The Battery (2012)

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battery00Two former baseball-playing buddies hit the road after the zombie apocalypse.  We first meet Mickey 1) smoking, so he’s is probably a loser, and 2) rocking out with some noise-suppressing earphones — making him guaranteed zomebie-bait. This guy has apparently leaned into too many pitches.  Luckily (for him (but not the remaining human gene pool)), the batteries die before he does.  Also very luckily for him, his friend comes running out of an abandoned house blasting away so that even Mickey can hear the shots, and they get away.

This guy is purely a slacker idiot.  In the next scene, he decides to take a break lying in the middle of the road while his brother Ben scavenges a car for supplies.  1) Wouldn’t the grass be more comfortable, and 2) would any other survivors hesitate to drive right over what appeared to be a murderous zombie speed-bump in road?  We’re already on the road to Idiocracy, but if this were the caliber of survivors, we would be really be Charlie-Hustling it (trying to stick to baseball metaphors, but it’s rough).

battery02After Ben shoots a zombie soccer mom in the head, they acquire a car that works; so the apocalypse couldn’t have been too long ago — yet Mickey uses a Discman.  While Ben is scavenging for useful materials in the garage, Mickey is collecting the panties of a dead teenage girl.  That pretty much says it all.  Ben is constantly doing something useful which Mickey is rocking out, sleeping, or staring at the dead teenage girl’s picture.  This imbalance almost taints the film in the beginning, but it is engaging enough that it works as a slice of life in a new world.

One morning, Micky wakes up to find Ben gone fishing, and a teenage zombie girl trying to get in the car.  Doing the only reasonable thing, he jerks off at her only slightly decaying boobs mashing up against battery07the car window.  Ben comes along and shoots her in the head, getting a pretty good laugh out of Mickey’s predicament.

That night, when they settle into an actual house, tired of saving Mickey’s ass, Ben tosses a zombie into Mickey’s bedroom.  It’s messy and doesn’t really accomplish anything, but he finally makes a kill.  Mickey is still depressed over a girl he has been talking to on the walkie-talkie who tells him to stay away, that The Orchard is not what they think it is.  If Walking Dead has taught us anything, it is that he should take her advice.

As luck would have it, they encounter each other on the road and Mickey lets it slip that they had been talking on the walkies and that she had said “the orchard isn’t what you think ti is”.  To be sure she isn’t followed, she shoots Ben in the leg.  They wake up the next morning in the car surrounded by zombies clawing at the windows.  For days they endure the moaning and beating against the windows, running out of food and water. And breathable air at the rate they’re smoking.

battery11The movie is what it is, as things usually are.  There is not a lot of zombie action, there is far less gore than on Walking Dead, the world is fairly clean given what has happened.  In fact, it is kind of understandable that Mickey reacts  to the zombie girl as he did — she wasn’t that far gone.  I would have not put anything near that mouth (you know, they say a zombie dog’s mouth is cleaner), but otherwise . . .

But despite the almost complete dickishness of Mickey, the two have a good relationship with naturally flowing, funny dialogue.  Ben is not without his flaws, either, insisting that they stay on the move.  Mickey wants to settle in a nice place, but also longs for a girl named Annie that he meets on the walkie-talkie.

battery13The desires of both contribute to their possible bad end (but mostly Mickey, let’s be honest).  The ending is ambiguous if you want it to be, and leaves one big plot string completely dangling.  Were guys making a $6,000 movie setting up a sequel?  I don’t know, I can only say that it worked for me far better than I expected it to.

Rating:  bats about .375.

Post-Post:

  • Title Analysis:  A reference to the pitcher and catcher in baseball, of course, which were their former careers.  Mickey’s Discman batteries are running down so he will have to face the world more directly.  Their use also mirrors the breakdown of technology as there won’t be any new batteries being made for a while.  Positive & negative personalities?  I don’t see them that clearly defined.  Good choice.
  • I would have been happy with more Annie.
  • One of the few movies where the score works with lyrics.
  • Ben (Jeremy Gardner) also wrote and directed the movie.
  • Where did all the people go?  The guys are constantly finding immaculate homes with no one there.

