This is just at the one theater I go to.

I think that what we’ve got here is the end of the comic book superhero genre for the time being. I was wondering how long that wave was going to roll, and I think we’re witnessing the breaking of that wave and from here on out it’s just the roll back.

Well, after a year or so of constant speculation, contemplation, discussion and anticipation, today I went and watched the new A Nightmare on Elm Street.

I’ve already written my guts out about my feelings about these movies, this character and remakes in general. So I won’t bother rehashing that much.

I’ll do my best to keep the review relatively spoiler free as well.

I try and go into any movie I see with a clean slate. Whether it’s an original story or an adaptation. I try to anyway. I feel like it’s only fair to give each movie the chance to tell it’s story in it’s own way without any sort of expectations or preconceived notions about what it should or shouldn’t be. It’s not always easy to drop all of that, but I do my best.

But to pretend that I went into this movie without any baggage would be disingenuous. In fact, it would be flat out bullshit. It would be completely impossible to watch a retelling of A Nightmare on Elm Street without mentally comparing it to what came before. What I can (and did) do though was allow myself to enjoy what this movie had to offer that perhaps the previous movies either couldn’t or wouldn’t bring to the table. I’ll get into that in a bit.

First and foremost, the big question (for me anyway) was whether or not someone else can step in and play Freddy Krueger. Because without that, there is no movie. I just looked it up and nine different actors have portrayed Jason Voorhees over the course of eleven Friday the 13th movies (skipping the first film, where Jason wasn’t even the killer, as well as skipping actors playing him as a child) and eight different actors have played Michael Meyers over the course of nine Halloween movies (skipping the third movie and child actors). While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that these actors are interchangeable, it’s certainly not a drastic move to recast either of these two characters. Throw a goalie mask onto a stuntman and you’ve got yourself a new Jason.

Freddy Krueger is a different story though. Only one actor has ever played Freddy up to this point, and that one actor played him in such a specific way, with a such a specific attitude and tone and posture that the idea of casting another actor to play that role seems… awkward at best, sacrilege at worst. Robert Englund embodied Freddy Krueger, quite literally, for some twenty years or so.

So Jackie Earle Haley had a big, thankless job to do. Not just in reinventing the role to suit his own acting style, but also the nearly impossible task of balancing being scary with being entertaining. Being evil with being charming. And he has to do all of that while being compared to another actor’s performance. Not many actors have to deal with that. I highly doubt that Pierce Brosnan or Roger Moore had to deal with people screaming and crying because Hollywood had the audacity to recast James Bond. I kind of doubt that Michael Keaton was sweating about what fans of Adam West would say about his performance as Batman. Fanboys are a fickle, borderline premenstrual-psychotic bunch of picky bastards. There’s no satisfying them. There will always be something to get up in arms about. There will always be something to post angrily about on message boards.

At some point, I’m sure, the people making this movie have to just tune that out. I know I would. If I was making a movie that’s controversial among fanboys, the first thing I’d do would be to unplug my internet and try and make my movie in a vacuum. Because, honestly, fuck fanboys. I don’t like this notion that if fans of a particular franchise bitch loud enough Hollywood will bend to their will. Filmmaking isn’t a goddamned democracy. The internet has empowered fanboys in a way that’s both dangerous and incredibly fucking annoying. In the last ten years we’ve seen geeks like Harry Knowles actually influencing the way that movies are produced and sold. Fox studios scorned Harry a while back by having the audacity to not invite him to a screening and he’s been torpedoing their movies ever since. The fact that studios even remotely feel the need to run things past fucking Harry Knowels kind makes me sick honestly. This isn’t meant as an attack on Harry, but honestly, who the fuck is he? Why do geek fans get an influential voice? Why do they get a say? Fuck geeks.

Sidetracked. Sorry. Back to Elm Street. 

In preparation for writing this, I re-watched the first A Nightmare on Elm Street last night. I’ve seen that movie many, many times, but I’m always struck by just how different it is than the rest of the Nightmare movies. Especially the Freddy character. When I think Freddy Krueger, I picture an amalgam of all the movies. I rarely picture what Freddy was in the first movie, which was little more than a grinning, cackling boogie man. Honestly, in the first NOES, Freddy didn’t do much more than yell “Hey Tina! Look at this! BLAH!”. He had very little personality and was actually barely in the movie at all. The first NOES was all about the kids and how they reacted Freddy. Freddy was just a chuckling voice in the shadows.

Wait. Hold up. I just want to point something out that I noticed when I watched NOES 1 last night that I thought was hilarious.

Okay, so Freddy is chasing Tina through the neighborhood. Tina’s running and screaming and Freddy’s chasing her in that weird like, little kid run that he does. I guess this was before Freddy figured out that he doesn’t actually have to run after his victims. He can just pop up in front of them. Anyway, so he’s chasing Tina through this alleyway and then yells “HEY TINA!” and she fucking STOPS and TURNS AROUND like “What?” then she stands there and watches as he cuts off a couple of his own fingers. Then she freaks out again and goes back to running away. I just love that she stopped running and turned around just because he called her name.

I think the shit is funny.

Anyway.

What I’m actually getting at here is that, as much as it pains me to say so, the first Nightmare on Elm Street was not a perfect movie. In fact, it was quite corny in a lot of ways. Now, because it was the first, and it invented a lot of the elements that went on to become keystones of the series, it gets all the credit in the world. And it was scary in a lot of ways, don’t get me wrong. I’m not hating on NOES by any stretch. I’m just saying that there IS room for improvement. Always. There’s room for refining and redefining.

Freddy himself isn’t above that either. While Robert Englund very much was Freddy, that embodiment of the character didn’t really come into swing until later. In the first movie, he was barely there. He had very little personality and it wasn’t until the third movie that we got a good look at what Robert Englund could bring to the table. But honestly, through the entire series, Freddy never really became an actual character. He was always just a boogeyman. Especially in the first movie.

It’s strange too, because his character is all about vengeance. He’s punishing the children for the crimes of their parents, right? Yet he never really seems to have any kind of personal investment in any of it. It just seems like he likes scaring people. He doesn’t really seem too angry or vengeful. He’s just a dick. Rewatching the first NOES last night, that was something I missed. That personal investment.

I missed it because Jackie Earle Haley brought it to his Freddy.

So that brings us to Jackie Earle Haley’s Freddy Krueger. That’s what we’re all here to talk about, right? I mean, we can go on about the story and the direction and atmosphere and whatever, but honestly, it all hinges on whether or not Freddy works.

All things considered, I really really liked Jackie Earle Haley’s Freddy. I was actually surprised by how much I liked him. Hell, I’d go so far as to say that I actually liked Jackie’s Freddy in this movie more than I liked Robert’s Freddy in the first Elm Street movie. If you were to just compare the first Elm Street movie with this new movie, I’d say that Jackie’s Freddy is a far better defined character and he has a lot more personality than Robert had in the first movie.

Most importantly though, Jackie brought some motivation to the character that was simply never there before. We were told that Freddy was out for revenge, but we never really saw it before. But Jackie’s Freddy is fucking pissed.

Okay, fuck all this. I’m starting over.

It’s been a couple of days now, I’ve rewatched the first movie as well as Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and I’m gonna start over again.

You know me. Nightmare on Elm Street is my jam. Freddy is my dawg. We’re tight.

But honestly, there isn’t any one Nightmare on Elm Street movie that is, in of itself, a great movie. There are a few that have really great, innovative, interesting things in them. But in all honestly, they’re all fairly flawed to different degrees.

I tend to hold the first NOES movie in pretty high esteem. It’s one of the great eighties horror movies and Freddy is my favorite horror icon. But even that movie, honestly, had some serious problems. What it did well, it did REALLY well, but that doesn’t change that it’s not a perfect movie. Far from it. A lot of the acting and dialog was pretty cheesy. NOES 1 had the least defined Freddy of all the movies. He had no personality or motivation. He was just an almost faceless boogieman. That’s not to say that I needed him to crack jokes and play videogames on a Freddy style Nintendo Power Glove.

