Conan the Barbarian 3D (2011)

Well, I think we all know the story.

The second 1980's remake that a saw this weekend, and a huge disappointment.  So here's the good, the bad and the ugly of why.

The Good:

The riddle of steel.

Ron Perlman really shines as Conan's father.  The scenes with Perlman and young Conan, played by Leo Howard are the highlight of the movie.  The two share a natural chemistry that was missing from the other characters in the film.  

Way to turn a hot girl creepy.

 

Rose Mcgowan is very creepy as the witch Marique, who has a super disturbing love for her father Khlaer Zym.  She actually out creeped the main baddie.

“I live. I love. I slay…I am content.”

Jason Momoa is excellent as Conan .  He plays the character as manipulative and smart character, who relies on more than brawn to get his revenge. The only downside is that he doesn't have much chemistry with female lead.  I blame this more on Rachel Nichols however. 

The Bad:

I'm a thug with a daughter who wants to have sex with me.

The main villain, Kahler Zym, is very underwhelming. He came off as a thug, more suited to be a henchmen than the main baddie.  A hero needs an appropriate villain, this guy came off as someone who should have been fighting Conan's friends.

Besides the underwhelming baddie, plot holes the size of hoover dam are everywhere.  Characters who could use magic, but don't, people who risk the end of the world just to get laid, etc. 


The Ugly:
The Conan birth scene was the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen.  When the whole theater bursts out laughing, at what should have been a dramatic scene,  you know they have done something wrong. 

I'm a princess or a monk or something.

Rachel Nichols character was not very well defined.  You never really had a sense of who she was. She should have been as defined as Conan, instead you got a one dimensional character who was just there for Conan to have sex with.

All in all this a remake that is best skipped.

Fright Night 3D (2011)

 

 Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) is a high school senior who’s on top of the world—that is until Jerry (Colin Farrell) moves in next door and Charlie discovers that he is a vampire preying on the neighborhood.

As a huge fan of the original I was a little nervous when I heard it was being remade.  My fears were unfounded as it turns out.  This new version manages to stay true to the original while being updated for the 21st century.  

Screenwriter Marti Noxon, a veteran of "Buffy" and "Angel", knows a thing or two about how to write dialogue for horror movies.

You have to have faith for that to work.

Colin Farrell does a great job seeming confident and more than a bit smarmy as Jerry the vampire.  The entire cast deliver great performances, but one stands above the rest.  

Doctor Who?

David Tennant takes the role of Peter Vincent and runs with it.  Roddie McDowell played the character as a sad washed up actor looking for a break.  Tennant's Vincent is a magician and an arrogant coward who has exploited the vampire legend to make himself rich.  It's very shocking to see Tennant drinking, cussing and generally acting like a douche-bag.

Anyone looking to remake a horror movie should look to this as how it's done.   My only complaint is that the film being in 3D wasn't really necessary. There were a couple of times it was cool, but mostly it could have been 2D and been the same movie.

Super 8

 

The Plot: In the summer of 1979 a group of friends making a zombie movie stumble on more than they bargained for. 

My Two-Cents: This movie is every nerds dream.  You're hanging out with your best friends and that cute girl who you might have a chance with, while making a horror movie, sounds good right?  Oh and you also get to uncover a vast conspiracy and save the world, perfect.

While the nerd elements are important, they are not the whole movie.  The movie is really about repairing relationships and coming to terms with loss.  Some of the plot points were predictable and one scene at the end was a bit heavy handed.  That said, I enjoyed the movie and would throughly recommend it. 

The Future of Horror

The final Saw film came out last year marking the end of an era.  Every Halloween for seven years a new film was released.  This was remarkable since few horror films have pulled this off.   Now that they are over, I have to ask "What's Next"? 

Horror films have long been the product of their times and subject to trends.  The success of Saw brought on the trend of the so-called "torture-porn" movies.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre  remake's success has led to countless horror classics being remade.  

What will the next trend in horror be?  I personally think it will be documentary/found footage film.  The Last Exorcism, Paranormal Activity, Quarantine (which was itself a remake of rec) these films have already proven to be successful.  They have small budgets, and yield a great return for the studios.  They also cash in on the reality TV craze that has been going strong for the last few years.  

 I have a feeling that the trend may not last as long in horror though.  Horror fans tend to want something new to shock them, that's why most of the trends don't last that long.  Horror fans also like to have a villain with a face too.  That's something that these found footage/mockumentary films generally lack.  Jason, Freddy, Michael and recently Victor Crowley give the horror fan someone to fear.

I think the found footage has a couple of years left.  After that, who knows?

Three things found in every horror movie house, but rarely in yours

Hopefully you live in the house on the right.

While horror movie tend to change with the times, there are a few things they are behind on.  Some of the most important involve changes in building design and personal hygiene.   So here are a few of the most out of place items in horror movies. 

Well maybe they have these at Sweeny Todd's house.

 1. Straight razors.  Almost every house in a horror movie seems to have baskets of these things just laying around.  They always make for a scary visual, but when was the last time you saw one in real life?  I'm 40 and I've only seen them in horror movies.  It's probably a good thing, I can cut myself with a safety razor, these things would kill me.

They always leave your back to the door too.

2. The claw-foot tub.  The main reason for these is so that the killer can pop up behind the teenage girl and murder her.  I say teenage girl, because in horror movies men never take baths or showers. 

