All posts by Rod Lott

Horror

The Last Slumber Party (1988)

Leave a comment

lastslumberpartyOne week after prom, the school year is over and three girlfriends decide to celebrate with a slumber party … The Last Slumber Party, if the scrubs-wearing maniac with surgical scalpel and frontal lobotomy has anything to say about it. (He so does.)

Despite strict parents who oppose boys and booze, Izod-clad good girl Linda (Joann Whitley) hosts the party for her two bitchy, sexually active friends who don’t seem all that friendly toward her: Tracy (Nancy Meyer) and Chris (Jan Jensen). You can tell these two apart because Tracy is blonde, while Chris is the redhead consistently grinding out the gay slurs — “faggot,” “homos” and “queerbait” being among her go-tos. In the less-PC 1980s, that kind of talk was standard vocab among young people, delivered without dripping in prejudice marinade; I believe this was the case here, too, since the shot-on-video movie is boneheaded in so many other departments as well.

lastslumberparty1Even lines lacking dirty talk remain crouched in dumbness, from “I’m going to the kitchen to munch out” and the twice-spoken “Let’s go rustle up some men folk” to the coup de grâce worth the price of admission, when Chris whines to someone on the other end of the phone line, “Who’d the hell you think it was, Shelley Hack?” That’s my pick for the most unquotable quotable line in a Z-grade movie, and trust me: Reading it is not the same thing as experiencing it. And this movie is an experience — granted, an experience for which most haven’t the fortitude, but that’s their problem.

Shot in the Louisiana suburbs by writer/director Stephen Tyler (who also plays the mute maniac and is not to be confused with Aerosmith walking corpse Steven Tyler), this 99 Cents Only Stores version of The Slumber Party Massacre feels less like a slasher movie and more like a loosely strung-together collection of its characters climbing in and out of the window of Linda’s room (notable for its Sesame Street poster) and/or walking up and down the stairs. The many scenes shot in that garishly wallpapered stairwell and adjoining hallway are so underlit and overgrained, you’d expect Andy Milligan to earn a credit as guest director. Tyler sure shares and exercises Milligan’s grasp on tension, which is to say one slathered in Astroglide. Fittingly, the monotonous score sounds as if Tyler’s cat walked across a synth and managed to hit “record.”

Actually, the whole of The Last Slumber Party reeks of that, down to its sudden, nonsensical ending. And more power to it. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Thriller

Careful What You Wish For (2015)

Leave a comment

carefulwhatNick Jonas kisses his purity-ring days of the Jonas Brothers bye-bye with Careful What You Wish For, an erotic thriller so by-the-numbers and yet diluted, it may as well be titled Basic Instinct for Beginners.

Acting through a series of drooping bottom lips, the youngest Jo Bro headlines as Doug, a teenaged virgin home for summer vacation. He’s hired by investment banker Elliot Harper (Insidious: Chapter 3’s Dermot Mulroney, nailing the Rich Asshole part) to keep the man’s sailboat in tiptop shape for the insultingly low hourly wage of 12 bucks. An unmentioned fringe benefit: close proximity to Mr. Harper’s much younger trophy wife, Lena (Isabel Lucas, 2014’s The Loft), an overly lithe, living Barbie who thinks nothing of bathing in the nude in broad daylight in peekaboo showers on the public dock — a lot of prepositional phrases for such a simplistic setup.

carefulwhat1Yes, of course they’re totally gonna do it. And of course Lena talks smack of her husband to Doug, saying, “You have no idea what he’s capable of.” And of course their affair will lead to mortal danger. Too faithfully, director Elizabeth Allen (Ramona and Beezus) follows the modern template of sex-infused noir throwbacks established by Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat, so that little of significance is new and plot turns can be spotted far in advance. What Allen does do differently is render the proceedings oddly sexless, meaning that while the movie is filled with couplings between Lena and Doug, nudity is limited to bare backsides and (if this even counts) rain turning Lena’s shirt see-through.

