Convoy dir. Sam Peckinpah (1978)

STEVE says:
I have to admit, we turned The Wild Bunch off after what felt like the first six hours, but after Convoy, I'm thinking of revisiting it.

I love Straw Dogs, I think Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a bit of genius, and Convoy - which I expected to be no more than a 90 minute chase scene - turned out to be kind of, well, fun, and rather highly politically motivated, which came as a surprise as well. I look at The Wild Bunch and I think, "Hey, maybe it was me." There's a reason it's so revered, right? I mean, where would we be without the slow-mo operatic violence of Sam Peckinpah?

Overall, Convoy wasn't bad, but it wasn't great, either. Fun, enjoyable, but not necessarily a classic the caliber of the others. Worth noting, though, is the fact that this is the first movie we've watched that's based on a song. So it gets an extra half-point for that distinction.

2/5

NIKKI says:
You just watch movies like this thinking about how it's never going to be this way again. They just do not make movies like this anymore. Or like Smokey and the Bandit or White Lightning or Cannonball Run or like anything Burt Reynolds was ever in driving a car.

This is a love story about trucks, and at one point, there's even a scene which feels like truck-porn. It fades in and out on the trucks while some sort of classical music piece plays. Like the trucks are doing ballet. The ballet-dancers of the road. It's very strange. And there are broads who fuck in truck cabins and tubby sheriffs who just want to get that Rubber Duck varmint.

The social and political undertones were good -- probably adding smarts to this one that perhaps Smokey lacked. Still, the bar brawl scene is way overdone, and I still don't really know if I liked any of the main characters. But that's this kind of movie, I guess. It's about egos and dignity, broads and short dresses, life on the road in the '70s.

Can someone make me a Wayback Machine?

3/5

Killing Words (aka. Palabras encadenadas), dir. Laura Mañá (2002)

NIKKI says:
Steve might be right -- maybe it is time for a foreign films extravaganza at our place? We're just enjoying them so much lately. I'd forgotten all about this one. We got it from BigPond Movies ages ago. It was so long ago now, that I thought it was a documentary about speech or bullying or something.

How wrong I was. This is a movie about a guy who kidnaps a woman and ties her to a chair. He plays her a videotape of him confessing to several murders of women and children (and taxi drivers, we learn later). Then he challenges her to word game called Word Chains, in which one person says a word and the other person must say a word that starts with the last syllable of the previous word. If she loses, he tells her, he will pluck out her eye.

Then the movie cuts forward in time, to the guy in an interrogation room, and every development you've just seen shifts a little bit out of place, and the film becomes something much more interesting than your basic killer-and-his-prey scenario.

The twists and turns are all really well done. Like 13 Tzameti, this is not a movie that wants to explain everything. It often lets you come to its conclusions rather than handing them to you. You have to do a little work, I guess. And it's exciting, brain-tingling work -- you're all, so he, but she, who's that, what's this... I love movies that turn your brain upside down, that challenge you, that tell stories in non-standard ways.

This is a great film. The direction was good, the acting was absolutely chilling, and the story was intriguing and new. We had a slight issue with the ending, it probably went on five minutes longer than it needed to, but that's not so bad.

3.5/5

STEVE says:
As with 13 Tzameti, the less said about this one, the better. I'll leave it at that, and let my rating speak for itself.

3.5/5

Xtro, dir. Harry Bromley Davenport (1983)

NIKKI says:
I'll admit -- I was pumped. It's been a long time since I've seen that horrible alien face, the face that used to taunt me at the video shop, daring me to take it home and face its evil evilness! Eventually, after I'd watched everything else on the Magnum Video horror shelf, I went for it. I needed mum, though, as it was R-rated, and I was still in primary school (...I know, but things were different then).

So, yeah, it did freak me out. It freaked me out even more watching it last night that I remember so little of it. I remember the birthing scene and the bleeding ears, but not G.I. Joe coming to life and murdering the old lady next door. Or the clown or the spinning top, or the bathtub full of Xtro pods.

My main memory of this is just that awful backwards-body man crawling in the swampy leaves with Xtro's FACE! Ugh.

We discussed the movie, though, prior to watching it, that even if it was bad, it was still deserving of our attention because it has its place in the evolution of horror in the 1980s. What that place signifies, exactly, I'm not so sure. I think it was one of the first movies I remember to take the notion of the scary little beast and make him so cruelly awful -- perhaps a precursor to Bilal in Basket Case, or those ridiculously disgusting slobbies from Society?

It could just be that Xtro exists as the Anti-ET. The video packet, Steve tells me, contained a line about not all aliens being cute and cuddly. Too right.

I think, too, I noticed a subtext about boys going through puberty without their fathers. There's much here in the way of sexual themes and allusions -- the father being reborn, the kid getting mysteriously covered in "sticky stuff" at night, the kid 'walking in' on his mum with her new man, the fact that the kid has a SNAKE as a PET. Okay, maybe that's going too far, but I'm fairly convinced this is a child's coming of age tale in an era of sky-rocketing divorce rates. And that's all any good horror movie needs -- subtext and scary monster.

It was still lame.

1/5

STEVE says:
Okay, new rule: From now on, if a movie has been released in my lifetime and I haven't seen it, let's take it as read that there's a good reason I haven't seen it and just move on.

Xtro had some very good, very wet special effects sequences, an interesting story with a promising subtext, a nude d'Abo and not much after that. Seriously, once the midget clown turned up, I tuned out.

Again, it took me 25 years to watch this and it turned out to be shite. That's a hell of a build up for such a resoundingly bad movie, and I can't help thinking that I'd have been less disappointed if I'd seen it when I was 12.

