Directors: Jeff Monahan, Michael Fischa, Tom Savini
Starring: Amy Marsalis, Jeff Monahan, Bingo O’Malley, Jason Norman
“Now I lay me down to rest, but there’s a goblin upon my chest. He’s grey and ugly and very gory, and he wants to tell me a Deadtime Story.” (George Romero, Deadtime Stories Volume 1)
Utter the name George A Romero to any self-respecting horror fan and they’ll fire off any of his classic zombie films in your direction. The “holy trilogy” of Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead and Day Of The Dead remain the definitive zombie series to this day and while his recent zombie films haven’t really met the same standards you can forgive the guy a bit because of his past glories. This shite, however, is unforgivable.
Oh George. What happened? You used to be a symbol of quality horror
For you see, it is Mr George A Romero’s name that you will see on the DVD cover of Deadtime Stories, or (to give it its full title) George A Romero Presents Deadtime Stories Volume 1. It’s Mr Romero himself who introduces this 75-minute anthology consisting of three horror stories. And it’s good old George who gets an executive producer credit on all three of these bland tales. Frankly then George, you should be ashamed of yourself, because these three stories are weaker than a hamster’s piss, and as a man who created such legendary films in the past you fucking know it too. Continue reading “Deadtime Stories: Volume 1 (2009)”→
Starring: Ed Nelson, Deborah Rose, Norman Fell, Phyllis Diller
“The bodies… the bodies we saw? They’re not dead.” (Alley, The Boneyard)
This one’s a little off the wall. Alley Cates (Rose) is a psychic who’s been asked by the police to help them figure out what’s happened to three young children whose naked, rotting bodies have been found. When she gets to the morgue (which, conveniently, is underground and difficulty to leave quickly) she realises that the ‘children’ are actually zombies who were afflicted with an ancient Chinese curse and are ready to wake up and munch on some human.
A freshly-woken Cher reaches for her makeup case
Typically the morgue’s exit is blocked, trapping Alley, an experienced police chief, his young deputy, a mortician and a suicidal young woman who was pretending to be a corpse. As you do. They need to figure out a way to get out of the morgue while also killing the three zombie children and any other monsters that turn up. And trust me, they do. Continue reading “The Boneyard (1991)”→
Starring: Sophie Vavasseur, Stephen Billington, Richard Felix, Jo-Anne Stockham
“Don’t worry, God never abandons anything to evil.” (Chris, Exorcismus)
Typical bloody teenagers, eh? They mess around with their pals, they take drugs, they get possessed by the devil and try to kill their family members, they go to nightclubs… wait, hang on a tick. That doesn’t seem right.
Well, it’s certainly the case at least for 15-year-old Emma (the believable Sophie Vavasseur), who has started slipping into odd little episodes where she starts acting like a proper fanny then waking up and wondering what’s happened. Her parents take her to a psychiatrist but, suspiciously, he has a heart attack while having a session with her. Later she tries to kill her brother before snapping out of it and coming to her senses.
You might remember Sophie Vavasseur as the girl from Evelyn, starring Pierce Brosnan. Then again, you might not
Eventually, Emma starts to believe she may be possessed by the devil, so she finds her uncle – a priest who is conveniently known for having performed an exorcism previously – and tries to convince him to perform an exorcism on her. But is Emma really possessed by the devil, or is it all in her silly little teenage head?
Well, she is possessed. Sorry if that seems like I’m spoiling things, but the film doesn’t really keep you in suspense for too long either. In fact, it’s only about half an hour in when she starts levitating in front of her family, leaving the audience in no doubt that these aren’t just teenage mood swings she’s having. Continue reading “Exorcismus (2010)”→
Starring: Warrior, Vince McMahon, Bobby Heenan, Ted DiBiase, Hulk Hogan, Jerry Lawler, Jim Ross, Bruce Pritchard, Chris Jericho
“History tells us, Hogan, that a man’s legacy is built from the premise that within his life, the moments lived, once lived, become a piece of his history. Somehow, you have conveniently, even eloquently misplaced pieces of your history. In the one time, epical battle between us, Hogan, you were the quintessential influence of what was good, great, and heroic. But different than you may remember, and albeit you may have beaten myths, legends, giants, and other great men, you never, never beat a warrior. And certainly not the ultimate one.” (Warrior, The Self-Destruction Of The Ultimate Warrior)
Even though I’m a self-confessed wrestling fan, I haven’t stuck anything wrestling-related on TWABM yet and I’m not sure I will again, at least not unless I come across another DVD as ridiculous as The Self-Destruction Of The Ultimate Warrior. While a lot of wrestling these days could be considered “a bit mental”, that’s more or less par for the course and talking about it on here regularly would be like talking about camels on That Was A Bit Humpy – it sort of goes without saying.
