¡QUÉ HORROR! 2020

Candidate #6

COLOR OUT OF SPACE

(September 2019)

“... and then there was this ‘Boom!’ like, like, like a sonic boom, and a big flash, like a pink light…
“Or actually, I don’t even know what color it was, it wasn’t like any color I’d ever seen before, and then everything just blew up, or fell from the sky…”

The Gardners are working through a trying family situation when things get really effed up after a meteorite crash lands on their isolated alpaca farm in Richard Stanley’s outstanding Color Out of Space.

Being a huge fan of Stanley’s lo-fi SF classic Hardware, I was understandably both anxious and hopeful when news broke of his intent to adapt H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space,” so I’m frankly relieved that the film came out spectacularly, and that I loved it as much as I do.

Stanley and co-writer Scarlett Amaris refract familial dynamics through the kaleidoscope of Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, shining that unearthly-colored light into the cracks and crevices of the fault lines that run through any family (no matter how apparently well-adjusted), to uncover the wriggling mutations that breed in the darkness of neglect, misunderstanding, and generational trauma.

Produced by SpectreVision (Go, Frodo!), this is a hallucinatory, unsettling, and mind-blowing first taste of what Stanley hopes will, heh, evolve into a trilogy of Lovecraft adaptations.

So, yes, hopefully more where this came from!

“Drink? I’m having one.”

Parting Shot 1:

Not only do we have a cast that includes Joely Richardson, Tommy Chong, Nicolas Cage, and a menagerie of animal actors with awesome names like Rowan, Lucifer, Xibanga, Bruno, and Ulisses, we also get a significant appearance of the so-called “Simon Necronomicon,” which my brothers and I actually had a copy of (the Avon paperback, if memory serves me correctly) way back when…

Parting Shot 2:

There’s also more Lovecraft to be had this year, with HBO’s adaptation of Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country, scheduled for an August release.

Co-produced by J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele, Lovecraft Country more directly engages with the writer’s more problematic views on race.

Parting Shot 3:

Stanley’s adaptation makes a fine double feature with Alex Garland’s Annihilation…

Just saying…

(Color Out of Space OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

SANTA CLARITA DIET
(January 2017)

"... On the other hand, maybe nothin’s impossible. Who would have ever thought an octopus and a kitten could fall in love?
"It’s on YouTube. You gotta see it. It’ll give you hope.”

There’s a select group of actors who, because of a Single Fantabulous Film (or TV Show) that they helped shepherd into reality, have got a lifetime Pass from me; they can choose to come out in whatever kind of film or series they want, and I will have no right to look at them askance or criticize them, because I’m eternally grateful for that Single Fantabulous Film (or TV Show).

Nicolas Cage immediately comes to mind. Because he produced E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire, I can forgive him for a lot, even (gulp) The Wicker Man remake.

There’s also Drew Barrymore, who now has two lifetime Passes from me: the first, for Donnie Darko (executive producer), and the second, for Santa Clarita Diet (again, executive producer). And she backed both up with her star power by appearing in the cast.

Thanx, Gertie!

“No. Don’t do anything, okay? Just relax.

“I’m dead. It can wait until tomorrow.”

Barrymore and co-star (and co-executive producer) Timothy Olyphant are husband and wife realtors, Sheila and Joel Hammond, doing their best to cope with Sheila’s new titular diet, which is (gasp!) human flesh.

Seriously, I haven’t had this much fun with anything zombie since Shaun of the Dead.

Which is why I’m talking about it here, outside of the ¡Qué horror! rundown, since this isn’t really a horror show, so much as it is a comedy with some horror elements.

“Maybe we should just keep driving. Go home, get some clothes, and just never come back.”

“Well, that’s crazy! We can’t just run away. Where would we go?! Oh, we have so much equity in our house!”

“Ah! I didn’t think about the equity! I’m a monster.”

The beauty of the show though is, as much as it’s about the hijinx that result from Sheila’s zombiefication, it’s just as much about the way a family deals with seismic upheavals, about finding family wherever you can, and embracing the reality that, even if something’s changed, that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful.

And not only do we have Barrymore as the newly confident and energetic Sheila, and Olyphant as the weed-smoking, occasionally manic Joel, but there’s an excellent supporting cast here too, starting with Liv Hewson (as their headstrong daughter Abby) and Skyler Gisondo (as lovable creeper next door, Eric), and stretching out to the two cops who live on either side of the Hammonds (uh-oh), Richard T. Jones and Ricardo Chavira (who also happens to be the jerkface stepfather to the aforementioned lovable creeper Eric).

Oh! And a 2-episode appearance by Grace Zabriskie! So awesome, ‘cause we all know there is No Such Thing As Too Much Grace Zabriskie!

And for another dose of awesome, Portia de Rossi shows up at the tail end of the season (in a role that was apparently written specifically for her).

“Hello.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood.”

“Just saying ‘Hello.’”

“I know your ‘Hello’s, honey, and that one was pouring me a glass of wine.”

If you’ve frequented the Iguana in the past, you’ll know that we’re pretty big here on atypical titles of bone-tired genres, and most everything zombie these days is so SO tired. So I wasn’t going to pass up the chance of trumpeting Santa Clarita Diet just because it wasn’t full-on horror. (Here’s hoping Netflix renews it for a second season.)

I dubbed I Am a Hero “the perfect antidote for those all-too-relentlessly grim soap opera zombie titles.”

I was wrong.

Santa Clarita Diet is the perfect antidote for those all-too-relentlessly grim soap opera zombie titles.

Boom.

“I really don’t think I bit him.”

“But what if you did? And what if that makes him turn, and then he bites someone, and they bite someone and pretty soon, we’re like the biggest a$$holes ever!”

(Santa Clarita Diet OS’ courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com & impawards.com.)

reVIEW (43)
SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE

“Our battle, our struggle, is to create art. Our weapon is the moving picture.
“Because we have the moving picture, our paintings will grow and recede. Our poetry will be shadows that lengthen and conceal. Our light will play across living faces that laugh and agonize. And our music will linger and finally overwhelm because it will have a context as certain as the grave.
“We are scientists engaged in the creation of memory. But our memory will neither blur, nor fade.”
-- F.W. Murnau

Nicolas Cage certainly has an interesting view of vampires.
In 1989, he starred in Robert Bierman‘s Vampire’s Kiss, a black comedy in which he played poor, befuddled Peter Loew, who believes—perhaps mistakenly—that he’s been bitten by a vampire.
11 years later, Cage chose as his feature producing debut, E. Elias Merhige’s brilliant take on Nosferatu, Shadow of the Vampire.

Here, noted German director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (John Malkovich) sets off to film (without the widow Stoker’s permission) Dracula, and in the interests of authenticity, has a real vampire (Willem Dafoe) pretend to be an actor named Max Schreck, to play Nosferatu’s Count Dracula stand-in, Count Orlock.
As early as that singular premise—with its funhouse mirroring of truth masquerading as fiction, to play a fiction which is both truth (as Schreck/Orlock really is a vampire) and a double fiction (Orlock is merely Dracula, under a different name); all of this, of course, a fiction of a truth, as we see a behind-the-scenes-look-that-never-was of the making of Nosferatu—it should be plainly evident that Shadow of the Vampire is so much more than your average cinematic blood-sucking experience.
With a script by Steven Katz, Shadow of the Vampire asks the central question, How far is an artist willing to go for his art? And in asking that question, Shadow also explores the double-headed metaphor of art as vampire, and art as a means to immortality.
It also takes the film industry to task. Humourously, by poking fun at how a star’s ego can hijack a production, and darkly, by presenting the camera (in the film, merely an extension of the director) as cold, apathetic observer and recorder, as leecher of vitality and life, an idea which reaches its apex in a chilling sequence that touches on the ultimate disposability of actresses in the grand old Boy’s Club of movie-making.

Merhige takes all of this weighty material and crafts a tantalizing portrait of the high cost of art and the dangers of obsessively brilliant artists.
And who else to play the narrative’s obsessively brilliant artist, but John Malkovich?
Malkovich’s Murnau is calculating and exacting, a cinema despot who asks his extras not to “act,” but rather, to “be.” In his white lab coat and goggles, he is the mad scientist only too willing to go to extreme lengths to complete his celluloid Monster.
But he meets his nemesis in Schreck, a role that Dafoe clearly dives into with relish. As part of the ruse, his Schreck is apparently the ultimate method actor, appearing to the cast and crew always in costume, and constantly in character.
And if you’ve seen Murnau’s Nosferatu, you’ll note that Dafoe nails the oddly disturbing mannerisms actor Max Schreck displayed in that classic of German Expressionism.
But it isn’t just that peculiar physicality that Dafoe brings to his performance. He also brings a humour, curiously both self-effacing and cunningly self-aware, as when, in one scene, he is at first coached as to his character’s motivation, before taking his first stab at ad lib.
Dafoe also brings a strange air of pathos to his character that serves to inform a role that could easily have been all melodramatic pantomime gesture and Vaudevillian tics, with some genuine longing and emotion.
What gives Shadow even more of a kick is how awesome and effective the rest of its cast is: genre stalwart Udo Kier, Eddie Izzard, Cary Elwes, Catherine McCormack, who all go about recreating scenes and sequences from Nosferatu like skilled and particularly respectful grave robbers, making the film, aside from everything else, a wonderful homage to a masterpiece of black-and-white cinema.

Shadow of the Vampire also has much in common with films like John Madden‘s Shakespeare In Love and Ken Russell’s Gothic, films which use actual historical figures to propose a fictional scenario that ultimately informs an artist’s work and creative sensibilities.
Or, as I put it earlier, films that show a behind-the-scenes-look-that-never-was of a film, or play, or novel.
So at this point, I think it should be stated in so many words: Shadow of the Vampire may have fangs, but it really isn’t about neck-biting and blood. It’s a fascinating and complex entry in the vaults of vampire cinema, one that is only willing and eager to be discussed and debated over.
After all, with so many funhouse mirrors around, it makes it that much harder to determine, where is the real Monster of the piece?
The ancient, bloodthirsty creature, only seeking to slake its inhuman thirst?
The despotic director, to whom all are merely a means to an end?
Or the film itself, the aforementioned end, for which all else is sacrificed?

Parting shot: A review of Merhige’s follow-up to Shadow of the Vampire, Suspect Zero, can be found in the Archive, where the article series “The Cinematic (Un)Life of Count Dracula” can also be found. Part I (“A Symphony of Shudders”) discusses F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu.

(Shadow of the Vampire OS courtesy of impawards.com [design by Samuels Advertising]; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)

THE DRESDEN FILES

Okay. A little something about me: my standards are high when it comes to the weird sh*t.
So, when a show like The Dresden Files comes along, I kind of hold my breath just before I watch the pilot. You never know, right? A new show like this could be another Millennium, another X-Files.
Sadly though, that isn’t the case here.
Harry Dresden (Paul Blackthorne) is a wizard for hire, a specialized private detective with powers, ala Clive Barker’s Harry D’Amour, who apparently advertises in the yellow pages, and gets consulting fees and favors from the Chicago PD (as represented by Detective Constanza Murphy; Nip/Tuck’s Valerie Cruz). In the pilot episode (“Birds of a Feather”), Harry gets involved with a young boy who is of much interest to some dark and sinister forces; a young boy who reminds Harry of himself at that age.
In and of itself, the set up and premise are serviceable, if not particularly stunning and original. At best, we could hope for something passably watchable, right? Somehow though, the pilot doesn’t even work on that level.
To begin with, Blackthorne doesn’t have quite enough gravitas to command the viewer’s attention. Not even little bits of voice over can help us sympathize with a character that just doesn’t come alive. Dresden isn’t really a person we end up caring for by pilot’s end, and if we can’t even care about the main protagonist, what can we hope to muster for the supporting cast?
And, speaking of gravitas, that’s something that the pilot’s baddie, the Skinwalker (played by Deborah Odell) doesn’t have any of, either. So when the pretty anticlimactic finish comes along (using a weapon which is, in true tried-and-tested fashion, established in a scene early on in the episode), all it really elicits is a sad, slightly exasperated sigh.
The one bit of interest in the entire episode is the idea of the Raven Clan, though even that is marred by the lead Raven (credited as the “Raven Man”) looking slightly like Bela Lugosi with some curious voice distortion going on.
There really wasn’t a lot that was commendable about this first shot in the arm of The Dresden Files, so, to be fair, I had a look at the second episode, “The Boone Identity.” Of course, as if fate wasn’t really on Harry’s side, the second episode had “Egyptian mumbo-jumbo” as its centerpiece, and the funny thing is, I’ve got a yen for “Egyptian mumbo-jumbo,” so my standards for that are pretty high too.
Again, nothing really outstanding for me to take note of, and the body jumping angle isn’t really explored to its fullest, so much so that Cruz is cheated of an opportunity to show us some acting chops (Murphy’s body is hijacked by the baddie, but we don’t really see much of baddie-in-Murphy’s body). Not to mention that the ghost fx in the episode’s climax were pretty sad-a$$.
All in all, unless things get markedly better, I really wouldn’t recommend The Dresden Files; the first few episodes of Supernatural seemed to be more watchable, and even that show couldn’t hold my attention past half a dozen episodes.

Parting shot: It should be noted (for those of you interested in these sorts of things) that Nicolas Cage is one of The Dresden Files’ producers.

(Originally posted 020307)

GHOST RIDER (Review)

Here’s a mind-boggling mystery that puts Easter Island and the Marie Celeste to shame: how the Hollywood money people could put Mark Steven Johnson in charge of another superhero film after the dreadful Daredevil.
Didn’t any of them watch that? And for that matter, didn’t Nicolas Cage?
Well, if they did and they still went happily along towards their grim fate which was Ghost Rider, then they deserve whatever may befall them, particularly bad reviews.