1/5

13 Tzameti, dir. Géla Babluani (2005)

NIKKI says:
And the preview tapes come through once again... Here's a movie we'd never otherwise get to see. A French film from 2005 that appears to be getting a little DVD exposure in Australia. It's such a small release (and foreign and black and white -- all the killers) that my video shop won't get it. And neither will most others around me. So, without the preview tape, a movie like this would just pass us by. Ugh, think of the ones that must have done so in the past? How horrifying.

Anyway, 13 Tzameti... it's impossible to reveal anything that goes on here without utterly ruining it. We knew very little -- just that a man assumes the identity of another man in order to possibly gain a lot of money. How, what, where, and why is the crux of this. The 'how' part of that scenario, when we learn as the guy does, just what's going on is probably one the tensest moments I've spent ever when watching a movie. Lots of "oh my god"s and "no fucking ways"s. It's not that the 'how' is all that out-there in a conceptual sense -- this isn't Hostel -- but our young, naive hero in this place with these people who appear otherwise sane -- what is this all about?!?!

And the great thing about this film is that it chooses not to reveal everything. We leave still wondering what and why and who, but we don't question that so much because the experience we've just had has been and fascinating and shocking, cruel and brilliant. One tiny thing lets it down at the end -- but I'm looking into the reasons behind it. If I can find an explanation that satisfies me, I may have to lift my rating a full point.

Great, great movie. Apparently Brad Pitt holds remake rights.

3.5/5

STEVE says:
Oh my everloving Christ!

4/5

Psycho IV: The Beginning, dir. Mick Garris (1990)

NIKKI says:
And then it all just goes so horribly lame. CCH Pounder sitting in a radio booth, smoking, acting all high and mighty, spouting nonsense about matricide and boys gone wild. This is a Psycho sequel? Apparently.

The main gimmick here is the flashback to Young Norman, played awesomely by Henry Thomas, to detail just how Norman went a little mad. It's all so standard, though. Think of the absolute to-the-letter textbook case for someone of Norman's particular issue and you'll no doubt pick the problems outlined here. Let's just say, at one point, Norman gets an erection while hugging his mother in bed. And, at another point, she makes him wear a dress. Really? Could you make it any more obvious?

BORING. Were there no creative people in the room when discussing the plot for this movie? But wait, it's written by Joe Stefano, who scripted the first one. Dude, what happened in 30 years that you became so unimaginative, boring, and by-the-numbers? Oh wait -- they gave this to Mick Garris to direct. That makes me think Stefano wrote a masterpiece. Give Garris a script, you know, and it's like in The Simpsons when the tractor keeps falling on Homer. He fiddles with it, it falls on him. He walks by it, it falls on him. He does nothing at all, the tractor still falls on him.

Give Mick Garris a screenplay and a tractor will fall on him.

This is just terrible. Badly acted, badly directed (Garris tries to be Jonathan Demme and fails), with a script so hopelessly stupid and banal that even Anthony Perkins and his giggly weirdness can't save it.

Top 5 Reasons To Make Me Think 'Joe Stefano' is a pseudonym for 'Mick Garris':
1. "You've got a tongue like an elephant's memory."
2. "You see Norman, it's not polite to be naked around a lady unless you're having sex with her."
3. "You will stay locked in there until you learn not to say "no" to your mother when she tells you you're a girl!"
4. "Just me and my trusty umbrella. "
5. "They're closing down the highway and building a new one. They couldn't build it closer to the motel because then the world could still see us! Oh, what am I going to do! How am I going to live! You! Just like my father -- never a drop of sympathy! It's because of you that I can't hold my water!"

1/5

The Dead Zone, dir. David Cronenberg (1983)

The Rachel Papers, dir. Damian Harris (1989)

Psycho III, dir. Anthony Perkins (1986)

NIKKI says:
I had it in my mind that this, too, was a decent Psycho sequel. It's really not. I like the whole thing at the end with his "finally free" of mother, having stabbed her skeleton to pieces. But the rest of the movie suffers from the same over-plotting as the previous sequel. There's just too much going on. Norman often gets lost in these movies as they build plot around him. I don't know, it just didn't work for me.

It starts with the nun, Maureen, leaving the church after accidentally killing another nun. (I'm convinced Diana Scarwid is playing her character from Rumble Fish -- cleaned up, into the nunnery, and then... oops). She wanders away, meets smarmy dolt Jeff Fahey (his Nikki's-Older-Man-Eye-Candy appeal drops a bit here because his character is such a wanker), he sexually assaults her by way of a come on and all goes downhill from there.

Norman takes her in, and lets Jeff work at the motel even though he appears as trustworthy as a talking mouse wearing peak-cap and an eye-patch. He turns the motel into his own little party-brothel and picks up skanks that end up dead. Blah, blah. Maureen falls in love with Norman, who is still haunted by his mother, whose body is now that of the dead Mrs. Spool from the first sequel. But she's not really his mother, but that's okay.

And there's reporter in there working on a story about recidivism, and killers back on the street, and she gets involved, and I believe there's even an allusion to the fact that she might be behind the murders to prove her point that Norman can't be trusted. I don't know, the nunnery, Fahey, the reporter, the Mrs Spool thing... life is never simple for Norman.

I didn't hate this, but I didn't much care for it. I must have felt that last time we watched it back in 2003, because I have no recollection of having seen it so recently.

2/5

Psycho II, dir. Richard Franklin (1983)

NIKKI says:
Apparently we did a Psycho-thon back in 2003, but I can't remember it. Bits and pieces of this one float around in my memory -- Dennis Franz, the new mother at the end, the draining of the swamp -- but much of it I have no recollection of. Especially the return of Vera Miles. Maybe I just blocked it...?

It's not a bad film, by any means. Anthony Perkins is far too enjoyable for that to happen. And it's directed by Richard Franklin of Road Games, so there's a few bonus points right there. The film's issue has to do with one plot element that just shouldn't be there. Remove everything associated with that plot element and you have a taught, interesting little film about rehabilitation and fear, paranoia and delusion.

So, I choose to look at the movie without the New Mother, and her killing spree. It's a bit tragic the makers didn't see the issue and fix it all up. They just didn't need the murders, and the red herrings, and the guessing game. The story about a reformed Norman and what makes him mad again, and these people trying to drive him made but realising that perhaps he's not. Now, that's a good Psycho story.

Still, this one has some great moments. Anthony Perkins and Meg Tilly are great together, and there are lots of references to the original film. Of course, Norman becomes a bit of a Horror Hero at the end, and I feel like we are supposed to applaud his return to violence. I don't know if I like that too much, but it was the '80s I guess.

On to #3...

2.5/5

Psycho, dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1960)

NIKKI says:
What can you say, really? It's a classic. It's still as good now as it ever was. Still superbly written and directed, and Anthony Perkins is still the most frightening killer in film history. And, that bit in the show scene, when she reaches her arm out and pulls the curtains off the railing then just thunks on the ground is still one of the most disturbing thing ever on film. I don't care so much for the "reep! reep! reep!" knife part -- the end of that scene is the shocking bit.

The first time I watched this movie was in my living room, back in the days of one TV and one VCR per household. The Dark Ages. I remember mum and dad were wandering in and out, and I felt a bit cool that I was watching a classic, and a black and white one at that. Mum told me about when she first saw the movie in the cinema, and how she was convinced the blood in the shower scene was red. Dad told me about seeing it, and as usual, remembered the details surprisingly well after about 40 years. Probably not the best atmosphere for the movie, but I remember that day really vividly. It was good.

The movie holds up, anyway. I could watch it more often than we do.

5/5

Rogue, dir. Greg McLean (2007)

STEVE says:
Kind of a Gilligan's Island meets Lake Placid thing going on here in Greg McLean's follow-up to the surprisingly good Wolf Creek.

Don't get me wrong: Rogue wasn't bad. It wasn't anywhere near as good as Wolf Creek, but it wasn't bad. It was much more of a popcorn flick than the other film, so it's already being graded on a curve. I liked it because it managed to take a pretty standard Man vs. Beast premise and had the characters deal with it in ways that didn't go along with convention. Nine times out of ten, at least.

The effects weren't bad, either. We rewound and watched frame-by-frame when one fellow got chomped by the croc, and could barely spot the CGI. Later, of course, it became more evident, but in all it was a mix of CGI and practical effects that didn't have me rolling my eyes every fifteen seconds. It receives an extra point for that alone.

3/5

NIKKI says:
I expected more -- more chomping, more slashing, more blood, more suspense. I expected Wolf Creek crocodile-style. Instead, director Greg McLean gave me a steadily-paced human drama with a big croc in it.

Well-played Greg McLean.

As Steve mentioned, this one took all our expectations and twisted them slightly. Like the scene where they suspend a rope across a river between two trees for the trapped tourists to shuffle across by hand and feet... Steve said -- so how many people will get across before one dies? I made a guess, he made a guess, and we were both so wrong it was embarrassing.

The 10 Little Indians plot device is discarded here, this is not a typical slice-and-dice. No one is here purely for the kill-factor. These characters are developed, their descents into fear are honest and compelling, and while the movie is not afraid to throw a curve-ball or two about, it doesn't rely on its twists to keep us interested.

And Michael Vartan was a good hero. That was the movie's biggest surprise for me.

I also enjoyed seeing John Jarratt, the horrible vicious killer freak from Wolf Creek as a grieving widower. The scene in which he and a small girl share a brief look of understanding is far too special for a Deadly Croc flick. But, of course, this isn't that flick.

3.5/5

April Fool's Day, dir. The Butcher Brothers (2008)

NIKKI says:
What can I say? I thought it would be fun. I thought there was no way it could be worse than the Prom Night remake. I thought we could have a few laughs at its expense.

Turns out, it was the one doing the laughing that we had wasted our limited time giving it the time of day. Oh well. I can not stop thinking that this is our job -- to watch any and all horror that crosses out paths. We are, I've decided, the International Horror Police. You think you've made a horror film? Not until we deem it so! I can no longer chide us for watching shit movies. We have to finally realise, accept and enjoy that it's JUST WHAT WE DO.

(Steve, stop shaking your head -- you know it's true and MUST ACCEPT IT!!)

I'll keep watching them, because one day -- one day -- I will be impressed. In fact, we've been impressed too much by potentially shit horror movies to stop giving them a go. We had the opportunity to turn this off at 27 minutes and we kept going. So, either we know our place in this world, or we're just gluttons for punishment.

I hate you April Fool's Day remake, and everything you stand for.

.5/5

STEVE says:
You see what happens? After watching one-too-many shitty horror flicks, we decide to swear them off, only to get sucked back in again. And again. And again.

This is another one of those modern remakes that bares only the slightest resemblance to the original, in that they share a plot element or two, and manages to suck in new and less exciting ways, a la Prom Night. The thing about April Fool's Day is, you already know the plot twist - it's all going to be a big trick in the end - so why are we bothering to sit through it? Can't we just fast-forward to that bit?

There was no excuse for watching this. (Or for making it, but that's not my watch.) No excuse. I refuse to allow my time to be wasted in this manner yet again. See, my argument isn't against watching shitty horror movies; it's against watching movies that we know are going to be shitty horror movies before we even bring them home. There's a subtle difference.

We've been surprised by a few of these low-rent horror flicks. The Dead Hate the Living, for example, was one we thought we'd just take home and make fun of for an hour and a half. Turned out to be a very funny movie that knew it wasn't high art and let the viewer know that it knew. April Fool's Day was never going to be that.

Nikki's argument that we had the opportunity to turn this off at 27 minutes holds no water with me. We had the opportunity not to watch it all.

