The Theatrical Trauma of April 26th

Talk about a slow week theatrically... we even included the new Rock/Marky Mark movie here because it's about the only big release that even remotely interests us, and that's only because both of those guys usually make fun movies.

Mud (Limited) is flick that at least hits closer to home, as it's a Mystery/Thriller-ish type of movie that may appeal to some Horror fans out there. After Killer Joe, we're willing to give Matthew McConaughey a chance in just about anything... no rom-coms though. Not those.

Also in Limited Release as well as VOD today, is The Numbers Station, which kinda looks like your average generic Thriller. We like Cusak, and Malin Akerman is a true Hottie, so maybe we'll catch this one if we get some free time.

The best bet for Horror fans just dying to head to Theaters and catch a genre flick this weekend is probably still Evil Dead. You could also go see Rob Zombie's new flick, The Lords of Salem, but be warned: unless you're a die hard Zombie fan, you may not be thrilled with his latest effort.

Next week we get Iron Man 3, The Iceman (Limited), and Kiss of the Damned (Limited), so until then, maybe just catch something on VOD or Netflix for now, because this week isn't very genre friendly at the Theater.

For Posterity's Sake: The films of Rob Zombie

With the release of The Lords of Salem, we felt it appropriate to give a quick and brief retrospective of our feelings towards Rob Zombie and his film projects.

Grade- B

Zombie's first film hinted at his promise as a filmmaker while giving us something that felt new and different. I'll be the first to say that this movie is a bit too quirky at times, and felt more than choppy overall, but we can't help loving it all the same.

It was so dark and nasty, and had such a 70's throwback feel to it, that not even the random images popping up all the time could stop of from loving this movie. It also helped that it was packed with a bunch of great actors playing some interesting parts. For a first film, this one was pretty fun, and it's become one of our "cult favorites" if you will.

Grade- A

This is, and may well always be, Rob Zombie's career highlight. A pure road revenge movie, Rejects shocked and reviled us, and yet made us fall in love with it at the same time. The cast truly elevates the material here, making the characters their own, and shining in the process. Bill Moseley was perfect as Otis, and Sid Haig was equally as brilliant as Captain Spaulding.

Zombie drastically improved on his 1000 Corpses architecture and made an almost normal and straight forward movie with Rejects, foregoing most of the kitschy randomness that plagued his debut film. This movie was better off for it.

Dirty, nasty, and yet still somehow fun, The Devil's Rejects is one of the best genre flicks of the 2000's, without question.

Grade- B+

The very idea of this movie infuriated us back when it was announced, but it ended up being pretty well done fro what it was. Zombie humanized (for better or worse) Micheal Myers for us, by showing him as a kid growing up in an abusive white trash home, which lead to his eventual break from sanity.

This remake is no way even close to what the 1978 original was, not in any way... that being said, this is also an effective, if not flawed, remake that packs a nice punch and delivers the goods. This is a brutal, skanky, visceral vision of Halloween, filled with sex, foul language, and the "colorful" characters that are staples in Zombie's movies. Where the original was more subtle, atmospheric and terrifying, this version is more violent, chaotic and evensort of depressing in a way.

Despite its flaws, this remake is far better than we ever thought it would be.

Grade- DO NOT WANT

We'll let our synopsis of the movie serve as testament of how it made us feel.

"H2 picks up where the first one left off, with Laurie having shot Michael at point blank range in the face with a Magnum (I think it was a Magnum), Loomis having his eyes gouged out, and Annie near death... except that Michael is alive, Loomis' eyes are fine, and Annie survives. Alright, fine. It's a horror flick, and I guess I sorta have to be good with just accepting certain things that give reason for and facilitate a sequel.

After a "ha, got ya!" dream sequence which negates the best part of the movie, we come to find that our sweet little Laurie has turned into a skanky looking, dirty pseudo-dread haired riot grrrl, who hangs with other skanky chicks calling each other "dick licker", "dude", and just acting annoyingly lame. I guess that's because of what she "went through?" Does everyone who writes young girl characters these days have to make them sound like total annoying assholes? Yes Diablo Cody, I am talking to you!

