They Grow So Fast

Is the real dream of any horror creator, be they a novelist or filmmaker, to eventually get to lend their name over the title of a movie they have nothing to do with? I imagine the paycheck is nice even when the budget is low. Perhaps no one knows this better than Clive Barker, a man who has probably started to name his swimming pools after Hellraiser sequel subtitles and who, in 2006, got to add "Clive Barker's The Plague" to that list. 

Quick Plot: A plague (or fine: Clive Barker's THE Plague) has struck all children under the age of 10, putting them into a comatose state save for two daily seizures that keep their bodies from atrophying. All children born since have come out the same way, leading to governments trying to regulate individuals from even trying to procreate. Ten years later, society is understandably a mess (though not surprisingly, the private healthcare industry is in great shape).

It's also been a rough ten years for Tom Russell (James Van Der Beek), the former smalltown quarterback who ended up in prison after a bar fight turned fatal. Tom returns home to his brother David, armed with the most on-the-nose (and incredibly abridged) copy of Grapes of Wrath ever to be printed and a desire to make good. David could use the help, since his son Eric is one of the lost generation. 

Before Tom has a chance to make more Dust Bowl analogies, Eric --along with the rest of the now-19-year-olds-- awakens from his coma, quickly bashing his father's head in before Tom pushes the silent but super strong kid out a window. 

As you might expect, Eric was just the beginning. The world's best-rested teenagers are ready for action, with their main goal seeming to be the eradication of everyone over the age of 19. Tom quickly teams up with his nurse ex-wife Jean, her brother Sam, the police chief and his wife (the other big name, Dee Wallace), and a pair of just over-the-coma age twin teenagers who can occasionally blend in with their younger, more violent counterparts. 

What starts as a meditative Children of Men-ish speculative horror fiction quickly turns into a messy blend of zombie-ish sieges and religious discourse. Some brief googling leads me to believe The Plague lost a lot between script and final under-90 minute streaming watch. It's a shame, because the premise is clearly rife with possibility, and some of the details (the twins' confusion over where they belong, Tom's need for forgiveness, STEINBECK) are too specific to have been intended for the underdeveloped rush job they ultimately get. 

Director Hal Masonberg (who co-wrote with Teal Minton) doesn't have many credits, but he shows some promise here. Yes, there's a sheen of very cheap and fast filmmaking, but there are also some suspenseful payoffs and for the most part, a cast that knows what it's doing and gives their all, even when the Village of the Damned-ish storyline wanders into a completely different tone of supernatural spirituality. Overall, it's more than a bit a mess, but still: you can see kernels of something decent.

In case you haven't guessed, 39 years of watching horror movies has loosened my standards. 

High Points

When the opening credits were nothing but classical piano, I was worried that we were stuck with the kind of genre film that wasted its budget on a post-Dawson's Creek and was working through a public domain dump for its score. But you know what? The Plague's music, when it IS purely instrumental, is quite good at building the right mood

Low Points

It's always a bad sign when the most fascinating part of your film comes 5 minutes in via a news update about how the world has changed, then you realize the movie you're watching is never going to address that again and instead center all of its physical and speculative action in this one small personality-free town

Lessons Learned

Never trust a grieving mother alone with the zombified version of her daughter 

Moody teenagers have a bond no slightly more optimistic adult can dare break

Rent/Bury/Buy

Sigh. (Clive Barker's) The Plague is busting with promises it just didn't have the ability or resources to deliver on. It's certainly more interesting than most other films of its ilk and budget streaming on Amazon Prime, so you could do worse. Go in with modest expectations.

Here’s What Happens When You Raise Hell In Less Than 2 Weeks

Filmed in just 11 days, Hellraiser: Revelations is a difficult movie to discuss. This is a bottom of the barrel first draft sequel made purely to hold onto a once successful series’ rights. Even the cynic in me finds it mean to be too hard on the lazy story, messy performances, and ultimate lack of just about anything.

But the movie was made, thus making it fair game…right?

Quick Plot: Oh great, we start with found footage! There’s a way to cut the budget before it’s even estimated.

Two rich bratty suburban teens travel to Mexico to drink tequila and bang prostitutes in bar bathrooms. Yup, I am TOTALLY on these guys’ side already.

