Expelled Grey Matter

RKO Pictures was a studio that often went from success to failure.  It was one of the biggest, releasing movies such as King Kong , Citizen Kane and Notorious .  It weathered a number of ups and downs, mismanagement under Howard Hughes and a final demise in 1957 when the company was sold to Universal.  Along the way, and often because the studio was desperate to make money, a number of interesting movies were made. Cat People was the first produced by Val Lewton.  Directed by Jacques Tourneur, the movie was produced in the way of many b-movies where the title came first and the writer, in this case DeWitt Bodeen, was tasked with coming up with an actual story once the picture was given the green light.  Lewton was new so he suffered studio interference while being given a small budget, but he and Tourneur managed to overcome all that and create one of the most popular classic horror films. Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) is a Serbian immigrant living alone in a Brownstone in New York.  O

My usual problem with remakes of classic movies is the same as when I hear a cover of a song.  There are two ways of doing it.  One is to copy everything to the letter, hoping to get a hit from what someone else did before.  The other is to take the original words, or some of them, and rearrange things so that it is different enough that the artist has put their own stamp on it.  The Vanilla Fudge and their version of "You Keep Me Hanging On" is one that always comes to mind.  So, in a world of bland horror remakes, the 2019 version of Child's Play might be considered the Vanilla Fudge version of the film.  Andy (Gabriel Bateman) and his mother Karen (Aubrey Plaza) have just moved into a new apartment.  Andy doesn't have any friends and doesn't try to make any, although he kind of connects with a police officer named Mike (Brian Tyree Henry) lives down the hall.  Things are made worse by Karen's boyfriend Shane (David James Lewis), whom Andy has no liking towa

I was not too excited when I heard that there was going to be a remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre .  It wasn't for the normal reasons I have, which is the fact that too many movies that I grew up with got remade in the 2000s.  This was at the beginning of that trend and, down the road, they started remaking things that came out when I was a kid.  I still wasn't that old at the time - barely in my 30s - so it was weird to have a remake of a movie I could buy on DVD quite easily and it be even better quality than when I originally saw it.   The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , though, was an outlier.  It came out when I was two years old so, other than as a horror fan later in life, it was not a big influence on me growing up.  In fact, it was quite difficult to find, and it took me a bit of time in the early 1990s to find a copy to watch.  That has changed as it has gone through a number of quality re-releases, but there were some shady things that went on with its original distr

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a movie of should-have-beens.  It was a financial success, much more so than Friday the 13th , which tanked after a huge opening weekend.  In fact, this remake of the 1984 film is one of the most profitable horror films of all time.  Jackie Earle Haley, who replaces Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger, did so with Englund's blessing.  Director Samuel Bayer was talked into doing the film by Michael Bay after holding off on doing any of the horror remakes with the promise that his feature debut was going to be the beginning of many good things.  It even had Rooney Mara, a young up-and-coming star at the time, in the lead role of Nancy. What it didn't have was the backing of fans of the original.  Platinum Dunes was becoming known as the studio that did horror remakes.  Horror films were not doing too well in the 2000s and the constant reboots and retreads didn't do them any favors and, by the time A Nightmare on Elm Street made it to the theaters, ma

Most of the time I'm going into comic book films pretty much blind or with vague recollections of childhood.  With Constantine , however, it is with both having seen the movie within a year or two of it being in the theater and later reading at least one of the graphic novels at a later date, which I believe was when the television show was on.  Both of the latter were enjoyable, especially the show, since even though he was part of the DC universe it didn't feel like the usual timeworn superhero antics.   What I remembered of the movie, though, did.  Constantine came out before the DC Cinematic Universe got going, but when I first saw it I felt it was like a number of other big budget films at the time: hollow, forgettable and without much story.  So many of the movies of the 2000s foretold how things are today, and rarely do I find myself revamping my opinion of movies from that time period.  This is one of those exceptions because, although it deviates far from the comic, Co

