Phantom of the Opera (1998)

It's hard to believe this is the product of the same guy who brought us movies like Tenebrae and Suspiria. Phantom of the Opera was neither dark nor clever, nor...well, anything. I'm not sure what Argento was attempting to do with this movie other than showcase his daughter, Asia Argento. Critics mark it down as macabre, chilling, haunting, and so on, but in actuality it's quite boring. A formal apology should be given to Gaston Leroux in the afterlife for defiling such a work of art.

Too bad I can't end my first month of Horror Dose on a high note, but Slasher Franchise Month is just around the corner, and we'll be kicking it off with Friday the 13th! Plus, I'll be finishing up Laymon's Midnight Tour tonight--it's been a while since I've reviewed a horror book on here.

Anyway, back to the title at hand. So, the plot deviates from the original and we get a Fabio-esque phantom who lurks in the catacombs and was raised by telepathic rats. Huh? Yes: telepathic rats! I should've read the synopsis before watching it, but I was so elated to find that Dario Argento had done a remake of this classic that I dropped it in the queue and anxiously awaited its arrival. Unfortunately, the performances are as lame as the plot entails. If you want to watch a good movie about rats raising children, check out Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles instead.

Argento's Phantom of the Opera has a handful of gory scenes, but seems unsure of itself while trying to mix the macabre with romance and fun.

Review Soundtrack:
Incubus - "Redefine"
Yngwie Malmsteen - "My Resurrection"
Dave Matthews Band - "The Dreaming Tree"

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Re-Animator (1985)

It wasn't long ago that Bo over at The Last Blog On The Left told me to reserve my judgement on best 80's horror movie until after I had seen Re-Animator. It took a few weeks, but I finally got around to watching it last night. Bo gave me sound advice, and I just might have to call it on Re-Animator, a bizarre bloodbath based on an H.P. Lovecraft story. If you know anything about the warped, dark recesses of Lovecraft's mind, you should already have a good idea about this movie's antics.

The plot has to do with an obsessed scientist who has devoted his life to re-animating the human brain after death. Like most resurrection plots, its format follows the usual lines: scientist finally resurrects an animal, but its behavior is erratic and most often deadly; scientist moves on to humans without perfecting the elixir on animals; humans come back to life, but with grotesque side effects. If you like this movie, you'll love both Stephen King's Pet Sematary and Richard Laymon's Resurrection Dreams, the latter being far more disturbing, but the former being better writing. Eventually, the good-hearted medical student and his fiancee--who happens to be the Dean's daughter--get pulled into the world of the mad scientist.

Like most movies of its time, Re-Animator is campy and out of control, but it is also a pioneer. Of all 80's horror I've seen (some reviewed here, most not), Re-Animator really pushes the envelope with gore and a good story. I suppose you could give all the credit to H.P. Lovecraft for the solid, harrowing story, but credit is also due to Stuart Gordon for wonderfully directing this masterpiece of horror cinema. Yeah, the acting is over-the-top, but in this movie it works. I can't even call it forced acting because it fits the mood of the movie so well. Like I said, it's over-the-top.

So, as I've pointed out, the movie follows a predictable format until the last half hour or so. That's when things take a turn for the worse, and the best. The movie suddenly takes on a new skin and mixes graphic gore with clever humor. I wondered why they made a point of showing the Talking Heads poster during the intimate scene in the beginning, and then, lo and behold, a talking head orchestrates a blood-soaked, aberrant ending with a great twist!

Shredded skin, resurrected cadavers, brains, arms, legs, gouged eyeballs, severed (talking) heads, a destroyed feline; Re-Animator new nominee for best 80's horror.

Review Soundtrack:
Pink Floyd - "On The Turning Away"
John Legend - "Heaven"
Gojira - "Vacuity"
Radiohead - "Creep"

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Demons 2 (1986)

Not much to say about this movie. Completely devoid of imagination and creativity. A complete copy and paste of Demons, but with a different venue. Basically, you can read the review for the first Demons and imagine that the movie theater is an apartment building. No new avenues of the plot are explored, and some of the cast is even reused (e.g. pimp as weightlifting instructor).

