I’m such a sucker for movies set entirely in one location.

What can I add to roughly twenty-five years worth of unfettered praise and critical analysis of Alan Moore’s brilliant run on DC Comics’ Swamp Thing? This question has been haunting me for the past few weeks, as I’ve explored DC’s new hardcover reprint of the material previously collected in the Swamp Thing: Love and Death trade paperback. For many, Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns were the comics that changed the way folks looked at comics as a storytelling medium. Love and Death was that book for me.

I had an interest in the Swamp Thing television show when I was in high school, based on my enjoyment of the 1982 Wes Craven film which used to be a cable mainstay in the early-80’s when I was a kid. My high school friend, Craig, wasn’t really that much into comics, but it was the early-90’s — everyone was buying them. Somehow Craig ended up with a Swamp Thing: Love and Death trade paperback and, probably finding it way too weird, gave it to me. He knew I watched the TV show, and he knew I was open to DC books (A lot of kids, and I’m sure this continues today, were strictly Marvel only. Then, Marvel and Image only.)

My mind was blown. Within these pages were nightmare visions of hell, leering demons, supernatural heroes, funky aliens, and psychedelic vegetable sex. The language was more poetic than anything I’d read in a comic book before; the images more grotesque than my imagination allowed. This comic book scared me.

[Because I wish even the most skeptical of skeptics would experience this on the big screen, I'm plugging my SFS review of Avatar here.  And also because this is my site and I do what I wants.]

The buzz and buzzkill leading up to Avatar, it turns out, found inadequate purchase now that the world has finally glimpsed the fabled film. The echo chamber of hype that believed it would drastically alter the landscape of filmmaking forever, the virulent, vitriolic cries of Dances with Smurfs, the total indifference…all misplaced.

You are not prepared for Avatar. Roll your eyes at that; laugh it off, you’ve heard that pitch before. It’s not hyperbole, though, it’s bald truth. Whether it’s your most anticipated movie of the year or your least, it is not precisely what you think it is. How could it be? Avatar is a motion picture precedent, after all. It’s fair to say that the core conflict is less than revolutionary and that parts of the narrative are broad, but those ills are scarcely symptomatic of James Cameron’s ultimate goal. It’s not about challenging the formula of Group X oppresses Group Y, who then fight back. Nor is it about only showcasing the bleeding edge technology that Cameron and company have invented and licensed over the last decade. Avatar is about transporting a viewer to the awe-inspiring alien world of Pandora and integrating them into its fantastic way of life for 150 minutes. That’s the bullseye Cameron is aiming for, and that is the bullseye he obliterates.

Read the rest of my Avatar review at SciFi Squad!

Theatrical Trailers and Clips

• THE CRAZIES – Second trailer.
• SOLOMON KANE – A cool clip from the movie, which still lacks distribution in the States but since it is a sold, dark fantasy flick, I’m putting it here out of hope.

Studio News and Attachments

• MIRRORS 2 – The Nick Stahl starring sequel to Alexandre Aja’s dull remake of a dull movie gets a longer plot description and a full cast.
• SEASON OF THE WITCH – If you like fire and Nicholas Cage’s forehead, then have I got a poster for you!
• GHOSTBUSTERS 3 – Sigourney Weaver hints that Bill Murray might be playing a ghost this time around…
• PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES – Natalie Portman will produce and star in a big screen adaptation of no one’s favorite alternate universe literary classic.
• VLAD – Summit’s Vlad the Impaler film, written by “SONS OF ANARCHY” and GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS star Charlie Hunnam, will have no hits of vampires in it.
• HALLOWEEN 3D – The Weinstein Company is scrambling for new ideas to make a movie no one wants into a movie at least one person wants.
• RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE – Slides from fall 2010 to the second week of 2011.

Remakes

• THE WOLFMAN – Emily Blunt says the reason for the shifting WOLFMAN release date has always been driven by special effects deadlines; not because Joe Johnston made a crappy movie.  Speaking of, the flick got an R rating this week.
• FANTASTIC VOYAGE – The ’60s classic sci-fi flick about shrinking down and going inside the human body joins the growing list of movies James Cameron might tackle next.
• THE GATE – H.R. Giger will be designing some of the creatures for Alex Winter’s THE GATE 3D.
• FRIDAY THE 13TH 2 – Unsurprisingly, Platinum Dunes’ proposed sequel to Marcus Nispel’s reboot of F13 has slid from its extremely tentative August 13th, 2010 date to the ambiguous To Be Determined.
• DON’T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT – Josh Vargas wants to remake S.F. Brownrigg’s film, but with some violent updates.
• NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET – Samuel Bayer’s remake of NOES is currently undergoing some reshoots, presumably after first test screenings weren’t so hot.

