Know Your B-Movie Actors

Finding the lost, forgotten, has-been, never-was working stiffs of Hollywood's backwaters.

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OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #29 HOSTEL

Hostel (2005) ⭐ 5.9 | Horror

1h 34m | R

Let me say this up front: I do not care for Eli Roth. In every interview I've ever seen from him, he comes across to me as a douchey frat bro. I also detest the "torture porn" genre of horror films that he is generally credited with kicking off. I know, people liked his performance in Inglorious Basterds, and his directorial debut, Cabin Fever, was not bad; but I just don't dig the whole Eli Roth vibe. So, it's probably no surprise that I have never seen Hostel until now.

What did I take away from the experience? Mostly what I expected. We follow three douchey bros as they drink and drug across Europe looking to get laid, engaging in every dumb, entitled, entirely embarrassing activity that young, douchey bros do while backpacking in Europe. These are precisely the type of dumbasses that I actively avoided the times that I have been in Europe, and my life is much better for it. I guess one of them is supposed to be the "sensitive" one, but he's also the same dude who gets them kicked out of a club in Amsterdam for threatening to fight a bouncer, so fuck him, too, I guess. I hated these guys immediately, and I was really looking forward to them being tortured to death by millionaires in some backwater of eastern Europe.

And I mostly got my wish. Hooray for me! However, to be fair to Mr. Roth, I don't think Hostel totally qualifies as torture porn. There's really only one scene of a guy being tortured, and it's not overly long. Hell, it even manages to have plot and character development between the blood and drill bits. Most of the first half of the film is just these three walking sexual harassment lawsuits as they horndog their way into stupider and stupider decisions until they get their drinks spiked in a dirty Slovakian nightclub. And most of the rest of the film is watching one of them fight his way out of the underground murder club. Roth is good at the technical aspects of filmmaking, so it all looks good and flows nicely. He even pulls a switcheroo in the film that I don't think I've ever seen before, essentially changing the film's protagonist halfway through the runtime. Maybe if I gave a shit about any of these dudes, I might have felt that was a bait-and-switch, but I genuinely thought, "Well played, sir," when I realized it had happened.

However--and I can't state this strongly enough--I hated the main characters and was not sad at all when they met their grisly fates. Maybe it's my own fault for not being a douchey frat bro. I just can't relate.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS -Eli Roth does nothing in behind-the-scenes footage to change my mind about his levels of doucheyness, fratyness, and/or broeyness.

-Eythor Gudjonsson was cast as one of the leads because Eli Roth met him once in Iceland and thought he was a cool guy. Gudjonsson was not an actor and had never been in a film before, which is probably why he disappears from the film before he has do anything other than party and get laid. He has not been in a movie since, though he did become the first person to open a Little Caesar's chain in Iceland.

-The gang of little kids who beat up and murder people who don't give them candy was actually played by a bunch of street kids that they rounded up in Prague.

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OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #28 THE OMEN (2006)

The Omen (2006) ⭐ 5.5 | Drama, Fantasy, Horror

1h 50m | R

Oh my god, it's ANOTHER 2000s remake of an old horror film. This time, the ritual sacrifice on the slab is Richard Donner's classic 1976 film, The Omen. Let's dive in...

You can call this new version a "remake" in the most literal definition of that word, because it literally remakes everything that the original already did. It hews so closely to Donner's version that the ostensible screenwriter, Dan McDermott, had his writing credit stricken by the WGA. Instead, David Seltzer, the writer of the '76 film, was ultimately given credit. Every character, every scene, practically every THING in this remake is almost exactly as it was in the original, only updated to take place in the 2000s instead of the '70s. It's not as egregious as Gus van Sant's nearly shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, but it's treading in that territory.

There's some top-tier talent on the screen--Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles, David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite, Michael Gambon, Mia Farrow; they're all doing their best--but to what end? The film has no aspirations beyond what the original film already did, and it barely accomplishes those. Director John Moore's previous movie, Flight of the Phoenix, was also a remake, and it bombed hard at the box office. Why anyone would look at that and say, "Yeah, let's put that guy on another remake," is beyond me. There's a deeply cynical part of me that thinks this entire project was greenlit because the producers thought it would be a great publicity stunt to release an "Omen" remake on June 6, 2006 (or "6-6-06" as all the marketing materials trumpet).

And it did work as a publicity stunt. This version of The Omen did eke out a profit; but, again, to what end? Whenever anybody hears the name "Damien", they're still going to hear it being said in Gregory Peck's voice from 1976. The only legacy this remake will have is as a cheap "gotcha" question in a trivia contest.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS -John Moore: "You're going to ask me why I wanted to do this film, and I haven't even been able to answer that for myself. But I have to come up with a salable answer."

-Dan McDermott (whose name and title are blurred out on the screen): "You spend a lot of time alone in a room with a laptop trying to bring to life the ideas and the vision that you have. You spend six to eight months of your life alone with a laptop, and it's such a thrill to be here and watch it happen."

-Liev Schreiber: "When I got the call, my first thought was, 'Oh shit. Another remake.'"

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OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #27 FRIDAY THE 13TH (2009)

Friday the 13th (2009) ⭐ 5.5 | Horror, Mystery, Thriller

1h 37m | R

The parade of remakes marches on! Today's contender is the 2009 reboot of that most famous of slasher films, Friday the 13th, this time produced by Michael Bay and directed by Marcus Nispel, who helmed the 2003 reboot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the 2011 reboot of Conan the Barbarian, the English language version of the Norwegian movie Pathfinder, and a made-for-TV Frankenstein adaptation. (He also directed a shit ton of music videos, which is probably why Michael Bay likes him so much)

Being a veteran of many an unoriginal work, Nispel is the closest thing I've seen to a professional movie rebooter, and it shows. This "new" version of the horror classic draws its material from bits and bobs of not just the original Friday, but from the first four films in the series. It's neither slavishly faithful to the original, nor a tangential departure from the it. Today people just take Jason Vorhees for granted, as if the character has always existed in his present form; but Friday the 13th filmmakers never had some grand master plan. They were just winging it from movie to movie. Jason wasn't even the killer in the first movie, didn't get his iconic hockey mask until the third one, died in the fourth one, once again was not the killer in the fifth one, and wasn't resurrected as the relentless, hulking undead monstrosity that we think of today until halfway through the original franchise. The 2009 reboot tries to take all the haphazardly constructed details of Jason's arc across the first four movies and condense them into a single, more intentional narrative, and it more or less works.