Okay, to be fair, there is one new addition in this bland sequel: a gremlin! That's right. A tiny, beastly gremlin is introduced for a brief time and then destroyed. Besides that, the format is such a replica of its predecessor that we even get the car full of zany youngsters cruising around, but they never even intersect with the happenings at the apartment building. What was the point of these people? They are out driving around, speeding, and then crash into a car, but I never made any connection to the plot.

This probably shouldn't have annoyed me as much as it did, but I can't get past the childbirth scene at the end. Perhaps, in keeping with the same format as the first movie, Bava wanted to throw something in that made us cock our heads the way the helicopter did. Suddenly, in the midst of chaos, the girl goes into labor. With only the assistance of her boyfriend (fiance? husband?), she pops the baby out sans umbilical cord and miraculously jumps right up and escapes the apartment building. I know I shouldn't be a stickler for these types of things since it's a horror movie, but man, couldn't that have been thought through just a little bit? The only part worse than this was when the weightlifting instructor went from trying to break the front door with a steel pipe to a potted plant. Yeah, if a steel pipe doesn't break through the glass I seriously doubt a potted plant will do the trick.

The only thing I really liked about the movie was the costumes; they were slightly better, and the green slime was scrapped. My advice: watch Demons and stop there.

Review Soundtrack:
Alice In Chains - "Would?"

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Battle Royale (2001)

I finally got around to watching Battle Royale, and I feel like a better person for doing it. Seriously, everyone needs to watch this masterpiece. It reminded me of Lord of the Flies, but the children are Japanese and have lethal, often military-grade, weapons! The plot seems bleak, but it plays out in a manner that is both entertaining and dreadful. There is even an element of humor mixed into the bloody warfare, not typical of Japanese movies.

The government imposes a new law to enforce punishment on schoolchildren who are abusing the system. Random groups of the schoolchildren are taken to an island, handed survival kits, and given three days to fight until only a single person stands. After three days, if more than one person is still alive, everyone is killed. Each aforementioned survival kit includes bread, water, and a randomly chosen weapon. The "weapons" range from a GPS device to a grenade, with everything in between.

I want to feel ashamed for watching a movie about teenagers slaughtering each other, but I can't. This was too good a movie to keep quiet about. Like Lord of the Flies, the movie did a great job exploring tough situations and decisions as kids formed alliances, dealt with their friends being killed, and fought to escape their own death. On top of all the gruesome battle, a layer of romance is used to bring the children to life.

Battle Royale is bloody, yet symbolic and thought-provoking. The actions kicks off almost immediately, pulls you in, and doesn't let go until a felicitous ending.

Review Soundtrack:
Sky Eats Airplane - "Patterns"
As I Lay Dying - "94 Hours"
Job For A Cowboy - "Embedded"

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Pelts (2006)

Argento's Pelts is the first MoH entry I've seen so far that gives Miike's Imprint a run for its money. Dario Argento took a decent plot and poured on the graphic gore to produce a highly disturbing horror flick. Honestly, I cannot decide which was more disturbing to watch: Pelts or Imprint. What do you think?

The plot seems like it was thought up by a couple of guys out drinking. Some fat guy, who makes and sells illegal fur coats, is obsessed with a local stripper. He recovers the deadly pelts from one of his suppliers and aims to use them to sleep with her. Okay, it's deeper than that, but who cares? The point of this movie is to evoke terror and repugnance...and it gets the job done.

My favorite thing about the brutality was that it got increasingly worse. I hate it when the most vicious kill is done at the beginning of the movie. As the movie went on, each brutal scene got harder to watch. the special effects were equally mind-blowing; I couldn't believe how realistic they were. I'd have to say it's a tie between the guy cutting into his stomach with the scissors and the kid snaring his face at the beginning, as far as most uncomfortable to watch.

One last thing to note is how, like Jenifer, Argento connected the beginning to the end with the severed raccoon arm!

High honors for Pelts, a shrine to self-mutilation. Now, help me figure out whether I should move Imprint to second place.

Review Soundtrack:
Kanye West - "Heartless"
The Melvins - "Mechanical Bride"

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Vacancy 2: The First Cut (2008)

I had the pleasure of watching the first Vacancy movie in the theater, with my skittish wife clinging to me! Though Vacancy 2 didn't have lead actors like Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson, it was an enjoyable, and interesting, prequel. Like the first one, it was able to maintain a good level of suspense despite the audience already knowing everything about the operation. More than a few times, I was certain the movie was going in direction A and it went in direction B; I like it when that happens.

