KFC Double Down

Grease is the word! I had to finally try one of those KFC Double Down meatwiches, and it was tasty enough -- two amazingly hot breaded chicken breasts, some sauce that reminded me of Thousand Island, some whitish cheese I didn't bother to identify, and a couple of strips of bacon. Health food, this isn't. And yet, despite the surely-deadly levels of fat in this, it wasn't overly greasy -- none of that throat-clearing one sometimes encounters after eating something too greasy. It all washed down pretty well.

It's a bit of a blunt instrument, flavorwise -- chicken/bacon/cheese/sauce -- not much in the way of flavor nuances, but then, it's a fucking Double Down, right? So, it doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is, and you shouldn't hope for it to be, either. Come in with low expectations, and you'll have them more than met. I liked it as a culinary curiosity, although I definitely wouldn't make it a regular part of my diet.

It certainly didn't feel like eating ball bearings, which is how Long John Silver's would make me feel (back in the 70s, the last time I had it). I ate it, was stuffed, but didn't puke or otherwise experience anything more traumatic than very greasy hands (handprint pictured above) and slight finger-burn because, with fried meat acting as "bread," there's no shelter for the fingers!

The Devil's Rejects (2/2)

I finally watched the rest of "The Devil's Rejects," which I thought was just terrible. Zombie tries to humanize the monster characters he created at the front end, showing them among their freako kin, and shows the hard-assed Lawman getting obsessive in his desire to bring them to justice. And, of course, instead of simply wasting the trio of nasties, the guy tortures them graphically, ensuring that they all ultimately get away, despite suffering some injuries along the way. But it's impossible to feel an iota of sympathy or empathy for the characters, given the horrors the unleashed on the front end. Zombie's editorial and directorial sympathies appear to be with the title trio of freaks, but they couldn't die soon enough, and an overlong ending with "Free Bird" playing is just too much to bear.

Looking at some of the reviews for this trash, I saw, to my incredulity, that Roger Ebert gave it like three out of four stars, but I just don't see it. It's competently shot, but it's just a pile of junk thematically. Bad dialogues, wafer-thin characters, a dreadful morality -- all of it.

Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass.

It's weird to compare this movie with one that clearly inspired it, like the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." In that one, despite the whole freak carnival of it, Tobe Hooper clearly identified with the hapless victims who end up on the wrong end of Leatherface's chainsaw. But Zombie so clearly identifies with the monsters in "...Rejects" that it's galling.

He could've written a more complex movie around Captain Spaulding, if he'd only had the writerly chops to pull that off, but that character was, by and large, only there for comic relief (what little there was of it). Anyway, blech. You feel like you need a shower and some brain bleach after watching this movie.

Pontypool (2008)

I just watched "Pontypool" tonight, and found it to be a very cool take on the zombie movie. It's a Canadian movie (or is, at least, set in Canada) and basically has this word virus that occurs when people say two words in close succession that have similar sounds. Like "symptom" and "symbol" or "Mister" and "missing" -- that kind of thing. It triggers a kind of crazy feedback loop in the minds of the victims, turning them into zombies, basically, as their brains short-circuit and they chase others around trying to kind of "complete the circuit" or something.

Anyway, it was nice to see a fresh take on zombies! The movie focuses on a small radio station in the middle of nowhere in Canada (I'm assuming somewhere in Quebec, since French-Canadian elements pop up a few times in it), and the story is seen almost entirely from the vantage point of the characters in the little radio station, with grizzled radio star Grant Mazzy as the protagonist of it (played by Stephen McHattie, who played the Svengali-like therapist for Elaine in SEINFELD, as well as Nite Owl I in "Watchmen" among various other parts). He has a great voice for the part of a radio host, and that's a nice element in it.

The virus is haunting enough to make you a bit paranoid about the use of language -- as a writer and editor myself, I am acutely aware of the use of language, and could spot the "triggers" the moment they appeared, thinking "Oh, no!" It seems like the filmmaker was kind of making a point about the damaging effects of talk radio on some level, although this thematic point doesn't get in the way of the larger effort.

I really liked this movie, and the tension is well-maintained in it, perhaps more so because of what you don't see -- most of the zombie horror is occurring outside, beyond the sight of the characters -- which helps keep production costs down, sure, but also creates a real kind of bunker atmosphere that was claustrophobic and haunting.