She's living with Annie and her Sheriff Father now, out in the deep country of Haddonfield, which offers a unique "family structure": Laurie is a retard, Annie is bitter and scarred, and the Sheriff is about the only person that doesn't make you instantly wish Michael had finished both girls off to begin with.

Meanwhile, Michael is a wandering hobo - honestly- who roams around fields all day looking like Grizzly Adams' mongoloid son. He also grunts and moans when he's killing people now. Plus, I think he has a psychic homing beacon with which he can track Laurie/Boo/Angel.

Laurie and Hobo-Mike alsoshare the same "dreams" involving their mom and a young version of Michael, who visit both of them with horses, talking about "It's time to come home" and "It's time to finish this." It's all very surreal and pointless. We get that Michael is nuts. We get that Laurie went nuts. How about letting the actors show us that by emoting and using their craft rather than using some shoddy dream sequence shit every five minutes.

Loomis completely does a 180 in this one too, going from concerned shrink to absolutely unconcerned author celebretard without missing a step. He's a douchebag with a capital D for the entire movie, and then in the last 5 minutes he gets bored in his hotel room and rushes to the scene of Michael holding Laurie hostage to "help."

This movie was an anger-inducing mess.

Grade- DO NOT WANT

It looks great, and the voice actors have nothing to be ashamed of, but it's such a vulgar and random mess of lame crap, that the rest doesn't matter... and I like vulgar. I LOVE VULGAR. I really think though, that Rob Zombie uses vulgarity so much because he just doesn't know how to do anything else. For instance, the main character is playing an Italian guy in a porn movie, and he's about to have sex with two girls and says "How do youa likea my cannoli now, heh?" Funny line! Right?

Enough with the nods to the old school horror of way, way back Rob, it's not clever anymore. We get that you like old and weird shit, but not many other people do, hence why it's not around anymore.

The 15yr old Adult Swim generation might like this movie, but it's lost on me, and not because I don't get it. Random and endless curse words, cartoon sluts, cartoon boobs, cartoon porn, jokes that aren't funny, annoyingly kitschy sound effects... this one is for the brain-dead only.

You can read out thoughts on this one in the review below...

The Lords of Salem (2013)

Being of the firm belief that Rob Zombie went off the rails after his Halloween remake, and has made nothing but crap ever since, we went into The Lords of Salem with a cautious hope. We hoped it would be a return to form for Zombie akin to The Devil's Rejects; maybe not in terms of content, but definitely in terms of quality.

While LOS surely had it's moments, we found the movie overall to be a mess -maybe his messiest movie to date- and we loathed Halloween II and El Superbeasto.

Let's get on with it, shall we?

The Lords of Salem is the story of Heidi, a local DJ in Salem, Massachusetts. She's one third of the super-crazy "Big H Radio Team," and a former crackhead. All she has in life is her sobriety, her radio gig, a shitty apartment, and a dog named boo... or, it's named something else. Can't remember. *Turns out the dog was named Troy. Sorry for the confusion.

Troy.

When a mysterious wooden box containing a mysterious record is delivered to Heidi at the radio station, marked "A gift from the Lords," she takes it home and listens to it, only to find that it plays backwards and its trippy grooves immediately put her into into a crazy trance. The next day at work, The Big H Radio Team pops that baby on the turn table and lets it rip, because, Rock n' Roll, man! It of course puts every woman (?) in Salem into the same trance-like state that Heidi fell into.

Maybe she was on drugs the whole time?

As Heidi's wild hallucinations and vivid flashbacks intensify, she falls into a state of hopeless despair, once again turning to drugs to cope. Lucky for her that she has a meddlesome Landlord (who has two creepy sisters) to look in on her, and keep her safely locked in her apartment... safe from everyone except them, that is!

