Puppet Master: A Retrospective

Lately, I've been watching a lot of the stuff on the Good Bad Flicks YouTube channel.  Why didn't I discover this sooner?  Just about everything that I love is celebrated on here, with a whole smattering of films that would have fit on Mystery Science Theater 3000 poured over in minute detail complete with humorous (yet good-spirited) barbs.  The guy that runs the channel is a huge fan of Full Moon Features, the old production company that used to release something like 17 direct-to-video horror films a year.  Which brings me to the movie series that brought me to Good Bad Flicks in the first place - Puppet Master

Without a doubt, Puppet Master was Full Moon's bread and butter series.  The first one was released in 1989, amid the wave of "killer doll" movies that appeared in the wake of Chucky.  You'd think that the 17,000th movie about stalking little toys would have been been boring and...well, bad.  But lo and behold, it was pretty frickin' awesome.  Enough that the people back in the late '80s renting every VHS horror tape that they could find responded to it in a big way.  Charles Band, the head honcho at Full Moon, took notice.  As such, it wasn't long until more Puppet Master movies started showing up in the video store.  And more.  And more, until the thing was an entire damn FRANCHISE just as much as the Freddys, Jasons and Michaels of the world could boast.  I would never, ever claim that this is the best movie series on the planet or anything, but I will say this: for a time, a very BRIEF time back when I was in high school, this was my favorite horror franchise.  It didn't take long for it to be supplanted, but it was fun while it lasted.

The basics go like this:  A group of characters appear at a location.  Most of the time, it's this fictional hotel called the Bodega Bay Inn, which also just so happens to be the site of World War II-era puppeteer Andre Toulon's experiments.  This guy's talent: living dolls, which he creates by extracting human souls and implanting them into the marionettes.  Oh, and said puppets are really cool and have even cooler weapons.  People start getting picked off by the puppets, there's some sort of ancient tragic romance storyline going on (more on that later), and we wind up with our big showdown.  Unlike most other horror films, though, the showdown typically doesn't involve the puppets.  There are other main villains at work here, and most of the time, they're overtly cartoonish.  Which just helps make them even more memorable.  I forgot 95% of the last 10 action blockbusters I saw in cinemas; I don't forget these cheesy movies from the '90s.

With that, let's start looking at some of the films themselves.  Which, I know, is what all seven of you were waiting for.

Now, I've already inducted the original movie into the IHR way back when that was a thing.  But I'll talk about it briefly again.  This movie introduces us to the back story of Andre Toulon (the AFOREMENTIONED WWII titular "Puppet Master" himself), putting the final touches on his last creation before Nazi spies rush the Bodega Bay Inn and kill him.  But not before he hides the puppets.  The action then switches to modern times.  All of our characters are psychics, and they all know each other, and they're drawn to the Inn for one reason or another.  What's even more interesting is that most of these characters are detestable pricks.  Not in the Rob Zombie way, but in an even-keeled kind of way, if that even makes sense.  But the real stars of the first movie - and in everything that came after - were the puppets themselves.

There was Tunneler, a soldier who drills his victims to death; there was Leech Woman, a truly disgusting creation who vomits bloodsuckers on people; there was Pinhead - nope, not Doug Bradley - but a strongman who strangled and beat on unfortunate saps until they perish; there was Jester, kind of the harmless emotional cheerleader of the group; and then there was BLADE, the most badass badass of them all.  Knife for one arm, hook for another, this guy was essentially my hero back in high school.  Looks-wise, attitude-wise, he's just awesome, and he already steals the first movie.  That's the thing about that original movie - the kills were just AWESOME.  For such a low-budget a movie, this stuff was creative, inventive and memorable, utilizing all those abilities listed above to varied perfection. 

So yeah, the first movie did huge with the video crowd.  Puppet Master II did almost as well, telling a much more personalized and Frankenstein-esque story about Andre Toulon himself coming back to life.  Resurrected by the life-saving serum that was introduced in the first movie (seriously, watch the movies for yourself if you want details about this stuff), Toulon walks among us, and he wants to reincarnate the spirit of his lost love.  Fortunately, he has an opportunity in the researchers who invade the inn like the marks that they are.  It's kind of a black sheep in the series considering what comes after, but it's pretty damn effective with some amazing stop-motion photography work by director David Allen.  It's also got Charlie Spradling as one of the sexiest victim characters in any horror movie ever.  She was so popular with fans, in fact, that she went on to host pretty much all the behind-the-scenes Full Moon stuff from that point on.