Cut to a Very Bad Things-ish accident that leaves uber male Nico in a bit of a bind. After manslaughter, the natural thing to do is to hit up a strip club (right?) where the pair befriend a mysterious American bum who gives them, out of the kindness of his sadistic heart, Pinhead’s vessel box.

All this action is mixed in with an awkward dinner party thrown by Nico and Steve’s grieving parents, who are completely rich and utterly boring. Steve’s teenage sister Emma is also in attendance to mourn the disappearance of her brother and (ick) boyfriend Nico, of whom her parents seem to care less for than the bottle of wine served with steak.

Oh Hellraiser: Revelations. The odds were stacked against you the minute you started filming against the clock. We know that, and can even forgive a shoddy Scottish accent-hiding actor’s shoddy skills at hiding a Scottish accent and a backlot serving as the country of Mexico. But how difficult could it possibly have been to NOT make your characters filthy rich entitled white brats? Are we supposed to WANT to see them skinned and pinned as Cenobite playthings? Or should we actually feel bad for their terrible tortured fate?

The problem with a film as rushed into production as Revelations is that it doesn’t know. A lot of the (pretty awful) Hellraiser sequels have leaned on having unlikable characters as a way to spread out the audience’s alliance. A date with Pinhead shouldn’t be wished on anyone, but it certainly makes viewers feel better if the victim deserves some form of punishment.

Heck, maybe I’m not giving Revelations enough credit. Perhaps the complete intention of filmmaker Victor Garcia was to get us rooting for Pinhead & Co. to win a few fresh bodies. Then again, if that was the plan all along, shouldn’t we…you know…be rooting for Pinhead? That’s a tricky request when for the first time, the lord of pain’s leather bodysuit is NOT being filled by Doug Bradley.

One can’t really fault unlucky actor Stephan Smith Collins for being a lackluster villain. Pinhead isn’t your run-of-the-mill Jason Voorhees or Michael Meyers. He’s far more akin to Freddy Krueger or Chucky, an iconic horror role made as memorable by the actor underneath the makeup as he is by his own mythology. Plopping another man inside his costume doesn’t feel sacrilegious: it just feels silly.

To make up for it, the script crams in every fad in recent horror cinema. Found footage! Home invasion! Crash test dummy Pinhead 2! Okay, the last one’s new, but not necessarily good. Little is in Hellraiser: Revelations.

But hey, that’s what you get for 11 days of shooting. The film runs a quick 75 minutes, little of which makes complete sense. Unlike the majority of the Hellraiser sequels, however, Revelations DOES actually FEEL like a Hellraiser installment. The story is essentially Frank & Julia retold as two awful teenagers who feel isolated in a dreadful youth-gone-wild straight to IFC original. From a screenwriting-in-11-days standpoint, it makes sense: there’s no time for anything complicated, so why not just copy the most successful plot and rewrite it with younger, prettier (by some definition unfamiliar to me) people? It makes sense. But a sensical plan and ELEVEN DAYS OF SHOOTING still do not a good movie make.

High Notes

For all its rushed messiness, the actual gore of Revelations is decently done, especially considering it mostly sticks to practical effects over the easier (as any Asylum vet knows) and uglier CGI

Well-

*mostly*

Low Notes

It’s hard to point fingers at the cast for inhabiting such miserable people, so I guess I’ll blame the studio for greenlighting an incomplete script filled with awful, ill-defined characters that offer nothing to sympathize with

Lessons Learned

Being on someone’s private property means that legally, they can blow your brains out and ask questions later

Before killing a prostitute, make sure you can afford her price

‘Cenobite’ now has a definition in your standard household dictionary

The Asian prostitute population in Mexico is surprisingly large

Getting shot in the stomach by a shotgun blast will kill indeed kill you, but it will take a really long time. Possibly enough time to rewrite your will, run a marathon, or rewatch the entire Hellraiser series

Rent/Bury/Buy

There’s a part of me that really wished Hellraiser: Revelations was worse, or at least, awful in a fun way. Alas, the film isn’t incompetent. Given an actual finished screenplay, I imagine director Victor Garcia can probably make a more than decent film. Instead, we’re stuck with a movie that feels embarrassed that it even had to be made. 

