Critters.

Review #2625: Critters.

Cast: 

Dee Wallace (Helen Brown), M. Emmet Walsh (Harvey), Billy Green Bush (Jay Brown), Scott Grimes (Brad Brown), Nadine van der Velde (April Brown), Don Keith Opper (Charlie McFadden), Lin Shaye (Sally), Billy Zane (Steve Elliot), Ethan Phillips (Jeff Barnes), Terrence Mann (Ug / Johnny Steele), with Jeremy Lawrence (Reverend Miller / Preacher), and Corey Burton (the voices of the Krites) Directed by Stephen Herek (#021 - Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, #502 - Man of the House, #868 - The Mighty Ducks)

Review: 

It may interest you to know that the movie wasn't exactly just riding off the coat tails of Gremlins as the other movie of little creatures wreaking havoc in a town before being confronted all the way to hell. Dominic Muir came up with the first draft of the story in September 1981 (the same time that the original spec script for the aforementioned Gremlins had been first finished). At the time, he was an Oregon teenager that liked movies and dreaming of going to Los Angeles to try and make it in movies. He liked sci-fi and horror, so he basically conjured up a tribute to "The Zanti Misfits" for his space convict focus. However, it languished in storage for a number of years before he came across Stephen Herek while working together as assistant editors on City Limits (1985). The San Antonio native had aspired to play baseball at the University of Texas at Austin before taking film classes when baseball didn't work out that had him hooked (he didn't get to do the senior filmmaking class, but he still set forth for Hollywood and grinded away). Herek worked on the script and soon pitched it to Sho Films, who wanted to develop it further that became Herek's feature film debut. Don Opper contributed to some of the dialogue, although he was not given credit at the time. Eventually, the movie was distributed by New Line Cinema for release in the summer of 1986. The movie was a mild success with audiences and led to a direct sequel with Critters 2: The Main Course (released in 1988, with Grimes, Opper, Mann, and Shaye each returning) and three direct-to-video sequels along with a TV show. Muir wrote a variety of stuff before dying from complications of a brain tumor in 2010.

I suppose one light creature feature is worth a good curious time. Sure, it lacks a body-count besides seeing a few exploding critters (and, well, a few harmed/knocked out others), but there's a good deal of fun to be had with its key threat (with designs by the Chiodo brothers) and a spry cast of charming people dealing with mayhem to make up for it. The mayhem is a bit two-fold here, as setup through its opening sequence to detail the fact that there are some destructive little bastards (Krites, specifically) on the loose and that the only people ready to stop them are shape-changing bounty hunters that like to study human faces from TV (and later on, up-and-personal contact) and like to achieve their mission at all costs. You get a pleasing enough quartet (Wallace-Bush-Grimes-van Der Velde) that seem like people worth believing would match together when the chips are down and the town needs some thinking besides the usual domestic dilly-dallying. The townsfolk are quirky enough (ol' reliable Walsh provides probably not enough presence, but he's always welcome) to lead to some humor without turning everything into one-note dreariness, mostly with Opper and his wayward spirit as both an eccentric *and* an important person when actually needing to rise to the occasion. The creatures are delightfully loathsome enough in their hunger for anything and everything that they want to do (even taking out an E.T. doll). There's even a tiny bit of suspense when getting that first setup of the family encountering the critters and the poisonous quills before inevitably getting into "blow stuff up" territory. I do give credit for the ending for deciding, yes, sometimes you can just cheat to make everything end up happily ever after. It's the kind of movie you watch along with, say, Tremors (1990) and go with the flow. A goofy little sci-fi horror comedy, Critters crawls its way towards the finish line with most of the right notes required to garner a place worth recommending at the bare minimum, which is more than can be said for other movies.

  

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

November 7: As per tradition, a double header to close out Halloween: The Week After. As such: Planet of the Vampires.

Song of the day!

The Last Broadcast.

Review #2624: The Last Broadcast.

Cast: 

David Beard (David Leigh), James Seward (James "Jim" L. Suerd), Stefan Avalos (Steven "Johnny" Avkast), Lance Weiler (Locus Wheeler), Rein Clabbers (Rein Clackin), Michele Pulaski (Michelle "Shelly" Monarch), Tom Brunt (Thomas "Tom" Branski), Mark Rublee (Clair Deforest), A.D. Roso (Detective Anthony Rosi), Dale Worstall (Dr. Dale Orstall), Vann K. Weller (forensic pathologist), Sam Wells (Sam Woods), Jay MacDonald (web designer), Faith Weiler (Joyce Dryer), and Marianne Connor (Mary Brenner) Produced, Written, and Directed by Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler.

