Here’s my companion piece to Mat’s recent review of some DVDs he received from Chemical Burn Entertainment. I also received a package from CB but mine contained different movies. I think it’s super cool of them to submit different DVDs to the two of us. To echo some of the things Mat said: Of course, we always appreciate it when filmmakers or distributors include us in their screener submissions. I certainly never want to take a dump on anything. I want to dig everybody’s movies.

But, man, sometimes you just can’t deny what’s in front of your face. All of these movies are giant turds. Let’s go down the list…

The Bisbee Cannibal Club: Now, despite the foreboding intro I just wrote, this one actually had some funny bits. It’s a horror-comedy and has the right attitude about itself. In the quaint little town of Bisbee, a gang of cannibals is preying on vegetarians (because grain-fed livestock tastes the best, duh). It’s shot-on-video schlock that might make you chuckle a few times. I suppose if you did a drunken Netflix instant party with this movie, it wouldn’t be the worst choice you ever made (it would make the list, though).

Camgirl: Woof. This movie is unique in that there is only one actress on screen for 99% of the film. Only very, very briefly do you ever see another person. The story is that this British chick is a “camgirl,” doing R-rated stripteases on the internet. One of her fans is obsessed with her and blah blah blah.

Lesbian Vampires: The Curse of Ed Wood: Okay, this one is pretty weird. There’s this framing device where a horror-host character named “Mr. Creepo” is walking through a cemetary trying to channel Ed Wood. Or something. It’s very strange. Then the real movie starts and it’s a bunch of really gross people sort of hanging around being gross while wearing lame vampire teeth.

Tales of the Dead: This is an anthology, collecting four short films. The framing device is a group of friends gathered together on Halloween, trying to scare each other. Somewhat novel, I guess, is that rather than sitting around and telling their stories orally, they are each bringing a DVD or video tape and viewing it with the group. The first story is kind of okay, about a woman who is obsessed with getting an elective amputation. The other three are nothing special.

So, those are the four DVDs I watched. I’ve historically done a poor job of watching the screeners that come in and posting reviews in a timely fashion. When this batch arrived, I wanted to give it an honest try and, surprise, I got burned. Or should I say, I got chemical burned? Ha! I’m so funny.

On the Chemical Burn web site, all of these DVDs sell for $19.95 + $3.95 shipping. That’s pretty high. It’s almost offensive, really. I mean, look, Outpost Doom is a crappy, boring movie – but at least we don’t charge an arm and a leg for it. We charge $10 with free shipping and that seems pretty fair for this type of thing.

…hang on, guys, my wife is calling me. What’s that, dear? I received another package today? Cool, let me see it…

No! No, it can’t be! More Chemical Burn DVDs! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!

I’m still debating whether or not to see the newly reformed Hammer Films’ first wide release, Let Me In, a remake of Tomas Alfredson’s widely acclaimed 2008 Swedish flick Let the Right One In. Unfortunately for Hammer, their remake absolutely bombed at the box office (doing worse than Case 39, a film that was made in 2006 and was thrown into theaters to try and make a quick buck, capitalizing on the October spirit) but it made me wonder: how good is this movie, really? With that in mind I went back and took a look at the original film which has really gone without any serious critical interpretation. It’s sort of coasted on its “greatness” since its release (even winning 4 Splatcademy Awards including Best Film a couple years back). Let’s see how it holds up…

Let the Right One In is a very straight forward story. A young, depressed Swedish boy who gets picked on and bullied by his classmates (Oskar) strikes up a friendship with his new neighbor who happens to be 12 year old vampire (Eli). People start dying, people start getting suspicious, Oskar and Eli become as close as pre-pubescent kids can be with each other and then Eli saves Oskar from his tormenters. The story is fine but one would not be ostracized for calling it a bit cliche. The novelty here is that it’s a couple of little kids in the lead but the basics of the plot, the nuts and bolts, isn’t anything you haven’t seen before. It’s a love story. Make Oskar and Eli four or five years older, switch the roles, and you’ve got yourself a very Twilight-ish relationship. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Some of the best horror films ever have been love stories (ex. The Mummy (1932) d. Karl Freund and The Fly (1986) d. David Cronenberg), but I wonder if this renaissance of the “sexy” vampire (Twilight, True Blood, etc.) has led to die hard vamp fans trying desperately to find a safe, non main stream vamp film that they can put on a pedestal and say “See! This makes me feel good about myself.” It’s a vampire love story that doesn’t involve dreamy men sweeping a woman off of her feet while simultaneously wrapping itself in indie trappings and credibility. Do people love this movie because they honestly love it, or because they want to love it?

