Thursday, September 26, 2013

Tsunami 2022 (2009)

18 years on from the devastating impact of 2004's tsunami, the world still fights to come to terms with this devastating environmental disaster. Little does humanity know that it is about to face the ultimate peril; a monumental death wave annihilating everything in its wake. With the threat of another catastrophic tsunami, Prime Minister Tribhop sets up a national disaster alarm centre. His political future and the lives of his people depend upon the decisions he makes. But no one predicts the enormity of what is about to rise from the Thai Gulf. And no one can out run it this time. The Death Wave is coming.

Thailand jumped into the disaster movie world with this offering. What we have here is confused acting, scream inducing flashbacks, tidal waves, big statues and a race against time to save the CGI dolphin! The premise here is that humans have stressed the Earth into wreaking havoc by unleashing a tidal wave on Thailand. It was written, directed and executive produced by Toranong Srichua.  It stars Pisan Srimankong, Sirinda Jensen, Panudej Wattanasuchat, Suchao Pongwilai.

Toranong Srichua uses his film as a cudgel to beat the topic of climate change senseless. The film had a 4 million dollar budget and it shows.  The effects were pretty poor.  It also jumps all over the place.  We have no time to get to know or care about any of the characters.  It's hard to take the movie seriously when the characters are so woodenly and melodramatically portrayed, especially the corrupt politician who harbors a secret and his son the hedonist, who swims with bikini-clad babes, takes drugs and kills sea gypsy fishermen.

 It also has one of the most ridiculous scenes in the history of films.  As the Prime Minister struggles in the water, the giant Buddha statue breaks loose and rises above the waves.  The hand comes up under our hero and raises him above the water to safety.  Buddha takes care of his followers.  Don't go out of your way to see this film. 


Death Race 2000 (1975)

In a dystopian future, a cross country automobile race requires contestants to run down innocent pedestrians to gain points that are tallied based on each kill's brutality. 

Death Race 2000 is a 1975 cult action film directed by Paul Bartel, and starring David Carradine, Simone Griffeth and Sylvester Stallone.  The screenplay is based on the short story The Racer by Ib Melchior.

Let me go ahead and bottom line it.  This film is awesome. Here we have a murderous trans-continental road race. The race has five participants - Frankenstein (Carradine), Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Stallone), Calamity Jane (Woronov), Mathilda the Hunn, and Nero the Hero.  They are joined by navigators where the goal is to kill as many pedestrians as possible along the way. Stallone is particularly amusing, and gets great support from his sidekick. Carradine is typically bizarre, and even parodies himself with a few poorly choreographed kung fu techniques during his absurd fight scene with Stallone. If one thing is disappointing, it is the fight scene in the middle of the movie between these two. I mean, it's Kung Fu vs. Rocky! That should have been an awesome fight.  Roger Corman produced this film and did I mention..... it's fucking awesome.

It's Frankenstein.....
The film delivers plenty of over-the-top gory carnage and a pleasing smattering of tasty female nudity.  It also pokes fun at fascist politicians, cruelty as entertainment, inept revolutionaries, mindless fan worship, the duplicitous and manipulative media, and America's wholehearted affinity for extreme violence. Although it's a cheesy movie, it never takes itself seriously and is just plain stupid fun! All in all, "Death Race 2000" is an immensely enjoyable experience, which is truly well-deserving of its cult classic status.

Cut It Mick....
 Trivia:

The speech mannerisms of the character Harold parody those of Howard Cosell. 

According to Roger Corman, several of the custom cars featured in the movie were later sold to car museums for considerably more than it cost to build them.

 The film retains only the basic premises of the original short story by Ib Melchior; the characters and incidents are all different. The story focuses on just one mechanic and driver, and one anti-racer. In particular, it does not include the President or the special driver Frankenstein.

The racetrack used for the opening track and grandstand scenes is the Ontario Motor Speedway near Los Angeles. 

The car in which President Frankenstein and Annie drive away after their wedding is a Richard Oaks Nova kit-car, actually based on the Volkswagen Beetle chassis (but obviously not the body). These were available in kit form for many years starting in the mid-1970s.

And there's 20 points for Frankenstein.
 Several of the cars in the movie are re-bodied Volkswagens, including a VW Karmann-Ghia (Matilda's Buzz Bomb). The white Resistance Army car that chases Frankenstein very briefly before crashing and blowing up is a 1965 or 1966 Ford Mustang. Nero's car was based on a Fiat 850 Spider, and Frankenstein's on a Chevrolet Corvette.

