Well, this was a marked improvement over the 20 Movies for $5.00 box o’ fun.  Sometimes you do get what you pay for.

The $5.00 box depended more on old public domain films and current ultra low-budget indie movies.  This set relied more on TV movies and movies with more professional production values, even if they were low-budget. And a few cheapos.

Best of Show

Night of the Living Dead – Released to the public because of a legal blunder, just like OJ — so not really fair, but I don’t make the rules.  No, wait, I do make the rules.  It holds up.

Runner Ups – Or is it Runners Up like Courts Martial?  And why have there been so many Popes Paul?  There are a shocking number of watchable (and dare I say re-watchable) films in this package.

Zombie Dearest – Probably the 2nd best film in the collection, and 100% different in tone from NOLD.  I’m not usually one for humor / horror hybrids, but this one maintained a good balance and had some good performances to make it work.

Hide and Creep – I dreaded this one just based on the hacky title.  But I was completely wrong.  Even funnier than Zombie Dearest, full of quirky characters and funny lines.

Last of the Living – Another of the dreaded horror / comedy mash-ups that are consistently proving my pre-conceived notions to be wrong.  Like Hide and Creep, it is a low-key funny film, very well played by the cast.

Another Kind – Not a funny movie.  Not a lot happens — it reminded me of Blair Witch or Willow Creek, but not hand-held.  Just a fairly low-key depiction of what might realistically happen given some extraordinary event.

Salvage – A low-budget  gem — or at least cubic zirconia.  A pretty serious piece that you think you have figured out, but then it takes you somewhere that I don’t remember seeing before.  I’m not 100% sure it plays by its own rules, but it is close enough and clever enough to be fun.

MIdnight’s Child – Pretty good for what it was — a TV movie version of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle genre (but not bad enough for the later TV movie category).  No big surprises, but carried off by some good performances, a hot au pair, and the hypnotic sight of Peggy Olsen as a little girl.

They Coulda Been a Contender

Hurt – Could have been tightened up into a much better movie given the quality of the cast.

The Cellar Door – Potentially interesting, if trite, concept sunk by rampant stupidity of the characters and some poor directorial choices.

Live! From Death Row – I wanted to like this one for the cast and idea, but it just came off as cheap and cheesy.  If it had been done seriously as a 100% live news feed from the prison, they might have achieved something like the great Special Bulletin.  They did not.

I am Omega – Sure, a rip-off but from great source material.  Sadly it was a rip-off in title only and was doomed by some deadly performances.

Behind Your Eyes – Strange sensation in that I remember the movie, and yet I don’t remember it.  I re-read the post, I the remember scenes, but nothing resonates with me. That can’t be a good sign.

The Wind – The last movie in both Collections have evoked mixed emotions in me and were probably rewarded with a artificially high rating.  This one also had the bad fortune of following several good movies.  It wasn’t a good movie, but I can remember liking a few images, so it gets a break.

Lifetime Theater – Having never actually seen a Lifetime movie, I will just say that there was potential in most of these had they not muted all the elements that would have made them stand out.  It’s not even a matter of violence or gore — more energetic direction, an effective score . . . they might have had a decent TV movie.  They can’t all be Duel, but some could have been watchable.

Bay Coven – Lifetime version of Rosemary’s Baby.

Adrift – Lifetime version of Dead Calm.  But not bad.

Nightmare at Bitter Creek – Lifetime version of The Descent (but above ground).

No One Could Protect Her – An amalgam of every Lifetime woman-in-danger stalker movie ever made.  Right down to the title.

Not Ready for Prime Time

Bleeding Rose – Possibly the most amateurish film in the collection.  Poor acting from most of the performers, and almost completely lacking in likable characters.

Ominous – In the first scene, the realtor calls the house a “piece of shit.”  I can’t quite go that far in describing the film, but it is pretty much a nothing.  When your best shot is a down-blouse of the female lead cleaning the floor, that is not a good sign.

The Cry – A stunning lack non-performance from the talented (based on other projects) lead actor and some awful camera-work ruin any chance this film could have had.

20 Horror Films for $7.50 — Part XX of XX.  After ramping up to a great climax with a few good movies, they end with a let-down that is not even worthy of the $5.00 collection.  This makes the season 1 finale of Heroes look like the season 1 finale of 24.

“It is the end of the world, but not the end we imagined,” begins an interminable narration which tells us the end is not from fire or earthquakes, but the titular wind — an idea so good that M. Night Shyamalan used it 7 years later in The Happening.  And to a similar reception.

The narration goes on for 4 minutes during which we are told how a single act was carried by the wind around the world, eventually leading to its destruction.  It concludes, “Some believe the wind is nothing more than a cautionary tale told to the children of a dying time.”  Yeah, the time when they made good movies.