But watching the first movie, I did miss some of that Robert Englund personality. Even the strut and the posture hadn’t been defined yet. Freddy just wasn’t quite Freddy yet.

There were hints of him there. Some of that Dracula-esque demented sexuality found its way into the movie.

But really, Freddy didn’t hit his stride until the third movie or so.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the first movie. It was easily the scariest of the bunch. But what made the first movie great wasn’t really Freddy, but more the idea of being killed in your sleep. The scene of Tina being tossed up onto the ceiling by an invisible murderer while cuts open up on her body from seemingly nowhere was terrifying. The shot of Tina in the body bag standing in the school hallway gave me nightmares for a long damned time.

If there had never been any sequels to NOES, and the first movie stood alone, that Freddy Krueger character would be pretty much forgotten. The movie itself would be remembered because it was scary and innovative, but the actual Freddy character wasn’t really a huge part of it. It’s the mental merging of the two elements that make me such a fan of this series as a whole. You see, in my head, these movies were as scary as the first one was but also had this amazing villain that the later movies developed (before running into the ground in the last few movies).

THAT is what I needed from this new retelling of A Nightmare on Elm Street. I needed a movie that was scary in the same way the first movie was scary, but with a villain that was defined in the same way (or at least to the same degree) that Freddy was in the middle movies.

And that’s pretty much what I got. I mean, the movie certainly didn’t venture into uncharted waters as far as the scariness goes, but what it did do was round out the Freddy Krueger character in a way that had never been done before. For the first time, Freddy Krueger has a personal stake in what he’s doing. Before, Freddy was like a cat playing with a mouse. He taunted and tortured and killed seemingly for the joy of it. I never got any sense that he actually had any investment in it. Freddy just seemed to be having fun, grinning and chuckling and throwing out his one liners.

But this Freddy is fucking pissed. He’s back for a reason, and it’s to punish these kids. Not just because they happen to live in the general vicinity to where he was killed but because they were directly involved in the incident that got him killed. He’s genuinely angry.

Another thing is the whole child molester aspect of the Freddy Krueger character. That’s always been kind a gray area in the NOES mythology. In the first movie, Freddy is described, very specifically, as a “dirty child killer” by Nancy’s weird, orange, drunk mother.

There’s always been the suggestion and assumption that Freddy was a child molester before he died, but I don’t think they ever came right out and said it. I seem to remember one scene in Freddy vs Jason where there was a flashback showing Freddy in his boiler room before he was killed and he licks a photo of a little girl in this really creepy, child molestery kind of way.

But yeah, they seemed to be unwilling to completely commit to that idea in the series. In a way I was grateful for that, because I liked Freddy. I still like Freddy in that way we love any horror icon. He’s an entertaining, fun character. It’s hard to reconcile that with a child molester though. I don’t know why the line is drawn somewhere between “dirty child killer” and “child molester” but that seems to be the case. Like, it’s okay to find someone simply killing children acceptable, but as soon as a sexual element comes into play it suddenly becomes wrong and creepy.

They don’t have that issue with the new Freddy Krueger. It’s quite clear that this Freddy is a child molester. In fact, he’s not even a child murderer. He just molested them. The parents find out about it and burn him to death. It’s a different kind of experience, watching a Freddy who is well over that line between child killer and child molester. It’s certainly a more uncomfortable experience. It’s not quite as much fun, but it’s more disturbing and it’s scarier.

One thing about this new movie is that they put all of it into question. There’s something of a mystery element to the story that was never there before. They’ve got you questioning whether Freddy was ever guilty at all or if he was a scapegoat for abusive parents. If perhaps the revenge he’s inflicting isn’t because they ratted him out, but because they lied about what happened. Was Freddy innocent? It’s something they ask in this movie, which was a fun twist to the story.

The major difference between the Freddy we know and love and this new Freddy is that the new Freddy is just scary. I wouldn’t say that there’s no humor to him, because there is, but it’s not funny ha-ha. It’s more just funny to him. It’s like Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs. You can’t watch Michael Madsen torture that cop and laugh at his jokes at the same time. It’s not so much that it’s funny, it’s just that much more disturbing because this character finds it funny.

That was something I was concerned about going into this movie. It’s a delicate balance, the humor and scariness. One that the original NOES movies had a really difficult time maintaining. As we saw in the first movie, Freddy wasn’t particularly funny. He was just an asshole. By the time the fourth, fifth and sixth movies came along, Freddy was funny, but not really scary anymore. Freddy needs to be both to work.

My main concern was that they would work so hard and making Freddy scary that he wouldn’t have any personality. He’d go back to just being the boogeyman again. But no, they made it work. He certainly has personality. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Jackie Earle Haley’s interpretation of the character has a fair bit more personality than Englund’s interpretation. Englund brought a very specific style and strut and charisma to Freddy that is certainly irreplaceable. And very specific to Robert Englund.

I mean, just looking at this picture, it’s very specifically Robert Englund. He’s able to convey so much personality in just his posture and silhouette.

But that Freddy was never really defined as a character. He was always something of a cartoon. It wasn’t Englund’s fault, it was the just the way the character was written. But regardless, you never really got any sense of what Freddy was thinking or needing from the situation.

With Jackie’s Freddy, we see his investment in it. We see him actually interacting with the other characters.

There’s one scene where Freddy has a girl pinned to her bed and is basically on the verge of sexually assaulting her, and she’s got her head turned away and is crying and he stops talking and screams “LOOK AT ME!” at her. It pretty much epitomized his character for me (even though that was kind of sort of ripped off of The Joker in The Dark Knight). I think that ties into the choice of making him a child molester rather than a child murderer. Sexual predators need that control and domination, and that’s very much what this Freddy is about. He’s not just playing with these people because it entertains him. He needs it. He’s fulfilling a demented need to make these kids afraid of him before he kills them. To make them understand that he is in control.

While Robert Englund’s Freddy was sexual in a kind of antagonistic but corny sort of way, as well as the almost romantic relationship he develops with Nancy by the end of the third movie, Jackie Earle Haley’s Freddy is sexual in a really fucked up, disturbing way. In one shot he leans in and licks this girl’s face. And I don’t mean his tongue just kind of touches her. He full on licks her face like it was a stamp. It’s fucking disgusting. It’s sexual, but not sexy in the slightest. It’s just sick.

I was reading that the initial makeup tests were actually too disturbing and they had to dial it back. They talk a lot about how they wanted him to look more like an actual burn victim, but I don’t think they really explain the purpose behind that. There are a lot more clearly lit, full view extended shots of Freddy’s makeup in the movie than I expected. Certainly more than there was in the first couple of NOES movies. The reason for that, I believe, is to force you to look at him. To really look at him.

There’s something very disturbing and awkward about seeing a burn victim. Someone whose face is melted. It’s almost a taboo thing to talk about, because it can hurtful to someone who deals with that in their life. But that doesn’t change the reality of it. It’s a gut reaction that’s very difficult to overcome. It’s embarrassing and you feel bad about it but it’s the truth.

The people who made this movie understand that and exploit it. Robert Englund’s Freddy didn’t really look like a burn victim. He looked like someone with a lot of movie makeup on. Not because the effects people did a bad job with it, but because nobody looks like that. People who have been burned don’t look like that. It’s scary looking in a monster sort of way, but not in any sort or real way. You don’t look at Freddy and recall an actual burn victim that you’ve seen.

This Freddy, on the other hand, looks just a whole lot like someone whose face has been melted. It IS difficult to look at.

His eyes are little pinholes of rage drilled into a mass of melted flesh. I mean, his fucking ears are melted off. This is some seriously messed up shit.

It’s not just scary looking, it’s disturbing looking. It’s offensive looking, because it puts you in a place where you remember that one time. You know? That one time when you went into the bathroom or were at a sporting event or at school or at work and saw a person with a deformity or a massive birth defect or someone whose been burned horribly and you were scared. You were scared and disturbed and you felt guilty about it. You felt guilty because you were afraid of this person. It’s a terrible, uncomfortable, devastating feeling and it’s one that the makers of this movie have exploited.