Roger Corman wrote the original treatment of the film, which was serious in tone, but thought it was not right and, in his words, was "kind of vile". He decided the dark material of the story would be better served by making the movie into a comedy and had Robert Thom rewrite the treatment. 

Both Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine did much of their own driving. In addition, producer Roger Corman drove in scenes that were shot on public streets, since the custom-built cars used in the movie were not street legal and the film's stunt drivers did not want to be caught driving them by the police.

 Mary Woronov, who plays Calamity Jane, did not know how to drive a car, so a stunt driver did all the actual driving for her in the movie. For close-ups, Woronov sat in a car towed behind a truck with a camera crew riding in it.

The role of Frankenstein was originally offered to Peter Fonda, who considered the movie too ridiculous for words. 

Explaining why he took the Frankenstein role, David Carradine says, "I started that picture two weeks after I walked off the Kung Fu set, and that was essentially my image, the 'Kung Fu' character, and a lot of people still believe I'm that guy. The idea actually was: No. 1, if you walk off a television series, you better do a movie right away or you might never get to do one. And the second thing was to do something right away that would create the image of a monster to get rid of the image of that little Chinese guy that I'd been playing for four years. And, you know, it did kick-start my movie career."

Was theatrically re-released in France in the mid-80s with its title changed from the literal translation "La Course a la Mort de l'an 2000" to a more evasive "Les Seigneurs de la Route" (meaning "Lords of the Road"). This time, David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone shared the top billing on the posters. 

David Carradine refused to wear leather, so costume designer Jane Ruhm had to make Carradine's iconic black outfit out of another fabric that looked just like leather.

Director Paul Bartel had Jane Ruhm design the opening titles using money from the budget without getting Roger Corman's permission first. 

The cars didn't run most of the time, so they had to be pushed down hills in order to get them to move. Moreover, the cameras used to film the cars were undercranked in order to perpetuate the illusion that they were moving faster.

Sylvester Stallone wrote some of his own dialogue. 

The opening sequence was shot at an actual racetrack in between races.


Barricade (2012)

A father's quiet retreat to the woods with his two children turns into a fight for survival.

Barricade is a 2012 action thriller directed by Andrew Currie and stars Eric McCormack.  It's also a film from WWE Entertainment and there's not a single wrestler in this film. We could have used the Rock rushing in and whipping somebody's ass. 

Terrence Shade (Eric McCormack) has decided that he needs a getaway with his two kids.  His wife died a year earlier and she wanted to have a white Christmas at the cabin but Terrence kept making excuses to get out of it. Now she's worm food and the family makes the trip. After arriving there strange things begin to occur and a blizzard strands them.  Shade is sure something is trying to get into the house and barricades them in. 

This is not a bad film and it's not a good film. It falls somewhere in the middle. Average.  Eric McCormack's performance as a terrified father is actually not too bad. The child actors also do a pretty good job. The film is very dark.  I don't mean dark as in the content but dark as in you can't see what's going on at times.  It does help to establish a certain type of atmosphere for the movie but I feel it distracts in this case.  It does have a little twist at the end so I won't ruin the ending.  The film is watchable and if you catch it on Showtime feel free to give it a view. 


The Birds (1963)

...And remember, the next scream you hear could be your own!
A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people there in increasing numbers and with increasing viciousness. 

The Birds is a 1963 suspense/horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on the 1952 story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier.  It starred Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette and a young Veronica Cartwright.  The screenplay was written by Evan Hunter.

The film is considered on the best thrillers of all time.  It was honored by the American Film Institute as the seventh greatest thriller and Bravo awarded it the 96th spot on their "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments" for the scene when the birds attack the city.  Ub Iwerks was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Special Effects.  Tippi Hedren received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress in 1964, sharing it with Ursula Andress and Elke Sommer. She also received the Photoplay Award as Most Promising Newcomer. The film ranked #1 of the top 10 foreign films selected by the Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards. Hitchcock also received the Association's Director Award for the film.

The birds attack.
The film begins in San Francisco where Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) meets handsome criminal lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor).  After a less than pleasant first meeting, Melanie decides to follow Mitch out to his hometown fishing community. She is apparently rather smitten with young Mitch.  But the day Melanie arrives for some inexplicable reason the birds start attacking people.  The local school teacher is Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette) who followed Mitch here to be close to him but when their relationship ended she just stayed to be near him as a friend.  If you believe that then I have the Brooklyn Bridge for sale if you're interested.  This creates a rather strange love triangle as an underlying plot.  There is also the strange relationship with Mitch's mother who is not very fond of any of the girls he brings home.

This is one of Hitchcock's most well-known movies. Along with Psycho, it's the movie that most people identify with him.  The plot of "The Birds" could be considered quite ridiculous.  The first 40 minutes of the film have zero horror elements and sets up what could be a horrible love story.  Hitchcock spends this part of the movie developing the characters and installing their situation in the viewers' minds.  And the suspense he build with these birds...shit.  You watch the birds just sitting there, and they do not move, they are just waiting. Even when you think they are dumb as shit something tells you they are thinking. They are analyzing your every move.
They sit and they wait.....
The scene when the four people are trapped inside the house with the birds waiting outside is classic.  This has to be one of the main influences on George Romero and his film "Night Of The Living Dead."  They were trapped in the old abandoned farm house much as our characters are here.  The absence of backgound music added a sense of calm before the storm which made the bird attack scenes all the more intense. In my opinion the most chilling scene was definitely when Melanie was waiting outside the school while the singing was going on inside the school. At each loop of the song, a few more crows would perch outside.  Just my writing about it doesn't do it justice.  It's just plain fucking creepy.

The special effects were amazing for a film from 1963.  When Hitchcock was asked how he got the birds to attack he jokes, "They were well paid."  The detailed camera angles that Hitchcock put into the film were impressive. Many directors shoot scenes in a boring manner, but not Hitchcock.

The birds obviously didn't like that singing.
I love the mysterious way the film ends with no explanation or dialogue. The sea of birds seem to permit their departure, even though the fowls could easily stop them if they wanted.  We never get an explanation as to why the birds are attacking and this leads some to point that out as a reason that they don't like the film.  Don't listen to them....they probably flip burgers at McDonalds.  If you need grilling advice then give them a listen, otherwise see this film.  It's a classic, a masterpiece and one of the best of all time. It's a perfect example of why Alfred Hitchcock is considered, "The Master of Suspense".

Trivia:  
Tippi Hedren was actually cut in the face by a bird in one of the shots.  

Rod Taylor claims that the seagulls were fed a mixture of wheat and whiskey. It was the only way to get them to stand around so much.

When audiences left the film's UK premiere at the Odeon, Leicester Square, London, they were greeted by the sound of screeching and flapping birds from loudspeakers hidden in the trees to scare them further. 

Alfred Hitchcock approached Joseph Stefano (screenwriter of Psycho) to write the script, but he wasn't interested in the story. The final screenplay (from a Daphne Du Maurier short story) was written by Evan Hunter, best known to detective-story fans under the pen name Ed McBain.

Alfred Hitchcock saw Tippi Hedren in a 1962 commercial aired during the Today show and put her under contract. In the commercial for a diet drink, she is seen walking down a street and a man whistles at her slim, attractive figure, and she turns her head with an acknowledging smile. In the opening scene of the film, the same thing happens as she walks toward the bird shop. This was an inside joke by Hitchcock. 

Tippi Hedren's daughter Melanie Griffith was given a present by Alfred Hitchcock during the filming: a doll that looked exactly like Hedren, eerily so. The creepiness was compounded by the ornate wooden box it came in, which the young girl took to be a coffin.

The automobile driven by Tippi Hedren is an Aston Martin DB2/4 drop-head coupe.

The movie features 370 effects shots. The final shot is a composite of 32 separately filmed elements. 

In the film, it appears as if the schoolhouse is within the bay town limits. The frightened children are clearly shown running downhill toward the town and the water. In real life, the schoolhouse used for those shots is located five miles southeast and inland of Bodega Bay in the separate township of Bodega, California.

The crow that sits on Alfred Hitchcock's shoulder in all of the promo photos was not in the movie. It was purchased after the movie had wrapped. A studio staff member bought it when he spotted the tamed bird on the shoulder of a 12-year-old boy walking down the street. The boy was offered about $10 but was hesitant until he discovered why it was needed. 

This was the first film to carry the Universal Pictures name after dropping the Universal-International name.

