get me wrong. A lot of awesome movies came out in the 70's: The Exorcist was released in '73, Jaws in '75, Carrie in '76, Eraserhead in '77, the original Dawn of the Dead in '78, Alien in '79, just to mention a few. The slasher style was born in this decade, crowned by Texas Chainsaw Massacre in '74, but also were the psychological and goth styles was we know them. The 70's spawned many horror films which would become classics, and I'm really not saying Halloween isn't a classic in itself.

The problem lies in the fact that after Halloween showed up, Hollywood decided to milk it for all it had, even at the cost of kicking logical thought in the shins. In the first two sequels, I mean, because after that, they also anally raped it, broke its fingers, hung it from the neck, played piñata with it and filmed the whole thing to post online on a snuff film forum. They destroyed an otherwise decent flick by releasing sequels ad nauseam. There was nobody through the 70's and 80's who didn't watch Halloween, and even across the 90's and onto our time, the original flick is still available for rental at many spots. Why? Well it's hardly the only one that doesn't suck, and even if many think it does, they'll watch it for its crappy film fame. You've done this too, I'm sure. Everyone says a given movie is crap, and you're gonna watch just to make sure... but I digress.

The saga revolves around Michael Myers (except for the third film, which seems completely unrelated to the franchise and is about man-killing robots running rampant on Halloween night), a man who has been locked up in a sanatorium since he was six years old, when he murdered his older sister on Halloween night. After he was locked up, he left behind a younger sister, and a few years later, on Halloween night, Myers decides to finish what he began: he breaks out of the sanatorium and goes after her.

While it's a plotline as good as any, this is doomed to repeat itself over, and over, and over again. Myers breaks from the asylum, hospital or sanatorium, Myers stalks and terrorizes members of his family, Myers gets shot, burned, ran over or tossed from a second story window, Myers enters a coma or trance and is sent back to the asylum, or simply vanishes at the end of the movie. Just so he can escape from the asylum again or mysteriously come back on the next sequel. When it became obvious Laurie Strode, the girl Myers wants dead, can't take anymore of him, they pop in Jamie, a niece for him to chase and try to kill. This happens in Halloween 4, by the way, which was called The Return of Michael Myers. What the heck did he do in the previous two movies, then, if he's returning now? (keep in mind I'm not considering H3).

On Halloween 5, Myers comes back yet again for The Revenge of Michael Myers, and keeps haunting Jamie. By now, I'm pretty sure, and so is everyone, Myers isn't human. No human being, with the possible exceptions of McGyver and Wolverine, can survive what this guy's been through. Laurie shot him, his doctor shot him, the police shot him, Hell, I would shoot him myself if I had the chance! Bring in the S.W.A.T. to shoot this guy, he just keeps coming back! Well, this was supposedly explained by the next movie, Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers. If up until now, the saga isn't taking it up the butt, it begins as of this film: a group of druids (!) are protecting Michael Myers. They kidnap Jamie, she is raped and gives birth to Myers' child (!) and escapes. The Strodes are once again haunted by Myers from this on. Frankly, I don't think it's fear anymore, it's plain frustration. As proof, on the seventh movie, Laurie fakes her own death, changes names and runs away, and this son of a crow STILL managed to find her! And on the next one, a bunch of jackasses open a contest for 6 teenagers to spend a night in the Myers home. According to all opinions, the guy was finally killed for real in the previous movie. This brought him back, seemingly. Ever heard that expression about not fixing what's not broken....?

Well, finally we come to the remake. I guess since the Strodes weren't getting bugged anymore, the druids disbanded and the evil robots were too farfetched to bring back, they decided it was time to give Myers a rest. Last year, Rob Zombie dug him up. Rob (Mr. Zombie?) has apparently left the world of music to write and direct ugly effin movies. The House of 1000 Corpses (2003) and The Devil's Rejects (2005) were a weird version of The Hills Have Eyes meets Hostel, with a little satanism on the side for good measure. The first was kinda funny, I had my chuckles during it. The second wasn't so funny, and in fact, I recall wondering when would it end. He is now dedicating to bringing Myers back... again. The line about fixing what's not broken mentioned earlier in this post applies.

So Halloween literally haunted a whole generation of horror movie fans. By far, it's not the saga with the most movies. Star Trek features ten flicks, James Bond features over 20 movies, and Godzilla 27 and one remake, making it the one, to the best of my knowledge, with most sequels. The oldest one, Gojira, came out in 1954, making it over 50 years old now...

But you know what's really scary?

Halloween, as previously stated, came out in '78, and if you don't count the remake, it haunted us up to 2002. That's 24 years, more or less a whole generation. Now try to guess this. Which horror movie came out in 2004, and has been releasing sequels at the rate of one per year, having released its fourth this very year? Doesn't ring a bell? Okay: the star of the first flick only had five minutes worth of screen time, eventhough it had been present the whole movie: Tobin Bell. Still can't guess? Last hint: I SAW the first, I SAW the two first sequels and I never SAW it again. Got it?

Saw (2004) has done in four years what it took Halloween eleven to accomplish: one original movie plus four sequels. Much like with Halloween, Saw's first sequel was only half decent, and from the third on it's hardly worth it. Again, much like Halloween, the third movie hardly followed the pattern of the first two, and the fourth tried to pick it all up again. Are you noticing a pattern here? All generations have had their movie. In fact, anyone from any given generation can tell you of at least one flick, with several sequels or maybe just one or two, that was a hit. I would also like to remind you that a "generation" is widely understood as a 20 year gap... do you see where I'm going with this? Is it possible that after twenty-four years of movies, Halloween has found a franchise to which it can pass the crown of becoming THE generation's bad horror flick?!

Be afraid. Be very afraid.