Director: Adam Green
Writer: Adam Green
Released: 2006
Labels: Gore|Slasher|2000's|Comedy
A group of unwitting tourists take a boat trip into the steamy Louisiana bayou and find themselves being stalked by a mutated swamp dweller intent on bloody murder.
Hatchet, as its tagline suggests, is indeed "old school American horror", so old school in fact that there isn't a single original bone in its dismembered body. Don't let that dissuade you from giving it a view though as it has enough decent humor and deliciously gory moments to keep any fan of the slasher genre amused, from its tongue-in-cheek nod to all that it inspired it (note the cameos from Robert Englund and Tony Todd), down to a really well crafted screen monster Victor Crowley (played by slasher veteran Kane Hodder).
The practical SFX are good and gory with some excellent artistic license taken with how a human body can come apart. The low-budget sets and lower-budget acting really only add to the B-movie fun of it.
Victor Crowley isn't going to rank with slasher icons like Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers but given time and a few more dodgy sequels (Hatcher 3 is due out 2012) his horribly disfigured face will become enjoyably familiar among even the most casual horror fans.
Director: Kevin Munroe
Writers: Thomas Dean Donnelly & Joshua Oppenheimer
Based on: Comic Book Series written by Tiziano Sclavi
Released: 2011
Labels: Action|Comedy|Monster|2010's
Based on one of the world's bestselling comic book series with over 70 million readers worldwide, "Dylan Dog: Dead of Night" blends horror and humor set in the backstreets of New Orleans...a city with a long and storied history with the supernatural. The story revolves around Dylan Dog, the world's only private investigator of the undead with a business card that features his slogan, "No pulse, No problem."
Having left the world of the supernatural behind after the death of his wife, Dylan is pulled back into action to solve the murder of a mysterious woman's father. Along with his zombie assistant Marcus, he finds himself drawn into the middle of a battle between the clans of vampire, werewolf and zombie for possession of a rare artifact to control both the mortal and monster world. Dylan must go where the living date not in order to solve the case, save mankind and keep his partner from losing any more body parts. (Taken from Official Website)
It doesn't take much investigation to discover that Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is hated by fans of the original Italian comic book on which it is based. This seems to be because the filmmakers have not even tried to stick to the original concept and feel. The biggest complaints are that the movie makes light where there should be dark and that major liberties have been taken with key characters and settings. So putting the source material aside let's look at this film as a piece of horror genre cinema.
The film places it's flag firmly in the camp (pun intended) of horror-comedy. The interplay between the characters is rife with wit and sarcasm, much of which is well written and entertaining, particularly the relationship between Dylan Dog, played by Brandon Routh and his un-dead sidekick Marcus, played by Sam Huntington. If this pairing seems familiar, thats because they played Clark Kent/Superman and Jimmy Olsen respectively in the 2006 film ''Superman Returns''. Routh's fresh-faced-superman good looks doesn't really lend itself to a portrayal of a hardened PI for the supernatural underworld, but his strong physicality backs up the role. Overall the acting is good throughout including a small but fantastically campy performance from Peter Stormare (Fargo).
The realtively low-budget of $20M ensures that this movie looks like a TV pilot rather than a cinematic experience, and the special effects are certainly akin to the production values of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Supernatural. The Werewolves are very much in the B-movie humanoid style, the Vampires are dark, hip and hedonistic (as they always are nowadays), and the Zombies provide the comic relief with some nice gags about diet, spare body parts and a support group.
The story is a bit tired in an ''ancient artifact has power to release mythical beast from slumber to wreak havoc on the world, it mustn't fall into the wrong hands'' type way, but the regular introduction of new un-dead creatures and scenarios keeps you interested along with some tidily directed action sequences.
As you can imagine there really is no depth here but it is an enjoyable romp and very easy to enjoy for what it is.
A young man, known as 'Columbus' (Jesse Eisenberg) survives a zombie holocaust and sets about making a journey across states to get to his parents' home in Ohio. He puts his survival down to a set of rules that he lives by in order to stay safe (see list of examples below). Along the way he teams up with 'Tallahassee' (played by Woody Harrelson), a gun-toting hard-ass heading to Florida. This mis-matched couple bond and travel along together using their very different approaches to survival. Soon they run into a young woman, 'Witchita' (Emma Stone) and her younger sister, Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). They too have a survival technique which involves conning our two male heroes out of their ride and guns! The girls have heard that there is an amusement park in LA that is zombie free and that is where they are headed. After some more path-crossing, the four decide to stick together and end up at the girls' chosen destination only to find that a bloody battle awaits them.