By doing this, they aren’t just making him disturbing to look at and therefore scarier. They’re also using it as a little more motivation on his part. By showing him as this burned up human being, you get a better sense of why he’s doing what he’s doing. You get a better sense of what was inflicted on him by the parents of Springwood. He may have been a child molester, but he was also the victim of vigilante justice by a mob of angry parents. Led by Clancy Brown no less.

I mean, it’s one thing to get burned alive. It’s another thing entirely to get burned alive by the fucking Kurgan.

I know I’m talking a lot about Freddy specifically rather than whether or not the movie is any good, but honestly, for me, whether the movie is any good hinges on whether Freddy is any good.

And Freddy is good. No, he’s not the Freddy we know and love. It’s a new Freddy. It’s awkward yes. It’s kind of like having to call mom’s new boyfriend “dad”. But ultimately, it works. For me it works. I want to see more of this Freddy. I want to see this Freddy in a better movie.

Because the movie itself, honestly, it’s just okay. It’s not terrible. I wouldn’t say that it’s any worse of a movie than any of the other NOES movies. There are plot holes and huge jumps in logic, but there were plot holes and huge jumps in logic in the original movies as well. That’s just how these movies are.

I wouldn’t say that this movie is scarier than the original NOES, but it’s more disturbing, and it has potential to get scarier with subsequent movies. I think that if you had never seen a Nightmare on Elm Street movie, this would be one hell of a scary movie. I didn’t find it overly scary because I know all of these tricks already. There’s little that Freddy can do that’s going to scare me.

One problem they had was a problem that the original movies ran into. That is that there’s only so much that Freddy CAN do. I mean, people have to sleep. That’s just reality. It’s hard to justify keeping characters awake long enough to come to the conclusions that these characters come to (IE, we’re all having the same dream and there’s a killer who lives in our dreams and can kill us IRL if he kills us in our dreams we have to fight him before he kills us so don’t fall asleep okay??!!) in any sort of realistic way. I mean, really, you get maybe three or four days of total sleep deprivation before you go insane. But since Freddy pretty much just kills people, it gets to be a bit much to have characters repeatedly almost getting killed by Freddy, only to wake up just in time with a ominous souvenir from their dream or a scratch on their arm. Nancy can only burn or scratch her arm so many times before it just gets silly.

This movie fixed that a little bit by letting Freddy lead the kids somewhere to find something for him, kind of like in The Ring. But it is a little tedious. The cast (aside from Jackie himself) was mostly boring and generic. I liked the girl they got to play Nancy though. She reminded me a bit of Emily Watson.

There were a lot of nods to the original, most of which ended up in the trailer. This is another reason why the movie may be scarier to someone who hasn’t seen the original, because for me, the scene where Freddy is killing Tina was scary as fuck, and when they basically recreated that scene in the new movie, I was entertained but certainly not scared.

It bugged me to see them use CGI for things that were done practically in the first movie. Specifically, this:

It was so much more effective and scary to just have Robert Englund press himself against a sheet of latex than this goofy looking CGI interpretation of the same goddamned thing. It was scary in the original, because it was unexpected and incredibly strange looking. Here it just feels like jerking off. It’s not scary and is a weaker version of what we’ve already seen. If you’re gonna pay homage to the original, at least understand what was scary about the original scene. I don’t like seeing people use CGI in movies for things that can be easily don’t practically. If the CGI is cheaper and looks as good or better than the practical effect, then fine. But don’t use it just because you can.

Anyway.

I want to see them take this character and this set up into another movie. A completely original movie. I don’t know how they would do that, but I’m sure there’s a way. Jackie’s signed on for three movies and they announced today that they’re going forward on the sequel. What I’d really like to see them do is focus more on the dream aspect of it. That’s one of the reasons why NOES 3 is my favorite of the series. That’s the one that, to me, that dealt most heavily with dreams and the surreal nature of them. I want to take it out of the boiler room and into these characters heads. There was a bit of that in this movie, but they could take it further. There’s so much that can be done with this premise. I just hope they don’t fall into the trap of setting up a new set of kids like bowling pins and then just watching them fall. I hope they can do something interesting with it.

So, in closing, I enjoyed watching the movie. I really enjoyed Jackie Earle Haley’s Freddy Krueger. I think the movie itself, as a whole, could have better crafted, but I’d give it a solid B.

It’s getting shit reviews. That’s okay. The first NOES initially got shit reviews as well. Fuck reviews. I got what I wanted out of it. That’s more than I can say for most movies.

this new Robin Hood movie looks like they took everything that was ever fun about Robin Hood and sucked it out and then replaced it with all the boring parts of Gladiator.

After however many years it’s been since it first came out on video and I thought to myself “Maybe I should watch that movie” I finally got around to watching that movie. It only took twenty something years of hemming and hawing. I was fascinated by the cover of the video when I was a kid, but there was always something slightly more intriguing or gruesome looking to watch. Also, of the three big slasher names, Michael Myers was the one I found least interesting. Later I found out that Michael Myers isn’t even in that movie, but by then I’d pretty much lost interest. So I never really got around to it. Until today.

Here’s the run down:

The movie opens in classic John Carpenter style. Bad 80s computer graphics and an even worse original score by Carpenter, apparently composed on his Casio keyboard. Like all of his other scores. We then find a crazy man running from some stoic guys in business suits. He narrowly gets away.

Then we cut to our hero, who is a guy with a mustache that is apparently some kind of doctor. We meet him as he’s arriving at his bitch ass girlfriend’s house. For reasons completely alien to me, he duckwalks into the room with his jacket pulled up over his head. My first thought was that maybe he was trying to keep covered from the rain, but considering that he’s completely dry, I’m left confused.

So anyway, he gives the bitch ass girlfriend’s ungrateful dickhead kids a couple of cheap ass Halloween masks. The kids are disappointed though, because they wanted Silver Shamrock Halloween masks, not shitty ones from the dollar store.

Bitch ass girlfriend bitches (as bitch ass girlfriends are prone to do) the entire time until he’s called back to the hospital for an emergency. Bitch ass girlfriend bitches about this.

The emergency is that the crazy man from earlier has stumbled into the hospital, babbling about “THEY’RE GOING TO KILL YOU ALL!!”. He is then murdered by one of the very stoic men in business suits. Stoic business suit man then goes in the parking lot and lights himself on fire. Mustache doctor guy finds this a little strange.

Later (we know it’s later because of a series of Shining-esque title cards telling us what day it is) we meet the crazy man’s daughter. Crazy man’s sexy daughter has traveled all the way up from Los Angeles (oh, and this movie takes place in  “northern California” which is  only slightly vague) to identify the body of her father. She is sad. Mustache doctor guy is puzzled.

Cut to a few days later and we establish that mustache doctor guy has something of a drinking problem. He’s sitting around in a bar (a bar that apparently plays cartoons all day) when the crazy guy’s sexy daughter comes into the bar (because the nurses said that she could find him there… hmmm. What kind of fucking doctor is this guy? Is this Jack’s dad from Lost?) to do some investigating into her father’s death.

Then, very abruptly, mustached doctor guy decides to help crazy guy’s sexy daughter get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding her father’s murder. Through some very quick, crack investigation, they figure out that her father went to some weird Irish town in the middle of Northern California. Because, you know, Northern California has quite a few Irish towns scattered around. In the town is the Silver Shamrock factory.

OH.

Did I mention the commercial? The company that makes the kickass Halloween masks that the kids wanted more than the shitty dollar store masks was called Silver Shamrock. And they have a commercial. Here, enjoy their commercial.

They play that commercial about, oh, I don’t know… eighty five times or so. It’s so not annoying at all.