First-time feature screenwriter Chris Frisina juices the dialogue so that every line of Elliot’s is laced with elbow-jutting innuendo, from “Anything worth doing is worth doing all the way” to “This hasn’t been thoroughly caulked,” and the joke calls too much attention to itself to work. Frisina also appears to draw inspiration from Armageddon’s infamous animal-crackers seduction scene, with Doug rolling an Oreo cookie down Lena’s bare hips and legs. Restraint is shown by not allowing Doug to pull them open and lick the cream; somewhere, Michael Douglas volunteers to show this young pup how it’s done. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Reading Material

Reading Material: Short Ends 6/18/2016

Leave a comment

newfrenchextremityAs recent attacks in Paris have demonstrated, the City of Lights unwillingly can be at odds with its postcard-perfect image propagated by the tourism board. Terrorism aside, Alexandra West examines the “nihilistic forces and presences” at work from within France, and how they have made their way into Films of the New French Extremity: Visceral Horror and National Identity. With a piercing critical eye and a wealth of insight, West takes a long, hard look at about two dozen movies, several of which have become well-known in the States: among them, Baise-moi, Irreversible, Trouble Every Day and the ultra-gory triple threat of Martyrs, Frontier(s) and Inside, all arranged into loose themes. Prior consumption of titles is hardly required; she keeps discussion lively and engaging, whether it’s a movie fresh on my mind (Sheitan) or something I never plan to see (anything else from Gaspar Noé). Published by McFarland & Company in trade paperback, West’s book is so très fantastique that I wish it were a reference guide that covered hundreds of films, while while I remain appreciative of what it is: a well-curated representation of the movement at large, even extends to High Tension director Alexandre Aja’s Hollywood work as a remake machine.

byebyemanCan’t wait to put some scares into your summer moviegoing with The Bye Bye Man? Well, hate to break it you, but the flick has been delayed to December. Fear not! You can temporarily scratch your urban-legend itch by reading the book on which the film is based. Originally published as 2005’s The President’s Vampire: Strange-but-True Tales of the United States of America, Robert Damon Schneck’s work has been slyly and slickly repackaged as a TarcherPerigee trade paperback tie-in as — hell, what else? — The Bye Bye Man and Other Strange-but-True Tales, with a new afterword so brief, it hardly merits this mention. The title tale is an account of some Wisconsin teens’ terrifying experiences after screwing around with a Ouija board. Schneck approaches it and each of the seven other stories with the doggedness of a journalist, albeit a journalist reporting on ghosts, inexplicably vanishing kids, spirit advisers, mummies and the like. Even if I don’t believe any of them, Charles Fort sure would be proud and potential surely exists for a fun horror film … or eight.

citizenkaneleboLiterate Orson Welles fans have had it rather good of late, with A. Brad Schwartz’s Broadcast Hysteria, Peter Biskind’s My Lunches with Orson and Josh Karp’s Orson Welles’s Last Movie hitting shelves, to mention just three. Now add Harlan Lebo’s Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey, in hardcover from Thomas Dunne Books, to that list. On second thought, scratch that: Move it right to the top. Drawing upon intimidating levels of research, Lebo has crafted what must be the definitive telling of this classic film’s complete story; while many Kane texts are keen to settle on the actual production and the behind-the-scenes war of the words with William Randolph Hearst, Hebo widens the lens on both sides, with particular attention paid to how the movie’s reputation ballooned over subsequent decades, often in disproportion to Welles’ own. The greatest of this type of book is to make you want to revisit its subject yet again while lending your eyes a fresh perspective; Lebo’s Journey does just that. A toast, Jedediah, to love on its terms!

kissencyclopediaAttention, all members in good standing of the KISS Army, Brett Weiss’ Encyclopedia of KISS: Music, Personnel, Events and Related Subjects is for you. Not being a fan myself of the legendary ’70s shock-rock band, I’m hardly the target market for this McFarland & Company paperback release. Much more than focused on albums and singles, the work catalogues forays into film, TV and comics, yet it strikes me as large in scope and light on detail. For example, the movie nut in me is drawn toward three things: the infamous Hanna-Barbera production KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park and Gene Simmons’ better half, erotic-thriller queen Shannon Tweed. While both are included, information on each is extremely limited; therefore, the band’s legion of hungry followers may find the book ironically wanting. Completists will want it nonetheless.

singlesitcomI had a blast perusing page after page of Bob Leszczak’s Single Season Sitcoms of the 1980s: A Complete Guide. A sequel to his similarly named project covering the years 1948-1979 (also published by McFarland & Company), the paperback profiles an entire era-appropriate TV Guide’s worth of ratings-challenged comedies I grew up with (well, for several months, anyway) and loved: It’s Your Move, starring Jason Bateman at his smarmiest; The Duck Factory, with then-unknown Jim Carrey as an animator; the non-sequitur No Soap Radio; the Police Academy-influenced The Last Precinct; and Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin in Police Squad!, in color! There are many more that I didn’t like, and those are here, too. (I should note that then, as with today, I had no social life.) Leszczak provides a significant amount of background info for each show, supplemented with comments from actors and creators when available. While lists of episode titles don’t do anything for me, they are here for historical preservation. Who else is willing to do it? —Rod Lott

Get them at Amazon.

