the jaded viewer: 3/16/08

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

After Dark Horrorfest 2007: Crazy Eights (Review)

Crazy Eights (2006)

Directed by James Koya Jones

That’s 80 minutes I’ll never get back. That would be my quote if it appeared on the DVD cover of Crazy Eights.

So instead of a review that thoroughly shreds this movie, let’s go with a revised TV show theme song.

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip
That started at this abandoned house aboard this horror flick
The main character was a mighty professor, the priest was brave and sure,

Four badly written horror characters set sail that day for a 80 minute tour.

a 80 minute tour.

The movie started getting rough, each horror cutout stereotype started to die.
If not for some dialogue about an angry, evil supernatural little girl who wanted revenge because of guilt?!?, the audience would be lost.

The audience would be lost.

The movie set ground on the shore of mediocrity
With Dina Meyer, Frank Whaley too, some other guy and his wife (ok not really his wife, that just needed to rhyme),
Traci Lords, the Priest and Gabrielle Anwar, here on Crazy Eights Isle!

That was fun. Suffice it to say I didn’t like Crazy Eights. It’s mind boggling that this was part of the After Dark Horrorfest. These 8 movies are supposed to be shunned by the mainstream as having dark or disturbing subject matter. But Crazy Eights is like a horror TV movie of the week.

The plot-matic tells us 6 friends have gathered for a childhood friend’s funeral and discover a map to a wooden trunk. The contents are all things from their mysterious past which eventually leads them to an abandoned house (because abandoned house are freakin scary). There they see glimpses of a little girl who has long black hair and raggedy clothes (and no she didn’t climb out of a TV). The horror gods trap them in and they begin to search for a way out discovering clues to their mysterious childhood along the way. They all eventually get picked off one by one which is done mostly off screen (the most aggravating horror movie convention) Gore hounds, you do not need to see this muck of a movie.

The cast is the most recognizable of all the Horrorfest movies. Dina Meyer (Saw franchise), Frank Whaley (“Big Brain on Brett” from Pulp Fiction), Traci Lords (c’mon you know), Gabrielle Anwar (Body Snatchers), George Newbern and Dan DeLuca who also co-wrote the film. All are in acting class mode and regurgitate badly written dialogue and overact when they are in danger.

Director James Jones vision is atmospheric, using his prime location of an abandoned asylum to dictate the “scares” from an arm grabbing hand to a missing jaw. But this crappy snooze fest is just filled with emotional psycho babble dribble and a script that is so boring, it makes straight to DVD torture porn look like Citizen Kane.

Crazy Eights seemed to have a good premise and a creepy location to draw out a disturbing story. But just like the cast of Gilligan’s Island, it never gets off the island and you sit there wondering, where did my 80 minutes go?

The Extras:

Included in all of the After Dark Horrorfest DVDs are the Miss Horrorfest Contest webisodes. Think Surreal Life meets the Misfits. It’s a VH1 version of the Suicide Girls.

Rating:

1/2

The Trailer:

Labels: after dark horrorfest 2007, after dark horrorfest 2008, after dark horrorfest boxset, crazy eights, dina meyer, frank whaley, miss horrorfest, traci lords

Posted by the jaded viewer at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Monday, March 17, 2008

After Dark Horrorfest 2007: Mulberry Street (Review)

Mulberry Street

Mulberry Street (2006)

Directed by Jim Mickle

28 Days of the Diary of the Clover-Rats.

If George A. Romero made a zombie-verse and Matt Reeves made an alien monster world, director Jim Mickle has made a rat monster utopia in Mulberry Street. It’s by far the better of the 3 movies either director made this year.

With a guerilla, docu-style and the nitty gritty look of NYC’s Mulberry Street as his backdrop, Mickle takes us into an apocalyptic city nightmare come true. Because as every New Yorker knows, the 2 things we hate the most are tourists and rats.

Our main “Ben” (aka lead character from NOTLD) is Clutch, a former boxer who lives in an apartment on Mulberry Street (it’s the main street in NYC’s Little Italy). With his friend Coco, they eagerly await for Clutch’s daughter Casey to return home from Iraq. We also meet the other tenants in this dilapidated complex, Charlie and Frank who are a couple of old timers and Kay, a bartender and her son.

It’s never explained what caused the “sickness” that is making every New Yorker slowly turn into rat creatures but that’s not important. What is important is that we see a depiction of real New Yorkers dealing with a supernatural threat and basically doing what we always do, survive. There is no nauseating shaky camera, no annoying hipster looking for their girlfriend and no film students trying to film something so they can post it on YouTube.

What we do have is seeing the pseudo-realistic media coverage of a threat and the response to it with some very chilling scenes of attacks from a mass of rat infected zombies.

I know what you’re saying. Really? Rat creatures?

It’s not as cheesy as it sounds. The infected don’t develop RAGE like super strength or quickness but become, well more psychopathic and ratty. And boy are these creatures hungry and bloodthirsty. The tenants have to pummel and kick and fight thru the city streets in order to survive. These are all fast paced and suspenseful scenes and are quite well done.

Mulberry Street uses the same genre conventions of a Living Dead or a 28 Days Later. And even though they may be assembly line tricks of the trade, they work.

And that’s the fun of Mulberry Street.

Jim Mickle also takes a page from Romero’s satire handbook by not so subtly commentating on the world, post 9/11. More specifically, the slow government response to a Severe Red Theat Level event (the President was in Bermuda!) is an obvious crack at the government’s reaction and response to Hurricane Katrina.

The only negatives are that the movie does look a little like a 99 cents store. The acting was very plausible though the dialogue was a little dry. The special effects seemed to be Sci-Fi channel-ish and the darkness blurred many scenes into utter static. But on a meager budget, Mickle used quick shots, music video style editing and a couple of good gory bloodbaths to get his point across.

Mulberry Street is the biggest gem in the After Dark Horrorfest catalog. So if you didn’t like the zombie or giant lobster monster movies you watched this year, maybe enter the cannibal-rat monster-verse, it’s a cheesy movie you probably might like.

As this was a DVD, I was able to watch the extras as well. Here's a recap.

The Extras:

The extras are pretty bland in comparison to the movie. There are storyboards, 2 deleted scenes which pretty much sums up that most of the cut is the finished product. Also included are director’s Jim Mickle’s early sketches of scenes and of the rat monsters (which would make great background wallpaper). There are makeup tests which are hilarious as you can see the evolution of what the rat creatures were to become. Also, there are behind the scenes of ratty munching and outtakes which are always funny as this is a horror film about rat infected humans.

Finally there are behind the scenes of the rats that are featured predominately in the movie. From the looks of it rats never follow their cues and are so demanding with their list of outrageous demands.

Included in all of the After Dark Horrorfest DVDs are the Miss Horrorfest Contest webisodes. Think Surreal Life meets the Misfits. It’s a VH1 version of the Suicide Girls.

Rating:

The Trailer: