The Pearce Sisters is a bleak oddity produced by Aardman Animations, a filmmaking studio better known for its whimsically entertaining stop-motion Wallace & Gromit or Shawn the Sheep series than unsettlingly funny animations like this one. The short is based on a tale by Mick Jackson that the director Luis Cook found in Jackson's book of short stories entitled Ten Sorry Tales. Animated using a mixture of computer drawn 3-D and hand drawn 2-D animation, the film looks anything but high tech—as Luis Cook himself has said, "The film itself [looks as if it] could've been washed up by the sea." Cook has been at Aardman since 1992 doing commercials and promos and stuff, but this is his first short film. An eye-opening and disquieting blast of visual creativity, it is hardly surprising that The Pearce Sisters was chosen as the Best Short Animation at the 2008 BAFTA Awards or that it has won a yitload of other awards at festivals around the world. The beautiful but disturbingly ugly short—a masterful, violent rumination upon love and loneliness liberally peppered with innards, dead fish, gore and nudity—may definitely not be everybody's cup of tea, but here at A Wasted Life we see it as perfectly brewed and served. Virtually circular in its narration, the short narrates a day in the life of Lol and Edna Pearce, two ugly old sisters that live a lonely and miserably hard life on a remote, windy and rain-raked coastal beach where they survive by catching and smoking fish.
Love him or hate him, Rob Zombie is truly a trailer park Renaissance Man: from music to writing to graphic arts to film, he seems to put his greasy fingers into any warm pie that will let him. And now, after four live action horror films—Halloween II (2009 / trailer), Halloween (2007 / trailer), The Devil's Rejects (2005 / trailer) and House of 1000 Corpses (2003 / trailer)—that share a penchant for ingenious visual overdosing but vary greatly in narrative quality and overall effect, Zombie has chosen to wiggle his fingers within the fecund genre of animation. To do so, he has returned to his graphic novel The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (published by Image Comics in 2007) to create a film of the same name. And what a film it is! With The Haunted World of El Superbeasto Zombie has made the perfect animated film for the pimply, hormone-crazed 15-year-old horror fan still alive within all grown men. A rollercoaster of violence, T&A, and clichéd and inspired dialog, one-liners and visual jokes and references, the story of The Haunted World of El Superbeasto is less linear than it is a gossamer strand which he uses as an excuse to toss out funny and flat jokes, tits and ass, tasteless laughs, tits and ass, blood, tits and ass, horror, tits and ass, inspired idiocy and tits and ass. Much of the plot development is abridged and compacted within the numerous musical interludes which span in style from heavy metal to country to discofied, and while none of the songs will ever get radio rotation, they are all highly entertaining ditties of degenerate taste. The "Haunted World" that is that of El Superbeasto is a netherworld populated by classic and non-classic film monsters and babes with big ta-tas drawn in a style that is more reminiscent of Saturday morning cartoons in the 70s than, say, Disney films. El Superbeasto is an obnoxious, pussy-obsessed and nylon-suited luchador (imagine a verbose Charles Burns's El Borbah with a Saturday Night Fever [1977 / trailer] wardrobe) with an overrated sense of self-importance who makes porno films by day and saves the world by night—providing he isn’t too busy chasing poontang. Rather unlike his hot blonde sister Suzi X, who is first seen on a mission to steal Hitler's head (on loan from They Saved Hitler's Brain (1963 / key scene) and who spends much of the film fighting Nazi zombies when she isn’t playing with the clutch of her of her horny robot car Murray. The stripper Velvet Von Black makes El Superbeasto’s chorizo move mightily, but before they can play patty-cake Dr. Satan has his talking ape Otto kidnap her: it seems she carries the mark of the devil on her ass, and if she and Dr. Satan unite, then Dr. Satan shall gain unlimited demonic power. Can El Superbeasto keep his mind on track long enough to stop Dr. Satan and save the world? Aside from Zombie Nazis and Hitler’s head, almost every monster or cult favorite of cinema has a cameo in the film—Zombie even manages to toss in a Benny Hill cameo, a reference so uncool that it's cool again. Indeed, the jokes and visual puns are very much of a take no prisoners mentality—obviously enough, if you throw a lot of shit around, some of it will stick eventually; luckily for Zombie, most of his shit seems to stick. More than one scene will have you shaking your head long after the film is over—the rat shitting scene or the toe-sucking scene deserve special mention in this regard. From the wonderfully traditional opening credit sequence underscored by some excellent traditional film music to the country closing number of the film, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto is as inspired as it is sophomoric, as intelligently stupid as it is tasteless and sexist, as fun and funny as it is embarrassing—and therein lies its charm, if “charm” is even what you can call it. For all its horror film trappings, the film is never intentionally (or unintentionally) scary, and focuses instead on using the vocabulary of the genre—and the vocabulary of an overly hip, 15-year-old sailor—to take the piss out of anything and everything. Simply put, if you like tits, horror and animation, you can’t go wrong with The Haunted World of El Superbeasto.
The third film of Brit Paul Anderson is an unexpected surprise. His first film Shopping (1994) was a pleasantly nihilistic trifle, predictable and almost annoying but al least visually interesting enough to make one think that maybe his next might be better. But his next was Mortal Kombat (1995 / trailer), a piece of true blue commercial crap, starring the Great God of Lousy Movies Christopher Lambert and based on a computer game, and all hope was gone—another hack and not much more. Then, unexpectedly, this film found its way into the theaters, where for some inexplicable reason it disappeared much too quickly. Dark and depressing, more a horror film than a science fiction film, its brief run belays the fact that it is actually a rather interesting, visually kinetic and at times highly effective cross genre mixture—sort of The Shining (1980 / trailer) meets Solaris (1972 / trailer) but without the pretensions, spiced a little with bits of Tron (1982 / trailer), Alien (1979 / trailer) and Hellraiser (1987 / trailer). Its obvious sources and its supposed extreme bloodiness have earned this film a lot a of derogatory ridicule, but truth be told, originality is only one aspect to rate a film—and often a questionable one, in this post-postmodern world—and, as any fan of horror, action or similar genre films can tell you, Event Horizon really isn’t extremely bloody, its just sorta bloody. In fact, it is probably realistically bloody, considering the situations of the story—rather unlike most Hollywood productions. The special effects are good enough, if not at times excellent, though many have complained that the computer animation is obviously fake. This is true, actually, but who cares? Cameron’s Titanic (1997 / trailer) had a bigger budget and didn’t do that much better. Event Horizon is a horror film in space, complete with slamming doors, haunted house—er, ship—ghosts, killer demon, body count and open ending. Either you like this type of movie or you don’t, bastá. One disadvantage this film has over most of its ilk is that it actually works better in the cinema than on the tube, if only because the varied tones of dark tend to blend or disappear on video, as does the film’s fine use of sound. Likewise, the overall claustrophobic effect in the spaceships and the incredible sense of never-ending expanse of the space scenes all suffer on the little screen. But at least the acting is excellent all around and doesn’t suffer on the small screen, everyone involved being able to quickly present and establish their characters and individual personalities amazingly quickly, equally due to being cast to type and talent. Still, fat chance this film will see a re-release or art-house run, so make do with damaged goods found at the DVD store. Know the story? Spaceship disappears, reappears years later, a rescue and salvage team is sent to find out what happened and all hell breaks loose.... but as the character Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill) says at one point, “Hell is only a word. The reality is much, much worse.” The rescue ship sent, the Lewis and Clark, is under the command of Captain Miller (Lawrence Fishburne), and with Dr. Weir, the designer of the Event Horizon in tow, they travel way out to Neptune and board the deserted, drifting ship. Of the first three who go on board, Justin (Jack Noseworthy) is the first to experience the unknown, a meeting that eventually makes him walk out an airlock and blow some guts in space (put in suspended animation, he is still one of the few that supposedly survive at the end—though, truth be told, the film ends in such a way that the viewers can decide for themselves whether there are actually any survivors or not). One explosion later and the Lewis & Clark needs some heavy duty repairs, leaving everyone stranded in the meantime on a ghost ship full of the splattered remains of its initial crew. Ain’t long before long the individual guilts, ghosts and fears of the various crew members begin to manifest themselves. It seems that the “Gravity Drive,” as special propulsion system developed by Dr. Weir that recreates a black hole so that the ship can travel by jumping dimensions—solar systems?—took the Event Horizon somewhere else than just another solar system. Not only that, but the ship brought something back, something that don’t wanna play canasta. Okay, so Peters (Kathleen Quinlan) does run around alone when she should know better, but how else can there be a body count? That Weir goes bad is believable, however, if only because the guilt he feels about the loss of his wife opens him up to the promise the entity seemingly gives him—a broken, weak person from the beginning, his possession, per say, is as logical as that of the little girl in The Exorcist (1973 / trailer). What is a bit less explainable is why Lt. Stark (Joely Richardson), Cooper (Richard T. Jones), DJ (Jason Isaacs) and Smith (Sean Pertwee) don’t seemingly have much problems with inner demons—not that it keeps the last two alive, though.Actually, like all horror films, if you want to pick the film apart, you can do so relatively easily. But in the end, the whole thing about the supernatural is that it doesn’t operate by logical or normal reasoning, so ignore the holes and enjoy the film. Event Horizon offers a pretty good ride, if you let it. (As would Cooper, one can imagine, if his offer of something hot and black were taken up.)
