Horror

Stephen reviews: Perfect Blue (1997)

Perfect Blue [パーフェクト・ブルー] (1997)

Starring Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto

Directed by Satoshi Kon

This film worms its way under your skin and never comes back out. I knew this going into it, since I saw it back when it first came out, and its haunting tone and disjointed worldview have stayed with me ever since. In fact, I watched it at least three times back then and spent a good deal more time skimming around the last half trying to figure out just what in the hell was going on. I never really did. It’s one of those movies that really deserves the phrase “mind bending.” This time though, I think I finally got it. My sense of the surreal and the strange has been honed over the past decade. I wasn’t really ready for it as a teen, but I am now.

It’s difficult to sum up the nature of this film. While looking for horror anime to review for October, I noticed this film on someone’s top 10 list of horror anime. This surprised me, and never would have occurred to me normally, but after some thought I realized it was true. If movies ever scared me, this one would have given me nightmares. It can be called a slasher film, but it doesn’t have the body count necessary for a slasher film. Nor is it a mystery, since there is no single villain, and even at the end it’s arguable who killed who. It’s really a psychological thriller about a woman slowly going insane.

Cube Zero (2004)

Starring Zachary Bennett, David Huband, Stephanie Moore, Martin Roach, Terri Hawkes, Richard McMillan, Mike ‘Nug’ Nahrgang, Tony Munch, Michael Riley, Joshua Peace, Diego Klattenhoff

Directed by Ernie Barbarash

Expectations: Low, but higher than I had for the second one.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Jesus Christ. Are the events of Cube Zero really what was going on behind the scenes this whole time? My mind simply cannot comprehend this fact, and as soon as this review is over I’m going to do my best attempt at a home lobotomy to forget everything I stored in my short-term memory about the film; I’ve got a wire hanger all ready to go. This film is a case-in-point example of why things shrouded in mystery will always trump an explanation. Despite some valiant efforts on the filmmaker’s part to resurrect the spirit and visuals of the original film, Cube Zero is a total dog of a movie.

But this wasn’t always my opinion. Cube Zero starts off incredibly strong, delivering one of the best trap kills in the entire series, bested only by the first film’s opening kill. The kill here is acid in nature, but instead of the quick face-melt like the one in Cube, this is some kind of slow-burn acid that the victim first thinks is water. Lulled into a false sense of security, the guy drinks as much of the liquid as he can suck off his drenched fingers, only to eventually notice his deteriorating skin and realize that yes, indeed, he has sprung a trap. What follows is one of the best full-body, skin-peeling disintegrations I’ve seen in a film. It’s truly a thing of beauty.

Bad Taste (1987)

Starring Terry Potter, Pete O’Herne, Craig Smith, Mike Minett, Peter Jackson, Doug Wren, Dean Lawrie, Peter Vere-Jones

Directed by Peter Jackson

Expectations: This is one of my favorite movies.

That’s right, four stars. No general scale, no B-Movie scale — just four stars, straight up. You might think there’s a flaw in my logic to award an amateur film such as Bad Taste a perfect score, and maybe you’re right. But to me, Bad Taste is a perfect movie. I wouldn’t change a single thing about it; I love it unconditionally. Pushing my love aside for just a second, though, the film is also an incredibly ambitious and impressive début, made all the more amazing when you dig a little deeper and discover the story of how it was made.

In his mid-20s and ready to take on the world, Peter Jackson got a bunch of his friends and workmates together to make Bad Taste. He would film it on Sunday afternoons over the course of four years, creating all the special FX himself, as well as hand-building the camera dollies, cranes and Steadicam equipment. As he says in the making-of documentary Good Taste Made Bad Taste, “Normally, if you buy a proper one, they’re about 40 or 50 grand, but this one cost about 20 bucks.” And it’s this “I can do anything” spirit, unrestricted by normal mental barriers, that typifies Bad Taste, and Jackson’s filmography overall.

Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)

Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)
AKA Cube²: Hypercube

Starring Kari Matchett, Geraint Wyn Davies, Grace Lynn Kung, Matthew Ferguson, Neil Crone, Barbara Gordon, Lindsey Connell, Greer Kent, Bruce Gray

Directed by Andrzej Sekula

Expectations: Super low. It’s gonna be dumb.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

I had many issues with the first Cube, but the overall experience was an enjoyable one because it felt like the movie was building towards something. Even though Cube 2 contains a fair amount of revelations about the cube and its purpose, it is never — ever — building towards anything. I think it’s a fair assumption to go into Cube 2: Hypercube expecting something dumber than the original Cube, but the level of inane bullshit here is out of control.

Cube 2: Hypercube takes many of the things that defined the original film and throws them out the cube door (and presumably into some other cube where a different, hypothetical Cube movie was being made… I wish I has seen that one.). Remember the iconic cube itself that inspired instant love from me and radiated goodwill right up until the end of the film? Here it’s redesigned to be bland, boring and without character. The colored rooms that gave Cube much of its texture and visuals? Gone as well, as every room in this cube is the starkest of whites. Not only does this make for a visually boring movie, it makes for one that runs together. Going from one room to the next holds no weight. I understand why the rooms are all white now from a story standpoint, but that doesn’t make them any less boring. This cube also looks like a set, and the fact that the rooms don’t change colors only helps to solidify the thought that instead of Cube 2: Hypercube, I’m watching Cube 2: On Broadway, or perhaps as my girlfriend suggested, Cube 2: On Ice.

Lurking Fear (1994)

Lurking Fear (1994)
AKA H.P. Lovecraft’s Lurking Fear, Shocking Fear

Starring Jon Finch, Blake Adams, Ashley Laurence, Jeffrey Combs, Allison Mackie, Paul Mantee, Vincent Schiavelli, Joseph Leavengood, Michael Todd, Cristina Stoica, Luana Stoica, Adrian Pintea, Ilinca Goia

Directed by C. Courtney Joyner

Expectations: Moderate. If nothing else, Jeffrey Combs is in it.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Lurking Fear is yet another Full Moon film based upon an H.P. Lovecraft tale, but this is definitely one of the minor entries into that sub-genre. Ever since Stuart Gordon scored a major genre hit with Re-Animator, Full Moon has loved going back to the Lovecraft well and Lurking Fear shows them trying that schtick without Gordon’s involvement. It doesn’t work out near as well without him at the helm, but the film is definitely interesting enough to hold your attention.

The story starts off as a couple of separate tales that eventually intersect. The only problem is that once they do it kinda feels like each story’s characters have done a Purple Rose of Cairo and walked out of their movie and into another. I guess this is because the gangster story starts in the city, and the deserted town story feels distinctly removed from that setting. It creates a disjointed feel to the overall movie that even white-eyed, subterranean-dwelling mutants can’t fix. Although I do have to give them credit for creating characters distinct enough to feel like they come from their own worlds.

Cube (1997)

Starring Maurice Dean Wint, David Hewlett, Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, Andrew Miller, Julian Richings, Wayne Robson

Directed by Vincenzo Natali

Expectations: Low. I don’t remember liking this.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Like a lot of movies I saw in the late ’90s, I’m finding that revisiting them now is a much better experience than watching them then. Back then, my expectations for Cube were through the roof; it seemed like it was everything I could want rolled into one movie. Things like cool science fiction sets, crazy traps and realistic gore FX. But I simply wasn’t ready to appreciate this movie for what it was, as I was ear-deep in my film snob phase and only the best in cinema would suffice.

Nowadays my expectations for movies have changed quite a bit, and I’m more than happy to just roll with the punches as long as the movie is of quality enough to entertain. Cube does entertain, and it does so pretty well, but it’s just shy of being everything that it could be thanks to some questionable, over-the-top acting and some equally questionable writing. But that’s OK, this is a début feature so things like that are bound to come up. And besides, look at that fucking cube set! It’s awesome!

Mini-Review: AVPR: Alien vs. Predator – Requiem (2007)

AVPR: Alien vs. Predator – Requiem (2007)
AKA Aliens vs. Predator 2, AVP2: Requiem

Starring Steven Pasquale, Reiko Aylesworth, John Ortiz, Johnny Lewis, Ariel Gade, Kristen Hager, Sam Trammell, Robert Joy, David Paetkau, Tom Woodruff Jr., Ian Whyte, Chelah Horsdal

Directed by Colin & Greg Strause (AKA The Brothers Strause)

Expectations: Moderate. I should know better, but that first one was fun.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

So y’know those ancient ruins and hieroglyphs and Predator mythology that made AVP so highly entertaining to me? Imagine a movie where they took all that stuff out, and replaced it with a bunch of small-town, human drama. Shit like “the pizza guy that’s too shy to ask the pretty girl out,” or “the distraught mother looking for her lost son and husband.” Oh, and imagine all of those sub-plots not really mattering to anything. And how about if we have the Predator play CSI by lurking around the forest for most of the movie, pouring blue goo on things to destroy evidence of the Alien (and Predalien) presence on Earth? This, my friends, is a recipe for disaster.

1023_14_screenshot — No bullshit, this is an actual screenshot from a scene in the film.

While I found it interesting to have the Predator play the role of the cleaner (and I got some amusement out of imagining Pulp Fiction‘s Harvey Keitel character, The Wolf, inside the suit), if he’s really trying to cover his tracks then why does he indiscriminately kill any human that comes upon him, stringing them up without their skin for other humans to find. He’s not on a hunt; he’s a cleaner, so why is he leaving messes? The logical side of my brain was blaring alarms constantly throughout AVPR, and while I know that this isn’t the type of movie to stand up to logical criticism, they should at least have the decency to make the stupid shit fun. But not a single moment of AVPR gave me any fun. And I say that without hyperbole — not a single moment.

There were definitely opportunities for fun, but every one of these was swallowed into the belly of the whale known as “Horrible Editing and Abysmal Lighting.” I expect a mainstream trash movie like this to be edited to hell, but AVPR is beyond awful. Coupled with what is probably the darkest and most indecipherable cinematography I’ve ever seen, we’ve got a real “winner” on our hands. If I was able to make out what was going on around the editing, the lighting — or really, the lack of lighting — made it so that I was literally unable to see anything on-screen during large sections of the film.

And honestly, I don’t even know what else to say about this piece of shit. It’s a horrible movie, with literally no redeeming qualities. The setup of the Predalien hybrid at the end of AVP was a super fun tease, but the direction this film took it in was absolutely the worst option. Watch the first one over again and spare yourself the pain of AVPR.