Willard (USA, 2003)

(Trailer) This movie made me think of my childhood. Not that my only friends were rats (though many of them came close to it), but at the tender age of 9 when the original Willard came out in 1971, I was forbidden to see it. But a year later in 1972 when its sequel, Ben, came out, my 2-year-older sister somehow convinced my mother that this time around she should take us to see the new film. (I think the fact that Michael Jackson's saccharine love song Ben, which was being played non-stop on the radio, may have been of help here.) So, one rainy evening we hopped into our 1967 Rambler and drove across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge from Alexandria, VA, to someplace called Anacostia and caught the movie, a fuzzy warm flick about a health-impaired child who befriends an intelligent rat. I remember liking it, but what I remember more is that we three were the only white folks in the entire movie theatre. It didn’t bother me much, but my mother didn’t really seem too relaxed; after the same thing happened again two years later when my sister convinced my mom to go take us to see Claudine (1974) (Trailer), my mom said it was the last time she would let my sister pick the theater. Not that that mattered much, ‘cause by then my sister had entered the age when she no longer wanted to go to any movie with the family. As for me, I had entered the age where I would sneak off for the flicks I wanted to see ‘cause I knew my mom would never let them see them if I asked. (As a result, I was twice more the only whitey in a black theater: once for Abby (1974) (Trailer) and, four years later, for Dawn of the Dead (1978) (US trailer or British trailer) – you should have seen the popcorn fly and heard the loud “boos” during the scene in Dawn when Peter (Ken Foree), the Afro-American character, plays waiter for the white couple during their "romantic" meal.) So, what does all the above reminiscing have to do with the 2003 remake of Willard? Not much, really, except that director Glen Morgen's remake of Willard – or, to be exact, Crispin Glover's cover version of the song Ben (done for the Willard) – simply brought up a memory that I thought I would share with you.
But now, time to get to the movie itself.
While not exactly bad, Willard is far from something to jump up and down and write home to momma about. In fact, in all truth, the music video on the DVD to Crispin Glover’s version of Ben, the all-time classic love song to a rat and theme song to the same-named film from 1972, is actually far more creative and interesting than the film itself (although it, too, would probably get a bit tedious if it were as long as the actual movie). For all the good points of the flick – a great Crispin Glover, loads of cute & cuddly rats, some nicely black and/or ironic humor, good editing, nice CGI – it suffers an odd feeling of under-development and seems greatly hampered by its PG-13 rating. And, although nominally a modernized “nature’s revenge” film, Willard is far less a horror film than a film about a very confused and pitiful loser – made both believable and likeable by Glover – that finally snaps. Still, the new Willard really adds nothing new to the old Willard; it is not some reinterpretation (like Ghost Ship (2002, Trailer), House on Haunted Hill (1999, Trailer) or House of Wax (2005, Trailer) – all of which, whether you found them good or not at least tried to be their own film), but is actually a straight-out remake... and, in adding little other than modern technology, Glover’s performance and a few cosmetic changes to the story, it seems almost totally unnecessary. The final scene is also a nod to that of Psycho (1960), but the reference – like the film itself – seems less clever or creative than superfluous. It is so obvious that Willard could have been so much more than it is that if the viewer puts on their thinking cap instead of turning off their brain, the viewer might get aggravated. (The painting of Willard’s father hanging in his house, by the way, is a painting of the actor Bruce Davison; his last memorable role was that of the asshole senator that turns to water in X-men (2000), but he also played the title role in the original version of Willard.)
Willard is fine fodder for a rainy Sunday afternoon, and is so lacking in blood and guts and anything all that disgusting that you could probably even watch it with your kids. And, if you’ve never seen the original Willard (like me, thanks to my Mom, may she rest in peace), then you’ll probably find the film more than mildly interesting (like I sorta did). Still, while the young and impressionable might still get a nightmare from the movie, no one else will. (Another memory of the Dawn of the Dead screening: The people came to the late-night screening with their kids and babies and were left in – to an NC-17 film, no less!)
One can only hope that director Glen Morgen's next film, the remake of Black Christmas (2006, Trailer), offers a little more creativity and vision then this film does.

Kansas City Confidential (USA, 1952)