Review: 

"In The Last Broadcast, we play with the idea of the information age. We play with the way public opinion works. The media shows one side of an event and people are very quick to believe. The whole point is aiming something at somebody and saying,‘This is truth'." - Stefan Avalos

"Nothing’s admissible as evidence anymore. The moment you put a cut in or distort any semblance of

time, the truth is gone." - Lance Weiler

This is yet again another movie that I had vaguely heard of as a teenager because of a YouTube video*. And that included even before seeing The Blair Witch Project [1999] (in all of its disappointing glory). The Last Broadcast, just like The Blair Witch Project, had its own interesting road from low-budget filmmaking to online phenomenon.  Stefan Avalos decided he wanted to be a filmmaker by high school rather than stay on as a trained violinist. Avalos met Weiler when the former was a lab assistant and the latter was a student at Bucks County Community College. Each rose up in the world of getting to do film and most importantly, video. The thing that was cited in making it possible, apparently, to do stuff with video came with cheap video digitizers for computers and digital camcorders that people could buy (for a considerable price, anyway). For the film, various formats were used in filming ranging from 8/16mm film to VHS to even Tyco cameras. The budget was recorded as being $900 (not counting costs for shooting, post, or borrowed equipment); as it was done on video, it started with regional releases in March 1998 before it rose to a few more cities in October, as done through satellite streaming. Since the release of the film, Weiler has been involved in a variety of ventures, ranging from an indie thriller/alternate reality game in Head Trauma in the 2000s, digital fiction and so on. Avalos has also stayed involved in film, even directing a shot-on-video thriller The Ghosts of Edendale [2003] and the violin-focused documentary Strad Style [2017]. 

So, what's the movie about? Well, it delves into the "investigation" of the deaths of a couple of public-access television hosts (as played by Avalos and Weiler) and their sound man (Clackin) along with the accused man (Seward) that had been with them at the time of their travels into the Pine Barrens in New Jersey to look for, wait for it, the Jersey Devil. For 1998, there's also the moments spent with the "Internet Relay Chat", because the plan was to do a live show (TV, radio *and* the Internet). Beard plays the filmmaker exploring the matter, for which things get weird. I tried to give this one a shot, really. Honestly, there was a part of me that wanted to believe that this would rise above the level of The Blair Witch Project (even if out of spite). And then, well, nope. 86 minutes of meandering around, narrating over select footage that tries to play completely serious as if one stumbled onto an impression of Dateline before eventually reaching a twist ending that comes completely out of nowhere for the sake of having a twist. It just drones on and on and on and on, and you have to wonder if it actually would've been better if it had actually just focused on the two doomed hosts rather than just getting nips and tucks of "the surviving footage". There is no person to be invested in because goddamnit, Beard is just not the type of guy to want to see talk the same points. The monster is the thought in your head to actually sit down and watch it. I can't imagine that true-crime stuff is this repetitive.  You have a group of desperate people wanting to believe that a couple of things they heard/saw on the Internet is enough to maybe make a show that see it all go to hell...and all you get is the most mundane stuff to come through. You get the gamut of info about "the accused" though, from the landlady to the child psychologist because hey, did you know he claimed to have psychic powers? Or that maybe he's innocent (but he's dead anyway). Well, you sure will get to hear about it over and over, so have fun. Does the audience question what they see, ending included? No, not really, it just comes off as a lazy cheat fit for a student film, not one trying to actually play off of "reality". As a whole, The Last Broadcast is an accomplishment for cheap filmmaking and the bare minimum of telling something different in the video format and little else when it comes to horror.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Next up: Critters.

*You guessed it, Cinemassacre's Monster Madness (1:05:24) - Monster Madness History of Horror (2007)

As for the idea of, well, who came first, Blair Witch Project (apparently conceived earlier than its 1999 release date) or The Last Broadcast. Both involved a documentary crew going out to a place with trees and mystery around it all that leads to danger. That's basically really the only similarity, because at least Blair Witch gives you "people" to follow with. It feels so good to close the circle of "found footage horror in a forest" that I inadvertently started for myself back on the original Halloween: The Week After with The Blair Witch Project on November 5, 2019, while 2021 saw me do Blair Witch and 2024 saw me do Blair Witch 2. Of course, I hear there may be a new Blair Witch movie in 2027, so maybe, just maybe, *one* of these found footage forest movies will be a good one.