Supporters of the film use the cinematography as a major defense for the film. “It’s breathtaking to look at!” If you are going to offer a vigorous defense of a film, the go-to examples are cinematography and story. If you can justify their “greatness” then it’s difficult for an opponent to argue, hence the film is “great” because you “can’t really deny it”. I’m going to go against the grain here and posit that the style and photography of the movie is, for lack of a better term, ugly. If that’s too strong for you, maybe you’ll settle for plain, boring, or lazy. I’ll explain this in a moment, but there is a curious analogy to Dead Lantern’s own movie making that I find pertinent to my argument.

One of the benefits of going to college to study film is that you get exposed to theories and techniques that you might not otherwise have thought about on your own. One of these theories is Bazin’s notion of mise-en-scene, that is, everything within the film frame. Long story short, Bazin argued for a technique known as Deep Focus Photography, wherein, everything in the frame is in focus. This allows the viewer greater control and freedom over what they look at. For example, in Outpost Doom, just about every shot is clearly in focus, whether it be the foreground or the background (unless there is an extreme closeup of a pillar, or something). So as Jeff is talking in the foreground, you can see Tina further behind him doing whatever blind girls do. When we began filming Isabelle, the new expensive cameras that we have don’t have that capability. So if we were to shoot the exact same shot, Jeff would be in focus, whereas Tina would be slightly, if not completely, out of focus. This changes how you see a film. When the focus is only on Jeff, it naturally takes your eyes to him, and only him. You are only “allowed” to see what the director wants you to see (because who wants to look at something out of focus in the background?). This was a staple of classical Hollywood cinema and what allowed for story and character to become so ingrained into the viewing experience. I absolutely hate that. It’s not that you can’t do it, and there are plenty of examples of it being done well, I just subscribe to a different theory. I like to be able to see everything in the frame. I like to be able to look  in the background and go “Oh look, there’s Reginald.” Deep focus not only gives more information to the viewer, but it enhances ambiguity. I don’t like my eyes to have their hand held and “told” what to look at when I see a movie. Which means I have to fundamentally reevaluate how I see a movie for me to be able to use the snazzy new cameras that Spooky and Deejay have.

Let the Right One In relies on this tactic almost exclusively. There are very few instances, aside from establishing shots, that use deep focus. Three quarters of the frame are almost always blurry with one thing in focus, usually the character. In many ways, you could argue that this isn’t an indie film at all, but rather a Swedish take on the Classical Hollywood Style. Couple that with the very flat,  monotone color scheme (grays, light browns, and blues), the lack of set design (do Swedes hang anything on their walls?), and a lack of creative shot selection and to me that adds up to an ugly viewing experience. Sure, it might be well done on a technical level, but on an aesthetically pleasing level? I don’t think so. In fact I’d go so far as to say that anyone claiming the cinematography is “stunning” or “breathtaking” is getting a boner for snow. Because we all know horror fans love snow in their movies.

So after rewatching this with a truly critical eye, I find a very cliched film with uninspiring visuals. Now I’m not saying that the movie is horrible and that anybody who enjoys it deserves to jump in front of a moving bus. I’m not saying that at all. Let the Right One In is a good movie. It’s put together well, its got excellent performances, and the idea of little vampire kids in a story of mature themes and subject matter is novel (plus that underwater shot in the pool is just aces). What I’m arguing is that it’s merely an ok movie, above average even, that is getting way more slurpage than it honestly “deserves”. It is certainly not “One of the ten best horror movies of the decade” and it certainly isn’t the greatest vampire film ever. It has some serious flaws and I think horror fans, vamp fans in particular, are so starved for something that is “not Twilight” that they can pad their cred (bonus: it’s foreign and relatively obscure, two points for the cred padding right there) with that they get lost in the headlights a bit.

I don’t have anything against the people who like this movie. None of us are immune to overreacting to the quality or lack of quality of any film. It’s just good to remember that when we praise a film, when we build a monument for it and make it the next big thing, when you support a film like that it’s important to do the responsible thing, take a step back, and make sure you’re on solid footing. It might not be as ridiculously amazing as you think (I’m looking at you, Inception.)

