The Horror Library - The Best in Horror Fiction

lAzy
By jOhn lOgan

Couple things before I get all started up today. I was recently asked why I don\'t give \"star\" reviews or letter grades to the movies or books or whatever I review. Someone even suggested to me that I use something like \"Killer Klowns gets Three Spleens\" and use a few bloody organs to get my point across.

Well, stars are boring, letter grades are for students, and the whole spleen thing is the horror equivalent of pink flamingoes in the front lawn. I just can\'t boil a film down to a couple stars and besides, I find giving a piece of art (I know it may be a stretch in many cases) a \"score\" is kind of lazy, don\'t you think?

Of course, I\'m a member of Netflix and I love it. They let you rate the movies by clicking on a star and then by the voodoo of some software they come up with suggestions for me. It\'s so easy to just click a star without thinking about the film. I\'ve rated 968 movies since I joined Netflix, rented 312 movies, and even rented Assualt on Precint 13 twice.

I hope you read it and make up your own mind, rather than be lazy and look for a score so you can run to the cineplex and blame me later.

21 Grams is a depressing film. The whole \"abandon hope\" thing applies at the beginning and gets worse as the story goes on. Now, I like a depressing movie now and again, they tend to give the viewer some extra perspective with which to view the world and when properly made they really dig at the root of cinema, relying on story, acting, and camera in a more pure, single-minded way than even if the most potent genre film.

21 Grams delivers the acting in big, heaping buckets of raw talent. These actors are so damn good, they lift this production so far out of the mire you can almost believe this film really is about redemption. There\'s not much I can say about it that hasn\'t already been said, Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro are completely wonderful throughout.

Not that the story or filmmaking is weak, it just takes a backseat (or maybe a caboose) to the leads doing their thing. A second viewing was tough to get through, and a third was out of the question. As well crafted as the succession of scenes are, I felt myself weakening under the force of sadness.

But this is a \"big issue\" film, dealing with all the \"big questions.\" And at the end of the movie you find yourself asking \"why?\" about a hundred times. So I got to thinking about those big questions and tried to come up with some real horror stories that delve into the big life questions. Why are we here? What are we here for? Where are we going? Can I be forgiven?

Are there any horror movies that do this? Well, of course, in a sense, they all do this by making us fear for our lives, drawing us to what\'s important. If your watching someone get stalked and killed onscreen and you immediately think, \"Damn I forgot to pick up my dry-cleaning…\" I might be worried about you a little. Granted, it\'s just a movie, but it seems kind of callous to totally disregard the fact that you just watched a human being cease to exist, right in front of your eyes.

But then again, I think of Reservoir Dogs and how I nearly ceased to exist while laughing at Mr. Blonde speaking into a severed ear. I almost suffocated. But I do remember feeling remorse a little later on when he\'s shot to death, so maybe it evens out a little.

Anyway, Bubba Ho-Tep is often hilarious, vulgar, and silly. Obviously low budget in nearly every shot, director Don Coscarelli (Phantasm films, The Beastmaster) has tried very hard to will a cult classic into existance. And he does fairly well.

Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis are outstanding, bringing humor and believability to material that could have turned out to be straight to video fodder. The script, based on a book by Texas wildman Joe R. Lansdale, is full of great Elvis-speak and horror humor. Coscarelli\'s direction has never been polished (Thank God) and his rough hewn, sometimes brilliant, sometimes gimmicky images serve the cult classic feel very well.

But my point here is this: Bubba Ho-Tep is a movie about a sixty year old Elvis in an old folks home (\"with a growth on his pecker\") and he joins forces with JFK (that would be Ossie Davis and yes he is …\"they dyed me this color!\"…a black man) to fight a soul-sucking mummy. That\'s right, a SOUL SUCKING MUMMY.

And this movie, with all its grade B stuffing showed more redemptive powers than the six and a half years it took to get through the tar pit of 21 Grams. They both deal with similar issues: the human soul. You can\'t get much more profound than that. In 21 Grams, the soul is attacked by tragedy and bad choices. In Bubba Ho-tep the soul is attacked by the same entities and a hungry Mummy!!

Just guess which film I enjoyed more.

Speaking of big issue movies, I was reminded of one of my favorite science fiction films ever: Solaris, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and based on the book by Stanislaw Lam. Watching this movie is like going to the gym: you better prepare yourself beforehand so you don\'t get a heart attack and get caught in the treadmill.

This is a long, long, complicated and challenging film. It requires thought and attention to detail to really get anything out of it. It\'s a bit old and it shows its age often. Some of the conversations, while interesting and extremely intelligent, are dense and heavy. But don\'t let that scare you off, because if you make an attempt you just might find it to be the most beautifull cinematic experience of your life.

Perhaps the best place to start is the acting, as it is so strong and the characters so well created that the seemingly unknowable plot doesn\'t get in the way of the people. Natalya Bonderchuck is gorgeous, my vote for the most completely lovable woman ever in a film, and the strength of this film resides solely in her performance, without which would have rendered the whole story inoperative. I can\'t think of any other movie wherein the female lead has as much power of such a huge production.