.5/5

Awake, dir. Joby Harold (2007)

NIKKI says:
Man, how I love big-budget trash. A movie about a guy who remains awake during a heart transplant and hears chatter in the operating room about a plot to have him killed? How is that not going to rule? But why does it star such big names as Hayden Christensen, Terrence Howard, and Jessica Alba? This is the kind of movie that would have starred Jeff Fahey, Leo Rossi, and Sherilyn Fenn back in the day. And how I would have loved that version, too.

This was schlocky, but it worked. It kept the twists coming thick and fast and, though I have to admit, I guess practically every freaking one of them (I was having a good night), I still liked them. They kept me interested.

The scares were good, too, whether or not they were meant, in fact, to be scares. I don't think I've seen much lately that rivals the "oh my god!" factor of doctors drilling into Hayden's sternum WHILE HE'S AWAKE AND CAN TELL NO-ONE!! Oh, that was horrible.

But, yeah, I liked the concept. It was well-directed. It was reasonably well-written in that the idiot references were far from all over the place as you might expect in this kind of movie. It was cerebral trash, let's say -- the best kind.

3/5

Valerie on the Stairs, dir. Mick Garris (2006)

NIKKI says:
I find Mick Garris quite an endearing person. Whenever I see him interviewed, he appears to me rather free of ego, just a former editor made good, responsible now for some major movies and TV miniseries'. Along the way, too, he has just stumbled into becoming the old-school horror genre fan's resident flag-waver. Lord knows we need one.

It sucks then to have to say it, but Mick Garris is a terrible filmmaker. His scripts are almost always boring and corny, his direction is unsurprising and unoriginal. His style reeks of film-school technique, and he can barely build a scare with even the most horrifying of material. While the remake of The Shining was impressive, Garris's resume also contains Riding the Bullet, Quicksilver Highway, Desperation, and Sleepwalkers -- some of the worst horror films and Stephen King adaptations ever produced.

How does the man keep getting work? How has become so revered? The stature of the names he draws to his Masters of Horror series is beyond comprehension. Horror directors past and present appear to be lining up to work for him. How has the man blinded people so? Am I missing something? Didn't Stephen King himself grow up loving the Universal Monsters, Vincent Price movies, and Alfred Hitchcock? How does the master of literary horror not see the flaws in Garris's super-corny, over-the-top, under-developed work?

It's boggles our fucking minds.

Valerie on the Stairs, based on a story by Clive Barker, is among the worst Masters of Horror films. It's about a guy who takes up residence at a writer's retreat in order to concentrate on his work. Minutes inside the place, and he's disturbed by banging walls and busybody neighbours, all of whom are mysterious and creepy. The banging stops and the writer (Rob) encounters Valerie (on the stairs) who begs him to save her from an unseen force. Valerie is just a chick lit from above, so she's not really all that scary. Blah, blah, blah, Rob discovers that Valerie and the unseen force (which we eventually see in the form of Tony Todd in a ridiculous devil costume) were created by other residents of the retreat. They are in a story and Rob may just be a part of it.

I have to spoil it -- in the end, after so much blood and gore (a guy gets his spine ripped out through his mouth), we learn that Rob is actually a part of the story and at the end his body turns to typewritten paper and his floats away.

Oh my god, Mick Garris -- are you trying to kill me with your ineptitude and lameness? Or do we blame Clive Barker? Something, perhaps those previously mentioned movies, makes me think Barker isn't the problem.

Nothing here is scary. The story is poorly developed. It makes sense, but only a contrived kind of sense. The horror is boring, the script stupid, the point indiscernible. Another so-called Master reveals his failings.

.5/5

Word Wars: Tiles and Tribulations on the Scrabble Circuit, dir. Eric Chaikin & Julian Petrillo (2004)

NIKKI says:
Competitive Scrabble might not be as nail-biting as competitive Donkey Kong and crosswording, but it's still fascinating, especially when viewed from the perspectives of the four unlikely challengers as depicted here.

The players are reigning champion Joe Edley, down on his luck comedian Matt Graham, Marlon Hill from the projects, and phlegm-laden "GI" Joel Sherman. The film follows the guys in the lead up to the 2001 Scrabble championship in San Diego. It chronicles the bizarre friendships between Matt, Joel, and Marlon, and their competitive dislike for Edley.

We watch as each of these men secures his place at the championship and we see how they fare as the event takes place. It's a surprise to see who gets where, and how they deal with their wins and losses. The film is funny and sad, and details the strange havoc Scrabble wreaks on these mens' lives. A majority of them don't work in any sort of full-time capacity, instead living on the bare bones they take home from Scrabble comps. They also seem to have trouble connecting to people, and often live in cluttered homes, filled with word books. Only Edley is different from the other guys, with his Tai-Chi and trumped-up opinion of himself as more a metaphysical Scrabbler than your average word-freak using the circuit as a means of survival.

I enjoyed it a lot -- especially Marlon, who I really wanted to take home the big prize. I think, though, that it lacked the emotional depth of like films, Wordplay, Spellbound, and King of Kong. It didn't hit me on the same level as those films, didn't glue me to my seat, and have me questioning everything about the obsessions in my life. It was a bit more of a surface look than those other films, but certainly worth watching.

3/5

Outpost, dir. Steve Barker (2007)

NIKKI says: We only got because it was rumoured to contain zombies. The Australian DVD cover art makes it look like a war film, so I'd love to know what renters are thinking when the Nazi soldiers start coming back to life...

We weren't expecting too much, so were pleasantly surprised when it turned into a suspenseful, really scary movie. The pacing, the imagery, every beat right on target -- this was a classy experience.