Comedy

Natural Born Pranksters (2016)

Leave a comment

NBPrankstersFor being Natural Born Pranksters, “professional idiots” Rowan Atwood, Dennis Roady and Vitaly Zdorovetskiy could stand for more training. Strictly from the basis of this, their first feature, the collective exploits of the popular YouTube rogues are not quite in line with their videos’ phenomenal viewing numbers.

The bits that make up this movie exhibit a gangliness in pacing, editing and sometimes even execution. Most segments either go on too long or call it quits before a true punch line can stick the landing; a few aren’t funny in the least. By contrast, your appreciation for the Jackass crew’s big-screen shenanigans will undergo an exponential increase.

NBPranksters1In a guest appearance, Jackass alum Dave Englund is tapped to do what he does best: Defecate on camera for the sake of a joke. In this case, his fecal matter serves as the “paint” for an abstract work of art on canvas to be raffled at a hoity-toity gallery opening. While making viewers grateful that the Smell-O-Vision gimmick failed to catch fire, this piece emerges as one of Pranksters’ better and more memorable ones, given that the target of snobbery deserves a good-natured poke. (That does not always hold true, especially when an earlier prank takes aim at a someone who doesn’t deserve the cruelty: a brand-new dad, whose mind appears to vacillate — before Atwood et al. reveal it’s just a joke, brah — between processing the life-shattering news foisted upon him and contemplating immediate suicide.)

Falling into the pro-Pranksters category are harmless hidden-camera premises of a campsite alien abduction and a gore-soaked human cannonball stunt gone awry. Respectively, citizens scared to the point of pants-wetting and witnessing sick humor on a grand scale are two elements of which the movie could use more. Less-effective antics include a faked mid-massage boner, a faked liquor store robbery and a faked death by truck-through-porta-potty. As far as franchise prospects go, this is a deeply flawed fair start. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

The Funhouse Massacre (2015)

Leave a comment

funhousemassacreSix crazed murderers enter a popular Halloween-night haunt. Next to no one exits. And that, ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages, is what we call The Funhouse Massacre.

Led by the charismatic cult leader Uncle Manny (Jere Burns, Otis) and his dead-sexy paramour, the Harley Quinn-styled Dollface (model Candice De Visser, making a memorable and assured screen debut), this very dirty half-dozen of Statesville Mental Hospital escapees is drawn to the bloody attraction because its various themed rooms depict the devious crimes that got them committed in the first place.

funhousemassacre1For example, Animal the Cannibal (E.E. Bell, Herbie Fully Loaded) is a chef who cooks with human ingredients; Dr. Suave (Sebastian Siegel, Risk for Honor) specializes in dentistry that flies in the face of the Hippocratic oath; the Taxidermist (Clint Howard, because duh) is “sew” good with skin, but we’re not talking animals; and Rocco the Clown (Mars Crain, Hancock) has a penchant for … well, as the old saying goes, if you can’t put a smile on their face, tear off the face.

Because the haunt is inspired by the loons’ infamous handiwork, they fit right in. A running joke of the film by Andy Palmer (Alien Strain) is that the crowds think them to be part of the plan. (Okay, so it’s not a good running joke.) It’s only after grisly slayings occur among their group that visitors take notice, that amusement is usurped by bemusement.

Funhouse’s flavoring? The 1980s — very, very ’80s. If you’re not going to be original, there are worse things from which to take inspiration. In his first feature as a screenwriter, The Hungover Games actor Ben Begley (who also fills the comic-relief role of the genre’s requisite bumbling deputy) clearly displays a soft spot for that era’s horror icons à la Freddy Krueger — not for nothing does Robert Englund cameo in the prologue — and in particular their more humor-driven misadventures, where the metaphorical stakes mattered little compared to the physical stakes … or any implement that was sharp, serrated and/or pointed. The balance between this Massacre’s light tone and heavy bloodletting works pretty well. Its effervescence just runs out of bubbles before Palmer and pals officially are done. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.