Thriller – The Weird Tailor (10/16/61)

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Arthur Smith, Jr. drunkenly arrives home to the family estate.  We, never see it from out side, but the double doors open into a long hallway lined with sculptures, so I’m thinking this ain’t my neighborhood.

The tipsy trust-fund infant stumbles from piece to piece offering no admiration or respect.  He puts his hat on one, and gallantly wraps his overcoat around a nude Venus de Milo [1] (although the sleeves need to be taken up a tad) who is scandalously showing her marble-hard nipples on TV in 1961.

Darn the luck, he arrives just as his father is performing a satanic ritual.  Arthur opens the door just as smoke is rising from a pentagram.  He stupidly walks directly across the pentagram to the booze on the other side of the room.  Down goes Arthur — another alcohol-related death.

Smith’s father goes to see Madame Roberti, a blind psychic.  He wishes to bring his son back.  He offers his entire fortune, but she admirably does not deal in such blasphemy, damnation, and defiance of of God . . . but she knows a guy.

She offers him a business card to go see Honest Abe at a used car lot — now there’s a guy used to blasphemy and damnation.  Honest Abe pulls an old manuscript out of his safe — Mysteries of the Worm.  There are only 3 copies left in the world — the others were burned centuries ago along with their owners.

Honest Abe figures he can let it go for, oh say $1,000,000 . . . $1,000,500 with undercoating.  Despite the lure of insanely low APR financing, Smith pays cash for the book (something that was done back when there used to be places called Barnes & Noble or Borders (there also used to be a place called “The Border” in the southwest United States.  Alas, that is gone because Congress still takes cash).  But I digress.

tweirdtailor17Erich (or Erik on IMDb) Borg’s landlord Schwenk storms in and demands the rent, but Borg doesn’t have the dough.  He goes in the back to where his wife is sewing in their apartment.  As usual in these stories, Anna is far too good for him (and 24 years younger), a disparity made even more evident when he tells her to “shut up” and smacks her; when, really, just the smack would have been sufficient.

The store is having a busy day as a second person arrives.  Mr. Smith has brought his own magical fabric required to resurrect his son.  It looks like something Elvis might have made into a gold lame suit.  Borg is to be paid $500 upon delivery.  When Anna asks about the strange fabric, he physically shoves lovely Anna away and she runs to the bedroom to confide in her only friend — a damaged mannequin.

tweirdtailor18In bed alone as Erich works only the unusual specific hours required by Smith, Anna comes out to look at the suit.  It tingles when she touches it, probably more than she can say for Erich.

The next morning, he delivers the suit.  He treats Anna horribly and laughingly threatens to leave her. She goes to have a heart-to-heart talk with the mannequin which she has named Hans.  It is very sad as she describes how she has been beaten and they have both been broken by Erich’s abuse.

Unfortunately, when Borg delivers the suit, Smith is a little short on funds.  Borg is suspicious when he notices that Smith has a nice new refrigerator.  He opens it up to find Smith’s son frozen inside.  In a scuffle, Borg (fighting a man for a change) kills Smith and takes the suit back to the shop.

He instructs Anna to burn it while he goes out for a drink; but, having priorities, he takes time to shove her around a little first.  When he returns, he finds that Anna has dressed Hans in the strange new suit.  Borg admits to killing Smith and Anna says she can’t live with a murderer, so he puts his hands around her throat and proves her correct.

During the struggle, Hans jerkily begins moving.  He chases Borg into the shop and kills him so he and Anna can live happily every after.  At least until she realizes he is not anatomically correct.

Henry Jones (Borg) was probably one of the first “that guy” actors, but I don’t remember ever seeing him play a character who was so despicable and pathetic.  On the other hand, this was Sondra Blake’s first-ever credit on IMDb.  Both were great in their depiction of this sad marriage.

As always, a good story and screenplay from Robert Bloch.  Twilight Zone and Rod Serling are so iconic, they will never be surpassed.  But Thriller is exposing me to a whole new genre I didn’t know existed — quality horror programming, well-written and cast, that was from that same era.

Maybe the fact that the Fan Favorites collection contains only 10 of the 67 episodes is a clue to the consistency of the quality, but I’m going to have to give the others a try.  The Hitchhiker wasn’t even able to pull together ten good episodes for their compilation.

