Unseen Terror 2018: Days 20 & 21

Ahhh, I suppose it's time to watch something new that should lift my spirits. Outside of one very odd Frank Henenlotter piece, I don't think I've watched any "true" horror-comedies for this year's marathon. So, per the recommendation of various sources, I say let's kick off the twentieth day with a bang!

Well then. 

Sure, this isn't the first blunder that I've made while I was assembling a list for Unseen Terror. And you can make an argument that this project in question can technically qualify as a "zombie" movie, or even a take on the storyline found in The Wasp Woman. At the end of the day though, Robert Zemeckis' 1992 hit Death Becomes Her barely sports any sort of ties to the horror genre. It's too late to turn back now though, so let's get on with this review. The plot revolves around a pair of female rivals named Madeline (Meryl Streep), who is an egotistical, conniving actress and Helen (Goldie Hawn), an aspiring writer whose career has yet to take off. Several years ago, the former effectively helped ruin the latter's life by not only taking her fiancé (played by Bruce Willis), but driving her to obesity and utter insanity. After spending time in a mental ward, Helen feigns rehabilitation, and she finds herself released on good behavior, though she is obviously plotting revenge on the woman who stole everything from her. Madeline, whose marriage and acting career have certainly seen better days, attends a book release party thrown by Helen, and is shocked to find that she looks as youthful and gorgeous as she did back when they first met. Dumbfounded, she digs around to discover the secret behind this, and eventually comes into contact with a woman (Blue Velvet's Isabella Rossellini) who offers her a "youth" potion that will promise her everlasting beauty. Unbeknownst to both Madeline and Helen though, are the very morbid consequences that come with drinking this magical concoction.


First off, I don't feel like it's terribly necessary to discuss just how good our two female leads are. Streep in particular is just so damn good at adapting to whatever genre you ask her to take part in (how she hasn't done something like a dark, psychological horror piece yet is beyond me), and Hawn just has naturally great comedic timing, body language, and delivery with every little quip or jab she's been given. Perhaps who took me by surprise the most was a man whose body of work over the past several years has been so lousy that it made me forget just how solid he used to be: Bruce f'n Willis. As we watch Madeline and Helen descend into madness, you begin to realize that he's one of the only halfway decent human beings that is left in the horribly strange world found in Death Becomes Her. A former plastic surgeon who has been reduced to being a mere mortician due to his alcoholism and frustrating marriage, it's hard not to feel for the guy when you see that nobody really cares for his wellbeing, but rather strive for his gifted hands.


Beyond the acting, Death Becomes Her contains great makeup work, and some very solid, award-winning (though slightly dated) visual effects. A particular sequence involving Streep and what happens with her body after she has been pushed down a long flight of stairs looks pretty great, as does one scene involving Hawn and a "hole" of hers. Both are likely to elicit some great laughs from those who have a pretty sick sense of humor. Most of the flick's first and second act are peppered with some great, darkly comedic moments that work so well because of the talented cast, but it does feel like some steam is lost during the third. Don't get me wrong, the final twenty-or-so minutes of this Zemeckis vehicle aren't bad per se, but they're predictable and a bit clunky. Luckily, the bits at the very end are undoubtedly some of the aspects that will stick with you long after the credits have rolled.


Is this one a horror-comedy? Is it just a dark fantasy with a wicked, twisted sense of humor? Well, whatever you prefer to call Death Becomes Her, it's quite the entertaining ride. I firmly believe that unless you are absolutely anti-Hollywood, there's quite a bit of material to enjoy here. As of this time, this early 90s fan favorite can be watched on Starz-On-Demand, and Scream! Factory released it on what is reported to be a pristine-looking Blu-Ray. Give this one a whirl.




Well, I figured that for the following day, I must atone for this potential mistake. So, per a quick perusing around the internet, I settled on a newer, and what some call a "proper" horror-comedy.

For the past several months, it appeared as though the trailer for Slice, the feature-length debut from writer/director Austin Vesely, was THE talk of the town in the horror community. Me though? I just never got around to watching it due to laziness on my part. Because of that, I went into this motion picture completely blind with no expectations whatsoever. The very first thing that I contemplated after finishing Slice was turning Death Becomes Her back on. After that, it was popping my Blu-Ray of Brain Damage back into my disc drive. After THAT, I sincerely debated just waiting to review this for something akin to a "rest of the bunch" post later on. But rather than delay, I'll just get this one out of the way.


The story of Slice is a bit of a messy one. In essence, it's a murder mystery centered around pizza delivery drivers being slaughtered, with one of the victim's ex-girlfriend (Zazie Beetz of Deadpool 2) pushing forward in her investigation, and a slew of accusations being thrown at various culprits, including lycanthropes, drug peddlers, and ghosts. Perhaps a disgraced ex-Chinese takeout worker (who also happens to be a werewolf) has something to do with the whole ordeal though. So, yeah. That sure sounds like a wacky, almost cartoonish premise does it not? Well, despite sporting some fairly original ideas, Slice does feel like the classic example of style over substance. And yet, even the "style" aspect isn't particularly good either. Quirks like having the recently-deceased constantly hanging around people at all times like it's not a big deal are clever, but we've seen this same thing done in better movies over the past few decades.


