A group of… twentysomething? Teenagers? Any way, they party late night at a mall and get stalked by killer robots.
Anything was going to be a let down after Deep Red, so I went lowest common denominator with Chopping Mall. Just a slasher flick with a trio of rather neat looking robots. An old favorite from a misspent youth.
And you know what? It wasn’t half bad. I got into it fairly well, despite knowing the basic plot. Such as it was. The actors are all veterans of the B-Movie scene. The director did his job. The movie did it’s job.
Now did I wish it was something it wasn’t? Like, say, a slightly smarter, less bog standard slasher flick? Sure. And there are really questionable moments in the films plot. Like just how powerful are the robot’s laser beams again? Sometimes it barely does any damage, sometimes it kills with one hit, and sometimes it blows a girl’s head off, all based on the whim of the script.
Just one example, mind. Other possible beefs exist, and perhaps in a longer review at, say, a review site, I could go into it.
Thing is, it’s just carping. Chopping Mall is what it is, and does what it sets out to do: entertain.
It’s a good flick (1.5 points) of its sort that I like (1.5 points)
As a sort of palate cleanser from the last flick, I picked this one.
If “cleanser” can be used in connection with Deep Red, that is.
Deep Red
A pianist witnesses a horrible murder and investigates the crime, not knowing just how dangerous what he’s trying to do is.
This might be the fourth time I’ve watched this movie. I know the story, at least how it goes and who does what. It should hold no surprises for me. But like so many of my favorite Horror flicks, this one still gets to me.
It’s not without its flaws. But to go into them is to spoil a really wonderful flick. Besides, the good really outweighs the bad.
I did a full review of this film at the sister site, which will return the moment I get my act together regarding it. Bottom line, great flick (2.0 points) which I really love (2.0 points).
So I saw a trailer for this flick and once I saw it, I knew I had to see it. This guy is repairing an old car with his uncle and an earthquake hits. Car goes on both of them, killing the uncle and trapping the guy not only under the car but in the garage itself. If this isn’t bad enough, there are these worm monsters that came out of the ground. Now the guy has to figure out how to free himself while avoiding the beasties.
It looked beautiful.
So when I saw it was over on Amazon, I knew I had to see it for the Month of Horror.
But it wasn’t free. I could by it outright for about $13 bucks, or I could rent it for about $5.
Now again, I was jazzed about the movie. Looked like it might be up there with Tremors. Monster fun. Something I might watch again and again. So $13 bucks wouldn’t be that big a deal.
But I blinked and decided to rent it instead.
This was the right choice.
The monster stuff was… okay. The acting was… fair. It could have been so much more.
But it got saddled with so much crap. So. Much.
We’re not going to talk about the pointless nightmare sequence at the start of the flick. We’re not going to talk about the plot contrivances. Like when Our Hero is unconscious just long enough to miss getting early help. Or like how the monster’s venom is supposed to kill in two hours and it seems to take a lot longer than that for Our Hero. Or… We’re not talking about it. No.
What we are going to talk about is how this film is, at best, 45% monster movie. The rest of it is seemingly endless family drama. The love interest doesn’t want Our Hero to be a cop any more after he almost gets himself shot. The Uncle might be Our Hero’s dad. On and on and on.
Our Hero manages to connect with the outside world with his mom, of all people, and after telling her to hurry and call the Love Interest (never mind why) he confronts her with his discovery of her and the Uncle. That’s when I muted the movie until the monsters returned.
Later he gets in contact with the Love Interest, who passes on information he got earlier in the film. Then, right towards the end of the conversations she says “I’m pregnant.”
This is where I started screaming at the film.
It doesn’t even know when to quit. It just goes on and on and on.
Wow. Just wow.
So glad I didn’t pay full price. Too bad I didn’t wait till it got on Prime.
It’s a near meh level bad (.5 point) and I didn’t like it at all (.5 point).
It could have been so much better than this. What a disappointment.
A young warrior steals food from the wrong shrine.
There’s very little time for anything like character building or plot with only three+ minutes. Sometimes, though, that’s enough.
In this case, it isn’t. It’s not a bad little short. It’s just too short to be effective with the story it’s trying to tell.
That said, it’s very well animated. So it might not quite deserve the meh (1.0 points) I’m giving it. Nor does it deserve a good, I think. In any case, I’m kinda meh (1.0 points) about the whole thing.
2 out of 4
I SEE YOU
A house cleaner finds cleaning a haunted house a difficult task
While a bit light hearted, this little feature does stir up the occasional bits of dread. It has enough time to build up its two characters and was decently animated (sort of stop motion).
Now to be honest I did see the ending coming a little ways before the half way mark. But it’s a nice, charming short that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Of the four shorts I’ve watched for this series, this is the one I’m most likely to rewatch just for the hell of it.
It’s a good short (1.5 points) that I liked a lot (1.5 points)
I don’t have a lot of luck with Short Horror films. They tend to be basic, built around a single moment or scare. When they’re good, they’re very good. When they’re not… they tend to be a waste of time.
But an under an hour waste of time. So it’s hard to complain.
ROOD
Rood tells the story about a man trying to summon a writer through a door. That’s… it. It was an award winning flick, and it’s not badly made. Acting’s fine, it might be a wee bit over directed.
Where we get into problems is with the story. Outside of a book of Lovecraft stories shown in passing, we have no real idea what’s going on. The man has a camera set up, so he wants to record something, but what he hopes to achieve we don’t know. It all wraps up with a jump scare that really doesn’t work.
This isn’t the first time I’ve come across an award winning Horror flick that failed to move me. Wonder what I’m missing.
I’m going to say a low good (1.5) because outside the story its not terrible or anything. Personally, though, I kind of just didn’t care (1.0).
2.5 out of 4
ELDRITCH CODE
An IT guy tries to stop a virus from infecting his company’s computers. A virus named Cthulhu, MUAHAHAHAHAHA!
Eldritch Code works far better than Rood. It has more characters, a plot that makes a degree of sense, and while not earthshakingly directed really not bad.
It wears its roots on its sleeves. While it doesn’t meshes with what Lovecraft wrote, it feels closer to the mark than Rood. It’s ending also is less than satisfying, but not, I think, enough to ruin things.
Another low good (1.5 points), but I liked it a little more (1.5 points). It’s a part of an anthology series on You Tube called Dust. Watching it made me curious enough to subscribe to see what else they come up with.
When I restarted this site, I said I wasn’t going to do movie reviews here. I had another place to do that, after all.
Well, I changed my mind.
See, the past two years I’ve done had here a series called A Month of Horror. These were, daily brief reviews covering Horror movies I watched that day. It’s happened almost long enough to be a fun little tradition. As bad as this year’s been for me, I need a fun little tradition.
So all this month, little capsule reviews. I’m given each a score based on the system I use on the Review Site when (when!) I start that back up again. Simply put, each film is judge on a two prong basis:
Quality (Terrible, Bad, Meh, Good, Great)
Preference (Hate, Dislike, Meh, Like, Love).
Each judgment is represented by a number (0.0 through 2.0) and the two numbers are added together for the final score.
Enough nattering. Here’s the reviews.
THE MUMMY (1932)
I went out to a theater to see this one. Not the most ideal viewing experience, as the sound was wonky. Background sounds and music were louder than the dialogue and sometimes things were hard to understand, especially in the beginning. That’ of course, isn’t the film’s fault, but it’s worth pointing out.
Anyways, this was personally viewed as one of the lesser Universal Monster movies before this rewatch. It’s the romance portion; the love-at-first-site trope is a terrible one. Lazy. Unnecessary, in this case.
This watch, though…
In a nutshell, an ancient mummy is revived after centuries and wants to be reunited with his dearly beloved. Unfortunately that dearly beloved happens to be reborn in the body of a pretty young lady. One who unsurprisingly isn’t quite ready for what passes for marriage among the Undead.
All of this is told at a damn fine pace. There’s plot holes galore here and there. Still the acting’s fine, the direction’s pretty great to my inexperienced eye, and really, this ain’t lesser anything.
As for the romance… well, let me summarize that in script form:
FRANK: Damn it, Helen, I’ve known you all of three seconds, but I love you! You remind me of a thousand year old corpse I dug up recently!
HELEN: Oh, Frank, you flatterer you! I think I maybe possibly could eventually–
IMHOTEP: [Enters room] I am Ardeth Bey.
HELEN: A MAH-YUN! [proceeds to stare misty eyes at the three century old corpse.]
Seriously, watch Frank fume at this was hilarious. I’d forgotten there was a quasi love triangle here. Plus, they hung a lampshade on how silly it was for Frank to do this. I gave it a pass.
All in all, it’s a good movie (1.5 points) that I liked (1.5 points).
3 out of 4
THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1932)
One of the trailers that played incessantly in front of these films was for Scream 2, of all things. In it, the characters get into a debate about sequels. One guy says that there where plenty of good sequels, and a girl character snottily asks him to name one.