Indie, Foreign, and Random News

• Zombie STAR WARS – Some guy zombiefied Drew Struzan’s original STAR WARS posters.
• 2010 Slamdance Lineup – The Sundance offshoot that essentially discovered PARANORMAL ACTIVITY has announced its competition slate for next year.
• Paramount Goes Low-Budget – The massive studio has set up a fund to produce micro-budget films in at attempt to recapture the profit margins of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, which they released earlier this year.
• PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE SEARCH FOR KATE – Speaking of, PA now has a follow-up comic series.

Non-theatrical Trailers and Clips

• [REC] 2 – The first 5 minutes of the film are online, and though they are badass, they’re not nearly as awesome as what happens later on in the movie.
• HALLOWEEN 2 – The alternate ending.
• RARE EXPORTS – This is what happens when you dig up Santa Claus.
• CABIN FEVER 2 – There is no reason you should be looking forward to this movie.
• 13 HRS. – The producers of DOG SOLDIERS would like to show you their new werewolf movie.

Theatrical Trailers and Clips

• CASE 39 – Two new clips for the long-shelved Renee Zellweger, Bradley Cooper and Ian McShane thriller.
• DAYBREAKERS – A new teaser spot for the damned fine flick out in January.  Review here.

Studio News and Attachments

• ZOMBIELAND 2 – Is official and will be shot in 3D.  Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg are assumed to be returning, but no word on Emma Stone or Abigail Breslin.
• BAD MONKEYS – Matt Battaglia (who produced the cool, but languishing in release flick KILL THEORY) is producing BAD MONKEYS, a script about a girl who, when arrested for murder, claims to be part of a secret society dedicated to fighting evil.
• ENDANGERED SPECIES – Eli Roth’s next project as a director is still undergoing some script tweaking, after Roth showed a draft to Quentin Tarantino, of course, as well as some f/x tests to determine how it will be shot.
• “HOWL” – In an attempt to get some of them Twilight monies, Fox and DreamWorks are teaming together to make a show about rival werewolf families in Alaska.  Should have just called it “TEAM JACOB CASH-GRAB”.
• HATCHET 2 – The sequel to Adam Green’s swamp-killer “throwback” HATCHET is moving along at Anchor Bay and the first official new cast member is none other than Daniel Harris.

Remakes

• PHONE - The rather unimpressive K-horror flick PHONE (review) about a…killer phone… has been optioned for a US remake by Imprint Entertainment.
• THE AMITYVILLE HORROR – Dimension Films is planning on remaking AMITYVILLE yet again.  Because it turned out so well for all involved with Platinum Dunes did it 4 years ago…

Indie, Foreign and Random News

• RIP Paul Naschy – The Spanish Lon Chaney passed away this past week at the age of 75.
• Universal Classic Monsters – Universal’s new site for THE WOLF MAN remake features a loving tribute to its stable of classic monsters equipped with playable soundtracks and more.
• Sundance 2010 – A look at the intriguing lineup for next year’s midnight movie slate at Sundance.
• FROST ROAD – Keith Arem is making the jump from the video game world (he directed the cutscenes in MODERN WARFARE 2) to the big screen with FROST ROAD, a story about “the survivors and victims of an invisible contagion in a small coastal Eastern town.”
• NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: ORIGINS – The cast for the animated prequel film to NOTLD voice cast includes Danielle Harris, Mos Def and Bill Moseley.
• LEFT FOR DEAD – Albert Pyun is making a western-set horror movie called LEFT FOR DEAD, which will be told in “almost real time”, not unlike Pyun’s INVASION (review), which was laboriously told in real time from the dash-cam of a cop car.
• ALONE IN THE DARK II – Will be out on DVD January 26.  Just an FYI since I know everyone was eager to mark their calendars.  Note: this one has almost nothing to do with Uwe Boll’s film.
• PIPER – Zenescope Entertainment’s comic PIPER about a bullied kid in high school who channels the malevolent spirit of the Pied Piper is heading for the land of film.
• SOME GUY WHO KILLS PEOPLE – John Landis is producing a film called SOME GUY WHO KILLS PEOPLE.  Awkward.

Non-Theatrical Trailers and Clips

• PHOBOS – Co-eds locked in an underground bunker in Russia does not at all look like THE HOLE on steroids…
• THE DESCENT 2 – Clip.
• FRITT VILT 3 – Norway’s first slasher (known as COLD PREY in the States) gets another sequel.