What really brings Slice down several notches is just how much good material could have come from everything that we see on screen. Zazie Beetz proved that she can be pretty damn funny and commanding this past summer as Domino, but her character's personality traits are seemingly limited to being irritable and "I'm out for revenge." Performers such as Paul Scheer and Chris Parnell are comedians that we should treasure and never waste, and they damn sure try their best with the lines that they're delivering. Hell, even Chance the Rapper, making his film debut here shows a lot of promise. What it all boils down to here is the source material (a.k.a. the script) being utterly lousy. Very few, if any of the jokes land and most are structured the same way that a "laugh track" TV comedy show is. The horror aspects don't feel particularly scary, or come close to anything resembling even mild tension. Worst of all, the entire experience just feels far more boring than something with this much talent ever should. On more than a few occasions, I thought that this could do much better as a television series. In the hands of someone with far more experience and a little supervision, the sheer absurdity and hidden metaphors that they try to insert into its running time could work wonders instead of stumble around.


While I have to give Slice points for originality, the film as a whole just feels like wasted potential. I'm sure that the late night stoner audiences will bolster this picture's legacy a smidge, but for me, it's a shockingly dull miss from a company that is usually very reliable when it comes to quality releases (still love you though A24). I'm going to be legitimately shocked if I remember much of anything about this one when Halloween comes around next week. Still, if you want to give this one a try and join in any future discussions about it, Slice is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.




Tomorrow, I feel the need to spice things up. Let's see what some "Vinegar" can do....

Unseen Terror 2017: Day 9

It's the year 2003, and the ultra-powerful corporation known as Chaank Armament are under fire from the press and the public for their controversial project known as "Hard Man," which strengthens mere fighters and soldiers to almost superhuman levels through cybernetic enhancements. Unfortunately, the latest experiment with the procedure has gone awry, with many innocent lives having been lost due to a malfunction by its deranged creator Jack Dante, whom some within the company want to be let go as soon as possible. A large portion of Chaank's employees are fearful that the backlash and negative publicity will cause them to lose several contracts, yet there are those, such as new Chief Executive Hayden Cale, who would actually go to great lengths to see these changes implemented. After a series of events leaves Jack unemployed, the mad architect unleashes a secret invention of his: a towering, murderous monstrosity nicknamed "Warbeast," which is comprised of metal, gnashing teeth, sharpened claws, and pure malevolence.



That plot description for Death Machine, a 1994 cyperpunk/thriller/horror film sure does sound alluring, doesn't it? After all, I can dig the idea of a robotic, hulking piece of metal that is controlled by an egotistical scientist with delusions of grandeur. Plus, as an added bonus, we have the director of Blade sitting in the big chair.....wait, didn't he go on to direct The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as well? *readjusts note* Ahem. As I've learned over the years, however, a good concept and idea doesn't necessarily guarantee a quality picture. This is all the more true when your script is seriously intent with shoving in as many references and nods to other Science Fiction properties as it possibly can and if you just can't keep up an exciting pace. But more on that later.


Initially, I was not aware that actor Brad Dourif, who is making his second appearance for Unseen Terror this year, was actually the top billed performer for Death Machine. Sure he is playing a villain, but those instances where the bad guy receives a larger screen credit that the rest of his colleagues is a rarity in cinema these days (one that comes to mind for me is Tim Burton's Batman). I certainly was relieved to see his scraggly-haired, smarmy, psychotic hide show up though, because he does the best job that he possibly can to ensure that you don't fall asleep or wander off. It won't go down as one of his more well-known roles, but for purveyors of comically bad over-the-top acting, it's always a delight to see him in even the crappiest of movies. The only other slightly recognizable faces in here are Richard Brake (the lone standout of last year's fairly hideous 31), who desperately needed more screen time than most of his cohorts, and a then-debuting English actress named Rachel Weisz, who at the age of twenty-four, does show signs of her future potential considering that she appears for a grand total of about ten seconds. Disappointingly, most of the main cast just seems far too content on attempting to ape our aforementioned Child's Play alum, and instead come across as trying far too hard to be bad or shaken up.