The “single act” begins immediately with contradictions — a POV tracking shot through the woods, interrupted with static shots.  Presumably, it is the POV of the wind, but why the motionless inserts?  And why is it sticking mostly to the paths?  It blows past Clair, sitting in a field, and she seems to sense something passing, but turns her attention back to an inappropriate card she has received from platonic friend Bob.

She calls her pals John, Billy and Mic who meet her in the field.  She tells them the mildly disturbing story of a “date” with Bob and shows them the card.  Clair cries through the relating the story, but smiles as they go off to kick Bob’s ass.  They are riled up enough, presumably by the wind, to go teach Bob a lesson.  Bob learns the lesson that being beaten up by your 3 best friends and clubbed in the head with a log will kill you.  To be fair, he probably already knew that.

Soon Bob emerges from his shallow grave, which was mostly leaves. Strangely, a stranger just happens to be there (eating an apple — get it?) and must kill him because he ends up at the morgue.

Mic goes to Clair’s house, but no one is home.  As in every movie in this blog, that doesn’t stop him from going in.  He finds evidence that Clair created the lame card that she showed the boys after her mildly uncomfortable outing with Bob.  This is like Oliver Stone making a $100 million movie if Oswald had just given JFK a wedgie in Dallas.

We learn that the stranger who finished Bob off was his brother Earl ^[1].  He also gets an ass-kicking from Mic, though non-lethal, after suggesting that he knows what happened and wants to be be Bob’s replacement in the gang (i.e. the Shemp).  When he regains consciousness, he walks out of the woods talking out loud to himself about about what a bully Bob was. Yeah, nothing like the guys he desperately wants to buddy-up to now.

Eventually the gang turns on each other and John, Billy and Clair perform the ritual blood-brother cutting and obligatory MMF 3-way.  Wait, what?  This came out of nowhere, and frankly didn’t need the gratuitous MM shots — there was enough F to go around.  In fact, the act ought to called MFM just to keep some distance in there.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Billy kills a rabbit and shows it to Mic, John hits on Mic’s semi-MILFy mother, Clair calls and invites him to the scene of the crime.  As Clair placidly stands by, the 3 of them duke it out.  And then — WTF — did Earl pop back into the picture?   He somehow snuck up on the group despite them being in a clearing the size the Bonneville Salt Flats.  Kudos for this though — the last 2 seconds make it worth sitting through the previous 30 seconds.

The last shot really is kind of awesome.  In fact, there is some good camerawork throughout.  The director really loves circling his small cast, and comes up with several imaginative shots throughout the movie.

In fact, I can imagine a good movie being made on this premise.  It’s too bad the concept of the evil wind was dropped.  This incident was supposed to be the spark that launched the apocalypse.  It was heard and seen blowing a few times, and that subtly was wise; it didn’t need to be hammered-home to the viewer.  But there needed to be a callback at the end for the title to make sense.

Sadly, the concept and decent camerawork couldn’t save this one — it was brought down by almost every other phase of the production.  The dialogue was weak, and at times, just too much.  For example, when John started seducing Mic’s Mom, I thought the scene was pretty well done as it went from uncomfortable to more aggressive.  John’s dialogue and performance really stood out.  But then he yakked on and on and on (and on); and on — ruining the scene ^[2].

The acting was pretty spotty.  Luckily the main offender Bob was not around for long. The others had their good and bad moments, but it’s not always easy to tell if the budget constraints or equipment cause some of this.

Due to the casting, I was confused throughout much of the movie by who was who.  I could spot John because he is blonde and Claire because she is shorter, but Mic, Billy and Earl were entirely interchangeable to me.  Clair probably gave the best performance.  She was consistently interesting to watch, kind of a mix of Bridget Fonda and Amanda Plummer.

So not a total disaster thanks to Clair and the director, but I’m not recommending it to anyone.  Or even admitting to anyone that I watched it (almost literally true on this blog)

Post-Post:

• No relation to The Wind except in their awfulness.
• ^[1] OK, maybe I have a little face-blindness, but this whole time I had thought it was Billy who had finished Bob off.
• ^[2] The scene was almost saved by the director.  The shot of Vanessa laying on the table beside the sandwich was just masterful.
• After the murder, the guys are hanging out at Mic’s house playing Resident Evil. One of them submerges his face in the icy water of a large Igloo Cooler for a several seconds ruminating on how they killed Bob.  This looks like a perfectly nice home which would have a refrigerator — why would they be keeping beer in a big-ass cooler?  Oh yeah, so he could stick his face in it.
• He raises his head and says, “we’re out of beer.”  It was established that Mic’s mother was home and the other guys (and Clair) live with their parents.  Are they still in high school?  Is she just a cool mom (i.e. the kind the fascist city government would love to lock up for such corruption)?
• Strangely, the only place I have seen any of the cast — Vanessa and Billy both had minor roles in The Sopranos as “Hysterical Woman” and “Caller #3”. Respectively, in an example of good casting.