A.K.A. Dr Butcher MD…

With a cover like this, it has to be awesome, right?

No, it really is also known as that. It says so right on the cover.

You see, there are some movies that are absolute classics that they deserve a place on your shelf, wherethey can easily be accessed for repeate viewing. This isn’t one of them…

Ummm… ok. But there are some movies that are so cheesy, and with special effects so woefully bad that they have to be seen, at least once, like a Troma film… Right?

Right, but this isn’t one of them.

Fuck… So why is this movie being reviewed? Oh yeah, because it seems to show up in every fucking bargain bin you ever see so you may as well give in, because serendipity is going to rape your eye balls.

And because there are some movies that are so cheap ($1.99 bargain bin at the news agent), and happen to have all the right words on the cover (i.e. “zombie” and “holocaust”) as to push your buttons, and they look like the worst cross section of grind-house and exploitation flicks and snuff, that you think to yourself maybe it’ll be so bad that it’ll be awesome. Like anything starring Dolph Lundgren.

Now, with a cover and title like that, and a being cheaper than a cheeseburger, you’d think it’d have to be an awesome movie. And you’d have to be high to think that. Which is likely what I was at the time.

Now, let’s be honest here. How hard would it have been to come through with any of the promises on this cover? Let’s break it down.

1. Zombies – There’s a word that always deserves a second glance. Zombies. You always know a movie is good when it has zombies! Which is why it’s amazing that this movie has almost none of them. It has Cannibals. An entire island tribe of them. If it had been called Cannibal Holocaust, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. And those bastard producers knew it!
2. Holocausts – Yeah, no, not happening. You’d expect a few hundred, if not tens of thousands of zombies in something where the word “holocaust” comes right after the word “zombies”. I think there are like three. And they’re actually kind of really lame.
3. Explosions - There’s kind of a lame fire at the end… but nothing blows up. I’ve had house parties where I blow up more shit than gets kerploded in this film. And with the word “Holocaust” in the title, I’m either expecting some seriously fucking huge explosions, or a lot of Jews getting turned into soap… And there was more of the latter going on in Fight Club.
4. 

   "The zombies kept eating the hands when they tried to facepalm, so they got me for this pic instead"

   Naked Polynesian dudes – In all fairness, the movie actually delivers on this… Although in many of the scenes, a lot of the naked Polynesian dudes are very obviously actually naked Italian dudes. For a start, Polynesians tend not to grow handle bar moustaches. Especially if they’re still backwards cannibal tribes. They also don’t tend to paint their bodies like native American war chiefs.

5. The movie not trying to be cleverer than the audience that would willingly buy it – Unfortunately, this is where it all falls apart (Edit: Are you fucking serious? – Ego).
   There are a few scenes where the badly dubbed Italian actors begin to talk like they actually know what the fuck they’re doing (as opposed to “I’m an experienced sailor”, and then trying to start an outboard motor that’s half buried in sand on the beach). But whilst it shows they’re using logic, they’re still fucking it up. “How did the doctor know which island we were on, when Molotto took us to the wrong island?”… Uhhh, because it was Molotto that took you to the wrong island, so if you ended up on the right one, which you did, the doctor knows you’re actually on the fucking island! GAH!
   If that’s not quite bad enough, there’s also the whole ritual sacrifice of the horror movie standard blond chick. Not only does she willingly go to get sacrificed after kicking and screaming whilst being dragged away, the sacrifice then stops for no apparent reason, and the previously loyal-to-Dr.Butcher tribe decide to suddenly turn on him, andthe zombies they so feared… with no explanation what so ever!

So, if you find this flick in the bargain bin for under $4.28, then sure, buy it for someone you don’t like very much, or have a horror movie night with drinking games – every time the characters do something you didn’t actually expect (like make a sensible decision, or make sense, or just decide to calmly go along with being sacrificed), take a shot!

I give this film half a spinning blue penis… a limp one at that!

Thanks to Buffy The Vampire Slayer, we are all well aware that the lamest and most awkward time in your life can be made substantially more awesome by adding in vampires… and a British guy that can sing.

But what happens if you suddenly take out all the cool and raunch of a show like Buffy, and instead added in all the lameness of a highschool drama? What if you crossed True Blood and Degrassi: The Next Generation?

You’d get The Vampire Diaries.

Much like Twilight and True Blood, these are based off a series of books from an author no one had ever heard of until recently, and all seemed to come out with remarkable speed. I guess the big push for vampires at the moment is the same as in the mid 90s. They’re the in thing again, and it needs to be squeezed into teenagers, so their cash is squeezed out, before they go back to some other form of disaffection with life and stop buying black clothes and silly hairstyles. On the bright side, I suppose this current craze could possibly see a revival in goth clubs… On the down side, they might insist on bringing the sound tracks to these shows with them, which in this case would include a fair bit of terrible terrible emo music. Yes, I hate My Chemical Romance in no small degree.

Back to the show!

The plot revolves around Elena, a girl who’s parents died the year previously, being sort of taken care of an aunt, whilst she takes care of her dope fiend brother. She’s having a hard time at school, as all high school drama protagonists do. It should be pointed out the Elena is played by Nina Dobrev, who is probably one of the better people for this role. Why? Because she’s been in other teen horror crap before, she was in Degrassi: The Next Generation, and hell, she even had a part as an extra in Repo the Genetic Opera… So yeah, I’ll give her, and the casting director, some credit in this. She’s also not a woeful actor, unlike many many teenagers.

Enter Stefan, one of the founders of their small town, who is now a vampire, and looks about as much a teenager as Luke Perry did as Dylan. He’s here to recapture his lost love from 150 years prior, because Elena, who is not only underage, but so much younger than him that it’s all kinds of wrong (Buffy was wrong too… Except for Willow. Her relationships were all kinds of right.), and his troublesome brother, Damon (nice and obvious name there).

Stefan’s a “good” vampire, because he doesn’t drink human blood. Suck it up, bucko. Literally. Male humans come with a convenient-for-vampires meat straw that they’re more than happy to have someone, anyone, suck on so that some kind of fluid is drained out. It’s what the female fandom are secretly wanting in the first place. Ladies out there, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’ll admit to only having seen two episodes, but the show irritates me on a number of levels, and I’m not talking about how much they tried to get a guy that looked like “Edward” to cash in on the Stephanie Meyer / Twilight craze.

The show is simply not that well constructed.

For a start, plot devices ripped straight out of every other vampire series out there. The sunlight going ring from Buffy, so Stefan doesn’t burn up. The “I’m a good vampire now” shtick from numerous sources. The “She reminds me of a lost love” from Anne Rice. The highschool setting from Poppy Z Brite. It’s like it’s every good idea stolen and rolled in together.

The pacing is terrible. Admittedly, this is partially the fault of poor source material, but a good team of writers or director know how to pad scenes so that they can give better over all pacing to a show. True Blood is a fantastic example of how tacky source material can be redone to make a much better paced show.

The special effects are just annoying. One prime example: The mist. Ok, we get it, vampires like mist. But mist rises from the ground, it doesn’t billow in from the sides, and certainly not in great rolling gusts. Maybe it’s mystical mist! No, I still don’t buy it. It shouldn’t be hugging the ground like a thick blanket, but rather be a solid wall. I drive through mist on a regular basis when interstate tripping. It’s scary shit when it looms like a wall, and I only ever see it hug the ground in valleys. Also, crows… Seriously?

The soundtrack to this show is woeful. The non-diegetic music simply does not suit the scenes that they’re paired with, and it really does sound like they’re simply trying to slot tracks in so that later down the road they can sell an MTV approved sound track.

I think I’m going to have to write another article on heart throb vampires that don’t fucking sparkle…

In the meantime, here’s a clip from Vampire Diary (not Diaries). It’s done on a budget of almsot nothing, seems to have no script, yet still manages to not be so lame… No wait, it does.

Just got back from watching Coraline.

