Monthly Archives: June 2014

Awaken the Dead (2007)

Posted on by
Reply

awakencover0320 movies for $5; what could possibly go wrong?  Part VI.

More ambitious than The Nurse, but not a success.

Awaken the Dead gets off to a good start with an interesting visual under the credits.  The camera races through a metropolitan area which has been flooded.  The cityscape is in black & white, and is animated or maybe rotoscoped.  This gives way to a few live color shots of an unflooded urban area.  This is the last we see of the flooding.  It is also the last decent cinematography we will see for a while.  For the next 90 minutes, the screen will be very grainy and frequently washed-out to the point of being monochrome.

awakenbegin02The “action” begins with a priest lying in bad with his arms out, crucifixion-style.  Just in case we don’t get it, he has a huge black cross tattooed on his back, and his name his Christopher Gideon.  In another part of the city, Mary Payne wakes up topless, but lying on her stomach, so she may as well be a nun.  Gideon has received a letter directing him to Mary’s house, where most of the movie will take place, to meet Mary’s father.

The film again taunts us by threatening to become good with the introduction of two Japanese schoolgirls.  They look up at a jet as if they had never seen one before and begin rubbing their eyes.  A few minutes later, after they are zombified, they disembowel a guy.  I’m still on board

awakengirls01

Amazingly, the YouTube version has a cleaner picture than the DVD. But I’m not sitting through it again to replace the screen-caps.

Gideon and Mary see out their windows that the world has been overrun by zombies, or at least their street.  Soon they are joined by a Jehovah’s Witness and a survivalist couple.

After the survivalist couple zombies-out, the priest goes outside guns-a-blazing.  I hesitate to include this pic lest it make this movie look good.

awakenguns01After this fight, Gideon is sporting an eye-patch, and looks a lot like the Governor from The Walking Dead.  The three remaining humans find a letter telling them to meet Mary’s father at an old church.

Mary’s father explains that this is a government operation testing a new weapon.  Buildings stay intact, no soldiers die, zombies kill everyone.  Shockingly, the government does not consider this a success, and kills him.  The same jets do another flyover, releasing a chemical which kills the zombies.

No cities were flooded in the making of this movie.

To recap:

  • Cinematography: Just dreadful.  I don’t even think it was incompetence or budget restraints; it was just terrible choices.
  • Acting: Mostly terrible.
  • Dialogue: Terrible, repetitive.
  • Make-Up: Really looked more like Insane Clown Posse than zombies.
  • Story: Adequate.  You don’t really need much for a good zombie movie.
  • Sound: Not well-recorded.  Sound does not get enough respect — in this, and many low-budget movies, expectations are lowered upon hearing the first word of dialogue.

I rate it a 4.

Post-Post Leftovers:

  • This was clearly a low-budget movie, yet it has a cast of 122 in IMDb.  Sure, 97 are list as “Zombie”, but you still have to feed them lunch.
  • There is a nice Dolly Zoom early on, but it just serves to show how dreary the direction is otherwise.
  • A 10% trim off the 1:41 running time would have helped.  Or a 90% trim might have left a pretty good short.
  • Also available on YouTube, but why would ya?awakencredit03

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Decoy (S1E37)

Posted on by
4

ahbabysitter03Oddball show-tune composer Gil Larkin is working with singer Mona Cameron and falling for her despite her being married; and despite him being a show-tune composer.  When Gil discovers bruises on Mona’s shoulder, he decides to pay her husband a visit.

Apparently, wife-beating is no longer the hoot that it was in the dark ages . . . you know, a week ago . . . in the previous AHP episode Mink.  It truly was a different time.

Gil goes to confront Mr. Cameron, who is on the phone wheeling and / or dealing.  Cameron shouts, “Richie, don’t!” as a man knocks Gil out from behind.  Richie, still unseen, then shoots Cameron.  Gil wakes up with a gun in his hand, Mr. Cameron dead, and the phone blaring out public domain pop music.

ahdecoygil02Gil realizes he is being set up, but has two clues — the name “Richie” and the caller who might have heard what happened.  The caller has hung up, but he finds a note listing two clients who were scheduled to talk to Cameron that night.

This really isn’t much of a frame-up as no one saw Larkin go to Cameron’s office and he had no appointment.  He could have just quietly slipped away after regaining consciousness.  And it was risky of Richie to knock him out.  Had Gil been unconscious when the cleaning lady came, that would have actually exonerated him.

Gil goes to see the first person on the schedule, a Japanese dancer.  This was pretty progressive casting in the 1950’s — there was no reason to make the dancer Japanese; unless she was the murderer, and that was somehow relevant.  I’m not sure whether this was a progressive casting choice or a yellow herring (I know, I know). [1]

ahdecoygil01

Classic “exposition delivered with your back to the room” stance

The next person on the list is a wacky DJ.  It is hard to tell whether this giggling beatnik doofus is high, hyperactive, ADD, drunk or all of the above.  He inexplicably hums the tune that was playing through the phone.  In this case, it is a pickled herring.

He joins the ranks of Hollywood DJs that you could not pay people to listen to (Stevie Wayne, Dave Garver, Johnny Fever, etc).  I would include Wolfman Jack in that list, except he actually was inexplicably successful.[2]

Gil returns to Mona’s apartment where the police are waiting for him.  They take him downtown to give a statement.  Returning to Mona’s place, he discovers an album of the tune that was playing through the phone.  It is an LP, but luckily he chooses exactly the right track.  When he accuses Mona of framing him, she calls Richie out of the bedroom.

When they say they can’t allow Gil to live, effectively confessing, the police barge back in.  Mona tries to pull a switcheroo on the cops, acting as if Richie had just barged in on she and Gil.  She gives a pretty great O-face (as in “O, Crap!“) as she realizes in about 3 seconds that there is no point to even trying this.

Post-Post Leftovers:

  • [1] Re-reading this after someone linked to it, I did cringe.
  • [2] Trivia: George Lucas gave Wolfman Jack a “piece” of American Graffiti to appear it.  It wasn’t Star Wars, but it was huge and set him for life.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  Gil and Mona are still alive, but that’s it.
  • AHP Proximity Alert: Harry Taylor was in 6 episodes this season.  Jack Mullaney just appeared 4 weeks ago.  Give someone else a chance!
  • Frank Gorshin, in his first role, has a bit part.  He would go on to at least two iconic roles: The Riddler on TV’s Batman, and Bele the black & white dude on Star Trek (not to be confused with the white & black dude).
  • There must be some weird Alfred Hitchcock / Ten Commandments connection.  In the first season, AHP used eighteen actors from that movie.  And nine more in season two.  Of course, it was a cast of thousands.

50th Post Palate Cleanser – The Marx Brothers

Posted on by
Reply

I wonder how well this has aged.  It was 50 years old the first time I saw it, so maybe it is truly timeless.  On the other hand, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit; has it gotten corny (to mix my metaphors into a tasty, tasty medley)?

You can really only shoot an elephant in your pajamas once; just like in music, you can really only Rock once around the Clock, or have one only Calendar Girl.  I guess you can also have a Mayan Calendar Girl, but not after 2012.

It might be low-hanging, but they got there first, and picked the hell out of it.

Groucho Marx and Margaret Dumont in Animal Crackers.

 

 

 

Byzantium (2013)

Posted on by
Reply

byzantiumcover01Watching this, I was reminded of Interview with the Vampire.  In atmosphere, but especially in story — a vampire telling his / her history,  cutting between present day and centuries before.  It was only later that I discovered both were directed by Neil Jordan.  The rarely-miscast Tom Cruise is replaced by Gemma Arterton; the always-miscast Kirsten Dunst is replaced by Saoirse Ronan.  If Jordan was trying to atone for past sins, he succeeded.

Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) is a 16 going on 217 vampire who occasionally writes the story of her life, and tosses a page out the window, to the wind, to the sea.  This time, she sees an old codger pick one up.  Turns out he has collected enough of these pages to know her story.  Talk about a perfect match: he has lived a long, lonely life and is ready to die; she feeds only on those who wish to die.  Her thumbnail morphs into a raptor-like talon and everybody’s a winner.