Anyway…

So doctor mustache calls up his bitch ass girlfriend to explain that he has to go out of town for “boring doctor stuff” but he can’t tell her where he’s going or what hotel he’s going to be at. PHEW! Off the hook! Oh, and apparently he had to buy a six pack for the road as well. This guy has a serious problem.

They get to the weird Irish town and start their investigation. Mustache doctor guy comes up with the not at all shady idea that they should pose as a husband and wife who are in town to buy Halloween masks for their store. Oh, and that they should also get a cheap motel room together. And that they should probably get shitfaced drunk.

At the motel, we meet the most annoying characters in the movie. I don’t remember their names, but I’m pretty sure it was The Asshole Family. It consists of Mr. Asshole, his lovely wife Mrs. Asshole and their kid, Asshole Jr.

They’re in town because Mr. Asshole is the #1 salesman of Silver Shamrock Halloween Masks, and he’s there to pick up an order(?). Apparently Silver Shamrock doesn’t actually ship any of their products out. They require store owners from around the world to travel to somewhere in “Northern California” to pick up their orders. Anyway.

We also meet this angry saleslady, who is also in town to pick up her order of masks, and she’s none to happy about it. In fact, she’s acting like a raging twat. But really, I probably would too if I had to drive all the way out to weird Irish town in “northern California” to pick up my shipments.

They figure out (again, though their crack detective work. The old “look at the hotel registration book” gag) that the girl’s crazy dad ALSO stayed at that motel. The daughter is understandably excited to get to work finding out why her father was murdered. But Dr. Mustache tells her to slow her roll, because it’s been almost an hour since he got shitfaced, and he needs a drink. So they decide to put off looking for clues about her father and stay in for the night, drinking and fucking.

Oh yeah, apparently Dr. Mustache is also a cheating man whore.

After some good fucking, Dr. Mustache decides he needs another drink, so he heads out to pick up a bottle.

Oh, and there are cameras all over town and a loud speaker that announces that the curfew is six pm, so everyone better get the fuck back inside or… something… will happen. This is never explained.

So Dr. Mustache gets his bottle and then runs into a disgusting wino who was hiding around the corner in an ally, waiting to ambush him and ask him for a drink of his delicious booze.

After letting the disgusting wino drink directly from the bottle (HELLO THERE, HEP C!) Dr. Mustache then quizzes him about the strange town. He finds out pretty much nothing other than that the town is run by the owner of Silver Shamrock, some Eurotrash millionaire guy. The wino then tells Dr. Mustache that he wants to burn the factory down with a “case and a half of Molotov cocktails”. I wasn’t aware that they sold Molotov cocktails by the case, but hey, you learn something new every day.

Back at the motel, crazy dude’s sexy daughter meets up with the pissed off mask buying woman from earlier, who makes a point to show her (us) that the plastic Silver Shamrock from the back of the masks tend to fall off.

You know I love me some good old fashioned unjustified exposition. Please, just tell me what’s happening. Don’t bother making it relevant to the story. I hate working for shit. I HAVE A FEELING THAT MAY BE IMPORTANT INFORMATION LATER. WINK WINK.

Before long, it’s imperative that the crazy dude’s sexy daughter have a shower. I has to be done at some point, because that’s the way things go in 80s movies. Back then, a movie wasn’t complete until there was a “hot girl in the shower” scene. I miss those days.

After some more fucking (two times even) between Dr. Mustache and the grieving daughter (who is clearly very bereaved, as well as sexy) we cut to the angry business lady next door (who we find out has a store in San Francisco, which explains her obnoxious New York accent). Angry business lady is getting all snuggled up for bed in her weird bedazzled kimono thing when she realizes that the little plastic logo do-hicky that fell off of the mask has a mysterious computer component embedded in the back of it. She’s all like “wtf is this shit?” so she pulls a bobby-pin out of her hair and starts fucking with it. That’s when a crazy blue laser shoots out of the thing and busts her face open and makes her eyes go all fucked up.

Okay, I’ll admit, that was kind of friggin cool. Even if a goddamned bug crawled out of her mouth afterwards, which makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.

The sound of the angry business lady’s face getting busted open interrupts doctor mustache and the crazy guy’s sexy daughter. They were busy fucking. Again. They quickly get dressed and run outside to find out what happened. That’s when a bunch of vans from Silver Shamrock show up and they take the now very dead angry business lady away.

The next day Dr. Mustache and the crazy dude’s sexy daughter decide to go to the factory to investigate. While they’re at the factory, they run into the Asshole family who have been invited to take the tour by the Eurotrash Millionaire. It’s all very boring and bla bla bla until the crazy dude’s sexy daughter notices her father’s car half covered in the factory. She runs up to investigate, but is stopped by stoic dudes in business suits.

They return to the motel and decide to GTFO. They’ve had enough of this silliness. Dr. Mustache has to go make a phone call (this was before motels had phones in the rooms apparently) and runs to the front desk, deliberately leaving the door open for some reason. Like, he makes a point to leave it open. I don’t get it.

While he’s gone, of course the stoic business suit guys come and abduct the crazy dude’s sexy daughter. I’m not sure WHY they abduct her. Everyone else they’ve run into they’ve killed mercilessly. The crazy dude and the wino at least. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, the stoic business suit guys killed the wino. They pulled his head off. It was stupid.

We then get about 45 minutes of Dr. Mustache running around in the town, diving behind bushes and trash cans, trying not to be seen by the patrolling Silver Shamrock cars.

Eventually, he gets back to the factory.

He’s very quickly caught and carted off to the Eurotrash Millionaire, who is in some kind of control room getting ready to reveal his evil master plan. He shows Dr. Mustache a TV monitor where he can watch as the Asshole family (who have apparently been on this factory tour for ten hours or so) are being escorted to this pretend living room where they’re going to get some test screenings of the awesome Silver Shamrock commercial. Remember the commercial? Oh yes.

The commercial instructs Asshole Jr. to put on his mask, which he obediently does, because kids always do whatever the TV tells them to. We’re then subjected to this seizure inducing flashing pumpkin image.

The commercial triggers the little plastic logo thing on the back of the mask, which then makes Asshole Jr.’s head turn into a bunch of bugs and poisonous snakes.

Wait, what?

Yes. That’s what happens.

It’s fucking ridiculous.

And Dr. Mustache finds it very upsetting indeed.

As you can tell, he’s clearly not coping well with watching the murder of a small child.

Now that we know what happens to kids who are wearing the masks when that see that awesome commercial, we get a montage of kids buying and wearing their Silver Shamrock masks all over the country. We also find out that the commercial is instructing all kids with Silver Shamrock masks to stop trick-or-treating and go home at a specific time and watch TV because there is going to be a BIG GIVE AWAY. You know, on the TV. It’s pretty vague, but as we’ve established, kids are clearly mindless automatons who do whatever the TV tells them to.

In classic bad horror movie form, the hero is strapped to a chair and forced to listen as the big bad guy (in this case, Mr. Eurotrash Millionaire) explains his master plan.

The unfortunate thing is that even after he explains his master plan, it still doesn’t make any fucking sense.

What Mr. Eurotrash Millionaire explains is that he knows the REAL meaning behind Halloween, which is that witches used to sacrifice animals and children at Stone Henge on the pagan high holiday Samhain and the rivers ran red with their blood. He then said something about the planets aligning and how the time has come again to sacrifice children to his evil pagan god. Oh, and he also STOLE one of the big Stone Henge rocks and, apparently, had it shipped to “Northern California”. The rocks are full of powerful energy, you see, that when focused with vague computer parts, can make blue lasers that can bust your face open and turn your head into bugs and snakes. So they’ve been putting little tiny fragments of the Stone Henge rock into the logos on the masks, and watching the the flashing pumpkin graphic triggers the energy and turns your head into snakes and bugs.

That’s his master plan. To use fragments of Stone Henge, embedded in Halloween masks, to turn the children of America’s heads into bugs and snakes.

I still don’t really understand what he’s accomplishing with this plan. I guess he’s counting the whole masks turning kids heads into bugs and snakes thing as mass sacrifice, but I never really understood what that sacrifice accomplished. Also, he talked like he was there, three thousand years ago, when the last mass sacrifice happened. So I guess Mr. Eurotrash Millionaire is three thousand years old as well? I dunno.

OH! I forgot to tell you something.

Remember those stoic guys in business suits? Androids. Yep. They’re fucking robots. Robots filled with orange yogurt.

Also, you can apparently disable them by punching them in the stomach. Good to know.

So yeah, remember that they’re androids, because that shit is important later.

Anyway, so Dr. Mustache is strapped into a chair in a holding cell in front of a TV. Dr. Eurotrash has left him there with a mask on, apparently alone for the next hour and a half or so until the commercial is supposed to air and kill anyone wearing a mask. Because, you see, before the stoic business suit/android guys just crushed the skull of anyone who happens to get in their way, but for Dr. Mustache and his new girlfriend, they get strapped to chairs and left alone for hours on end.

Oh yeah, the crazy dude’s sexy daughter is strapped to a table in another cell.

So, left alone, Dr. Mustache kicks the glass of the TV in (I think someone behind the camera has a beef with television and consumerism, but doesn’t quite have the George Romero/Dawn of the Dead skills to properly execute a social commentary/satire via horror movie) and uses a shard of glass to cut himself free of the straps. He then (of course) escapes by crawling through the massive ventilation duct in the room.

We then get another half hour of Dr. Mustache evading Silver Shamrock employees (androids) by diving and ducking and slinking through shadows Sam Fisher style. He frees crazy dude’s sexy daughter and then figures out his big escape plan. What he does is sneak back into the control room (using the old “hide behind a rolling cart of Halloween masks” gag. I’m surprised they didn’t have them carrying a friggin bush).

The androids are very busy and distracted by their work of looking at clip boards and moving around sliders and dials on control boxes to notice them. They’re able to sneak in. He turns the commercial on (because he knows exactly which buttons do that) and it plays on a bunch of TVs in the room. He then climbs up to some kind of catwalk scaffolding thing and drops a box of those logo disk things with the computer component and piece of Stone Henge over top of the androids. The commercial triggers the blue lasers in the chips, killing everyone in the room (but conveniently missing both of our two heroes, as well as eurotrash millionaire guy). Then the Stone Henge rock in the middle of the room turns blue and shoots a laser at the eurotrash millionaire guy, which makes him turn blue and then makes him disappear.

So that was the end of the three thousand year old pagan eurotrash halloween mask making dude, as well as his army of orange yogurt filled androids.

OH, and then the factory blew up. Luckily, it waited for Dr. Mustache and the crazy dude’s daughter to escape and get in front of a blue screen where they could be superimposed over the explosion.

PHEW! The end, right?

WRONG, FUCKER! Not even CLOSE.

Dr. Mustache and the crazy dude’s daughter are driving home. Crazy dude’s daughter is being suspiciously quiet and uncommunicative. She then abruptly grabs Dr. Mustache’s face and makes him crash into a tree.

When Dr. Mustache gets out of the car, he finds her arm still holding onto the door handle. AND IT’S A MOTHERFUCKING ROBOT ARM! DUN DUNT DAA!!!!!

So then the one armed android crazy dude’s sexy daughter starts attacking Dr. Mustache. Her only means of attacking is choking and grabbing his face though, which makes her not a very affective killer android. Luckily for Dr. Mustache, the trunk of the car popped open in the crash and he was able to grab a tire iron and knock her head off with it. If this movie had any kind of balls, it would have knocked her shirt off too and we could have gotten another look at those sexy tattays! But oh well.

That should have been the end of it, but we go through about fifteen more jump scares of various parts of her body grabbing onto him. FINALLY he’s able to take off running and escapes.

So I’m not entirely sure if we’re supposed believe that the crazy dude’s daughter was an android the entire time, or if she was somehow replaced by an android at some point. Maybe it was some kind of Blade Runner/She-doesn’t-know-she’s-a-robot-kind of thing? I don’t really care either way to tell you the truth. I’m done trying to make sense of this fucking movie.

Eventually Dr. Mustache ends up at a gas station, where he starts calling the TV to tell it not to play the commercial. I couldn’t really get a sense of who exactly he was calling, but whoever it was apparently had the power to change the programming of paid advertisers, and was also willing to do so just because a crazy doctor with a mustache calls in screaming about how they have to take the commercial off but he can’t tell them why but it’s because WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

So they take the commercial off of one channel. Then these kids, who are also in the gas station and watching the TV, change the channel and the commercial is on THAT channel too. So Dr. Mustache says “It’s on the other channel! TAKE IT OFF THE OTHER CHANNEL!! WHY?! BECAUSE I SAID SO!!!” so they take the commercial off of the second channel as well. Then the kids change the channel again, and the commercial is on THAT channel too. So Dr. Mustache starts screaming about “YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE COMMERCIAL OFF OF THE THIRD CHANNEL OR WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!! BECAUSE I SAID SO!!”

But then, apparently the guy on the other end of the phone (who has the power to change the programming of not only one television station, but apparently at least three) finally grows a pair and puts his foot down. He was willing to be bullied by an anonymous dick on the phone to take down two commercials, but not three. No way. That’s going to far. Nobody bullies that guy into taking down THREE commercials. Not today, motherfucker.

And that’s how the movie ends. Apparently the three thousand year old pagan eurotrash mask maker’s plan still went off without a hitch. And, apparently, millions of kids all over America got to experience their heads turning into bugs and snakes. The sad thing is that nobody on the east coast bothered to warn the people in the other time zones not to watch the commercial. I mean, shouldn’t the people on the west coast have figured out by then that something fishy was going on, given that it was three or four hours later or whatever?

Anyway. That was Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

Final thoughts?

That movie was fucking retarded. I wish I hadn’t watched it.

So when I was looking up information about Last House on the Left (gotta fact check my shit you know) on Wikipedia, I did what I usually do when I’m on Wikipedia and I started clicking links to other entries which then lead to links to other entries, until I’ve spent four hours looking at all kinds of random shit and I’m no where near where I started.

Except in this case I didn’t wander TOO far. I went from Last House on the Left to Wes Craven to A Nightmare on Elm. And really, in my world, eventually all road lead to Freddy. That’s just how I roll.

Anyway, I got to reading about how apparently the song Dream Weaver by Gary Wright (which will, in my mind, forever be associated with Wayne longing for the Strat in the guitar store window in Wayne’s World) was one of main inspirations for A Nightmare on Elm Street and that main Nightmare theme is based on that song. The entry on Wikipedia says that the “main synth riff” of the Nightmare theme is from Dream Weaver.

I’ve listened to Dream Weaver about six times now and I just don’t hear it. I’m trying to, because I think that would be awesome to be able to hear A Nightmare on Elm Street in this cheesy fucking song. But I dunno. The weird opening and closing music (which sounds just a whole lot like Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd) is kind of similar in style, I guess… but I don’t hear anything that sounds like the main riff of the Nightmare on Elm Street theme.

Dream Weaver

The Nightmare on Elm Street theme.

Can someone please listen to both of these and show me where I’m missing it? Because I know that Wikipedia is never, ever wrong and obviously it’s my ears and brain that are broken.

Speaking of which.

I hate how people are so fucking uppity about Wikipedia. Like it’s completely full of shit all the time. Sure, there’s stuff on there that isn’t perfectly accurate all the time. It’s an imperfect system, I know. But more often than not, it’s a valuable and awesome wealth of mostly accurate information.

For instance, this:

I was at work the other day and somehow got to ranting at a customer (which I’m prone to do at times) about how pandas are evil, wicked animals to be feared, not loved. My rational is that they’re bears, and that bears vicious killing machines that will stop at nothing in their quest to devour your soul and bath in human blood. It was a couple I was talking to, and the chick decides to pull out this fairly common, but totally wrong little factoid “Well, actually Pandas aren’t really bears.” I said “WHAT? of course they’re bears.” to which she said “No, they’re marsupials.” Which is not only completely incorrect, but totally stupid as well.

I’ll give people that up until somewhat recently, scientists weren’t sure exactly WHAT pandas are, but they have been officially classified as bears. They certainly aren’t fucking marsupials though.

So I told her “I actually got into this discussion with someone recently,” (which is true) “and I had to read up on pandas to prove my point that they are, in fact, bears.” and then mr. boyfriend comes in with “Oh yeah? Where did you read that?” and I said “Wikipedia” and he gets all sarcastic and says “OH! Well if it was on Wikipedia then it MUST be true!” like I’m a fucking moron. Then he goes on to say “I study genetics and I can tell you that pandas are not bears. They’re actually from the same family as raccoons.”

Okay, first of all, fuck that guy. Second of all, yes, until recently, there was debate as to whether pandas were bears or a type of raccoon. But now that they’ve done genetic testing on pandas, they’ve figured out that guess what, they’re fucking bears. You study genetics? THEN YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS SHIT, FUCKHEAD.

This is from the WWF’s site (the World Wildlife Foundation, not the wrestling company) on their panda FAQ.

“Are pandas bears?
Giant pandas are biologically unique. They are classified as bears, but unlike other bears, cannot store enough body fat to hibernate. “

Which is the same thing it says on Wikipedia.

That fucking condescending (and wrong) fuck. Fuck. I’m going to keep saying fuck a lot. Bear with me.

AND, even if that fucking dipshit was right, and they ARE some kind of huge ass raccoon… that would be EVEN WORSE. A bear sized raccoon? FUCKING FORGET ABOUT IT. Raccoons are even scarier and more evil that bears in my eyes, so either way, fuck pandas. My argument stands.

Not that it matters, because pandas are bears and they’re evil and I’m glad they refuse to fuck and are going extinct. When I’m rich, I’m going to own a black market panda fur coat.

Fucking pandas.

Fucking customers. Marsupials my ass. Hey lady. What are you, retarded? Hey. Hey! Hey guess what, silly woman. KOALAS are marsupials. That’s what you’re thinking of. They’re also big fat dopey slow tree eating idiots. Just like you. You fucking fuck.

…

Okay, I’m over it.

In related news, I very much want a shirt with this image on it:

Also, this:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/thelasthouseontheleft/

Ya know… I hate to say it… but this looks like it could be a pretty decent remake.

Actually, I don’t hate to say it at all. I’m very glad to s ay it. I want this to be good. I really do. What I’d hate is if it turns out to be another stupid, pointless remake.

I’ve talked about my position on remakes in general and I’ve talked a bit about how I feel about horror remakes specifically (since they’re do so many of them these days) and, from what I can tell, Last House on the Left is a good example of a movie that really could stand a decent, modern remake.

Last House on the Left was an important horror movie, but it was a dated horror movie. It was definitely a product of the low budget, Texas Chainsaw Massacre era of movies (though it predates TCM by two years) and it did a fine job of being intensely disturbing and graphic. Wes Craven came out of no where and redefined what a horror movie could be.

People talk a lot about “torture porn” these days. Acting as though this trend of overtly violent and gruesome movies like Hostel and Saw is some new thing. But really, Last House on the Left and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did that whole scene back in the 70s. And they did it well. Fuck that “less is more” bullshit. That’s fine if you’re doing a suspense movie. But that anti-gore attitude in horror can be a bit pretentious. Sometimes more is more. Sometimes it’s seeing characters that you care about being horribly maimed and disfigured that can get to you.

Last House on the Left didn’t beat around the bush. The main characters (a small gang of vicious criminals) were sadistic, vile, evil people. And the violence they inflicted on these two teenage girls was intense and unrelenting.

There’s one shot in particular that really disturbed me. Mostly because I didn’t expect it. The gang is two guys, a chick and a teenage boy. They’ve got this teenage girl out in the woods and are kind of casually raping and torturing her. The shot I’m talking about shows two of the guys talking about something or other, and the girl is on the ground, just barely in frame, crying and writhing. While they’re talking, the woman gang member’s head pops up into frame to say something. It pops up from between the tortured girl’s legs, where you suddenly realize that she was down there eating her out. I remember seeing that and going “OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY WENT THERE!” That was some intense, crazy shit that I certainly didn’t see coming. It was like “oh yeah, rape, torture, murder… AND LESBIAN RAPE”.

Anyway, my point is that while Last House on the Left was kickass for it’s time, and an important chapter in the history of horror movies, it was also kind of silly. The music was goofy, and while that was somewhat intentional, it still pushes it into that weird corner of low budget 70s movies along with Walking Tall and Billy Jack. Those movies that you watch, and enjoy, but you also kind of have to say “well, the 70s were kind of lame”.

Looking at this trailer (which seems to give away pretty much the entire movie, which is fine for giving me an idea of where’s they’re taking it, but really annoying for anyone who isn’t familiar with the story already) it seems that they’ve followed the original story pretty closely. From what I’ve read about it, they didn’t hold back on the violence, gore and disturbing nature of the original either. And, from what I can tell, it looks like they’ve gone back to the original story (which was cut and re-edited to appease the ratings board) where the daughter is alive when her parents find her. I dig that they did that.

So here’s to hoping that this remake is decent. I’m typically skeptical of remakes in general, but I always want them to be good. I’m perfectly cool with remaking a movie if you can bring something new and interesting to it. I just get tired of forcing movies that were otherwise fine just as they were into the cookie cutter standards of today’s horror movies.

A small bit of trivia for you… the main bad guy character (the gentleman on the left in the picture above, played by David Hess) was named Krug, a variation on the name of a kid who bullied Wes Craven when he was a child. That bully’s name was Freddy Krueger.

Currently Listening: Dream Weaver / Gary Wright

WTF Jason Statham? Really?

I don’t get peoples fascination with him. I’ve heard (WAY to many times) people say at work “Well, it’s got Jason Statham in it, so it must be pretty good”. What? REALLY?! Since WHEN?!

I feel almost the exact opposite. If it’s got Jason Statham in it, it’s probably pretty fucking stupid. He’s quickly turning into the Steven Segal of this generation.

But with this trailer, he seems he’s somehow jumped past the Steven Segal stage and has landed somewhere in like… I don’t know what. Steven Segal never did anything like this. Neither did Jean Claude Van Damme, or any of the other late 80s/early 90s action stars I can think of.

Either way, it looks fucking stupid. But I didn’t watch the first Crank either.

The only thing that looks even remotely interesting in this trailer is Dwight Yoakam.

The poor guy… I swear.

So The Spirit flopped miserably. It’s apparently completely atrocious and unwatchably bad. I believe it. I haven’t watched it yet, but I believe it. When Robert Rodriguez, with all the good intentions in the world, called Frank Miller his “co-director” on the Sin City movie, he damned him for all time. With his act of kinship and respect, Rodriguez managed to convince Frank Miller that he actually IS a real director. But what he didn’t do was give him the rest of the tools needed to direct a movie. There’s more to it than simply story boarding and green screens.

In the medium of comic books, Frank Miller is almost untouchable as a writer. Or he was anyway. I don’t know what’s happened to him over the last ten years or so, but whatever. My point is that that the man knows how to pace stories and develop characters for comic books. Unfortunately, movies are a completely different and unique medium with an entirely different set of rules and guidelines. The skills it takes to write and illustrate a comic book are totally different than the skills needed to write characters, pace the story and direct actors in a film.

Poor delusional Frank Miller.

I remember when they first announced he was going to do The Spirit. I was hopeful, but also concerned. It would appear (I can’t say for sure, because again, I didn’t watch it) that the worst possible scenario played out. Frank got in WAY over his head. I doubt it was an ego thing… I mean, yeah, he’s a legend in the field of comic books, but I don’t get the impression that he thinks he’s king shit of the universe. But I think he somehow convinced himself (with the help of his “co-director” from Sin City) that he had the chops to fly solo with his own movie. Unfortunately that flight went right into the side of a mountain and exploded.