Mitch Zanich, owner of the Tides Restaurant at the time of shooting, told Hitchcock he could shoot there if the lead male in the film was named after him, and Hitch gave him a speaking part in the movie. Hitchcock agreed: Rod Taylor's character was named Mitch Brenner, and Mitch Zanich was given a speaking part. After Melanie is attacked by a seagull, Mitch Zanich can be heard saying to Mitch Brenner, "What happened, Mitch?" 

When the film was aired on NBC-TV in the USA on 6 January 1968, it became the highest rated film shown on television up to that time. The record held until Love Story overtook it on 1 October 1972.

The classic scene in which Tippi Hedren watches birds attacking the townsfolk was filmed in the studio from a phone booth. When Melanie opens the phone-booth door, a bird trainer had trained gulls that were taught to fly at it. Surviving photos of the shooting of the scene were published in the book "Hitchcock at Work" by Bill Krohn. 

In one of the first scenes, Tippi Hedren can be seen crossing the street to the pet shop. As she does, she disappears behind a sign for a moment and reappears on the other side. Alfred Hitchcock so hated working on location that he used this moment to seamlessly cut to a studio shot.

The sound of reel-to-reel tape being run backward and forward was used to help create the frightening bird squawking sounds in the film 

Melanie wears the same green suit throughout the movie, so Tippi Hedren was provided with six identical green suits for the shoot.

 A scene in the film shows a service station where a bird knocks over an attendant filling a car with gas. The gas flows across the street where a man lights his cigarette igniting the gas. The fire follows the gas stream to the pump and explodes. The service station was located across from "The Tides" restaurant and pier. In reality this service station did not exist at the time of the filming. However, several years later a service station was built and is still located at the spot shown in the film.

Voted seventh-scariest movie of all time by a poll carried out on the British public by Channel 5 and "The Times" in 2006. 

Cast member Doodles Weaver was the uncle of actress Sigourney Weaver, who worked with Veronica Cartwright in Alien, and with Tippi Hedren's daughter, Melanie Griffith, in Working Girl. 


The schoolhouse, in Bodega Bay, California, has also been known to be haunted, even back during the filming. According to Tippi Hedren, the entire cast was spooked to be there. She also mentioned how she had the feeling, while there, that "the building was immensely populated... but there was nobody there." When Hitchcock was told about the schoolhouse being haunted, according to Hedren, he was even more encouraged to film there.

Tippi Hedren was required to really slap Doreen Lang, who played the hysterical mother that called Melanie "evil." Hedren was hesitant, having never slapped anyone before, but Lang convinced her to do it. 

One of the little girls at Cathy's birthday party (at the very end of the 'attack' scene , she was standing alongside another girl....holding her cheek) was played by Suzanne Cupito. She later changed to her stage name, Morgan Brittany. Dallas fans may remember her as Pamela Ewing's evil half-sister, Katherine Wentworth.

The scene where Tippi Hedren is ravaged by birds near the end of the movie took a week to shoot. The birds were attached to her clothes by long nylon threads so they could not get away. 

The film does not finish with the usual "THE END" title because Alfred Hitchcock wanted to give the impression of unending terror.

Near the end of the film, when Mitch carries Melanie down the stairs, it is actually Tippi Hedren's stand-in being carried by Rod Taylor. Hedren was in the hospital recovering from exhaustion after a week of shooting the scene where Melanie is trapped in the upstairs room with the birds.

A number of endings were being considered for this film. One that was considered would have showed the Golden Gate Bridge completely covered by birds. 

In the end, when Melanie is carried outside, Mitch opens a door. There was no door used in filming, and it was all done with light effects to make it look as if Mitch opened the front door.


For the scene in which Annie is killed, Suzanne Pleshette who played her told Alfred Hitchcock it would look good if her ear was all bloody and hanging off, so he sent her to the prop department. When it came to shooting the scene, Hitchcock had Annie facing the other way, so the viewer never sees the ear, which Pleshette recalled "was part of his delicious sense of humor."

Before filming the final attack scene when Melanie goes upstairs, Tippi Hedren asked Alfred Hitchcock , "Hitch, why would I do this?" Hitchcock's response was, "Because I tell you to." 