The best thing the movie had going for it was allowing the first couple--the just married couple--to go unscathed. This immediately raised questions for me as I expected the movie to jump right into the tormenting and killing. The two creepy motel guys even look at each other and say, "let's get to work," after the husband eagerly leaves the front desk. Once the couple peels out of the parking lot, we find that they are just making simple voyeur films at this point.

Next, we get this strange character who, unbeknownst to the motel guys, is a murderer and sets the whole operation we witness in Vacancy into motion. After the new snuff film operation is underway, the movie does a good job making you pull for the original two motel guys, but not for long. My attention began to wander during some of the narrow escape scenes with the three kids; it was rather mundane, but served its purpose.

Vacancy 2 is among the better prequels out there. It's not pulse-pounding suspense, and the gore level is moderate, but it definitely keeps you on edge in the way a realistic thriller does.

Review Soundtrack:
Unearth - "Bled Dry"
Ben Harper - "Burn One Down"
Opeth - "The Drapery Falls"

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Tenebrae (1982)

Well, I was supposed to get Demons 2 next, but it went into "short wait" at the last minute, so Netflix jumped ahead and shipped Tenebrae. I've gotta say: I'm glad they did. This wasn't very horrific--until the bloody ending--but actually more of a "who-did-it?" mystery. Cheers to Argento for a good piece of writing that made great use of red herrings, and kept me guessing until the last ten minutes.

That's not to say that it isn't dated, cheesy at times, and that it doesn't have much in the way of gore until the end, but the movie as a whole is pretty darn good. It actually reminded me a lot of a Richard Laymon novel. Which one? Well, all of them, really! Laymon is constantly throwing red herrings into the mix and killing cute, likeable little characters we have come to love relatively quickly. Similarly, Argento lured my favorite character--the hotel owner's daughter I believe (Maria?)--right into the belly of the beast. Tragic moment!

Famous writer's new bestseller unleashes a vicious serial killer who selects victims and leaves notes based on the writer's book. It's a plot we've seen/read before, but Argento's directing makes it enjoyable to watch. For the most part, the acting was solid. The detective and the literary agent were my favorite characters, based on acting. Both had uniqe personalities and looked comfortable as their characters on the screen.

So, overall, Tenebrae didn't blow my mind, but it was a pleasure to watch; good serial killer mystery. I'm looking forward to continuing with Argento giallos, including Inferno, Deep Red, and Opera. Oh yeah, and of course, Demons 2 and the like, once they start shipping.

Review Soundtrack:
Dave Matthews Band - "Too Much"
Primus - "John the Fisherman"
Sky Eats Airplane - "The Artificial"

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House on Haunted Hill (1958)

For my first review, it was suggested I take on the original House on Haunted Hill. I remember seeing this back in '99 when the remake came out and I quite liked it, but the original sucked. I tried to keep in mind the context, but this just sucked. I probably won't be going retro for a while after this, thank God.

A poor attempt to pull off a handful of plot twists, and laden with terribly wooden acting, especially on part of the wrecked blond who screamed constantly like a whistle. The film almost redeems itself with the entertainment we get from the husband and wife, but it's all moot in the end.

This is yet another campy, cheesy, not-scary horror movie classic. For those of you aiming to use these classics as history lessons, @#$! these history lessons. I like horror movies, especially offbeat cult films. Do I need to paste the definition of horror in here?

I probably won't say this a lot, but, save your time and watch the remake.

Sombre (1998)

It seems that I'm doomed to watch one movie per decade that leaves me mystified, frustrated, bewildered--well, just plain stumped! As a kid, I was rendered speechless (an amazing feat if you knew me as a child) by Fantasia. As a teenager, I discovered Mulholland Drive by David Lynch. I remember the DVD came with an insert that listed 10 clues to look for in order to unlock the mystery of the movie...I'm still looking for a reasonable explanation. Now, in my 20's, I have discovered this decade's puzzling movie. A little French film called Sombre.

