Expelled Grey Matter

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...

There was a time in the past when zombie movies had not overstayed their welcome.  At the time The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue was made pretty much the only film that that was using George Romero's particular type of zombie was Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things .  Despite Night of the Living Dead becoming a big hit it was really Dawn of the Dead that kicked off the whole genre.   Thus, the Spanish-Italian production The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue , also known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie amongst a variety of other titles, was a bit of an anomaly.  It also meant that, though it owed a lot to Romero, it still had room to make up its own rules.  The result is a movie that has been rediscovered and appreciated in recent years as its take on the genre seems a bit fresh after the same plots repeated ad infinitum. George (Ray Lovelock) is on his way to visit some friends in Windemere when Edna (Cristina Galbó) backs into his motorbike. He demands...

I would make a reference to the Sony Spider-Man Universe dying with a whimper rather than a bang, but it didn't really even do that.  It died more with the underwhelming sound of a punctured whoopy cushion.  The cast and crew behind  Venom: The Last Dance wasn't really informed of what Sony's plans were, and it seems like neither was director J.C. Chandor, more known for doing mid-budget dramas than big-budget superhero films.  It's another case of someone getting their big chance and the studio either interfering with or just ignoring what they do. In this case it wasn't just the studio.  Audiences did as well, with buzz about the movie being as bad or worse than Morbius and announcements ahead of the release, which had been delayed for over a year, that this was it with Sony's attempts to keep Disney from being able to use characters from the Spider-Man comics.  That any of these movies were watchable is the true miracle.  If there had been any dri...

A recent internet discussion has been whether or not a woman should choose a man or a bear to be alone with in the forst.  There is a scene in Day of the Animals that makes that choice rather obvious, although it's pretty atypical as the animals seem to be attacking indiscriminately.  William Girdler, hot off of the big success of Grizzly the year before, gathered some of the stars - and the bear - from that movie for another film about animals attacking, one that has garnered a bit of a cult status by being weird, campy, ridiculous and somewhat effective all at the same time. Steve Buckner (Christoper George) is about to take a group of hikers up a mountain for a two-week hike back to the town of Murphy.  Along with him is a Native American guide named Daniel Santee (Michael Ansara), a reporter named Terry (Lynda Day George) and a number of others.  Both Buckner and Santee feel that something is off, and it turns out they are right.  A weakening in the Earth's...

I can almost hear the pitch for a number of movies in the mid-1970s.  "It's like Jaws , but with..."  As in, with piranha, a killer whale, a pack of dogs, a giant squid, killer bees or, in this case, a bear.  Not just any bear, but one waying over a ton and standing 18 feet in height, said by one character to be a throwback to the bears that roamed during the ice age.   The reason all these and more got made?  They made money.  Grizzly , despite a number of dull sequences and a not-so-convincing mechanical bear standing in whenever the real one couldn't be used, was the highest grossing independent movie until Halloween came around two years later.  It also has some interesting tales of theft, deceit and general wrongdoing behind it that are more interesting than the movie or its spiritual sequel, Day of the Animals .  The tourist season is wrapping up, but there are still a number of backpackers in a stretch of national forest land that for...

When one sees a tagline that a movie is "absolutely insane," whether or not it includes modification from the universal adjective, one has to take it with a grain of salt.  What mainstream critics and studios consider insane is usually something that those of us who enjoy the fringes of cinema are familiar with.  It is familiar territory for writer and director Coralie Fargeat who has an unquestionable knowledge of horror.  This was obvious in Revenge , which took inspiration from past exploitation films such as I Spit on Your Grave , but put an angry feminist spin on it.  The Substance finds Fargeat doing the same for body horror.  The obvious go-to on this is David Cronenberg, and the influence is there, particularly from The Fly .  What The Substance most resembles, however, is Brian Yuzna's cult favorite Society .  Her movie   is full of practical effects that recall those of Screaming Mad George.  It also has that same satire of a specif...

