31 Horrors: Hardware (#22)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

Well this was insane and I loved it.

It's hardly surprising to discover that Richard Stanley's 1990 sci-fi/horror action flick received a poor critical reception upon its release. It's a tough film to pin down, seemingly a pastiche of so many different films that it's hard to keep count - post screening my friends and I labelled Blade Runner, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, The Terminator, Alien, Short Circuit, Rear Window, Total Recall, Vertigo, and several more as obvious influences - and yet one that, despite it's mad sloppy screenplay, proved to be an intoxicating winner. It's an exhausting hoot of a film that shows flutters of such astonishing technical finesse that I couldn't help but admire its chutzpah even when it was flapping about like a fish out of water. I loved this movie, perhaps against my better judgement.

Set primarily in one of those futuristic dystopian cities that became so popular in the aftermath of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner where the skies bleed red from nuclear radiation and the cityscapes are dark masses dotted with neon and fluorescent. Hardware begins with the emergence of Dylan McDermott's Moses out of the desert where he has been scavenging for spare parts. Taking some mysterious, but uber-cool, electronics home to his girlfriend who uses these type of foreign objects in her industrial artworks. They live in a world riddled with dirty violence and people are lining up for voluntary sterilisation to reduce population growth. Naturally, the machine from the desert wakes up from its robotic sleep and begins to wreak havoc in exceedingly violent and explosive ways.

I'd never actually heard of this movie before I saw it on a Halloween night double bill with, what else, Halloween at the Astor Theatre. It shares nothing in common with that 1978 classic, so it was a double bill in horror goodness only, but I'm glad I got the chance to see it and to do so on a big screen. The astonishing editing and production design is best experienced on a cinema screen where they merge to form a dizzying collaboration. As the film continues to go higher and higher with its batshit craziness - culminating perhaps in a truly confounding, eye-popping sequence that takes a bit of visual influence from 2001 and Vertigo - I was continued to grow fonder and fonder. Richard Stanley, working from a screenplay (an admittedly odd, muddy one) by Stanley, Steve MacManus, and Kevin O'Neill, never lets up and isn't afraid to go to some truly unexpected places. The gore, too, which rears its head in the final act is certainly a bright and red in a gleeful fashion.

As a visual feast, it ranks alongside Blade Runner, Dark City and The Matrix as dying worlds on life support. It's visually stunning. The claustrophobic one-set nature is obviously derived from Alien, but Stanley is still able to do some interesting, fresh things with it. I admired the performance of Stacey Travis, more the star of the film than McDermott, and found she was able to make the preposterous sequences glisten with genuine emotion, not to mention blood, sweat and tears. Even when it descends into a grotesque Real Window moment of voyeuristic perversion, she keeps the film from spinning off of its axis, something that Stanley clearly had no interest in.

This hallucinogenic, post-apocalyptic, weird, crazy horror extravaganza was a real treat. Evil robots are always fun, but I don't recall seeing anything this flat out bonkers. A movie without blinkers on in its wide-eyed technology-is-evil-yo attitude and that has the balls to really go to some odd places. I loved it! And who can resist a movie in which Iggy Pop features as a radio DJ? A-

31 Horrors: Dead & Buried (#14)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

It took actually seeing this movie to realise I've spent my entire life having absolutely zero idea of what it was about.

One of my earliest movie memories is adoring the video cover of the Dead & Buried VHS in the horror isle of the local video store. So many of the images in that section of the shop left imprints on my brain, but Dead & Buried was one of the greatest. As I've said though, you could have asked me what it was about about and I would have had to shrug my shoulders. I certainly wasn't aware it was about voodoo zombie clans running around taking photographs of victims. I would have guessed it was about some sort of alien creatures emerging out of the Earth to attack a group of horny teenagers. Ya know, I'd just assume.

The poster labels Dead & Buried as from "the creators of ALIEN", but there's really nothing at even remotely similar to Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece. Not in terms of scope or talent, and certainly not in terms of scare factor. It has a nice, novel setup - new arrivals to the town of Potter's Bluff start popping up dead and the new Sheriff must investigate, leading the way to all sorts of grisly revelations involving the town's beloved mortuary owner (Bernie he is not) - and several scenes really work fabulously, but it never really gets out of its shlocky '80s groove to become anything more. It actually reminded me a lot of Stephen King's The Tommyknockers (or vice versa, I suppose, since that novella came out in 1987 and the miniseries several years later) with its horde of calm zombie creatures.

There are moments throughout Dead & Buried that give major hints at what the final product could have been, but director Gary Sherman somewhat fumbles the ball in the final act. The reveal of just what has been going on this town doesn't have quite the impact as it should. It has a great look to it, with a lot of beautiful polish - certainly more than I was expecting from a film of that era - and the make-up effects are deliciously grotesque from time to time (although what's up with the baaad finger effects of the final scene?), but I never truly got the horror of the story. For a film that was once designated a "video nasty" in the UK, it comes off as awfully easy to watch. B-

Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 3 of Scream 2 (0:13:51-0:15:52)

In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!



