Parsifal's Revenge
And, boy howdy, that MySpace is a fun time waster. I can have any of a wide variety of good songs blasting at anyone who stumbles upon my page, and I can write as much as I want about how awesome that song is. (Enslaved is up there now.) I am friends with a bunch of bands I really like, some who asked me to be their friend, and I get all sorts of updates on their doings. This is how I found out about the new Agalloch song, a special Katatonia-flavored gift for March. Although I've verified a number of people I'd rather not hear from are lurking about its sprawling network, I've also been contacted by some cool mf's I haven't talked to in a while. Sometimes, some total hoochie will send you a "friend request," which means you get listed as friends on each other's pages and can read each other's frivolous bulletins. It's bizarre to me that some married Christian woman in Idaho who likes horsies and country music would see my big brown page and go, "Oh, I should be 'friends' with that guy." I do not feel bad denying these people friend status, especially since I do not know them.
Then, sometimes you get something like this in your message box:
Subject: i think we live in the same city
Body: hey your profile is awesome!
if you want to chat ill be online right now just hit me on my Yahoo name --> candytaylor87
we can chat for a while if you want don't forget I'll be on the Yahoo name --> candytaylor87
If I'm offline for any reason ADD ME to your contact list to message me later (Ill be waiting 4 u babe)!
If you are one of those special people who cannot recognize spam, this candytaylor87 (her profile name is the more subtle "candice") does not actually exist. The fake profile says she lives in San Francisco, which is not remotely the same as my city. So if candice were an actual human, she would be the dumbest 19 year-old I've ever seen, provided her age is what the "87" is meant to infer. And from her picture, she doesn't seem like a very serious student, either. Perhaps this advertising tool is designed to appeal to guys who get off on stupidity? Depressing. On the bright side, I needed a title for my next single. "(Just) Hit Me On My Yahoo Name" is catchy and hip.
I liked the way the last post turned out, so I think I will try to stick to the single-subject-review format from now on unless I have something really special to blab about. In theory, this should allow me to post more often rather than saving it up for a week. So... I got another amazing Shriek Show box, one all about tangential jungle exploitation movies. It's designed for dudes like me - I assure you, most purchasers of this set are males - who already own "Cannibal Holocaust", maybe received "Cannibal Ferox" as a gift, have read up on cannibal pictures and are curious about the lesser titles of the, um, movement. The film on today's splatter platter is the least "cannibal" of this batch, although considering that it came out in 1985, it was really milking the long-dead cannibal trend by even suggesting it. Yes, It's yet another Italian job I'd wanted to see for a while. I mean, the title alone...
"Massacre In Dinosaur Valley" stars Michael Sopkiw, who diligent readers will remember turning down a bunch of fine Italian women as the moronic Parsifal in "2019: After the Fall of New York." He's much smarter here, and as the subject of both a long interview and the commentary track, I now have a bit of respect for Sopkiw - he's a bit pretentious, but he respects the scrappiness of the Italian schlockmeisters he worked with (here it's Michele Massimo Tarantini) and he readily admits that "Devil Fish" is total turds.
I had been lead to believe "Massacre" was an ultraviolent '80s action film in the vein of Deodato's "Cut and Run", but it's more of a sleazy Indiana Jones/"Romancing the Stone" knockoff with some cannibal elements for seasoning. Either way, if Cannon Pictures would have had an office in Rome, movies like these would surely be the product. The Italian title, "Nudo e Selvaggio," means "Nude and Savage," and that puts its concerns in the proper order of importance for Deodato and crew. There are no dinosaurs in this film, just Sopkiw as self-proclaimed "bone hunter" Kevin Hall, a wussy name for an ass-kicking paleontologist if ever there was one. Among even the lesser movie action heroes of his era, Kevin Hall is not in the same league as Allan Quatermain, or even Jake Speed. However, he does have three attractive girls who spend a lot of their screen time with their mammary glands exposed.
We first meet our hero at a Brazilian hotel that hosts cockfights, where the other guests include a grizzled professor, his saucy but horribly-coiffed daughter Eva, a Vietnam vet who looks and dresses like Udo Dirkschneider, Udo's braying old glamorpuss wife, a fashion photographer and two models way better looking than the twigs in those underwear catalogs that keep showing up in my mailbox. Kevin bone-hunts the hotter (read: brunette) one after he gets his ass kicked defending her honor, but she unfortunately dies when they all get on a plane and it crashes in the fossil-rich "valley of the dinosaurs." Such an amazing special effect with a toy plane you have never seen! Sopkiw says on the commentary, "At least they used the right model of plane, right?" Oh yeah, the professor dies, too. The photog gets his leg chewed off by piranhas before Udo ices him. Kevin gets all uppity, so he and the camo-sporting soldier engage in a manly brawl that sends them rolling down a waterfall, a stunt which Sopkiw says still gives him back problems. At one point, the girls' shirts get wet and the camera literally zooms in on their boobs, first one rack and then the next. In this movie, this is what passes for foreshadowing.
The cannibal antics are pretty low-grade. After the awful old woman drowns in quicksand, the local tribe eats her jerk husband. The chief yanks out his heart and holds it up like Mola Ram, then chows right the hell down. Then they haul the ladies off, strip 'em and make 'em wear some sort of loin-thong things. A dude wearing a big dinosaur skull mask and a fake claw scratches up the blonde model's chestal area to collect some blood in a goblet, but dashing Kevin swoops in to save the day before too much menacing can occur. From there, it's on to a sloooow getaway, some travel sequences and an aborted love scene between Kevin and Eva. The ladies are certainly running around the jungle topless for a long time. The whole shoot must have been pretty degrading for actresses Susie Hahn (Belinda, the model) and Suzane Carvalho (Eva); Hahn never made another movie, and after one more WIP flick with Tarantini, Carvalho quit acting to become a big-deal Formula 3 race car driver.
The final section of "Massacre" involves an emerald-mining slavemaster who looks just like George Clooney in "Syriana." He ties Kevin up with some flesh-eating pigs, and he sticks the ladies in with an aggressive lesbian warden type. This lady has a make-out session with Belinda that would have been erotic if the model's teat wasn't all crusty from the dinosaur claw wound. Then George Clooney smacks Eva around, mashes on her and performs what appears to be a forced dry-humping on her. I think it's supposed to be a rape, but thanks to Tarantini's ineptitude, it's only implied. In a move straight out of "Jewel of the Nile," Kevin gets the pigs to chew through his ropes by bleeding on them. He kills Clooney, but not before the bewhiskered tub o' guts shoots Belinda about twenty times. Kevin and Eva steal a helicopter and fly off: filthy rich with emeralds, completely in love and not seeming very shattered by the events they just lived through. Like, everyone they came down to Dinosaur Valley with dying, including her dad. Well, you know what the Findlays told us: in South America, life is cheap! (And to think, kyle and eden are there right now...)
The "Massacre" is not that "extreme," and I was kind of disappointed at first, but upon watching it again with Sopkiw's commentary, I have to admit a lot of crazy, sordid shit happens in this movie. The music is mostly pretty good retro-electro stuff that made me wish the new Zombi album was already out, but the main theme is especially great. It's basically a boisterous Brazilian samba with chirpy "la-la-la" vocals, yet the singing has that weird vintage echoey European recording that you want from an Italian cannibal movie theme song. Imagine naked women singing it, and that hodgepodge perfectly sums up this movie's appeal.
More reviews are here - the new Yakuza album and James Gunn's "Slither", both recommended by the house. Until next time, keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.
posted by SoulReaper at 1:01 AM
1 Comments:
Yakuza, Samsara (Prosthetic) ***
Chicago's Yakuza return with their unique, expansive brand of progressive hardcore. Metal, jazz and psychedelic concepts continue to collide within and inform Samsara, the band's third album, a strong distillation of their creative force which should finally get the quartet the notice they deserve.
It's not that Samsara is a difficult listen - it's far more compact than 2002’s Way of the Dead - but rather that it offers so many things to hear at once. Producer Matt Bayles draws out a variety of textures similar to his work with Isis and Mastodon (whose frontman Troy Sanders lends his roar to closer "Back to the Mountain").
There's more power and conviction than ever in Bruce Lamont's clenched-gut bellows and dazed Perry Farrell croon (see the trippy "Exterminator"), and his saxophone outbursts are more expertly integrated into the songs. His brooding horn melds surprisingly smoothly with Matt McClelland's sheets of ambient guitar ("Dishonor"). McClelland also conveys the unpredictability of a back-alley stabbing amid the vicious riff attack of "20 Bucks" and opener "Cancer of Industry," while drummer James Staffel amplifies the record's spontaneous danger with rhythms ranging from tribal to calamitous.