Thankfully, what isn't bad are the technical aspects of Death Machine. Considering that this wasn't  exactly gifted with a wide release into cinemas, the set designs and special effects are fairly okay. The titular beast looks surprisingly good, resembling sort of an Alien Queen-meets-cybernetic Tyrannosaurus Rex hybrid. It's one of the cooler-looking creations that I've seen pop up on here in quite some time. The film also has a certain mucky, bizarre look to it, giving off the impression that this version of 2003 (or the "Near Future" according to the opening scene) must absolutely stink to live in, as it is overrun with big corporations and a disregard for human life or safety. But those positives could be Death Machine's only non-Dourif aspects worth praising, as it gets stuck in the mud by clinging on to the choice of utilizing "movie worship" a little too much. Don't get me wrong, I can get some amusement by seeing that a trio of activists are named as obvious nods to Aliens and Evil Dead, and Brake's character is named "Scott Ridley," but when you have moments which seem like a direct ripoff from the former motion picture, as well as a showdown between two machines of comically different proportions, you just start wondering why you aren't watching one particular flick from the late 1980s instead or whether Roger Corman was secretly involved in the production. And for Lemmy's sake, you really aren't being subtle whatsoever when one of your executives is named John Carpenter. If you really want to see properties which wear their influences on their sleeves but don't constantly shove it in your face, go watch The Cabin in the Woods or Stranger Things. Worse yet, the moments of silence or inactivity that litter most of the second half (i.e. when Dourif isn't planning to sic his pet on the hapless group) don't really add as much intrigue as they should, which ultimately leaves you feeling a tad bit bored until the Warbeast comes calling.


In the end, there isn't a great amount that's worth salvaging from Death Machine. True, it does sport a solid-looking "monster" and Brad Dourif turns in a wonderfully unhinged performance like usual, but the movie is too reliant on nostalgia and hoping that you won't just choose those other films in the genre that it clearly loves oh so dearly over their one instead. As of now, you can purchase a rather cheap copy of the movie over on Amazon, but that seems to be about it for availability. I have serious doubts that this will ever see even a halfway-decent release on Blu-ray, especially since it's been reported that director Stephen Norrington was rather dissatisfied with the final cut and the flick has undergone several changes on the home video market since then because of it.



Better yet, if you just want to save your hard-earned cash, you can watch the best scene in the movie below.

Tomorrow, my love of horror and professional wrestling clash in one giant, bloody bonanza! But will I get swerved?

Unseen Terror 2013: Day 24

Today will mark the last entry featuring what you could constitute as a "modern" horror film (i.e. released within the last ten or fifteen years), and boy howdy am I glad, since I was starting to miss the good times and cheesiness of the decade that I was born in. Director-wise, The ABCs Of Death is one of the largest groups I've seen assembled on this blog, with an ambitious idea of gathering twenty-six different men and women to direct different shorts and segments, each based around a different letter of the alphabet that was assigned to them. Hence, why I don't have a plot synopsis typed above, since there is none to found here. Not a single story connects with one another, though some do share similar themes and styles.

Therein lies the problem with this "movie" though, since it may have been better served as something other than an actual film. For every story that intrigued, amused, or even shocked me, there were about five or six that just didn't, and it feels akin to a two hour-long roller coaster ride in terms of horror anthology enjoyment. Producer Ant Timpson did a great job of rounding up as many people from different parts of the world as he could, including directors from America like Ti West (House of the Devil) and Adam Wingard (V/H/S, You're Next), France's Xavier Gens (Frontier(s)), Japan's Yudai Yamaguchi (Meatball Machine) and Noboru Iguchi (The Machine Girl), and a myriad of mostly unknown Spanish and latino directors. The quality of these actual shorts varies in a way that some feel like they could be stretched out into actual short films, while others feel phoned in to the point where you wonder if the directors felt as if they sent their segments in as a way to get the producers to leave them alone (Ti West's barely minute-long segment feels similar to a page he ripped from a script he never finished).

I know this isn't an entirely original concept either, and as I've brought up before (at least I believe I have), Showtime's Masters of Horror was very similar to The ABCs of Death. If that name doesn't ring a bell, let me refresh your memory. Created by director Mick Garris, 2006's Master of Horror was an anthology series that aired for two seasons on the Showtime network, and featured a wide array of directors in the field, with a large amount of them being pretty darn famous. I know Magnet Releasing most likely can't afford to get someone like John Carpenter or John Landis to come in and work on a short here, but every single short "film" that aired in Horror, even the bad ones, had something to remember, and it gave you room to breathe by making you wait another week for the next installment. Death's segments just occur, flash the title with a "directed by" at the end, and immediately transition into the next one. It gets to be tiring and repetitive entirely too quickly, ultimately making you just want to guess what the letter is going to stand for, and not in a fun way, but in a "would you hurry up?" kind of way.

Inconsistency in quality really hurt my overall enjoyment of The ABCs Of Death, which was a real shame since I still want to applaud this concept. But next time, perhaps making this a series of online-only shorts (no way this makes Youtube due to the nudity) would best serve the creators and cause less frustration among fans. With this decision, you gain the ability to skip past the fluff and at least revisit the memorable moments you did enjoy without having to revisit any meandering or flat out boring segments. Hell, I know that I'd love to rewatch the segments from Noboru Iguchi, Banjong Pisanthanakun, and Angela Bettis again without having to suffer through what precedes them. Supposedly, there's a sequel being worked on at the moment, with at least one pair of directors confirmed, those being the Soska Sisters of American Mary fame. They seem enthused enough about the project, so in the case of the producers, hopefully it will be a case of learning from your mistakes, or at the very least, the shorts themselves don't have the bad-to-good ratio of 6:1 as seen here.

Tomorrow, we're back to the 1980s and stuck in CHOPPING MALL!