Tag: horror

Creepy Creatures and Haunted Houses: An Interview with William Malone by Kent Hill

by Kent Hill, posted in Interviews

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I first became aware of the work of William Malone when I saw his movie CREATURE. For most, all they see is just some cheap imitation of Scott’s ALIEN – but there is much on offer if you give the flick more than a sideways glance. There exists the same thrilling, eerisome mood generated that marks all of his movies and which culminated in his remake of HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL.

Growing up in Lansing, Michigan and going to the same high school as NBA legend Magic Johnson, it would be music and not sport that would eventually see the young Malone make his way west to Los Angeles. But the music soon died and William found himself looking for work. He took a job at Don Post Studios doing make-up and costume duties before attending film school at UCLA.

His first film would soon follow, the cult classic SCARED TO DEATH. This was the beginning of a storied career of other great features like FEARDOTCOM and PARASOMNIA as well as work on the small screen in series like TALES FROM THE CRYPT, MASTERS OF HORROR and FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES.

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It was great talking with William about everything from directing Klaus Kinski, his non-existent role of TV’s THE INCREDIBLE HULK, having one of his scripts become a sequel to UNIVERSAL SOLDIER and the (I find it intriguing) story behind the making of the troubled SUPERNOVA, of which Francis Coppola mentioned to him that they should have stuck with Malone’s original script Dead Star.

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Aside from being the world’s foremost collector of FORBIDDEN PLANET props and paraphernalia, William Malone is a fascinating movie-maker and a delight to chat with. I trust you’ll feel the same . . .

. . . ladies and gentlemen . . . William Malone.

 

B Movie Glory: Guardian

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Guardian falls squarely into the ‘ancient relic B flick’, a well worn path in which some obscure archaeological dig unearths a crazy evil that plagues everyone and causes a monumental ruckus, or in this one’s case, a laid back low budget ruckus. The incident here happened during the Gulf war, in which special forces badass Mario Van Peebles witnessed something escape a tomb, something that’s now reared it’s head years later in inner city LA, and he’s now a detective who has to deal with it, assisted by his partner (James Remar). The beauty of making your antagonist a shapeless, invisible identity that takes over human hosts and jumps from person to person is that special effects aren’t even required and you can stay within budget restrictions (I imagine that was on Gregory Hoblit’s mind for Fallen, and he was able to save a few bucks for the wicked cast he scored) which in this film’s case is a concern that was probably paramount, this is about as scantly funded as they get. It’s scrappy, atmospheric and works well enough for something like this. Remar is underused for the first half as the classic wise-ass sidekick, until the demon jumps into him and we get to see some of that classic Remar menace take the controls from Peebles’s moody cop, he’s a guy I never saw the point in having as your leading man, the necessary amount of charisma just isn’t there. This actually makes a great Remar/Peebles double feature with another obscure horror called Blowback, in which cop Mario is hunting down crazed serial killer James. I’ll get to that one eventually. Oh yeah, Ice T has a small role as a gangbanger here too, almost forgot about him.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Intermedio

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Everyone has their career peak, and unfortunately for Edward Furlong it was right out of the gate with James Cameron’s Terminator 2. After that it was a long slow slump of B movies leading up until the present, one of which is the dingy cave set horror flick Intermedio, which is mostly trash save for a few artistic flourishes in ghost design, and a spooky villain performance from genre icon Steve Railsback. Furlong leads a hopeless troupe of American tourists who attempt to smuggle drugs back to the states through a complex underground catacomb, and fall prey to many tortured souls who have become vengeful phantasms down there. It’s dark, noisy, dimly lit and cluttered, with Railsback providing class and creep factor, but beyond that it’s not much. The obligatory scream queens are played by Cerina Vincent and Amber Benson, who have enough presence to get by alright. I did enjoy some of the ghostly special effects though, trippy apparitions that almost look like cave paintings come to life. This is nothing more than an extended X Files style gig, with a few notes that land, but mostly gets swept away in the dust. That title is neat though hey, representing an ancient word for the space between the world of the living and that of the dead. If only the film could have been that effectively mystic.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Soulkeeper

