Xtro:
My first time in a video store, I wandered into the horror / Sci-Fi section of the two bit shop and my eyes fell on the box cover to this British movie. It boasted several quotations that guaranteed this would not be my first rental for the new VHS player my family got for Christmas that year, but it did stick out in my mind for several years. But, when I was old enough to start renting movies this title still seemed like a forbidden taboo that I shouldn’t cross. As the years went on, I sort of lost track of ever finding the movie again but it kept scratching at the back of my mind. I eventually remember watching it late at night, severely cut on one of the USA network “late night” shows, but it really didn’t seem to make much sense. So I put it on my Netflix queue and waited, not with especially baited breath (I had long since lowered my expectations based on various reviews of the film).
Late on Saturday night, I flung Xtro into the DVD player when my gaming group left the house and laid out on the couch to enjoy the film. A father is abducted from his family, his young son the only witness. Three years later, he comes back a changed being and wants his son to join him in the stars. So… okay, that’s as basic a rendition of the storyline as I can figure, but the movie is such a mess that it’s hard to follow some of the logic of the things that are going on. It’s also hard to figure whether the father’s return is a good thing or a bad thing, even though some truly disturbing and terrible things are happening as a result. There is plenty of grue to satisfy the gore-hound, but the movie is so bizarre and strange that it’s just hard to take it seriously. It seems that being partially transformed into an alien creature by his father has given the boy, Tony, some special powers and abilities that simply defy any sort of belief.
It’s not a good movie, but there’s a strange fascination and appeal to the movie that makes it worth watching. The bizarre elements are all thrown together in a blender and the audience just sort of has to sit there and watch things happen with little to no explanation. I remember watching Eraserhead with the same kind of wonder. The surreal nightmare quality of Xtro was probably less purposeful, but it still works as a strange little oddity in the world of cult cinema. Check it out, but don’t expect to be blown away.
2.5 out of 5.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
X-Cross:
Honestly, where and how do I start with talking about this movie? Two young women travel to a distant village where they intend to relax in the natural hot springs and get away from the rest of the world. One girl recently broke up with her long term boyfriend, the other is a promiscuous man-hunter, and their friendship is somewhat strained by their uncertain affection for one another. Few things are truly what they seem when the girls separate and their stories take divergent paths linked only by their desperate attempts to reach one another on their cell phones. Time is a fluid commodity for the director as he travels back and forth through the same moments, giving us different views from each of the two protagonists.
One girl discovers the terrible secret of the village and finds that she’s only the latest victim of the traditional sacrifices practiced by the misshapen residents. Worshiping their victims as “Living Gods”, they ritualistically remove the left leg and hang the mummified corpses as scarecrows around the village. Afraid for her life, only one real question continues to haunt the girl… did her friend lure her to the village?
Meanwhile, the other girl is stalked by a homicidal lunatic wielding various shears. Having wronged her attacker some months back, the girl is chased and attacked by her insane assailant who never seems to stop. As she tries to find some means of escape, she is also holding back on a secret from her friend.
A mishmash of styles, the movie shifts from eerie and frightening to slapstick comedy and fan-boy action without even the slightest degree of contrived awkwardness. Both stories, and all the mysteries, unfold and converge in an explosive climax. X-Cross is a brilliant little film from Japan with plenty of action, laughs, and gore to satisfy the genre-minded fan boy.
4.5 out of 5.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Blood Moon Rising
Zombies, Werewolves, vampires, Demons, aliens, and a witch converge to open (or close) the gates of Hell in this low budget love letter to the Grindhouse experience. Cut with fake dirt, missing footage, and horrible sound, this movie delivers the sleaze and the grue in buckets with one quipped one liner after another. Ron Jeremy makes a cameo appearance for all of about four minutes, but the film is virtually carried by it’s two lead actors when a comic-book nerd and party-skank are employed as saviors to the World against legions of monsters thrown together with bottom dollar effects. We have zombies, vampires, werewolf bikers, demonic knights, and the daughter of the Devil herself running wild! It’s a chaotic jumble of genre baddies, but the film comes together with typical grindhouse simplicity as the good guys just blast their way through most of their problems.