And really, what did he expect? Honestly? That he would go into making another movie ONLY using the tools he gathered while standing around on the Sin City set? Did he think that the public wants to see another movie done in exactly the same style as Sin City?

Sin City was awesome for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons was the visual style Rodriguez used. It was interesting to watch and captured the atmosphere of the comics perfectly. It was great for THAT movie. Variations on that might be interesting to watch in other movies. Like 300 for instance. 300 was fun to watch, partially because of it’s visual style, which was very similar to Sin City. Similar but different enough to stay interesting. If they’d done 300 exactly like Sin City, then it would have been boring and pointless.

Which I think was one of the reasons no one went to see The Spirit. I know that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t go. It just looked… tired. I don’t want to see another movie aping Sin City’s style. The only reason Sin City worked was because it (very precariously) balanced many different elements, one of which was that unique style. But that style wouldn’t have been enough on it’s own to make Sin City work. And it certainly wouldn’t be enough to make any other movie work.

That’s why I didn’t watch The Spirit. That and because everyone whose seen it says it absurdly bad.

Which sucks especially since I’m relatively sure he managed to drag down any possibility for that supposed Sin City sequel that was in the works. Remember back when they were talking about how Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie were going to be in it? Yeah… we’ll see. I doubt it’s going to happen at all. Mickey Rourke has recently said that he’s not particularly interested in coming back as Marv. I haven’t heard word one from Robert Rodriguez about it. All I’ve heard from him are all of the different ways he’s trying to come up with movies he can remake for his goofy looking, home wrecking girlfriend to star in.

The only person I’ve heard say anything remotely indicating movement on Sin City 2 is… of course, poor, poor, delusional Frank Miller. Go figure.

And honestly, I can’t see them going forward on a sequel to Sin City without Mickey Rourke. Which is also a shame, because honestly… fuck Mickey Rourke. I’ve never liked that fucking guy. He was good as Marv, but whether or not he reprises that role isn’t a deal breaker for me. Get Clancy Brown or Ron Perlman in there to do the same fucking job. Probably better.

But yeah… I’m sure other people are far more attached to Rourke than I am. I just don’t see Sin City 2 happening without him.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Who knows?

Frank is supposedly in line to direct a new Buck Rogers movie. We’ll see.

But between Robert Rodriguez’ apparently decent into pathetic girlfriend placating movie remaking and Frank Miller’s complete and utter failure at making a movie on his own… it doesn’t look good for Sin City 2.

The really sad thing is that this has happened to Frank Miller before. Sort of.

Many, many years ago Frank was asked to write a sequel to Robocop. He did, and (from what I hear) he apparently did quite a decent job of it. People have said that Miller’s original draft of the Robocop 2 script was kickass. But studios, being what they are, they took his script and chopped it up and added characters and took characters out and blended story elements and changed everything around until it was barely recognizable as Frank Miller’s original Robocop 2 story. And the movie that ended up being filmed was horribly stupid. But it still said right at the beginning of the movie “WRITTEN BY FRANK MILLER”. It was a big deal. I remember being excited for it, because I knew who Frank Miller was and I was very hopeful that he’d turn out a decent Robocop story. It didn’t work out that way. Hell, Frank was even IN the movie. He played a small role. But yeah, Robocop 2 was retarded.

After that, Frank Miller was done with Hollywood. Much like his angry, cynical, smelly, derelict hobo looking peer Alan Moore, he shunned Hollywood and the movie making industry. In the once rare interviews he did around the time, the hurt and betrayal he felt was painfully obvious. He was done with Hollywood forever. They’d burned him bad and he wasn’t about to let it happen again. That’s why Robert Rodriguez had to practically stalk him to get him involved with Sin City. Unlike Alan Moore (who is just hateful and unpleasant) Frank seemed genuinely heartbroken about his relationship with Hollywood. I get the impression he’s a pretty damaged guy to begin with. He probably has major rejection issues. I think that’s why 95% of the women characters in his stories are either heartless, sexless bitches or prostitutes in need of saving. Or both.

But I don’t want Frank Miller to disappear from Hollywood. I don’t want this Spirit thing to completely devastate and destroy him, like the Robocop 2 thing did. I can’t really see how a failure of this magnitude COULDN’T devastate and destroy him (it certainly would me) but I hope it doesn’t. What I want is for Frank Miller to go and do the legwork it takes to learn the craft of filmmaking. Chitchatting with Robert Rodriguez on the set of Sin City is a great start, but it isn’t enough. I hope Frank is solid enough to realize his mistakes with The Spirit, but humble (and determined) enough to go back and learn from what he did wrong. He needs to take some film classes. Take some screen writing classes. I think that he took Robert Rodriguez’ laid back style for granted. I don’t think that he realized that Robert earned that style through years and years of low budget film making. You can’t just jump into a big budget action movie starring Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson without any kind of experience. Life isn’t that easy. Even when you’re one of the greatest comic book writers/artists of all time.

Sandra got me a shitton of DVDs this Christmas. Part of the reason is that we went down to the states a few weeks back to do some Christmas shopping. I went into a Big Lots and they had a whole pile of decent DVDs for like, 2.99 or something. So I bought a bunch for myself. Then Sandra was like “No way mister, we’re Christmas shopping” and she took em all and gave them to me as Christmas presents. Then we were in Target and they had a bunch of DVDs on sale for like, 3 for 12 bucks or something. So I picked out a bunch that I wanted and then Sandra made me go away while she bought them. There are two in there that weren’t bought like that. One was Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. The other was The Pee-Wee Herman Show. But all the rest were crazy cheap and facilitated an abundance of Christmas DVD presents.

Rather than list them all, here’s a photo of the stack.

Sandra’s up at her grandma’s with her family. I’m at home alone, drifting from one present to another.

One of the things Sandra got me for Christmas that I opened early (because I ended up running into Futureshop to pick it up, since it was on sale that day) was a new Wacom tablet. I think I’m going to have to take it back and get another one though because the eraser doesn’t work.

Anyway, I’m killing time at home and started working on this in photoshop.

Which will ultimately be a newish take on the Batman character Harley Quinn. Obviously inspired fairly heavily from the Dark Knight version of The Joker. I typically don’t use black and white to actually “ink” anything that I’m drawing in photoshop. I generally go for more of a painting style approach, but I figure that since this was a comic book character (though, originally cartoon character if you want to nitpick) I should take a more Tim Bradstreet approach.

Plus, Sandra bought me the Brian Azzarello/Lee Bermejo Joker graphic novel which has a similar kind of gritty, demented approach to The Joker that’s very inline with the Dark Knight interpretation.

I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve flipped through the pages and taken a look at the style and it’s very much like the movie. I don’t know which came first, but I’m gonna assume that this book was inspired by the movie rather than the other way around. Either way, it got me wanting to do something like this.

I figure I’ll lay down a fairly intricate black and white drawing with line shading and bold outlines and then paint the colors on a layer under it in photoshop.

I really liked the scarification on The Joker’s face in the movie and I think that was a pretty interesting interpretation of the character. Doing away with (apparently at least) the whole “You dropped me in a vat of chemicals and now I hate you because that was such a dick movie Batman” aspect. Leaving the audience to assume that he either did it to himself or someone did it to him.

Either way, I think it works even better in the context of Harley Quinn. I mean, she’s the ultimate abused girlfriend. The idea that SHE either did this to herself to prove her love and admiration to The Joker… or, even worse, he did it to her to prove his ownership. Whichever way you look at it, it works in the context of the story.

That’s one of the things that’s so fascinating about Harley Quinn, and by extension The Joker himself. She was his psychiatrist. She started off in a position of power over The Joker and ultimately, he took that from her in the most extreme way. Or she gave it to him. If The Joker is the ultimate bad guy, then Harley Quinn is the ultimate doomed woman who can’t help but love bad guys. By the time she became “Harley Quinn” she was so far gone whatever power she ever had that she’s completely lost in this abusive, demented relationship with a man whose only emotional relationship with her consists of abuse and control.