It's hard to believe but it turns out this guy was a bit of a nutter
If that camel was to suddenly start talking about another camel who pissed it off 20 years ago though, and went out of its way to assassinate its character in every way imaginable, then we’d have something worth talking about, and this DVD does exactly that. Except it’s about a wrestler, not a camel. Look, just forget I ever mentioned camels, that was a terrible idea.
Anyone my age (late 20’s) who was into WWF when they were younger doesn’t need an explanation of who the Ultimate Warrior was. He was easily the most intense and energetic of the WWF superstars, and though we never really understood what he was going on about or even enjoyed his matches much – even as a kid when everything was exciting – his crazy facepaint, sheer power and endless energy made him a fan favourite. Behind the scenes though, it turns out he was a few turnbuckles short of a squared circle. Continue reading “The Self-Destruction Of The Ultimate Warrior (2005)”→
"Page breaks, you say? Well, as long as I still get to boot arses in the dream world you can do whatever you like mate"
Merry Christmas and stuff, hope you’ve been having a brilliant one.
That Was A Bit Mental will soon be turning one year old and with around 100 reviews in its first year I’m happy with its success so far, a success mainly down to any of you who’ve ever read the site, for which I’m eternally grateful.
If you’ve read the Spirited Away review below you’ll notice that I’ve put a page break in it, meaning you’ll only see half the review followed by a “Read more” link. Usually I’ve been putting the full reviews on the main site but I’m going to be changing to this method from now on for a few reasons.
1) Hits
I’m not going to dick about here – basically, the more hits I get the more I can convince film labels to send me review discs, and the more timely and useful film reviews will appear on the site as a result. I’ve already been very fortunate to review the likes of The Exterminator, Deadly Blessing and Cannibal before their release on DVD or Blu-ray, giving you a good chance to consider whether they’re worth buying. The more hits I get, the more of the same will start happening. Oh, here comes a break now, by the way. Continue reading “Site update: Page Breaks”→
CHIHIRO – “How did you know my name was Chihiro?” HAKU – “I have known you since you were very small.”
Young Chihiro isn’t happy. Her parents have decided that it’s time to up sticks move house, and she’s upset that she won’t get to see her friends any more. On the way to their new home however, Chihiro’s dad takes a wrong turning and the family come across a mysterious tunnel. On the other side they find what appears to be an abandoned theme park.
Smelling something nice, Chihiro’s dad finds a stall filled with delicious food, which he and Chihiro’s mum start wolfing down. Chihiro wanders off and finds a boy called Haku who warns her to leave before it gets dark, but it’s too late – by the time she gets back to her parents, they’ve turned into pigs. Suddenly the once-abandoned theme park becomes a village filled with spirits and otherworldly creatures. It’s up to Chihiro to find out what’s going on and turn her parents back into humans again.
That awkward moment when a person comes on a train and sits right next to you even though there are free seats
Spirited Away is the twelfth film released by Studio Ghibli, the iconic Japanese animation studio responsible for such delights as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle. Studio Ghibli is to Japanese cinema what Disney is to western cinema and Spirited Away is a key example of this, as it’s without a doubt one of the greatest animated movies ever made. Indeed, on the year of its release in the US, it won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, beating out the likes of Lilo & Stitch and Ice Age. Continue reading “Spirited Away (2001)”→
“No force on earth or heaven could get me on that island.” (Alan Grant, Jurassic Park III)
Some twat (Leoni) sends her son on holiday with her boyfriend, where they both go parasailing over Isla Sorna to try and see some dinosaurs. Clearly not bothering to pay attention to the carnage in Isla Nublar or the incident a few years prior in which a big T-Rex kicked the shit out of San Diego, they somehow seem surprised when things go wrong and they crash-land on the island.
Weeks pass and the twat and her loser ex-husband (Macy) are worried, so they pretend to be millionaires and propose an offer to the original film’s hero, Dr Alan Grant (Neill): be our tour guide as we fly over the island to see some dinosaurs, and we’ll pay you enough money to keep your archaeology gig going for years to come. Grant reluctantly agrees and is understandably pissed off when the plane instead lands on the island and the twat and loser tell him their secret – they’re actually not rich and he’s been roped into helping them find their missing son. This is no longer a research project, it’s a rescue mission… except Grant doesn’t say that because Jeff Goldblum already got to say it in the second film.