Ladies and gentlemen, Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge.  This was the flick that set the tone for Toulon's character for the rest of the series.  Now played by the awesome Guy Rolfe, this is the 1941-set origin story.  We see Toulon's bride get murdered by the Nazis, we learn the back stories of the puppets themselves, and we also get the introduction of an awesome new puppet in Six Shooter, a six-armed cowboy who shoots the dick out of unfortunate Nazi saps.  I think this movie is easily the best-constructed and most emotionally satisfying of all the movies, and I also think that if there is a movie in the franchise that is due for a big-budget reboot treatment, this is the one.  Imagine a movie where we actually get to know the characters who become the puppets, some fancy-schmancy handmade special effects with a modern twist and maybe, just maybe, Kiefer Sutherland as Toulon.  Now's that's terrifying.

Time for the bad puppets to go good!  That was the tagline when the fourth movie was released, and it delivered exactly on what it promised.  Parts IV and V were shot back-to-back by director Jeff Burr, and according to the ever-accurate Wikipedia no less than SEVEN writers churned out the scripts.  It gives us protagonist Rick Myers, affable dude who is now the caretaker at the Bodega Bay and just so happens to be working on artificial intelligence.  We get this weird plot involving an ancient demon lord who is out to reacquire the secret to reanimation, sending his little minions called "Totems" to the Inn to do it.  Which means, Puppet vs. Totem smackdown time.  These two flicks definitely aren't masterpieces by any stretch of the animation, but they're decent fun, and it was interesting to see the babyface-heel dynamic get switched.

A brief break in the series followed at this point, but soon enough, the series started cranking out more stuff.  1998's Curse of the Puppet Master isn't a movie that is going to take home any Saturn awards, but it's perfectly fine for what it is.  Another story of tragic romance with a twist, we have an evil scientist, his lovely daughter, and the love story between the daughter and the scientist's likable assistant.  There's also a really satisfying scene at the end where evil scientist gets gutted by the puppets en masse.  So that's nice.  1999 followed with Retro Puppet Master, the story of how Toulon himself found the secret to reanimation in Egypt.  And this one...yeah, it ain't good, unfortunately.  It DID feature newly-designed models of the puppets, but I definitely prefer the originals.  A best-of reel came next with Puppet Master: The Legacy, a decent-enough highlight package if that's what you're into.  From that point, the series went full SyFy.  And folks, you never go full SyFy.  Combining two of Full Moon's popular franchises must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys is simply awful.  Bad, bad, bad, dumb, it's really bad, and it's dumb.  And that is what you call constructive criticism. 

Fortunately, the series came back in a big way as the '00s crossed over into the '10s.  Starting with Axis of Evil, the series - still manned by Charles Band and his Full Moon Features label - has cranked out three more films in this little sub-series ever since.  Again, they're not perfect.  They're not artistic.  But they're fun and memorable, and we've even got a brand new movie this year and another one due out next year.  Stay tuned for Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich, coming soon to TV screens and Blu-Ray shelves near you.

If you've been keeping score in this scatter-brained retrospective, the series now stands at an incredible THIRTEEN movies.  They continue to draw horror fans in, and they continue to turn a profit.  So what makes this whole thing special, and what makes people like myself keep coming back for more?  From the very first movie, there has been this tangible sense of joy and exuberance to the making of the material.  On the surface, yeah, they're movies about killer puppets.  But everything about the execution, from making the dolls as badass as possible with cool weapons, the settings ranging from the early movies at the California seaside inn to Egypt to Nazi Germany, and the over-the-top performances by the actors...you get the sense from watching that everyone involved had a load of fun on the set.  Compared to the soulless joy that comes from almost every film at the multiplex these days, watching these movies is a refreshing experience.  Stripped down to its roots, though, the story of Andre Toulon and his army of reincarnated soul puppets is a powerful story about love.  Cue Huey Lewis and the News song.  They're also about human evil vs. inhuman evil, how they cross and intersect, and ultimately they're about YOU, the audience, taking a side between the two.  Really, surprisingly deep stuff for a cheesy series about murderous marionettes.

Or maybe I'm just dumb.

Horror Video Games!

I have four nerdy passions:  (1) Horror movies, which I get to enjoy all of you fine people with here every week, (2) Pro wrestling, which I've been a loyal (and long suffering) fan of for many years, (3) Batman, despite everything Joel Schumacher and Christopher Nolan did with it, and (4) Video games.  A refreshingly blunt and to-the-point intro paragraph if I say so myself.  I'll take my donation any time now.