After a perfunctory voice over by Sam Elliott (who plays the mysterious Caretaker), we are introduced to the young Johnny Blaze (Matt Long, from TV’s Jack & Bobby), a stunt cyclist working with his father (Brett Cullen), and making googly eyes at Roxanne Simpson (Raquel Alessi).
Johnny’s plans to run away with Roxanne are curtailed when the young man discovers his father has cancer, and makes a deal with Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda): Johnny’s soul for the eradication of the cancer.
Well, M being who he is, takes away the cancer, but still screws Johnny big time, so the poor schmuck is forced to make the painful choice of staying away from Roxanne. Of course, given how these things go, he doesn’t bother to explain himself, just rides away on his motorcycle, leaving Roxanne drenched in the oh-so-dramatic pouring rain. Cad.
Years later, after Johnny has morphed into Nicolas Cage, M and Roxanne (now Eva Mendes doing her best impression of a TV reporter) both come back into his life simultaneously, while M’s son, Blackheart (Wes Bentley) is off to usurp the throne of King of the World from James Cameron.

Now, as the flaming-skull-headed Ghost Rider, Johnny has what is called “the Penance Stare,” where looking into the gaping holes where his eyes should be makes you experience all the pain your evil deeds have caused in the world, leaving you a blank-eyed husk, presumably feeling nothing at all.
One of the biggest problems I had with Ghost Rider was the fact that watching it was like being in a post-Penance Stare stupor. Nothing I saw on the screen engaged me enough to make me feel anything beyond a vague annoyance and a dim impatience to finally see the end credits start to roll.

To begin with, I am asked to accept as the protagonist a character whose personality tics (the Carpenters music, the jellybeans) are so annoyingly contrived, as to turn the character into more of a caricature than he already is. The melodramatic finger-pointing and comedic faces-in-the-mirror just make things all the worse.
On top of that, I am then asked to accept as the protagonist’s love interest, a complete cipher. This is just too much…
Given that the romance takes a sizeable chunk of screen time, I feel I should be able to see exactly why Johnny loves Roxanne, right? To get me invested. To make me see why Johnny is so torn up by the situation. To make me see why he cares so much for her. But all Roxanne is is a pretty-looking vacuum, true believers! She isn’t a character, she’s a walking plot complication.
Actually, come to think of it, I don’t see what Roxanne sees in Johnny either. (Unless of course, you’re the kind of girl who falls for the Nicolas Cage type, which is what you get here, basically. A flaming-skull-headed Nicolas Cage, decked out in spiked leather and chains.)

This is painful, people.
Seeing Peter Fonda in this kind of a movie isn’t all that surprising, really, but to see Wes Bentley here is a massive disappointment. I mean, Ricky Fitts was like a personal god to me, but Bentley is so awful here, it’s almost like it was some other actor who starred in American Beauty. Whattup, Wes?
Sam Elliott, of course, can do the cowboy archetype in his sleep, so he’s fine here, if sorely underutilized. (The final act the Caretaker does for Johnny is so irritating, you’d think twice about the character’s level of intelligence.)
Donal Logue meanwhile, has the thankless task of being the sidekick/semi-comedy relief, and is another sketched-in blur passing off as a character, who is given little more to do than try to talk Johnny out of doing the dangerous jumps, and interrupt his viewing of a martial arts monkey.

Now, if it seems I’m ripping into the actors, that isn’t entirely the case. I mean, who can blame them if the script they’re acting out is a turkey? (Well, maybe we can blame their agents, for getting them this gig…)
Johnson the director isn’t the only one with blood on his hands. The scriptwriter is one guilty culprit as well, and…
Oh. I see.
Johnson wrote the script too.
Well.

And you know what’s even more horrifying than the movie itself? Three things, actually.
One: Ghost Rider has so far grossed over $83 million dollars, the biggest movie of the year to date. Yet another mind-boggling mystery to add to the list.
Two: With that sort of money, Sony will definitely be thinking “sequel.” Oh, joy.
Three: Johnson is actively developing the Vertigo comic Preacher for HBO. (I think he’s writing the script for the pilot right now.)

Johnson has to be stopped.
Daredevil and Ghost Rider are the sort of comic book movies that make comic book movies look bad. Singer and Nolan and Raimi have fought hard to bring a certain legitimacy to the genre, and directors like Johnson and Tim Story (of Fantastic Four infamy) just piddle over all their hard work.
I don’t want to write off HBO’s Preacher before I see a single frame of it, but man, if it blows, I hope Garth Ennis rips Johnson a new one…

Marvel has to be stopped too.
I mean, they get lucky when it’s a Fantastic Four or a Ghost Rider: a bad movie that still, bizarrely, rakes in the dough.
I never thought I’d say this, but we need more Elektras! More bad Marvel movies that bomb at the box office.
Maybe then Marvel will wise up and take their time to get things right.