It’s funny how Harley has become this kind of “powerful woman” character in the Batman universe, teaming up in almost homoerotic side stories with Poison Ivy. Because Harley Quinn is about as far from a “powerful woman” as you’re going to get in the comic book universe. They treat her like she’s this Mallory Knox kind of character who is somehow partnered with The Joker to pull off these intricate, entertaining crimes. That they’re on equal ground. But that’s not really true to her character at all. Without The Joker she’s nothing. Or, even more boring, without The Joker, she’s healthy and functional. But he’s managed to break her down so far that she can’t exist without him. Her entire emotional and mental structure is based on this need to please a man who only wants to keep her under his thumb.

It’s true that she is capable of holding her own, within the context of doing his bidding. She is a smart, capable woman. But she’s not strong. She’s incredibly weak and dependant. But not because he’s a man, or even THE man, but because he’s so fucking BAD. She’s beyond “He’s bad but I can fix him and make him love me” and into just getting off on how bad he is. That’s what I love about Harley Quinn. If she believed she was going to fix him and make him love her, then she’d be boring. But no… she just wants to watch him be evil.

And that’s hot. Abusive wife syndrome (which, I don’t know if that’ s actually a syndrome, but that’s what I’m going to cal it) isn’t an attractive quality in a character… but a character who gets off (I’m reading a little more into a children’s cartoon that I maybe should but whatever) on watching someone physically and emotionally hurt other people is both interesting and sexy. In a fictional character. In real life, not so much. But when we’re talking fantasy, that’s pretty hot.

It’s a shame that Heath had to die. There was talk (and, like so much talk around these Batman movies, I imagine it’s bullshit) that they were planning on possibly doing another movie that featured The Joker, this time focusing on his trial. It was (supposedly) going to have The Joker conducting all of these terrible things from his cell in Arkham Asylum, ala Charles Manson during his trial. THAT would have been the perfect context for bringing Harley Quinn into the movies. Can you imagine if they’d managed to have Heath in as The Joker, in Arkham, and had cast Michelle Williams as Harley Quinn?

That would have blown my mind. Of course, the history between the two would have made it that much more twisted and awesome.

But now we’ll never know.

Anyway, if you’re interested, this is the picture I’m using as reference for the Harley Quinn drawing.

And yes, she’ll probably be topless in my drawing as well. But I haven’t decided for sure yet. I’m going to draw gloves on her and probably some kind of hat with the pointy jester things and bells. If you could see more of her arms, I was going to have the diamond pattern tattooed on her. I may still work that in there. I was stuck between a few different poses from the same set of pictures.

I also liked this one, but I didn’t think you could see enough of her face to get the scarification across.

And I like being able to see her stomach. I’m thinking about doing something with that.

I talk a lot about my disdain for Tim Burton and his movies. But that’s not entirely true. I do think that in the right environment and with the right support, Tim Burton is capable of making good movies. I just think that his capacity for greatness is far more limited to the abilities of the people around him. He’s got a certain somewhat unique viewpoint, that when channeled well, can produce quality art. It’s just that most of the time that doesn’t happen. Burton isn’t capable of bringing those elements together for himself. 

One of my favorite acting performances ever came from a Tim Burton movie. It was in Burton’s fan letter to the doomed transvestite film maker Ed Wood. The performance was Martin Landau as a drug addled, washed up Bela Lugosi. Landau was absolutely brilliant. Funny, touching, offensive and completely immersed in his degenerate world. What was so amazing to me, beside the fact that when I watched it I simply saw Bela Lugosi and forgot I was watching an actor, was the way he was both this legendary actor and so pathetic and tortured. Watching it, I hurt for Bela Lugosi. I wanted him to be okay, even though I knew he wouldn’t be.

Anyway, this is the scene that I always remember when I think of that performance. I don’t know if it’s Landau’s best scene in the movie, but it’s the one that stands out in my mind. He has this little ray of sunshine through the darkness, and then his ego and the reality of his life clouds it over.

Plus, I love quoting this scene.

Karlof? Side…kick? FUCK YOU! KARLOF DOES NOT DESERVE TO SMELL MY SHIT! THAT LIMEY COCKSUCKER CAN ROT IN HELL FOR ALL I CARE!

Unfortunately people don’t usually know what I’m saying or why when I say it. It’s one of many things that alienates me from the general public.

Back in the old days? Yes. But now no one gives two fucks for Bela.

In other news:

This is the fattest snow I I’ve ever seen in my life. FUCK YOU SNOW!

gravity sent me this link. Here are some of the standouts.

And for some reason seeing both Rashida Jones in there makes me happy. Every time I see her what I think (rather than Karen Filippelli) is of her and Natalie Portman yelling “PUPPIES!”.

Also, Thomas Lennon, who I still think of as “Thomas Lennon from The State” even though he has since become Thomas Lennon from a lot of other things.

And, of course, major kudos for The Pixies song.

HOUSE Girl Olivia Wilde To Star In TR2N!!

I am – Hercules!!

Months after showing everybody its teaser trailer, “TR2N” is starting to cast human actors.

Olivia Wilde, who played Marissa Cooper’s lesbian love on “The OC” before turning up on “House” as Candidate 13 last season, is all aboard.

She’s pretty!

According to The Hollywood Reporter:

Wilde will play a worker in the virtual world who tries to help fight Master Control Program, the villainous intelligence protocol that was the nemesis in the original film.

Wilde was two years from being born when the original “TRON” hit cinemas in 1982.

Also cast is Wilde’s “Turistas” co-star Beau Garrett (“Made of Honor,” “Rise of the Silver Surfer”), who will play “a siren in the virtual world.”

Jeff Bridges reprises the role of Kevin Flynn in the sci-fi sequel, due out in 2011.

Find all of The Hollywood Reporter’s story on the matter here.

Dude… Thirteen on House is the fucking HOTNESS.

She is like, supernaturally hot. She’s the kind of hot that transcends normal hot and becomes some kind of incomprehensible hot. A have a theory about her character though.

Remember a couple of seasons back when we had the original team and Cameron thought that she was dying of some kind of disease and so she went on like, a crank binge and turned into a big slut and had sex with Chase? Then she found out she wasn’t dying and went back to being normal Cameron?

I think they LIKED her like that, but didn’t want to lose regular old Cameron as a character. So they came up with Thirteen, who is like a super intensified version of “I think I’m gonna die so I’m gonna be a slutty druggy” Cameron. She’s hotter, she’s sluttier, she’s more of a druggy.

I approve either way. And I am QUITE down with TR2N. Which really should have been called Tr0nz.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE HD

While it definitely looks cheesy, I don’t give a bag of dicks. It also looks awesome. Really, all I needed to see was Wolverine using his claws to slow himself down on a motorcycle.

Now, in the realm of BAD IDEAS, I give you this:

Has anyone here seen the movie Badlands? I haven’t but I think I’d like to. It stars Martin Sheen (who I’m meh about) and Sissy Spacek (who I like quite a lot) as a young couple on a killing spree. It’s based loosely on a spree killers Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, which was also the inspiration for a pile of other movies, including Natural Born Killers, as well the the Bruce Springsteen song Nebraska.

I’m not really a huge fan of Natural Born Killers (though I thought it was The Shit when it came out and I was like, sixteen or something) but I do like that genre. That “lovers killing a bunch people” genre. Not a whole lot of movies IN that genre, but there are a few.

Yes, I think I’d like to watch this movie.

This dude has got to have been one of the scariest fucking dudes ever. He showed up at my door and it started raining and he was demanding that I let him in, I would probably shit my pants.

And, for the record, I miss Craig T. Nelson ever so much. He was awesome.

This one focuses much more on the relationship and parallels between The Joker and Batman. Holy jeeze am I ever excited!