*other various notes - Hollywood Effects on an Indie Budget - MovieMaker Magazine

Mary Reilly.

Review #2623: Mary Reilly.

Cast:

Julia Roberts (Mary Reilly; Sasha Hanau as young Mary Reilly), John Malkovich (Dr. Henry Jekyll / Edward Hyde), Michael Sheen (Bradshaw), George Cole (Mr. Poole), Kathy Staff (Mrs. Kent), Bronagh Gallagher (Annie), Glenn Close (Mrs. Faraday), Michael Gambon (Mr. Reilly), Linda Bassett (Mrs. Reilly), Henry Goodman (Haffinger), Ciarán Hinds (Sir Danvers Carew), Tim Barlow (the Vicar), and Stephen Boxer (the Inspector) Directed by Stephen Frears (#2333 - High Fidelity)

Review: 

I guess if anybody needed a re-invention of the old horror stuff, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde probably did merit consideration for the 1990s. Actually, the movie is based on the 1990 novel Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin, which was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella that I'm sure you know, well, didn't have a woman as among the key focus. Christopher Hampton (British playwright/screenwriter previous responsible for such works as Les Liaisons Dangereuses) wrote the screenplay and there were initial plans for Tim Burton (announced as early as 1993) to direct after he did Ed Wood, reportedly with Winona Ryder in mind for the lead. However, the ramifications of Wood being rushed to make a decision and the overmentioned Wood movie being put in turnaround led him dropping out. As much as TriStar Pictures wanted Daniel Day-Lewis to pair off with Julia Roberts, they got Roberts paired with John Malkovich instead. Amidst production delays from Tristar changing the release date over and over (to where it finally landed in February 1996 after production had started in 1994) to 25 drafts being written to quibbles over the ending (to the point where the studio tried making their own cut only to see test audiences not care for it either), the film plopped as a flop with audiences*.

There were various people in Stevenson's life that probably influenced him in making the original novella, whether that was the double life of cabinet-maker William Brodie or murderer Eugène Chantrelle. It probably would go hand-in-hand with Bram Stoker's Dracula [1992] and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein [1994] in deciding, hey, big Gothic re-inventions of old horror stuff that sees a desire of seeing repressed evil urges basically go for a desire to escape from a form of depression that sees the same type of things go awry. The result is the strangest type of disappointment: it isn't as nearly as the odd reputation that it garnered at the time, but it also isn't as interesting to actually hold up and defend besides calling it a close misfire. It aims for the horror of a woman living in the margins who has curiosity over what she sees from Jekyll and Hyde in sympathy and also revulsion. A good chunk of what Roberts does (besides wearing some scar makeup because hey, rat bites) is basically observing what is going around her that is very, very, very drawn out. Yes, even during the one transformation sequence of Hyde/Jekyll, she sits close by and watches, because heaven forbid anything of substance is allowed to just happen. If she is meant to be the face that drives a movie without saying much, I'd probably just take the bus and look somewhere else for presence. Whether by choice or otherwise, Malkovich mainly just comes off as awkward in the attempted display of a man in turmoil, with one side actually coming off as interesting (the bawdy, opinionated measure of a man that likes to kick people) and the other side coming off as a strange type of seething monotony that makes you ask the question, "Yes, and?". Every step of the way basically comes with weird caveats that tease rather than actually cut loose for 108 minutes that lets Close and Gambon basically sit on the sidelines for a painfully mundane movie (at least Cole gets to be a tiny bit jealous as the eldest of butlers). You get the occasional flash of blood and the idea of a body-count, but most times one is spent experiencing the day-to-day life of a person get upheaved by, well, things happening (oh but she doesn't hate the evil men in her life, that's a real keeper). You'd have better luck asking one of your parents how their week went. 