But with one iffy exception, like the other episodes, this one is good stuff.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Always the quipster, writer Robert Bloch has Arthur say to the armless Venus, “We’re gonna have to take those nail clippers away from you.”
  • Title Analysis:  Borg is an abusive loser, but does not seem particularly weird.  Maybe it is just a play on “Weird Tales.”  If so, it fails because the double meaning isn’t there.  But then I also never understood the Best of Both Worlds title of the Star Trek TNG Borg episode.  Maybe Picard was the best of humanity, then of the Borg after assimilation?  Of course his attempted genocide of them 5 minutes later might have tainted his legacy among the Borg.
  • Hmmm, I wonder if Madame Roberti is played by the same Iphigenie Castiglioni that was in Return of the Hero?
  • Borg’s landlord was the guy who sold the Tribbles in Star Trek.
  • Strangely, Hans was taller than Anna, but when he became animated, he seemed very small.  We never saw him scaled against anything, so it could have been poor camerawork.

Human Race (2013)

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The Rules:  1) Only one will win, 2) the House, the School, and the Prison are safe, 3) follow the arrows, or you will die, 4) stay on the path, or you will die, 5) sorry ladies, if you are lapped twice, you will die, 6) do not touch the grass or you will die, 5) Race or die.

A girl in a hospital gown gets the news that she has cancer.  She says that is what killed her mother and sister, and walks out.  Why is it always the fat guys who have the gowns that don’t tie all the way shut in the back?

humanrace01She begins taking medicine and going for nightly runs, getting into awesome, glistening hot-body shape.  Feeling quite proud of herself she looks up at the sky and curses God, flipping him off.

The next day she finds that her cancer is in complete remission, so ya can’t say the big guy holds a grudge.  On the other hand, she suddenly finds herself transported in a flash to the titular race, accidentally steps on the grass (breaking Rule 6), and her head explodes in spectacular fashion.  OK, so he’s mercurial at best.

humanrace08In Afghanistan,  soldier Justin Connor drags his 1.5 legged comrade Eddie to safety.  Years later, in the states, Eddie is giving a pep talk to a group of kids with disabilities at a school where Justin is vice-principal.  Like the girl, they suddenly see a flash of light and find themselves in the race.  They see the girl explode.

A pair of deaf people that they had seen just before being transported to the race are there also.  They are amazed that they were able the “hear” the instructions.

All seem to get the basic concept, so most take off running.  One man tries to go over the wall, and is rewarded with an exploding head.  Everyone, even the deaf people hears numbers representing the number of survivors . . . just like in Battle Royale or the cannons in Hunger games.

The race is pretty much LeMans style.  Most of it appears to be running through a neighborhood, pedestrian tunnels, and the house, school, and prison.

Just to make it even more like Battle Royale, two Japanese characters are introduced — a teenage girl and her chubby little brother.  This is now Battle Royale with Cheese.  Justin and Eddie are clearly the good guys here, and stop to help the kids, but end up leaving them behind to find help.  They even stop to help an old man in a walker.  They are joined by the deaf couple and take the geezer to the house.

They form a  human roadblock to prevent anyone else from passing through the house and lapping the old man, which would kill him.  One jerk takes off, killing the old man, and also runs past the kids, exploding their heads.  Justin tries to catch him, despite the guy claiming to be a Tour de France winner (and wearing a yellow jersey).  Justin comes within inches of stopping him, but to be fair, the guy had’t had time to dope-up before being put in this race.

Tour de France guy is a killing machine lapping a dozen people and leaving a trail of exploded heads behind him.  He finally stops when he sees a pregnant woman. But just for a chat, before he continues, killing her too.  Just as in Children of Men, the mother is one of the very few blacks in the movie, so he can also be accused of raaaaaccism.

Justin is killed, but one-legged Eddie is able to kill off his murderers using crutch-fu. Things get interesting when the racers realize they can use the arrows as weapons and actually start pro-actively murdering their competition.  Now we are in True Battle Royale territory.

humanrace14Sure, it borrows from a lot of other stories, but guess what — they borrowed from a lot of other stories too.  Am I not entertained?  Yes.  No, wait, No  Or is it Yes?    That’s one of them trick questions.  I was entertained.  Consider, they had to make a movie about people walking in a circle but found a way to make it work.  Now if only NASCAR could only make their driving in a circle the slightest bit interesting.

