Warm Bodies (2013)

2013

Directed by Jonathan Levine
Starring Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Corddry, Dave Franco, Analeigh Tipton, Cory Hardrict and John Malkovich

Oh boy, a zombie movie.  I have the vaguest of memories of this film when it came out (like it came out ten thousand years ago or something).  I think I saw one ad, one poster and said "well, folks, another zombie movie" and never gave it a second thought.  However, looking for horror movies that fit the whole "Love and Red Stuff" motif was running a little dry on the ol' search for recent movies, so...here goes.  After dismissing this as just another run of the mill movie with brain-eating, communicate-by-grunt monsters, imagine my surprise when I find out that the movie is actually good.  Not GREAT, but good, and definitely worthy of the five bucks I spent for that rental on Amazon Video (/free plug for Jeff Bezos that I am in no way getting paid for).

Why is this exactly?  Well, for starters, it's pretty unique.  At least as unique as a movie with all the trappings of the usual zombie movie can allow.  It's actually told from the perspective of the freakin' main zombie.  Folks, this is a development that I thought would pretty much make the movie unwatchable, but lo and behold Nicholas Hoult managed to pull off a minor miracle with his performance as this guy.  More on him in a bit.  It also had a bigger budget than I anticipated ($35 million) and the always cute Teresa Palmer playing the hero's love interest, as well as John "The Man" Malkovich in a supporting role.  In short, they had a lot of help on this one.  It's a good thing, too, because the plot goes into all-too-familiar territory on a pretty frequent basis.

Meet "R," your typical American zombie movie zombie played by the aforementioned Hoult.  Along with his partner-in-crime "M" (Rob Corddry), R is currently milling around in an airport looking for new potential human victims.  Yes, folks, this is what he's doing.  Every movie in this subgenre has its own lore and science associated with the "how" of being a member of the undead, and we learn pretty quickly here that R has no heartbeat and that the reason that he craves human brains is because it makes him feel "alive" by absorbing the memories of that person.  I've got to say, from a writing standpoint, that's not the worst contrivance the guy who wrote the novel that this film is based on could have come up with.  Unfortunately, we also get a fascinating conversation between R and M consisting entirely of grunts and occasional near-words.  It's just as enthralling as it sounds.

The plot kicks into motion with the arrival of Julie Grigio (Palmer) and a group of human survivors.  I've been a big fan of Palmer's dating back to her days as one of the bitchy friends of Arielle Kebbel in The Grudge 2, and she's very likable and engaging here as a no-nonsense girl who has no problem putting herself in danger.  Of course, R is immediately smitten with her, and it's not hard to imagine why.  What is hard to imagine is what happens not too long after this initial meeting, as R attacks and eats the brain of Julie's boyfriend, thus causing his attraction to her to grow even more.  And cause his heart to start beating again.

In a lot of ways, this really is a romantic movie.  R saves Julie from a few attacks by his fellow zombies and hides her in the airplane that he calls home.  A lot of the middle section of this flick takes place in said airplane, as the story gives us admittedly a pretty nice long, slow burn with the relationship between these two.  They play a few games, listen to records, and even start to converse.  When I was doing my pre-viewing research, I thought I would absolutely HATE this part of the movie since modern-day screenwriters generally suck when it comes to crafting romances that I actually care about...but, amazingly, I did.  So +2 Fonzie cool points to the powers-that-be on that one.  Eventually, Julie gets restless and tries to escape, but the mindless hordes still attack her.  Derp.

The last half of the movie is a bit more action-oriented, as R resolves to take Julie back to the human encampment lorded over by Julie's father, Colonel Grigio (Malkovich, and he's awesome here as always).  Along the way, he reveals to Julie that he killed her boyfriend, prompting a mini-existential crisis that is probably much less fascinating than the flowery way that I just made it sound.  While all of this has been going on, all of R's friends have also begun to show signs of humanity - and this puts them on a collision course with the "Boneys," weird skeletal zombies who go after anything with a pulse.  All in all, decent storytelling that leads us to the big climax in a baseball stadium and a fight between R's band of good zombies and the Boneys.  And a surprisingly upbeat ending!  Wow!  Exclamation points because such a thing is fairly rare when it comes to movies featuring flesh-eating grunters.