Sure, it has a certain type of look that actually seems pretty appropriate for the setting, but there is something about how the movie maneuvers that makes you feel as if you were watching a poor man's The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960). It's the 1990s for God's sake, you can't even cut loose for a really sexually charged scene? I would even settle for a real head-popping scene, because if you're going to tell a "companion piece" to the most well-told, well-known thing in existence that ends (most of the time, anyway) with dire circumstances for Dr. Jekyll, you have to at least have something to stir that stands out! Working women get slaughtered, the tease of libido gets strung around, but hey, we get to see the poor little maid grapple with what the hell is going on with the sulk of someone who can't get out of a long-winding conversation at the store. As a whole, there are some interesting moments to be had in the horrors of being swayed one way or the other by a man in turmoil, but Mary Reilly trudges along with no sense of involvement of actually getting to where it wants to go without dragging its feet until only the devoted have given up. You can only go so far with a mediocre movie before it all turns to mush, and that I suppose is the real lesson to learn when digging for "horror" and turning up for this.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

Next up: The Last Broadcast.

*There were, however, a few defenders of the film, mainly Roger Ebert - https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mary-reilly-1996

I didn't have time to see it, but he did at least one interview on the circuit about the film around the time it was out - Stephen Frears "Mary Reilly" 1996 - Bobbie Wygant Archive - YouTube

Or, alternatively: 'Mary Reilly' star defies easy expectations

Messiah of Evil.

Review #2622: Messiah of Evil.

Cast: 

Michael Greer (Thom), Marianna Hill (Arletty Lang), Joy Bang (Toni), Anitra Ford (Laura), Royal Dano (Joseph Lang), Elisha Cook Jr (Charlie), Charles Dierkop (gas attendant), Bennie Robinson (albino trucker), and Walter Hill (victim in prologue) Written, Produced and Directed by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck (#1704 - Howard the Duck)

Review: 

I guess it makes sense to pick a possible "cult favorite" every now and then. You might remember that Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck were a married screenwriting duo that had a notable connection in filmmaking when Huyck met George Lucas when each were students at USC and their film school. Huyck and Katz were hired by Lucas to work on a treatment for what eventually became American Graffiti. The resulting success on its August 1973 release came right as Katz and Huyck were to do their first film together with, well, Messiah of Evil. It was a low-budget movie that had several of their friends play bit parts (Walter Hill, Billy Weber, Bill L. Norton). Apparently, Katz co-directed the film with Huyck (sources list her as uncredited) in what was her only directorial credit. The movie either finished as it was planned or it was left* with a few scenes left to actually finish (honestly, the latter seems more there) before just being dropped into theaters in December 1974. There apparently were multiple titles that the film got released in for later years, such as "Return of the Living Dead", "Revenge of the Screaming Dead", "Night of the Damned", and "Dead People". Katz once called it a "real bowwow", although Huyck eventually warmed to the film, even attending a sold-out Q/A screening for it in later years. The following year after the release of Messiah, Huyck and Katz got tasked to do script-work on Lucky Lady [1975] before working on French Postcards [1979].

What's there to say that isn't merely just stating things that occur in the film? You might wonder what the film is about. Well, in the vaguest way possible, a woman tells of what happened when she visited a coastal town to see her artist father only to find a diary of his strange experiences alongside a few strangers that happen to need to stay at the place because of strange things that only get stranger (I suppose it's not a spoiler to say it starts at the loony bin). People gather around bonfires to stare at the moon while people's eyes weep blood and a "dark stranger" apparently may return 100 years after being a survivor of the Donner Party. Around that is a variety of things that happen from albino truckers to narration to basically carry what isn't evident. This is...one of those movies where you really, really need to experience the "atmosphere" and see if it actually will hit for you in the unsettling manner that comes through in all-consuming, all-bewildering dread. Hill doesn't really get much to actually say besides reacting to what is going on (around her and to her with the vomiting insects), which works in some ways to accompany her growing fear that doesn't exactly get a chance to really explode at what actually comes out in the art of unsettled lunacy. The best sequence might be in the movie theater with a growing array of people coming inside that actually shows some sort of terror on screen. You have to fill in some of the blanks with the looming terror because damned if the movie is going to allow you to have an easy time doing it, particularly when it ends just as abruptly as it starts, because nothing is that easy to resolve. As a whole, Messiah of Evil is basically a dreamscape type of movie, one that will either hit the chords required for off-putting interest in what is said and left unsaid or will pass through with the bare minimum of "well, that was a movie". For me, it was pretty okay, and I suppose that is a tacit endorsement worth checking out least once on a dreary night.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Next up: Keeping it a surprise.

Song of the day!

*Anita Ford claimed this as such: Anitra Ford's Personal Blog: Be afraid, very afraid -- for 6 minutes

Bordello of Blood.

Review #2621: Bordello of Blood.

Cast: 

Dennis Miller (Rafe Guttman), Erika Eleniak (Katherine Verdoux), Angie Everhart (Lilith), Chris Sarandon (Reverend J.C. Current), Corey Feldman (Caleb Verdoux), Aubrey Morris (McCutcheon), Phil Fondacaro (Vincent Prather), Juliet Reagh (Tallulah), Kiara Hunter (Tamara), Eli Gabay (Miguel), Matt Hill (Reggie), Eric Keenleyside (Sheriff Noonan), with John Kassir (the voice of the Crypt Keeper; Brock Winkless as puppeteer), and William Sadler (Mummy) Directed by Gilbert Adler.

Review: 

You might remember Demon Knight (1995) was actually pretty decent, all things considered for a siege horror movie that tried to make Tales from the Crypt a film franchise. Sure, the tease for a zombie tale around New Orleans ("Dead Easy") didn't come to fruition, because Universal Studios decided fairly late in pre-production to turn it all around. But surely there had to be something with a movie that had a story from Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (a script that was written as old as the 1980s). Or not, because the story ended up being done by A.L. Katz and Gilbert Adler (Gale stated that the changes made were so bad that he never saw the film after the early cut). Producer Joel Silver got his way with casting, so instead of Daniel Baldwin as the lead and Robin Givens for the adversary...you get Dennis Miller paired against Angie Everhart. Adler had been a director on two episodes of the show (as well as producer) before directing this film, the only theatrical effort he has ever done (he has since been a producer on a litany of movies such as Valkyrie [2008]). 

The shoot and script of the film ended up going through the wringer with its key presences: Miller improvised nearly every line of his dialogue and even with a shoot that was rescheduled to work around his HBO show (effectively shooting on weekends), he was "too tired" at certain points to actually show up, for which some scenes were shot with a stand-in. Eleniak apparently wanted to take the movie seriously as an actress (to the point where she did not come out of her trailer besides filming) and reportedly wanted changes to the script to make her character not be a stripper but instead a religious advocate; she contended that her big line of contention was not wanting a "sexy" scene between her and Everhart specifically because it wasn't on the script while noting her disappointment at script changes that meant her character's secret past of being an ex-porn 300 pound star was deleted. On a budget of roughly $2.5 million, the movie barely made over double of its budget back. There were no more "Tales from the Crypt presents" movies, although Ritual (2002) later had a home video release with a newly filmed intro of the Crypt Keeper.

I should mention this is an 87-minute movie, but only 80 when taking out the credits. The first seven minutes show you an introduction involving the key from the last movie being used to help subdue a great vampire before you get interrupted with a three-minute interlude to see a mummy and the Cryptkeeper engage in a silly conversation about films. You get quickly to the title of the film involving a bordello and, well, vampire prostitutes. Unfortunately, you also get to Dennis Miller around the 21-minute mark. My first worry upon seeing his first scene was "oh God, is he going for a discount version of Jim Rockford from The Rockford Files?" It may interest you to know this is the first (and so far only) movie with Miller as a lead presence, and I'm sure at least someone in their mid-thirties or forties know about Miller as a stand-up comedian/talk show host in his heyday. With basically an hour of what you might term a performance, let's start with a ripoff of one of his jokes: the only difference between a bad performance and a tired performance is that in a bad performance you hear every single problem, and in a tired performance you see it. He really thought he could just yuk it up and coast on his lines ("I Feel like I'm in a bad Tales from the Crypt episode" - you are in a bad one!), and to call it embarrassing would be an understatement, because there is no semblance of charm found here. 

If you don't care about the lead in a vampire comedy, what's there to care about for the rest on down? Eleniak might actually be outclassed by Everhart (who has the excuse of little acting experience as a model), who at least gives you some sort of campy enjoyment whereas the other looks as if they actually would be better off being in a Baywatch episode. Feldman*, Sarandon, and Fondacaro just seem to have little to actually do before getting to bite the dust. My god, they made a movie with vampires operating a whorehouse and did the bare minimum! The attempted angle of positioning a seedy reverend getting in league with vampires to deal with sinners could've been something, but it all just comes off as lazy, as if they didn't have anything else to really go with the creatures besides killer tongues and not being captured on video camera. When you do a sequence of vampires getting taken down to "Ballroom Blitz" via holy water-filled super-soakers and just roll your eyes, you know you are in trouble. It isn't even worth getting down to the climax, where I guess it doesn't really matter to cut a heart of a vampire and take 'em out completely if it wasn't for the silly little matter of "surprise" endings (even Tales from the Darkside had better ideas). As a whole, there are a few decent effects and gore to accompany the movie, but Bordello of Blood never rises above lazy B-movie standards with actual commitment or charm to make it worth it. 