Yes, folks, the Lick Ness Monster is a gamer.  NES, Sega Genesis, Super NES, N64, Gamecube.  That was the list of consoles that I owned throughout my formative years.  As you can tell, I was (and still am) a big Nintendo fanboy, and that's something that causes me almost as much suffering as WWE does these days.  If only these guys could get their heads out of their asses and get back to basics.  But then again, they have to be raking it in over "Pokemon Go!" so I can't say that they're exactly hurting these days.  Still...much like my philosophy with movies, I'm a big proponent of "keep it simple, stupid."  As such, there was a time where I just lost interest in video games, because I thought that the whole experience from online multiplayer to the consoles themselves being more like general entertainment hubs than gaming machines had gotten to be anything but simple.  See how that list of consoles ended two generations ago? 

But alas, something brought me back.  Hearing that there was a new "Doom" game on the horizon was the lure, because that was the series that taught me that I can combine my loser-y fascinations.  500-some-odd dollars later, I had an Xbox One, brand-new copies of "Batman: Arkham Knight" (combining loser-y fascinations again!) and "Grand Theft Auto V" (because it looked so awesome on various YouTube gaming channels I follow), and a couple months' wait for "Doom."  Long story short, it was worth it, because it's still just as fast-paced, intense, and gloriously gory and horror-oriented as I remembered from my youth, with a story that doesn't go the traditional modern gaming route by shoving it in your face every five seconds.  It's there, but it's not intrusive, and that's a rare thing these days.  As awesome as it is, though...it still can't hold a candle to the original.  Spoiler alert. 

Thus, this week, we're going to be looking at my favorite horror video games. 

Going back to my childhood, I've always been a huge fan of the "Castlevania" series - well, up to a point, anyway, because that N64 one can f**k right off.  Of all the ones that I played in my youth, my favorite was undoubtedly "Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse" for the NES.  This is a series of games where you play as a member of the Belmont family, whip-wielding badasses on a mission to kill Dracula.  On your way there, you face off with skeletons, Gill-men, floating heads, you name it.  The mood, atmosphere and music are all creepy to the max, but what sets this particular game apart from the others is the innovations that it brought to the table.  There were different characters that you could find and take with you to find Dracula with different abilities ranging from high jumps to magic spells.  Oh, and the game is balls-tastically hard.  In other words, it's prime 8-bit side-scrolling goodness at its finest.

The next console that I owned was a Sega Genesis; I loved Nintendo, but the combined powers of Sonic the Hedgehog and the original "Mortal Kombat" in full blood mode were enough to win me over.  Well, until I bought a Super in college and realized how wrong I was.  But two games that I used to rent constantly were "Splatterhouse II" and "III," a series of games that I think is long overdue for a modern remake.  The plot goes like this: you're a buffed-out dude wearing a Jason mask that gives you mystical powers attempting to save your girlfriend from horrific monsters.  What more do you need than that?  Answer: nothing, because these games were just 100% pure awesome.  From your bare hands to bats to daggers, this game gave you the ability to splat the bad guys in insanely gruesome ways.  Well, by early '90s standards, anyway.  And I'll fully admit to pretending that I was playing as Jason himself.

From here, we go to arguably one of my most precious childhood memories.  Now, computers and my parents were two things that definitely didn't mix.  To this day, I still get called every time my mother gets a somewhat questionable email.  Thus, I was only able to play the original "Doom" and "Doom II" at a friend's house, and I'll never forget the time that I found out what the initials "BFG" stood for.  Many years later when I actually had my own laptop, these games were the first things that I downloaded.  To this day, I still give them a play-through at least once a year.  Here we have a first-person shooter about a space marine trying to stop an invasion from hell itself, with awesome weapons, baddies and loads of gore to be had in the process.  But it's this game's puzzle solving element that really pushes it over the top...and the memory of playing it in the dark with the computer screen being the only light in the room.

While I stuck with the Nintendo consoles after my Sega Genesis experiment, my roommate in college had a PS2.  It was here where I discovered the "Silent Hill" series.  In particular, "Silent Hill 2."  People...if only THIS story could have been presented to us unabridged instead of that godawful mess we got as a movie back in 2005.  Without a doubt, this was the creepiest game I had ever played.  The "Silent Hill" series is all about oppression, suspense and what is and isn't real, with the idea being that a town can bring out the worst fears of anyone unfortunate enough to wander in.  This really is like Dario Argento's Suspiria in game form with a psychological twist.  James Sunderland is a bad guy; this much we can gleam from the various cut scenes and horrific entities that you face off with here, up to and including the amazing Pyramid Head.  Whether or not he gains any kind of redemption in the conclusion is up to your imagination. 

Finally, we're back to Nintendo.  In particular, the Gamecube, as the remade version of the PlayStation classic "Resident Evil" hit store shelves in 2002.  I still remember the commercials for the original game when I was in middle school.  Zombies, guns and video games...the mystique and draw of this game was definitely there for me.  The Gamecube remake was my first exposure to the series, and while I've played many of the games in the series since, this is still THE definitive horror game for yours truly.  The story of an elite tactical team called to a countryside mansion to investigate a rash of mysterious and violent murders, the scares just build and never let up.  There's gunplay, but the focus here is on exploration, inventory management, and survival.  Oh, and staying the f**k away from Lisa Trevor, truly the most bone-chilling creation I've ever run across in any video game.  Those rattling chains still haunt my dreams.

Of course, those are just my favorites.  And as the recently renovated "Doom" (along with "Five Nights at Freddy's," "Alien: Isolation," "The Evil Within" and many others) proves, there's no end in sight.  Ever since I was a kid, I've enjoyed being scared.  It's why I like this stuff.  As such, I've always thought that it's fun to picture myself IN the horror movies that I watch, and this is your way to almost literally do it.  Who knows?  Maybe in a few more years I'll have my own personal Horror Holodeck or something.  One can only hope.

Night of the Lepus (1972)

1972
Directed by William F. Claxton
Starring Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun and DeForest Kelley

Get ready for one of my favorite overused points that I make here on the blog:  Sometimes, ordinary things can be the scariest things of all.  All you have to do is inject some mutation, weird science, or some other fancy contraption to just about any creature that exists on Earth and you can accomplish just that.  Occasionally, you don't even have to do that.  Things like spiders and sharks are always scary.  And then there are things that have been horrifying at some point in the planet's existence.  Proof?  There used to be beetles the size of poodles that roamed the deserts during the days of the dinosaurs.  Just the thought of this makes me want to curl up into the fetal position.

Which brings me to Night of the Lepus, a.k.a. Killer Bunnies: The Movie.  This is another one of those creature-fied horror flicks that used to get a lot of play on TBS when I was a kid.  Back then, it used to f**kin' TERRIFY me, and I wish I was making that up.  Rabbits are adorable.  The rabbits in this movie ain't.  Of course, this was when I was, like, eight years old.  And when this movie finally got a home video release in 2005, I couldn't pick it up fast enough.

Spoiler alert: it sucks.

I know that's not news to a lot of people, because this is one of the most laughed-at movies of all time.  Hell, it even got the Rifftrax treatment a few years back.  For starters, it's not scary.  At all.  It's also got what amounts to an amazing crop of actors for a movie about giant mutated killer rabbits, but sadly that cast is wasted, because they all look like they'd rather be anywhere else in the world than filming this movie.

Anyone who has seen a "Nature Run Amok" movie kind of knows the drill about where we're going with Night of the Lepus.  So, let's try and make this as quick and painless as possible.  Our star character is rancher Cole Hillman (Calhoun, significantly less nutty than in his later Farmer Vincent persona), good ol' boy who is concerned about the thousands of rabbits that have taken up residence on his property.  Help comes in the form of college president Elgin Clark (DeForest Kelley) and a pair of researchers played by Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh.  Amazingly, Leigh was still quite the looker in 1972. 

Our "weird science" portion of the movie begins here as the researchers capture several of the rabbits for experimentation, injecting one of them with a weird serum while their daughter falls in love with the captured bunny.  She keeps it as a pet, but it soon escapes, and this is where the s**t hits the fan.  Within short order, Whitman and Leigh's daughter takes a trek out to a local cave where they see one of the rabbits with blood smeared on its face and making the trademark 1970s shrieky "scream" soundtrack noise.  Yeah, you know the one.  Imagine Quint's fingernails scratching the chalkboard and mix it with the yelping of a dying cat if you don't.

Now, I will give it to the movie here.  It moves along at a nice, brisk pace.  88 minutes long, very little wasted motion, plenty of kills.  There's a few offshoot hick characters connected to rancher Cole who get to bite it once the bunnies start to invade the farm, with one of them getting to see the rabbits' massive teeth in a sequence that gave me nightmares as a child.  Yeah, this was the movie's money scene, and everything that follows is pretty much secondary.  The director had some pretty grand ambitions, as the rabbits go from the ranch to a nearby town, a big-time massacre sequence in said town, and threaten to invade a much LARGER nearby town in the process before our heroes put together the most epic electrocution plot ever to save the day.  Having seen the movie, take my word - it's not as much fun as it sounds.

The rabbits themselves are shot mainly through the art of forced perspective photography, shooting them in close-up against smaller backgrounds to make them look bigger.  Attack scenes were sometimes even done with human actors in rabbit costumes.  And folks, that...is awesome.  The beasts definitely don't look the greatest, but I admire th effort.  The laugh quotient here with the giant bunnies is somewhere around a 64%.

What ISN'T so admirable here is the acting.  And boy, is it bad.  There's a YouTube reel out there that contains the best stuff from the movie, and a lot of it is centered on  Calhoun, Kelley, Whitman, Leigh and the rest of the yokels.  They're either screaming stuff very unconvincingly, or shoving out all the exposition in bits that are stilted to the max.  As such, this isn't a movie where you get emotionally invested.  Calhoun in particular always has this William Shatner-esque "What...the hell...am I doing?" look on his face, but the other dudes aren't far behind.  Maybe Kelley transported Captain Kirk's brain into the other actors on the set (/dodges tomatoes).

Becuase the movie at least KIND OF works on its intended level, I'm not giving it my lowest rating.  It's also pretty funny.  The aforementioned Rifftrax version of this movie is proof of that, as there's plenty of material and unintentionally dumb bunny attack scenes to be had.  But it doesn't work as anything other than a dumb monster movie.  Thus, let's give this flick * 1/2 out of ****.  Still worth a watch or a cheap buy on DVD.

Horror Movie Reviews: The Fun-Sized Edition!

Alright, kids, we're going to do something different this week.  Here's the thing: there's a bunch of movies that various people (yes, they do exist) have requested reviews for.  These requests have fallen on deaf ears.  Epic story, huh?  But it's pretty much the truth. 

There are flicks...that I just really, really don't want to commit the 90-or-so minutes it takes to pump out a review, because I feel like I just don't have a whole bunch of insight to add to the equation.  Sometimes, it's a series that everyone else seems to love but I just don't get at all, and doing the review would feel like me being annoying just for the sake of being annoying.  More on this later.  Then there's a long-running series feels more samey than Friday the 13th ever did on its worst day, and at a certain point, there's just not a whole lot you can say about it that feels new or entertaining.  Also, more on this later.  And then there's just some truly oddball stuff that are almost impossible to review with anything resembling a straight face.  For whatever reason, I just don't want to tackle these things, partially because I'm lazy and partially because I just don't have the much-needed life skill of pretending to care about stuff.

Until now.

Folks, we're going to be running through a bunch of movies in this write-up.  Some of them are quite popular.  It's going to be quick and painless, and these reviews are going to be completely BS-free.  Get ready to sit under the learnin' tree.

The Saw series:  Now, the first movie is a bona fide modern classic.  This flick was SO refreshing when it dropped back in 2004.  Dark, creepy, atmospheric, and a truly awesome final twist to boot.  For the uninitiated, they're all about this guy who attempts to teach people "moral lessons" via all these Goldberg Variation-style death traps.  Sometimes, they succeed.  Sometimes, they wind up with a bear trap ripping their jaw open or something.  But anyway, the series starts off strong and then nosedives in faster and faster fashion, beginning with the third film.  You know, when your main villain (the amazing Tobin Bell) dies and you still manage to get four additional films, you've officially reached the point of beating the dead horse.  The sixth film even tries to branch out into SOCIAL COMMENTARY by featuring a whole bunch of didactic stuff about health insurance.  Overall, though, this is just the most convoluted movie series of all time, and not in the good way.  Jigsaw has his spider's web all up in everybody's ass in this series.  Shawnee Smith was great as his first apprentice, but it was all downhill from there.
1 - *** 1/2
2 - ***
3 - **
4 - **
5 - *
6 - *
7 - * 1/2

Blood Freak:  What an amazingly odd movie this is.  Released in 1972, it's essentially an anti-drug movie wrapped up in a horror tale, where a Vietnam veteran played by Steve Hawkes befriends a young woman, gets a job, starts smoking pot...and then participates in a test.  A test unlike anything you have seen in any movie ever.  Yes, kids, Hawkes eats some experimental turkey meat, which causes him to wake up sprouting a turkey's head in place of his own.  And he's still addicted to drugs.  And killing the f**k out of any motherf**ker who gets in his way.  Now, for a movie that's all about saying no to drugs, one has to wonder just what substance the makers of this film were on when they came up with this concept.  A couple coworkers have seen this and wanted me to check it out.  I did...but it was just too weird for the full Lick Ness Monster treatment.  My critical take: It's pretty bad, but you'll never forget it.  ** out of ****.

