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The
Signal
The film opens with a young couple, Mya and Ben, having a late night tryst. The two are having an affair and Mya promises to leave her controlling fiend husband Lewis the following day. The two make a pact to meet later at Terminal 13 and blow out of town, town being the ominous Terminus, a Dystopoian, Eraserhead-ish other-world that looks like ours, only grainier, colder, and more prone to senseless violence. The rest of the film follows Mya and Ben’s misadventures in a world gone mad, as the sinister signal turns everyone around them into slavering, kill-crazy beasts. Chopped up evenly into three distinct chunks titled “Transmissions”, the film veers wildly between slapstick and hardcore horror, often in the same scene. The most remarkable and brutal of the three is Transmission 2, wherein Mya’s crazed husband home-invades a clueless yuppie couple preparing for a party on the day the world ends. As the segment opens, the ever-chipper woman laments the fact that she’s had to kill her gone-beserk husband earlier that day. Apparently she still plans to have the party, though. Her freaked-out landlord arrives early and tries to warn her that the world’s gone wild, but everyone is so signal-fried at this point that points-of-view become liquid and nobody knows what’s real anymore, including the viewer and possibly the film-makers, as well. “Are you made at me for killing your friend?” the woman asks. “We weren’t that close”, the landlord deadpans. Eventually the lupine Lewis bullies the party-goers into submission, and in order to extract info as to Mya’s whereabouts, he shoots bug spray into the woman’s eyes, repeatedly. She cries and her eyes swell shut, and he sprays her again. She walks into the walls and wonders why she’s blind, and he sprays the poison down her throat until she convulses and dies. It’s sadistic and over the top and alters the tone of the film significantly. Where we once had a fun, if decidedly weird cult-horror experience, the bug spray scene repulses and repels, and guarantees a one-time viewing for everyone except hardcore shock junkies. That scene aside, however, this is a radical, surreal vision that completely sucks you in. The violence is non-stop and the gore is savage, the dialogue is crisp and biting and occasionally hilarious, the budget is non-existent and the look is suitably threadbare and barren. It’s tight, mean, and compelling indie-horror that does borrow a lot of ideas from other films – the aforementioned Eraserhead and 28 Days Later, plus Videodrome and Romero – but still manages to appear quite original. Unfortunately it’s too harrowing for the casual horror fan, but sensation-seekers and sick-kids will doubtlessly lap it up. -Sleaze |
Be Kind Rewind
The big draw here is the crazed, lo-fi renditions of Driving Miss Daisy, Boyz in the Hood, etc. down in a wildly inventive, kitchen-sink style by Jerry and Mike. The “Sweded” films play like Youtube parodies starring, well, Jack Black and Mos Def, and they are fitfully funny, but it’s the awkward friendship between the two leads and the amazing art direction that really drives this film. Ostensibly the story takes place in the mid 90’s during the dawn of the DVD age, but it could have been any time, really, and the dusty, musty shop and the shabby, graffiti-splattered neighborhood look as though they were lifted straight from the pages of a 1970’s Marvel comic book. It’s dreamy, atmospheric, and a warm, fun ride that completely erases any irritation you might have had with the overly-precious Science of Sleep. Great stuff. -Sleaze
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Stella First Season
(2006)DVD
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Automaton Transfusion
(2007) DVD
Maybe it’s better if I just tell you what I liked about the pic, and what I didn’t. Energy and pace are definitely in the pro column – Miller cuts the picture like a sports drink commercial, and that works very well in the film’s middle and finale, which are essentially one long series of breakneck chase scenes involving its three teenage heroes – emo tough guy Garrett Jones, gruff black sports dude William Howard Bowman, and Jones’ screaming (but increasingly capable) girlfriend Juliet Reeves – as they attempt to avoid what appears to be their entire graduating class, which has transformed into fast-moving, flesh-eating zombies thanks to a government biological experiment. Miller stages these marathon chases with an astonishing amount of scope and detail, with what appears to be hundreds of Karo-caked extras and high-def camerawork which literally shakes and jitters with every footfall. And when the irresistible force of the three survivors meets the immovable object of the zombie horde, the violence is as mean and brutal as anything you might’ve seen in the current crop of living dead pics – necks are torn out, jaws pulled off, limbs and faces gnawed to the bone, and in the film’s puke de resistance, a fetus is ripped out of a poor gal’s belly – and again, it’s all delivered at meth-lab velocity. Say what you will about Automaton Transfusion, but you won’t be bored by the film. However, Miller isn’t terribly interested in grounding the action in any sort of cohesive or compelling story – we know nothing about the people we’ll follow for the next 70 minutes, and when the film slows down enough for characters to utter a line of dialogue, it’s either forgettable (Bowman in particular is stuck saying “Fuck! Fuck! We’re fucked!” a lot) or cornball (the school janitor, who is revealed to be a secret Army operative, is given a leaden mouthful of exposition to explain the reason behind the zombie uprising). And while I understand that Miller’s intention was to deliver an action-heavy gorefest, sprinkling just the slightest bit of character development couldn’t have hurt (at the very least, it would have helped me to know that the characters had names that weren’t Emo Guy and Black Dude).
The DVD includes commentary by Miller and two of his producers, a number of deleted scenes, videos for two of the screamy nu-metal songs featured on the soundtrack, and a making-of featurette that shows Miller as a fairly smart, efficient and ego-free director who just might make a decent horror film for a studio at some point. I imagine they’ll want him to shoot an ending for that one, so I hope he figures out how to do that soon.
– Paul Gaita |
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Diary of the Dead
(2008)
There’s a 50% chance that Romero was actually going for camp when he concocted the heavy-handed dialogue and cartoony characters. Certainly, a serious-minded man would not have created a boozy professor who wields a bow and arrow and makes pithy comments whenever a moment of extreme violence or tragedy occurs, but that is what he presents us with. And then there’s the impossibly wealthy junior-playboy who chooses to party the apocalypse away, and the constantly grousing ‘final girl’, and…suffice to say, every character in this film is either so poorly constructed or just plain annoying that you’re happy to seem ‘em get chomped. It seriously dampers the proceedings and reduces the tension level down to nothing. We are left with a few moments of genuine horror – a zombie clown who seriously fucks up a kid’s birthday party, a tragic-comic botched suicide attempt – and a smattering of innovative, albeit CGI-aided gore scenes, including a pretty impressive acid-meets-skull sequence. That, and a heavy-handed ‘message’ that reveals more about Romero’s unease with technology than with society’s over-reliance on blogs and camera-phones.
Die-hard horror nerds will see this anyway (as this review attests to), but it adds little to the mythos and seems much too self-consciously ‘contemporary’ for it’s own good. Like when Alice Cooper sings about X-boxes. Please stop trying so hard, George. Just make with the splatter already. -Sleaze |
Teeth
(2007)
On the surface, Teeth seems like an 80’s gross-out horror-comedy in the Basket Case/Street Trash vein, but it’s actually much more subtle. Although it has more than its share of extremely graphic penis dismemberment, it’s a wickedly dark comedy, full of wry humor and just the right touch of social commentary. The performances are pitch-perfect, especially Weixler, who exudes a wide-eyed innocence even after the third or fourth rape attempt. I don’t think there’s ever been a character as unlucky-in-love as our girl Dawn, and she shows considerable pluck in even the darkest circumstances. You will fall completely and totally in love with her by the time the film is over. Which is bound to cause you considerable pain, given her condition. Great stuff from first-time director Lichtenstein (son of painter Roy), who walks a thin line between John Waters and HG Lewis, without tipping too far over in either. Of course, you will probably never have sex again without demanding a full vaginal inspection, but that’s a small price to pay for art. -Sleaze |
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This Filthy World
(2006) Directed by Jeff Garlin Dokument Films
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Kurt Cobain: About a Son
(2006)
-Sleaze |
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Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank
(2006)
This film has it all, really. It’s got a brain literally made out of jello. It’s got hilarious bits of junky CGI. It’s got a Pia Zadora lookalike who chews off a guy’s thumb. It’s got an incredibly hot blonde who poses in the woods in her panties, with her skin-tight jeans around her ankles, while she eats a dude’s arm. It’s got a non-nude shower scene that rivals Austin Powers for sheer, um, cheek. All the men in the film are buffoons or douchebags, and they all sorta resemble well-known character actors. There is very little nudity but an amazing amount of panty scenes, which seems much sleazier than nudity, for some reason. None of it makes a lick of sense, but it all comes together seamlessly anyway. It’s like HG Lewis meets Russ Meyer in the bargain basement. Director Bowman is either a genius or a lunatic. I’d bank on the latter, but hope for the former. Whichever. If you’re looking for a low-budget, blood-splattered jiggle-fest that works just as well with your pants on or off, Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank is for you.