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Next up: Messiah of Evil.

Song of the day!

*The actual joke told by Miller as found on Wikipedia: "The only difference between group sex and group therapy is that in group therapy you hear about everyone's problems, and in group sex you see them."

*Feldman is a weird guy in many matters: this matter or the one non-laughing matter.

Hardware.

Review #2620: Hardware (1990).

Cast: 

Dylan McDermott (Moses "Hard Mo" Baxter), Stacey Travis (Jill), John Lynch (Shades), Iggy Pop (Angry Bob), Carl McCoy (Nomad / Zone Tripper), William Hootkins (Lincoln Wineberg Jr), with Mark Northover (Alvy), Paul McKenzie (Vernon), and Lemmy (Water Taxi Driver) Directed by Richard Stanley.

Review: 

I suppose it was eventually time to encounter a Richard Stanley movie, so why not go with his first one? Born in South Africa in the era of what he called a "police state", he was interested in filmmaking from a young age and studied at Cape Town Film School. When he was a teenager in school, he made a short film called "Incidents in an Expanding Universe" that was set in a dystopia that provided some steps into what became Hardware. He moved to London in his twenties and did work directing music videos before traveling to Afghanistan to document the Soviet-Afghan War (specifically by joining a guerrilla Muslim faction) that saw him see plenty of danger for him and his camera man. With Hardware, it came out of the process of wanting to actually get one of his scripts made that happened to take comments into account for what people "wanted", which namely ranged from a chainsaw to a fire stunt that saw him apparently write it in a week (he later stated that he was in a "pretty hellacious frame of mind at the time"). The film was shot in an abandoned place called the Roundhouse in east London (with the opening in Morocco) and ultimately found a place of distribution with Miramax. Even with cuts made to dance around an X rating, the movie was a mild hit (on its reported budget of over $1 million) and Stanley directed three further features over the next few decades, most notably with Color Out of Space (2019). Stanley kept busy, of course, writing various unproduced screenplays (one of which apparently being "Hardware II") along with directing a documentary on the life and times of Otto Rahn. 

Red skies, bills involving clean breaks with procreation, and a world seen and heard through a screen, it's a future not all that distant from what we wish to tell ourselves, as if "stupid, sadistic, and suicidal" actually could be a mantra. Is it a familiar type of "cyberpunk"? Maybe. Is it a familiar type of slasher? Probably. Is it still my kind of movie to at least give credit to? Oh you bet. Around the time of release, Fleetway Comics sued the filmmakers for plagiarism because of perceived similarities between the film and "SHOK!", a 1981 short story (as written by Steve MacManus and Kevin O'Neill) that had appeared in a spin-off publication of 2000 AD; as with Hardware, both happen to involve the remains of a droid from a devastated zone getting into the hands into a sculptress that re-assembles and traps her in her place (one goes for body heat, one is weak to moisture). Whether having inspiration from Soylent Green, the novel Damnation Alley, or with Saturn 3, I had plenty of interest in actually seeing the movie because of the dreary charm that comes through in a world where there just isn't anything to really latch onto for hope besides just aiming to drive out the noise. It's the illusion that there even is a fight worth having when a killer robot is just going to grind you away (in packaged fascism) that is probably more fit now in our rusty times. McDermott and Travis have their own differing way of interacting with the world of sludge that sees them engage in, well, passion (as seen by a delightfully disgusting Hootkins) before it gives way to a monster flick. I think I enjoy it more within its latter half of the 94 minute runtime when it gets to the cruel showcase of mayhem, ranging from a pervert viewing a real bug-eyed presence to a solution drenched in moisture and actual futility. As a whole, Hardware is bleak, unsettling, familiar, and the kind of movie fit for all times in the decayed corners of a world going down the tubes.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

Welcome to Halloween: The Week After - Crazy Eights. All the way to November 7, we will be clearing the road with horror movies that I couldn't quite get to in October and hopefully have some fun with it. But first, let's take a tiny detour in curiosity with the next movie:

Bordello of Blood