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Soulkeeper is a diamond in the rough, in the sense that it has all the trappings of a forgettable trashy B grade flick, and ends up being something way more fun and adventurous than it has any right to be. Dressed up like your average schlocky horror fling, it also carries a cheeky Indiana Jones vibe with it’s two treasure seeking bro-tagonists and all the right character actors showing up in all the right places. The two renegade brothers are after an ancient relic from the age of Simon Magus (he shows up briefly too) and all that hocus pocus, an artifact that is valuable beyond anything but also has the power to bring evil souls and demon spirits back from the underworld, which naturally causes all kinds of gory chaos for everyone later. It’s super duper fun, with evil curses bringing forth all kinds of gooey special effects, in the tradition of everyone from Joe Dante to Sam Raimi. Then there’s the eclectic genre cast: Brad Dourif does a hysterical Vincent Price pastiche as an eccentric archeologist, Robert Davi charms as the ghost of some Italian nobleman who guides our heroes here and there, Michael Ironside literally phones in a cameo a lá Charlie’s Angels as the mysterious employee of their mission, and watch for Tiny Lister as well as the late great Karen Black too. This won’t go down in history as one of the greats, but you can certainly do a lot worse in terms of this genre and budget range, it’s pure horror/fantasy/adventure escapism. Oh and if you can score a DVD somewhere it comes with a wicked cool retro cover slip with an awesome hologram 3D poster where one of the many gruesome monsters leers out at you. Cool stuff.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

There’s no excuse for films as shitty as Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne. I know he’s a notoriously slipshod filmmaker and he somehow manages to get the rights to all these awesome video games which he then butchers with kindergarten level gong shows like this, but this one is especially bad. Now, before he goes and reads this and wants to come fight me like those other critics (he owns a restaurant a few blocks from where I work, so I gotta be careful lol), I should say that, contrary to popular opinion, he has in fact made some good films. Attack On Darfur and Assault On Wall Street come to mind as two solid dramas where he actually took his craft seriously and made something worthwhile. But Bloodrayne? Holy shot this movie sucks the big one and doesn’t even have the courtesy to swallow after. It’s loosely based on a pretty cool medieval vampire adventure game from years back, but resembles an episode of Xena Warrior Princess made by preschoolers. The protagonist is hottie vampiress Kristanna Loken, who was the kickass female Terminator in T3, and also gets to kick some ass here, between steamy porno scenes with other vampires. The only cool bit is a stunt sequence where she gets to fight a giant ogre thing and bash its head in with a gigantic war hammer. The cast is absolutely stacked here, as is strangely the case with most of Boll’s films. Michael Madsen and Michelle Rodriguez look hella out of place in Middle Ages garbs playing fellow warriors, Ben Kingsley is rigidly constipated as the big baddie, Meat Loaf has a laughable cameo as some kind of Shakespearean pimp, Billy Zane hilariously shows up as a despot, and the list goes on, including the likes of Udo Kier, Michael Paré and Geraldine Chaplin. I wanna be fair to Boll, as the guy clearly has a lot of passion for trying to get films made and simply being productive, and like I said before, some of his output is actually really decent. It’s just whenever he tries to adapt a video game the resulting product turns out hopelessly disastrous. It’s the same case with Alone In The Dark, House Of The Dead and Far Cry, and the guy keeps going. Bloodrayne is a cartoonish, awkwardly staged, terribly acted EuroTrash dumpster fire, something no one should have to sit through just to see their favourite actors embarrass themselves. I can’t believe he went on to make like three sequels.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory- Rise: Blood Hunter

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Rise: Blood Hunter is what you get when you take the sexy female vampire Underworld shtick and suck all the moody, gothic stylistics out of it, leaving something that doesn’t quite have an aesthetic it’s own at all, and feels awkward. It does have one thing going for it though: Lucy Liu. She gives Kate Beckinsale a run for her money in terms of physicality, sex appeal and stunt work, but it’s too bad she wasn’t given a film that rose up to meet her talent. She plays a reporter here who wakes up on a morgue slab one day and realizes she’s been turned into a vampire by the very same satanic cult that she had prior been investigating. Loaded with souped up powers, she begins a bloody journey to exact revenge on them one by one and put a stop to their nocturnal shenanigans. There’s a subplot involving a cop (Michael Chicklis) who’s looking for his missing sister, but ultimately it’s a series of violent, dimly lit confrontations as Liu hunts the cult down to their nasty leader (James D’Arcy is a bit too pretty boy for such a built up villain. There’s supporting work from Holt Mccallany, Carla Gugino and random cameos from Nick Lachey, Marilyn Manson and the great Robert Forster who’s talent is wasted on a bit part that any extra could have done in their sleep. You’ve gotta hand it to Liu, she’s a fountain of star-power and presence, but not even she could carry this beyond SyFy’s movie of the week syndrome.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Captured