A group of mercenaries head into a war-torn area of Eastern Europe to investigate a long-forgotten WWII bunker. In it, they find well-preserved bodies stacked knee-high, one of which is still breathing. The "breather" is catatonic and doesn't appear to need urgent medical attention, so they take turns watching him while they go about their investigating. The guy sits there, with his head on his chest for much of the film, and is pretty much the scariest thing I've seen since the natives in Welcome to the Jungle.

So, eventually the mercenaries discover that this is a Nazi bunker where SS bigwigs experimented with troops to create unstoppable killing machines -- soldiers who couldn't die. Not all went as the Nazis planned, it now appears -- they may just still be out there. The mercenaries, then, must come up with a way to stop the undead Nazi soldiers in order to escape the bunker.

The breather ends up playing a much more important role here and becomes pretty much the most horrendously scary horror hero you're ever likely to see. Never speaks a word, either.
The rest of the zombies are evil, too, and do some pretty awful things to complete their mission.

I loved this one. Just a freaky, scary good time.

3.5/5

STEVE says: I'll say it now and stand by it in the future: There's nothing cooler than Nazi Zombies.

It's a sub-genre that's not often visited - and hasn't been, in any significant way, since Ken Weiderhorn's Shockwaves in 1977, so the mere existence of Outpost came as something of a surprise. That it was actually good was a bonus. Using Einstein's Unified Field Theory to bring Nazi soldiers back to life as unstoppable Zombie killing machines was a stroke of pure genius, making Outpost a high-water mark for the Nazi Zombie ouvre.

This one's definitely going in our collection.

3.5/5

Michael Jackson's Thriller, dir. John Landis (1983)

NIKKI says: We got to this because I got the idea to watch concert videos on the big screen and pretend I was actually there. How awesome it was. First I watched my new James Reyne DVD, which is very cool -- just James and his band playing the Espy with no crowd. Then I watched Kenny Loggins belt out "Peace of Mind", which is just shiveringly brilliant. And then... Michael Jackson. Steve wanted "Thriller", so "Thriller" it was. Music, turns out, is just as great to watch on the screen as movies and Moonlighting.

How great is "Thriller"? You really can't fault it. It's funny, spooky, and really well put together. It's hard to believe it came out 25 years ago. Wow, that's shocking. I just love young Michael, with his crazy sense of humour, and his love of horror and sci-fi stuff. He just smiles all the way through this (except when he's a zombie), and he looks to be having so much fun. I miss the fun-having MJ.

Anyway... so this was cool to revisit. The zombies look great, the dancing is the best, and I love how it's all about blending artforms and using them to their fullest effects.

5/5

STEVE says: When MTV started running Thriller in December of 1983, my brother Mike was only a little over two years old. He would watch it religiously, every hour-on the hour, kneeling in front of the TV, fascinated by the dancing undead.

Nearly a year later, when all the Thriller hype had died down, MTV ran the video (a short film, really, hence its inclusion here) on Halloween. Twenty-five years later, I can't remember if it was Michael Jackson turning into the Wolf Man, or whether it was the Zombies pulling themselves out of the damp earth, but my brother promptly forget that he'd already seen this clip about 72 times with no adverse reaction, because he started crying, bolted up the stairs and hid under my desk.

He'll kill me for telling you that.

Later, of course, when he was closer to five, he'd be watching Re-animator with me and asking how the effects worked, so this Thriller thing appeared to be a one-time-only episode. It's a great little, flick, though - due largely in part to John Landis.

It was Landis' American Werewolf in London that started this whole thing. Jackson, being a huge American Werewolf fan, asked Landis on board for this clip, and he brought his own style and sense of humour along. Once the Wolf Man part of the story is revealed to be a movie, we can hear one of the actors on-screen reciting Landis' famous in-joke, "See You Next Wednesday", and there's even a poster for Landis' first film, Schlock, hanging outside the theatre. And the disclaimer "Any similarity to actual events or persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental" is a nod to American Werewolf itself.

Credit must be given, too, to Rick Baker and his crew for their Zombie make-up. Only four years earlier, George Romero's Dawn of the Dead opened unrated in theatres because he wouldn't cut it for an R rating. Baker and his crew pulled off some pretty nasty looking Zombies here, some certainly scarier than the legion of undead in Romero's film - and Thriller ran on television... where it could scare the pants off of unsuspecting two-year olds.

4/5

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, dir. Steven Spielberg (2008)

NIKKI says:
Well, this was a surprise. I did not think I'd like it as much as I did. Truth be told, I didn't think I'd get it. I was expecting much talk about arks and covenants and I envisioned myself just missing the point and just waiting for the climax.

How wrong I was. I was with the movie all the way through, and I loved how it was all about aliens and Area 51. There were a few things I didn't get, like why Oxley took the head in the first place, but I'm sure Google can answer that for me. Otherwise, I followed things quite well.

The action scenes were good. I loved the dual car fighting, when Shia and Cate Blanchett were back-and-forthing over two jeeps, and she has the head, then he has the head, then she lands on another car altogether, and then Shia is swinging through the jungle with the monkeys. Somehow, I never questioned the realism of that -- see, I finally got what it was like to be wrapped up in an Indiana Jones adventure. Very cool.

And the ants! The other thing I worried about with this was that it would play too much to the kiddie crowd, but it really doesn't. The ants were the main evidence of that. Gory!

Overall, I enjoyed it. It's currently my favourite of the series.

4/5

STEVE says:
George Lucas has spent the last few weeks promoting Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull by telling all and sundry, basically, "Don't get your hopes up." He reckons that high expectations, not his own mediocre script and tepid direction, are what killed The Phantom Menace, and wants to make damn sure that doesn't happen here.

The difference, of course, is that Crystal Skull has the double advantage of having a good writer in David Koepp, and a great director in Spielberg, so there's no way, really, that expectations could possibly kill it. Right?

Right...?

Well, it's like this. I liked Crystal Skull. I didn't love it, but I liked it, and I don't think that has anything to do with the altitude of my expectations (which were both high and exceeded, by the way, Mr. Lucas). There is simply no way that this movie was going to be better than Raiders - apologies to Nikki - but it certainly had every chance in the world of being better than the previous two sequels. My expectations were based solely on how it compared to the original adventure, and not how it fit into the series, or whether it "beat" the last one, which is how these things are usually judged. Each sequel has to be "better, stronger, faster" than the one that came before it, raising not only the expectations of the audience, but the responsibility of the filmmakers to the point of absurdity, so that after ten movies Jason somehow ends up in space.

David Koepp seems to understand this, and has written not just "another movie" in the Indiana Jones franchise, but a direct sequel (or at least a companion) to Raiders. And in this way, it was better than Temple of Doom and Last Crusade. It beat them without trying to beat them, but by ignoring them completely.

Hats off to you, Mr. Koepp.

4/5

The Evil Dead, dir. Sam Raimi (1981)

NIKKI says:
It's about time. I don't think I've seen this movie since I lived with Steve back in America. And watching bits and pieces of the musical over the last few weeks, I've really been wanting to revisit it. It was pretty much exactly as I remembered it -- just crazy and weird. But, watching this time, I noticed sam Raimi's style developing big-time. The camera moves and the tension-building, the stuff that comes to great use in his more mainstream, leter films like A Simple Plan and The Gift.

I still hate the effects, though. Which is to say, the zombie make-up. I know they only had a small budget, and the latex stuff is the best they could afford, but it's not really that. It's more the sheer gruesomeness of the goo dripping from mouths (the oozing white stuff, remember that?), and the blood and the gore. Eew. I don't know, perhaps I like my zombies streamlined? In a George Romero way?

Still, the thing is just nuts. And so funny, and Bruce Campbell is just great. The tree scene, though, remains far too graphic! Nobody needs to see that!

3.5/5

STEVE says:
I had an opportunity to see The Evil Dead in the theatre back in New Jersey in 2001. I was working on Midnight Mass at the time and went with the director, Tony Mandile, and the script supervisor, a Russian girl named Gloria, to an all night horror movie marathon: Return of the Living Dead, Re-animator, a "surprise" third film (which turned out to be Romero's Day of the Dead), and The Evil Dead.

Sadly, we didn't get to see The Evil Dead. We had to leave at 4am, right after Day of the Dead, in order to get back to Point Pleasant to catch two, maybe three hours of sleep before getting up for our 8am call time. Watching it now, on our little-big screen here at home, I'm kind of glad it turned out the way it did.

My friend Vince and I watched The Evil Dead for the first time, probably around 1985, and I remember thinking it was one of the worst horror movies I'd ever seen. It took forever to get started, and once it did, it had only lame-ass make-up and special effects that would ultimately degenerate into some silly Claymation puppetry by the climax. This was, after all, the age of Savini, and shit like this just wasn't going to cut it.

Never have these limitations been more obvious than on our big screen. I can't imagine what it would have looked like in a theatre.

Having said this, I've come to see beyond the effects since watching it with Vince (hey, we were 14 - effects were all we cared about in our horror movies back then; effects and boobies), and can appreciate the movie now for the story and for Raimi's directorial style, so maybe it wouldn't have been so bad had we stayed to see it in Jersey. It's one of my favorite horror films, and I still argue, after watching the 2nd and 3rd movies devolving into comedy and using the horror as a punchline, that it's the best of the lot.

4/5

Flashdance, dir. Adrian Lyne (1983)

STEVE says:
Once again Pop Culture has led me down a dark alley, tempting me with promises of pretty things, only to beat the shit out of me and take my wallet.

2/5

NIKKI says:
I still have my wallet, but I'm starting to doubt my memory.

Flashdance has never been one of those dance films I revisit constantly. It's not a Footloose or a Dirty Dancing, or even a Fame. This, I thought, wasn't because I didn't like it, but because I didn't have it. It was never on TV late at night for me to tape and watch until the tape could take it no more. (I was so afraid my Dirty Dancing tape was broken that I recorded the movie onto cassette tape and transcribed the screenplay -- the hard copy of which I recently stumbled across in a box of LPs).

Still, I've always held the movie in relatively high regard. I bought it the first chance I got, and was more than thrilled to do so. And then we watched it...

My god, has it been that long? If I really think about it, I probably haven't seen the movie in 16 years. I remember watching it with two friends I only hung out with until Year 8. I have no real memory of it after that. My Year 8 self thought it was great. Now, though, the Adrian Lyne veil of smut and misogyny drips all over every frame and I just want to kick everyone in the Special Features who refer to the movie as a girl's empowerment piece.

It's not a girl power movie if a girl has a man's job and wants to dance. It's not a girl power movie if she sleeps with her boss (she's 18 and he's pushing 40) and acts like a child every time the relationship becomes too adult for her. It's not a girl power movie when the boss has to save her all the time. It's certainly no girl power message when she only decides to go back to the ballet school not out of a desire to take her passion and make it happen, but because her old friend who was in the Follies and told her to follow her dream finally kicks the bucket.

Alex doesn't dance her way to success here, she stumbles and falls and is guided towards her goals by everyone around her. And don't even get me started on the outrageous stereotyping going on with the friends and bit-players here. Check this out: Alex and her friends are working out in a gym that's got all white walls and looks like Olivia's Physical video (lots of crotch close-ups). They're all bitching and moaning about guys who won't call (because that's what girls do). The black girl, with a name I don't think we ever heard, says in response to all the bitching: "Man, am I glad I'm not a honkey".

Right.

So, you see where we are. The film's other major issue is its structure, which is terribly off. The first half is just a bunch of stuff that happens intercut with dancing scenes. I'm really shocked, too, that the famous running-in-place work-out scene to "Maniac" came so early (and, weirdly, abruptly stops, so much so that Michael Sembello is mid-lyric and Alex mid-hop when the film jumps to Alex on her bike). In dance movies, the big dance scene is supposed to break tension, reveal to us the main character's true self through dance (a la Ren's punch-dancing moment of zen when he decides to take on the Bomont anti-pop establishment). Come on, do these people know nothing?

And then there's the sex. Oh my god. Now, I love Adrian Lyne for one reason: Foxes. One of my all-time favourite films, and one of the most inspirational as far my formative years go. (I tried so hard to be Annie, felt more like Madge, ended up just like Jeanie -- but, strangely, didn't end up kissing Scott Baio at the disco as obviously planned.) But, oh the sleaze. "Ain't you two a couple of cunts," one character says. And there's just so many crutch-shots that I'm starting to get the significance of the word "flash" in the title.

When did this movie become so adult?

Anyway... the music is still great, and the dancing is awesome. But though it claims to the movie that inspired a generation, it really isn't inspirational at all. Make things happen? Alex only really does that when her boyfriend tells her to and everyone else around her dies or fails miserably at their own dream. You go, girl!

2/5

Raiders of the Lost Ark, dir. Steven Spielberg (1981)

NIKKI says:
Another great pic for the big screen. This is the kind of movie that was made to be seen in cinemas -- noisy, action-packed, lots going on in any given scene. The movie was so awesomely big, I was noticing the bugs buzzing around on set. Just perfect.

I'm glad we watched this, really, as we're going to see the new movie this week sometime. I've only ever seen this movie once before, so now I'm caught up on most of what I'm sure will be referenced in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Even with all its good points, I'm still not really drawn to this kind of movie. I don't know what it is, but adventure and swashbuckling and all that stuff just doesn't really grab me. I found, during bits of this film, that I was zoning off a bit. I know the action scenes are great, but they just don't do for me what I know they are supposed to. I feel this way about Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, National Treasure and all those big sort-of movies that are about the effects and caves and ships, and, I don't know.

Steve said to me when I brought this up that he couldn't understand how I could give Fame 4.5 stars when it has no plot and is just about a bunch of people dancing. That's a hard one. It's just a matter of interest, I guess. I don't relate to a movie like this the same way I'd relate to a movie like Fame. And, plus, I don't have the history with a movie like this one. I was 21 the first time I saw it, 20 years after its release. The same year I saw Star Wars for the first time.

At the risk of going on about it, I know it's not a bad movie. It's a fun, adventurous, rip-roaring ride -- exactly what it is supposed to be. Isn't it weird, though -- I feel like there's something wrong with me because I'm not into Indiana Jones! I can't explain it. I used to tell Steve that space movies just leave me cold, but I've since rethought that as I love Alien and I loved 2001. I think it's more to do with adventurous missions -- I can't think of one movie featuring such a mission that I am hugely into. I don't know. Will ponder more and see how the new movie goes later this week...

3.5/5

STEVE says:

"We are simply passing through history. This, this is history."

Which pretty much sums up the way I feel about this movie.

This pick was kind of a cheat, as I have seen Raiders in the theatre at least twice - once in its original run and once in re-release - but with the new movie coming out, I wanted to watch the other three as a lead-in, and now that we have this screen, why the hell not?

4.5/5

Fame, dir. Alan Parker (1980)

NIKKI says:
My first choice in "Awesome Movies on the Big Screen Week". I haven't watched Fame in a while, so it was good to have a revisit. I still love it. I still think it's first-class filmmaking. I still think Alan Parker is a God. And, you know what? For something so totally steeped in '80s-ness, its '80s-ness is really not that distracting. We found ourselves picking on the fashions and phrases more when we watched the pilot episode of the TV show (which we did directly after this, because -- why not?).

Fame is about kids starting their lives, deciding what they want to do, and finding out who they are. The movie follows them through their four years at the performing arts high school and along the way they learn about themselves and each other through good times and bad hair days. Every single one of these kids is likable, and easy to relate to. Everyone is just trying to figure their shit out, and they make mistakes and they fix those mistakes, and eventually they graduate, prepared (mostly).

One thing I noticed, though, when watching this was that every time a new character was introduced, I felt my heart break a bit. As soon as you see Doris on the stage trying to sing "The Way We Were", oh God, all the memories just come flooding back. I feel so strongly for everyone in this movie. It's like they're real people you've known and hung out with. It's weird. I was so glad that even Steve appreciated just how good the kids were, as actors and characters.

And the music is awesome. It was so easy to tell which Mega-God songwriter (*cough* Dean Pitchford) was not involved in the TV show as soon as New Coco opened her mouth to sing the tragic "Take Me" song, or whatever it was. Ugh. The songs in Fame -- "Red Light", "I Sing the Body Electric", "Fame" -- are just so great. And Irene Cara on the piano doing "Out Here on My Own" (which I believe was written by Lesley Gore) is just soul-melting. I'm shocked Irene Cara isn't up on a Whitney-height cloud of reverence in the Pop World. She's just got the most pure, beautiful voice.

Anyway... so Fame. It loses a half-point for its structure, which I find leaves some unanswered questions. But it's still a classic, still a great dance movie, even better when largified on the screen.

4.5/5

STEVE says:
They should have called it Lame.

No, I'm kidding, but that pun was just too deliciously bad to pass up.

Actually, no, really, Fame wasn't that great a movie. The songs were great, the acting was phenomenal (for people, 90% of whom weren't actors), and the dancing was... interesting, but as a movie it was sorely lacking something.

Plot, maybe?