Tremors is truly an odd duck of a movie.  Made on a low budget with a reluctant Kevin Bacon, who thought the movie was going to kill his career, it initially had a tepid box office run despite some good reviews from critics.  Where it flourished was on the rental market as audiences soon discovered that director and writer Ron Underwood had delivered a fun tongue-in-cheek monster movie with some impressive-looking creatures.  Despite Bacon's reluctance it also has one of his best performances. What is most surprising is that this movie that pretty much no one expected much of has spawned numerous sequels and a television show without the usual sinking quality of other franchises.  Not that the movies it has spawned are fantastic.  It is just that they are not the usual abysmal fare that something like the Hellraiser franchise has become.  At the heart of it, of course, is this film. Val (Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) are a pair of ne'er-do-well friends living...

I know that the reason there aren't more giant monster movies these days is that most of them aren't that good.  In fact, Lake Placid itself had a series of made-for-television sequels that just got worse and worse, to the point that the crocodile was starting to get "versus" movies.  That's Asylum territory, and that's never a good thing.   Still, the original movie, despite being panned by critics, managed to become a hit.  Although it doesn't show up much until the end the crocodile, an animatronic occasionally enhanced by CGI when needed, was designed by Stan Winston and is pretty good looking.  The movie also features a number of name actors as well as Steve Miner, a veteran horror director, behind the camera.  It's not a serious film, but there is no reason it has to be.  When a diver with the Maine Game and Fish is bitten in half by something in a lake, Sheriff Hank Keough (Brendan Gleeson) teams up with game warden Jack Wells (Bill Pullman...

It seems like the more creative and experimental the band the more likely they are to want to expand beyond doing music.  The big issue is budget.  While KISS or Spice Girls may have the chart success for someone to ask them to make a movie, someone like the Flaming Lips, despite having a hardcore fan base, is not exactly bleeding money.   Still, director and Flaming Lips lead singer Wayne Coyne persisted over a period eight years, creating sets in his back yard, filming when he could around touring and recording new material.  If anything that is probably what finally gave the movie its push.  Over two decades into the band's existence they finally had that one big hit, "Do You Realize??", from their 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots .  It helped sell quite a number of copies of the album and the song was used in at least two advertising campaigns that I can think of, which probably made Coyne more coin than CD sales at the time.   ...

Only Darren Aronofsky could get me watching a movie about ballet.  It's not specifically about ballet, although it does take Swan Lake, the production in which our protagonist wins the lead role as Swan Queen, as inspiration, but also the Japanese animated thriller Perfect Blue .  It introduces us to the crumbling mental state of a frightened and abused woman trying to reach in her mind what she sees as perfection.   Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is one of the most popular performers in a New York ballet company run by Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel).  He wants to do a new version of Swan Lake where the dancer who plays the Swan Queen also plays her rival, the Black Swan, and while he is confident in Nina's ability to play the traditional lead he thinks that she is too restrained to play her opposite.  His views change after she violently revokes a sexual advance, but the going is rough as he can't seem to get her to show the emotion and sexuality needed for ...

I am not a big anime fan so it should never come as a surprise that I am unaware of certain animated movies, particularly from Japan, that are influential on Western films.  Perfect Blue is one of those, and it seems that director Darren Aronofsky is a big fan, with references popping up in  Requiem for a Dream and a good number of plot similarities to  Black Swan.  For me, I went into it not knowing too much of what to expect and got an interesting take on the giallo as reimagined through Japanese eyes. Mima Kirigoe (Junko Iwao) is a pop singer who decides to give up her music career to go into acting.  She is a bit unsure, but her manager Tadokoro (Shinpachi Tsuji) helps her get an expanded role in a television show called Double Bind .  Her mentor, Rumi (Rica Matsumoto) is not so sure of the move, particularly of the sleazier aspects of the business, but soon Mima appears up to the task. Problem is Mima has attracted a stalker that, though at first willi...