Now, obviously, I had a blast with this film. But I need to point out the faults because I don’t share the same interests with… well… a majority of the rest of the world. Everything that worked in the movie could also work against the movie. It was chaotic, with some creatures switching sides for no apparent reason, characters dying and then coming back as either a werewolf, zombie, or vampire through various means and the double-billing of it’s lead actress as both the heroine and the villain. The acting flipped between overdrive and wood, sometimes in the same scene, and the effects were bottom dollar stitched together rubber costumes. The only area where I thought the film truly suffered was in the sound quality, with crappy over-dubs and some dialogue that just went too low with the high volume soundtrack music. So if any of these things are a major irritant to you, than skip it and rent something a little more friendly to your interests.
4 out of 5.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Hills Run Red
Fans are always on the look out for the next “Holy Grail” in horror. They track down rumors and hearsay regarding films that have fallen to obscurity, extreme movies touching on the raw nerves of the few fans privileged to experience such epic horror. Rarely do the films ever live up to the expectations, but we still keep an eye out for them and we still track them down and we still watch them. That’s the general premise behind “THRR”, the search for the Holy Grail when a fan makes his search into a quest and manages to track down the daughter of an obscure director to a film only screened once. It’s not a new storyline, to be honest. The film uses the same Self-Irony of the Scream franchise, the “Torture” scenario from Hostel, the psychotic backwoods setting of the Chainsaw Massacre, and the Trademark Killer from 80’s Slasher movies to shove a quick little gore fest that brings a few interesting twists but is otherwise the same stuff we’ve seen a hundred times before. And that’s the way it should be!
Horror films don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time they get a green light. The Hills Run Red gives you exactly what it promises to give you; a quick little run through the guts and the gore with a couple of laughs thrown in to keep it safe. Baby Face is a fun little iconic image, the kills are twisted little gore-bits, and the characters are neatly packaged for a quick little jaunt that clocks in at nearly an hour and fifteen minutes. Some of the effects work better than others, but the film had over-all satisfying feel to it and is worth the time of a rental and a cheap purchase.
4 out of 5.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Inglorious Basterds
Once upon a Time in Nazi-occupied France…
This isn’t about historical accuracy. Tarantino’s “Spaghetti Western” employs the mythic storytelling of the Italian Western and sets it in the desolate desperation of France during the Nazi occupation of World War 2. He fills his movie with colorful characters, not the least of which begins with the title characters led by “Apache” Aldo Raines. A group of Jewish-American Soldiers dropped behind enemy lines in order to perform acts of sabotage and to terrorize the German forces before the Americans initiate their landing on the beaches of Normandy. Brad Pitt chews up his dialogue as Raines, a grizzled veteran with a deep southern accent and a mysterious scar across his throat. The rest of the Basterds are highlighted by Donnie Donowitz (played full tilt by Eli Roth), and a psychopathic ex-German enlisted man named Stiglitz. But the whole movie is virtually hijacked by Tarantino’s villain of the piece, a devoted SS officer whose nickname is “Jew-Hunter”. This character opens the film for us with one of the most compelling scenes that truly wrap you up in precisely who he is, what he does, and what kind of obstacles our heroes have to overcome in order to achieve their mission. In the same scene, we are also briefly introduced to Shosanna, a character who becomes pivotal to the rest of the story as she flees the Nazi forces and eventually finds refuge under an assumed identity over the course of several years.
The plot is simple: The Basterds are tasked with aiding a British operative as he infiltrates the World Premiere of a film directed by the Nazi high command, featuring the true story of a Nazi sharpshooter’s heroics. The object is to kill as many members of the high command as they possibly can, including the last minute inclusion of Adolf himself! Multiple schemes and plots converge at once for an epic ending. The movie is violent and features the usual poetic dialogue that’s made Tarantino so popular.
There are some problems I had with the movie, though. He seems to be repeating himself as many lines of dialogue seem to be taken straight out of Kill Bill and Jackie Brown. They weren’t pivotal lines and could have been thrown out in favor of something less familiar, but it may be that Tarantino didn’t even realize the repetition at the time of his writing. Additionally, the film seemed far too short for the story and the characters… which may sound odd for a 2 hour war epic, but with so many interesting characters it seemed that Tarantino could have done more with them had he taken more time. The Basterds, especially, seemed to have less screen time than just about anyone else in the movie. With rumors about a prequel to the film, this could probably be rectified by bringing some of the cast members back for another waltz through the landscape of World War
2. 5 out of 5.
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