Is Heidi going insane? Who are the Lords of Salem? Will any of this movie ever make any sense? Far be it from us to spoil it for you, but suffice it to say that no, no sense shall ever be made of this movie or anything contained therein.

Witches, man. Witches.

As a Director, Rob Zombie has two things going for him; he knows how to frame a shot/shoot a scene, and he has a unique eye for sharp, effective visuals. It's plain to see that he's a huge Horror fan, and because of that fact he brings certain classic elements to his movies, and tries to make the best out of them. Visually, this movie is pretty damn good.

Sheri Moon Zombie did a decent job in her role here, and came off as pretty believable. Even if she weren't Zombie's wife, she could totally do the acting thing on her own if she wanted to. As far as performances go, Bruce Davison was probably the standout for us in this one; he definitely brought the most legitimacy to the movie with his role, and he kept his scenes grounded, which we really liked.

The music was also great in this one, both the score and the song selections. John 5 really knocked it out of the park with this score, and I imagine the soundtrack album will be a good listen, especially at high volume, in the car.

Zombie has an artistic eye, no doubt.

Rob Zombie needs to stop writing his own scripts. The plot in this one is incoherent and underdeveloped, and the atmosphere feels more campy than it does dread filled or dark. That's the fault of poor writing and plotting, plain and simple. Zombie tends to cast pretty well, and those he does cast show up and do their jobs well, but the material they have to work with here is just not good at all.

The thing about this movie, and a lot of Zombie's other film work, is this: If there was no sound, no plot, and you played nothing but music over the visuals, you'd have a pretty trippy music video on your hands. So much of what goes on in this film is just random, "out there" visual oddity, that serves no real purpose other than to be random and "out there." Like a music video. That's basically what Rob Zombie does here; he creates an hour and a half long music video, and tries to force a shambled mess of a plot in there to make it into a movie.

I mean, the end credits were more coherent and tension-filled than anything that preceded them.

WTF is this guy doing? And why?

I'm really not trying to shit on the guy, or his creative vision, but he's six films deep into his career as a Director, and this is the extent of his growth and evolution as a filmmaker? This felt like a first film, not a sixth. To us, it even felt like more of a first film that 1000 Corpses did, and as much as we love that movie, it had some serious issues going on with it.

Rob Zombie clearly makes movies for himself, which is honestly what a filmmaker should do, but at some point in the creative process, there have to be measures enacted to ensure a work's coherence and to deliver a solid narrative. Had the script been better, this movie would have worked better. Had the story made more sense, and had more of a point to it, it could have been his best film to date.

Alright, at this point it's obvious that things like this were thrown into the move "just because."

Here's a list of examples of the things that bothered us in The Lords of Salem:

Why would a group of DJ's play a 30 second song that was sent to them by an unknown band, over the air like they did? Better yet, how could that band, with its 30 seconds of odd noise, be billed as the stars of a "Coming to Salem for one night only!" event, as if that would appeal to anyone at all? Is that how the Boston music scene really works?

At one point, Sheri Moon Zombie comes home to her dark apartment, and starts calling her dog. All is silent. When she turns on the light. her dog is suddenly right there... and the creepy music hits to give us a jump scare? Intentional or not, it made me laugh.

... and what's with this guy?

What was with the midget made of clay, squealing while Sheri Moon Zombie vibrated in place and wrangled his penis tentacles? The thing looked like a living ham.

The paper mache'-looking priests masturbating with purple dildos while Sheri Moon Zombie rides a goat and grinds with someone from a Norwegian Death Metal band... well it looked like a bunch of abstract shit from a music video, rather than a scene, or even a quick sequence of them. It all felt very pointless and pout of place.

***BEWARE, ENDIING SPOILERS***
And the ending.... Sheri Moon Zombie gives birth to a crayfish and then ends up standing on top of a mound of dead, naked old chicks, white eyes and all, in a messianic pose... which prompts a goofy smile from the head witch. Then she plays with her dog, the end. What was that?
 ***BEWARE, ENDIING SPOILERS***

What is this I don't even.