Day of the Dead and Everything That Came After:  This is actually something different.  Much like James Rolfe, I'm going to do a NON-review.  I've seen George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, and while it's not my favorite movie of all time, it's pretty damn good.  Dawn of the Dead also has its moments.  But for whatever reason, I've never once had the urge to pick up the third movie in the trilogy, partially because I was already burned out on zombies by the time I started to seriously collect horror movies and because everybody I know who has seen it tells me that it's just really, really heavy-handed in its message.  Like, even more than Dawn of the Dead was.  Romero keeps making these movies almost right up to this day, but...yeah.  Never seen 'em.  So what say you, Lick Ness Monsters?  Any of these latter-day Romero splatterfests worth checking out?

Speaking of zombies...

The Evil Dead trilogy:  Here it is.  You're finally getting it.  I'm talking about The Evil Dead.  Brace yourselves.  Contrary to what I might have led you to believe, I don't actually hate these movies.  Having said that, I don't find them to be particularly enjoyable.  My experience with these films is that they work well in small doses; I've seen each movie twice, and while I can sit through one at a time, there's no way I could ever binge-watch all three.  The films are about a heroic character named Ash (Bruce Campbell) and his bloody and catchphrase-laden fight against the "Dead"-ites.  The first movie treats this concept seriously and fails miserably, setting the tone for the rest of the series as director Sam Raimi just amps up the intentional cheesiness to the Nth power.  Overall, the humor is incredibly hit and miss.  And while I like the Ash character, I don't have anywhere near the boner for him that a lot of fellow horror fans do.  But the movies are definitely worth watching once, because, again, they're unique.
1 - **
2 - ** 1/2
3 - **

And now for some POSITIVE Sam Raimi talk...

Drag Me to Hell:  This 2009 chiller starring Alison Lohman and Justin Long is a movie very much in the vein of the Evil Dead series, mixing a semi-creepy story with bizarre humor.  Sometimes, it works.  Hey, we have a movie here with a literal ANVIL KILL.  Sometimes, it doesn't.  I think the ratio of good-to-bad here is much better than Evil Dead, however, mostly due to the fact that it features actors who are by and large much better than that series.  The plot concerns a young bank manager (Lohman) who denies an old gypsy woman a loan.  In return, the woman places a curse on Lohman that threatens to...you guessed it...drag her to hell.  It's kind of like Thinner, only with more deaths and a bit higher stakes.  Fortunately, the cast seemed to really have fun with this material, as both Lohman and Long come across as quirky and even semi-likable at points.  I don't think the movie is that scary, but it's resonant enough that it will keep you interested.  My only other complaint was this movie's release date: May.  This movie screamed to be released during Halloween season.  *** out of ****.

And finally...

The Ring films:  To this day, the kids love these movies.  Well, at least the first one.  The 2002 American remake of the certifiably awesome J-horror classic is right up there with the best horror movies of the '00s.  The simple concept: watch a cursed videotape, die horribly one week later.  It's all about the execution from here on out, but fortunately the execution is good.  It's got the same slow burn, the same well-placed jump scares, and the same creepy villain character that haunted your dreams from the original.  In addition to that, Naomi Watts was all kinds of awesome as the lead heroine, a single mother doing her best to save both herself and her young son from the unwitting death sentence they find themselves in.  'Dat second movie, though...ouch.  I was so stoked for it on release that I skipped out on film class (the irony) to watch it.  I don't regret the decision, but for all the wrong reasons, because it just isn't good.  Although it does have that unintentionally hilarious deer attack scene, something almost worth wasting my tuition money in and of itself.
1 - ****
2 - *

Thus concludes the first ever-round of Lick Ness Monster ultra-short reviews.  I finally managed to get the Evil Dead series out of the way and dealt with and SHUT SOME OF 'YA PEOPLE UP about it already.  And we had a good smattering of technically good, technically bad and so-bad-they're-good style movies.  Who knows, maybe if I get enough requests, I might do a sequel.  Now that's horrifying.

The Purge (2013)

2013
Directed by James DeMonaco
Starring Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Adelaide Kane and Max Burkholder

Michael Bay.

Michael F**kin' Bay.

People who know me in my personal life know exactly what I think of this guy.  Namely, that he has pretty much singlehandedly ruined movies, and not just action movies.  Coming along in the mid-'90s, Bay arrived and said that stories could screw and explosions and excess were all people wanted to see.  Several years later, people were eventually conditioned to believe him.  Rare is the day at the multiplex in 2016 when I actually give a shit about anything that I'm watching, and we have Captain Explosive to thank for it.  When you can do everything (and Bay can definitely do everything in terms of being a munitions expert posing as a director), you ironically can't do anything. 

