Day of the Dead (USA, 2008)

Dare we out ourselves as not being a big fan of George Romero's original Day of the Dead (trailer) from 1985? We saw it when it first came out and while there were aspects of it we liked, we found it a bit of a dirge that ran in circles and got lost in its desire for eye-popping gore scenes. Gore for the sake of gore is all fine and dandy in its own way – the Italians are particularly good at it, as we all know – but somehow, in Day of the Dead, Romero lost his message and the film lost its rhythm in the visceral excesses of the special effects and the flaws of the screenplay.

Steve Minor's 2008 straight-to-DVD "remake," if that is what you can even call this flick, is at least much truer to its purpose of existence than the original film was to its own. And what is its purpose of Minor's film? Well, to ride the coattails of the excellent 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead (trailer) and bring in some more bucks. The intentions are apparent in many ways, but probably most obviously in the cheap-trick casting of Ving Rhames (who played one of the last survivors in DotD) in a relatively small part that has nothing to do with his character in the 2004 film; Rhames disappears as quickly as, say, Joseph Cotton did in his later rent-paying films made in Italy (of which Lady Frankenstein [1971] is a good example). For all intents and purposes, Rhames is basically the "name star" that Rodriguez parodies in his much better horror film Planet Terror (2007 / trailer) with Bruce Willis, only in Day of the Dead Rhames actually sometimes appears in the same frame as the film's main characters.

In all truth, the 2008 version of Day of the Dead is so different from the 1985 original that we find it difficult to call it a remake. Hell, this "Day" doesn't even follow the "Dawn" that came after the "Night" but, going by the plot development, is an independent story. Sure, there are undead and military and a long stretch set in an underground base and even a "good" zombie named Bud – though in the original film, the "good" zombie was actually named Bub – but the plot and events and everything in-between and related is so different that this version, if anything, should at most be called a reinterpretation or simply "a new film inspired by" for, like 2007's House of Wax (trailer) or 2002's Ghost Ship (trailer) or even 2009's Friday the 13th (trailer), the film may perhaps bear the same name as its source and maybe includes one or two nods to the original story, but everything that happens within the film is totally new or different than the original. (The hockey-masked killer Jason, you might remember, was not even in the original Friday the 13th [1980 / trailer], while virtually nothing of the original House of Wax [1953 / trailer] – itself a remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum [1953 / trailer] – reappeared in the 2007 "remake"; 2002's Ghost Ship, in turn, had virtually nothing to do with the 1980 cheapie Death Ship [trailer] and even less to do with the other "haunted ship" films to carry the same moniker, namely the 1943 Val Lewton production [full film] and the 1952 British cheapie [scene] directed by Vernon Sewell.)

Perhaps it seems like we are digressing, but the above is only even mentioned so as to point out that in the end, Steve Minor's Day of the Dead should be approached not as a remake  – or, perhaps, even as a reimaging – but rather simply as a zombie film that happens to carry a familiar name. (Anything for an extra buck, as they say.) And as such, is it any good? Well, like most modern-day zombie flicks it dumps true terror and horror and rubber prosthetics and ketchup and the uncomfortable feeling of unavoidable Armageddon innate to many of the old school gore film for CGI-heavy action and laughable, over-the-top violence (a good example of both being a zombie that jumps up onto and then scrambles across the ceiling at the hospital). Minor's Day of the Dead is populated with fast zombies and sudden virus-influenced conversions that may supply a few nice jumps and a lot of nihilistic laughs, but the flick does not really include any effective suspense and also totally requires you to check your brain in at the door and not ask too many questions. So, yes, it is fast and furious and fun, but it is anything other than intelligent – but then, intelligence is not something usually found in the contemporary zombie flick.

As mentioned before, Ving Rhames gets star-billing in a role so unimportant that anyone could've played it (he probably took the job so as to buy a new car or something), but it is co-star Mena Suvari (of The Rage: Carrie 2 [1999 / trailer]), she with the biggest butt in Hollywood after J.Lo, who is the true star of the film. And she, like everyone else in the cast, does well enough in a film that really only calls for most of its main actors to be good looking and likable or good looking and dislikable.

Day of the Dead does keep the concept introduced in Romero's original that zombies retain a certain level of their former selves – veggies stay veggies, moms sorta stay moms, military zombies can still shoot even if they can't aim – but the idea is not presented consistently and comes across a half-baked. (Then again, maybe one's aversion to meat is greater than a mother's love.) The film quickly moves from the quick conversion (into zombies) of the whole town of Leadville, CO, to the attempts of the final survivors – which, aside from Suvari (as Corp. Sarah Bowman), also includes her onscreen bro Trevor (Michael Welch of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane [2006 / trailer] and An American Crime [2007 / trailer]), his squeeze Nina (AnnaLynne McCord of Sirens of the Caribbean [2007 / trailer] and The Haunting of Molly Hartley [2008 / trailer]) and the mandatory wise-cracking Afro-American Salazar (Nick Cannon of The Killing Room [2009 / trailer]) – to kill all zombies and escape alive. Luckily for them, by the time of the final showdown in the underground bunker – a location also taken from the original film – the number of zombies has substantially if mysteriously reduced itself from that of an entire town.

Whatever. As we said before, Day of the Dead isn't intelligent but for that it is fast and fun. The CGI sometimes looks remarkably fake, but often it looks real enough to work. A lot of people die and some of the people you like – only the white ones, oddly enough – survive, and there's an ending that promises the option of a sequel that will probably never come. Day of the Dead is a by-the-numbers zombie flick that never tries to transcend its mercantile aim of making some dough by offering undemanding entertainment full of CGI blood and guts and laughs within a simple storyline.

Oh, yes, we forgot to mention that we caught the film in 3-D. If Day of the Dead was originally shot in 3-D, then Minor, despite his adroitly professional direction in general, has either no concept of or no interest in the technology, for the film never once seemed to consciously take advantage of the 3-D technology (in comparison to, for example, the 3-D version of My Bloody Valentine [2009 / trailer], which worked with the technology and included such visual treats as flying pickaxes and jawbones). Indeed, we tend to think that the film was converted into 3-D afterwards simply to take advantage of yet another possible drawing card to make a few more bucks.

Still, even as an obvious attempt to make money without offering any noticeable artistic or intellectual pretenses, Day of the Dead nevertheless makes for fun viewing. True, it is hardly an under-appreciated or yet-to-be-discovered masterpiece, but taken as simple entertainment professionally made, it does remain engaging and mildly enjoyable – which isn't exactly the case with many a film that try to offer a lot more but fail to even be diverting. (Land of the Dead [2005 / trailer], anyone?)

Mutant Aliens (USA, 2001)

"Goodnight, and God peed."

Earl Jensen (Dan McComas)

Now here's one for the kids! And you'll enjoy it, too. Of course, maybe the kids shouldn't be too young, as otherwise you might be forced to offers some sudden sex-ed lessons, not to mention deal with a few weeks of nightmares dealing with man-killing aliens and dismembered flying body parts, among other things.

Bill Plympton has long been a favorite of fans of obscure and bizarre animation. We first noticed him years ago in the late 80s when MTV still had [some] balls and was worth watching on occasion; his shorts would occasionally pop up between the rotating music videos – and they were usually a well-appreciated respite from the limited and repetitive playlist programming. In 1992, he finally went the full monty and produced his first full-length animation film, The Tune (1992 / trailer), and since then he has regularly dumped one weirdly wonderful full-length film upon the public after another – most of which few people we know have ever seen. Their loss – and yours, too, if you haven't seen any of them yet.

Mutant Aliens, it should be noted, is hardly as sweet as The Tune. In fact, Mutant Aliens is often downright mean, despite its almost pleasantly Impressionistic drawing style and the overall accessibility of its visual appearance. The trailer above reveals the basic premise of the film: Astronaut Earl Jenson is left to die in space when an engineered "accident" leaves him marooned without the fuel to get back. Twenty years later, however, he returns to earth bent on revenging himself against Dr Frubar (George Casden), the man who basically left him to die. With the help of his now-adult daughter Josie (Francine Lobis), her sex-stupid boyfriend Darby (Matthew Brown), and a yitload of mutant aliens, Jenson begins to cut a swath across the countryside.

The film is heavy with sex and violence, and takes both consumerism and commercialism to task without ever questioning the moral validity of the actions of the film's main protagonists: basically, everyone who gets cut down in the friendly fire of the Earl Jenson's quest for revenge deserves it simply because, well, to paraphrase a statement we once read in a White Supremacist booklet we found at our high school (Mission Bay High) in San Diego, "If you aren't with him, then you're against him." But what the fuck, it is fun and funny to watch everyone die – as it is to watch Josie and Darby bonk in a car or at a computer input counter, Earl bonk a nose with breasts, alien noses wage war with flying eyes and fingers, body parts fly and Jesus drag race... 

Mutant Aliens is hardly an overtly intelligent film or in any way intellectual, but it is childish and puerile and quick-moving and tasteless and well drawn and surreally funny and colorful and sublimely outrageous. All in all, it is a lot more fun than the average Disney animation film of the last ten years although, in truth, hardly as scatological or excessive or taboo-breaking as the average Drawn Together episode. Still, Mutant Alien's rude and silly and enjoyable enough to fill the air with laughter and the make the time fly – give the film a chance; you'll probably like it. We sure did.

Decoys (Canada, 2004)

 

Trailer provided by Video Detective

"With you it's all about cameras, conspiracies and ass-kicking aliens from hooter planet."

Roger (Elias Toufexis)

Decoys is a true rarity: a Canadian film actually set in Canada. We didn't know they still made them after Cronenberg left for Hollywood.

Dr. Gore gets it right with his nutshell description of this entertaining piece of fluff: "Hot alien blondes seduce morons." OK, he fails to mention that they kill the morons as well, which in theory should make them evil aliens, but be what it may, we couldn't help but think that the aliens were doing the world a favor. Had they not been blondes, we probably would have hated this film for not letting them get away with it in the end...

Written by Tom Berry (the director of the non-classic Amityville Curse [1990 / trailer], the fifth of an inexplicably undying series of bad films) and Matt Hastings, the latter who also directed, Decoys is more entertaining than it is good, and more fun and funny than horrific or scary. In fact, other than for the opening, in which a less-than-bright dude walks into a room of frozen dead, the film isn't scary at all – though it does have, between all the funny stuff, a few truly ick-scenes, the best being the birth of baby aliens out of the mouth of one of the longer-lasting dudes.

There are many a film out there with far less effective CGI effects than found in Decoys, but then, there are also tons of films out there with better acting – the fact that a minor character, a female cop and (in an unexplored subplot of the film) ex-lover of the hero dude Luke (at-the-time still mildly twinky heart throb Corey Sevier of Metamorphosis [2007 / trailer] and House of Fears [2007 / trailer]), played by ex-Baywatch babe Nicole Eggert (also found in The Haunting of Morella [1990 / trailer]), is the most convincingly played part of the movie reveals the general thespian level found in Decoys. (On the other hand, Eggert may only appear to be the best actress because she also has the least lines – her entire part was probably shot in a day.) But then, this is a sci-fi horror comedy, so great acting is not to be expected...

Within the basic setup of blonde space babes coming to earth to bonk morons to death in an attempt to give birth and regenerate their dying race, Decoys is much more entertaining, consistent and funny on purpose than the last alien impregnation film we had the displeasure of watching (1997's remake of Breeders [trailer]). Decoys also features a far more likable basic constellation of characters: the previously mentioned lead hero Luke, his virginal roommate Roger (Elias Toufexis, the second best actor of the film, of the Z-films Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep [2006 / trailer] and  Ba'al [2008 / trailer]), and their one-of-the-guys gal friend Alex (Meghan Ory of  Dark House [2009 / trailer], who's such a HOT STUFF brunette that her acting talent is immaterial). The three are freshmen students at St. John's College, where Luke, in a case of what seems initially to be fortuitous Peeping Tomism, finds out that the "hot" blondes Lilly (Stefanie von Pfetten of the infamously horrendous flick Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 [2004 / trailer] and Icarus [2010 / trailer]) and Constance (Kim Poirier of American Psycho II: All American Girl [2002 / trailer] and Dawn of the Dead [2004 / trailer]) are aliens. Of course, no one believes him – but then, he does tend to have hallucinations (i.e., a speaking corpse and a face that opens up like those of the Reapers of Blade II [2002 / trailer]). When morons start showing up frozen to death, Luke becomes the prime suspect – can he save his friends, his own neck and reveal the fuck-happy alien invaders to the world?

People long out of college might find the film's college party and sorority milieu as mildly stupid, but then, if you were an alien who wants to blend in while looking for horny morons with their brains in their dick, could you really find a better place than a university? For a film that revolves around sex, there is remarkably little nudity – in total, there is only one semi-nude scene, the topless Peeping Tom scene in which you see Constance's oddly synthetic breasts just before she and Lilly spout tentacles for the first time (they seem to have lumpy silicon in the Belt of Orion). And oddly enough, the aliens, for being smart enough to get all the way to earth, seem almost stereotypically blonde and vapid; one could assume that they are so on purpose so as not to scare away the prey – everyone knows how female brains scare the male sex and negatively affect their ability to arise to the occasion – but they are even vapidly stupid when alone amongst themselves, which gives rise to the argument that they are so naturally. The predictable shock ending can be seen a mile away, but at least it fits. God only knows why the film got an R rating, though.

That said, the various small flaws found in Decoys are hardly detrimental to the overall fun of this mildly entertaining cinematic frivolity. The film is not meant to be either intelligent or great, it is meant to be a fun way to pass the time; on that level, Decoys succeeds hands down. It goes very well with nachos, beer and a joint.

But, damn! Why didn't Alex (Meghan Ory) get nekkid?!? She's babe-a-licious!

The Killers (USA, 1946)

 

After leaving Nazi Germany for Hollywood in 1939, German émigré director Richard Siodmak made a number of interesting films ranging from above-passable horror (Son of Dracula [1943 / trailer], the third of Universal's Dracula franchise) to wonderfully campy (The Cobra Woman [1943 / trailer]) to Technicolor adventure fluff (The Crimson Pirate [1953 / trailer]), but it is for his film noir movies that he is best remembered and most honored. His first US crime drama was Fly-by-Night (1942), a relatively forgotten if entertaining programmer, but beginning with Phantom Lady (1944 / trailer), he had a productive decade during which he not only helped give film noir the style and form that defines it but also produced a number of treasured and highly praised classics. The Killers, the debut film of a young and undeniably charismatic Burt Lancaster and the second headlining (and name-making) credit of the beautiful Ava Gardner, is one such film – in 2008, in fact, it was even deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and worthy of preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress (where it joins such noteworthy [???] films as, among others, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein [1948 / trailer], Back to the Future [1985 / trailer], Boyz n the Hood [1991 / trailer] and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? [1957 / trailer]). 

The Killers is based in part on a short story of the same name by Ernest Hemingway first published in 1927 in Scribner's Magazine, and was eventually remade in 1964 by Don Siegel (the director of The Verdict [1946], amongst other films). Siegel's color version, which was originally made for TV but released theatrically after being deemed to violent, is far more flashy, crass, violent and nasty than Siodmak's version, and thus arguably the more enjoyable film of the two; Siodmak's version, however, is without the doubt the more beautiful. Siodmak's opening is also far more faithful to the original tale; the rest of both films – so to say, the search of the "Why?" – is the invention of the filmmakers and not present in Hemingway's short story. The "why" is the explanation for the inactivity of the Swede (Lancaster), who sits patiently and defeated in his room although forewarned that two hitmen are on their way to kill him, and then lets them shoot him dead without even lifting a finger to defend himself. In the Siodmak film, it is the insurance investigator Jim Riordan (Edmond O'Brien) who, for some not-well-conveyed reason, becomes driven to find out what would lead a man to let himself be killed like that.

At the risk of offending many, we really have to say that the original version of The Killers may be a fine film, but it also has a bigger reputation than it really deserves. It is a good film, yes, maybe even a great one, but there are better film noirs driven by crazed babes out there – off the top of the hat we promptly think of Gun Crazy (1950 / robbery scene) or Out of the Past (1947), or even the bargain-basement-budgeted Detour (1945 / full fabulous film).

The cinematography, for example, is perfectly functional, but with the exception of the first ten minutes its visual verve and use of the shades of B&W or depth and shadow or stark contrast or disquieting angles and framing never reaches the same memorable levels as, say, Phantom Lady or the unjustly unknown noir I Wake Up Screaming (1942 / trailer) or even Kansas City Confidential (1952 / full film). (That said, the continuous crane shot used for the robbery is breathtaking, even if the voiceover doesn't correspond 100% to how the cop grabs his injury before he falls.) In regard to the core casting, both Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster are total fuckables and literally drip charisma and allure and well convey both the besotted man and the conniving femme fatale, but Edmond O'Brien, who literally has most of the film on his shoulders, never truly conveys the hardness of a tough-guy investigator nor does one ever really understand why he is so obstinate about staying on the case. (For that, however, it is interesting to see a young and relatively slim Edmond O'Brien for a change – indeed, we here at A Wasted Life never even knew that he had ever even been slim; by the time the original and great D.O.A. [1950 / full film] came around, he was already had what you might call an easy-chair figure.) 

The supporting cast is just as well cast as the three leads and the acting equally as good, but the makeup is sometimes laughable (the old-age makeup of Vince Barnett [as Charleston, the Swede's jail mate and pal] is laughably atrocious) and the script is a bit of a mess. That a film based upon the past leading up to a man's taciturn acceptance of death might not be able to get around flashback after flashback after flashback is clear, but the deathbed flashbacks of the delirious Blinky (Jeff Corey) are nevertheless an obvious and ridiculously desperate attempt to keep the story rolling no matter what. Even embedded between the hardboiled dialog of those commenting about his eminent demise, the scene still instigates a snort or two.

But perhaps the true measuring stick that should be used for The Killers is that despite such flaws, the film remains enthralling and enjoyable, and keeps the viewer involved up until the its ending, one that is as bleakly just as the Swede's death is initially mysterious.