All the basics of a good old fashioned Friday the 13th are here, just souped up with better production values and a more cohesive storyline. Jared Padalecki headlines the cast (my second Padalecki sighting this season), upgraded from disposable fodder in his appearance in House of Wax to sensitive, brooding, heroic leading man here, now that Supernatural had found its fandom. It's nice to have a pretty good actor anchoring this thing, even if it feels like they just dropped Sam Winchester into this film. Stuntman Derek Mears gives Jason a leaner, faster, more athletic feel than we've ever seen before. (For the first time, I actually believe that Jason could catch his victims without the miracle of editing). The Norman Bates-esque relationship that Jason has with his dead mom is made more prominent, giving him something very close to a sympathetic backstory. Jason actually has a lair of his own, instead of just existing somewhere vaguely out there in the woods, and, overall, he feels much more like an actual human than I remember from the original franchise. He's still a silent, remorseless, nigh-unstoppable murder machine, but now at least it feels like he's got his own stakes. And, in this film, he's got two completely different groups of pretty young people to tear through, so you'll get plenty of improvised murders to sit back and enjoy like the monsters you all are.

Despite all it's got going for it, the big problem with this new Friday the 13th is that it's not really necessary. Sure, it's a better made film than the originals, but that's not a very high bar to clear; and despite it having this updated, more cohesive story, it still leans on the fact that you already know who Jason Vorhees is. When Jason first comes upon his hockey mask in this film, it feels like the filmmakers are winking at us and saying, "SEE! THAT'S HOW HE GOT THE MASK! ISN'T IT COOL HOW YOU KNOW THAT NOW?!"; but within the actual plot of the movie, it's not a big deal. It's like at the end of Solo (we all remember Solo, right?) when it's revealed to us how Han Solo actually got his iconic last name. (You obviously remember that, because everyone watched Solo!) It's not actually important to the movie, and it's not a question that many of us were asking, (even though every single one of us obviously went to the theater to see Solo) but filmmakers approach the character as if it's some great legend to which every minor detail must be attested. This new Friday the 13th looks a lot better than the old ones, but you're not missing anything essential about the series if you don't watch it.

But, you know what? I enjoyed this remake way more than I expected to. If there are any old horror franchises left to robotically reboot, why not give Marcus Nispel a call? Based on his IMDB page, he's not up to much these days.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS I bought the "KILLER CUT" edition of this film, which is about ten minutes longer than the theatrical cut. I guess in compensation for those extra moments of bloodshed, this DVD has no real extras other than a handful of deleted scenes. I can only imagine the profound things that Marcus Nispel would say about that deep, complex character, Jason Vorhees.

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OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #26 PIRANHA 3D

Piranha 3D (2010) ⭐ 5.5 | Comedy, Horror

1h 28m | R

Tits. This movie is about tits.

Sure it's technically a "horror comedy". There's plenty of blood and guts and de-fleshed limbs. A lot or people die. There's plenty of comedic actors like Adam Scott, Paul Scheer and Christopher Lloyd. Jerry O'Connell plays a coked-out parody of the sleazebag who made all those "Girls Gone Wild" videos. Richard Dreyfuss has a cameo as a fisherman who is dressed suspiciously like his character from Jaws, singing along to "Show Me the Way to Go Home". But, for a good 50% of the movie, until those bloodthirsty fish show up, it's just an excuse to have young women take their tops off. Since this movie was originally released in 3D, this means that audiences specifically showed up to see big three dimensional breasts left and right. Why the hell else would you have a cameo from Eli Roth as the host of a wet t-shirt contest? If you don't believe that was the main motivating factor for this movie, please know that the sequel to it was entitled Piranha 3DD.

The original Piranha was produced by Roger Corman as a cheap rip-off of Jaws. Knowing he couldn't recreate Spielberg's work on a fraction of Spielberg's budget, director Joe Dante decided to make it a comedy with lots of inside jokes for horror movie fans. It would go on to be a cult hit. Steven Spielberg himself said Piranha was his favorite of all the Jaws clones. He reportedly liked it so much that he stepped in to stop Paramount from suing Corman's film company for copyright infringement. This mix of horror and comedy became Dante's specialty, resulting in a long career making fun, weird, offbeat films like The Howling, The 'Burbs, and Gremlins. Dante's body of work is so influential that you can argue that we owe the whole modern idea of a horror comedy to him.

However, in the entirety of Dante's original movie, there is only one brief view of a lady's ta-tas as she is undressing to go swimming; and, as we all know, a proper Piranha movie is about showing off a bunch of bouncing boobies. Sorry, Joe Dante. Do better next time. Maybe get Spielberg to cameo as the wet T-shirt host.

Remember: this movie is about tits.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS -Director Alexandre Aja said he wanted to "go back to the '80s" and make a "guilty pleasure movie" full of "nudity and gore". He also can't seem to talk about any of the women in the cast without describing them as "beautiful" and/or "sexy".

-One of the writers of the film said, "There used to be boobs in horror movies! Why aren't there boobs in horror movies?!"

-Every single person behind the camera is a dude. This movie should have been titled "Male Gaze and Fish"

[knowyourbmovieactors]

OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #25 THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE

The Devil's Backbone (2001) ⭐ 7.4 | Drama, Horror, Thriller

1h 46m | R

I know it sounds dismissive to describe a movie as one of a director's lesser works, but when the director is Guillermo del Toro, "lesser work" is still pretty damn good.

The Devil's Backbone was only del Toro's third film, and you can see the elements that he would revisit again in later efforts, especially Pan's Labyrinth. There's the Spanish Civil War setting, the orphaned child main character, the violent male antagonist. There's also the sympathetic ghost that at first terrifies the main character and then helps him, just like in Crimson Peak. You could even extend this to the del Toro-produced El Orfanato, what with the orphanage setting and all. (If he only he could have worked in a giant robot and a lady who has sex with a fish man.)

It's much smaller in scale than any of del Toro's later movies, taking place almost entirely in the single decaying orphanage, cut off from the rest of the world by the civil war slogging its way toward the terrible conclusion of a fascist victory. It doesn't have the elaborate fantasy world or big, expensive special effects that his success could afford him later in his career; but it is thoroughly a del Toro movie, with all his sympathies on the side of the outsiders, the broken and the forgotten, and the truly monstrous and frightening actions coming not from the ostensible monster, but from the "normal" man. It's a small study of the psychology of fascism, where the "strong" man feels justified in committing violence to obtain the power and wealth he believes he is owed and has been denied by the "weak" people around him. Stripping it down to the small scale like this shows the fascist movement for what it really is: just a bunch of bullies, small-minded men who would rather burn down the world than risk being embarrassed.