SCENE 3 of Scream 2
Length: 2mins 1secs
Primary Characters: Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), Mickey (Timothy Olyphant), Cici Cooper (Sarah Michelle Gellar), "Film Class Guy #1" (Joshua Jackson) and "Artsy Teacher" (Craig Shoemaker)
Pop Culture References:

• Alien and Aliens (used as another example of sequels being better than the original, quoted by "Film Class Guy #1)
• The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (another example, quoted by Randy)
• The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (another example, quoted again by Randy)
• House: The Second Storey (the lead off to a discussion about horror movie sequels)
• James Cameron (Mickey has "a hardon for Cameron")

And with this I apologise for being so delayed with this, but life happened and I don't always have oodles of spare time to devote.


The story goes that Cici wasn't meant to be in this initial classroom sequence, but was instead introduced along with Rebecca Gayheart and Portia de Rossi's sorority sisters a longer version of the scene that comes after this, but when this class sequence needed to be reshot they threw Cici into it. I think it was a good move since it's not only creates some relationship between her and Mickey (when otherwise there was next to none) and, also, it adds a little something extra on repeat viewings. Knowing that inside Mickey's head he's all "you're gonna die soon!" when she makes that crack about James Cameron's hardon (you totally know he's angry about it and wants revenge.)

I guess it's really how "the story goes" though, is it? I mean, it's how the story was. The deleted scene of the film class in the cinema class room featured no Cici and the script pages specifically detail the extended sorority pledge scene with her and Sidney. I think it makes Cici's death a bit stronger, too, since she's not just another hair-flicking sorority girl. Poor Cici. She seems like one of those cool girls from school that would actually be nice to the plebs beneath her and who wasn't as dumb as people thought.


Hi Mickey! Your introduction is a bit less suspect than Billy's in Scream, but you're discussing horror movie sequels so you were instantly a suspect, even if you're not actually in much of the movie. Isn't that funny, it feels like the killers in Scream 2 are in it far less than Billy and Stu were in the first. It makes sense in "Debbie Salt"'s case since so much of the Scream universe plays around Sidney and her actions and bringing those two in front of each other before the finale was impossible, but they could have easily thrown Timothy Olyphant a bone and given him a scare sequence earlier in the film. Although in retrospect it was probably them just trying to deflect suspicion.

Or, now that I think of it, I can't remember, but was Mickey always the killer? I remember they had to change the killer's identity when the script leaked. Hmmm.


Oh Randy.

*sigh*

I was so glad they realised how effective Jamie Kennedy and Randy were in Scream and decided to bump him up to a bigger role (well, since he checks out early it's probably even less of a role, but of bigger significance!) Although, to be honest, he and Sidney did lose a big chunk of their friends so Sidney had no other choice. I like that they go to the same college. It's feels very "we're survivors, we stick together" on them, doesn't it?


Oh hai Joshua Jackson.

Just think, if there was no Scream 2 then there'd be no Dawson's Creek, which means there'd be no Joshua Jackson walking around all moderately-famous, which means he wouldn't be on Fringe and dating Diane Kruger and looking all swank. Mmm... where was I?


"Are you suggesting that someone's trying to make a real life sequel?"


"Stab 2? Who'd anybody wanna do that. Sequels suck!


I like Cici's "huh?" face and yet she turns around and asks Mickey to "name one" sequel that surpassed the original.

For what it's worth I too would say The Godfather Part II and - duh - Terminator 2: Judgement Day (it's nestled tightly in my top 10 of all time!), but not Aliens. Love Aliens, but I prefer Alien. I mean, they're completely different movies anyway so comparing them feels at odds.

Other sequels I would have used (in 1997) would be Batman Returns, Wes Craven's New Nightmare (although, admittedly, couldn't really use it in this scenario, could they?), Child's Play 2, Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn and, er, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. That's a discussion for another day though. Since Scream 2? The Bourne Supremacy, The Dark Knight, Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me and, er, Step Up 2: The Streets. That's a discussion for another day though.


Oh Randy. This is film class and yet future Pacey Witter is in fact correct. Right? Or am I getting it wrong?

I'm so glad I couldn't grow facial hair in 1997 since I would have copied that ridiculous beard of his since Randy was my favourite at the time (after Gale, of course, although now I'd rank him after Gale and Tatum.)


"House 2: The Second Storey"
To which Randy replies that "the horror genre was destroyed by sequels." Not sure I agree with that since there have been many good ones. I do, however, look forward to the possible "remake" scene in Scream 4. I mean, surely they can't ignore that, right?


Oh Timothy Olyphant. You're so handsome and yet another actor who has come from such humble beginnings as the Scream franchise and become a respected actor. Just like Liev Shreiber!

This scene is obviously one of the most famous from the entire trilogy. Much like the "how to survive a horror movie" sequence in Scream (and nothing from Scream 3, amirightladies?), this "sequel's suck" conversation says so much about what Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven were doing with this movie. Almost like doing an autopsy at the same time as performing surgery. And you know why they know certain sequels succeed and others don't (noted again during Randy's "rules of a sequel" scene coming up later), they are pointing it out to audiences and all but demanding they take Scream 2 seriously. "We're not just another dumb sequel" type of thing, yeah? Great stuff.

Scream:
Intro, Scene 1 Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12, Scene 13, Scene 14, Scene 15, Scene 16, Scene 17, Scene 18, Scene 19, Scene 20, Scene 21, Scene 22, Scene 23, Scene 24, Scene 25, Scene 26, Scene 27, Scene 28, Scene 29, Scene 30, Scene 31 Scene 32, Scene 33, End Credits

Scream 2
Scene 1, Scene 2