At the beginning of the 1950’s, Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, two newspaper columnists, wrote a series of well selling pulp "non-fiction" books printed by cheapie-publishers Dell entitled, among others, Chicago Confidential, Washington Confidential and New York Confidential. These now hard to find, badly dated but entertainingly camp exposés supposedly gave "the low down on the big town(s)," naming the names and telling the facts about all that was illegal, half legal or simply questionable in taste. Kansas City Confidential, a pleasant little B-film from United Artists filmed in 1952, obviously hoped to milk some name recognition from the successful paperbacks, even if the "non-fiction" books and the fiction film had very little in common. In fact, Kansas City Confidential even has relatively little to do with Kansas City, and is not an exposé of any sort. After the quick moving first 15 minutes of the film set up the basic "wrong man framed for the crime," the entire action moves from the mid-western city to Mexico—or at least a Californian location meant to look like Mexico.
The story concerns an ex-military man with a slight criminal past who, working as a driver for a flower delivery van, almost inadvertently gets framed as the patsy for a "perfect" robbery of a bank, a well timed piece of planning executed by a group of four masked men of which only one, the leader, knows who everyone is and how they look like. The cops try to beat a confession out of our hero (no talk about Miranda Rights here), but are forced against their will to release him when certain evidence points towards his possible innocence. Out of work and unemployable due to his infamy, he sets out to find out who set him up. Following a slim lead down to Mexico, he ends up taking over the identity of one of the hoods, Pete Harris (Jack Elan), when the latter gets shot to death by some police. Making his way to the fishing resort where the criminals are to meet for the divvying up of the bank loot, his arrival sets off a series of events that culminate in a big showdown in which all the bad guys die, his name gets cleared and he gets the girl.
Featuring forgotten B-movie stalwart John Payne in the lead role, this prime example of low budget film noir also showcases nice, early performances by a beady-eyed Jack Elam and a smooth, slimy Lee van Cleef as two of the bad guys. In general, the acting in Kansas City Confidential is a tad above most similar B-films, if only because the various actors seem to be cast by type, as well as ability. The only weak link in the chain of thespians is Coleen Gray as the blond, law student love interest (and daughter of Mr. X, the Big Baddy of the film), but even if she seems a bit out of place, she does meet the ideal of the time and is pleasant to look at. (Vincent Price fans will get a kick out of his performance as a playboy nice guy.)
The direction is deftly handled by yet another forgotten B-movie stalwart Phil Karlston, who manages to keep the action moving and the visuals interesting – his composition of the picture frame is often excellent – thereby injecting some good tension into what sometimes seems, were it not for a few unexpected and interesting twists, like an old and creaking story. One of the better tricks Karlston uses, aside from some competent camera work and for its time unflinching violence, is to keep the viewer unsure about whether Payne, once he manages to track down those responsible for his situation, is really simply trying to save his name or is rather actually trying to hone in on a share of the loot. In the best tradition of Film Noir, good guy/bad guy gets mixed together ambiguously until the end. Kansas City Confidential may not be an acknowledged classic of its type, but it is definitely a good example of how, when handled well, all the little pieces add up to make a pretty satisfying whole. It is a film worth watching, and not just by fans of Film Noir.

Creepozoids (USA, 1987 Trailer)

(Trailer) Creepozoids, one of famed director David DeCoteau’s earliest directorial efforts, is without a doubt also one of his best films – but anyone who is familiar with his work also knows that that doesn’t mean much. Creepozoids is a hilariously lame blast from the past, a high-point of low-budget,1980s filmic ineptitude with a typical vomitorious synth score, bad hair and lousy clothes, a mostly talentless (or at least extremely inexperienced) cast, laughable special effects and hilarious story development. But, for all its innate and obvious flaws, Creepozoids is miles above and far more enjoyable than so many of DeCoteau’s later and more technically proficient (but miserable) cinematic forays such as Blonde Heaven (1995) or Retro Puppet Master (1999). Hell, if he made more films this hilariously bad, he would have a much better name as a director.
Like so many films of the time, Creepozoids is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story; and, like so many films of its time, it is written by the number and is far more badly made than it is creative or interesting. But if you like gratuitous naked shower scenes (Yeah!), rubber-suit monsters (Yeah!), gory ooze (Yeah!), plastic killer mutant babies (Yeah!) and a body count of brainless victims (Yeah!) – and have absolutely no creative or intellectual demands or any expectation of obvious directorial or acting talent – then this piece of low-grade fluff might be your thing.
As is also typical of so many of the post- apocalyptic flicks of the 80s, Creepozoids is set in the “near future”: 1998, a few years after the world has been reduced to rubble by World War III. After a brief opening of some fat chick (Joi Wilson – who should have shot her hairstylist) in an almost empty lab room who responds to the noise outside the door by asking “anybody there” before finally opening the door and (as to be expected) deservedly dying, the remaining five cast begin earning their drug money. Five young military deserters – decked out in hip clothing that just arrived from the Laundromat – are on their way somewhere when they are forced to seek shelter from acid rain in an abandoned governmental research facility – a facility which seems to consist of only two hallways, two rooms and a shower. People wander around, paper-mâché heads falls out from somewhere, a rubber monster attacks a couple of times, there is the mandatory nude shower (featuring “scream queen” Linnea Quigley, who looks fucking ugly in the flick but has a great body) and a lot of ooze and gore as the characters die one by one. Oddly enough, although Bianca (Linnea Quigley) gets to show her bouncing boobs, the film’s other main female character Kate does not, despite the fact that the actress Kim McKamy (recently seen in Willard (2003) as a bitchy office co-worker) is by far the more attractive of the two girls. (Since Creepozoids, Kim McKamy has regularly shown more on video: as Ashlyn Gere she struts her stuff and has demonstrates certain talents in such films as Club Head (1990), Lethal Squirt (1991), Ashlyn Rising (1995), Cock Smokers 12 (1999) and Sunset Stripped (2002), to name but a few of dozens of hand-helpers that she has graced. In the censored photo included here, she is enjoying the salami of the famed (and hung) Italian stud Rocco Siffredi.) Regrettably, in Creepozoids, instead of shaking her boobies, Kate gets to shake an oversized mutant rat in a scene that most strongly brings to mind the famous segment in Ed Wood’s masterful Bride of the Monster (1955) in which Bela Lugosi fights an un-moving monster by twisting the creature’s tentacle around himself.
As mentioned before, we see Linnea's tits and people die and mutate and ooze, but a true highlight of the flick has to be the mutant plastic baby that crawls from the rubber-suit monster’s innards after the latter is finally killed by Butch (Ken Abraham – say, are we related, dude?). The mutant baby's appearance enables DeCoteau to stretch the film’s running time, and it is luckily also good for a few laughs.
And that actually, is all that the entire film is good for: a few laughs. (But then, few DeCoteau productions are normally even good for that.) Don’t expect anything more and you might enjoy the flick for what it is: vintage badly made trash.

