Expelled Grey Matter

Dan O'Bannon was known for a few things, other than being extremely difficult to work with.  He cowrote and co-starred in Dark Star , wrote Alien and directed The Return of the Living Dead .  Because of the latter he has his own version of zombies named after him.  While he had issues he wasn't the only one in his field that did, and his supposed problems seem tame when compared with a lot of eccentric directors.  Whatever the case, he had early success with his movies and was considered to be quite brilliant.  Therefore, it is a bit of surprise that he only directed two feature films and one of those is almost impossible to find.  Private investigator John March (John Terry) is contacted by Claire Ward (Jane Sibbett) to find out what her husband Charles (Chris Sarandon) is up to.  He has been acting strange as of late and recently moved into an old farmhouse in rural Rhode Island that had once been owned by a  man named Joseph Curwen (Sarandon)....

Director Stuart Gordon, though he never made a story-accurate version of an H. P. Lovecraft story, was still the first film director to successfully bring the author's works to the screen.  There had been attempts previous.  Roger Corman's  The Haunted Palace   attempted to offer some Lovecraft along with all of his Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, while "The Colour Out of Space" was given life as the late-career Boris Karloff film  Die, Monster, Die!   There was even attempt at bringing  The Dunwich Horror  to the screen, with mixed results.  Gordon, however, found success in one of Lovecraft's lesser stories, creating a cult horror classic with  Re-Animator . Gordon would make movies other than the Lovecraft adaptations, but it was the one-two punch of Re-Animator and From Beyond that many horror fans remember, and definitely everyone remembers Barbara Crampton from those films.  When director Joe Lynch teamed with Dennis Paoli, who ...

If there was one series I was not expecting to return it was Final Destination .  The original film was conceived as an X-Files episode and got expanded into a movie with the unique premise that, instead of the usual masked stalker in most slashers, the killer is Death.  Not a personification of Death with a robe and a scythe, but just the idea that Death does not like being cheated and will do whatever it takes to meet its quota.  It kind of makes for a universe in which the Grim Reaper has the tenacity of an I.R.S. agent.  That has meant some big ups and downs for a series where the big bad killer manifests as wind.  The first film is okay, with the concept being better than the actual film, while Final Destination 2 manages to do something interesting as well as add in some humor.  By the time we get to Final Destination 5 we find that we have come full circle, with those events happening prior to the original film.  It's like closing a loop in th...

Looper  was writer and director Rian Johnson's third feature film and first major success.  A major departure from the movie he had done prior, it required immense worldbuilding, a major amount of attention to making the time travel plot plausible and the ability to do so on only a moderate budget.  However, it was a gamble that paid off in major ways for Johnson, at least in the short term. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a looper, which is basically a hired assassin who takes care of people that a crime syndicate 30 years in the future wants gone.  They send them back to his time - a dismal, dystopian United States in 2044 - to be shot, for which he earns silver bars that he can spend.  What he mainly spends it on is whores and drugs, but it's because he knows that, in the end, he will have to close his own loop.  That means ultimately killing an older version of himself. When Joe's friend Seth (Paul Dano) faces just that and fails he is asked by local crim...

A big difference between the original Doctor Who series and the current is that, during its first 20-year-and-some run, the show revolved around ideas rather than spectacle.  A good portion of the newer series carried the ideas forth but, for a long time, the effects have been a cornerstone of the revived version rather than the inventive stories.  The show was originally forced to do so because of the lack of budget that the BBC had to make s weekly sci-fi series of that magnitude, but it soon became a hallmark of the show.   Although there are pulp science fiction novels the majority of the classics are the same way.  They dwell on philosophical or actual scientific speculation.  Sometimes the ideas get ahead of the characters but they remain interesting even without giant space battles.  Such is Primer , a time-travel movie made by writer, director, producer, editor, composer and actor Shane Carruth as his debut film.  With just a $7000.00 budg...

James Dallas Egbert III was a troubled genius.  He was attending Michigan State University at the age of 16, taking computer science classes.  He suffered from depression and drug addiction as well as the pressure of being so young in an adult world.  He may also have been hiding his sexuality from his friends and family as it was 1979, long before many homosexual men felt it safe to be out.  On August 15 of that year he disappeared from his dorm, leaving behind a suicide note.  He was reportedly seen in Wisconsin, and his family ultimately hired a private detective to find him.  Egbert attempted suicide a second time after relocating to New Orleans and was eventually tracked down working on an oilfield in Morgan, Louisiana.  He was returned to his parents and started attending Wright University.  However, on August 16, 1980 his final suicide attempt was successful.  Egbert was a troubled individual who needed professional psychiatric help an...

A big problem with the majority of slashers is that the formula doesn't leave much room to develop the characters.  Typically they are archetypes - the horny jock, the prankster, the loner and, of course, all the sexually active girls versus the virgin.  It makes lines easy to write, but it also makes all of the chracters disposable.   The early movies the influence the genre, however, were a bit different.  Black Christmas and Halloween took some time to get to know the victims so that the impact of seeing them killed registered.  There is a reason that Laurie Strode is remembered where few of the victims in the Friday the 13th movies are known outside of the name of the actress that played them.  This is something Jimmy Huston had in mind when he wrote Final Exam .  The problem is it is also possible to go too far in that direction as well.  Finals are starting at a small university when news comes in that a couple from a neighboring inst...