I'm sitting there watching people come in and out of auditions, waiting for an inciting incident, when suddenly it's 20 minutes in, auditions are over, and we've hit the turning point. The hell? So maybe the audition sequence was the inciting incident, kids getting accepted, that sort of thing. But 20 minutes of it?

The rest of the script is no better, giving all the other plot points - pinches and the ever-important midpoint - completely a miss and just plowing through the four years of high school. We're given snapshots instead of development, and it's annoying. Leroy and Coco are apparently an item, but when Leroy is stolen away by rich-bitch Hilary, Coco hardly seems to notice. Suddenly we're in Junior Year, Leroy and Hilary are headed up to her place to do "homework", and that's the last we see of them until Senior Year when Hilary is getting an abortion. Does Leroy know? Does Leroy care? Moreover, why should I?

3/5

Jaws, dir. Steven Spielberg (1975)

STEVE says:
So we got offered this LCD projector. Nikki's friend Trish who works at a local kindergarten says they've got one they're looking to get rid of but can't find a buyer. Meanwhile, I'm getting light-headed. I've wanted one of these for years but haven't been able to put the $1300 together to pick one up. Turns out the kindergarten only wants $350 for it.

Light-headedness turns to outright dizziness, and I'm starting to sway back and forth. Nikki grabs my arm to steady me. That's about 26% of what we'd pay for one new.

And a new one wouldn't come with a big-ass 6X6 screen.

I was thinking we'd just project the movies onto the wall, or a sheet, something. But the screen is part of the package. Yeah, that sealed the deal.

So we brought it home and have been watching the occasional movie on the screen, only taking it out on special occasions, but those occasions came more and more frequently until finally we just hooked our TV up to the computer and are now using the screen exclusively.

This week is dedicated to Movies We Wish We'd Seen In The Theatre. My first pick was Jaws.

If you haven't seen it by now, chances are you're not going to. And if you have, there's no need to recap. You already know it's awesome. I'll say only that, getting to experience it finally on a big screen (not 40 feet tall, but still mighty impressive) was like seeing Star Wars or Blade Runner again in widescreen instead of the crappy VHS pan and scan version I'd been subjected to for years. Very nearly a religious experience.

4.5/5

NIKKI says:
Lovecraft Week is over and Steve and I have moved into a week of "Movies We Want to Watch on the New Awesome Screen". Steve picked some big sci-fi and horror pics -- all among his favourites, while I've gone for something a bit, let's say, dance-ier (which involved a trip to the video store with eight dollars in silver coins to buy Xanadu... more on that during the week).

We flipped a coin to see who started, and ended up with a night of huge sharks! It was so great. Steve up on the couch with Fulci, me down on the floor resting on some huge pillows, looking up at the wall consumed by beaches and boats. It was great. It really felt like the cinema.

And a great opening movie. I'd forgotten just what a brilliant movie Jaws is. It's the quintessential movie when it comes to pacing and structure. There's not a superfluous or redundant moment -- every word, every action is necessary to develop and further the motion. It's just superb on that level. And it's still scary. I still jump and squeal when the shark pops his head out. As well, I still laugh at the jokes, I still get freaked out when Quint acts mental, and I still feel the frustration Brody and Hooper go through when faced with Amity's Mayoral roadblocks. It all holds up magnificently.

I really love, too, that the final action takes place in the daytime. I never really thought about it before, but Quint's demise and Brody's eventual blowing up of the shark are all in broad daylight, which really subverts the standard notion of horror or terror. It's bright as Quint is swallowed, so instead of creeping that up in darkness, we're watching it take place in morning light, no Hitchcock-y shadows, no crazy camera moves -- and it's way more horrifying.

So, great experience, heaps of scary fun. A brilliant movie that gets better with age.

4.5/5

The Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter, dir. Jean-Paul Oullette (1993)

NIKKI says:
Pony-Woman is back! Only she's slightly grosser because the beautiful woman inside her is now outside of her and she's just a raging demon.

Again, I found myself liking this one. Again, it's got much to do with the characters, who return (complete with original actors) to sort out,once and for all, this problem with the "unnamable" creature.

Here, Carter finds a way to free Alyda Winthrop from the clutches of the creature, thus offering her a chance to spend her last days as a regular person. This means, for her, running about nude until age catches up and she shrivels to a skeleton. It means, for Carter, that he can harness the evil and rescue mankind.

There is much running and chasing, and lots of scenes with Howard looking confused. But it's not so bad. I liked Lovecraft Week, even with The Curse. Makes me want to read the stories a bit more, and seek out some other adaptations.

2.5/5

STEVE says:
This was an unsuccessful sequel to a not-so-successful-in-the-first-place Lovecraft adaptation, but at least the first one bore some resemblance to the story that inspired it. Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter has the unenviable task of not only measuring up to the original film, but also being an adaptation of another story altogether, one that has nothing to do with The Unnamable.

The story is meant to pick up where the last one left off, with Tanya being helped into the back of a police cruiser, Damon being loaded into an ambulance, and Carter trying to get the police to believe his mad story of The Unnamable. Nevermind that that's not how the first one ended at all. The Unnamable ended with Damon, Carter and Tanya practically skipping back to town, Necronomicon snuggled tightly under Carter's arm. Here, Tanya is nearly catatonic - and never seen again after the opening sequence - and Howard (which is now the character's surname, as the movie insists he is Eliot Damon Howard instead of Howard Damon, as in the first film) having been mauled by the Unnamable beast in the house. This is a plot device, apparently, to get Howard to the hospital where he's visited by a ghost in a very Lovecraft-cum-Dickens twist.

Silliness abounds for the next hour and a half plus, and John Rhys-Davies and David Warner pick up their paychecks. It wasn't as bad as The Curse, but - to borrow a line from Huey Lewis & The News' much overlooked third track on their breakout album Sports - Bad is Bad.

Dawn of the Dead, dir. George A. Romero (1978)