The finalists aren’t surprising, but how they get there is.  I can imagine people being disappointed by the ending, but I give the producers credit for not taking the easy way out, or blatantly setting themselves up for a sequel.

Good stuff.

Post-Post:

  • They determine that everyone in the race was on the same block in the city when the bright light brought them here.  Which makes more sense when you see the final scene.
  • A basic of similarity to The Long Walk novella by Stephen King. Except there is an actual ending; also unlike his novella version of The Mist.  Or the conclusions to most of his early books which was to burn down the school / town / hotel / Las Vegas / or in Firestarter, everything.
  • OK, I’m no liberal automaton, but means “no” means “no” even in ASL. Still, Deaf Girl (as she is credited) couldn’t spare Deaf Guy a comforting kiss knowing that they were almost certainly within minutes of death?  Is that really the time for the “like a friend” spiel?
  • And why is it American Sign Language?  Why wouldn’t all languages use the same set of hand signals?  Turns out there is a lot of overlap, but a lot of difference too.
  • There is a bizarre photographic choice when Eddie pulls his car up to Justin’s school.  It is like tilt-shift pictures where only a small portion of the frame is in focus.  There is no reason for it, it does not recur, and I don’t see that it symbolizes anything. It just seems like something a young director does before they lose their balls.  I just saw Jaws in the theater, and there is no way Stephen Spielberg could make that same picture today.

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Long Rain (09/19/92)

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rbtlongrain01Screwed again.  One of Bradbury’s most famous stories and is it in “100 of His Most Celebrated Tales”?  It is not.

Four men crash on Venus, although they are traveling in a craft named Neptune; perhaps a wrong turn at Albuquerque.  But then, the Atlantis didn’t go to Atlantis; but Challenger on the other hand . . .  well, never mind.  Still too soon.

Venus, according to Bradbury science, is a tropical planet of non-stop rain.  Like Mars, the air is breathable.  The crew’s GPS tells them it is 8 miles to the nearest Sun-Dome. These are structures built so that travelers have a permanent warm, dry place to stay while visiting Venus, kind of a One-Seasons Hotel.

They make their way to the Sun Dome at about 1 mile an hour, not rbtlongrain03aexactly a breakneck pace considering the path seems pretty clear for them.  Hour by hour, mile by mile, the GPS calls out their progress.  Somehow, they end up right back at their ship like the time my goddamn GPS took me in circles for an hour trying to get in the DFW airport.  But I digress.

Going in a circle and ending up back at the ship makes sense if you are the dolts from The Blair Witch Project using a map (did they have a map?  Or did they have a compass, but not the brains to use it?  Or were they just staring at Heather’s ass instead of watching the terrain?).  But explorers using a GPS type of device?  That is a Prometheus-level of stupidity.

The men go a little crazy being lost in the non-stop rain.  Boltz destroys the GPS and drowns himself by swallowing the rain, Cooper opens himself up to be killed by lightning. Captain Trask and Simmons start out again for the Sun Dome.

Only an hour from the Sun Dome, Simmons gives up and they have a long argument. What’s strange is that in the shots of Trask, he is in pouring rain, but in shots of Simmons, it doesn’t seem to be raining at all.  This is the ultimate continuity error as it should be CONTINUOUSLY raining — that is the defining characteristic of Venus in the story, the constant maddening rain.

rbtlongrain10Only Trask is left to make it to the Sun Dome.  He makes it to the Dome and opens the doors to the warm, dry interior.  And then something happens. No, wait, nothing happens.  This might be the most pointless story in the series, and that’s saying something.

This episode is — ahem — awash with poor decisions.

rbtlongrain03Instead, in the original short story, the group begins falling apart when the first Sun Dome they reach has been destroyed by Venusians.  My guess is that this pivotal point was ruined by budgetary constraints — less effective, but much cheaper to just show the ship twice.

More could have been done with some men just breaking and staring up at the sky until they drown from the rain — an interesting idea that gets about 10 seconds here.