The 2000s are a decade I don't look back on with fondness.  The music was awful and most of the movies, particularly in the horror genre, were terrible as well.  Often the two made an unholy combination, meaning that because horror films were supposed to be scary, they needed a nu-metal or industrial soundtrack so it would feel dark and foreboding.  It was also a time when Hollywood decided pretty much everything needed to be remade despite the fact that, since physical media still dominated when it came to movies, almost everyone had the originals to watch anytime they wanted.   Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes was one of the worst at this, bringing us unwanted versions of A Nightmare on Elm Street ,  The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and, of course, Friday the 13th .  The remakes, like many of the original horror films of the time, featured unlikable characters, unimaginative scripts and production values that managed to be even less impressive than some of the straight-to-video mate

The Island of Dr. Moreau is one of those films where the stories of its conception and filming are much more interesting than what made it to the screen.  The original script was by Richard Stanley, known at the time for the cult films Hardware and Dust Devil , and was the culmination of a number of years of effort to bring to life his version of the 1896 novel by H. G. Wells.  Stanley was able to secure funding, get Stan Winston's company to do the effects and secure Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer in lead roles.  After all of his effort he was fired less than a week into filming. The director that took over was John Frankenheimer, a director most famous for The Manchurian Candidate over 30 years prior.  Where Stanley was often known for his unique vision in the films and videos he made, Frankenheimer was one of the remaining old-school Hollywood directors whose focus was on getting through the project rather than making an statement.  His traditional approach to making movies and la

1977 was a strange year for movies.  On one hand, there was Star Wars , which along with Jaws a couple years earlier helped pave the way for the movies of the 1980s and beyond.  There was also Smokey and the Bandit which, if it wasn't for Star Wars, would have been the biggest hit of the year.  Although it is of its time it is still considered a classic comedy. Then there were films like The Island of Dr. Moreau .  Despite a number of great horror and exploitation films floating on cinematic fringes many of the big-budget films had not changed much since the late 1960s other than one was more likely to see some nudity here and there.  While something like Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger is still lots of fun in a throwback kind of way many movies were more like The Island of Dr. Moreau , one of a number of H. G. Wells adaptations from American International Pictures in the mid-1970s and, while it is nowhere near as good as Island of Lost Souls , one of the better ones. Andrew Brad

The conception of pre-code movies is that almost anything goes.  It is true that in some cases there was some nudity and violence, sometimes getting into what would earn an R-rating today; D. W. Griffith's Intolerance always comes to mind on that front.  Although certainly more violent than films after the Hays Code went into effect, and a bit steamier, it was rare that many of these movies ventured into territory that outright violated the norms of the time.  That means, despite the lurid poster art, Island of Lost Souls is less about topless nymphettes and more about the horrors of unrestrained scientific experimentation.  Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) is a survivor of a shipwreck who is picked up by a merchant ship in the South Pacific and nursed back to health by a man named Montgomery (Arthur Hohl).  The ship is bound for Apia, the capitol of Samoa, where Parker's fiancée Ruth (Leila Hyams) awaits him.  However, Parker runs afoul of the ship's drunken captain (Stanley

After a rushed and not well-received sequel New Line brought back Heather Langenkamp and much of the magic of the first film with A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors .  Robert Shaye, producer of the series and CEO of New Line, knew it was the right time to seize the opportunity and get another Nightmare film out quickly.  With a script penned in days by Brian Helgeland and a looming writer's strike, as well as special effects being worked on before the movie started filming or even had an ending, Shaye hired a young Finnish director named Renny Harlin to direct the fourth entry in the series, which would go on to become the highest grossing and one of the most popular. Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is thought to be dead after being buried in consecrated ground.  However, Kristen (Tuesday Knight) is still having nightmares, as well as pulling in Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) and Joey (Rodney Eastman), the other survivors of the previous bout with Freddy.  Kristen's fears are ri

