Dead Alive

This is Monster Mommies Week! All this week we'll spotlight some of the cruelest, meanest, and scariest cinematic mothers.

Dead Alive (AKA Braindead)
seen online via YouTube
5.4.11

So how about that Peter Jackson, huh? I still remember when he was named the director for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The only other work of his I had seen to that point was The Frighteners, which I liked, but I couldn't help but wonder if he had what it took to handle something on as huge a scale as the Rings movies. I probably wasn't the only one who thought so, either. I think it's safe to say he not only met, but exceeded, expectations. Now he's a part of the geek pantheon of directors: Spielberg, Lucas, Cameron, Nolan. Looking back at his early days as a director, though, it's hard to imagine that he would reach such heights... especially when you consider a movie like Dead Alive.

The monster mommy here is an old lady who keeps her son Lionel on a very short leash, to the point where it interferes with his burgeoning love life. Then one day she gets bit on the arm by a rabid animal from a mystical island, dies, and becomes an undead zombie (making her a literal monster mommy). And things get a hell of a lot worse.

I hadn't planned on watching this. It was a last-minute substitute. I had heard of it before, going back to my video retail days, as a matter of fact, but never got around to seeing it. All I knew about it was that it was a bizarro horror flick from Jackson's early days. I was reminded of it while looking through Kindertrauma (once again), looked it up on IMDB, and gave it a shot, not giving it too much thought because I needed something to watch quick.

Well, I've seen it. And I'll tell you this much:

I no longer feel like I need to watch another zombie movie... ever... again.


How can any other zombie movie top this? This makes Night of the Living Dead look like Bambi! Half of the time I was literally holding my laptop out at arms length away from me. I started out watching it in full-screen, but after awhile I reduced the window size to normal because I really, really did not need to see things like eight miles of zombie guts, unnatural bodily fluids, and especially zombie sex up close.

Dead Alive reminded me a whole lot of Sam Raimi and the Evil Dead movies. Like Raimi, Jackson uses a lot of quick, swooping camera movement from skewed, exaggerated angles. In Jackson's case, however, the action is breathtakingly quick and edited fiercely, to the point where it's a bit hard to keep up at times. It's an approach that he's since curbed, though his King Kong had some of it. (Speaking of which, Jackson has said that the original King Kong was the reason he became a filmmaker, and the opening scene in Dead Alive appears to be a shout-out to that classic monster movie.)


I freely admit that I'm a wuss when it comes to watching cinematic gore, so it helped somewhat that Dead Alive was also pretty funny. I mean, once the zombies start multiplying and the carnage increases, things go way over the top to the point where it's fun-scary, but even before then it's clear that the whole thing is intended to be a romp. Anything goes in this flick - and it often does. I mean, look at what happens to Lionel's mom towards the end...

Seriously, I don't see what more you can do with zombies after this except to go in the completely opposite direction, Walking Dead-style, and make it all brutally serious and bleak - which has its merits too.

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Previously on Monster Mommies Week:
The Brood
The Baby

The Baby (1973)

This is Monster Mommies Week! All this week we'll spotlight some of the cruelest, meanest, and scariest cinematic mothers.

The Baby (1973)
seen online via YouTube
5.3.11

There's a website (which I won't dignify with a link) that's dedicated to the elimination of the "r-word" from the English language, the word in question being retard. I've always believed that when we hide behind potentially harmful words with euphemisms, we give those words far more power over us than they deserve, and we make genuine communication that much more difficult. That said, when I heard the word "retarded" used to describe the title character in The Baby, it still shocked me for a moment. It was used in the purely clinical sense, meant to describe Baby's medical condition and not as an insult, but it still seemed surprising and yes, even anachronistic, to hear him referred to this way. Decades of politically correct brainwashing have had their effect, it seems.

The Baby is another movie I discovered through the horror site Kindertrauma and it was a very pleasant surprise. Ruth Roman, a veteran TV actress who was in, among other films, Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, plays Baby's mother and she dominates the film. Physically, Baby is a young adult, perhaps 18-21 years old, but developmentally, he's still an infant, incapable of speech or even walking upright. His mother and two adult sisters take care of him. A social worker assigned to the family determines that Baby needs a better environment in order to progress, and so begins a tug-of-war between the two women over who should have full custody of Baby.


