B Plus Movies

Roger Ebert, undoubtedly one of the most influential movie critics of my lifetime, was ragged on for reviewing a movie of which he watched only 8 minutes. Now while it’s said one never has a second chance to make a first impression, seeing less than 10% doesn’t usually constitute a proper basis to judge its merits, even if you have seen every movie since the invention of celluloid. Ebert went back, watched the film and apologized for cheating on his first try, basically I think to maintain his cred as a reliable critic.

This is why I usually don’t review movies I’ve not sat entirely through… until today. This friday’s blog gets you a three for one sale, the length of each review corresponding to about how much time I spent watching it.

First up is Strangeland, a film made by Dee Snider, former lead of the band Twisted Sister and hair metal DJ of 2009. I’d been interested in seeing this film, but only caught the last half. The story centers around a sadistic madman calling himself Captain Howdy who likes to play BDSM games with people but isn’t necessarily big on getting their consent first. According to the media I saw about it before hand, it starts with a young girl (the daughter of a cop) meeting the Captain online and getting sucked into his world.

Where I picked it up Howdy had gotten caught, incarcerated, determined to be insane and then released after he forgoes the Captain Howdy persona for his more mild mannered real name. The normal folk of the town can’t stand the thought of leaving him alone which inadvertently brings Howdy back to the surface and starts another string of violence, peircing and seeking after the teen girl from the half of the movie I didn’t see. Her father, the police officer, must once again leap to action and save his little girl from the tattooed and pierced monster that is Captain Howdy.

Dee Snider plays the  villian of Strangeland and does it well. Captain Howdy is genuinely creepy, threatening and believably threatening with just a touch of visionary madman, enough to make you think he’s kinda cool if he wasn’t raping girls and poking people with long needles. On the other hand, the movie makes use two contradictory cliches, marring its edgy, avante garde nature, namely that 1)People into bondage and peircings are always bad and 2)the freaks are always persecuted by the rednecky straights. Both cliches are presented in such a blatant, over the top fashion that you take them for granted (partially due to the excellent talents of Robert Englund) and it’s only until later that your preconceptions have been prayed up.

Strangeland, despite its flaws, gets a B+ from me. Go Dee Snider. Next.

The Devil’s Rejects is the sequel to the 70’s horror homage House of 1000 Corpses. Rockstar/Producer/Director Rob Zombie put this retro, ready-for-grindhouse movie onto screens at a time when I was already becoming bored with torture porn like Saw and Hostel, not because they’d lost their bite, but because watching people be savaged for two hours just seemed less enjoyable than other things people might do on film.

Picking up where it’s predecessor left off, The Devil’s Recjects starts with a family we met in House of 1000 Corpses of sadistic rednecks who have killed enough hapless teenagers to finally bring down upon them a fanatical cop who wants to see them dead more than he wants to see them arrested. Many of the family are caught or killed in the first few minutes of the film, leaving three to hit the road and go on the run.

Featuring Sid Haig (B movie god), Bill Mosely (also of B+ Movie Repo: The Genetic Opera) and Sheri Moon-Zombie (Rob’s wife), The Devil’s Rejects has some intense and believable performances. It also has just enough gore to remind you of the first movie and enough gun play to distinguish itself from it’s origins. The movie attempts to blur the line between the heroes and the villians of the piece, but when one of your main characters has a thing for cutting off people’s faces and wearing them, such lines are less likely to be blurry and much more likely to simply denote the people in the movie we despise from the people we simply dislike.

I only saw the first half, up until the point where the audience is supposed to start relating to the murderous trio and while I’m told the finale is kind of touching, I don’t think I’ll be missing out by not going back for the rest of it.

Rob Zombie did succeed though, in making the grade of movie he wanted. This is one reason the half watched The Devil’s Rejects earns a B from me.

And finally…

I caught about fifteen minutes of Never Cry Werewolf on the Sci-Fi channel one night. It was enough to make me convinced that whoever green-lit a remake of Fright Night with Kevin Sorbo as the most notable actor and a werewolf instead of a vampire as the villian might not have been completely in the wrong, but whoever then let them take this concept and make a poorly acted, poorly shot and poorly scripted monster movie afterwords should be tied up with leg warmers and pelted with Rubik’s cubes for assaulting one of my teenage favorites.

Never Cry Werewolf gets a D from me, not sinking any lower because I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt that the majority of the movie that I didn’t see contains something of redeeming value.

Any of these you think would have gotten a better rating if I’d watched the whole thing? Feel free to comment below.

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