So when this dude bankrolls and/or makes preachy polemics about capitalism and excess, I cough even more than I ordinarily would with anybody else in charge.  Bitch, please.  Yeah, I know that Bay didn't direct The Purge, nor did he helm either of the two sequels - the latest of which having just opened up a couple weeks ago.  I even know that it isn't just his Platinum Dunes production company that distributes them, with Blumhouse Productions sharing the load in this regard.  But his imprint is all over this movie. 

All bitching aside, James DeMonaco is the guy actually sitting in the director's chair for the flick and calling the shots as the screenwriter - just as he has for every movie in the trilogy.  I have to give it to the guy for the concept.  Unless you've been living under a rock, the story of The Purge goes like this - every year, the U.S. has a "purge night," where all crime is legal from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.  Cue loads of explosions, murder and all other manner of debauchery.  Since this is a horror movie, he even has a pretty solid introducing hook, with a relatively happy, affluent family doing their best to wait out the night in their home.  It's...the execution that just doesn't do it for me, as that scary concept gets buried under a bunch of semantics and some usual Michael Bay trappings.  More on that later. 

After the opening crawl that gives us some handy-dandy background information, DeMonaco does his job establishing our characters.  Our main guy is James Sandin, played by Ethan Hawke as Ethan Hawke post-1990s slacker icon.  His job: selling security systems meant specifically to survive Purge night.  He has a gigantic house of his own, and the movie lays out an early hook as some of the neighbors are clearly jealous of his status.  His wife Mary (Lena Headey) is just there, pretty much.  Even after re-watching the movie for this review, I can't remember much about her with the exception of her big emotional speech toward the end.  Thankfully, their kids are a bit more fleshed out.  In the case of daughter Zoey (Adelaide Kane), quite literally, as she shares a makeout session with her boyfriend a few hours before the Purge begins complete with Michael Bay-style pervy cam capturing every bit of her ripe body. 

But...this is a scary movie, and we need a reason for it to get SCARY.  That opportunity comes in the form of the Sandin's son Charlie (Max Burkholder).  He likes inventing little contraptions and he's the sensitive one in the family.  After the house is locked down, the outside camera system picks up a solo man running in terror out on the streets, pleading for someone to let him in.  Take three guesses as to who decides to open up the door.  From here, the script kind of derails a bit as we get a bunch of different forms of melodrama, with James taking all kinds of issue with what his son has just done, teenage relationship BS as Mary's boyfriend has snuck back into the house to confront her disapproving dad...and the whole ultimatum that the murderous maniacs gathered outside have in store for the Sandins and their stowaways.

To be sure, the bad guys in this movie are cartoon characters.  Having never seen the sequels, I'm 100% certain that this is also the case in those movies.  They all wear these big, theatrical costumes and masks and speak in intentionally creepy voices.  It's weird.  Costumes have remarkable mind-over-matter powers, kind of like when I would dress up as Jason on Halloween and actually feel like a badass for the night.  The lead guy is played by Rhys Wakefield, and he's undoubtedly the most memorable thing about the movie for better or worse.  Eloquent and polite, he demands that the Sandins release the man they were after.  Commence big debate.  Later commence virtual "f**k you" to the Purgers.  LATER later commence breaking into the house and a whole bunch of jump scares.

That's the big problem with The Purge - it just ain't scary.  It's also not terribly interesting, as the characters are about as deep as a thimble and not terribly resonant.  And that third trimester?  Yeah, it goes full Michael Bay.  And you never go full Michael Bay.  It isn't quite as bad as the action movies that he's attached to in terms of shaki-cam, but it's still all sizzle, no steak.  And...all of the politics and social stuff that the movie shoves at you takes away from the scare factor even more. 

Maybe your tolerance for this stuff is higher than mine, but in my case, you're dealing with a guy who hides status updates for anyone on Facebook who posts something political.  Ugh.  Keep that stuff away from me.

Alright, well, time to assign a rating.  Because it has a good concept and a decent build, I'll give the flick ** out of ****.  Ultimately, though, it just falls apart, and I've never once been tempted to check out the sequels.

The Guardian (1990)

1990
Directed by William Friedkin
Starring Jenny Seagrove, Dwier Brown and Carey Lowell

Way back in like, 1992, I remember watching the last 30 minutes of The Guardian on TBS.  To a nine-year-old still hooked on Ninja Turtles and the NES, the sight of a levitating, demonic hellwitch chasing people through the creepy woods was freakin' traumatizing.  Alas, that's the kind of stuff we get in this movie.  I forgot all about that flick up until many years later when the "Boogeymen: Killer Compilation" DVD was released, and this was one of the featured movies.  What the f**k?  The plant chick?  Man, it's a small world after all.