Roman's character, Mrs. Wadsworth, reminded me of an old Bill Cosby line from his stand-up days. In talking about parenting, Cosby says that little children are "false advertising:" they're great fun when they're little, all cute and playful and totally devoted to you, but then they grow up! In this case, Mrs. Wadsworth gets the best of both worlds, in a sense. In one scene, she more or less admits as much to a group of her friends. She says something like how other parents might consider dealing with Baby a burden, but she doesn't. In that moment, she speaks of Baby with such genuine tenderness and love, and Roman completely sells it. Watching her, you forget that her love for Baby causes her to do some cruel things to anyone who tries to come between them. An unfortunate babysitter provides one example early in the film.

I'm not a parent, but I can see how this could, on some level, be a kind of wish fulfillment fantasy. To have a child's unconditional love, untainted by the changes time and exposure to the wider world inevitably make, forever, has to have some appeal to a parent, particularly to a new or recent one. When I was about 12 or 13, I was a counselor-in-training at a summer day camp, and I met a girl, a camper, perhaps three or four years younger, who developed an unusual fixation on me. She actually thought of me as a surrogate father, though I couldn't begin to tell you why. It goes without saying, perhaps, that she had some major issues. Still, though, a part of me liked being in that position, difficult as it was (and boy, was it difficult), and I felt as if I would've done anything to protect her.


The Baby has the feel of a horror movie in places, but I'm not sure if it should be considered one. There is violence and murder, but it comes in relatively small doses and doesn't dominate the overall story. Most of the fear and tension comes from other sources. For instance, one of the more disturbing aspects is the sexual tension. Baby may act like an infant, but he has the body of an adult man, and more than one woman in the story responds to that, even though Baby himself is incapable of initiating any sexual activity. When the majority of the violence comes, it ends up twisting all your conceptions about the characters completely upside down, leaving you with a shocker of an ending. I know I didn't see it coming.

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Previously on Monster Mommies Week:
The Brood

A Life in Movies

"A Life in Movies" is a blog-a-thon hosted by the site Fandango Groovers Movie Blog. The goal is to pick a movie from each year of one's life through 2010 and say a few words about it. A complete list of participants can be found at the host site.

I almost wasn't gonna do this because I was a bit hesitant about actually revealing my age - something that normally doesn't bother me in real life! But then I decided that was a silly reason not to take part in a blog-a-thon, so here I am. I suppose being surrounded by so many film bloggers who are so much younger than me makes me feel my own age sometimes - not that I'm a senior citizen or anything.

Props to Andy from FGMB for this idea, and for inviting me to take part. It is a pretty clever idea for a blog-a-thon. These aren't necessarily my favorite films from each year; just films I like, or at the very least, have seen.

Cabaret (1972). I think dark musicals are my favorite kind, and this is one of the best. Liza knocks 'em dead, but I like Joel Grey best.
Sleeper (1973). I need to accept the bitter fact that screwball Woody is gone and is never coming back. But I keep hoping.
Foxy Brown (1974). Recently scientists have discovered that the sexual energy generated by Pam Grier could light up the North American East Coast for a year.
Cooley High (1975). If John Hughes were black, he would've made movies like this.
King Kong (1976). No lie - the overt sexual foreplay between Kong and Jessica Lange always made me uncomfortable as a kid. Of course, I couldn't have explained why back then...


Pete's Dragon (1977). I remember my mother taking me to see this one.
Thank God It's Friday (1978). Guilty pleasure movie! A young Jeff Goldblum, the Commodores, disco dancing, Donna Summer singing "Last Dance" - you can't miss.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). As a Trekkie, I would be remiss if I didn't include a Trek movie. A sub-par execution of a very good story - one that doesn't need a villain (are you listening, JJ Abrams?).
Popeye (1980). If nothing else, it's perfect casting.
Pennies From Heaven (1981). Another disturbing musical, made even better with dancing Christopher Walken.

Eating Raoul (1982). "I'm a hot-blooded crazy emotional Chicano!"
Eddie and the Cruisers (1983). This kid I used to work with couldn't get enough of this movie. Stay far away from the sequel, though.
A Soldier's Story (1984). Underrated military drama that my father took me to see. Early role for Denzel.
Tampopo (1985). A sweet little Japanese movie about food that I discovered during my video retail years.
She's Gotta Have It (1986). Spike Lee has become so closely associated with New York it's easy to forget that he's originally from Atlanta.

