Mini Review: Rigor Mortis

You ever have one of those movies that you watch, get to the end and ask, "What was that?"  For me, that movie was Juno Mak's Rigor Mortis, a vampire/possession-zombie(?) movie that starts and ends in some kind of gray mud, which can probably serve as some sort of commentary on the entire film.  It was made in tribute to the Mr. Vampire series of films and stars a lot of the actors who made their name in those films.  I have not been able to track these down, but I have it on good authority (Wikipedia) that they exist.  So that's something.

Rigor Mortis belongs in the jiangshi genre.  Jiangshi are hopping corpses in Chinese folklore.  These are also known as "hopping vampire films", which sounds about right.  There were hopping entities in this film, complete with red tendrils protruding from their entire body, for reasons I wasn't entirely clear on.  Were they vampires?  I'm still not entirely sure.  They seemed to be more like demons or ghosts, but that's neither here nor there.

Vampires?

Let me try to explain the plot to you and we'll see if my head explodes.  A washed-up actor moves into a decrepit apartment complex with lots of strange characters.  He immediately tries to kill himself and is saved by a resident; a great rice cook/vampire hunter.

There's a woman who lives in the complex with her little white-haired son.  They used to live in an apartment, but now they don't, so they wander the halls, stealing food.  They live in the basement because the kindly security guard feels bad for them.  They used to live in the apartment the actor moved into, but her husband cheated on her and got killed by ghosts?  Maybe?  That whole scene was hard to follow.

There's a warlock.  Like, a straight-up warlock.  It might just be me projecting my thoughts when looking back, but I think he had a really dark goatee and wore a robe.  (He did not wear a robe.)  He coughs a lot and smokes "special cigarettes".  (Spoiler alert: it's the crushed-up bones of innocent children.)

There's an elderly lady and her husband.  He dies by falling down stairs, and the warlock convinces her to do a ritual that will revive her husband.  It's weird and creepy and she becomes unhinged quickly.  He becomes a monster who likes to kill, and she seems legitimately surprised by this, despite the fact that he looks like a monster and was raised from the dead by a warlock.

He's fine, you guys. He's just really sleepy.

There's a big fight scene at the end that I didn't fully understand.  There's a little scene after the fight scene that I didn't fully understand.

I feel like I would have understood this better if I had been very familiar with the Mr. Vampire films.  But I have never seen a Mr. Vampire film, so I was very much in the dark for the duration of the movie.

YAAAAAAAA!

It looked really cool, though.  I feel like this was one of those movies that would be perfect for putting on in the background of a Halloween party.  If I had Halloween parties, I would absolutely do that.  Mute the movie, throw some music on and glance over at the screen from time to time.  It would be tremendous.

I can't recommend it as an actual movie, though.  Cool as it may look, the story is absolutely nonsensical.  It wasn't a complete waste of time, but it was a 75% waste of time.

Rating: 1/5

Dracula 3D: Journey to the Brink of Sanity

(I originally put this up on Horror-Writers, but decided to post it here as well.  I was talking to a couple people that write for the site, and they were talking about how bad Dario Argento’s Dracula was.  So I watched it and wrote this.)

On numerous occasions, Shawn has proclaimed this movie “the worst movie ever made”.  I believe Chassity has backed him up on these claims. 

I took these bold proclamations as a personal challenge.  I sat through Blood Gnome – a movie about knock-off Ghoulies in the world of S&M – in its entirety.  I refused to believe that Dracula 3D could be worse.  It was directed by Dario Argento, for God’s sake.  I’ve never been a huge fan of the man, but at least his films have a visually interesting aspect to them. 

And so, with half a bottle of Scotch at my disposal, I hit play and prepared myself for the onslaught of Dracula 3D in 2D.

May my non-existent children forgive me.

My confusion started early, and set the stage for what was to come.  I swore the music playing over the credits was the same music used in Mars Attacks.  Was I to infer that Dracula was actually an alien?  I assumed the answer was an emphatic “yes”.  Dracula – THE Dracula – had given up pork.  I was left to wonder when (not if) Tom Jones would be showing up.  Dracula turning into a mantis.  It’s not unusual, indeed.

Within the first five minutes, I witnessed a busty young lass take off her clothes and get railed in a barn by a local (married) farmer.  In my experience, there's nothing a woman likes more from her married lover than hurried, dirty sex in a barn.  At least throw on some Marvin Gaye, man.  They had a tiff afterwards (something about him being married, the cross she was wearing, and their differing opinions of the style in which As I Lay Dying was written, I believe), which led to her running through the woods from an owl and becoming Dracula’s newest plaything, while a man with a shotgun smiled and nodded his approval.

At this point, I had come to believe that I had contracted the flu.  Nothing else would explain these images currently being burrowed into my brain.