Wow… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kid’s movie that was less appropriate for children other than perhaps Urotsukidoji. In seriousness though, it was a fantastic adaptation of the book. There was a slight deviation from the book (there always is, isn’t there) in the creation of the character ‘Wybourne’. Why he was added baffles me, and I can only thing it was to add some sort of love interest, because all preteens need one of those, right? But hey, read the book for yourself and decide which version you like better. I think the character of Wybourne adds a little bit more depth to Coraline’s character.

Casting for this movie was pretty well done. Dakota Fanning as Coraline. She’s a precocious brat, so it works nicely. Whilst I didn’t exactly agree with the casting of Terri Hatcher as the mother, that they made the animated figurine look somewhat like she used to in the old Lois & Clarke series helped it along nicely and seemed to ease her into the  role… the flat head helped especially. The Cat, for me at least, was the most interesting pick. You’re going to watch this film and scratch your head wondering where the hell you’ve heard this guy’s voice before… because he’s in every bloody Xbox game worth playing! And he was also Goliath in Gargoyles, which you know you watched as a kid, even if you’d like to pretend you didn’t.

Visually speaking, this movie is amazingly good. Stop motion animation is always hard, and there are two recognised masters of it, Aardman films, and Burton’s team on Nightmare Before Christmas. The fluidity of animation, particularly of the ‘Other Mother’ after she’s transformed, is astounding, and to be honest, rather creepy at times.

The choice of soundtrack was interesting. As the movie is based of a children’s book, and is ostensibly aimed at children (very fucked up children who are going to be come the next generation of Goths, just like NMBC did with all the kids in the early 90s), it would be safe to assume that the sound track would also be somewhat aimed at children. However, you’d be amazingly wrong. The score, or at least the parts you’re going to remember, are a bloody creepy children’s choir for the ‘real’ world, and rather up beat orchestral melodies for the ‘other’ world… It fits the mood perfectly.

It needs to be stated that I saw this film in 3D, which I think really probably added to the experience in a big way. The added depth of field helped in no small way when it comes to the suspension of disbelief, and I’m thinking that a lot of animations will probably seem more “real” using 3D display technologies. With that said, the effect was let down by the a lot of red/green shift happening to things further back in the depth-of-field when they were dark colours. Just something to keep in mind if you decide to see this in 3D as well.

In the Goth Club movie rating system, I give this film four spinning blue penises.

Go and see it in 3D before it finishes atthe cinema, because the 60″ screen with 7.1 Doly surround sound that you call a home theater system is still 2D bile  in comparison.

I’ve seen District 9 twice now.

I actually quite enjoy it as a film on both the switch-your-brain-off action movie and as a social commentary.

For those that haven’t seen it yet, seriously, do go and see it.

It’s a fantastic movie, based of a similar short film called Alive in Joburg, by the same director (Neil Blomkamp – who was offered directorship for the Halo film adaptation). The protagonist, Wikus (played by newcomer Sharlto Copley), is in the role of the hapless-idiot-turned-hero in a way that had me completely suspending my disbelief. I’m hoping Copley makes it to Hollywood, actually… Then again, all white South Africans are bad guys in Hollywood.

There are things that bugged me about it though. The use of African tribal music, which doesn’t really work in a South African apartheid type setting was odd… but hey, white person, what the fuck do I know, right?

The most frustrating thing though was the switch from the mock-documentary format at the beginning of the film to a regular action sequence… and then back to documentary at the end. Seriously, they could have kept it mocukmentary style the whole way through with some clever angle usage and inserting “dramatization” in flashing red letters in the bottom corner of the screen. Not hard really.

But here’s the thing. The metaphor for the extraterrestrials being Black people is just way too obvious. I’m thinking it must be deeper than that, and I think I finally figured it out!

District 9 is actually a metaphor for pubescent male magicians who like to hold onto phallic objects!

The movie seriously could have used a bit less violence, and some more playing sports and waving of wands to solve problems. At least they managed to get the made up language part right.

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