3. The bathroom mirror/medicine cabinet.  Long ago these were replaced with larger mirrors so people would have a place to pose for Facebook pictures.  The only purpose these serve in horror movies is this:

Honorable Mention: Breaker boxes on the outside of the house.  By about 1980 people learned that keeping the controls to the power outside was a bad idea.  Now the psycho has to actually be in the house before he can plunge the heroes into darkness.

Insidious (2011)

Nothing creepier than an evil looking kid.

Director: James Wan
Writer: Leigh Whanell

The Story:  A family discovers that dark spirits have possessed their home and that their son has inexplicably fallen into a coma.   

The Good: The cast does a great job in this movie. 

As if one haunted house wasn't bad enough. 

 Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson are not only very believable they also make smart choices.  One of the things I really liked about this movie, was that the characters avoided making many of the stereotypical stupid horror movie mistakes. 
To me, the characters that stole the movie were Specs and Tucker. 

Leigh Whannell as, you guessed it "Specs"

Angus Sampson as Tucker

Specs and Tucker are paranormal investigators who get called in to see if the house is truly haunted.  They show using ghostbusting equipment that looks half steam-punk, half MacGyver.  These two low rent ghostbusters are very engaging and I would really like to see a whole movie just about them. 

The Bad: While the characters avoid many horror cliches, the movie does not.  A lot of the scares are simply loud musical cues, and the old black cat scare.  The must have had a very low budget on this because some of the scenes are nothing but black backgrounds and fog. 
When they decide to conduct a seance, things with the psychic take a turn into bat-shit weird that I can't even explain properly.  You'll just have to see it to believe it.

The Ugly: By now everyone has probably seen this scene on the trailer:

It's not polite to point.

The monster here looks very creepy and intimidating.  They really should have kept him in the shadows.  At first the creature is only glimpsed in shadows or psychic drawings.  He's very scary looking in all of those.  Once they finally reveal him, not so much.  Imagine a creature that has  Darth Maul's head on a shirtless male model body, wearing goatskin leggings and there you go. 

The Verdict: This is not a terrible movie, but it doesn't really break any new ground.  It's worth watching, but not something I would see twice.  I would like to see a sequel that focuses on Specs and Tucker's next job though. 

The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)

One of these statements is untrue.

Director: Albert Pyun
Starring:

• Lee Horsley (yes the same guy who played Matt Houston)  as Talon
• Simon Mac Corkindale (Manimal!) as Prince Mikah 
• Richard Lynch as Cromwell 
• Richard Moll (Bull on Night Court) as Xusia
• Kathleen Beller as Alana 

The Plot:
From the title you may be asking yourself if the movie is some sort of Arthur/Excalibur type story.  No, the reason they titled it that is this:

Didn't see that coming did you?

Yes, Talon has a sword, that FUCKING SHOOTS SWORDS.  Let's see another example of this:

Better than a shotgun.

Do you want to know what makes this even more awesome?  They never explain it at all.  They just act like this was common technology at the time. 

The evil Cromwell, is there anything that Richard Lynch hasn't been in?

The plot is your basic fantasy trope.  A man called Cromwell makes a deal with an evil sorcerer to help conquer Ehdan.

Richard Moll as Xusia, demon sorcerer.

Our hero Talon is the youngest son of good King Richard who rules Ehdan .  The evil Cromwell murders Richard and the queen. Young Talon escapes only to return 11 years later to seek vengeance.  Pretty standard so far. 

I'm here to reclaim my birthright, or eat meat and get laid, whatever.

Talon returns with a group of mercenaries, and they all immediately hit the local whorehouse and mutton hutt.

Why is Frank Fontana here?

Meanwhile Prince Mikah and his sister Alana, are plotting to over through Cromwell and put Mikah on the throne.  They repeatedly say that Mikah is the rightful heir to the throne (pay attention, this will get more disturbing later).  Mikah and Alana are attacked by the Cromwell's men and Mikah is captured. 

I saved you, now have sex with me.

Alana is cornered in an alley and about to be gang raped by Cromwell's men when Talon arrives and saves her.    Our gallant hero then agrees to help rescue her brother and depose the king, but only if Alana will "Get perfumed and pretty" and have sex with him.  So right away we get to see what a truly noble guy Talon is.  Nothing like saving a woman from rape and then extorting sex from her.  Now let's think about the even more disturbing part.  If Prince Mikah is a rightful heir to the throne and Alana is his sister, wouldn't that make them both related to Talon in some way?  Yeah, they really glossed over that one.  Also, shouldn't Talon speak up and say "Hey, I'm the son of the king that was killed".  I would think that would be worth mentioning to a group of rebels. Although maybe not if you were extorting sex from your relative. 

Oh, the days before CGI....

My Thoughts:

Only Ed Wood used stock footage more than Albert Pyun.  I think every exterior shot of the castle came from either an old Dracula or Camelot movie.  Although the one scene showed camels walking around a clearly Arabic city.   

The costumes were an odd mix of Arabic swordsman and English period costumes .  The sets were recycled too, it's odd that a country called  Ehdan would use the same flag as England.  

This movie is filled with plot holes and inconsistencies.   It uses slapstick humor, graphic violence and nudity sometimes in the same scene.

Nothing like a good crucifixion scene.

 

This movie apparently has a huge cult following, but I'm sure it's mainly people who saw it as a kid.  I was eleven when I first saw this, and my only clear memories of it were the sword he used and that there was lots of nudity.   This is one of those films that having seen as a small child you have a very slanted memory of.  

It's worth watching just for the sword cannon scenes, but don't expect much else to be original.