Now, the film is definitely no masterpiece.  But in doing the research for this review, I'm actually surprised to learn that The Guardian - William Friedkin's first out-and-out horror movie since The Exorcist - was universally panned by critics at the time of its release.  I'm a little remiss as to what exactly they were expecting with a movie about a woman connected to a cult of druids looking to steal a baby for some sort of world-controlling ritual.  Deep down, I'm guessing a lot of these critics left the theater secretly wanting to nail Jenny Seagrove, the fantastically sexy star who should've used this movie as a launching pad to a Ric Flair-esque career of wining and dining.  But...nope.  The movie was "disjointed" and "uneven" and..."not scary."  Well, the Lick Ness Monster doesn't let things like that get in the way of a good time, so count me in on this series' group of cult fans.

We open up on a very classy set of backstory title cards, informing us that the ancient druids worshipped trees.  FORESHADOWING.  Cut to the present day, where we get a creepy little exposition segment as a nanny abducts an affluent couple's child and brings it to the freakiest-looking tree you've ever seen in any movie.  The Evil Dead ain't got nuthin' on the Guardian tree, bitches.  The baby's face appears in the tree, indicating that it has been sacrificed...or something.  And then the nanny turns into a wolf.  What's going on, who knows, but it's exciting!

From here, it's time to slow down.  We meet our star couple, Phil and Kate Sterling.  Played by Dwier Brown and Carey Lowell, they actually have fantastic chemistry and come off as very likable people.  You know, it's things like this that make me really depressed that more people don't watch or even respect horror movies.  The job of an actor is to give their soul to any role that they have, and make their interactions with other people as realistic as possible.  And a lot of these performances are - no joke - hidden in horror movies.  So...that's the end of that little rant.  Anyway, Phil has gotten a job in Los Angeles and Kate is pregnant, which means it's time to hire a nanny.

One guess as to who they hire.  Yup, the same woman from the flick's prologue.  Only, now she has a different name and is somehow even hotter.  Her name is Camilla, and it's simply a tour-de-force performance from Jenny Seagrove.  Yeah, she doesn't have much dialogue, and the character isn't terribly deep, but it doesn't matter.  She's sexy in all the right moments and menacing in pitch-perfect tones, and I really am stunned that this didn't lead to bigger and better things for her as an actress.  But...I guess Julia Roberts had to keep making disposable romantic comedy movies.  Screw Hollywood. 

According to the ever-accurate Wikipedia, the script was originally much more humorous, with Sam Raimi attached to direct.  Once he dropped out and Friedkin was brought in, that changed in a big way, and what we get from here on out is some solid domestic drama sprinkled in between some decent scary scenes.  Of course, Camilla immediately forms a strong bond with the eponymous baby (named Jake).  She encounters three gangsters out in the woods and is attacked, only to kill them with sharp tree roots that she seems to be able to control.  At one point, she is cut open and heals herself (while completely nude, natch) with the bark from the Guardian tree, a move that is discovered by one of Kate's friends who has a crush on her.  Which is completely understandable...but it results in Camilla's army of trained attack wolves discovering his existence and killing him. 

Oh yeah.  Camilla has an army of trained attack wolves.  Did I mention that?

Now, one complaint about this movie that I actually do agree with is that it's neve really spelled out exactly what the villains are here.  Are they demons, elementals, just really, really dedicated Hot Topic customers?  No one seems to know.  We know that Camilla is trying to sacrifice another baby to the tree, but for what reason, other than just to keep it alive?  The stakes are a little low here, other than just Phil and Kate losing their kid.  Maybe if it had been spelled out to us a bit more that the sacrifice would result in the tree conquering the world or something, that would have helped the movie's standing in the eyes of critics?  I'm a big structure guy when it comes to screenplays.  Since we don't have a clear-cut goal, a lot of The Guardian is pretty choppy.

But then the finale hits.  Simply put, it's awesome stuff.  Floating women, Carey Lowell and Jenny Seagrove duking it out, a killer tree squrting buckets of fake blood.  Sports fans everywhere will love it, and the Lick Ness Monster approves.

I'll be the first to admit here that this plot is preposterous.  It's The Hand That Rocks the Cradle meets the "Goosebumps" book "Stay Out of the Basement."  How could anything that combines these two unparalleled masterpieces of fiction be anything close to good?  But Friedkin and the cast really do make it work.  It's not a classic or anything, but The Guardian is worth a watch.  And that is what you call stepping out on a limb and taking a stand.

*** out of ****.  No closing sentence this time.