-Sleaze |
Billy the Kid
(2007)
Venditti’s camera follows Billy through an eventful school year, one where he decides to woo his first girl, a half-blind cutie named Heather who works at the local diner. His awkward courtship of the fragile girl is so raw, real, and heart-rending, that you can’t help but cheer and cry in equal measure as these two refugees from the Island of Misfit Toys gamely attempt to find love in all the wrong places. Meanwhile, Billy rattles on to the camera about his love for bad 80’s metal (he loves Kiss) and his oddly sunny philosophies on life, the universe, and everything else. As the documentary rolls on, it becomes increasingly clear that Billy is not completely right-in-the-head, and by the end, he is diagnosed with a mental disorder. However, that’s besides the point. What this film is really about is the gaping open wound we call adolescence, and if you struggled through yours, you will find a kindred spirit in Billy. Venditti’s suffered a few critical slings and arrows along the way for this film, as some feel she exploited Billy’s mental instability to her advantage, but there’s one scene here that’s so fist-in-the-air triumphant that I bet Billy’s quite happy it’s caught on film forever. I know I am. -Sleaze |
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The Hottie and the Nottie
(2008)
Joel Moore – the Shaggy-esque sad-sack from Hatchet – plays Nate, an unlucky-in-love doofus who decides to track down his long lost love from first grade. Cue Paris Hilton, said lost-love, running on the beach in slow-mo as guys propose marriage and freak out. Now, there’s no doubt that Paris Hilton is a pretty girl, but she’s sorta twiggy, you know? I don’t think she’d elicit that sort of reaction in real life. I mean, she’s no Tawny Kitaen. But anyway, she has an ugly friend who’s she’s very attached to, so Nate has to find the uggo a date before Paris will go out with him. Meanwhile, the ugly girl is slowly undergoing a makeover as the film goes on, and guess what? Yes, she’s actually just as hot as Paris after various treatments and surgeries. You’ve seen this story enough times to know what happens next. It’s tried and true stuff done on a low-budget with actors that mistake opening-night gusto for passion. Well, expect for Paris, who tones it down so low she appears to be visibly napping through several scenes. The whole thing is shabby and clunky and shallow. Paris wears too much lip gloss, and they ugly up the other chick so much with moles and dirty band-aids and face-crust that I almost gagged a few times in the first half. It was still better than Cloverfield, though. And it had a happy ending. There hasn’t been very many of those lately. I like happy endings. -Sleaze |
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A sort of gutbucket cross between 28 Days Later and your standard
techno-fear J-horror gag with a heavy dose of John Waters-y puke-porn
thrown in for extra flavor, this low-budget scuzzfilm, written and
directed by a triple-team of scruffy young fearmongers, is the deepest
of black comedies shot in episodic, sitcom-from-hell style. The conceit
is a simple and oft-mined one these days: a static-y blast of noise jams
all available signals – TV, radio, cell-phones – and causes
disorientation and rage in everybody who’s exposed to it. 
Whimsical Frenchman Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
Science of Sleep) returns with his most accessible work yet, a simple
urban fairytale that cleverly exploits our mash-up culture to tell a
timeless tale of friendship and redemption. As the story opens, grumpy
Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) leaves his ramshackle Jersey video
store/junk shop in the care of his bumbling employee Mike (Mos Def) for
a week, with explicit instructions not to let local nutcase Jerry (Jack
Black) anywhere near the place. Jerry lives in a trailer next to the
electrical plant and is constantly trying to sabotage it, as he fears
radiation (or whatever) is getting to him. One day he dons a tinfoil
suit and gamely attempts to destroy the plants monolithic generator. He
fails, of course, and finds himself highly magnetized as a result. And
so, the adventure begins. Jerry visits Mike at the video store and
inadvertently erases all the tapes. With resources too limited to buy
new tapes, the two concoct a harebrained scheme to just shoot their own
versions of the movies – stuff like Robocop and Ghostbusters – and pray
like hell nobody notices the difference. They call the process
“Swede-ing” as a sort of nose-thumbing gesture to Interpol. Turns out
the locals love their no-budget, amateur take on familiar blockbusters,
and the two become the unlikely heads of neighborhood-driven film
factory, and all is well until government hatchet-woman Sigourney
Weaver shows up to shut the copyright infringers down, resulting in a
third-act rally that’s funny and warm and suitably uplifting. 
I don't have cable, so I never know what the rest of you guys are on
about, when you're referencing adult-cartoons, or Comedy Central, or HBO
shows. I'm stuck working at an excruciatingly unrewarding bottom-end
job, so the entertainment budget is so minimal that I even had to quit
smoking, and now, I'm getting fat, from eating, every time I would've
smoked, drank, fucked, fought, rocked, wept, acted-out, talked on the
phone long-distance, or done-drugs, which was like, pretty much all the
time, that I was awake. To make matters worse, Dick Nixon, Dick Cheney,
Miss Togar, and Nurse Ratchet are the role-models of all the finks and
middle-class, middle-managers I'm currently, being forced to co-exist
with, out here, in the franchised sprawl of authoritarian Cop-Nation.
Anyways, they even charge you a dollar to rent videos at the public
library nowadays, which just goes to show how unbelievably Un-American
this shamelessly greedy country's become, since the Library-Police, and
Junior G-Men moved-in, with the Patriot Act. Radio sucks ass, we don't
have Youtube, or Satellite radio here, either, so when we do shell-out a
dollar, for a night's hard-won entertainment, we always have to consider
the running-time, to maximize our buck-bang. We're really, really poor.
Seven dollars an hour is not nearly enough to support three people. So,
it was between this Comedy Central series, and "Barbarella", and we went
with this, cos it was ten episodes, and because I liked that smart-ass
Michael Ian Black's commentary on VH1's "I Love The 80's" series, from a
few years back.
I’d love to be able to apply that most diplomatic of critical terms –
“uneven” – to the indie zombie pic Automaton Transfusion. I
really would. But the problem is that while the film has a number of
positive qualities – not the least of which is the fact that hyphenate
Steven C. Miller delivered a supercharged, gore-soaked horror film in a
nine-day film shoot for something like 30 grand – its negative elements
are so hard to look past that they come close to completely undoing
every success that Miller achieves in its short (70 mins) running time.
So I don’t know how to call this one “Half-assed” is too harsh. And to
say that the film “tries hard” isn’t exactly the case either, because
its most egregious mistake was entirely avoidable. It would appear that
I need a new term for Automaton Transfusion, but I’ll be dogged
if I know what it is.
The film’s most unpleasant mistake, however, is its finale, which posits
Jones and Reeves in a no-win situation, with a locked door behind them
and zombies lunging for their throats – only to throw a “To Be
Continued” card in your face. I understand that Miller’s intention is
for Automaton Transfusion to be the first in an eventual trilogy
of films, but here’s the thing – I’d be happy to dismiss this decision
as a particularly vain one if this movie was just out-and-out terrible,
with no redeeming features whatsoever. But because Miller’s movie does
have some terrific things going for it, and because those elements are
compromised by some considerable flaws, the notion of having to endure
more two more films filled with bad dialogue and risible acting (yeah,
that’s another problem – sure, his cast are amateurs, but they’re pretty
bad ones) just to see more of his action set pieces is more than a
little disheartening. As it stands, Miller should’ve sold his
Fangoria collection or passed on his latest tattoo and given this
film a proper ending. 
Second month of the year, second eye-rolling comment on our
media-saturated society utilizing shaky cams, annoying twenty-something
twerps, and familiar boogeymen. Cloverfield threw a Godzilla
doppelganger at us and in Diary of the Dead, George Romero
trots out his ol’ shambling corpses once again for another bout of flesh-chewing. This
time out, the zombie outbreak occurs while a particularly sour-faced
group of film-students attempt to make a no-budget mummy film in the
woods. Before they get their shots, the world goes to hell, and the fake
horror movie turns into a real one, as the intrepid gang of young,
snippy filmmakers shoot the ensuing chaos. 
Dawn
(Weixler) is the last American virgin. She’s a star speaker in her
school’s weird celibacy club and thinks only pure thoughts. She’s also
breathtakingly beautiful, in a fresh-faced, corn-fed sorta way, and so
sexually ripe you can practically smell her pheromones through the movie
screen. Obviously, something’s gotta give, and once she decides to get
amorous with a deceptively harmless-seeming member of her Jesus-freak
club, she finds out that her vagina is lined with razor sharp teeth that
turn whatever is invading her personal girl-space into pulp. This is
very bad news for all the men in her life, including her pervy
gynecologist and her ass-fuck happy step-brother. 