Dragnet (1987). Another guilty pleasure. Tom Hanks has another comedy in him, I know he does.
Midnight Run (1988). Charles Grodin needs to make a comeback, dammit!
Uncle Buck (1989). Got dragged to see this and ended up loving it.
Pump Up the Volume (1990). If not Jenny's favorite film, then it's at least in her top five.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). The movie that made me a Trekkie.

Hard Boiled (1992). I used to slide down bannisters all the time as a teenager. Sad to say, however, I never did it while shooting bad guys. It's one of the great regrets of my life.
Demolition Man (1993). More people dig this one than I realized.
Heavenly Creatures (1994). There's this song - I wish I knew who sings it - that's an ode to Kate Winslet. The chorus goes, "I'm no diplomat/But you look better fat/Kate Winslet!" And it's true.
Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995). I saw Heather Matarazzo speak at a gay rights rally here in NYC once.
Matilda (1996). Awesome, awesome, awesome kids movie. Matilda is totally my role model. Now if only I could develop telekinetic superpowers...

187 (1997). Sam Jackson the dramatic actor doesn't get nearly enough credit. Check out this film about pre-Columbine high school violence one day.
A Simple Plan (1998). Sam Raimi needs to make another movie like this.
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (1999). "It's da fuggin' birdman!!" [wheeze]
Dude Where's My Car? (2000). The ONLY Ashton Kutcher movie I'll ever watch.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). Who knew that John Cameron Mitchell would go from this to Rabbit Hole?

Barbershop (2002). Why do so many black barbershops have wide screen TVs? Seriously, in my neighborhood, there's like, a hundred different barbershops and they all have them. Some guy could be shaving Lebron James' number into your scalp when all of a sudden somebody gets shot on CSI and the next thing you know you've got half an ear!
Mystic River (2003). The movie that got me hooked on Dennis Lehane.
Kung Fu Hustle (2004). Took a chance on it on a day when I was feeling depressed, and ended up enjoying it.
Good Night and Good Luck (2005). I know this was the year of Brokeback Mountain, but this was the movie I was rooting for to win Best Picture.
The Fountain (2006). Years from now, people will better appreciate this movie.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007). Would I have the courage to live if I were in this guy's situation? I wonder.
Rachel Getting Married (2008). An interracial marriage and it's treated no differently than any other one.
Up in the Air (2009). Still kinda pissed it didn't win the Adapted Screenplay Oscar.
Hot Tub Time Machine (2010). Seeing this was purely a spur-of-the-moment decision.

H'wood eager to kill Bin Laden all over again

I've learned that Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow in recent weeks has been preparing and starting to cast an indie movie with the working title Kill Bin Laden, while another movie project about the hunt for the Al Queda terrorist leader at a major Hollywood studio stalled back in 2006. Given tonight's startling news, it's clear that these may be the timeliest film projects in recent Hollywood history. And judging from tonight's showbiz phone calls coming into Deadline about Osama bin Laden's death, I wouldn't be surprised if the movie studios are anxious to bring these projects to the big screen as soon as possible, updated with the details behind tonight's successful military mission...

I found out on Facebook, of course. My first thought was, "joke." Then I saw other people posting about it. Even when I saw it on CNN.com I still couldn't entirely believe it, but there it was. I had reached the point where I was beginning to despair of anyone ever finding OBL - or even if finding him remained a high priority. Yesterday morning I watched a bunch of videos on the CNN site, read articles, tried to take it all in. I do feel relief, naturally, as well as pride in our military and our president in getting this important job done. I'm not sure I feel right about cheering anyone's death, but man, if anyone's death deserves to be celebrated...

So now we find that Hollywood is champing at the bit to capture the moment on celluloid (metaphorically speaking; I know that everything's digital now). Kathryn Bigelow's record speaks for itself; I trust her to make a great movie about this that will, perhaps, serve as a companion piece to The Hurt Locker.

One thing that I hope will not get forgotten, however, when these movies do get made, is all the lives that were lost in the past nine and a half years as a direct result of OBL and the events of September 11. That includes all the victims at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Flight 93 passengers, the US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, even the Iraqi civilians killed in the line of fire. OBL's death closes a chapter in world history (though don't let anyone fool you into thinking terrorism is no longer a problem), but it came at the cost of too many lives that were needlessly wasted, on both sides, and that's something we mustn't lose sight of in the rush to cinematically canonize our heroes.

Thoughts?

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Related:
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (the first movie I saw after 9-11)

The Brood

This is Monster Mommies Week! All this week we'll spotlight some of the cruelest, meanest, and scariest cinematic mothers.

The Brood
seen online via YouTube
5.1.11

I used to always confuse David Cronenberg with David Lynch. I suppose it was the first names that did it. They still trip me up occasionally, though not as much. Cronenberg, of course, is the guy who has made a career out of making films about body mutilations and transformations. It's a good subject for a horror filmmaker to explore. Most people will likely agree that normal bodily functions are gross to begin with. When you search for different ways to twist and reshape the human body in films, I think you're getting into primal-fear territory.

Feminists probably had a field day analyzing Cronenberg's The Brood, a film I read about at a terrific horror movie site called Kindertrauma, which specializes in childhood fears. Mentally-unbalanced woman undergoing radical psychotherapy which causes her anger to manifest as little mutant children that kill anyone she's pissed at? Yeah, I can see feminists reading some interesting things in a story like that.

The Brood came out the same year as Alien, another movie in which human bodies are the vessels for violent, murderous offspring. The tie to one's emotional state, however, makes me think of another angle: the notion of a cycle of violence linking familial generations - the children carrying on a battle begun by the parent. And because children are so easily mutable, it's easy for a parent to mold them in their image, for the express purpose of carrying out their bidding. In the movie, Nola's maniacal rage leads to her mutant children threatening the life of her natural daughter, and that's the danger of vengeance, isn't it? Left unchecked, it could consume everything in its wake.


It's unfortunate that The Brood is told from the perspective of Nola's husband Frank. Hers is the more interesting story - and because we never see her prior to her commitment to psychiatric care, every time we see her she's either nuts or in therapy to keep her from going nuts. The treatment she goes through made me think of Scientology at first: a charismatic leader who isolates the subject from their family; former subjects who escape with mental (and physical) scars; the whiff of a cult about it. I would've liked to have known how Nola got caught up in it.

Plus, we never see Nola with Candy, her natural daughter, so we don't get a sense that Nola ever cared about her to begin with. She seems to embrace her transformation - again, something I would've liked to have seen more of, especially when she seems to hold her mutant offspring in higher regard than her natural one. The more I think about it, the more it seems like a mistake to not show more of her side of the story. Awesome climax, though.

Soundtrack Saturday: Rushmore

A very eclectic selection that Wes Anderson judiciously uses within the film.

Cat Stevens, "Here Comes My Baby"

The Who, "A Quick One While He's Away"

The Rolling Stones, "I Am Waiting"

Scream 1-4

Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3
last seen online via YouTube

Scream 4
seen @ Jackson Heights Cinemas, Jackson Heights, Queens, NY
4.27.11

SPOILERS FOR SCREAM 4

From the first time I saw the trailer I knew Scream was different from most horror movies. I’m not a big horror movie fan, though there are plenty of them that I like, but I knew enough about the clichés of the genre, especially the slasher flicks, to recognize their subversion in Scream.

The meta-textual elements get lots of discussion, of course, but in re-watching the original, I had forgotten that it’s genuinely scary too. The opening scene with Drew Barrymore sets the stage perfectly. I was grinning at first, speaking familiar lines along with the movie, but by the time she gets whacked I wasn’t grinning. This scene is still as creepy and disturbing as anything Wes Craven has done before or since.

The march of technology in the Scream movies is notable. In the first one, “Ghostface” calls Barrymore on a (cordless) land line telephone, and cellphones are still regarded as new technology. When the police chief questions Billy, he asks why he has a cell at all, as if it was unusual for teenagers to have them! Billy, of course, being a modern American teenager, answers, “Everybody’s got them.”