This is the correct answer.
This is so much better than the original. And the original wasn’t a slouch.
Quick summary: the monster survives his near death experience from the previous film. Now he is on the look out for someone to be his friend. Meanwhile his creator is being hounded by a former teacher to make more monsters.
While this has it’s problems (an unnecessary prologue, like the first film, for starters) it runs at a nice pace. Most of the male character try their hand at eating the scenery (Ernset Thesiger beats Colin Clive here). The female leads aren’t too shabby for what little they get. It really has a glorious ending, and does the fine job of making me regret put off a rewatch.
So to do the point thang again, it’s a great movie (2.0) that I loved (2.0)
Spoilersfor a short story published very nearly two hundred years ago.
When you are good at what you do, people talk about you. Edgar Allan Poe was very, very good. He even survived a character assassination early one. The man was a beast. And thus people talk.
Among his tales of cats and mad men there is one tale that stands above the rest: The Cask of Amontillado. In short, it’s a tale of revenge that still packs a wallop even even after over a century. The narrator, Montresor, lures back his prey, Fortunato, to a fate worse than mere murder. Bleak, dark, and not quite like anything else Poe ever wrote.
Now, again, when you’re good, people talk, and this story gets a lot of talk. Many make of the fact that Montresor never says why he does what he does, suggesting that he himself might be mad.
The thing is, this supposition isn’t supported in the narrative.
Before talking about this, one crucial fact must needs pointing out.. Consider the first paragraph of the story:
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled — but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allan Poe
The Cask of Amontillado doesn’t have only two characters. Unlike The Black Cat and The Tell Tale Heart, the narrator isn’t speaking into the void to whoever will listen. Montresor is speaking to a very definite person. He has a very definite audience in mind. This person who knows so well the nature of Montresor’s soul.
Who is this person? As with so much of the story, it doesn’t matter. It could be a friend, a brother, a wife, a lover. Not important. What matters is this person’s existence in the story.
For simplification let’s call this person Grim.
The Cask of Amontillado Bernie Wrightson
Poe’s big thing was precision. Every little bit plays on every other bit until he hits the mark he needs to hit. Which he was very good at doing.
Montresor never once expounds upon why he kills Fortunato to Grim. He expects Grim to know and understand at once. That is because he tells Grim exactly why he kills Fortunato.
Fortunato insulted him.
That’s it.
No great mystery to solve there. It could have been anything. Duels were more common back then, and they didn’t need that much of a reason for happening. Insults were the primary cause.
Fortunato’s reaction to his fate also points the way. Appaled by the act as he is, he never once asks the important question of why it’s happening to him.
That’s because he knows why.
Fortunato thought himself safe when his insult passed without action. Another factor is that, as Montresor tells Grim, Fortunato was “a man to be respected and even feared.” Someone that believed himself above reprisals.
Thus it’s very likely Montresor isn’t one of Poe’s mad men. He’s merely a very clever, very evil man.
Maybe that’s why, unlike with most Poe’s killers, Montersor gets away with it in the end.
The picture is from the Golden Book version of Hansel and Gretel. Or, rather, my version, back in the day. It’s from the front of the book, with the two kids over to the left.
As said, this is a terrifying memory. The witch, standing there, staring out of the book. At the fool still holding the book.
At me.
Memory plays tricks. The face there has a more evil cast. Uglier. Wicked.
This, though? While sinister after a fashion, it doesn’t compare to memory. What is fails to compare to what the mind wants to believe.
It might seem like all I do is complain about work. This, though, is meant more as an observation.
Arriving at work yesterday I found the cooler had been emptied of meat chubs. Every single last one of them had been taken out and placed in the meat case out front.
The general assumption is that someone wanted the case to look full. And it might have worked, had some care been involved. Instead, everything got shoved together into a massive mess.
Now a reasonable, good associate would have done something to fix this. Problem is, I spend the better part of the previous day working on organizing the cooler and whoever had this latest brain storm undid all that. All I could see was spending another hour or so of work, only to be told I did it wrong and have it undone.
Is this a bad attitude to have? A little. I’m more apathetic about things, and that doesn’t help me or my associates in the long run.
It’s also, I think, a reaction to uncertainty. Until more stable leadership comes in (assuming more stable leadership does come in), it’s probably better to go with the flow. Especially since I’m seriously considering leaving anyways.
That didn’t stop me from commenting loudly about how stupid it was. I am who I am.
The Writer Journal (and So Much More!) of Cullen M. M. Waters