Medium Rare With a Side of Stale Cheese

Short stories in the horror genre are often prime meat for feature film adaptations. Candyman, Re-animator, The Fly, and even Hitchcock’s The Birds and Psycho are a few glowing examples of how and why 20 or so pages can be expanded into a solidly entertaining 100 minutes onscreen. Unlike novels where readers are deeply connected to a character’s voice who has guided them for hours and days of reading, shorter fiction often tosses out a concept for inspiration, thus providing ample space for a filmmaker to create his or her own world.

And then there’s Rawhead Rex.

Based on a short story from Cliver Barker’s third Book of Blood, this is a film long abused by its original author (and penner of the screenplay) for misinterpreting its source material to make a mere monster movie. Having read Rawhead Rex, I can fully appreciate and sympathize with Barker’s criticisms. On the page, Rawhead Rex is a grungy, male ego-on-the-loose tale about an ancient god whose only weakness is, essentially, female menstruation and fertility. In the hands of George Pavlou, however, Rawhead Rex becomes a haunted house prop set loose on poorly shot screaming actors.

Quick Plot: In a quaint and quiet small town of Ireland, a farmer struggles to excavate a random monolith that has sat in the middle of his land for some time. With a strike of lighting and some fancy technique, he eventually succeeds. Unfortunately, the process also helps to free the long-buried demon god Rawhead Rex, portrayed here as a growling 8’ tall Halloween decoration with a mean six-pack and costume borrowed from a backup dancer for Gwar. 

So what’s so bad about Rex (aside from his wardrobe and laughably glowing red eyes)? Well, mostly the fact that he likes to eat folks (in the story, children are his meal du jour, but men and non-menstruating females make the menu as well). The skeptical police are of little help while the local village priest has switched allegiances to the titular monster himself. The only real hope comes in the form of a visiting historian who, along with his impatient and rather unpleasant wife, watches his son get devoured by Rex as we instead watch his slow reaction to what we assume is a horrific offscreen act. Will the grieving father be able to unlock the ancient secrets as written in stained glass on the church’s windows, or will the world fall prey to a blown up Spencer’s Gift with an appetite for destruction?

Rawhead Rex offers nothing revelatory in its execution, but it’s a solid enough watch for its brief running time. At the same time, it’s a pretty bland disappointment if you’re familiar with the work of Cliver Barker or have read its original story. Not only do those 50 pages offer triple the amount of gore as this 1986 film, they also dig far more deeply into what kind of evil Rex is and how the world he lived--and currently lives--in fosters the reign of a masculine monster. With a misused minimal budget, Pavlou’s Rex is a miniature Godzilla loose on an underfunded and poorly policed town.

High Points

It’s refreshing that the film retained some of the story’s less cinematic storylines--such as the excremental sacrament--but it would have been far more impressive if Pavlou had managed to attach actual weight to the actions

Low Points

Most of the special effects--including the woefully rubber faced Rex himself--feel less impressive than when Days of Our Lives featured a character possessed by a green-eyed devil

It's not that Rawhead Rex is completely devoid of the male-power aesthetic of Barker's original work; it just has no concept of how to use it. There are phallic symbols to be found and men to surrender willingly into servitude to Rex, but Pavlou provides no actual commentary on what makes this killing machine any different--or, for that matter, similar to--any other human-hungry villains.

Lessons Learned

Small red-coated women that resemble Venetian dwarves from Don’t Look Now frown upon public displays of affection from middle aged parents

When watching a gigantic monster hover over your child, it’s probably best to run to the boy’s aid before sighing with resignation

Irish policemen spend an awful lot of time smoking and scowling

Upon being released from several centuries of live burial, a demonic god’s first action will be to trash a kitchen a la Janeane Garfalo in Wet Hot American Summer

To save your girlfriend from being grabbed and eaten by a monster, it’s best to grab her arms and not her top. To get a gratuitous breast shot in a film that has need for nudity, it’s best for a character to grab a would-be victim’s top instead of arm

If your two children are insufferable brats, you, as a married couple, have no right to still be so damn horny

Not surprisingly, baptism by facial urination will make a new follower rather foul-mouthed

Rent/Bury/Buy

I obtained my copy of Rawhead Rex via a convention table sale and while it wasn’t the best $8 I’ve ever spent, I’m not cursing the time wasted viewing it. The film hasn’t had a DVD release and it’s not quite worth the time or mild guilt you would spend in trying to find a copy for yourself. Clive Barker fans will probably be offended by utter lack of artistic merit or any of the real horror found in his text, but those who enjoy mediocre monster movies will have a good enough time.

