Choice Anxiety

Finally I have a little more time to watch some flicks, and I'm faced with a pile of horror movies that range from 50's sci-fi to good old Vinny Price to an assortment of double features from Something Weird to 70's drive in fare to a couple of the '8 films to die for' series. Not to mention 2 or 3 MST3K box sets. I haven't watched any of them yet and quite a few are from the killah Amazon Halloween sale last year. I usually never let movies sit this long unwatched, but time has been precious these last few months.

So finally I have some breathing room, and what happens? I sit there and stare at the pile of movies trying to pick something, anything....

I call it choice anxiety.

I can't take credit for the phrase - I stole it from a friend i used to talk to online many years ago when I used to do the chat thing. I think it's definitely a phrase for our times. Think about going to the store and trying to do something simple like pick a scent from the myriad of choices of deoderant, shampoo, soap.....even if you have a favorite brand you have used for years - chances are that brand comes in about 50 different flavors, styles, or colors.

Choice Anxiety.

Go ahead, try it out. Use it. I give you permission and a huge kudos to my long lost friend who had the genius to come up with it. (Or steal it from somewhere else, whatever the case may be).

Anyway - to finally start to combat my own particular struggle with movie choice anxiety, I decided to sort my movies by decade and just start digging in.

I started with the 50's - and went back to a small box set I started on last December.

If you remember, I reviewed The Giant Claw - a fun little b & w about a flying turkey.
The other three films in this set include Creature with the Atom Brain, Zombies of Mora Tau, and The Werewolf.

My favorite by far was Zombies. It takes place in Africa where a group of people are planning on salvaging a treasure of diamonds from the bottom of the ocean. The only problem is that the local zombies are very much against this plan, and have a history of killing anyone who goes for the treasure. Adding to the fun are an old woman (whose husband died doing the same thing) and her granddaughter, who thinks this zombie business is just a bunch of tomfoolery.

Granny is also interested in getting her husband's soul some peace, and she believes the only way to do that is to give the diamonds back to the zombies......by throwing them out to sea where nobody can find them. Yeah, that part's kind of sketchy....but no matter! We have so many other fun things going on in this film, who needs a coherent plot?

For instance.....

Zombies that can be controlled by candles
Zombies walking on the bottom of the ocean
And zombies that attack you underwater when you try to steal their diamonds
(and I always thought Zombie was the first movie to feature swimming zombies...although as far as i know it's still the only movie to feature zombie vs. shark)


The Werewolf was shockingly enough, a movie about a guy who turns into a hairy killing machine....but not when the moon is full....he seems to change whenever he's threatened or stressed....kinda like The Hulk.
He also didn't come to lycanthropy the good old fashioned way.....nope, no being bitten by a werewolf for him (neither do the people he bites turn into wolves), our friend is a werewolf courtesy of science.

Seems Mr. Unlucky had a minor car accident one day, went to a local doctor, who just so happened to be conducting experiments with radiation in the back of his office. Doc injects his patient with radiation and voila! Instant Werewolf.

But it turns out that Doc had a good reason to conduct his experiment. See, he believes that the human race is on track to eventually destroy itself....slowly. And what better way to prove that by making werewolves in your home laboratory?
EXACTLY.

Creature with the Atom Brain was probably the least exciting of the four, although it was enjoyable enough if you like your sci fi cheesy and aged to perfection, which I do.
Some crazy dude is stealing dead bodies and reanimating them, and then sending them to do his evil bidding. Then he uses a microphone to speak through the dead guys.

Dead Man Talking...

Overall, I think this is a fun set. It's probably not the best bunch of horror/sci-fi you could pick from this era, but I think if you're a fan of this kind of thing, you'll enjoy it.

With my choice anxiety relieved, let's see if I can make it through the other films from the 50's without breaking my stride....

Adopt a Monster

To adopt a monster, click here

Unexpected

I wanted to see this with my movie pass when it was in theaters but never made it. It's been sitting on my Netflix for ages and I kept moving other things in front of it. I love Ricky Gervais but the reviews were mixed. This week I felt like something lighter so I went for it.

Maybe my lowered expectations helped, but I liked this movie. If you're a fan of Ricky Gervais, you'll appreciate the scenes where he was obviously allowed to ad lib a bit. Especially funny is the scene where he goes to the hospital for a colonoscopy and the nurse is asking him all the usual questions, and he just can't see the point of most of them. Best use EVER of the phrase 'fait accompli'.

Gervais is not who'd you likely expect for a romantic lead, and when it got to the time in the movie when he was supposed to start courting Tea Leoni, I thought this might be where the movie failed. But it didn't. Maybe because I'm a HUGE proponent of 'Marry the Funny One' (see my earlier post re: Antonio Banderas vs. Simon Pegg), I totally believed that a beautiful woman engaged to Mr. Handsome-Save-the-World-Guy would become attracted to a somewhat homely but hysterical dentist.

I think that the filmmakers thought that Gervais might not be the likeliest romantic hero, thus we never see anything physical at all between these two - not even one kiss! The only way we're even allowed to understand the attraction is through their chemistry and reactions to each other - and I thought that they both did a great job portraying their emotions without actually touching each other. Sounds strange but I think it worked. Think old movie Cary Grant style- a lot of times all they ever got was a 'passionate hug' as the movie faded out.

I can't imagine what someone who wasn't familar with Gervais would think of this movie - maybe that's why it didn't do well at the box office. Also going on during the film is the storyline of Gervais seeing dead people who hound him to do favors from the other side. I especially liked the subtle way the movie suggested that every time we sneeze, it's because we just walked through a spirit bound here on earth. Something to ponder the next time you sneeze. Maybe it was Grandpa? Neat!

The film also led Papa Cash and I to have a short but serious discussion whether or not souls bound to earth might be here because of 'unfinished business'. (The movie suggests this). A romantic comedy about ghosts may not lead you to pondering just why or why not a soul might feel like it had to stick around - but hey, we're weird, and we like pulling movies apart to see how they tick.

So if you like ghosts, Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear (hey-almost forgot him!), or are in favor of adopting the slogan "Marry the Funny One", you might want to check this one out.

Gesundheit,
Mother Firefly

Mother Is Excited

Y'all BEST Be Coming to this Beeyotch (And I Do Mean You My Brother)

Movies. Zombies. Night of the Living Dead Puppet Show. Dee Wallace. Joe Pilato. TOM ATKINS (who I have never met and am SUPER PUMPED about).

And I just found out that they added SID HAIG this week.

Yes. I said SID HAIG and a Night of the Living Dead Puppet Show.

It's insanely good entertainment AND you get to hang out with me, Mother Firefly.

Life is just too good.

Up to see The Hangover

Me and the P.Cash went a couple of nights ago to see Up in 3D. When we got there, we found a sign on the front door that said something about about only showing it in 2D. I have a friend from school who is a manager who happened to be working, so we went in to ask her what was going on.

Their 3D equipment was broken. She said, 'No, you can't see that tonight but what you can see is anything else that you want to for free.......because you're cool.'

That was an easy choice since we had just seen Drag Me to Hell....so The Hangover it was.

I managed to only repeat 'It's because I'm cool' three times to Papa Cash that night.

I hesitate to tell you how funny this movie is, because maybe what I find funny isn't what you find funny. So I won't mention how I almost peed myself at the end from laughing or about the two times I laughed so hard I lost my breath. Nope. Won't mention it.

Drag Me Through Hell While I Revisit Evil Dead I and II

Hello my Lovelies:
Didya think I went and died? Abandoned my blog? Decided I was too good for you?
Nah. I've just been busy with
1)Finishing up a grueling and canker-sore inducing (not kidding) Spring semester
2)Wondering why the HELL I ever wanted to go to graduate school
3)Driving back and forth to the wonderful state of Michigan
4)Sleeping and hoping somehow that will make my Clinical Project disappear
5)Not watching very many movies
6)Starting Summer semester and wondering if I'll still have my sanity when December gets here

But it doesn't matter tonight - because I just went to see Drag Me to Hell and I just know that all of you are DYING to know what I thought.
Well.
Full disclosure. Part of me kind of wanted to hate it. Because I kinda really hate Sam Raimi. Because one time, a few years ago, I read an interview where he completely dismissed his horror movie past as something he was over and that it was a way for him to get started in the business. I'm paraphrasing here but the guy said it. And I thought Look Here, F**ker, you didn't just make ONE horror movie to get your foot in the door, you F**king made THREE, you Ass! Four if you count Darkman.
So I have had full on hate in my heart for Sam Raimi since then. He's right in my Hate Box next to Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, and Tom Hanks. And let me tell you, there is some SERIOUS hatin' going on in there.

So I was a little surprised to hear the rumors that he was thinking about remaking Evil Dead, or doing another sequel...and relieved to find out that instead, he made something entirely different.

Well, almost.

I won't give away any plot points or scares or any of the fun stuff because I purposely
read ZERO before I went to see the movie. I did glance enough at reviews to see that they were mostly pretty good, but I didn't actually read them. I only even watched like one ad, and all I remembered was the part with the fly crawling in the mouth. So even though I knew zip about the movie, I could have pretty much guessed the plot just from the title and previous Raimi movies.

It kind of goes like this:
When you unleash evil spirits, bad shit happens.

And that's fine - it's absolutely just fine with me that one line is all your movie is about. As long as you tell it in a new and interesting kind of way with good acting, some creepy visuals, and give me at least one new thing I haven't seen before, then we're good.

So without giving stuff away, I say: Go see this movie. Let's support a horror movie that isn't a sequel, or a remake. Even if it is made by a big old hypocrite. I'm willing to temporarily put the past behind me and give my money to a film like this in the hopes that more original horror movies will follow.

Without bitching too much (because, believe me, this post could have been all about the bitching of my actual experience in the movie), this film was filled with adolescents old enough to see a PG13 movie - but not old enough to drive. Apparently, just so you know, they have very weak bladders and must get up and leave the theater three or four times in a 90 minute period. I wanted to say, don't worry, when you get old like me,you'll actually be able to hold it for an entire movie. Also they must get emergency text messages a lot because many of them seemed like they had an awful lot of important messages to attend to during the movie. ANYWAY - these little assholes would never notice what I'm about to point out, so if you're 14 or never seen a Raimi film before, the following won't be of any interest to you.

One- Alison Lohman gets the Bruce Campbell experience of the new millenium as she must have some kind of bodily fluid, goo, dirt, you name it on her every fifteen minutes or so. Kind of like the Raimi tradition to torment them via fluids.

Two - the seance scene. Without giving anything away, I thought the beginning of it was probably one of the scariest things I have seen this year in a movie. Then everything changed and it became a mini-remake of Evil Dead I and II. I won't tell you what I thought, but if you see it, let me know what parts made you remember the first time you saw those movies.

More movie reviews to come......
Mother Firefly