There’s a cover blurb on Victorian Undead, the new horror/adventure comic from DC/Wildstorm that proclaims in bright green letters, “SHERLOCK HOLMES VS ZOMBIES!” I feared that the story inside would read as a cash grab opportunity to sell issues based solely on the upcoming Guy Ritchie film. Turns out Victorian Undead’s greatest credit is that it doesn’t smack of opportunism at all — it’s simply a story that writer Ian Edginton felt compelled to tell, a quasi-What If? in the tradition of Alan Moore’s playful historical fiction comics.

I can’t judge how faithful Edginton stays to the tropes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective, having read only The Hound of the Baskervilles at a very young age, but it certainly feels like classic Holmes and Watson. There are some elements of the fantastic added to the familiar mix, like androids and, of course, zombies, but nothing that betrayed my perception of the way these characters should behave. Issue 1 (I’m assuming this is a mini-series, but there’s nothing in the comic to indicate how many issues are planned) is essentially a very simple set-up, wherein a comet passes over 1854 London and brings the recently dead back to life. Sherlock Holmes is called in by Scotland Yard to investigate.

Do I want to know what happens next? Yes. The book is light horror, due in part to the pencils of Davide Fabbri (who seems heavily influenced by DC stalwart Dan Jurgens), and Edginton provides just enough of a hook to make you curious about where the story is going next. Nobody is trying to re-invent the wheel here, and I think it makes Victorian Undead one of the breeziest horror comics in recent memory. Fabbri doesn’t draw anything inside the pages as gruesome as Tony Harris’s hilariously revolting cover art, and, in a different artist’s hands the book would’ve probably felt more adult.

Directed by William Lustig, 1988
Written by Larry Cohen

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Welcome back to AYIF.  That’s right people, I have returned from the grave to bring you more wonderful treats form my must-see list.  Sorry for the delay, but I have been hard at work helping Pete over at Horror Squad.  So I’ve been lax in my writing about horror so that I can…write about horror.  Yeah sorry, not sure how that one works.  Today’s film is Maniac Cop.  I have had this movie on my radar since I was a kid and saw the cover art at my local, hopelessly corporate videostore.  I added to my must-see list only a month or so ago because I saw that it was available on the Netflix streaming on the XBOX.  If you have an XBOX and you have Netflix, you have to look into this.  It is easily one of the greatest advances in movie-watching technology.  Me likey!  Anyway, let’s take a big bite of this cinematic cheeseburger.

This film takes place in NYC while it is in the grip of a panic.  A rouge police officer is dishing out his own brand of law and order by dispatching both criminals and innocents alike.  The result of this panic is that citizens begin shooting anyone with a badge who comes near.  Luckily, the police arrest a patsy on whom they can pin the whole affair; happens to be an NYPD cop so that fits nicely.  Turns out the murdering cop is former NYPD detective Matt Cordell who, although considered a hero by most, was sent to prison on account of his itchy trigger finger.  Tired of all the lawsuits against Cordell, certain city officials arrange to have him killed by other inmates.  Despite his deceased status, he is gleefully butchering New York citizens and crooks left and right.

Technically, this is a bad movie.  The story is preposterous, the acting is ham-fisted at best, and some of the action sequences seem like nothing more than people awkwardly falling over.  And I loved every last second of this!  This is exactly the type of cheesy 80’s horror that makes me giggle inside like a nine-year-old girl trading “who’s got cooties” stories with her BFF.  It has classic slasher film elements with the gore effects, the shadowy killer, and the revenge-from-beyond-the-grave plot.  But I liked the added irony of the slasher being a cop; playing with the established exemplars of safety and order.  Sure Jason is scary, but if you see a guy in the woods wearing a hockey mask and brandishing a machete, you are not likely to approach said creep.  But everyone knows that cops are the paradigm of protection so there is no risk in approaching them right?  Wrong!

Written and Directed by D. Kerry Prior, 2009

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There is a good movie buried within THE REVENANT, but unfortunately the film is still a few edits away from unearthing it.  It’s got a solid horror-comedy skeleton to it in the form of a plot about an Iraqi war veteran who returns home, only to re-animate as a shade of his former self that can only exist if sustained by a diet of fresh human.  His best friend is in out, however, and completely game for not only finding ways to keep his best friend alive, but to exploit his new undying powers.  Zaniness follows.

There are two big obstacles Prior fails to overcome.  The first is that the film clocks in at nearly two hours long but lacks enough substance to sustain energy throughout its run time; but again, editing can fix that right up.  The second obstacle can’t be saved in post-production, however.  Chris Wylde is perpetually annoying throughout the entire film, cramping what is an otherwise welcome spin on buddy comedies.  Maybe I’m just not a fan of Wylde’s, but it felt like watching a movie with one of the McPoyles from “IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY” as a lead character, and if you know the McPoyles, you know just how skeevy that prospect is.

The rest of the actors help compensate, however, and the script does have a blast with its special breed of zombism, but at the length THE REVENANT currently runs, most of it is too little, too late.

Written and Directed by Uwe Boll

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Without question RAMPAGE is the best film Dr. Uwe Boll has ever made.  However, and this is an elephantine however, that statement still needs qualification.  RAMPAGE is fascinating for both its successes and its failures, but ultimately the movie is still a failure; albeit the best failure Uwe Boll has ever been involved with.

The reason it fails is not because it was made with a piggy bank budget or because it featured washed up actors playing villainous dark wizards or sophisticated anthropologists.  No, RAMPAGE fails because it’s about a guy who creates a suit of armor and goes on a killing spree in his home town.  And that is all it is about.  There’s no higher agenda, no important examination of what it means to be directionless in life, of the kind of motivations that fuel people who go postal.  No, RAMPAGE is about a middle class white kid whose parents care about him, who has a job, who has a best friend, and who just decides to up and slaughter dozens of and dozens of men and women because he can.

And what’s so frustrating about that is that Uwe Boll actually brushes shoulders with a higher meaning.  At first it might seem like he’s not only shaping a worthwhile character, but that he’s showing a creativity behind the camera that he’s never exhibited.  For example, when Brendan Fletcher (who does a fine job with what he’s given) first starts his killing spree, we don’t actually see the carnage.  Instead of relishing in it, Boll reverses the camera, giving the viewer a reverse first-person perspective locked on the Fletcher’s face as we hear the muffled screams and gunfires he would be hearing from inside his armor-plated helmet.

It seems like it should be a clever bit of commentary on what the audience typically sees in a movie like RAMPAGE.  By denying the gory shots, Boll has upped the emotional ante considerably, but it doesn’t matter, because all of that is accidental.  It doesn’t take long before Boll is showing us the full-on carnage, forcing the viewer to take a bath in it, practically begging for us to root for the now-severely unlikeable Fletcher as he kills masses and masses of undeserving people.  And what’s even sadder than that plot is the fact that there are people just like Fletcher in the world who are going to look at RAMPAGE and think that it speaks to them, that it’s playing out their angsty fantasy, when really all it is doing is putting another dump-truck full of dead bodies on the screen for no higher purpose than a body count and a controversial (lack of a) message.

Directed by Barbara Brancaccio, Joshua Zeman, 2009
Written by Joshua Zeman

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Documentaries often deal with scary subject matter — JESUS CAMP is more terrifying than any work of fiction I saw in 2006 — but rarely do they intermingle with the typical horror movie narrative.  Yet such is CROPSEY, a documentary that tackles a story so ripped from a horror movie script that it had a good number of people at Fantastic Fest wondering if it was a indeed a mockumentary.  Unfortunately, it’s all true.

Filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio grew up on Staten Island hearing scary stories about a boogeyman named Cropsey who stalked the woods surrounding the giant, abandoned Willowbrook Mental Institution at the center of the island, snatching up anyone who came too close with his hook hand.  However, when children started to go missing in the ’80s, Cropsey was no longer a work of over-active imaginations meant to keep kids from playing in dilapidated buildings.  Their boogeyman was real and he had a name: Andre Rand.  And he was allegedly responsible for the serial kidnapping of young, mentally handicapped children around the orbit of Willowbrook, where he used to work.

Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2009
Written by Rodolphe Tissot, Olivier Volpi, Sylvain White, Gilles Paquet-Brenner

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When I’m feeling lazy, I like hang out on the couch, drink beer, and watch movies. At those times I have no desire to do anything to advance the quality of my life in any way, and my creative juices are certainly not flowing. The difference between me and director Gilles Paquet-Brenner is that when I’m feeling worthless and indolent I don’t decide to make a movie. At least that is the impression I’ve come away from WALLED IN with, because not one frame of the film suggests anybody involved in its making gave a damn.

Mischa Barton “stars” as a recent college graduate who is the youngest in a family of demolition experts. Her first solo assignment for the family company is to plan the demolition of an old apartment complex in the middle of nowhere, due to be destroyed because the “government” has “ordered it.” The building was designed by an eccentric architect, who made it a habit of burying people alive in the foundations of his creations in order to increase structural rigidity. Something about an ancient Egyptian myth, I think.

WALLED IN also features Cameron Bright (Nicole Kidman’s tiny love interest in BIRTH, who, by the way, isn’t getting any less creepy), and Debra Kara Unger (who isn’t getting any less plastically-looking). Although both of them outshine Barton by quite a bit, this is like saying Brett Ratner is a better director than Donald Petrie.