Back in 2009 (and it makes me feel old that it was almost ten years ago), a little movie called Zombieland was released that I absolutely loved because it broke the mold for zombie movies by featuring actual likable characters.  It was the film's biggest strength by far, along with that amazing cameo by Bill Murray.  In a lot of ways, this movie is kind of similar.  It doesn't do what Zombieland did by going LONG stretches with no zombies onscreen, but that's kind of an impossibility with this setup.  But it does spend just as much time giving us some very human touches into its very inhuman story, and words cannot express how much that move was appreciated by this admittedly bad writer.

So what didn't I like about the movie?  Well, if it was any indication from the handy-dandy plot description, the first little bit of the movie is almost unwatchable.  Kind of like how I can't believe that they actually went ahead and decided to make an entire movie featuring nothing but the Minions (tell me, people, is the movie really nothing but those little fuckers talking gibberish?), the adventures of R and M and their deep friendship didn't exactly have me hyped up for the movie.  In truth, it was hard for me to get into the story of R because of this - at least until he starts talking.  But Hoult was so committed to this part that he actually managed to make it work.  Almost spiting itself, this is just one of those movies that works.

Rating time.  *** out of ****, and take that with the idea that I went into this one fully expecting to hate it.  Check it out.  And with that, we're done reviewing romantic horror movies.  Next month, we're taking a trip to the Not Too Distant Future...

Wolf (1994)

1994

Directed by Mike Nichols
Starring Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Spader, Kate Nelligan and Christopher Plummer

Looking back, the '90s weird a very strange time for horror movies.  The slasher boom of the '80s had gradually given way to the Nothing from The Never-Ending Story, meaning that we were in for a lot of flicks that essentially had no clue what they were trying to be.  Not on a macro scale, anyway.  Some of them were paying tribute to older stuff.  Some of them were still trying to milk the slasher craze.  And then there was the mini-trend of big budget, big deal, big cast movies that started with Bram Stoker's Dracula and continued well into the middle of the decade.  I don't know if they were all specifically trying to rip off the template from Stanley Kubrick, but none of them quite got there.  Not that they didn't try.

Which leads me to Wolf.  Released in 1994, this film was expected to be a big deal.  It had a MASSIVE budget of $70 million, which has to be some kind of record for the time period when it comes to horror movies.  It did modestly well in theaters, but it wasn't QUITE the mammoth hit that it was expected to be.  I didn't know any of that back then, because this movie was definitely a big deal with me.  Folks, Michelle Pfeiffer might have been my very first boner ever.  That alone on the ad was enough to sell 11-year-old me on the proposition, so when this baby hit HBO, I was there.  A horror movie with Catwoman, the Joker and that douchy guy from a bunch of '80s flicks?  Are you kidding me?  Loved me some Wolf back in the day!  So, does it hold up?  The answer is...kinda. 

I never thought of this back when I was an idiot kid watching this movie, but one thing that kind of amazes me now as a grumpy adult is how many movies and TV shows have main characters who are book editors.  Maybe it's a symptom of where a lot of these films are written, but still...book editors.  I couldn't even tell you what these guys DO, and I've watched something like 2,000 hours of entertainment footage depicting their lives!  Well, in this movie, we get Jack Nicholson.  Full-on 1994 Cool Guy Jack Nicholson, no less, and he's playing...Cool Guy Book Editor Will Randall.  Yup, he exists, but it's Nicholson, so you know it's good.  The character is actually pretty likable despite me not knowing what he does for eight hours a day, and in this movie, he's got a young mentor played by James Spader.  Only Spader isn't really a grateful mentor, as he plays dirty in the early goings of this movie to pass Will over for a promotion.  Derp.

The movie shows us a lot of the trials and tribulations of Mr. Randall in the early goings.  In addition to his tumultuous relationship with Spader (and I refuse to call him anything else), there's also a tumultuous relationship with his tumultuous wife Charlotte (Kate Nelligan).  Will secretly suspects that Spader is banging her, and eventually he is able to catch the two of them in the after-stages of fucking.  I know that sentence might not make much sense, but believe me, it's portrayed strongly.  Wait, isn't this supposed to be a wolf movie?  Oh yeah - Will was also bitten by a wolf while out on a drive at the beginning of the film, and after discovering Spader and his wife's secrets, he starts to grow the familiar gnarled fangs.  Yikes.