Not much of a
revelation, here--just the usual self-promoting, stand-up, info-mercial
for an audience full of adoring film-geeks. I sat through all his
agonizingly dull 70's flicks as a teen, and thought they were all pretty
unwatchable, even boring, but I was never a pot-smoker. In this current
age of cookie-cutter crass, choreographed, and commercialized,
corporate, consumer-crapola, like that High School Musical/American
Idol/Across The Universe/Disney Channel/War Is Groovy whimsical
revisionist neo-con propaganda, it's naturally, at least, refreshing to
hear even some of the same old anecdotes about Divine, and Edith Massey
from the Gross-out Pope. Even the Bush brats have seen "Hairspray", by
now. My faves are still, "Polyester" and "Crybaby". Waters' "vaudeville
routine" just isn't that shocking anymore. I think he half-expected us
to gasp when he said Carol snorted-up summa Stiv's ashes, or confronts
us with deviant behavior, sicko human sub-cultures, or abhorrent acts
torn from the sensationalist info-tainment headlines. The old taboos
have almost all steadily been assimilated to sell us more dog-food
McFreedom Value Meals. His smirking, big-budget forays of recent years,
the Johnny Knoxville vehicle, with all the usual stunt-casting, they're
still mildly entertaining, but at this point, Waters really has become
your creepy Uncle who helps you "get an abortion, or get out of jail",
or who "Talks you out of getting married". He still pisses off the
Catholic church, supposedly, but I've NO IDEA why. He's about as
subversive as the Village People, at this point. With all due-respect.
The Sex Pistols just aren't going to scare folks in 2008. The "normals"
are the scary ones. Go sit in Wal-Mart for an hour. I think that's
always been his message, though. It's the lawn-mowing flag-wavers you
gotta watch out for. Billy Bush. Bill O'Reilley. Karl Rove and Lou
Pearlman. They're the true freaks.
Rock journalist
Mike Azerrad conducted over 25 hours of interviews with
Kurt Cobain for the Nirvana bio-book “Come as You Are”. In
About a Son,
director Schnack has taken snippets and chunks from those audio
interviews and married them with constantly drifting images of Seattle
and Aberdeen and other Kurt-haunted places, and has created a suitably
narcotic dreamscape narrated by the long-gone grunge-god himself. What
is most striking about Cobain’s words is how ultimately ordinary a
thinker he was, a point he attempted to drive home many times on these
tapes. Sure, he had considerable gifts for songwriting and performing,
but in the end, he was just a dude, one that suffered significantly,
both physically and mentally, one who would have been better off left
alone. As such, the film feels voyeuristic, like even Cobain’s ghost is
subject to inquiry and dissection. Still, in pure cinematic terms, it’s a
beautiful, moody meditation-piece, like the plink of a somber piano on a
rain-soaked afternoon. Probably not what you’d expect from a documentary
about a rock star, but then again, Cobain loved thwarting people’s
expectations, so maybe it’s perfect. 
Awesomely sleazy low-fi splatter comedy about warring teams of hot young
archeologists (!) out to win some vague prize for digging up the most
compelling artifact in Burbank. Turns out there’s a mystical, magical
jewelry box buried deep in the ancient hills of upper Burbank, and when
the jewels inside the box are fondled by any woman, she grows plastic
fangs and eats the nearest male. And that happens. A whole bunch of
times. 
Jennifer
Venditti’s directorial debut is a compelling documentary about a teenage
boy in Maine (named Billy, naturally), who, despite being intelligent,
engaging, and friendly, is a pariah among his classmates. He is forced
to spend most of his time at school alone and his attempts at
interacting with the local douchebags in the teen rec center are
miserable failures. Why? Well, Billy’s different. And that’s the last
thing you want to be in high school. 
This film will live on in infamy for its hilariously meager
first-weekend take at the office: a mere $25,000 after playing for
three days in 111 theaters. I am proud to say I was $7.75 worth of that
haul. Of course, I had a good reason for seeing it. Total Film, a
magazine I write for, asked me to review it. Hey, a buck’s a buck, Jack.
Interestingly, I had to drive 20 minutes to some cavernous theater on
the lip of the highway to see it. This does not sound unreasonable on
paper, but I live in