Review: Creature

Creature (1985)
A complete and utter rip off  homage to Alien, but a really fun one. Two competing corporations have been exploring the solar system in the near-ish future. One makes a discovery on the moon Titan of some strange containers that can only have been left behind by an alien species. Well it breaks open immediately and starts wreaking havoc, then a quick cut and their ship slams into a space station. This is just the beginning. The company sends another team back to investigate further. Between a not-so-smooth landing and electrical storms on the planets atmosphere running interference on their computer systems the crew is already in a jam. By the way the crew is a typical assortment of older almost-tough-guy engineers and scientists and 80's babes. They make a couple discoveries, that there is a nasty alien life form about to eat them all, and that there was a crew from the rival, German space company there to investigate just prior to their arrival that also got got. They meet one survivor from the German expedition who wisely advises them to blow everything up and fly the fuck out of there. It takes the crew some time to get their ducks in a row, the plot stresses their dangerous condition because not only do they have this alien thing to deal with but they are running out of air and power too. Also the alien is capable of talking over peoples bodies, so their are sort of zombified slaves. So the movie also takes liberties from The Thing as well. One of the worst/best things about this one is the sound design, as the sound effects for the space ship operations are taken from a mixture of much older sci-fi movies and serials, video games, and Star Wars. I should mention though, that the sets are fairly well done, and the acting is really not that bad and it has some pretty good moments in it. We get 80's haircuts, some gorey kills, perky 80's tits, some funny moments like the German guy grabbing the ass of the female security officer while they are both in space suits, a pretty good looking alien costume that in no way took heavy inspiration from H.R. Giger's xenomorph designs, and a really great final moment that I don't want to spoil, but it might involve flying dragon kicking an alien with a bomb strapped to it out of an airlock and then shooting it. It's still on Netflix as of reviewing this, so I would recommend pouring a drink or two and giving this one a shot.

Review: The Untold (Sasquatch)

The Untold (Sasquatch) 2002

Now I do love me some big foot, but this movie is pretty forgettable. A rescue party is sent out in search of a plane that has gone down in remote forest country of the American Northwest. The survivors have been dragged off and presumably devoured by a sasquatch, but the search party doesn't know that yet. The search party contains your usual mixture of tough-guys and bumbling idiots and bimbos, lead by the father of one of the plane passengers who happens to also own some big bio-tech corporation played by Lance Henriksen (Bishop from Aliens). There is a subplot about him trying to find some prototype DNA reading machine that was in the plane. Most of the movie is the search party bumbling through the woods bitching at each other and the two tough-guy guides slapping each other with their dicks trying out alpha-each other (metaphorically speaking). The sasquatch is at least well hidden from the camera, in an attempt to keep up suspense with a lot of POV shots that make me think he might actually be a Predator... that might be the real reason Henriksen is there, I cant remember what the company he owns is called but it might as well be Weylend corp. I'll admit I barely paid attention to this one, the dialogue and performances are pretty forgettable, and the action doesn't pick up until the 50-minute mark which is pretty slow for a movie only 86 minutes long. Turns out the bigfoot was mad because when the plane crashed it hit a tree which fell on the big foots kid or mate or something. This is not the fun big foot murder-romp you want, they try to play this out as a sort of serious environmental movie about animal rights and family, not that you couldn't make that work, but this attempt falls totally flat.

Review: The ABCs of Death

The ABCs of Death (2012)

Ok so ABC's of death is an anthology project with each letter being tackled by a different group of filmmakers making a short film themed with a word starting with a certain letter from the alphabet. Overall I was kind of exasperated by how weird or kind really stupid some of these were. Only three or so really stood out to me as being really good, and it was kind of a shame for them to be mixed in with a lot of these which I really hated. The majority are horror-comedy or just dark comedy, or just stupid toilet humor, or just really fucking weird. I'm going to go through each letter briefly, without giving too much away.
A- meh
B- pretty good
C- ok, simple, cute premise
D- one of the stand-out's, it has a satisfying twist
E- meh
F- Goddammit Japan
G- boring
H- Goddam Furries
I- pretty tense
J- Goddammit Japan
K- stupid
L- one of the most fucked up, but actually tense and not just annoying
M- quick and fucked up
N- funny, classic comedy bit gone violent at the end
O- just weird
P- well done, tragic and tense
Q- I lol'd R- I didnt really get the symbolism or something, kind of wanted a little more explanation because I was intrigued and left hanging.
S- ok
T- hey look, more toilets and poop.
U- ok
V- probably my favorite, crazy, distopian, brutal
W- fucking weird, but kind of funny
X- ok
Y -just kind of weird, but ok I guess.
Z- GOD DAMMIT JAPAN!! So to tally it up, there's about 9 that were worth watching, about 8 that were meh, and another 9 that I really disliked. That's not really a great ratio. I would skip it overall, I kind of wish segment V would just be its own movie and was just longer, maybe not even feature length but a good 30 minute short film. If you really want to watch the whole thing anyway I suggest that you skip any of the shorts that start to be annoying or boring, because they dont get better at their ends.

Review: Pontypool

Pontypool (2008)

Pontypool is a zombie movie, but with very little zombie in it, its mostly about a talk radio DJ and his producer and assistant hunkered down in their radio station. The thing that makes this different from every other zombie movie is that the people are infected not with a virus in their bodies but in their minds by repeating words. The movie plays with the idea that language being mimetic is infectious like a virus, and that ideas and meanings behind words are infectious, but it specifically and almost contrary, the infection is caused by the repetition of a word until it becomes meaningless and the victim goes crazy and starts trying to kill people. This churns into a mass hysteria, but we don't really get to see too much of it since most of the action is played out in our minds as we hear it phoned in (literally) to the radio station. The drama plays between the characters in the radio station as they try to make sense of what is going on and how they can use their position to help people. I didn't really enjoy this one that much, but I don't want to say it was a bad movie. I applaud them for taking a different approach and trying to breath more life and intelligence into the zombie genre. I do like the idea of building the analogy of infectious ideas that spread like a zombie plague, but I'm not a fan of how they implemented it. The way it infected only words of the English language didn't really make sense to me. Also the part where they are repeating words over and over until they don't make sense, but then the way its defeated is by thinking the word means something else was a little weird, and it was never really explained how that would travel from person to person through exposure. That and the guy's voice sounded too much like Space Ghost which took me out of the movie a little. Overall it was an interesting idea, but the details of how they implemented it didn't make sense to me.

Review: Session 9

Session 9 (2001)

A group of asbestos cleaners get a contract for an old, abandoned mental hospital but the place seems to have another toxic residue besides mold and asbestos. The production value is really high for a movie that didn't get very much publicity. The real star of the movie is the set of the Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts. This place alone is ripe for your imagination to wander through the decaying walls. There is plenty of great shots of the rotting building that build the palpable tension, the idea that the air itself is toxic ads to the tension. Everything comes together to make for a very effective psychological thriller. The movie doesnt have very many "scares" but does build tones of tension through-out its length as questions keep appearing and scattered answers fall like peeling paint. It leaves you asking the right kind of questions even after its over and lets some of the most disturbing pieces play out in your mind. There are strong themes about insanity, the capacity for violence in everyone, and things being left behind in the past not being gone. I have a feeling I will be thinking about this one for a while.