Wait, isn't Michelle Pfeiffer supposed to be in this movie?  Yes, and that's the next stop on the plot train.  With his life effectively in shambles, Will goes traipsing away to the countryside estate of Laura Alden (Pfeiffer), the daughter of his boss (played by the always awesome Christopher Plummer - this movie really did have some cast).  For what it's worth, the love story here is actually done pretty well.  When you've got performers as good as these two, you can pull off pretty much anything, but the material isn't too weak.  Laura is written as a sensitive, nurturing person, just the type of soul that Will is in need of. Looking like Michelle Pfeiffer doesn't hurt either.

The setting also gives us a nice backdrop for some wolf action, as Will kills wild animals and bites the fingers off would-be muggers while out and about in full canine mode.  I also need to mention that MOLA RAM HIMSELF makes a surprise appearance as a local mystic who gives Will an amulet meant to keep him from transforming.  Yeah.  Goddamn Mola Ram.  Can't say I saw that one coming.  But the movie's real meat takes place back in the big city as Will begins taking back his life from Spader.  By the end of the story, a few people are dead, several more people are bitten, and we've witnessed an office scene consisting of Jack Nicholson pissing on James Spader's shoes.  Yes, folks, this actually happens.  Everything eventually leads up to an ending that I've always found slightly confusing, but from what I've read it seems to be exclusively me who feels this way.  Probably just a case of my ever-present glandular condition.

Watching this movie again after all these years, the first thing that jumped out at me is that the tone of this film is just all over the place.  You can definitely tell that this script went through something like four bazillion rewrites as it made its way through the big-budget Hollywood system.  Sometimes, it's trying to be scary.  Sometimes, it's trying to be funny.  Sometimes, it's trying to be darkly satirical.  I get the feeling that the latter is the one that the original screenwriter was going for, and ironically, I think it's those bits that are the least interesting.  As such, it's really hard to sink your teeth into this story (horrible unintentional pun alert).

That's not to say that the movie is bad, though.  Acting wise, it should be pretty obvious that this film is top notch.  Nicholson, Pfeiffer and Spader were all at the top of their game, and the scenes between Nicholson and Pfeiffer definitely didn't disappoint.  I've always loved the "curse-and-redemption" storyline done in monster movies, and it's still pretty emotional here.  Those bits, though, are brief.  And one would think that a movie with as much money to spend as this one would have some pretty impressive wolf makeup, but whenever Nicholson has to get wolf-ized...LOL.  That's all I'll say about that one.

Time for a rating.  This one gets ** 1/2 out of ****.  It's still one of the sentimental favorites of my youth, but this flick is kind of a textbook example of a movie not knowing what it's going for.  Check it out for the performances, but as a scary movie, it's lacking.

The Fly (1986)

1986

Directed by David Cronenberg
Starring Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis and John Getz

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Round II of Love and Red Stuff, where we explore the connection between love and...um, death, I suppose.  It's as good of a theme as any.  Also, by my calculation, this review will get posted the day before Valentine's Day, so enjoy your heart-shaped review of The Fly, the certifiably awesome 1986 film about love and death.  That's right.  This was planned, people.  I had no idea that this movie was so beloved when I first saw it, but it's easy to see why.  In fact, I have it comfortably slotted at #2 on the all-time remake barometer behind only John Carpenter's redux of The Thing.

I get comments every so often about how good my recall is.  It's just one of those things that I've always been a natural with, and it definitely helps for reviews like this, because I can still remember the DAY that I first saw The Fly.  It was at the end of a particularly trying day of middle school where I had three tests and a boatload of algebra homework to do, and nothing seemed like a better capper for said day than a horror movie about a dude transforming into a giant fly.  Little did I know that this film would connect with me so much as a geeky eighth grader.  This movie is scary, yeah, but it's a lot more than that.  It's about isolation, changing, and eventual death.  If there is a middle schooler alive who wouldn't relate to that...well, you must be the greatest human being alive.  Sorry, folks, couldn't think of a punchline there.  The film was also a mammoth hit when it came out in 1986, with director David Cronenberg (the master of weird - seriously, look up this guy's filmography) shocking, sicking and emotionally walloping audiences and critics alike.  Today, the movie is still quite popular and has a substantial cult following.  So what is this legendary little legend about?  Well, let's get to it.