Aside from all the heavy metaphors, The Devil's Backbone is also full of small, quiet, touching moments and fantastic performances, including some surprisingly good child actors. If nothing else, it proves that Guillermo del Toro doesn't need giant stories or giant budgets (or giant robots) to get his message across.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS The DVD I bought suddenly cut out in the middle of the closing credits and has refused to play anything other than a black screen since. Is it now cursed? Do I have to go to my basement and find some way to help the poor ghost down there find closure or at least avenge its death? Until I figure this out, I won't be able to watch the special features; but along the way, I just might discover that the real monster is Man.

[knowyourbmovieactors]

OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #24 THE MUMMY (2017)

The Mummy (2017) ⭐ 5.4 | Action, Adventure, Fantasy

1h 50m | PG-13

So it has come to this: Universal's failed attempt to launch their "Dark Universe". Despite the reboot of The Wolfman being a failure only seven years before, they doubled down on remaking their classic monster flicks, this time in a vain attempt to have their very own cinematic universe. It didn't go well. The Mummy lost the studio so much money that their whole "Dark Universe" was immediately canceled. Call me crazy, but maybe producing a film that needed to make $450 million just to break even when your last attempt at rebooting a monster movie already lost money was a bad business decision. If Universal is so intent on pouring money down a hole, I can can go dig a reasonably sized one in my back yard and they can drop a few million bucks in that. I guarantee that it will lose them less money than this movie did.

The biggest problem with this modern Mummy is that it's not the 1999 version with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. That movie was a lot of fun. Fraser and Weisz had really ripping chemistry. In their place here we have Tom Cruise and Annabelle Wallis, who somehow have negative chemistry. Tom Cruise is almost always at least interesting to watch, but here he's just not landing the roguish charm that Brendan Fraser handled with ease. And Wallis' character is barely a character at all; whereas Weisz was charming and intelligent and someone you wanted to root for. Fraser and Weisz had snappy dialogue and crackling repartee, underlining a classic "Will they or won't they?" dynamic. Cruise and Wallis are speaking dialogue that I can tell was crafted to try to ape that feel, but instead of "Will they or won't they?" it has more of a "please don't" vibe.

The tone of this movie is at odds with itself. The script wants to have some jokey Marvel-esque good times, but the production has chosen to copy the dour seriousness of the DC cinematic universe. When the script is saying, "Hey, let's have fun with this!" the direction, cinematography and soundtrack are screaming in unison, "THIS IS EPIC AND IMPORTANT!" Even though Russell Crowe does some fun stuff playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it was very presumptuous of the filmmakers to start right off the bat shoehorning another Universal monster into their very first entry in this unrealized series. The entire thing is dragged down by the insistence that this is definitely going to launch a whole new line of EPIC AND IMPORTANT movies, and it's really no fun.

But you know what IS fun? That 1999 version of The Mummy. It still exists. You can go watch it instead of this expensive debacle.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS -The extras on this DVD are just as boringly self-serious as the movie. The main takeaway for me is that they spent an awful lot of money, and everyone here is trying very hard to convince themselves it was worth it.

-There is an entire featurette explaining how they filmed the plane crash scene where Cruise and Wallis are briefly weightless, which they went to the trouble of filming in an actual "vomit comet" (a plane designed to dive in a parabolic arc in order to simulate weightlessness). It's the same way that many space capsule scenes were filmed for Apollo 13, but here it's in service of about 45 seconds of zero-G action that could have easily been done with wirework or CGI or just cut entirely without having any impact on the movie. I think Tom Cruise is now so utterly hollow inside that the only way he can feel anything is when he's risking his life doing an insane stunt. I doubt he can even get an erection anymore without being suspended several thousand feet above the earth's surface.

-There is an "animated graphic novel" included, which I think is just the storyboard for a sequence that was cut before filming.

[knowyourbmovieactors]

OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #23 PUPPET MASTER

Puppet Master (Video 1989) ⭐ 5.5 | Fantasy, Horror

1h 30m | R

There are 15 movies in the Puppet Master series. You would think I would have seen at least one of them by now, even by accident, but this was actually my first exposure to Charles Band's cult hit. This was not my first exposure to Charles Band, though. As a writer, director and producer, he has been involved in literally hundreds of films, many of which wound up as fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000, if that tells you anything about the quality of his work. On IMDB, he is listed as the producer on over 470 films, many of which are schlocky low-budget horror films like The Gingerdead Man, Evil Bong, and, of course, his crowning achievement The Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong. Many of the rest appear to be porn. Almost all of them were released direct-to-video, including Puppet Master.

Indeed, there is a slight air of porniness about this film, from the stilted acting to the gratuitous boob shots to the multiple scenes in hotel rooms. There are four main characters who are all psychics of some kind, but one of them seems to only be psychic for sex stuff. She can see who fucked in whatever room she's in, and that's about the extent of her powers. Her boyfriend (one of the other psychics) is a sleaze ball whose "research" into psychic phenomena is also centered around fucking, as exemplified in his very first scene where his "scientific" test of his psychic abilities is to ask a volunteer to picture a sexual fantasy so that he can read it from her mind. There are more examples, but, suffice it to say, this movie reads like it was written by a 14-year-old boy, which I would guess is the target demographic for most of Charles Band's work.

Though deeply bad in a lot of ways, Puppet Master at least has one somewhat impressive thing about it: the puppets. There's actually some pretty good work done here in animating those murderous little guys, but all it means is that the puppets are somehow more emotive and expressive than the film's actual humans. I'm guessing that this is the reason why so many more of these films were made, with an ever-expanding roster of puppets. Not that this matters much to the film's director, David Schmoeller, who was not asked to come back for any of the many sequels. He wasn't even asked to record commentary for the DVD edition that was released after the film's surprising rise into cult status. Band personally took charge of directing subsequent sequels. Also, according to Schmoeller, Band never paid him all the royalties he was owed for the movie; and, given everything I've already told you about Charles Band, I know that you're just shocked by that.

Aside from his Puppet Master films, Charles Band has made a lot of other evil doll movies. I don't know if that's because he figured out how to consistently make money off of them, or if it's his own little kink. Personally, I don't care one way or the other, but I don't need to be witness to any more of them. Also, his son Alex is the lead singer of The Calling and wrote that that dreadfully banal song "Wherever You Will Go". I can blame Charles for that, too, right?

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS Once again, this was on a compilation DVD (one that is filled with movies that very obviously went straight to video) so there are no DVD extras. However, reading through Charles Band's IMDB page taught me enough to know that I don't want to learn anything more about him or his creative process.

[knowyourbmovieactors]

OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #22 WOLF CREEK

Wolf Creek (2005) ⭐ 6.2 | Horror, Thriller

1h 39m | R

Three friends head off in a crappy used car for an epic three-week road trip across Australia, but they only make it as far as their first scenic destination (the Wolf Creek of the title) before that crappy used car breaks down. Seemingly stranded in the Outback, a truck approaches them in the middle of the night, and out of it steps the most Australian man ever committed to film. Even though he seems extremely friendly and helpful, this is a horror movie, so you know that something bad is about to happen.

Writer/Director Greg McLean said he wanted to create an "iconically Australian bad guy," and I'll be damned if he didn't achieve his goal. John Jarratt's portrayal of the murderous Outback psychopath Mick is a greasy, sweaty melange of rough Aussie stereotypes. He's like an evil Crocodile Dundee, tearing through the Outback with a bowie knife and a .308; but he's not the grim, relentless hunter you'd normally find in a slasher film. Much like Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher, Mick is a smiling madman, quick with a joke and an unsettling laugh. This must have been especially surprising to Australian audiences, because, prior to this, John Jarratt was a relatively well-known TV actor who had recently hosted a gardening show. However, Jarratt was all in on this film. Mick is a maniacal, terrifying presence, made all the more so by the glint in his eye that says he's having a really good time. He was so good at it that he was brought back as Mick in both a sequel movie and a TV series.

The movie does play a lot like an Australian version of The Hitcher, with the desolate American highway replaced by the greater desolation of the Australian Outback. There are lots of amazing shots of the landscape, at first rendering it in all its vast, beautiful glory, and then focusing on its grim emptiness. The movie looks really good for being filmed on such a tiny budget, and a lot of the credit goes to the Outback just being itself.

The only unfortunate thing about Wolf Creek is the opening text claiming that it is "based on a true story." This is only true insofar as Greg McLean was inspired to write the script by two different series of murders that happened in the Outback. No actual characters or details come from real life, other than the fact that Australia has had more than one serial killer out in the wilds, and I really wish the filmmakers hadn't pulled this "true story" BS. (Especially since they unknowingly filmed at a location where another murder actually happened, and the movie's release was delayed because of the high profile trial following yet another Outback murder; Jesus, how many serial killers are stalking around Australia?!) Still, it's a pretty damn good little film.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS -The crew selected a filming location in the Outback where it hadn't rained in over ten years. As soon as they showed up, it started raining, and it rained on 21 of their 25 shoot days.

-John Jarrett stayed in character as Mick between takes, which Greg McLean described as both "hilarious" and "terrifying".

-You can tell how low the budget was by how often McLean and executive producer David Lightfoot act as stand-ins and grips during filming. At one point, one of the crew actually says "I wish we had more EPs like you on set."

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OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #21 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) ⭐ 5.9 | Action, Fantasy, Horror

1h 45m | R

Writer Seth Grahame-Smith started his career with in-depth examinations of nerdy shit full of jokes, like a huge tome about Spider-Man and a how-to manual for surviving if you find yourself inside a horror movie. He also wrote a nonfiction book about the history of porn. For some reason, his editor told him he should take Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and insert a zombie plot into it. Despite never even having read Pride and Prejudice, Grahame-Smith thought this was a great idea, and thus the best-selling mashup novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was created. For his next book, he tried a similar trick, inserting vampire lore into another story from the 1800s, only this time it was the life of Abraham Lincoln.

Director Timur Bekmambetov is probably best known for his Russian Nightwatch and Daywatch movies and their early, eager, completely over-the-top embrace of CGI action sequences. They are bonkers films, filled with convoluted monster lore, psychotic pacing, and absurd video game logic. I remember watching them when they were first released in the States and thinking "What the fuck is happening?!" about every 30 seconds. (But, you know, in a good way.) I haven't watched them since then, so god knows if they have aged well at all, but they had a certain gonzo style inside that glistening sheen of 2000s era computer graphics that I appreciated.

So, do these two wild and crazy guys go well together? Well, your mileage may vary, but I would say no. Weaving a vampire hunting plot into the true details of Abraham Lincoln's life is a dumb proposal that calls for a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor. Bekmambetov doesn't do tongue-in-cheek humor. His staging is grand and melodramatic and, while it is often ridiculous, it's not the same kind of ridiculous that I think would make this work. On top of that, this movie accidentally suffers from the same problem that any run-of-the-mill biopic has: when you try to cram a person's entire life into a single movie, you end up sanding away so many details that all you are left with is a broad, unfocused caricature. Also--and I acknowledge that this is purely my own pet peeve, given that I am from the Land of Lincoln--I am constantly disappointed that movies flatly refuse to have their Lincolns speak the way that he actually spoke (as confirmed by just about every contemporaneous article written about the man), in a "frontier" dialect, with a high, reedy, nasal voice. Remember Ross Perot? It was probably something more like that and less like the somber baritone in Disney's Hall of Presidents. Daniel Day-Lewis came the closest, but he wasn't allowed to go far enough. WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF, HOLLYWOOD?!

There are some decent performances in this film. Benjamin Walker has a lot of the "aw shucks" charm needed for the character (and he does look good twirling an axe). Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Mary Todd Lincoln as a feisty and intelligent woman, instead of the mentally fragile spiritualism follower she's usually portrayed as. Rufus Sewell, as usual, is a magnetic villain. Dominic Cooper (and his tall, tall hair) and Anthony Mackie are also along for the ride, for those of you filling out your "also in the Marvel Universe" bingo card. But I can't say that any of that is enough to recommend this film.

Hey, you know what else came out the same year as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter? Spielberg's Lincoln, with Daniel Day-Lewis very nearly getting the accent right. Maybe see that instead and just imagine vampires into it while you're watching.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS

-The producers optioned the rights for Seth Grahame-Smith's book and hired him to write the script before he had even written the book. They were two weeks away from pitching it to a studio when Smith realized that there was no main villain in the story, so he hastily invented Rufus Sewell's character and rewrote the script to include him.

-Everyone involved spends a lot of time talking about historical accuracy in this film, which is goddamn hilarious.

-Every time there is a free moment on set, Benjamin Walker can be found practicing his axe twirling.

[knowyourbmovieactors]

OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #20 28 WEEKS LATER

28 Weeks Later (2007) ⭐ 6.9 | Horror, Sci-Fi

1h 40m | R

The original 28 Days Later was one of those shocks that no one saw coming. Directed by Danny Boyle (known at the time mostly for pitch black comedies like Trainspotting) on a tiny budget and starring a bunch of nobodies like Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston and Cillian Murphy, it was a huge surprise hit in 2002 that almost singlehandedly revived the the cinematic zombie genre. For a good decade and a half previous to this, the horror film industry had been all in on vampires. Zombies were old, stale and slow; but Boyle gave the world something it hadn't seen before: fast-moving, screaming, virus-created zombies. OK, sure, George Romero himself already did that back in the '70s with The Crazies, but hardly anyone remembers that movie, and Danny Boyle is a really great director who brought a ton of seriousness, style, and substance to the story and put zombie horror back on everyone's minds.

And that's why the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead happened (complete with fast-moving, screaming zombies), which launched the movie career of Zack Snyder, which culminated in a series of dreary DC universe movies that the most obnoxious bros on the internet screamed about until the production company caved and actually gave them the mythical "Snyder Cut" of a dumb, bad, and bloated movie, that only made it more dumb, bad and bloated, but also signaled to all the toxic fanboys in the world that you can actually bully a multi-billion dollar film company into doing anything you want as long as you pour enough righteous anger into the internet, which is why almost every piece of legacy media is now covered in a goopy dribble of fan service that continues to drown out any actual merit or originality that might be left in it. Yes, that's all ultimately Danny Boyle's fault.

But, hey, at least 28 Days Later was really good. So, here's the obligatory sequel to the surprise hit, not even directed by Danny Boyle, and it's probably a mess, right?

Surprise! It's also good! Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, in his first English language film, so faithfully recreates the look and feel of the original film (from the washed out color grading, to the handheld camera work, to the frenetic editing, to all of the quiet, tense moments that actually make the big action sequences feel overwhelming) that it's hard to believe that this isn't a bunch of footage that was shot at the same time as the original. However, it's not fan service. There's not a single character from the first movie here. We're just dropping back into the same world we previously saw and telling a new story in it. Now we've flashed forward in the Rage virus pandemic, when all of the original infected have died from starvation and exposure. People are beginning to trickle back into the devastated London, including a family whose mother supposedly died in the outbreak and whose father is desperately trying to forget how he ran away at the moment his wife needed him most.

Just as in original movie, the director deliberately tried to cast actors who were not already household names. Of course, today you know names like Idris Elba and Jeremy Renner and maybe even Imogen Poots, but in 2007 Elba was just moving on from a decade of doing forgettable one-offs on TV shows, Renner had yet to have his breakout role in The Hurt Locker and Poots was an 18-year-old who had only been in one movie before. The biggest star at the time was probably Robert Carlyle, who had been in both The Full Monty and Trainspotting (and who, by the way, turned down the part in 28 Days Later that went to Christopher Eccleston).

Carlyle is great, both as the shame-filled father trying to put a life back together for his kids, and (once he is infected) as the raging murder monster stalking them in the streets. There's something very particular in the way he plays being one of the infected, as if he still has some flicker of recognition of his family, even if he can't control what he's doing. Imogen Poots is fine, being still basically a child actor. Idris Elba is in a totally forgettable role, cast mainly because he looks good in a military uniform and can speak with a decent American accent. And Jeremy Renner is, as always, a Jeremy Renner type. His role in this movie--a disillusioned US sniper who refuses to shoot uninfected civilians and goes AWOL to protect them--basically serves as his audition for The Hurt Locker.

Like 28 Days, 28 Weeks is working on a couple different levels. On a broad level, of course, it's a study in how humanity reacts to overwhelming tragedy; but on the individual level, it's about some survivors of the tragedy having to come to terms with the fact that they did not rise heroically to the challenge that it brought. Also, if you were a functional, cognizant adult in the 2000s, it's not hard to see the intense critique of the US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the film, a UN coalition force (which mainly seems to be made up of US troops) is occupying the now destroyed Britain and taking a stab at nation building in an overly-confident, almost arrogant way; and when things go wrong, they just start dropping bombs. Does any of that sound familiar? It's hard to watch as the military brass in the film panics and orders their soldiers to just start firing at everyone, infected and non-infected alike, and not think about how badly America bungled its two most recent wars in real life.

The only mark against 28 Weeks Later is that it couldn't just come out of nowhere with a surprise punch like 28 Days Later did. It had expectations, and even though it met those expectations, it's hard to top a true classic. So, stay tuned for when 28 Years Later comes out next year! May it once again meet expectations.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS

-It's actually a little bit untrue to say that Danny Boyle didn't direct. While he did decline the director's chair here because of his previous commitment to direct Sunshine, he was on set A LOT to advise Fresnadillo. So much so that he ended up taking over the 2nd unit and directing it until he got so into his work that he seriously injured his shoulder. From what I saw in the special features, this wasn't some ego-driven thing on the part of Boyle. The guy just really fucking loves his job.

-Rather than casting regular extras, the production hired a small army of trained dancers, acrobats, and mimes to play the infected and treated scenes with them more like choreography than mere blocking. They are WAY into it. Some members of the regular cast talk about how genuinely terrifying they were on set.

-In his interviews, Jeremy Renner acts like an adorably enthusiastic dope who is absolutely blown away by everything about making a film. While watching him talk, I actually thought, "Aw, how cute, this 22-year-old kid just got to do his first big movie!" But then I looked up his bio, and, nope, Renner was 36 when this was made and had been acting in movies since 1995. Maybe Jeremy Renner just IS an adorably enthusiastic dope.

[knowyourbmovieactors]

OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #19 THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

The Cabin in the Woods (2011) ⭐ 7.0 | Horror, Mystery, Thriller

1h 35m | R

I've seen so many movies this year that were kind of sub-par. Could that have something to do with the fact that this year's list was compiled from a bunch of stuff that people basically threw away? Who knows? However, I did pick up a copy of The Cabin in the Woods, which I recall as being excellent in just about every way. Of course, I haven't watched this now 12-year-old movie in quite a while. So, it is actually still good?

Yep, it's still good.

What can I say about this film that anyone hasn't said before? It works both as a horror film and as a high-concept commentary on horror films, with an incredible amount of humor and a fascinating attention to detail. Of course, since this movie was released, it has been revealed to the world that Joss Whedon is the ultimate asshole director, and nobody who has worked under him ever wants to again, but he and Drew Goddard knocked this script out of the park. (Also, Goddard actually directed it, and it seems like things were a bit better on set with him in the driver's seat). Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford as the callous, jaded company men controlling this high-tech horror scenario are still my favorite part of the whole movie, but there are so many good performances all around here. There are also so many details in the background that I could have spent several hours just pausing the film and taking notes.

If you haven't seen it, go watch it; if you have seen it, go watch it again; because it is actually a miracle that we got this film at all. Goddard more or less had it completed right when MGM went bankrupt the last time, and they put it on a shelf because they didn't want to throw any money at promoting it. If Chris Hemsworth hadn't suddenly blown up after playing Thor, "The Cabin in the Woods" probably would have sat in a vault forever. You're lucky to have something this good available to you. Treasure it.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS

-The production designers went harder than they had any right to. There is a short featurette with Fran Kranz (who played the stoner Marty) just going through all of the custom-made paraphernalia they designed for him. None of it was actually weed, but all of it was smokeable and tailored to function just like it. Where a normal movie might show you a plastic baggie of greenery, this was all obsessively organized into multiple bags, pouches, and tins, with custom-branded rolling papers. It took Kranz several minutes just to pull all the stuff out and show it to the camera. Also, that giant collapsible bong/travel mug? Yeah, it's actually functional, both as a bong and a mug, and cost several thousand dollars just to manufacture one copy. This is just a tiny example of the detail work they put into this.

-Whedon and Goddard banged out the first draft of this script in about three days, and there weren't very many major edits after that. If you've been lovingly crafting your own screenplay over the course of years, just think about that and then cry.

-It was still snowing at the cabin location on the first couple days of the scheduled shoot. They kept having to cancel and push back shoot days, because of an unforeseen cold snap. You know the scene where they go swimming and say how cold the water is? It was even colder than that. That lake probably still had ice on it a few weeks before they filmed.

[knowyourbmovieactors]

OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #18 THE WOLFMAN

The Wolfman (2010) ⭐ 5.8 | Drama, Fantasy, Horror

1h 43m | R

I guess this is the year where I watch all of the remakes. Which one is this? Ah, yes, the much-troubled 2010 remake of the classic Universal monster film with Benicio del Toro.

This movie went through big time production hell. The studio poured a shit-ton of money into it, which meant that the producers were constantly meddling with the process in a vain attempt to protect their investment. The original director quit when he realized they were going to be second-guessing him every step of the way, and the producers didn't land on a replacement director until about 40 days before filming started. The script was rewritten multiple times during production (three different screenwriters are credited, and god knows how many script doctors were shuffled through every time the producers had a new suggestion). Danny Elfman was hired to score it, wrote and recorded the whole thing, and then was set aside for another composer that turned in a synth-based score that in no way matched anything in the movie, so Elfman's score was reinstated at the last second. Filming went way over schedule and then after more producer notes, extensive re-shoots happened, pushing the whole thing well over budget. Originally shot in 2008, it was such a mess that the final film wasn't released until 2010. The Wolfman made $146 million at the box office, which sounds like a pretty good haul, until you know that they spent $150 million making it.

The final product is big, stately, grand, and really not scary at all. After all the producer meddling, it was rendered into a very good looking Victorian era gothic drama without anything original, inventive or daring to recommend it. Anthony Hopkins is particularly good, and pretty much everyone from Hugo Weaving to Emily Blunt seems down for a little British melodrama; but then there's Benicio del Toro, being, well... Benicio del Toro. He is reportedly a huge fan of the original Wolf Man movie and was really chomping at the bit to be in this film, but he gives such an understated performance that it borders on apathy. It's like he's acting in a completely different movie from everyone else. On the whole, it's not a bad film. It's got great production values and some good performances. Rick Baker's wolf man design pays homage to the original 1941 makeup while updating it to feel more real and feral (even if it ends up somewhat buried under some shoddy CGI). It's just a shame that they spent all that money and couldn't use it to do anything very exciting or new with this old story.

But, don't worry! There's another reboot coming soon! How's that going? Well, the original director quit before they started filming, three different screenwriters have already worked on it, and the release date was pushed back from this year until 2025. So, yeah, right on track.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS The only extras on this DVD are deleted scenes and a couple alternate endings. Watching them makes it clear that no one actually had a strong concept for this movie, and that the whole thing was probably saved in the editing bay.

[knowyourbmovieactors]

OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #17 VISITORS

Visitors (2003) ⭐ 5.0 | Drama, Horror, Mystery

1h 40m | R

Georgia Perry is attempting to break the world record for the fastest solo female sailboat circumnavigation of the world. On the last leg of her voyage back to her native Australia, however, she's hit a little bit of a snag. Becalmed in a dense fog somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean, she's been stuck drifting for several days. After going nowhere for almost a week, she's going a little stir crazy, talking to her cat and herself. After she accidentally kills a bird that landed on her ship (Ok, class, who here has actually read "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?"), things get a little more nutty and we actually start hearing the cat's voice talking to her. And pretty soon other people start showing up and disappearing from the ship. Mostly people who are already dead. Is she losing her mind, or is she actually receiving ghostly visitors? OH! That's what the title means!

This was the last film by Australian director Richard Franklin. Never heard of him? That's OK. Only Quentin Tarantino has. (Apparently, he's a big fan of Franklin's early film Patrick) Franklin is probably best known as the director of Psycho II, a completely unnecessary yet somehow not terrible sequel to Hitchcock's classic. Oh, and he co-produced The Blue Lagoon. Franklin's not exactly one of the great directors of our time. He does an OK job here, but the low budget of Visitors really shows, and Franklin just doesn't display a lot of imagination or dexterity in dealing with that. Many of the scenes feel like they were staged, lit, and scored for a soap opera. Lead actor Radha Mitchell is really the one doing all the heavy lifting here; the movie is actually at its best when it's just her stomping around her boat and muttering to her cat.

I don't have much else to say about Visitors, and I will probably forget about it within a fortnight. At the very least, it was an actual Australian film with Australian characters. With a director and actors who spent a lot of time doing American TV and movies, it would have been really tempting for them to all try to pretend they were Americans. So, thanks for showing me some genuine Ozzy culture, I guess.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS Once again, the only real extra on the DVD was a trailer for the film, and even though this is a movie made in the 21st century, it actually has a classic "man with deep voice" voiceover. This particular VO sounds a little odd, probably because this very Australian production had an Aussie VO guy doing it in his best American accent.

[knowyourbmovieactors]

OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #16 THE REAPING

The Reaping (2007) ⭐ 5.6 | Horror, Thriller

1h 39m | R

Hey, it's our old friends at Dark Castle Entertainment again! This time with a completely original film. What have they got for us?

We are introduced to a militantly atheist college professor (played by Hilary Swank) whose life's mission is to aggressively debunk supposed religious miracles around the world and be a huge dick about it the whole time. She's accompanied by a fellow researcher (played by Idris Elba), a very kind, helpful, thoughtful guy who still believes in Jesus and occasionally attempts to call her back to religion, even as he helps her wield their mighty science against these fake miracles. Then, the two of them are called upon to investigate an incident in Louisiana where a river appears to have turned into blood. And then there's a rain of frogs. And a rapid infestation of flies. And, boy, it sure looks like the ten plagues of Egypt are being replayed. Swank's character is dumbstruck and angry at her inability to explain it all scientifically, and it's revealed that she actually used to be a devout Christian missionary until she experienced a terrible tragedy that drove her away from God...

Wait a minute. This sounds like it would be the plot of a Pure Flix movie. (You know, the guys that make those terrible, self-important God's Not Dead movies with Kevin Sorbo?) Swank sure talks and acts exactly like the stereotype of the rabidly god-hating scientist that pretty much only exists in the fevered imaginations of extreme right-wing fundamentalists (Richard Dawkins notwithstanding). What is this movie? I thought them Hollywood elite types were supposed to hate Jesus and America? Instead, we get a top-of-the-line actor (at least at the time) playing an atheist re-converted back into the faith after being shown the true nature of the holy struggle going on right here in the ol' USofA. Pure Flix should just buy the rights to this movie and remake it every five years or so.

This film was not good. And it also managed to piss off a lot of people in Chile. The opening scene, supposedly set in Concepción, depicts the city as a sprawling mass of decaying favelas centered around an ancient cathedral, surrounded on one side by treacherous oceanside cliffs and on the other by an ugly petrochemical plant spewing toxins into the air. The citizens are shown to be almost nothing but ignorant, destitute religious fanatics (who all speak Spanish with Central American accents). This was very confusing to the actual inhabitants of Concepción, a modern and decently prosperous inland city on a river, known more for its many universities than any chemical processing. The real Chileans were not pleased. The mayor at the time sent a formal objection to the producers, and theaters there pretty quickly stopped showing the film. So, on top of being weird Christian apologia, The Reaping is also xenophobic and completely ignorant of other cultures? Damn, maybe this film should run for president.

But I guess insulting an entire city was worth it to get this movie with an 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS -The movie was filmed in Louisiana in 2005, which means they were also slammed by Hurricane Katrina. According to their production manager, 80% of the local crew lost their homes. They decided to resume filming a week later. Do you want to spin that as the film industry being so callous that they would carry on with their little movie in spite of all the devastation that had been wrought on their employees, without giving them any time at all to recover? Or do you want to spin it the way the production company did and claim that they continued the shoot so quickly because of the job security and economic benefits it brought to the affected area? Either way, they wound up with a big abandoned Wal-Mart they were able to use as a cheap soundstage.

-There is a short feature on the DVD that explores the possible "scientific explanations" for the Biblical plagues of Egypt. Half of the experts they interview are biblical scholars, and none of the other half are archeologists (who could tell you that we have zero actual evidence outside of the Bible that any of this stuff happened). It's basically just a bad History Channel documentary. Or, given the state of that network today, just a regular History Channel documentary.

-There is another short feature that consists of nothing more than Idris Elba telling us how much he dislikes bugs. There are a lot of bugs in this film.

[knowyourbmovieactors]

OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #15 THE FUNHOUSE

The Funhouse (1981) ⭐ 5.9 | Horror

1h 36m | R

1981 was a turning point of sorts for Tobe Hooper. The outsider filmmaker rocketed to acclaim and controversy in 1974 with his weird, greasy, grimy slasher film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Five years later, he had matured into a confident director able to handle more complicated material with more adult themes, like his celebrated 1979 adaptation of Stephen King's Salem's Lot. Stephen Spielberg had even been in talks with him about possibly directing this upcoming movie called E.T. By the dawning of the '80s, he was poised to move past all that gory '70s grindhouse stuff and take his place among the dignified, highbrow horror directors.

Except, 1981 was still basically the '70s, and Hooper wasn't quite done being a little gross and weird. Exhibit A: The Funhouse, a teen slasher film set in a skeevy, dirty traveling carnival. When four teenagers on a double date dare themselves into spending the night inside the carnival's funhouse, they get a lot more than they bargained for, and we get absolutely no hint that this was made by the guy who was going to make Poltergeist only one year later.

I loved the atmosphere of this film. Shot in Florida (specifically because child labor laws were so lax there that they could work their one child actor more than 12 hours a day; guys, Florida has ALWAYS been like this), they picked locations right down the road from where a bunch of actual traveling carnivals spent their down months in the winter. So, Hooper hired them. All the obvious OSHA violations that people are riding for fun and all the too-skinny carnies are absolutely genuine. When Hooper needed "dancing girls" for one of the carnival tents, he just popped over to a local strip club and started hiring. There is a gritty realness to the carnival scenes that takes me right back to the traveling carnivals that would roll through small towns for their summer and fall festivals back when I was a kid. They always felt a little bit seedy and dangerous, which, honestly, was most of the appeal. I mean, ring toss and corn dogs are nice; but did you ever see a drunk carnie climb up on the prow of a swinging ship attraction and ride it like a bull in a rodeo, and instead of getting that man with an obvious problem help, almost everyone who was strapped into the ride applauded? I SURE DID!

The movie itself is fine. It's nowhere near as demented as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even though it once again features a deformed killer who is the product of a deranged upbringing. The film does show a bit of empathy for the disturbed, nonverbal man-child raised in the shadow of his greedy, drunken father's violence, so you can see hints that Hooper understands that horror films can be more than vehicles for blood and guts; but once the killing starts, that's all left in the dust as we concentrate on our 25-year-old teenagers trying to escape the chained-up funhouse. There's some inventive use of space inside the the twisting, disorienting darkness of the ride (which must be at least four stories tall and goddamn ENORMOUS); Kevin Conway plays three different carnival barkers, each one more off-putting than the last; and Elizabeth Berridge has the most devastated, traumatized thousand-yard stare you'll ever see at the end of a horror film; but for me, what makes this film interesting are all the dirty little details in the background.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS The only extra on this DVD was the original trailer for the movie. Remember when trailers were just men with deep voices telling you everything that happens in the movie?

[knowyourbmovieactors]

OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #14 HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959)

House on Haunted Hill (1959) ⭐ 6.7 | Crime, Horror, Mystery

1h 15m | Approved

I talked about William Castle's old, gimmicky horror films for way too long in my review of the House of Wax remake. Then I discovered that one of the compilation DVDs I bought actually has Castle's original House on Haunted Hill on it. So, let's see if this 1959 film is as cheesy as I thought it would be.

As it turns out, it's actually an OK film. A stereotypical eccentric millionaire (played, of course, by Vincent Price) invites several random guests to be locked inside with him and his mysterious and beautiful wife for a night in a "haunted mansion", where at least seven previous people have been murdered. They will each receive $10,000 for doing so, but there's a wicked little addition: should anyone die during the night, their share will be divided among the survivors. And, oh, look, he has party favors for all of them in cute little mini caskets! What's inside? Loaded handguns. You know, just in case. What follows is a a waterfall of diversions and red herrings as the people locked inside scheme to last the night, and we discover that some of the guests are playing an entirely different game.

