All posts by Rod Lott

Thriller

Into the Grizzly Maze (2015)

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intogrizzlySeven years after fleeing his Alaskan hometown, prodigal son Rowan (James Marsden, X-Men: Days of Future Past) returns, only to step in a big ol’ mess of animal instincts. “Would that,” you ask, “involve going Into the Grizzly Maze?” To that query, I respond rhetorically (and obviously), does a bear shit in the woods?

His estranged brother, Beckett (Thomas Jane, Deep Blue Sea), among them, the local po-po are busy investigating deaths in the forest caused by a giant grizzly, “portrayed” by an actual bear whose billing sits higher than co-star Billy Bob Thornton. Beckett needs Rowan’s help in retrieving his wife (Piper Perabo, Looper), who’s not only oblivious to being in danger because she’s taking nature photos at the time, but also because she happens to be deaf, thereby greatly upping her chances of becoming one super supper of all-white meat. (Admit it: It’s weird the grizzly has more lines than the damsel in distress.)

intogrizzly1Hired by the sheriff’s department, Thornton’s straight-faced bear tapper sums up the situation at hand — and, by extension, the entire film: “This isn’t your average bear. It’s a clever bear. … You’ve never met a bear like this before. … I’m just tellin’ ya.”

What he doesn’t tell ya is that this wilderness thriller plays like a high-gloss, kitsch-stripped update of William Girdler’s 1976 cult hit Grizzly, which itself was a furry take on Jaws for the Cabela’s crowd. While adept enough at staging suspense, director David Hackl seems more interested in ending each set piece with an act of gore, each so wet and lingered upon that they would not be out-of-place in Hackl’s previous film, Saw V. Because these bits are largely (and admirably) practical rather than digital, they convince enough to wince; same goes for the clawed beast serving as Maze’s maker of mayhem.

Although unlikely to leave any lasting impressions, the movie is absorbing as a paper towel dropped on the puddle of dog urine found on the dining room floor, but without applying pressure: not ideal, but works for the time being. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Angst (1983)

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angst83Angst has bounce. That’s because for some of the running time, the camera is attached to the German-language film’s lead character. A certifiable psychopath, he’s not the kind of person to whom you would wish to be so close.

Played by Erwin Leder (Das Boot), who narrates almost the entire picture, the normal-looking man is, in actuality, an evil brute whose uncontrollable urge to torture humans bubbles over mere minutes after being released from a 10-year prison stint for murder; he had chosen a random house and, just for the hell of it, pulled a gun and point-blank executed the elderly woman who made the unfortunate mistake of answering the door.

angst831Now freed from bars once more, he’s got that itch that really needs scratching, and finds it in a fairly secluded home occupied by a small family that includes a wheelchair-bound young man who drools uncontrollably. Thus begins the “meat” of the movie: a triple murder played out in excruciating, graphic detail and violence that escalates to vile.

It’s revolting enough early in the film to see an extreme close-up of the psychopath tear into a sausage like an animal; it’s near-unbearable — those with a weak constitution should nix the “near-” — to witness what is essentially a how-to piece. Director/co-writer Gerald Kargl never made another picture before or since, so at least his lone foray into features is unforgettable — just not in the way the populace likes. Based on real-life events, it’s tough and uncompromising and hardly “entertainment.” Aided and abetted by Tangerine Dream co-founder Klaus Schulze’s score and with astute, dark-humored details such as a dog chewing on the dentures knocked out of an old woman’s mouth, Angst has artistry that can be acknowledged while simultaneously loathing the work as a whole. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Lake Placid vs. Anaconda (2015)

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lakeplacidvsanacondaAlien vs. Predator comes off as high art next to the monster mash-up Lake Placid vs. Anaconda, a melding of two franchises I’d bet the average moviegoer doesn’t realize were franchises; with the exception of the 2004 flop Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, all six sequels bypassed theaters. That includes this one, the not-so-fab fifth chapter for each.

Its setup is highly labored, with a scientist delivering much fact-filled exposition in a valiant attempt at justifying the flick’s joint meeting of creature features. But really, all you need to know are these three sentences:
1. There’s a giant crocodile.
2. There’s a giant anaconda.
3. They get loose.

Representing Team Placid is feisty Sheriff Reba (Witchblade’s Yancy Butler, from 2010’s Lake Placid 3 and 2012’s Lake Placid: The Final Chapter, which obviously flat-out lied). To combat the critters run amok here, she joins forces with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service warden (Corin Nemec, Mansquito) and, reluctantly, an opportunistic local guide (Robert Englund, ditching his Freddy Krueger gloves for an eyepatch and peg leg to reprise his Final Chapter role) who knows his way around the woods.

As luck would have it (for any teen boys watching, that is), Delta Phi Beta sorority girls specializing in vocal fry and petty bitchiness are on hand to haze pledges at the beach where the croc and snake lurk. You will root for the species other than human. Mmm-mmm, snacks!