The director said: "At Rue Morgue's 2008 Festival of Fear expo, director Bruce McDonald stressed the victims of the virus detailed in the film were not zombies, calling them "Conversationalists". He described the stages of the disease: There are three stages to this virus. The first stage is you might begin to repeat a word. Something gets stuck. And usually it's words that are terms of endearment like sweetheart or honey. The second stage is your language becomes scrambled and you can't express yourself properly. The third stage you become so distraught at your condition that the only way out of the situation you feel, as an infected person, is to try and chew your way through the mouth of another person."

Good times! A welcome addition to the zombie movie subgenre! And be sure to watch past the end credits!

Severance (2006)

I watched the British horror movie/black comedy "Severance" last night, hoping it was something it wasn't. The trailers for it make it seem like it's this wry, dark comedy -- I mean, it's referred to as a horror-comedy, for fuck's sake...

"Severance" trailer

The biggest problem: NOT FUNNY.

And it's not simply a matter of an American kind of failure to appreciate British humor on my part -- if anybody understands both black comedy and dry humor, it's me. The problem was that the movie just wasn't funny -- sure, there were a few wryly amusing gags in it, but the movie just fails completely to live up to the promise of its premise. Seriously, you want horror-comedy? "Cabin Fever" delivers that aplenty. This movie doesn't.

For all of the front-end mentioning about the company retreat, there's almost no actual satire of workplace bullshittery in it. I imagine the writer pitched this movie with that otherwise solid concept and ultimately failed to offer a comedic payoff.

The characters aren't well-developed, and the situation just devolves into a hum-drum slaughterfest against some completely uninspiring villains (near as I can tell, they're pissed-off Hungarians out for revenge). The writer was clearly trying to make a political/satirical point about arms dealers getting what's coming to them by getting killed by and large by the weapons that their company makes, but it falls flat -- the writer just didn't know what to do with the premise.

For example, the nebbishy guy (in the clip above, caught in the bear trap) -- they play that moment for comedic effect by having the others try to free him, and they slip their grip on the trap, leading him to get yet another snap of the trap on his leg, making him scream all over again.

Okay, I get it -- funny on the first slip, sure. And then they do it again. And again. And again. Four times? Five? And, oh, big shock -- his leg gets severed. Ha. Ha. They overuse the joke and the nebbish doesn't even get the satisfaction of doing anything more than screaming -- he should at least get to scream out something about the people being butterfingered fuckwits or something. It's like the pie in the face -- the first pie, sure. Okay, but halve the laughs with each subsequent pie, until only the crickets are chirping.

The American protagonist in it ("Maggie") gets points for being an ass-kicking chick -- she fights hard and at least has the benefit of making the right moves at the right time (she's a stone-cold killer); there's a drugged-out Brit male character (can't remember his name -- I'll call him "Limey McGee") who also survives, but he's just a dolt and a twit -- it felt like the writer had extra-fondness for that character (maybe reminding the writer of himself? Not sure), who just gets high and trips out most of the time, and sloppily fights his way to survival before ending up with a pair of Slavic escort babes and a stated desire for a foursome at the end of the movie.

Oh, and they led off with the Small Faces' "Itchycoo Park," the bastards. Of course, at that point, I didn't realize how sucky the movie was going to be, so there was still hope then.

The movie's just a drab slaughterfest, not nearly as smart or funny as it thinks it is, and it was a big disappointment. FAIL.

The Devil's Rejects (1/2)

I watched some of "The Devil's Rejects" last night, before falling asleep (yeah, it put me to sleep). Rob Zombie is an acknowledged fan of Horror, but watching that movie (or what I did of it), I knew that being a fan of Horror and being able to actually write and/or direct a horror movie is a very different thing.