“Yes, you’re right, there is some sort of mark on your back. Have you been rolling around in the grass or something?”
If the original Jurassic Park was a spectacle – a unique film at the time that changed the face of big-bidget special effects cinema – and The Lost World was Spielberg’s homage to King Kong, Godzilla et al, Jurassic Park III is basically just a high-budget Lockjaw or Sharktopus. It’s goofy, it’s got some ridiculous moments in it and any thought-provoking social commentary in there (of which there’s very little) is there by complete accent.
The raptors have been given an overhaul this time around, and are so intelligent that it’s getting a bit silly. Now it seems they can talk to each other (in dino-speak, of course), something they oddly chose not to do in the first film when stalking two children through a kitchen, a scenario in which communication could have been helpful. Even more ridiculous is that Grant, by sheer chance, happened to have been given a replica of a raptor’s windpipe earlier in the film and in a key scene late in the film, just as he’s being surrounded by raptors, he blows in it and magically makes noises that not only sound like a raptor, but can actually be understood by them. How in the realm of fuck does that happen?
The prehistoric flasher strikes again
That aside, there are some new dinos chucked into the mix here too, which range from awesome (the Spinosaurus may actually be a little bit better than the T-Rex, as proven in the scene where they fight and it breaks the T-Rex’s neck) to disappointing – for years fans of the series wanted to see pterodactyls getting used in action scenes, but it’s all just a bit rubbish when we finally get our wish and are hit with a visually impressive but sloppy aviary scene. Not to mention the usual Jurassic Park name-fail by featuring dinosaurs that didn’t actually exist during the Jurassic period.
The strong trio of Neill, Macy and Leoni aside, the supporting cast have all the charisma of a packet of Monster Munch. Grant’s apprentice Billy is so boring and generic (just look as his name for Christ’s sake) that when he disappears, seemingly left for dead, then magically appears again at the end of the film with no explanation as to how he survived, you think “oh, I forgot about him” even though you only just saw him 20 minutes previously.
“No, Mister Ranger sir, I definitely wasn’t starting a fire in the park. I… um… oh, this is awkward”
Meanwhile, the series’ annoying child tradition continues when Grant finds the missing son but this time he’s even more annoying because, having survived in dino-infested jungle for so long, he’s a know-it-all kid rather than your basic screamer. Needless to say, the fact that the film doesn’t end with a raptor picking bits of him out of his teeth and speaking to the others in raptorese while a subtitle says “tastes like CHILDREN hahahaha” is nothing short of an injustice.
Any time I watch a film I consider what lessons I’ve learned from it. The lesson I learned from the original Jurassic Park is that you should never try to play God, no matter how appealing the results may seem. The sequel, meanwhile, taught me that you shouldn’t try to mess around with nature and try to take things out of their natural habitat because things will go wrong. The only thing Jurassic Park III taught me is that if you ever go to a foreign country and can’t speak the language, simply cut a native’s throat out and blow through their windpipe like some sort of obscene flute and you’ll get along fine.
None of the above is to say Jurassic Park III is a terrible film, mind you, it’s entertaining in the same way watching a fight going on outside your window is entertaining – it’s a good laugh and you’ll chuckle away for its short duration but you wouldn’t exactly film it and try to sell it to the Tate Gallery. This is a big-budget creature feature and is simply dumb fun.
Starring: Reed Birney, Sheree Wilson, Bruce Campbell
RENALDO – “I’ve never seen you here before. I like that in a woman.” WOMAN – “You’re cute.” RENALDO – “Heh, keep talking baby. Maybe you’ll tell me something I don’t know.”
As far as unknown movies by popular filmmakers go, Crimewave is a double whammy of forgotten history. To many a film directed by Sam Raimi and written by the Coen Brothers would be a match made in heaven, but in fact it already happened with Crimewave. So why has a film with such a pedigree been lost in time, all but vanished after 26 years? Because Raimi and co-producer Bruce Campbell despised it.
The plan sounded great at first. After the huge success of The Evil Dead, young filmmaker Raimi decided that Crimewave was to be his next film. As with Evil Dead he rounded up all his friends – actor Bruce Campbell, editor Kaye Davis, composer Joe DoLuca, but this time he signed a deal with a big film studio so he wouldn’t have to worry about a budget anymore.
"Who, him? Oh, he's just my incredibly shiny brother"
Eventually the studio muscled in and made changes Raimi wasn’t happy with – they kicked out Davis and DoLuca and replaced them with staff of their own choosing, and Bruce Campbell was removed from the lead role, a move that pissed off Raimi immensely. What’s more, the two lead actors brought in by the studio were, according to Campbell in his autobiography years later, “coke-nosed weirdo nutjobs”. The result was a film that Raimi and Campbell don’t like to talk about any more.
It’s a shame really, because Crimewave isn’t actually that bad. It’s got an interesting style, with ’40s-style characters, cars and interiors set against a story involving a security camera business in 1980s Detroit. It’s continually messing with your head as you try to place it in the right era, until you realise it isn’t supposed to have one.
You can add your own favourite dodgy curry joke here if you want
The plot may seem complex (it’s the Coens after all) but it’s actually pretty easy to follow since it crams in all the story in the first 15 minutes or so. In brief: a co-owner of a security firm realises his partner is selling the business to a sleazy heel called Renaldo (Campbell), so he hires two goons to kill him. After a mix-up the goons kill the co-owner too, then go after his wife who was spying on them from across the street. Meanwhile, a hopeless nerd (Birney) is trying to chat up a beautiful woman (Wilson) but she’s after the heel who’s buying the company.
In reality, all that is just an excuse for loads of ridiculous slapstick comedy that will be familiar to anyone who remembers the sillier scenes from The Evil Dead. While a lot of the acting is of a fairly low standard and some of the special effects are hokey at best, there are plenty of clever and funny moments here to have you smiling a few times throughout. One fantastic scene in particular has a woman being chased into the security shop and through the “safest hallway in the world”, which soon becomes a surreal ballet of colours and doors. Here, watch it for yourself and tell me this isn’t an amazing scene:
While I’ve already said that the performances are a little shaky, there’s one very obvious exception to this in the form of the magnificent Bruce Campbell. Bruce was originally supposed to be playing the lead role of the nerdy guy who becomes the hero and given his similar role in The Evil Dead it would have been a perfect fit. Ultimately though that pesky studio replaced him with someone else, leaving Raimi to put Campbell in a smaller role, that of the heel. Despite this, Campbell still manages to steal the show as a hilariously arrogant arsehole.
Crimewave is a difficult film to find (I bought a Hong Kong DVD of it about six years ago), and overall it’s not worth spending a lot of time or money trying to get it. If you get the chance to watch it though I’d recommend you do so, because while it’s nowhere near the quality of Raimi’s other films like Evil Dead or Spider-Man, or the Coens’ later projects such as Fargo and The Big Lebowski, it’s still got enough glimmers of genius to make it worthwhile to an extent.
Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite, Vince Vaughn, Richard Attenborough
HAMMOND – “Don’t worry, I’m not making the same mistakes again.” MALCOLM – “No, no, you’re making all new ones.”
If the original Jurassic Park was a love letter to our childhood obsessions with dinosaurs and our desire to one day see one in real life, The Lost World instead takes its inspiration from King Kong and others of its ilk, showing what happens when large beasts are confronted in their natural habitat and how they react when placed in unfamiliar surroundings. Fear is replaced with sympathy, and by the end of the film Spielberg’s big accomplishment this time isn’t making us believe these fearsome creatures exist, but making us actually want them to overcome our own species in order to survive. That’s right, I can get deep when I want to.
“Before we camp out tonight, I have to warn you all that I’m a bed wetter”
After the incidents of the first film essentially made the Jurassic Park complex in Isla Nublar a bit of a write-off, The Lost World starts with Ian Malcolm (Goldblum) meeting up with John Hammond (Attenborough) for a little chat. Hammond tells Malcolm that Isla Nublar wasn’t really the main site, and that there was actually another island called Isla Sornar where they bred the dinosaurs and raised them in their natural habitat before moving them over to Jurassic Park. Remember that scene at the start of the first Jurassic Park where they were putting the raptor in the crate? That was at the other island, that was.
Hammond tells Malcolm that Ingen, the company he was in charge of, has punted him and put a weaselly lawyer guy in charge instead. Not dissuaded by this, Hammond wants Malcolm to head to the second island as part of a research group to study the dinosaurs. Oh, and as if that weren’t enough, the sneaky old prick has also invited Malcolm’s scientist girlfriend to join the team and has already sent her there as a way of convincing him to go. Malcolm perhaps puts it best himself, in the first of many one-liners he gets in this film: “this is no longer a research project, it’s a rescue mission”. Little does Hammond know, however, that Ingen has sent its own workers to the island, in an attempt to bring the dinos back to the US and show them at a new Jurassic Park in San Diego. Because the last one worked out so well.
“That’s nothing, you should see the size of my sister”
The Lost World tries its best to outdo the original in every way possible. You liked the bit with the T-Rex? Well now there are two of them! You liked when they were running with the herd? Now there’s a bigger herd and people are trying to catch them! Remember the sick triceratops? There’s a healthy one this time, and it fucks shit up! You liked seeing people interact with the dinosaurs? Well now a whole army turns up at one point to hunt them all down! You wanted a stegosaurus? Job done, and while we’re at it let’s have it wreck loads of shit in the process so it looks more bad-ass.
The problem is, in adding all this extra action there’s less focus on the story, and while most people don’t exactly watch Jurassic Park films for the character development, there’s still something missing this time around in terms of that human element. You still care about Malcolm because he’s familiar to you after the first film, but the other main characters – his annoying daughter, his headstrong girlfriend (Julianne Moore), their photographer (Vince Vaughn), the veteran hunter who wants to bag a T-Rex (Pete Postlethwaite) – are all lacking that certain something and, ultimately, you couldn’t care less whether they survive or end up as part of a T-Rex’s next shite.
“I’ll have a cone and a packet of salt & vinegar please”
Speaking of big Rexy, it’s once again the tyrannosaurs who steal the show despite the obligatory raptor scenes. The scene in which two T-Rexes push the team’s trailer off a cliff is impressive stuff, and when a solitary Rex discovers a large group of Ingen workers camping out chaos ensues.
By far the most memorable (and opinion-dividing) moment however is the film’s last fifteen minutes, in which Ingen manage to get a T-Rex back to the US and it starts running riot through the streets of San Diego. This is clearly Spielberg’s attempt at Godzilla and while it’s fun, it’s a bit of a jarring change of tone that doesn’t really sit well with the rest of the film.
The Lost World was never going to better the sheer novelty and innovation offered by the original Jurassic Park, but as sheer spectacle it’s still up there. It loses a little personality and while it’s still good fun to watch it does start to feel more like a generic monster movie by the end… but hey, you haven’t seen anything yet. Just wait until I review the third one.
Starring: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Dick Miller, Corey Feldman
“I warned you. With mogwai comes much responsibility. But you didn’t listen.” (Old man, Gremlins)
When it comes to Christmas presents, some people like to keep it simple. A few DVDs, a book or two, maybe some flowers or the ever-reliable box of Quality Street. Not so with Randall Peltzer’s dad. A dodgy inventor by trade, Randall decides that this Christmas he’s going to surprise his son Billy with something he’s never seen before in his life. While on a trip through Chinatown selling his wares, he comes across just the thing – a mogwai.
After naming it Gizmo, Randall gives Billy the mogwai while also passing along three very important instructions given to him by the shop owner – keep it away from bright lights, don’t get it wet and, above all else, don’t feed it after midnight. It’s like taking care of a fat goth, basically. Anyway, guess what happens next?
"I thought you said you were going to install seat belts in this bastard"
That’s right. After getting Gizmo wet and discovering it makes him multiply and spawn loads more mogwai, Billy’s clock dies and he accidentally feeds these new mogwai after midnight, causing them to turn into evil monsters called Gremlins.
At the time, Gremlins was a revelation. The creature effects were incredible, its sense of humour was the exception rather than the rule and it gained a large following, and for good reason. These days, sacrilegious though it may be to say it, Gremlins suffers from the same problem as Child’s Play in that it spends too long revealing what we already know. Whereas the sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, kicks off the action fairly early into the film, the original spends a lot of time faffing around with the rules, letting us get to know Gizmo and only revealing the monsters at the end of the second act.
Chainsaw versus baseball bat. Hmm
What’s more, moments that would have been hilarious at the time are merely smile-inducing these days, with the exception of the fun bar scene in which the Gremlins smoke a lot of cigarettes and generally take over the place.
If you’ve never seen it and have somehow managed to avoid the whole integration of its ‘three rules’ in popular culture then Gremlins is worth a watch because it’s still a fun movie, albeit one whose structure has been mimicked and refined many times by other films over the years. Otherwise, if you already know the deal with the Gremlins and you don’t want to spend the first 50 minutes waiting for the other characters to catch up with you, it might be worth skipping straight to the sequel first.
Directors: Jeff Monahan, Michael Fischa, Tom Savini
That Was A Bit Mental 