She provides a much needed heart to an otherwise cold film, pumping emotion into what could have turned out to be a lot of Space Odyssey crap. And then theres the planet Solaris, a huge beaming ball in space with untold powers and mystery. There\'s no understanding it, but it\'s such a huge attractive mystery we are drawn to it.

There\'s no denying the brilliance of Tarkovskys camera, every frame could litrerally be framed and the lighting is pure old school Russian cinema, Katalozov and Vertov would be proud (or hate it, you never know with artists) But the point is, at the end of the film, despite all the heaviness, it is still a genre film.

So Marlon Brando is dead. Ray Charles is dead. Ronald Reagan is dead. Earlier this year, Johnny Cash died. Tough year all around. Brando was the big question actor; he plumbed the depths of so many characters, so many different onscreen souls how could he not have turned out to be so eccentric? Ray Charles had a voice to move you to tears or fire your ass up, melodrama be damned, he could convince you grass was a shade of tie-dye and you\'d believe him. Ronald Reagan…. Hell, I ain\'t going there…. But Johnny…. THE MAN. I feel like I lost my imaginary friend, when I write the voice in my head is his, speaking, singing, droning, hollering, crying, preaching… Now that he\'s dead, I feel like there\'s a ghost in the room all the time.

You know how, in so many Hollywood movies, a hero has to go through all kinds of hell to score big in a happy ending? You know like, killing seven hundred terrorists for a hot scene with a starlet or running through the desert being chased by mutant camels for a palace in the Sahara with a whole harem of starlets? Anyway, you get the idea, Hollywood formulas are called formulas for a reason, chances are you know\'em before you see\'em. It\'s just natural.

You ever see this silly, melodramatic piece of sentimental American Pastime crap called \"For The Love Of The Game\" starring Kevin Costner? Pure Hollywood all around. But do you realize who made this film? It was SAM RAIMII! Sam the man with the evil Deadites, Ash, chainsaws, crawling hands and blam-o-cams. At first I thought… what the hell…

And then I got it.

Sam is our hero. He has persevered through a Kevin Costner movie to give us the Spiderman trilogy. Ok, I\'m not a huge fan of Spiderman, never really was. Didn\'t even like the first Spiderman all that much. The Green Goblin had the worst friggin mask I have ever seen.

But Spiderman 2 is another story. Sure it has Hollywood in it, but I can overlook it because I see Sam all over it. From the hyperactive camera to the cheesy humor and back to the crazy effects the summer blockbuster is all about, Sam has put his mark on this one. It\'s like Darkman with a budget or Army Of Darkness in the daylight.

But let\'s face it; Sam is still working for the MAN, when everyone who matters already knows Sam is the MAN. Sure, go ahead and make Spiderman three and I\'ll shell out the bucks to go see it. But you wanna light up my world, use some of the MANS money to continue the EVIL DEAD series, may it never die.

Your our hero Sam, only you can restore the early eighties horror boom. I know nothing lasts forever, but damn I would love to see it thrive for a while like it used to.

ENDING: In Search of the perfect movie…

I spend a lot of time looking for perfect stuff. The perfect slice of pizza with no toppings, the perfect hot dog with no toppings, the perfect steak with no sauce…. You get the picture? I\'m talking about food that is perfect because it\'s simple enough to be perfect. Like a single rep on the bench press that goes up past a sticking point with ease even though the reps before and after stumble and stall. Or when Johnny Cash growls, \'I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.\' Or the perfect single kiss, no tongue, no heavy duty saliva, just a brief, cool kiss on the lips that for some damn reason is perfect.

Mostly, these things are surprises. Now, I don\'t spend a lot of time thinking about why these things are perfect, that would cause these moments of perfection to stop happening. It would ruin the surprise. Sadly, I can\'t think of many moments in my film watching career that I would call perfect.

When I was just a kid, I saw Clash Of The Titans and that was perfect. I saw Empire Strikes Back twice in two days ad that was perfect. I saw Conan The Destroyer when I was in fourth grade and that was perfect.

I got older. The Thing was perfect, The Ring was perfect. I saw Trainspotting on a first date with a really hot chick and that was perfect, even if we were late and as we walked in we were both treated to full frontal nudity and I nearly died of embarrassment.

Now, I\'m not saying these movies were actually perfect. What kind of critic would I be? I\'m just saying these movies have perfect moments. Even a terrible movie can have a perfect moment, right?

So anyway, somewhere in Quentin Tarantino\'s Kill Bill movies there is an honest to god PERFECT movie. A movie so big, so full of bristling life force and power that I quake at the mere thought of bearing witness to it.

But alas, this is for next time, as I have gone on too long now as it is. So next month, I\'m gonna do a little thing on Kung fu movies. Why? Because I\'ve been watching Kung Fu movies as long as I have been watching movies, eating pizza, listening to music, and looking for the perfect in everything.

See ya…

jOhn