"People're weird. They die... they get weirder." Geoffry Hunt
Claire Holloway (Gabrielle Anwar) is a successful writer of morbid kiddy books who is plagued by nightmares. One day she sees the house of her dark dreams—the Rose Marsh Farm in Westmoreland County—on the tube and promptly rents it to stay in while working on her next book. Wow! Not only do some of the faces in town seem familiar to her, but back at the ranch she is haunted by the terrifying ghosts of a little girl and a teenage boy (Joe Dinicol of Diary of the Dead [2007 / trailer]). The local newspaper publisher Noah Pitney (Justin Louis of Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II [1987 / trailer] and Blood & Donuts [1995 / trailer]) wants to get to know her despite the fact that she sort of acts like a frigid bitch, but it's better that way cause in a by-the-number flick like this the viewer knows that he ain't as kosher as he pretends to be. Instead of snuggling up in his arms when the ghosts start a-haunting, she runs to the local parapsychologist Hunt (Forest Whitaker)—every small town has one, right?—whose business card she just happens to find under the sofa. What is her connection to the ghosts and the tragedy that happened in the house some 20 years earlier? Well, here's a hint: Claire Holloway was adopted… OK, one can understand why Gabrielle Anwar said yes to making this film. The Marsh was released a year before Burn Notice went on air in 2007 and she began earning a regular pay check as Fiona Clenanne, the anorexic-looking second-tier female. But in 2006, she was still an actress normally referred to as "that woman who did the tango with Al Pacino" in one of his worst films, Scent of a Woman (1992 / trailer), and had only headlined a few non-masterpieces such as Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal (2001 / trailer), Flying Virus (2001 / trailer) and Abel Ferrara's totally pointless remake Body Snatchers (1993 / trailer). Thus, the lead in a Canadian-shot theatrical release with a name co-star like Forest Whitaker (who worked with her already when he was less well known in Body Snatchers) must have been tempting, especially when house payments have to be made. So, Ms Anwar, we understand and forgive you for taking part in this piece of shit and hope you were at least well paid. But in regard to Forest Whitaker, man, dude, you're a fucking serious actor! What the hell are you doing in something like this? Do you have a gambling problem? Were you stoned when you read the script? Did you get free blowjobs guaranteed in your contract for the length of the shoot? Let's hope that that award you got for The Last King of Scotland (trailer)—made the same year as The Marsh—will keep you out of films like this in the future. The Marsh is a generic haunted house film that offers little new to the genre but, for that, is both twice as predictable and has twice as many holes in its story than the average television flick. Scriptwriter Michael Strokes may be a practiced hand at scripting B-movie plotlines—see the superior B-flick Exit Speed (2008 / trailer), the laughable CGI-heavy Z-flick Shadowbuilder (1998 / trailer) and the generic Mark Dacascos film Sanctuary (1997 / trailer)—but he was being particularly lazy with The Marsh. Aside from the generic and coincident-driven story, tangents are picked up and dropped or forgotten—for example, the red herring tale about the Rose tragedy 100 years earlier, whether or not the Dad (Peter MacNeill) was in on the cover-up, anything that might relate to what the teenage ghost says, anything that has to do with explaining how Claire became an orphan, why the publisher wants to cover up something that was reported in the newspaper 20 years earlier, and whoever's skeletal hands do the pulling—at the drop of a hat. And why does the little girl ghost do all the killing—after waiting 20 years, supposedly because she needed to be jump-started by Claire the Sparkplug—when it's the teenage ghost that is the evil one? And why does he want to keep her? The Marsh may be nicely shot, but any and all possibly effective scenes end up inducing anger in the viewer due to the cheap trick of ALWAYS using sudden loud noise to underline the scare. Obviously enough, those involved were trying to achieve something a bit more classy than the average direct-to-DVD haunted house flick, but mood and subtlety—two aspects integral to the best classy haunted house flicks ranging from The Haunting (1963 / trailer) to The Shining (1980 / trailer)—do not seem to be among the directorial talents of the director, Jordan Barker. If you want a decent haunted house flick, skip this turkey and either catch the two just-mentioned masterpieces or, if you prefer your films less historically burdened and more "independent", try Dark Remains (2005 / trailer)—it has ten times the scares of The Marsh at half the budget.