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

In a home invasion scenario, where do the lines between stalker and victim get blurred? For cat burglar Robert Breed (Andrew ‘Wishmaster’ Divoff) and hotheaded real estate tycoon Holden Downs (the great Canadian character actor Nick Mancuso), this question leads to a nocturnal game of cat and mouse when the former makes the ill fated decision to bust into the latter’s garage one night and pilfer an expensive automobile. Little does the intruder know, but Downs is a bit of an unhinged basket case and, after several other break ins, has equipped his ride with a self locking, impenetrable steel cage that basically turns it into a prison for whoever is locked inside. This puts both men in an odd position as Downs hold Breed captive inside his car, torments him and projects every little frustration of his own life onto the guy until tempers are high. It’s a somewhat silly concept given the Panic Room style chamber piece treatment, but it’s the two actors who really sell it with their frenzied intensity, particularly serial scene stealer Mancuso who goes for broke with his angry Joker-esque mannerisms. This is blatantly low budget and super rough around the seams, but a serviceable thriller nonetheless, with excellent work from the two actors who make good use of the high concept setup.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Walled In

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Walled In isn’t scary enough to be memorable or original enough to leave a lasting impression, it’s just one of those drab, grey, middle of the road horror flicks that comes and goes as quickly and unceremoniously as a sudden breeze through the room. The only notable reason for it existing beyond background noise is the presence of a few cool actors. Mischa Barton headlines, and despite her teen star shtick I’ve always thought that she’s a really good, engaging actress. Supporting her are Vancouver’s own Deborah Kara Unger and Cameron Bright, who always add class to any venture. Their trio of involvement made it worthwhile for me, but the story and production overall is just a hazy blur. Barton plays an agent for a demolition company who is overseeing the removal of a particularly old building, with some freaky secrets laid into the foundation. Unger is the building’s super creepy caretaker who knows what’s up but ain’t snitching to anyone, while Bright is even less helpful as her weird son. It turns out there’s hidden tombs in the walls where the long dead victims of a mysterious killer were shut in, and even years later the murderer may still be lurking about the place, which should have put Barton in the hot seat for some potentially suspenseful scenes, but alas, it’s a sleepy slog the whole way through. The thing would have been more lively as a video game or something, anything more stimulating than the cable level lack of thrills and chills doled out here. Barton was good, as she always is, but other than her, Unger and Bright, this is just mud.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Asylum

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Asylum is first rate trash, a nasty, cheap exercise in shocker horror that gives sanitariums everywhere a bad name and perpetuates the ludicrous stigma that all such institutions are the scariest, most unorganized places on earth. God bless the cheap underside of Hollywood and it’s deliberately skewed perception of things. This one sees Robert ‘T-1000’ Patrick as a private investigator who goes undercover inside a mental hospital as a patient when it becomes clear that people are going missing inside and something is up. The set, design and mood of the place is schlock to the core, without the faintest hint of realism to be found. The facility’s head doctor (the late great Henry Gibson) is a benign fool who has no idea the kind of havoc being perpetrated under his watch. The place has a special kind of crazy in a character played by Malcolm McDowell called Sullivan Rane, a lucidly maniacal serial killer who has red herring written all over him and moonlights under an obvious wig and mask as a patient known simply as ‘Doc’. It’s a hammy throwaway role, but ever intense McDowell seems to have a ball playing whatever oddball garage sale B role they give him, and ends up stealing his few scenes, as usual. Patrick plays it straight and his trademark steely reserve is an odd contrast to the knowingly silly demeanour of almost everyone else involved. The film does it’s best with a twist one can sense coming a good country mile off, but it gives one aforementioned actor some last minute juicy scenes to make his involvement worthwhile. Low rent horror and then some.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Seven Mummies

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Seven Mummies is so bad it plays like something that From Dusk Till Dawn shat out along the highway. There’s not even one mummy in the thing, let alone seven, instead it’s a dull, shoddily acted piece of bargain bin garbage and the plastic used to make DVD copies would have been put to better use elsewhere. It concerns a bus full of convicts who escape somewhere in the remote southwest, and head for the Mexican border. On the way they stumble across Aztec treasure that has some vague curse, and soon an even vaguer evil is after them all, but none of it makes much sense. Danny Trejo is in it as a mysterious old weirdo called Apache (never mind that he’s so obviously, visibly Mexican), who sits on a dilapidated desert porch and ominously laughs to himself while staring out at the horizon for at least a whole scene. Seriously. No actual lines at all, just laughing and staring, it’s so odd. The one saving grace is veteran villain actor Billy Drago as the evil ghost of an old west outlaw who shows up to cackle and terrorize everyone in a classically hammy bit of theatricality, it’s always great to see him. Other than that there’s really no signs of life to this one, from crappy low rent CGI monsters to lazy filmmaking all round. You’re better off pulling up a chair next to Trejo on that dusty porch and joining him as he chuckles at the tumbleweed dumpster fire of a film he agreed to d just for a few bucks. Amazingly though, it’s still better than that Tom Cruise Mummy flick from last year. Ugh.

-Nate Hill