The slasher formula should be easy.  One just chooses a setting, puts a bunch of annoying teenagers or college kids in it and adds a deranged killer. Just make sure there is a good final girl, include enough breasts and blood to get people in the seats and leave it open for a sequel.   Despite this easy formula so many of these movies just go wrong.  Whether it is pacing, plotting or just general incompetence behind or in front of the camera, so many of these movies even from the classic period are barely watchable today.  The fact that there was more butchering in the studio than on screen never helped, as often the few reasons for seeing the movie were excised before they even got to the theater.  Even so, I really can't see the appeal of something like Graduation Day.  High school track star Laura Ramstead (Ruth Ann Llorens) dies after completing a run in just 30 second, leading to coach George Michaels (Christopher George) being let go by the schoo...

In June 1999 Stephen King suffered injuries which were not only life-threatening but could have been career-ending.  While on a walk he was struck by a van, the driver of which was distracted by his dog,  causing him to swerve to the side of the road and hit the author.  At first media reports downplayed the injuries but, as time went on, King was forthcoming on what effect it had on his life.  Part of that, due to a broken pelvis, was the inability to sit for long periods of time to write.   However, a writer must write, and that he did.  His 2001 novel Dreamcatcher was written in longhand, all 500-some pages of it.  It told the story of a different kind of alien invasion, the attempts by a secret U.S. military unit to repel it and a special boy that might just help change the world.  The novel was part body horror and part road trip.  It also featured a number of elements that are typical of King, but also often left out when adapting ...

When I see certain names in opening credits I start to get concerned.  The name David A. Prior - the writer and director of Killer Workout , aka Aerobicide  - seemed slightly familiar to me.  So did one of the lead actors, Ted Prior, the director's brother.  I think what distracted me a bit was the fact I saw Michael Beck in a part, although it turned out to be a different Michael Beck than I was thinking.  There are also some boobs right off the bat and those always grab my attention.  Still, I wish I would have recalled who David A. Prior was, as I would have known a bit more what to expect.  Rhonda (Marcia Karr) is the owner of Rhonda's Workout, a popular health spa and aerobics studio.  She is frequently hit on by weight instructor Jimmy Hallik (Fritz Matthews) and has to deal with a non-punctual instructor in Jaimy (Teresa Van der Woude).  Still, things are going well for her, at least until one of her customers turns up dead. ...

This movie, from the title to the poster to the actual plot, has enough red flags to warn a viewer away from watching it.  There is no question it is not going to be a quality film, but the warning signs are there that I am in for 70 minutes of dull, dreary plot involving unlikeable people wandering around for the prize of a few minutes of something interesting at the beginning and end.  To my surprise, the dull viewing experience I was expecting never happened.  Michael Evans (William Bumiller) is the owner of Starbody Health Spa, a popular L.A. fitness location with a state-of-the-art computer system controlling everything, courtesy of his brother-in-law David (Merritt Buttrick).  Evans's wife Catherine (Shari Shattuck) committed suicide just over a year ago, but Evans has moved on and started dating a woman named Laura (Brenda Bakke).  One night when enjoying a steam bath she is temporarily blinded and badly burned when chlorine starts coming out of the vents...

Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are the cornerstones of DC, and the major mistakes that Warner Bros. made with the DCCU were writ large on a number of the films featuring those characters, as were the hints of good ideas behind a number of them.  Too many were bloated, mind-numbing failures, full of bad green-screen effects and half-cooked ideas.  Worst of all there were way too many people involved in watering every idea down as executives wanted to play it safe at every turn.  That is where Suicide Squad stumbled and ultimately revealed and solidified all the problems with the DC Cinematic Universe.  The horrible mess Joss Whedon made out of Justice League may be a grand example because of the hell he put the actors through, but there is no better place to look than David Ayer's attempts to bring one of the more interesting comic book concepts to the big screen, only for he and everyone involved to drop the ball so hard that the foundation under the franchise be...

When reading a little bit about the history of Mortuary I came across a few interesting things.  I remember this video cover and it does appear the movie turned a hefty profit.  It would have been hard not to based on the 250 thousand dollars it cost to make it.  However, it ended up with a small distributor because, after it was made, the studio that it was made for didn't want it.  Even the distributor it ended up with commissioned the famous poster and made a trailer, neither of which were related to the actual movie.  The reason for this is because they saw nothing in the film they could promote.  That pretty much sums up everything one needs to know about this film.  Greg (David Wysocki) and his friend Josh (Denis Mandel) break into a warehouse owned by Josh's former boss Hank Andrews (Christopher George).  Andrews owns a mortuary and, as the boys discover, likes to have seances in his warehouse as well.  One of those they see participat...