Personally, I remember seeing Mulder and Scully use them on The X-Files and thinking, well, they’re government agents, of course they need them. So this scene in Scream rings true with my memories of cellphones at this point in time. They weren't quite as ubiquitous as they are today, but they were getting close. And of course, the obscene phone caller-as-killer idea goes at least as far back as films like Black Christmas, which I’m sure Craven was well aware of.

I had forgotten how affluent Woodsboro is. In re-watching Scream, I was a bit shocked at the lavishness of all the homes, something I had never paid attention to in all the times I had watched this film before. I suppose that’s a part of the slasher horror genre too – the notion, never overtly expressed, but there below the surface, that not even the suburbs are safe from deadly violence. The suburbs, for many years, was the source of white flight from the inner city, and sure enough, the Woodsboro residents are almost exclusively white. Now that urban sprawl has proven to be an unsustainable form of growth, we’re seeing many people returning to the cities. Scream 4 doesn't reflect this change in society, but I didn't really think it would.

Scream 2 was entertaining but I didn’t feel like the stakes were sufficiently raised. The motive was simple revenge, as there’s a connection to someone in Scream, but we never got to see that connection; indeed, this connection is only fleetingly mentioned in the first movie, so the revelation kinda feels like an ass-pull, like “Where did that come from?”

I liked the development of Cotton Weary, even if he did come across as an obvious red herring. Specifically, I liked how he felt he was owed a shot at stardom, even if he was falsely accused of murder by Sidney. His obsession with fame reflects a common, and disturbing, trend in society of killers – or anyone who misbehaves in public – becoming media stars. As we’re currently seeing with Charlie Sheen, the media, and by extension the public, are more than willing to reward bad behavior. One can hardly blame Cotton for wanting his fifteen minutes.

Scream 3 is where the franchise really falls apart. The revelation of the killer and that person's relationship to Sidney comes completely out of left field, which is bad enough, but I also wasn't interested in the cannon fodder supporting characters. Their deaths meant nothing to me. Plus, this one is by far the silliest. I mean, Jay and Silent Bob? Really?

By this point three primary characters have emerged - Sidney, Dewey and Gale - and it's become clearly apparent that no matter what they may go through, they'll survive no matter what, and this pattern continued in Scream 4. I have to wonder why, though, especially if 4 is meant to kick-start a new trilogy. We've seen these movies self-referentially explore the horror genre - and by extension, the movies in general - front to back and inside out by now. Isn't it time to shake things up story-wise?

In 4, I would've had Jill kill Sidney and get away with it. She was setting herself up as the sole survivor, the "final girl" in genre parlance, even though she was also the killer. Why not run with that idea for awhile? That would provide a much better rationale for a fifth movie: the killer as protagonist. We could see, for the first time in the series, how the killer sets up for a kill (which would justify the Peeping Tom reference in 4). And she would play the innocent the whole time, with Dewey being the only one who suspects otherwise. That would've given the series the kick in the pants it needs - a kick that I doubt will come now.

I remember seeing the second movie with Jenny at a theater that's no longer around: the predecessor to the IFC Center in the West Village (whatever its name was). I don't recall how much she liked it. Jenny loves horror movies, but her tastes run more towards cult stuff. Although I do recall watching Children of the Corn at her house one time and both of us laughing at how silly it was.


I've written about the Jackson before. It seems they've got new management now, although I wonder if it's affected attendance any. The early evening showing I went to didn't even have a dozen people. I got there ten minutes before showtime, but the movie from the previous showtime was still screening. I looked through the window of the doorway to the auditorium and, regrettably, caught a glimpse of Jill holding a knife, clearly addressing Sidney. So while the ending was kind of spoiled for me, at least I didn't know the context of what I fleetingly saw.

I had to wait in the lobby for another 10-15 minutes. At one point some guy who must have been the manager looks at me - the only person in the lobby other than the girl behind the counter popping popcorn - and asks if I need any help. I told him my situation and he said, "Just a few more minutes." I can't recall if this has ever happened to me before. I was tempted to sneak into the adjacent auditorium for a few minutes, where Rio was showing, but I changed my mind. Thankfully, the previous show declined to roll the closing credits so the next show could start sooner - but they had to throw in a couple of ads first, of course.

The Jackson has hung on for a long time. I fear its best days may be behind it now, but I hope I'm wrong.