We get a living ham playing penis-jump rope with Sheri Moon Zombie, a bunch of Fulci Zombie-looking Priests masturbating with dildo's, someone gets beat to death with a frying pan, and we see a pile of naked dead bodies at one point... the gore factor in this one is on the low end of the scale, though there are plenty of disturbing visuals throughout.

There's a ton of nudity in this one... and most of it involves a group of older, not-in-the-best-shape-of-their-lives women. Not gonna lie, it was mostly not cool. Sheri Moon Zombie also gets mostly naked in this, and seems to like showing off her butt crack, so, that helped a bit.

A bit.

Too many clothing!

Over the past 30 years of watching Horror flicks, I can safely say that I've seen thousands of them. I think it's safe to say that I've paid my dues as a Horror Fanatic, so when I say "God, that sucked" I do so with the experience of having a good basis of comparison under my belt.

For most of its running time, LOS is a silly, nonsensical, laughable, sorry mess of a movie. That being said, I have to admit that The Lords of Salem didn't completely suck; it's a nice looking movie with some moments of goodness wedged in between the even more numerous moments of confounding nonsense. It's confusing and feels incomplete, and more than anything else, just feels like a missed opportunity.

A guy named Ben Rock over on our Get Glue account made a comment about the movie that really sums it up the best:

"I don't hate Rob Zombie's films, but I don't like them either. I just can't help but think he doesn't make movies for the same reason I want to see them."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

D

Sheri Moon Zombie is a Hottie for sure, and she's not a bad actress at all, either. Lots of Horror fans out there bitch and moan that Rob Zombie needs to stop casting her in all of his movies, but if they had a wife that hot, and one that could actually act too, they'd cast her in their movies too.

So, shut up about it already.

The Digital Dread Report for April 23rd

It's another mostly underwhelming week as far as DVD & BLU releases go, but it's not a total loss.

We're really trying our best to save our $$$ for May and June, which have so many high profile releases scheduled, that we may need to take out a small loan to keep up. So for now, we're being picky with what we buy.


We reviewed The Grapes of Death (HERE) many years ago, and while we found it to be solid but not spectacular, we're still excited about seeing it in a pristine 1080p transfer. It's a crazy Euro-style zombie flick that always comes to mind when people ask us "Give me a movie to watch that's REALLY obscure!" We definitely need to own this one, as we're pretty big on Jean Rollin's films, and we really like what Redemption does with most of their Blu-ray releases.

Night of the Hunted is another Jean Rollin film being released by Redemption this week, and once again if you're into that 1970's Eurotrash thing, this is another movie to add to your collection.

Cold Prey 2 (aka Fritt Vilt II) is another flick we reviewed (HERE) a few years back, so we find it odd that it's just now seeing a release in North America. We loved the first Fritt Vilt, which was a Norwegian spin on the usual slasher flick, and we liked part 2 almost as much. There's also a part 3 out there somewhere, but we didn't like that one as much... the point is, any of the "Cold Prey/Fritt Vilt" movies are worth a watch, and even a buy at a cheap price.


As far as the week's rentals go, Pawn, Thale, Assassin and It's in the Blood are all decent and worth a look.

We're also morbidly curious to see the new Christian Slater and Cole Hauser flick, Assassin's Run, because it involves a crazy karate ballerina who is out to get her daughter back from the Russian Mob... using only her karate and ballerina skills. Yeah. We're guessing it's like a female version of Taken, but probably not as good. Still, we need to see it.

The rest are all crap-shoots.


We have no desire whatsoever to see, let alone buy, Jurassic Park in 3-D. There's just no reason.

We have no desire to even acknowledge that A Haunted House exists, other than to say that we don't want to acknowledge its existence.

And finally, there's Sloppy the Psychotic. Just, no.