Sars Wars/Khun krabii hiiroh (Thailand, 2004)

The Thai film industry is one of continual surprises. And Sars War is without a doubt one fucking great surprise! In what seems to be his first film, scriptwriter and director Taweewat Wantha decided to not only do a Thai take on the current zombie film resurgence, but to take the piss out of it (and everything else) as well. The result is a hilariously surreal and bloody comedy that (according to one Internet source) has a total body count of 110 people. But there is more to the film than just a body count and blood: Taweewat Wantha's humor swings back and forth and up and down and all over the place with such wild abandon that before one knows what’s happening, one begins laughing at even the stupidest joke. Indeed, the level of the humor often makes one think that the film was probably actually scripted by a room full of zombie-obsessed 13-year-old pubescent boys high on too much Thai and getting off on old sex ed books – but then, considering the supposed topic of Taweewat Wantha's second film, Asujaak/The Sperm (2007), perhaps the good man did indeed write Sars War by himself. (According to IMDB, The Sperm is about a rock musician who jerks off too much and whose flying sperm impregnates local women who in turn give birth to an army of little jerking clones that die when they have orgasm; things get complicated when an alien accidently turns one little creature into a giant...)
Taweewat Wantha is obviously a film junky, too, for the film liberally quotes dozens and dozens of films ranging from Star Wars series (the title and a sword) to Kill Bill (the occasional use of animation) to Demons 2 (the location) to Anaconda (the tertiary monster, a mutant zombie snake) and any dozen other films and/or genres. For that, the film remains a truly unique and enjoyable viewing experience for any and all people who can laugh at zombie babies on the rampage or hot Thai babes who turn out to be ugly, mustachioed transvestites. Hell, just watch the trailer or this funky video of a Thai industrial rap song sung by the main lead and hero of the film – if you don't find them to be the bee’s knees, go rent a copy of The Wizard of Oz.
The opening credit sequence is a bloody and violent animation short of heroes on motorcycles slashing their way through zombie hoards, which is followed by a brief scene of a decimated African landscape during which the new, deadly strain of the SARS virus is explained. An almost Jan-Svankmajer-inspired scene using postcards explains how a SARS infected cockroach makes its way to Thailand where it bites a bald-headed guy (in the deleted scenes one finds out that he is a doctor working on a cure for the virus) who manages to make it back to his high-rise before he goes zomboid. In the very same building a bunch of low-level gangsters are holding a kidnapped virginal babe in a school uniform named Liu (Phintusuda Tunphairao) for ransom; her father sends in the young virginal swordsman Khun Krabii (Supakorn Kitsuwon – the guy doing the industrial rap song; also found in the Thai cult fave Tears of the Black Tiger) to save her. But when the epidemic breaks out and everyone in the building turns into flesh-eating zombies – and turns one pet snake into a mutant snake monster – Master Thep (Suthep Po-ngam) decides to come to the aid of his younger superhero protégé. He's unexpectedly aided by Dr. Diana ("Lene Christensen" – the same babe found in the Ed Woodian Thai horror film Devil Species/Phantugram ammahit (2004)) who is on hand to try out her new (but ineffectual) SARS vaccination. But time is running out: To prevent the spread of the virus, the government plans to bomb the building flat.The plot is an excuse for a non-stop barrage of inane, almost post-modern jokes – at one point Master Thun even says something like: "zombies, a bomb, and now a giant snake! Boy, the producers really want to make money with this movie!" – about anything and everything, jokes that oddly enough even manage to meld well with the blood and guts and horror elements of the film. But for all the blood spilled and munching zombie hordes in Sars Wars, the flick is first and foremost an exercise of in hilarity and bad taste and is best enjoyed as such. Since Taweewat Wantha keeps his movie moving faster than a Porsche on the German autobahn, some logic and coherency does fly out the window, but neither are actually missed. (Love that noodles joke – one of the more truly disturbing and weird jokes ever caught on film.)
If a fast-moving film overflowing with exuberant inanity, pubescent surreal humor, hot babes and tons of blood sounds like your cup of tea, then you can't go wrong with Sars Wars.