Too often the box art of a movie is more interesting than the movie itself.  Due to Uncle Sam not getting a theatrical release as originally intended the few posters produced - lenticular, showing the face on the one-sheet changing - are now collector's items.  I am quite sure I remember seeing the box and ignoring it back in the '90s because, even though I knew who Larry Cohen was, I didn't know William Lustig outside of the Maniac Cop movies.  At the time I would not have known either of them were involved with this movie due to the fact that I would have had a quick laugh over the artwork before looking for some similar low-budget fare from Full Moon that I would have thought more entertaining.  Master Sergeant Sam Harper (David "Shark" Fralick) is killed in a helicopter crash caused by friendly fire during Desert Storm.  Three years after the incident his body is found and shipped back to his hometown of Twin Rivers, where his sister Sally (Leslie Neale), neph

I am often wary of movies with hot-button issues that come out around a general election.  It is the time when Hollywood, and often many independent filmmakers, ramp up the propaganda on both sides.  Technically there are laws against using movies or television shows to blatantly sway an election, but there is also the First Amendment and a whole lot of grey area.  This is why Danesh D'Souza often gets away with his unwatchable "documentaries" and why we got a film about killing President Bush back in the 2000s.   That is why I was concerned about Civil War when I first heard it about it.  There are certain elements on the right that seem to be pushing for one, as if returning to one of the bloodiest periods of our nation's history would be a good thing.  I was also afraid that this movie would open a new can of conspiracy worms in the form "social conditioning", as if there is a secret cabal trying to lead us in this direction.  Alex Garland, the writer and

The 1990s saw a spate of vampire movies focused around New York, including The Addiction , Habit and even Vampire in Brooklyn.  Save for the last they dealt with non-vampiric subjects in the background, such as drug abuse and loneliness.  Meanwhile, another low-budget feature set in the Big Apple, Nadja , attempted to update the most famous vampire story of all. Nadja (Elina Löwensohn) is a Romanian vampire and the illegitimate daughter of Dracula (Peter Fonda).  She roams the streets of New York at night looking for young men to feed upon while spending her days bathing in blood under the careful watch of her slave Renfield (Karl Geary).  Things change when she senses her father's death and starts realizing that she suddenly has a freedom she hasn't had in her entire life.  This leads her to pursue a mortal woman named Lucy (Galaxy Craze) who happens to be married to Jim (Martin Donovan).  Jim, in turn, is the nephew of Van Helsing (Fonda), the man who killed Dracula. Jim gets

Habit began life as writer, director and star Larry Fessenden's student film project which was released as a short film in 1982.  Fessenden expanded the script into a feature and began working on it in the mid-1990s, finishing in 1995 and self-releasing in 1997 after failing to find an actual distributor.  Despite the difficulties in getting it seen Habit fell perfectly into the indie film scene of the 1990s even if Abel Ferrara's more well-known The Addiction beat it to theaters by a couple of years.  It's too bad it got ignored at the time as Habit is the much more interesting and engaging film. Sam (Fessenden) is an alcoholic artist dealing with the death of his father.  His girlfriend Liza (Heather Woodbury) is leaving him, and his best friends Nick (Aaron Beall) and Rae (Patricia Coleman) are having their own issues.  As things are looking their worst he meets a strange woman named Anna (Meredith Snaider) at a Halloween party and they hit it off.  Only problem, she di

When one considers that John Schlesinger directed The Believers it is no surprise that this movie feels like a bit of a throwback.  It didn't get the best reviews when it came out in 1987 but that may have been that the film style was more 1973.  It also deals with the well-worn topic of modern society colliding with traditional beliefs, with the supernatural having an actual influence.  Factor in that this is about Santeria and "dark" African magic and I can understand how this did not fit in with the 1980s and even less today.   Cal Jamison (Martin Sheen) is a police psychologist raising his son Chris (Harley Cross) on his own after the death of his wife (Janet-Laine Green).  He has moved back to New York, renting an apartment from a woman named Jessica (Helen Shaver) and getting back in touch with old friends Dennis (Lee Richardson) and Kate Maslow (Elizabeth Wilson).  His relative peace is short-lived when he is asked to help with a police officer (Jimmy Smits) that h