Similarly short shrift is given to the carnivorous plants.  If you die, they lasso your body and I presume drag you off somewhere to be eaten.  A few times when the men aren’t moving fast enough, the ivy wrapped it self around their ankles and they had to break free.  Fortunately this wasn’t directed by Sam Raimi.

rbtlongrain09

Oh my God, I’ve lose my entire crew in the last few — hey is that a sauna?

And what of that Sun Dome?  It is pretty clear that Trask makes it and enjoys a nice warm day at the spa.  A little ambiguity of his fate, or remorse for his men would have been welcome.

Post-Post:

  • Does anything ever get long shrift?

Behind Your Eyes (2011)

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behindyoureyes0420 Horror Movies for $7.50 — Part X of XX.

Please, for the love of God, stop scoring your movies with guitar ballads.  I have yet to see it work once in these box-sets.  I know, I know, your buddy that has a band wants to help out with your movie. Just say no.

Another tip:  If you have a prologue where a very thin brunette hottie wearing wearing a tight green tank top gets killed, don’t start your main movie with a different almost identical very thin brunette hottie wearing wearing a tight green tank top.

So far, 12 minutes in, I got guy and girl going to meet his parents, and there is some sort of friction with the father.  i.e. It ain’t grabbing me.  It doesn’t help that these two are really mediocre actors.

The couple stop at a closed gas station for the nameless dude to take a leak.  Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I saw a closed gas station. They have been 24-hour longer than CNN, and more trustworthy as well.  As no-name dude gets back in the car, he is carjacked with a pistol pointed to his head. Carjacker tells no-name to start driving.  On the plus side, he fits right in, also not being much of an actor.

behindyoureyes03He directs them to a barn and commands them to get on their knees and take off their shirts in front of a camera (a half-measure in her case).  He binds the dude to a pole and asks if he knows what it’s like to watch a loved one die.  Then he starts whipping the dude with his belt.

The only thing moderately interesting up to this point besides Girl’s snappy body is that the Carjacker really doesn’t seem very into this; he seems bored, like he is doing it for a payoff.  I’m not into it either, but at least I’m maintaining my amateur status.

behindyoureyes05He gives Girl some water and forces something in no-name’s mouth.  Then we get a series of ill-advised jump cuts. They contribute nothing, and are never used elsewhere in the movie, but if each of them is cutting 1/24th of a second out of this film, I’m on board. I think I’ve got that their names are Steven and Erika, so we are making progress.  And Carjacker.

Erika has a chance to kick carjacker in the balls and does so.  She and Steven make a run for the truck, but another car turns its lights on them and takes off. Carjacker demands to know who it was.

behindyoureyes02Carjacker orders Erika to get naked and ties them both to a pole where he lashes Steven again with his belt.  After seeing another man and hearing a gunshot, they run to a nearby cabin.  Well, Steven gets as far as the porch when he sprains an ankle, but  Erika makes it to a nearby cabin.

The couple living there are pretty strange.  The woman pretends to call the police, and the man is interested in if she is a virgin.  Soon, Erika is tied up again, this time in a basement with Carjacker who is also tied up.  Carjacker says he works with Steven, or at least in the mailroom at his firm.  Also, sells drugs to all the attorneys.  He also says Steven is paying him $30,000 to do the carjacking and tape them.

behindyoureyes06

There are a few twists, but honestly this is not a very good movie.  I discovered that Carjacker is named Daniel Fanaberia, and admit I was too quick to judge.  His acting actually was pretty good in this once I figured out what was going on.  And I think the screenplay, while maybe needing another pass, was greatly undermined by poor direction and mediocre work by the other actors.

And, please, do the director a favor and tell him to go easy on the gratuitous jump-cuts.

Post-Post:

  • Title Analysis:  Behind Your Eyes would have actually been a much better title for Salvage.  Come to think of it, Salvage might have been a better title for Hurt.
  • Not being one to nitpick, but when Carjacker tells the girl to get naked, she leaves her drawers on.  You just can’t let hostages get away with shit like that or pretty soon they’ll own you.
  • A user on IMDb claims the girl on the cover is the one that is killed in the first 5 minutes,not the one who stars in the movie.  They are so identical that I can’t confirm that — at least without watching it again, and that’s not going to happen.