What I saw of it was mean-spirited and icky -- there's clearly money behind it, because it doesn't look cheap, but there's just something terribly foul (and dirt-cheap) in this movie -- good horror confronts the viewer with the sublime, and there's simply nothing sublime in this movie. There is misogyny, cruelty, foulness, barbarity -- and there is a sense of editorial approval on the part of Zombie for the villains (they're too repugnant to even be considered "antiheroes"). It's weird to imagine the raw cynicism at work in the filming of this movie, like the aesthetics of pretend depravity -- "Oh, I was Naked Girl Corpse Number 1 in "The Devil's Rejects"). And there's precious little humor in it -- it appears to take itself very seriously, and that misses out on a vital element of horror: HUMOR. Even black humor is humorous, and this movie piles on the carnage without a lick of humor in it (it reminds me a bit of oh-so-serious Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" -- which also took itself incredibly seriously as it bludgeoned the audience into submission, while pretending to be offering some kind of cogent social commentary). The victims of the "Rejects" aren't deserving targets -- they are unfortunates in the wrong place at the wrong time. Horrific, sure, but Horror? No. The character of Captain Spaulding brings only the barest whiff of humor to the story, and even that is just a tiny whiff that gets overshadowed in the bloodbath.

My intuitive sense of Zombie in this movie is someone with the means to indulge his enthusiasm for the genre, without having the narrative, intellectual, or aesthetic chops to really pull it off. Now, I haven't seen the rest of the movie, but what I saw of it was fucking dreadful -- horrible people doing horrible things to people -- that kind of inverted ethic where fans of this are supposed to identify (?) with the killers at the expense of the victims (?) -- not sure where he was taking it, whether the trip is worth taking, and so on.

I enjoy Horror, but to me, this wasn't really Horror -- it's the same reason I avoid so-called "Splatterpunk" and "Torture Porn" and the whole "Saw" franchise. Popping people into the meatgrinder isn't Horror in my view, although it is surely horrific. Maybe my intrinsic sense of righteousness demands that the evil be punished, and the lead characters in this movie most definitely need to be napalmed -- and I'm not entirely sure that this'll even happen.

Movies like "Straw Dogs" and "Deliverance" are, while not marketed as such, most definitely Horror movies (and horrific) -- they call forth a monstrous dread in the viewer, invoke Terror and Horror in graphic ways -- but there is enough character weight in these harrowing movies to carry the audience through. Since the killers are the nominal protagonists of this movie, there is nobody to identify with (except for sympathy for the victims and the actors starring in this movie). It's very dehumanizing.

Horror, for all of its reputation, is not a dehumanizing genre -- it actually places a huge and high value on humanity, and approaches issues of what makes us human by exploring the horrors of Man and Nature. None of that is evident in this movie.

(I'll comment on the rest of it after I've watched it, which I'm only doing out of a sense of narrative closure -- judging from the front end of it, I think I know what's coming on the back end)

Cabin Fever

It's nice to see that Eli Roth's "Cabin Fever" (2002) still remains one of my favorite horror movies. It's dark, gruesome, and darkly hilarious. It has some of my all-time favorite horror movie moments, including this one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMS9Rv3ksrU&feature=related

Bahaha! In the context of the movie (where some college kids go off to a cabin and get infected by a mysterious and horrible disease that picks them off one by one), it's just too perfect a set up, and the group cohesion falls apart as they're confronted with their own mortality. There are some very memorable images from it

Of course, it's not some sensitive Emo fable -- rather, it's a darkly funny exercise in mayhem, and nothing is sacred. It's got some stupid elements in it, it's got some funny-as-hell elements in it, and it's got some seriously horrific elements in it -- basically, a good time IF you enjoy horror movies.

I finally got it on DVD over the weekend, after not having seen it for years (and often touting "Harmonica Man" from it, which is, sadly, not properly shown on YouTube), and was pleased that I enjoyed it as much or more as I did the first times I saw it.

The asshole characters are extra assholish, and the plague falls on the just and unjust in roughly equal measure, coupled with rogue rednecks on the rampage (itself a bit of a wink-and-nod at the preconceptions of the characters).

It's fun, it's funny, and it's horrifying, and in a culture that runs from death and disease as much as ours does (I mean, who wouldn't want to run away from death and disease, right?) -- it hits a nice nerve, and bravo to Roth for tapping it (and the mean-spirited nature of the protagonists in it amuses me, too -- the selfishness of youth?)

Some horror fans I know hate this movie, but I think they're wrong -- it's all kinds of good, and you can't help but laugh while you're busy grimacing and squirming from it.

Book: The Ruins

I may link to some of my older Amazon reviews, just for fun, before sorting out future reviews with Amazon...

http://www.amazon.com/review/R12WIRUEI41UZD/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm