Short Reviews for Dec. 6, 2010: French and Cheese

La Rose de Fer (1973) - 3/4

Iron, fog, and stone
Are met with perky nipples
Amidst skulls and bone.

Ils (2006) - 2.5/4

A film so economical couldn't begin in kindergarten for nothing.
So I guessed correctly.
Still, the suspense of the picture is undeniable.
I had to suspend my belief three, four, five times!
Still, the terror of the picture is undeniable.
How Strangers took a page or two from this book!
Oh, but found a prettier deathtrap.
Tis only in Romania floors and walls are the same colour.

I could watch her in her panties all day.

House of Wax (2005) - 3/4

Remake: Firstly, to call House of Wax a remake is tantamount to libel. Against whom, the original House of Wax (1953) or the present House of Wax, I couldn't say. The only thread they share in common is a murderous wax artist. Where The Thing (1982) and Thing from Another World (1951) share the arctic setting as well as the alien invader, House of Wax has nothing but the wax museum in common with its predecessors House of Wax (1953) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933).

Ambition: Both Mystery of the Wax Museum and House of Wax were technologically ambitious films. Mystery of the Wax Museum is perhaps the earliest feature-length colour horror film. And House of Wax was famous for its 3D. (The paddle-ball guy is infamous.) There is no technological innovation in House of Wax (2005). But the art direction is surprisingly ambitious and fulfills those ambitions handily. The film is arguably even more ambitious than its predecessor, insofar as it makes not just people out of wax but entire buildings. It really is impressive.



Narrative: The narrative is needless to say a Dead Youngster Movie. A group of young people are offed by the maniacs for no good reason other than "They're maniacs!" By making the youngsters slightly older, around 25, the film has a certain emotional maturity not too often found in such films. Moreover, the body count isn't high. Still, despite the paucity of characters, several are sidelined and entirely undeveloped.

Subtexts: Unlike many films of this sort, the girl and her boyfriend aren't the protagonists, but a girl and her brother. This is predictable to some extent, as the film's major inter-character conflict is between them. Any horror film that tries to give itself a little depth a la Screenwriting 101 does this: a personal conflict amongst the characters to parallel the more pressing conflict with the villains. You see it used clumsily in Vacancy (2007), The Strangers (2008), and many, many other run-of-the-mill screenplays. And this is indeed a run-of-the-mill screenplay. For some reason the serial killers are separated siamese twins. An homage to de Palma? I'm not sure what's going on there. Blood is thicker than goopy, hot wax? I dunno.

Scares: Scares come from vulnerability. If a character stands in front of a dark window, we automatically grow tense, because she's vulnerable. The tension reaches its peak and simultaneously dies--like a supernova--when the attack is launched. Jump scares are consequently the weakest of scares because they begin, peak, and die all in one fell swoop. House of Wax uses NO jumpscares. Instead they use this other trick: You think a protagonist is hiding somewhere, the maniac goes to check that spot, and while the POV is with the maniac, the protagonist has slipped away out of frame. So we expect to see her get caught, the tension mounts, mounts, mounts and BOOM--she's not there! Tension is relieved without peaking, but it's still effective.

So that's House of Wax (2005). It's entertaining, inventive, and capable enough to never become annoying.

Unrated: The Movie (2009) - 1.5/4

There are these bimbo actress babes walkin' through the woods, right, and they're not wearing woods-walkin' clothes 'cause they're stupid bimbos. And there's this Eastern European-lookin' dude with a camcorder and he keeps sayin' "Action!" but there's no script--kinda like this movie--and he falls down a lot, which is funny, 'cause there's comedy sound effects like BOING.

And they get to the house and they're all like, "Sheeeat, this house stank," 'cause it's just a dirty cabin in the woods and the establishing shot was made in photoshop. So the bimbos are yellin' at the dude and then at each other, sayin' like, 'Old bitch!' and 'Piss bitch!'--taxing all their creativity. So one bimbo leaves. And the dude just whacks off to pictures of the director.

And sometimes they try to say stuff in like a conversation, but nobody knows how to make a conversation, so they're just kinda sayin' stuff in the general space of each other and nothing's really reachin' anyone and they keep repeating the same things over and over and it's really frustrating for everyone involved, including me.

Then SATAN shows up, and he's a chick with beams of light coming from her nose! Whoah! And she has this spider and a little screaming worm thing, but he feeds the worm to the spider 'cause, I dunno, the spider's gotta eat. Then BOOM! lightning dislodges a book. And they've never seen a book before, but they're thinkin' it's cool. But it's not. It's bad. And the chick who left suddenly appears in a reaction shot, which is also not cool. It's bad.

And the monsters start comin' out of the book. And there's like this melty latex guy and he's all like BLARGH! and this fat zombie guy and this other guy named Karl who sings a song in broken English about 'desaster' and this chick with huge, fake tits and she does a little dance on TV and never stops rubbing her funbags 'cause it's probably cold.

So they neuter the dude. And the chicks are all like, "This is too much, we don't even have our own trailers!" so they start kicking the monsters. And uh the monsters don't like that too much so they rip the bimbos up, even the old lesbian one. And the chick who was supposed to have left, well, she hasn't heard anything, 'cause she had water on her face. Then her face just melts, I dunno why.

But there's this other bimbo who has like some character development goin' on 'cause her parents were murdered and she even gets a dream sequence during the murders and doesn't wake up 'cause the 12-foot cabin is just so big who can keep track? Finally she gets up and the monsters are all there, but fortunately so are the machine guns that were never in the movie before and she's like shootin' them BANG BANG BANG and suddenly she's in a g-string and she keeps shootin' 'em and there's this song about rainbows and unicorns and then she machetes them and then she shoots them summore. THEN she calls them cocksuckers and that sends them to the pits of hell and stuff 'cause they're homophobes. Then she starts posin' for the camera with her machete and gun and g-string, which is kinda hot but kinda stupid--just like the rest of the movie. And then it ends, 'cause the experience taught her she doesn't have to feel guilty about her parents' deaths anymore.

This is a really stupid movie that's half-way Lucio Fulci film (audience-pleasing gore-fest) and half-way Chris Seaver film (a collection of in-jokes to amuse the filmmakers--and only the filmmakers). Sadly, the flavour of Seaver overwhelms the delicate Fulci undertones, making this a rather unappealing dish, despite the tasty garnish of tits and lesbians. I think all the dialogue that goes nowhere, token character development, and narrative chaos is intended as some sort of parody of bad horror filmmaking. And y'know, it kinda works. And just as a parody of film noir is itself a film noir, this is a pretty good instance of bad filmmaking. Unrated: The Movie is the cinematic equivalent of an idiot savant. Make of that what you will.

Nekkid: 3/4
Gore: 3.5/4
Comedy sound effects: 18
Humour: 3.5/4