Not long after that, Jonathan Harker – who looked absolutely nothing like Neo – arrived at Dracula’s castle and noticed the lack of Dracula’s reflection in a mirror.  “Must be a trick of the light,” he said.  “Or proof that your parents haven’t conceived you yet,” I replied, cackling into my glass.  At this point, I went to the nearest mirror and was shocked to find that I also lacked a reflection.  I chalked it up to the Scotch, and not the madness this film was inflicting on me.  While it was still too soon to know for sure, I felt as though I were already past the point of no return.  Soon, I would be pulling off the legs of those closest to me and hearing terrible, disjointed music blared out from the heavens.

Or was that Yellow Brick Road?  At this point, it was impossible to tell.  I ditched the glass and decided to drink straight from the bottle.  The night was getting away from me.  Dracula had already claimed another victim, though I was not ready to admit it to myself just yet.

Naked ladies were everywhere now.  There was one, desperately trying to suck the life of out Jonathan’s bloody hand, stealing pictures of his wife, and engaging in some passionate necking.  There was another, being bathed as part of a sexy bathtime routine by her best friend.  There was another, descending the walls of Dracula’s castle on Rapunzel’s hair.  And still another, being thrown to the ground by Dracula and hissing at him while he bit into Jonathan’s (obviously) delicious neck.

Naked ladies and bad CGI dogmen are the only things that make sense to me anymore.  They are my currency, and I am their master.

At this point, I began to question the decisions of any director who thought it would be completely appropriate to film his daughter getting a sexy naked spongebath.  I may be in no position to judge, but that’s pretty weird.

I watched Renfield running bloody through the streets and wondered if it were him or me.  Had I somehow joined the characters onscreen, like some sort of Brea Grant-less Midnight Movie?  I checked myself, and found no blood.  It couldn’t be me, then.  So why was I howling at the moon?  And how did my clothes end up in tatters?  I looked to my bottle and found it was almost full.  Nothing makes sense anymore.

I watched a sick Lucy Kisslinger in bed and found one way we are similar: we both wear sheer nightgowns in front of our fathers.  Her father seemed more open to it than mine.  Perhaps the Buffalo Bill voice was a bit too much.

“I dreamt a wolf tore a woman to pieces,” a frantic and increasingly helpless Mina Harker proclaimed.  I tipped back the bottle, drank deep and replied, “And I was that wolf.  And I was that woman.  And I was the ground on which it happened.”  I drank again and saw nothing but the wolf.  And he was hungry like he should be.

I recall flashes of activity: of life and death and blood and hope and love and loss.  And all of it washed over me like a waterfall. 

I saw Dracula appear in a cloud of flies and lay waste to the establishment.

I saw wolves running around Mina and wondered aloud how Argento got those wolves to ignore the helpless woman on the ground while filming, and whether the first five Minas were torn to shreds.

I saw three cockroaches that I believe were supposed to be Dracula, but I was never quite sure.

I saw Rutger Hauer.

I saw a giant praying mantis climb a staircase and kill a fat man.  I laughed harder than I should have, which frightened my dog.  She looked at me and asked, “What are you doing with your life that you are here, right now, watching this?” but her lips never moved.

When the end finally came, it was swift and unrelenting.  I wasn’t sure if it was actually the end, or just the end of my already fragile mind.  I opened the DVD player and found that there was nothing in there.  Did any of this ever actually happen? 

I pinched myself.  I was me.  I am me.  I am one.  I am a rock.  I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar.

I looked up.  The TV was blank.  I got out of the chair to find that two days had passed. 

I checked the mirror. 

I had a reflection.

I had survived, though I have no idea what kind of life I am capable of anymore.

I left the bottle of Scotch next to my chair and walked outside into the great wide open.  I drank all of it in.  Every single inch.  I saw a bug fly by and smiled knowingly. 

“I’ll see you again, Count.  I'll see you real soon.”

BloodRayne: The Third Reich

Description from Netflix:
In this action adventure spun off from a video game, half-human, half-vampire rebel spirit Rayne is pitted against a dark evil from another time - a squad of undead Nazi warriors trying to inject Adolf Hitler with Rayne's blood to make him immortal.

Notable actors: Clint Howard

My thoughts:
On paper, I should really love this series.  A vampire-hybrid vampire hunter who is shown at random points in history, killing vampires and vanquishing evil in general.  Like a time-traveling Blade, but a hot chick.
I should have loved the second movie in particular.  My love of westerns meets my love of action-horror.
I also should've loved this movie.  A vampire hunter going up against Nazi vampires.
Sadly, when Uwe Boll is involved, all bets are off.

The story was cheesy, but it could've been decent with someone more competent at the helm.  But Boll is far from a competent hand.  He has earned his title as the worst director currently working.

The acting was terrible.  The dialogue was trash.  And the characters were awful.  Barely one-dimensional.  The fight scenes were confusing.  On multiple occasions, I thought there were more people involved in a fight than there actually were.

At a running time of 79 minutes, it was kind of amazing how slow this movie felt.  And that was with two pretty graphic sex scenes thrown in.  I'd say roughly 10% of this movie was sex scenes, which I'm pretty sure qualifies this as a softcore porn.

A scene-chewing performance by Clint Howard, Nazi vampires (including a brief glimpse of Vampire Hitler), and a hot vampire hunter could only carry this movie so far.  There were moments where this movie was pretty funny (in the so-bad-it's-good kind of way), but, for the most part, this movie was really terrible.  

Shocking, I know.

Rating: 1/5

Nosferatu the Vampyre

Description from Netflix:
This stylistic 1979 retelling of Bram Stoker's Dracula follows the bloodthirsty, undead count as he takes over the German village of Virna and then tries to spread his bloodsucking ways throughout the world.  All that stands in his path is the lovely, selfless Lucy Harker.  Iconoclastic German director Werner Herzog blends dreamlike imagery and a languid pace to give the film an ethereal milieu.

Notable actors: Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani

My thoughts:
First of all, let's state two facts about this.
1. Klaus Kinski is terrifying as Nosferatu.  Even worse than his face are his hands.  Those hands freak me out.

2. Isabelle Adjani is gorgeous.  Pictures don't do her justice.  She carried herself so well in this film.  She really was the embodyment of all things beautiful and pure, which is exactly what Herzog was going for.  He could not have cast two better leads for this film.

This was very much a 70s film.  By that I mean, it was slow paced.  It was also very deliberate with each shot, and very deliberate in its setting and surroundings.  It made for a beautiful film, but also one that I kind of zoned out of a handful of times.

Technically speaking, it's a masterpiece.  Between the acting and the directing and the setting, it really is amazing to look at.  But it wasn't the easiest film to watch.  It was late and I was a little tired.  This is a film that demands your full attention, and I wasn't in a place to give that last night.  I plan on watching it again when I am better prepared for it.

If you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth a watch.  But it's not one that you can watch passively and still expect to get full enjoyment out of it.

Rating: 3/5
(I'm sure that rating will increase if I watch it under different circumstances)

One final note: after watching this, it's easy to see where the influence for The Master in Buffy the Vampire Slayer came from.

Stake Land

With my baseball team (the Tigers) playing game 6 of the ALCS tonight, I wasn't planning on watching a horror movie.  But a 9 run third inning by the Rangers is probably going to change that.
For now, I'll review a movie I watched a couple nights ago.

Stake Land

This showed up as a "you might like this movie" on Netflix.  So I grabbed it.
You know what?  They were right.  They usually are.
This is a vampire movie that feels more like a post-apocalyptic zombie movie...all scorched earth and undead things roaming around.  The big difference, of course, is that vampires can't come out during the day.
I don't remember them ever saying what caused it, but the movie begins with the world being overrun with vampires.  We follow Martin as he is getting ready to leave with his family, only to watch his family get killed, and himself only surviving because a man (simply known as Mister) comes by and saves him.  Martin begins traveling with Mister, and Mister shows him how to kill a vampire, and how to survive in general.
They pick up a couple of people along the way: a nun (Sister), a pregnant country singer (Belle), and a Marine (Willie).  They are trying to make their way to New Eden, a place in Canada that is supposed to be vampire-free.
But vampires aren't the only thing they need to worry about.  There is a fanatical religious group that calls themselves The Brotherhood, and is fronted by the sadistic Jebedia Loven, who believe that the vampires are a plague brought down by God.

The vampire behave more like zombies than vampires.  They have one goal: to feed.  They don't think.  They don't feel.  They can be killed in the standard vampire ways: stake through the heart, decapitation, and sunlight (although the only one we really see is the stake through the heart).

The movie moves a little slow in parts, but I think it works well.  It sets a good mood overall.  The music works really well for that mood, as well.  Lots of piano.  Pretty stark.  It fits the feeling and mood of the movie perfectly.

Overall, I really liked it.  It was a little different for a vampire movie, but it worked really well.  There were some parts that seemed a little clumsy, but, overall, it worked.
There was one thing that threw me off.  One of the cowriters of the movie was Nick Damici, who also played Mister.  Mister is great at killing vampires, and he's always cool, calm and collected.  So, basically, he's supposed to be a really cool character.  And that character was played by the guy who wrote him.  That just seemed a little cheap to me.  But it doesn't distract from the movie too much.  Just seemed a little odd.  Then again, Sylvester Stallone co-wrote for the Rambo and Rocky series...but Damici is no Stallone.

There were a few people in the movie that I recognized.  Danielle Harris (Rob Zombie's Halloween series, Hatchet II) played Belle, Kelly McGillis (Top Gun, Witness) played Sister, and Michael Cerveris (one of The Observers from Fringe) played Jebedia Loven.

Rating: 4.5/5

The Rangers are now up 12-4.  Guh.  Guess it's horror movie time.