First-time director A.B. Stone (*sniff sniff* — I smell pseudonym) and screenwriter Berkeley Anderson (Robocroc, and I swear that’s real) play the lax proceedings for a big joke, perhaps hoping to latch onto this country’s inexplicable love for all things Sharknado. Like those movies, the gags aren’t funny. The only laughs Lake Placid vs. Anaconda earns are not the ones it intended, as the CGI effects are third-rate on a scale with only two levels. Neither the anaconda nor the Lake Placid crocodile looks any better than what free iPhone apps can create, and your time is better served playing around with those. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Bride and the Beast (1958)

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bridebeastEd Wood didn’t direct The Bride and the Beast; he “only” wrote it. One really can’t tell the difference, as the film is stamped with the Plan 9 auteur’s brand of incompetence all around.

The bride of the title is Laura (Charlotte Austin, Gorilla at Large), newly married to Dan (Lance Fuller, This Island Earth). However, her hubby is not the beast … but he does keep it caged in his basement! And by “it,” we mean his gorilla. (Yes, gorilla.) It is named Spanky. (Yes, Spanky.)

Captured as a baby, the now fully grown Spanky is due to be shipped to the zoo in a week’s time. Wasting no precious moments, the big ape goes so agog at the sight of lovely Laura, he bends the bars of his cage! The fascination is mutual, as Laura — sleeping in her twin bed, separate from Dan — dreams of having her nightgown ripped off by Spanky. Even awake, she can’t quite contain her obsession, which stems — as hypnosis reveals — from the suppressed fact that she used to be gorilla herself in a previous life.

bridebeast1Ah, but of course! The way it’s written, it makes perfect sense … if your name were Ed Wood. The way it plays out onscreen, guided by The Amazing Exploits of the Clutching Hand serial producer Adrian Weiss in his only feature gig as director, it makes zero sense, which is the only reason The Bride and the Beast didn’t disappear into mere memories. The pic is Woodsian through and through, as exemplified by:
• obvious day-for-night shots, made all the more jarring by a storm that’s supposed to be taking place;
• a variety of mismatched stock footage for the second half’s jungle scenes, some of which are negatively exposed;
• the man-vs.-tiger wrestling match, in which the cat clearly is a stuffed animal; and
• suspect science, including Dan’s outright untruth that the tarantula is “as deadly as the lion’s fang and the elephant’s foot.”

We also can’t discount the howler of an ending, which finds newlywed Dan suddenly back to bachelorhood as Laura rejoins the apes as their rightful queen. To think of the activities that await her and Spanky in private is … is … well, it’s an image I don’t want seared in my brain. Moviegoers who paid good money in 1958 to catch The Bride and the Beast in theaters must have found it a safari on the regret level of Cecil the Lion. —Rod Lott

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Horror

The Mist (2007)

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mistIn 1985, when I was a 14, all I wanted for Christmas was Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew, then fresh in hardback. I got it, and the cold winter nights were perfect for reading “The Mist,” the eerie first of 22 stories in the collection.

But really, what were the Weinstein brothers thinking in releasing Frank Darabont’s The Mist movie over a Thanksgiving weekend? While it is mostly faithful to King’s original, 100ish-page story, its drastically different ending doesn’t exactly scream “holiday family motion-picture experience.”

Thomas Jane (2004’s The Punisher) stars as David Drayton, an artist and all-around family man living the quiet life in coastal Maine until the night a freak storm tears the outdoors to hell. The next day, facing no electricity, he and his little boy head to town to pick up food and supplies at the Food House grocery store, leaving his wife back at the house.

mist1Given the storm, the store is packed with people of all backgrounds, which will make for a real pressure cooker (mostly thanks to the apocalyptic religious zealot played by Mystic River’s Marcia Gay Harden) once the eerie fog envelopes the place and traps them inside. Despite attempts at escape, gooey tentacles and oversized insects from the mist thwart those desperate plans. But what’s really in there? And will anyone who sees live to tell?

It’s the third go-round for Darabont in King features, having written and directed 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption and 1999’s The Green Mile prior. Hey, at least this one gets out of prison … or does it? People trapped in a grocery store — may as well be San Quentin.

Differences to the story are mostly subtle, except for the biggest change of all: the ending. I won’t spoil it for you, but it brings to mind a point Jeffery Deaver made in the introduction to his 2003 Twisted anthology of short stories: “Authors have a contract with their readers and I think too much of mine to have them invest their time, money and emotion in a full-length novel, only to leave them disappointed by a grim, cynical ending. With a thirty-page short story, however, all bets are off.”

True, this is a motion picture, not a work of literature, but its extended running time makes it the equivalent of a novel, and Darabont crosses the line into cruel cynicism. Up until that point, I was with The Mist all the way — a suspenseful, purposely paced horror thriller that delivers some old-school, B-movie scares. —Rod Lott

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