Horror Movie-A-Day-A-Thon-Apalooza-Fest: 10/27

Feature Presentation: Zombieland (2009)

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Rating: 8 out of 10

I didn't expect what I was about to see with this one. A zombie comedy 5 years after the the benchmark for this little sub-genre, Shaun of the Dead, doesn't have a chance of surpassing that great film. And it doesn't. This is a different monster altogether, just out to whip some ass and show the audience a great time. It succeeds on both fronts.

Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), the awkward college student with a list of rules for surviving in the current state of the planet, Zombieland, teams up with the Twinkee obsessed Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) to try to survive. Along the way they meet a couple of con-sisters, Witchita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), who repeatedly outsmart the guys before eventually joining forces with them. The girls are on their way to an amusement park in California, and the guys, by survival instinct or hormonal urge, stick with them.

Less a zombie horror movie and more of an action/comedy with zombies, the film is beyond funny. It's friggin' hysterical. The scenes with the uptight Columbus and the ass-whipping Tallahassee are highly exceptional. Harrelson's portrayel of the ultimate zombie killer is something right out of a comic book, complete with one-liners and hero shots galore. He spends most of the film uttering machismo-laced cracks at Columbus, swinging baseball bats and hedge-clippers at zombies, spraying bullets from an uzi, or destroying cars and stores just to blow off some steam. The only time the movie slows down is when they try to connect Columbus and Witchita romantically, and even that isn't too bad. Thry still manage to throw some funny lines in, but it's definitely a drop-off from the tone of the rest of the film.

Jesse Eisenberg does a great Michael Cera acting job here, but I would say he even outdoes Cera. He's more believable during the romantic scenes, using the awkwardness to actually be quite charming instead of just pathetic. He has the majority of the heavy lifting in terms of acting and narrating the film, which he does very well. The girls garner a few cracks too, but they spend most of the time being smarter than the guys or picking on them. They're strong chicks, for sure.

I think this would be a great party film, like Evil Dead II. A bunch of less-than-sober people looking for a good time would eat this movie up. The enjoyment factor is through the roof.

Next: The Halloween Tree

Horror Movie-A-Day-A-Thon-Apalooza-Fest: 10/26

The Movie: Evil Dead II (1987)

Director: Sam Raimi

Rating: 10 out of 10

I will guarantee one thing: gather up some friends, mix up a few cocktails, suspend your disbelief, and this will be the most fun you will EVER have watching a horror movie. This film is so amazingly insane you have no choice but to enjoy the hell out of it. It has gore, humor, more gore, and more humor. The pacing is so frantic and kinetic you won't have a moment to pause, it doesn't allow you to breathe.

For anyone who's seen the first Evil Dead you know the idea of the flick, as essentially this is a loose remake of that one. The first one was a low-budget, fairly ingenious horror-gore-fest shot by newcomer Sam Raimi. Well, the cult success of that begat a bigger budget for this. It uses many of the same concepts and techniques from the first one, but it adds a heavy dose of dark humor to lighten it up this time. Plus, the charismatic version of "Ash" we've come to expect from Bruce Campbell was born here. In the first one he's a scared, timid college kid who has no clue how to handle the crisis before him. When his girlfriend becomes a deadite in the original, he can't bring himself to chop her up to make sure she's dead, which he pays for later. Not so in this version. A chainsaw to her severed head pretty much seals the deal, without a shred of remorse.

Here's the deal: Ash and his girlfriend are heading to an old abandoned cabin in the mountains for the weekend. Once they get there, they are introduced to the evil living in the woods around the cabin pretty quickly. Within the first 10 minutes his girlfriend is dead and he's become a deadite. It's that fast, people. There's no story really other than that. We get to spend the remaining 1 hour 20 minutes enjoying the insanity that Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell cooked up, and they do not disappoint. I got a special kick out of the mounted deer head coming to life and cackling hysterically at Ash. That's the kind of insanity I'm talking about. It's like the evil is just fucking with him and tormenting him, and he just rolls with the punches.

There's nothing to describe really. I can't tell you how awesome it is, it really is an experience you just have to have for yourself. If you're open-minded, you're going to have an absolute blast with this.

Next: Zombieland

Horror Movie-A-Day-A-Thon-Apalooza-Fest: 10/25

Feature: The Shining (1980)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Rating: 9 out of 10

This is what I mean about the golden days of horror. We had Stanley Kubrick directing a horror movie. This is something we're just never going to see again, a top-tier director, one of the finest filmmakers in cinematic history, directing a genre film. What do we get now? Marcus Nispel, Samuel Bayer, Eli Roth, James Wan. Any of those names ring a bell? They don't and they never will because they're just cheap labor hired by the studios to make a film that brings in a few dollars and nothing else.

The plot: Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is hired to take care of the Overlook Hotel during the torrid winter months while the hotel is closed down. His wife Wendy (Shelly Duvall) and his son Danny accompany him, along with Jack's ambition to write a book during the long, cold months. The hotel manager tells Jack of an incident that occurred years before where a caretaker, such as himself, went crazy and murdered his wife and two daughters with an ax. Jack assures the manager no such incident will occur during his tenure.

