Expelled Grey Matter

Despite John Carpenter's current reputation at this point in the 1980s he was running into big trouble,  getting into creative conflicts with the major studios and looking at an uncertain future.  The Thing   had widely been panned by critics for what they considered excessive violence and became a box office failure.  Christine  did better financially, but didn't win him any new fans among the press.   Feeling his ability to make movies was in jeopardy he decided to do a mainstream film and, in this case, it was one produced by Michael Douglas that had already seen a number of directors come and go.  Douglas had been attempting to get the movie made since 1979 and, though it says the script was by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon, truth was it had been doctored quite a bit even up to Carpenter directing.  Under his guidance the movie was pared down to a road movie and a love story with Carpenter aiming to show some of the beauty of the Unit...

I will always have a soft spot for stop motion effects.  Despite the fact the method does show its age, often with the herky-jerky motions of the creatures prior to Phil Tippett's advances in Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi  and the difficulties of blending live actors and backgrounds into the scene in a realistic manner, just the feeling that there is a person behind the movements makes it better than running a computer program.  Those who are best at it have always brought their own personality to the effects. David Allen was one of those people.  He was friends with producer and director Charles Band, the man behind Empire Pictures and Full Moon.  While Allen worked on major Hollywood fare such as Willow  and Ghostbusters II  he is known largely for his work with Band, providing what Ray Harryhausen and Tippett often provided, but on a more modest budget.  Most people would have seen his work on the first five Puppet Master films, with Allen ...

The Return of the Living Dead turned out to be a surprising cult hit.  Written and directed by Dan O'Bannon and based on a story by John A. Russo, one of the original collaborators on Night of the Living Dead , it became one of the most renowned horror comedies of the '80s.  Its punk style, outlandish characters and imaginative gore put it ahead of much of the competition.   There would end up being five movies in total, but the first follow-up is pretty much a remake with less gore, no nudity and quite a bit more comedy.  That is why there are no references to Louisville, Kentucky getting blown up by a nuclear bomb at the end of the first film.  Instead, we are now in a fictional town called Westvale, somewhere in the Midwest, when that darn old Trioxin starts doing its thing again. It turns out there are plenty of old barrels of Trioxin 245 around the country and the Army is rounding it up.  Unfortunately, they're about as competent as before, and a ...

Land of the Dead was the first new entry in George A. Romero's series of influential apocalyptic zombie films since 1985's Day of the Dead .  Instead of an isolated military base we got to see what society had become years after the dead had begun to rise, both for humans and the zombies, who had shown signs of growing intelligence in the previous movies.  By Land of the Dead some consciousness was returning to the creatures as they began rediscovering certain things rather than going through the motions of their past lives. Some, like Big Daddy, had even overcome most of the urge to snack on humans, as it was made clear in Day of the Dead that the hunger was instinctual rather than that for the nutritional needs. The thing is that Land of the Dead re-used some ideas that Romero didn't have the budget for in Day of the Dead , and was a bit of a stop-gap movie as the series lumbered to its conclusion.  I was eager to see that now that it appeared that the dead and the liv...

Different Seasons was the Stephen King collection that just kept on giving.  It was an anomaly for King at the time it came out, containing four novellas, three of which were not horror stories.  It was the point where he began to go beyond just doing genre fiction and, in some ways, maturing.  This side of king had always been there and bits had popped through in The Dead Zone  and The Shining , but this is where he just went all in without using the supernatural as a crutch.   The result was a collection of well-regarded stories that resulted in two of the most influential movies of their time, Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption .  The Breathing Method , the last story in the collection and the only horror entry, was never going to be made into a full movie, and if it ever does get produced will be lucky to be part of an anthology or television miniseries.  However, Apt Pupil  was still there for the taking, and understandably had be...

Imagine me sitting in an empty cinema in Scottsdale in 1994.  I figure that Cemetery Man is probably the safer bet than  Spanking the Monkey , largely because I don't have to say Spanking the Monkey out loud to a stranger and I figure if I'm going to watch a movie about incest it would probably be better to wait for video.  All I know about Cemetery Man is that there are zombies involved, and I'm game.  Dawn of the Dead is one of my favorite films, and I love horror, having seen quite a bit of mainstream and slightly off-kilter American horror.  I also like a bit of comedy with my horror, being a fan of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson.  Also, this movie promises some nudity. However, I have no idea who Michele Soavi is.  It will be almost two decades before I see The Church .  In fact, at this point, I really have not seen a full Dario Argento or Mario Bava film.  I pretty much have no idea what Italian horror is like.  I don't even know g...