Meet Jeff Goldblum.  Specifically, Jeff Goldblum in 1986, fresh off the success of The Big Chill and before he would launch himself into stardom as everyone's favorite all-purpose movie oddball with Jurassic Park.  In this movie, Goldblum plays Seth Brundle, brilliant scientist who owns a sweet warehouse/loft where he keeps his prized possession.  More on that later.  As the movie opens, he meets science journalist Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) and the two of them immediately hit it off.  Davis is also really good in this role, and the love story here comes off as quite genuine.  I don't know how many science journalists look like Geena Davis, but stick with me.

It isn't long until Brundle has taken Veronica back to his lair and shown her what he has been working on.  Teleporters.  He has two of them, but he still has difficulty with living beings, as shown by what happens when he tries to move a baboon from one pod to another.  Think that thing from Watchers times a thousand.  This is about where the character of Stathis Borans (John Getz) enters the fray, an old flame of Veronica's and also her former editor who really hates the presence of Seth in his ex's life.  The jealousy factor is what triggers Brundle to make his next move, transporting himself after making some tweaks to the pods...with a common everyday housefly in the pod, unbeknownst to our hero.  Oops.

I'd seen a decent amount of monster movies at the point in my life that I first caught this flick.  As such, I was expecting some good rampaging fly-monster action from this point forward.  What follows is something very different, and much better, frankly.  The script did a great job getting us emotionally invested in these characters from this point forward - and it continues to do so!  Amazingness!  Slowly but surely, Seth begins transforming.  First, he's just much more jumpy and emotional.  Then he notices freakish human strength and sexual energy.  Then he starts losing fingernails.  Then vomiting digestive enzymes.  Yeah.  The movie is REALLY realistic and detailed when it comes to Brundle turning into "Brundlefly" (as he dubs himself), all with Veronica looking on with horror.  I should also point out that Veronica has learned by now that she is pregnant, which gives us what I deem to be the scariest nightmare scene in movie history.  No spoilers here if you haven't seen it.

In order for a horror movie to be, you know, horror, people have to die.  Or at least get severely injured.  Those are the official rules that I came up with just now, and I'm sticking to them, dammit.  Well, The Fly is a horror movie - even more so than the Vincent Price original that I actually just saw for the first time a year ago.  Case in point: the final trimester of the movie, as Brundlefly abducts Veronica after finding out that she plans to abort the baby and brings her back to his lab, with Stathis in hot pursuit (huh-kuh-kuh-kuh).  It's emotional, it's brutal, and it's...pretty stomach-churning.  If you've got a weak tolerance for gore, this is probably a movie to avoid, because there's some disgusting stuff to be had.  Advance warning.

This movie is good.  Like, really good.  As far as remakes go, it's pretty much the gold standard.  I enjoyed the 1958 film for what it was, but it can't hold a candle to what Cronenberg and screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue were able to conjure up here.  They took that basic concept and framework that was provided and just totally let their imaginations run wild, and the result is definitely a labor of love that has stood the test of time.  The special effects are also ungodly; the transformation of Brundle to Brundlefly is especially some amazing stuff, starting off with your basic household rash and eventually winding up at full-on Freddy Krueger-esque hideousness.  Yikes.

More than anything though, this is definitely still Jeff Goldblum's movie.  People slather on the praise for how good he was in this, and every bit of it is deserved.  In the hands of somebody else, the role probably could have been laughable, but Goldblum's natural weirdness an eccentricity actually made this guy likable.  Even a little pitiful, at times, as he spits out lines buried behind something like 97 pounds of makeup.  Because of Goldblum, this movie hooks you and doesn't let go for all 95 brisk minutes.

No surprises here.  This movie gets a **** out of ****, bah Gawd!  You guys know that I don't pass around the "Must-See" moniker very often, but a horror movie about love that manages to repulse you at the same time?  Tell me you're not curious.

Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)

1954

Directed by Jack Arnold
Starring Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning and Antonio Moreno
Ladies and gentlemen, February is upon us, which means that it's time for some love.  But not the pussy kind.  The kind that also features some red stuff, as we look at horror films that are all about being in love.  With that, it's also time for another segment in tearing back the curtain of this here blog.  Last summer, I was in the planning stages for what I was going to do for Halloween season and there seemed to be only one option - a sequel to the Universal Monsters megareview that I did the previous year.  And then that Empire Pictures box set came along.  Looking back, I'm kind of grateful, since I'd already covered most of the heavy hitters in the Universal pantheon and most of the marathon would have just been sequels to said films.  However, there was ONE villain that I hadn't touched on yet.  And that would be the one featured in the movie in question today.