The plot is about a serial killer who drives around France strangling prostitutes. This is one of those films that aims to stand out as a brilliant work of art, but if this is art, I'm Michelangelo. In French, sombre means dark, which describes both the mood and the lighting of this movie. The first 50 minutes are so poorly lit I could barely see anything, save for maybe a pinhole of light, an arm here and there, some guy's hair blowing in the wind, and so on. Aside from poor lighting, the movie is reminiscent of Mulholland Drive in its dreamlike scene changes that are supposed to build mystery and suspense, but actually weighted my eyelids with sleep. After an hour of all this dreadful camerawork, and maybe four lines of dialogue, I fell asleep.

Upon waking, I skipped back to where I left off and witnessed some of the thinnest character development I've ever experienced. The serial killer encounters two sisters who find him peculiar, but instead of yielding to their women's intuition, they continue to hang out with him. None of their actions have any rationale. Finally, I just turned it off, and I hardly ever turn a movie off before it's over. I have the same policy on books: Always finish what you've started.

If the point of Sombre is to make its audience feel the way a confused, maniacal serial killer feels, it succeeds. As far as I can tell, it's a misogynistic film, portraying women as weak and feeble-minded.

Review Soundtrack:
August Burns Red - "The Blinding Light"
Morphine - "The Night"

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Demons (1985)

Filled with slimy, bloody, flesh-ripping, gratuitous gore, and over-the-top acting, Demons may just be the most entertaining movie I've ever seen. Although, when it finished, I felt like I had missed some things, so perhaps you can fill in the gaps for me. But regardless of the missing pieces, I'm marking this one down as my favorite 80's horror movie, bar none. I knew I was in for a real treat when I saw bands like Pretty Maids, Mötley Crüe, and Accept on the soundtrack!

Okay, like I said, I feel like I missed some things. I mean, I didn't fall asleep or anything, but for me there are four distinct loose ends. The first concerns the guy with the chrome Phantom of the Opera mask who appears in a reflection on the subway train, then in person to hand out tickets, then in a reflection at the movie theater, and finally on the roof at the end. Who is this guy? He never says anything that I can recall, though he does utter a sinister chuckle or two at the end, just before he is killed. What, specifically, does he have to do with anything that happened?

Similarly, my second question concerns the girl who works at the theater. When we first see her, she is suiting up in a green outfit that makes her look like one of Santa's helpers. I could be wrong, but the movie seemed to be alluding to something with all of the mischievous looks she gives. I expected her involvement with the demonic activity to be revealed at some point (was she in cahoots with Phantom of the Opera Guy?), but she ends up just running around clueless like everyone else until seized by a demon.

The third question I have concerns the movie played at the screening in correlation to the movie theater itself, The Metropol. I couldn't help but wonder if The Metropol was built around the church/graveyard featured in the screening, or something. Is the history of the church/graveyard ever explored further in any of the Demons sequels?

The fourth, and final, question about the movie concerns the scene where our last surviving hero and heroine are trapped in the theater, surrounded by demons and looking for a way out. Suddenly, we hear noises from above, and just as our heroine acknowledges the noises, a helicopter miraculously falls through the ceiling. I can just imagine the writer sitting there with a cup of coffee, tapping his notepad with the end of a pencil, trying to figure out how to get the survivors out of the building: Well, I've already shown that the demonic forces are keeping the doors barricaded, and it's a movie theater, so there aren't any windows. Hmmmm...oh! I've got it! A helicopter falls through the ceiling! Did I miss something, or is this the most random part of the movie?

Other than the helicopter scene, which blew my mind, my absolute favorite moment was when the hero somehow manages to drive a dirt bike over the tops of movie theater seats, slaying demons with a samurai sword, all to the pounding rhythm of Accept's Fast As a Shark (I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was Fast As a Shark)! This is priceless cinematography folks.

Demons defines a must-see horror flick. I can hardly wait for the arrival of Demons 2 and all of the movies that aim to be Demons 3: The Church, Black Demons, and Demons 3: The Ogre. Hopefully I'll get more exposition; if not, I'll check out the director commentary on each disc.

Review Soundtrack:
Achilles - "The Dark Horse"
Behold... The Arctopus - "Canada"
The Red Chord - "Antman"

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