Stop making these videos, that is, until he sells the massive stock of Outpost Doom DVDs that we’ve got. You can contribute to shutting this guy up by ordering a copy.

I recently watched and reviewed Jamie Blanks’ Long Weekend. If you haven’t seen it (or the original), you can check out my spoiler-free review here. But I also felt a need to delve a little into how it compares to its predecessor, directed by Colin Eggleston in 1978. This will contain spoilers for both movies. Here are just a few thoughts I had on them.

The remake is not completely shot for shot, but it might as well be. To be honest, as I mentioned in my review, had I watched these in the opposite order, I’d feel differently about each of them. But as it is, I saw the remake first, decided I liked it already, and really I think it’s quite hard to unlike something. But it did make my heart sink a little when something that impressed me in the remake turned out to have already been done in the original (in particular, the white foam of breaking waves silently turning red with blood). As you’d expect, the special effects look better in the remake, especially the very last scene, a glorious explosion of gore, which the rest of the movie held back on.

One difference between the two is that our central male character, Peter, is Australian in the original and American in the remake (played by Jim “Jesus Christ” Caviezel). Initially I thought the choice to have an American as the central character bore some significance to his attitude, and wondered what the filmmakers were trying to say about the United States’ position on the health of our planet. But it is not once mentioned, and I can find little mention of it online, so one can only assume it was a casting issue.

Another omission from the remake was a scene from the 1978 version in which Peter gets stoned. I didn’t find it all that queer that this was left out of the remake, but found a lot to speculate on as to why it was in the original in the first place. Was it a tool to enhance Peter’s paranoia towards the creatures around him? A sign of his secret appreciation for what nature has to offer? The manifestation of his inclination to use Mother Earth solely for his own gratification? Or merely a sign of the times?

Outside of the nature message, a main theme of the film is abortion. But you can see how these two issues become one and the same. The couple have gone through an abortion, either as a result of, or maybe resulting in, the breakdown of their marriage, and the wife (Marcia in 1978, Carla in 2008) is constantly reminded of this. There is a moment that we become momentarily sympathetic to Peter, where he witnesses his wife smashing an eagle’s egg against a tree, and declaring, “You didn’t have to kill it.” It’s not all that subtle, especially in the original, but I thought it added a nice extra layer. Another symbol displayed here is the dugong (Aussie seacow) crying out for its lost cub, a sound that haunts our characters throughout, right up to the last seconds of the movie. We take this to mean that Marcia/Carla is doing the same for her own lost child, or maybe she is disgusted with herself for not doing so.

Overall, you could argue that this was a movie that did not need to be remade, especially when you consider the fact that there were no “updates” to the story, aside from maps being replaced with GPS. But Jamie Blanks dedicated his movie to the late Colin Eggleston, so it’s easy to see why he wanted to make it but didn’t want to change anything. I feel that there were a few things done better in the remake (the last 5-10 minutes), but this of course can be just a few tweaks of the original material (couple with the fact that I watched it first). At least it was nice to see a remake that did not lose the message or impact of the original. I recommend both movies highly.

Long Weekend is released on 8 Feb 2010 by Showbox Home Entertainment

I brought along a few DVDs to pass the time. So far, I’ve watched The Hills Run Red and The Children (I’d give Netflix links, but the Netflix site destroys my dial-up connection). Both of these were fun movies. The Children, especially, is a perfect flick to watch while cooped up with family. I think people should definitely check that one out, it’s kind of offbeat and mean-spirited.

Please continue to send us Midwesterners some good vibes to get through this blizzard. Thanks!

But back to the DVD: it’s got two feature-length vintage trailer marathons. One is horror-themed and the other is a more general compilation of exploitation flicks. My favorites so far are Gone With The Pope (definitely want to see that movie) and Banana Monster. They don’t make trailers like they used to! In addition, there is a collection of new fictional trailers based on some of the films from the Shock Festival book.

The set also includes a disc that’s full of mp3 sound files of original radio spots for genre flicks from the 70s and 80s. It’s a really neat idea and I like to see these sorts of value-adds included with DVDs. The packaging is also great, everything is full-color, including the attractive printing on the discs and there’s a cool retro-styled mini poster in the box.

The DVD set doesn’t come out until February 2010, but the book is available now.