I WAS already plenty familiar with the Gill-Man and his evil exploits from Revenge of the Creature, the second movie in this series that was lampooned well on Mystery Science Theater 3000.  After watching this film, I was incredibly grateful that this one had 100% less John Agar cavorting around in tiny swim trunks.  Shudder.  This movie...is about 7 times as good as that one, no exaggeration.  Universal was a factory in creating these things, mostly based on classical villains from literature, but they were just as good at creating their own.  The Gill-Man and the Mummy represent.  But I still have no interest in seeing an MCU-esque intersection of all these characters.  Call it glandular.  Yeah, Lick Ness Monster cliche #4 rears its ugly head once again.  Let's get to the description.

The movie starts with the ubiquitous thing that a lot of 1950s horror and sci-fi films hang their hat on - a scientific expedition.  Most specifically, a scientific expedition set in the deep Amazon.  The kind of deep Amazon complete with stock footage of dangerous animals.  Led by Dr. Carl Maia (Antonio Moreno), they find a creepy skeleton with a webbed hand.  Foreshadowing alert.  That's essentially your setup, establishing that something is out there in about five minutes of screen time.  Folks, writers used to be a lot more economical.

It doesn't take long for all of the side characters to show up in the form of the various researchers that Maia recruits in this new mission.  Your star is Dr. David Reed, played by Richard Carlson, and he's approximately 171% as likable as John Agar.  Of course, Reed has a smokin' hot girlfriend named Kay, and Julia Adams in 1954 was a sight to behold.  Film-makers in the '50s really were amazing at finding hot, classy women.  You just have to watch a lot of movies from this era to get it.  Does this count as a comeback for the Skeevy Paragraph?  You make the call.  There's also Mark Williams (Richard Denning), the boss of the whole show who Spielberg HAD to have cribbed from when portraying the Gennaro character for Jurassic Park as he immediately is thinking about the financial rewards of the discovery and becomes obsessed with taking the Gill-Man alive.

Yeah, the Gill-Man.  It also doesn't take long for him to show up in this movie, a bipedal fish humanoid who has this interesting little mix of intelligence and malevolence.  There's also a dose of King Kong-style infatuation as he immediately takes a liking to the presence of Kay, and who could blame him?  There's a reason why this movie is in my February Love and Red Stuff series of reviews.  Two of Maia's assistants are the first ones to bite it at his hands just because he can, but the movie actually does have a decent body count for an earlier scary flick.  For what it's worth, Ben Chapman and Ricou Browning took the reins of playing the Gill-Man during the land and underwater scenes, respectively, and do a great job lugging around what had to be very uncomfortable pre-CGI thick rubber suits and seeming menacing in the process.  The thing is definitely a memorable villain.

The climax of the movie takes place in the titular Black Lagoon, which, as a crusty steam captain played by Nestor Paiva (who shows up in the sequel, amazingly) helpfully informs them, has never been escaped from by any human being.  Gulp.  This place is the home of the Gill-Man, and said Gill-Man has taken Kay hostage.  Three guesses as to how this all works out.  Spoiler alert - it involves bullets.

The people behind the scenes at Universal Studios at this time definitely knew what they were doing when it came to crafting big-budget horror films that felt like events, and this is definitely no different.  From a script standpoint, it's almost perfect, with every character that's meant to be likable actually BEING likable, especially Dr. Reed and Kay.  But the movie's best performance is definitely Denning as Mark Williams.  Every horror movie needs at least one dislikable character to give us a "stand up and cheer" moment when the villain corners them, and this flick has one of the best examples of this I've ever seen, no exaggeration. 

Special effects wise, Creature From the Black Lagoon was pretty impressive for its time, especially considering just how much of a bitch water makes everything in relation to filming.  Underwater filming is especially cumbersome, since you need something like 47 divers and wranglers for every actor involved.  I studied and researched that statement for hours.  The only thing that I can gripe about with this movie is that the character of Dr. Maia isn't terribly interesting.  Don't get me wrong; he's there to be the one who brings all of the more interesting characters aboard, but...eh, fuck it.  I can't think of any solid way to put it.  Nobody ever said I was good at this.

For the all-important rating, this film gets a solid *** 1/2 out of ****.  If you're into classical creature features, this one actually has the word "creature" in the title!  Check it out.