Meanwhile Mom, also a vampire, has fled from the bar where she strips after a man recognizes her.  Wow, vampire strippers hate that, too?  After a nice foot-race through a grocery store, through a warehouse, and through the skylight of a mall, they somehow end up back at her place.  After making nice for about 30 seconds, she slices the man’s head off.  When Eleanor arrives home, they torch the place and head out.

byzantiumsao01Mother and daughter both meet guys that night.  The difference is Mom gets her man by offering “€50 for a blow and a €100 for a full whack.”  Eleanor gets her fella’s interest by playing the piano in a restaurant.  Although IMDb says Saoirse took a 12-week crash course in piano lessons, her fingers match the notes played like the lip-synching in a 1960’s chop-socky movie.

Mom hit the jackpot as her “client” Noel has inherited a hotel, the titular Byzantium, which will make quite the brothel.  She introduces Eleanor as her sister.  Woohoo!  In most guy’s minds, that would have also suggested a jackpot.  Noel doesn’t seem to be the horniest bulb on the tree, though.

Eleanor gives her new boyfriend Frank one of her biographical manuscripts.  He reads it and gives it to their teacher.  The teacher and a counselor are impressed by the story and the way it is written.  Such intelligent, independent thought can’t be tolerated in school, so they try to “save” her.  Which does not work out well.

Throughout the film, there are frequent flashbacks to the Napoleonic Wars which show how Mom got into “the business”, and how the she and Eleanor became vampires. Sadly, in those unenlightened days, girls were not allowed to join the vampire union.  The Brotherhood tolerates Mom’s existence only until she “breaks the code” by turning Eleanor into a vampire to save her life after being raped by a syphilitic soldier.  She also killed “one of their own” which does not sit well with the Brotherhood.

byzantiumgemma01Also throughout the movie, two men from the Brotherhood have been searching for our vampires.  Finally, they meet up with Eleanor and the school counselor.  The pace in the last 15 minutes really accelerates, and is satisfying on  all levels.

Byzantium is a slow, deliberate movie, but in a good way.  This pace is helped immensely by a great score.  If it had been written by the guy who worked on The Nurse, this film could have been deadly. It looks great, but none of the performances blew me away.  Eleanor’s boyfriend Frank was probably the stand-out.

I rate it a 8.

Post-Post Leftovers:

  • Written by Moira Buffini, who sounds like a French vampire slayer.
  • Vampire tropes:  Fangs (OK, a talon in this case), feeding on blood, enhanced strength, immortality, must be invited into a home.  However, they can walk in sunlight, do appear in mirrors, and are not room temperature (unless Mom slices their head off).
  • On at least two occasions, Eleanor actually tastes Frank’s blood, or nicks him and is tempted.  With him having leukemia, wouldn’t that be a problem?  I guess immortality trumps a mere blood disease.
  • Eleanor is attending college at 16 — what is she a genius?  Uh, wait, she is really over 200 years old — talk about a slow-learner.  Did she she take the short-carriage to school?
  • Features two actors who had significant recurring roles in Season 5 of Dexter.  Seems unlikely for that to be 1) coincidence, or 2) interesting to anyone except me.
  • Maybe the first time the two leads of an English language movie completely failed the spell-check: Gemma, Arterton, Saoirse, Ronan.
  • Pronounced Jemma and Sir-sha.
  • €100 = $135.byzantiummount02

Carla Laemmle Dead at 104

Posted on by
Reply

I wouldn’t normally note something like this, but I recently saw her in Dracula from the Universal Classic Monsters Blu-Ray Collection.  Despite a very small part, she stuck in my head as a cute 1930’s nerdy-girl; a pre-war Bailey Quarters.

She was the last surviving actor in the film; and 104 years deserves some kind of recognition.  More here.

Update: Just noticed that Lupita Tovar and Manuel Arbó, who were in the Spanish Dracula, are both 103.  Although, I suspect the lack of a death date is just an oversight by IMDb on some pretty obscure actors.

20140615_165840a

20140615_170223a Poor composition here — she is not smoking a cigar