When the children are running down the street from the schoolhouse, extra footage was shot back on the Universal sound stages to make the scene more terrifying. A few of the children were brought back and put in front of a process screen on a treadmill. They would run in front of the screen on the treadmill with the Bodega Bay footage behind them while a combination of real and fake crows were attacking them. There were three rows of children and when the treadmill was brought up to speed it ran very fast. On a couple of occasions during the shoot, a number of the children in the front fell and caused the children in back to fall as well. It was a very difficult scene to shoot and took a number of days to get it right. The birds used were hand puppets, mechanical and a couple were trained live birds.

Hitchcock's film and the original story by Daphne Du Maurier share no characters and in fact have only in common the bay-side town setting, the bird's bizarre behavior and their inexplicable tendency to launch frenzied attacks, fall dormant only to attack again later. In Du Maurier's story the main character discovers that this pattern is directly related to the rise and fall of the tides and uses this to their advantage, as opposed to the film which seems to follow the same pattern but never makes a direct connection. Also the original story takes place in Britain and centers around a man protecting his wife and two children at their isolated cottage home, as opposed to the film which centers on the spirited but troubled city dweller Melanie Daniels who travels to the California coast on a whim. 



Saturday, September 7, 2013

Phenomena (1985)


A young girl, with an amazing ability to communicate with insects, is transferred to an exclusive Swiss boarding school, where her unusual capability might help solve a string of murders. 

Phenomena is a 1985 Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento. An edited version of the film was released in the United States under the title Creepers.  When I was younger I remember seeing the video sitting on the shelves in the local video shop.  It was under the "Creepers" title and it looked sort of silly so I never rented it.  I'm glad I didn't.  That version for the US was butchered up with a lot of footage cut.  I've now gotten around to viewing the entire film with all the sliced footage intact.  

It has a 14-year-old Jennifer Connelly, playing a sleepwalker who has a bizarre telepathic bond with insects and uses them to help her solve a string of gory murders at a girls boarding school in the Swiss Alps. A lot of people love this film and a lot of people hate this film.  I fall right in the middle.  It's not bad but I don't find it very good either. Donald Pleasance is in the film as a wheelchair bound bug dude. But the entire time I'm watching him on screen I keep thinking he's going to burst out in a rant about Micheal Myers being the devil.  Instead he's hanging out with a pet monkey.

Bubbles, did MJ touch you in the bad place?
Phenomena is a surreal, magical and surprisingly beautiful film.  It also has gruesome gore with a swimming pool full of maggots and rotting corpses, a mad dwarf, a razor wielding monkey and grisly decapitations. And we get a kick ass soundtrack with Iron Maiden and Motorhead.  Partially a Giallo, and partially a horror film with psychic and transcendental elements, "Phenomena" is a creepy film that gets kind of silly of times in my opinion with the bug communication deal. 


The special effects were decent, given the year. The firefly special effects were cool, and there was at least one swarm scene that I thought looked pretty neat.  A lot of people love this movie but I don't fall into that group.  It's well below Suspiria in my opinion.  But if you ever wanted to see a monkey go ape shit with a razor blade then this is a movie you want to see.

KB
Weird
Trivia
Shot in English and dubbed into Italian. 

Most of the Italian and other non-English speaking actors/actresses actually dubbed their own voices into English for the USA and UK distribution.

A sequel to Phenomena was going to go into production in 2001 but it was canceled due to Dario Argento's contract with Medusa. 

Director Dario Argento said that his idea for the look of the killer child came from the real genetic disorder Patau Syndrome, which causes severe deformation of the face. For this reason, Argento calls the child Patau, even though he is never named during the film. 

Director Dario Argento often cites this film as his personal favorite among his works.

The trained chimpanzee that plays Inga escaped into the woods at one point during shooting. After a few hours of searching she was found and returned to the set. 

Jennifer Connelly said in an interview that she was bitten by the chimp in this film. Apperently during one scene the chimp kept turning around and Dario Argento, not wanting to film her behind, asked Connelly to place her hand on the animal to stop her from turning. But when she attempted to do so, the chimp became enraged and bit her; and then became very hostile toward Connelly for the rest of the film.

The film was inspired to Dario Argento after he learned that insects are sometimes used during murder investigations. 

The story Jennifer tells about her mother abandoning her was an actual story from Dario Argento's own childhood. 

Jennifer Connelly had part of her finger bitten off by the chimpanzee in the final scene at the end of the film. She was rushed to the hospital and the finger was re-attached. 

A young Jennifer Connelly