Zombieland is an absolutely brilliant take on the Zombie genre. Of course comedy in zombie movies is nothing new, (Shaun of the Dead instantly springs to mind, as well as the new movie Deadheads and let's not forget the shuffling Mall-Zombies going about their business in George A Romero's Dawn ofthe Dead), but this film stands out because of the fast-paced directing style (Ruben Fleischer), some incredibly well-written dialogue (Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick) and top-notch acting from all the leads. The action is suitably slick, especially good is the slow-mo opening titles. The SFX make-up is first rate and the movie makes good use of the CGI blood splattering that seems to be the norm for modern horror. They have made the un-dead the fast moving kind, which does still bother some fans of zombie movies, but in Zombieland it is entirely fitting as the action relies on sudden surprises and snappy chase scenes.
The film is made up of a series of mini episodes and is interspersed with flashbacks and back-story explanations which engages you with the characters so that you really do care what happens to them. Also there is an on-going commentary from "Columbus" as he tries to make sense of the situations he find himself in and this also gives you explanations as to why his "rules" are in place.
Zombieland is absolutely full of moments that you will want to tell your friends about, not least is the best mystery cameo performance you will see for a very long time! (we won't spoil the surprise here). Also look out for the scary clowns, Twinkies, 'zombie kill of the week' and great use of a banjo!
Although not scary, Zombieland is packed with gore (oh yes, these Zombies bleed..... a lot!) and is as funny as you could ask for. So "Nut Up Or Shut Up" and rent yourself a copy.
Oh and P.S....Rumor has it that Zombieland 2 is "in development" :)
Writer: John Landis Director: John Landis Released: 1981 Labels: Monster|Comedy|1980's
Brief Synopsis:
Two young American backpackers, David and Jack, are attacked by a werewolf in a remote British village; Jack is killed, but David is just wounded. He awakes in a London hospital, has dreams and visions of his own burgeoning blood-lust and of random (and quite bizarre) scary scenarios, not least the military rampaging zombies that massacre his family! Jack re-visits David and explains that he is stuck in limbo as an "un-dead" until the werewolf bloodline is severed and insists that David kill himself. A pretty young nurse, Alex, takes pity on David and invites him to stay with her. Full moon inevitably comes around and David becomes a werewolf and sets about doing what werewolves do best, all over London.
Our recent trip to Universal Studios Horror Make-up Show (see separate post) prompted this re-watch of "An American Werewolf in London" as we were shown some of the props and techniques employed in the making of this film.
Made in 1981 by Universal pictures and directed by John Landis (The Blues Brothers, Twilight Zone, Animal House) it harks back to the movie making style of the classic British Hammer Film horrors from the 1950's 60's & 70's. (It is interesting to note that the "Hammer Horrors" thrived because, after the initial success of their first Dracula release, Universal Studios opened up their library and gave them license to remake all their iconic monster movies). It is a movie that has no CGI effects and in fact has a relatively small amount of gore and action compared to the modern horror, but it does have plenty of charm and humor. Actually it uses comedy to great effect (particularly in Jack (Griffin Dunne) whose pissed off un-dead laconic style is really funny) and there are some amusing sight gags too. This is, however, a true horror movie and it does not fail to create suspense and tension throughout, there is plenty to make you jump and you also do feel for the tragedy of David's plight.
The film is renowned for its transformation scene, and it really is a work of genius from legendary special effects artist Rick Baker (The Ring, Men in Black, Hellboy ... the list goes on and on....). There is no animation here, all that you see has been created with the use of prosthetics, make-up, animatronics and some intense acting from David Naughton. It won a 1981 academy award in a category specifically introduced for this piece of work, we couldn't resist giving it to you here in all its magnificence. so......
More of Rick Bakers make-up effects teams work. This was particularly uncomfortable for David Naughton as the contact lenses were made of glass back then!
Oh and by the way...this face pretty much traumatized us! (it reminded us of the demonicsubliminal images throughout the Exorcist)
This movie has so many interesting facts and trivia titbits that it's impossible to list them all but a couple of our favorites are:
*Frank Oz (of Muppets fame) makes two appearances in the film, one as an American embassy worker and the other as Miss Piggy!
*The songs used in the film all have 'Moon' in the title.
*Oh, and keep your eye on the credits for a royal message!
Yes, this film comes across as a bit dated now, and it's not as slick as modern productions, but we love this movie for everything that it is not, as much as everything that it is.