That description is a little more exciting than the actual movie, but it's not a bad film. The twists and turns that screenwriter Robb White put in the script are weighed down by Castle's stodgy direction, and the acting styles of the 1950s seem a little cartoonish to us today, but I was never bored watching it. And I have to say, Vincent Price is pretty fantastic. Sure, it's another film where he's playing the same kind of campy character you heard in his "Thriller" voiceover; but by the end of the movie, he reveals some actual depth inside of what would otherwise be the most one-dimensional character of them all. There's a good reason why he made his living at this.

For Castle, though, the actual film was only a small piece of his larger game: using weird stunts to drum up publicity. The movie opens with an overly extended silent blackout that made me think my DVD was broken. Then, in the blackness, what sounded like one of those cheap "Sounds of Halloween" tapes started playing. This part was specifically tailored to be experienced in a theater, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. (The reason it sounds like a Halloween FX tape, by the way, is that an audio engineer was inspired after seeing the movie to create the first actual Halloween soundscape record, which went on sale soon after). He had the exterior shots of this haunted mansion done at the famous Ennis house in LA (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) simply so he could have the fantastic structure in the ads. The rest of the movie was shot on cheap soundstages that in no way match the exterior (or even each other). Castle also deliberately placed off-putting images in those advertisements specifically so that the ads would be banned, and he could make further ads about how the movie was so horrifying that even the original ads couldn't be printed. I won't even get into the flying skeleton that was rigged to soar over the audiences during the movie; but suffice it to say, Castle was more interested in transforming everything around the movie into its own experience than he was in actually making the movie.

Of course, much like Wes Craven's efforts to make a "controversial" film with The Last House on the Left, this all worked. Castle made a mint off of this movie (so much so that it reportedly inspired Alfred Hitchcock to make his own low-budget horror film called Psycho), and he kept escalating his stunts (and his wealth) from here on out. What's weird about this is that Castle--who was so concerned with maximizing profit off of his films--kind of forgot to renew the copyright on this one, so it is now in the public domain. Since there is no longer an "official" copy of it, you can find multiple different cuts of varying quality. The version I watched seemed to have all the original scenes in the original order, but it was an awfully low-grade print. But, hey, this means any one of you could go out and make your own version of House on Haunted Hill whenever you want (provided that it is legally distinct from the 1999 remake).

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS Since this is another big compilation DVD, there are no extras. However, House on Haunted Hill is nestled in there with a bevy of other classic horror films that have either fallen into public domain or are forgotten enough that studios parted with the rights for rock bottom prices. On this DVD, Haunted Hill comes after the original Night of the Living Dead and right before Carnival of Souls.

[knowyourbmovieactors]

OCTOBER HORROR MOVIES 2024 (DVD EDITION) #13 LISA FRANKENSTEIN

Lisa Frankenstein (2024) ⭐ 6.1 | Comedy, Horror, Romance

1h 41m | PG-13

When my girlfriend sees me put this disc in the DVD player, she says to me, "Didn't this movie just come out?" And she's right. This movie opened in theaters in February of this year.

"You bought this?" she asks. "I thought you got all your movies this year at thrift stores." That is exactly what I did. Despite the fact that the DVD of this movie was just released this past April, a copy has already found its way to a thrift store. "How does this end up there so quickly?" she asks.

"I couldn't even begin to speculate," I say.

"I have several theories," she says. She begins to speculate as I am looking up who this guy playing "The Creature" is. Really? That Disney kid who grew up to play Jughead in that whacko Archie TV series on the CW? My girlfriend's final theory ends with, "...so it was a breakup, and this ended up in the guy's box of stuff by accident."

"Those are all good speculations," I say. Meanwhile, Jughead is getting mud all over this teal and pink and blue house with lots of glass shelves.

"If this is supposed to be set in the '80s, nobody's houses actually looked like that," she says, "There should have been a lot more wood paneling."

"Yeah, and nobody's smoking," I say, "And everything's too clean. I remember the '80s looking a lot dirtier. Probably from all the smoking."

"Do you think they set it in the '80s just so they could have that tanning bed?" The tanning bed is pretty crucial to the plot.

"Yes, that," I say, "But also so they could do this knockoff John Hughes style they're going for." As if on cue, the movie launches into its 6th or 7th needle drop, a song that only the most hip kids at your high school in 1989 would have known about, used here to underscore a light-hearted montage of The Creature trying on different outfits.

"This movie is retro in two ways," she says, "Yes, it's the '80s. But it also feels like a 2000s comedy."

"You mean, like Juno?"

"Yes, like Juno!"

"Well, it was written by Diablo Cody."

"It's like she hasn't grown at all since then."

"Well, it is Diablo Cody."

The movie ends in a way that I think is supposed to leave us feeling happy for the two lovers, even though mostly what we've seen them do is kill people without the slightest bit of remorse.

"It's an interesting choice," I say, "To have your main character immediately become a narcissistic sociopath the instant the first plot point happens."

"I was just waiting for them to reveal that the person who killed her mom at the beginning was her stepmom," she says.

"Oh, yeah," I say, having forgotten that our main character survived an axe-wielding maniac who murdered her mother, a scene that was never really referenced again after the first 30 minutes. "Or maybe her dad?" I add, trying in vain to recall if there were actually any subtle clues about this or if it was just dropped so that we would feel better about The Creature happily reading a Percy Bysshe Shelley poem out loud at the end.

"Or SHE did it," my girlfriend says, a little too gleefully.

"Or anyone at all who was actually in the movie," I say.

After the credits finish, this DVD just automatically starts playing all the bonus features. Cole Sprouse is telling us all about the mime lessons he took to prepare for this role, since The Creature doesn't speak. Well, at least until he starts reciting Shelley.

"He should have just watched Warm Bodies," my girlfriend says.

"I was just thinking that!" Actually, I was wondering through the whole movie how much better it would be with Nicholas Hoult as The Creature.

"Nic did a much better job at the physicality."

"You mean Nicholas Hoult?"

"Yes," she says. I didn't realize they were on a first-name basis.

"Or Poor Things," she says.

"I haven't seen it."

"Emma Stone does some amazing things!" I guess she's not on a first-name basis with Emma.

At this point, the dog is whining at us. He wants to go outside.

"Hold on," my girlfriend says, "Let me finish watching the DVD extras."

THINGS WE LEARNED FROM THE DVD EXTRAS -It sure seems like everyone had a good time filming this, and good for them.