For the highlight, check out either the titanic "Glory Hole" or "Monkeytail," which begins with Lamont’s sax backed by a sleepy post-rock arrangement and gradually builds into a pounding Neurosis-style drone before erupting into frantic shredding. And at a time when The Dillinger Escape Plan gets heavy rotation on MTV2, it will be a shame if chaos-core kids never revel in the controlled savagery of "Just Say Know."
Recorded on the band's own time and dime, "Samsara" marks Yakuza's move from monolithic metal meat grinder Century Media to the smaller Prosthetic, the imprint best known for introducing neo-thrash heroes Lamb of God. It's appropriate, because Yakuza's unorthodox approach requires more attention than usual from publicists and listeners alike.
Goopy "Slither" infested with the spirit of '80s splatter comedies
***
"Slither" is the sort of spookshow that proliferated during the 1980s. After years of rote post-"Halloween" slasher dross, flicks like "Evil Dead II," "Critters" and "The Stuff" started using humor as a tool to get a reaction from jaded audiences. Now that the '80s are back - from the Republican in the White House to dance-punk bands wearing skinny ties - it's time for the classic splatter comedy to make its comeback.
Writer/director James Gunn does it, and he does it right. He probably made more money writing the "Scooby-Doo" movies, but Gunn is better known as an alumnus of Troma Studios ("Tromeo and Juliet") and for writing 2004's surprisingly effective "Dawn of the Dead" remake. "Slither" is his directorial debut, and it’s hard to imagine a better man to tell this tale of a small town overrun by goopy, mind-controlling alien slugs.
It's even harder to imagine a better lead than Nathan Fillion, a major cult star after his winning role as cavalier Capt. Mal Reynolds in Joss Whedon's "Firefly" and "Serenity." Here, he's Bill Pardy, police chief of rural Wheelsy, South Carolina, a town so sleepy that the cops don't notice a meteor crashing right behind their car.
Another genre favorite, Michael Rooker of "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" fame, is businessman Grant Grant, who scooped up pretty young Starla (Elizabeth Banks, the blonde nympho from "The 40 Year-old Virgin") as a teenager. Bill has nursed the mad hots for Starla from childhood, but he's resigned to the fact that she chose the rich old guy.
One night, when Starla's interest in nookie wanes, Grant gets drunk and meets an old girlfriend's sister, Brenda (Brenda James). They're walking in the woods when they come across the meteor, which hosts a worm-like creature that burrows into Grant's chest and works its way up to his brain.
Of course, it's an evil alien seeking to wipe out life on Earth. It causes Grant to stockpile raw meat, slaughter local house pets for food and kidnap Brenda, turning her into a huge, swollen breeding sac for the alien’s progeny. By the time Starla realizes what's up, her husband's chest is a nasty mess of sores and tentacles, and she teams with Bill to hunt down the missing Brenda.
They find her, but it's too late. In one of the film's many gross-out scenes, Bill, his creaky fellow cops and Starla witness the culmination of Brenda’s incubation: she explodes into a torrent of alien slugs, which swarm over the heroes looking for a way into their bodies.
It's an impressive CG spectacle that brings to mind both Jeff Lieberman's killer worm classic "Squirm" and David Cronenberg's biologically harrowing debut "Shivers." (That film's infamous "parasite in the bathtub" sequence is also referenced in "Slither," featuring prominently in the ad campaign.)
The slugs take over Wheelsy person by person, entering through their mouths and connecting them to the master brain residing in Grant. Bill and Starla assemble uninfected fighters such as hilariously inept mayor Jack MacReady (Gregg Henry) and cranky teen Kylie (Tania Saulnier), who fends off an invader with her long, ghetto-fabulous nails.
The ick factor is commendably high, with a host of great special effects both digital and prosthetic including Grant's elaborate mutation, a head blown open and a guy butterflied like a shrimp. Yet Gunn's droll dialogue and game actors give "Slither" the proper tone: fun but not mockingly campy.
Fillion's laid-back wit is perfect for what could be a stock heroic role, while Henry steals a number of scenes as the foul-mouthed mayor. Look for Gunn in a cameo, as well as his wife, Jenna Fischer of NBC's "The Office," as the riotously deadpan police dispatcher.
But "Slither" belongs to Rooker, who projects a surprising humanity under the latex as a guy who really loves his "trophy" wife, yet cannot help but watch her slip away. He gives it an emotional core that you don't expect from a movie with this much goop, one which promises that in the future, Gunn will be capable of delivering his own genuine genre classic.
[Note to "Tromeo" fans: there's a Jane Jensen song on the soundtrack.]
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