As If the Subway System Wasn't Horrible Enough, Now There's ...

If you’ve followed news in the horror world last summer, you may recall the release drama of The Midnight Meat Train. Produced by Lions Gate and based on a Clive Barker short story, this film was intended for a full theatrical release before being yanked for less-than-desired showings in a handful of dollar theaters across the States. Barker barked and horror devotees complained. Saw V and The Strangers took the blame. Was this another case of shafting original horror to showcase easy money sequels and remakes?


It pains me to say this, but The Midnight Meat Train is not the long lost gem we hoped for. It’s skillfully made by director Ryuhei Kitamura, with clean visuals and more than adequate performances. The basic plot and setting offer oodles of potential. And yet, for the entire running time, I found myself becoming more and more frustrated with everything that was and wasn’t onscreen.


Quick Plot: In an unnamed city, struggling vegetarian photographer Leon (Bradley Cooper) learns from the wisdom of famed art dealer Brooke Shields that in order to break out, he needs to take pictures of truly disturbing content without turning away. She knows this, of course, because of her early experiences with the famed Basquiat (we knew Shields was a child star and went to Princeton, but did you also know she also discovered one of NY’s greatest street artists when she was an adventurous 14 year old?).

Leon takes her advice and hits the streets, focusing mainly on the immaculately clean subway. As luck would have it, a few thugs are attempting to rape a pretty young woman right in perfect view of Leon’s non digital camera (and the very conveniently placed security CCTV). Leon has his shot and the woman is on her way to a conveniently patient late night train. The next day, Leon discovers a newspaper story chronicling her disappearance. A visit to the cops involves weird double speak and somehow inspires Leon on a vigilante mission to uncover this mystery, much to the chagrin of his far too understanding girlfriend.

Enter the Forrest Gumpish Vinnie Jones as the best dressed serial killer in mass transit. Sadly, he’s also the blandest, wearing a dull scowl that couldn’t be farther from the charismatic psychopath of The Condemned or even his supporting work in X-Men 3.

Deep sigh.


The Midnight Meat Train is not the worst film you’ll see, but I found it to be an incredibly disheartening film experience. 103 minutes isn’t long, but when extended stretches are devoted to empty montages, it feels like eternity (sort of the difference between an express and local train). The title calls back to something gritty and mean, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the film’s primary problem is just how clean it is. I’ve never seen a subway that shines with such regularly applied stainless steel cleaner and the digitalized gore is so noticeably unreal, none of the violence lands until the very last scene. By then, it’s a little too late to reinvest.


High Points
Surprisingly enough, the romance between Cooper and Leslie Bibb is quite believable and affectionate, providing a solid emotional base for the finale to land

Low Points
...but the fully clothed sex scene is supposed to do what exactly?



Cooper is fine enough as Leon, but his insanely fast slide into insanity? obsession? paranoia? is so messily done that it’s hard to really want to follow him on his increasingly dumb endeavors underground

Early in the film, Leon talks about how he pulls so much inspiration from the big bad city. That’s fine and mood-setting, but it would certainly help if the city WE see wasn’t drenched in shiny blue coloring. Of course, we could also SEE the city rather than the ridiculously clean metro and one friendly steakhouse


Until the last act, there is nothing actually frightening happening. We don’t know any of the victims, so seeing an extra or two sitting on a train and then get chopped up by a computer effect simply has no emotional impact

Lessons Learned
The only way to survive an encounter with Vinnie Jones is to first sell him candy


Searching for keywords on microfiche is much easier and faster than using Google


Never assist your friends in breaking into a rundown motel where a homicidal butcher allegedly lives; the consequences are just not fun

Bloody floors are incredibly slippery


Rent/Bury/Buy
I really wanted to like this movie but as seen in my extensive low points, that’s far too difficult to do. The performances are better than average and the final scene does start to get interesting, but the coldly empty blood and story inanity is just not enjoyable. How, for example, would any city’s subway system still be functioning if multiple straphangers disappear EVERY SINGLE NIGHT? I’m not one to nitpick plot details, but when the core concept seems so unruly, it just makes everything else that much more glaringly careless. That being said, those of you with a genuine interest in visual design of modern horror may find this particular approach interesting. It’s different and definitely made by someone with artistic vision; I just don’t think that style fits the nature of this film in the least.