As the long months draw out, we watch the family slowly start to fall apart. They refer to it as cabin fever, but really there is just something wrong with that hotel. There's an evil about it that just envelopes Jack and his son, to different degrees. The place just freaks Danny out, for the most part. We've all seen the sequences of Danny bombing around the halls on his Big Wheels only to find the ghostly apparitions of the twin girls urging him to play with them. I know grown men who got freaked out by those creepy girls, so imagine being a young child and seeing them.

The movie is a slow-boil, epic kind of horror film that gets better and better as it goes on, evetually leading to the complete melt-down of the family and Jack going psychotic. I would give the movie a 10 but I do have one small gripe that knocks it down 1 point. Oddly enough, it's Jack Nicholson. He does aa great job with the role, he's perfectly cast as the psychotic dad who loses his shit late in the movie. However, Jack looks a little too insane early on in the flick too. When they're driving in the car on their way to the hotel, there's a moment where Jack grins that creepy grin and raises his eyebrow and looks totally out of his mind. And this is early in the film! I just think he should have played a more friendly father and husband at the beginning, then when he turns on his wife and child it would be far more disturbing and the influence of the evil hotel would be even more evident. But, maybe I'm nitpicking.

It's an amzing film with a great score and an utterly fantastic ending. Jack's great, Shelley Duvall play scared well, and that poor kid is pretty awesome at being traumatized. Great story, great director. See it!

Next: Evil Dead II

Horror Movie-A-Day-A-Thon-Apalooza-Fest: 10/24

Film: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Rating: 8 out of 10

Here's a true exploitation flick that somehow managed to work it's way into horror classic status. Again, you'll notice I side-stepped the abhorrent remake and went back to the roots. That's my tip, folks: when in doubt, watch the original. How many remakes can you actually say are as good as the original? And even fewer actually manage to exceed the quality of the original. I'm lookin' at you Platinum Dunes! Stop ruining classic properties, come up with an original idea of your own and we'll see just how creative you guys can be. Show us your gusto!

Ok, all done with that, on to the flick. The opening narration, by none other than John Larroquette, tells us that the following events really transpired in a sweaty little town in Texas. If you've seen this or the remake you know the simple plot: 5 kids are on a road trip in the middle of the Summer: Sally, her invalid brother, Franklin, 2 guys, and another girl. Believe me, that's all you need to know about the characters. They pick up a hitchhiker which, as expected, doesn't end well. This is where the weirdness starts, and it really doesn't let up after that. The hitchhiker is clearly insane, he has a big spot of blood on his face and has pictures of slaughtered cows with him, which is a pretty good indicator that something could be amiss. After he cuts his own hand open, followed by cutting Franklin's arm, the kids toss the kitchhiker out and make their way to their (final) destination: an old, abandoned house that belonged to Sally and Franklin's grandfather. That house is pretty creepy, but it's the house next door they should have avoided.

A guy and girl go to check the house out after seeing gas pumps out back. I guess borrowing gas from your neighbor in Texas is like borrowing sugar anywhere else. Of course, the curious guy walks in the house looking for a tenant, and eventually he finds one: a large man in a skin mask and an apron belts him on the head with a sledgehammer and he's down for the count. This strapping gentleman is the fella we'll come to know as Leatherface. If you've watched enough horror movies you know what's coming next. When one friend disappears in the house all the other friends have to check it out too, one-by-one to disastrous results. One girl gets hung on a meat hook while Leatherface cuts up her boyfriend with the chainsaw, then another guy gets the old sledgehammer to the noggin.

After that, it drags out and gets really damn weird. Sally gets chased through the woods by our chainsaw wielding antagonist for, what seems like, an hour. They're in the woods, running, chasing, running, chasing, until Sally finds a house. She gets out of the house, and we're back to the woods: running, chasing, running, chasing. Then she winds up in the hands of, what turns out to be, Leatherface's uncle, who ties her up to bring her home to the family, where we find out the hitchhiker from earlier is Leatherface's brother. Then we get the dinner scene. Just weirdness from start to finish. I can understand that they're playing up the documentary feel of the film, and I couldn't imagine being in that situation. But if you're watching it now, in our cynical society, a society that has been morally desensitized by these kinds of films, it just feels dragged out and pretty damn weird (maybe even a little annoying). The scene is wall-to-wall cackling from the insane family while Sally screams and screams endlessly.

I like this film because of the feeling it gives, and I think that's what the filmmakers were after. It's fairly unsettling, but not dread-soaked like the remake is. The grainy film stock and the lack of musical score makes it feel like a homemade film, which I'm sure is the byproduct of a low budget. But it suits this kind of dirty, grimy horror perfectly. The remake looks like a movie, which is fake. This looks like real life, which is far more terrifying than a movie.

Next: The Shining