something for the weekend....

 Enjoy.

 

whispering grass.

In tribute to Stephen King's birthday, a look back of the last Stephen King thing I watched.

Apologies for the brevity of the review but it's Saturday night and I'd like you all to imagine I have a life. 

In The Tall Grass (2019).
Dir: Vincenzo Natali.
Cast: Patrick Wilson, Harrison Gilbertson, Laysla De Oliveira, Avery Whitted, Will Buie Jr. and Rachel Wilson.

"Don't you want to touch the rock?"

Big-binned Cal DeMuth (The Vanishing of Sidney Hall's Whitted - looking for all the world like the terrifying lovechild of Jon Cryer and John Favreau) and his bun in the ovened baby sister Becky (De Oliveira, who was in iZombie once) are traveling to San Fransisco in order to give her baby to a childless couple as she feels too young and ill-prepared for parenthood since her lank haired beau Travis (Picnic at Hanging Rock's Gilbertson) dumped her due to commitment issues and an argument over who got custody of the shampoo.

Stopping on a lonely Midwestern road to allow Becky to vomit (as pregnant ladies are known to do) she's shocked to hear a small boy screaming for help in the distance.

The cries seem to be coming from a huge field of tall overgrown grass next to the road.

Well obviously they're coming from his mouth but you know what I mean.

Cal makes his way into the grass to see if he can help with Becky soon following  but soon lose sight of each other as they move ever deeper into the field.

"You ain't seen me right?"

Jumping and shouting for a bit in the hope of re-uniting with his sister Cal soon comes across (not literally, I don't even think Netflix would have the balls for that) the helpless boy, covered in snottery shite, crying and with a haircut that'd make Dario Argento balk.

Tobin (Will Buie Jr. best known as Finn Sawyer from Disney's Bunk'd) - for that's his name - explains that he got lost in the grass whilst chasing his dog and that his parents Natalie (Rachel Wilson, who played Tina in the 1991 TV version of Marvel's Power Pack) and Ross (Ed Warren himself, the scenery destroying Patrick Wilson) are also lost somewhere within the grass after coming to his aid.

But being a Stephen King adaptation he relays all this information in a very sinister manner.

Cue more scenes of Cal jumping up and down whilst shouting for his sister before stumbling across a dead dog then jumping and shouting a wee bit more.

Realising that although this will no doubt keep the cast fit, it's not really going to hold the viewers attention for 90 minutes, Becky soon finds Tobin's dad Ross who comes across as so nice and caring you'd be surprised if anyone but him ended up as the mad mental protagonist and after a quick introduction the pair head off to find everyone else.

Meanwhile Cal has been taken into a clearing in order for Torbin to show him a massive, rune covered rock he's found that, if you touch it grants you mystical powers of foresight or something but Cal's touchy feely session is cut short when he hears his sisters screams.
 

"Leaf me alone!"

There's no time to mourn Becky tho' as we're off to meet the ex, Travis who's currently driving cross country with a picture of his girl glued to his dashboard.

It's not long before he too is lost in the long grass where it soon becomes apparent that not only does all that green stuff harness a dark power capable of bending time and space but that the scriptwriters have spent way too much time reading (and literally copying) HP Lovecraft's The Festival whilst skipping any writing classes that deal with the intricacies of having a time travel plot.....

Will Travis be re-united with his ex-girlfriend?

And will she be dead or alive when he is?

Will previously nice but intense dad Ross go full mental Christian zealot renta-villain with hitherto unseen super strength that enables him to crush his wifes head like a (badly rendered CGI) melon?

Will Cal go from geeky big brother to sister shagging obsessed murder bitch for no other reason than 'just because' and will this plot thread get ignored at the movies end so as to wrap everything up as neatly as possible?

go on, guess.

"Look at the dog!"

 

 

 

Taking as it's basis the horror short written by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill that was originally published in Esquire magazine back in 2012, Vincenzo Natali's screenplay stretches the genuinely scary short story to feature length by adding shedloads of CGI birds and (grass) blades, an incest subplots, naked men with freshly mowed grass faces and a bowling trip before making the originally unseen ex-boyfriend the hero and neatly wrapping everything up in a junior Steven Moffatt style coda that's as infuriating as it is cloying.

"Can you smell petrol?"

It's almost as if Natali loved the original story so much he just didn't know when to stop, adding more and more increasingly bizarre side notes and twists to what is fundamentally a basic scare story in The Twilight Zone vein until it almost collapses under the weight of its own absurdity.

That's not to say it isn't enjoyable in its own - very - silly way because it is.

Unfortunately tho' it's just not scary.

Unless you suffer from Agrostophobia obviously.*























































*Or even maybe Genuphobia at a push.

one dark knight...

It's Batman's 85th birthday today which led me to remember a very lucid bat-based dream I experienced a couple of years back after partaking in a few ales.

Luckily I awoke to find a pen and paper on the bedside cabinet and excitedly wrote it down.

Obviously I did this before I noticed the dead body at the bottom of the bed but that's a different story.

Obviously it has to be based on The Dark Knight Returns due to the fact that in the past 40-odd years it appears that no fucker as ever read anything else.

So anyway, here goes*.

"No, Joker. You’re playing the wrong game. The old game. Tonight you’re taking no hostages. Tonight I’m taking no prisoners!" John Cassavetes as an older, wiser Bruce Wayne.

'Batman: The Dark Knight Returns'

(loosely) based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller.


Dir. Mario Bava.

Prod: Nicolas Winding Refn.

Adapted for the screen by Truman Capote and Anthony Burgess

Original music: Ennio Morricone, Jerry Goldsmith and Wendy Carlos.


Cast:

Bruce Wayne/Batman: John Cassavetes

The Joker: Malcolm McDowell
 
Commissioner Gordon: Lee Marvin

Two Face: Udo Kier
 
Alfred Pennyworth: Vincent Price

Robin: Emma Stone

Superman: John Phillip Law 

Bruno: Ajita Wilson

Oliver Queen: Doug McClure

Selina Kyle: Helga Line

Dave Endochrine: Dustin Hoffman.

For added realism McDowell actually underwent a painful bleaching process to obtain The Joker's deathly pallor.

 

Despised by critics yet loved by cinema goers, the big screen adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns popularity among lefties annoyed it's creator, Frank Miller so much that vowed never to allow another one of his stories to be adapted in any medium. 

Eventually, after realizing that he needed cash for a new cowboy hat he relented and finally allowed all of his properties to be adapted by anyone with a dollar and/or right wing leanings.

The Bat mask interior as envisaged by  Jean Giraud

 

The behind the scenes story is as exciting as anything on screen tho', with a cybernetic/AI Mario Bava taking over the project after Dario Argento, Alejandro Jodorwosky, Shane Black, John Boorman, and Takashi Miike failed to stay attached to the film. 

During the Jodorwosky production, Mick Jagger was slated to play the Joker, tho' Jagger reportedly actually appeared on set, his scenes shot at various locations around the world due to The Rolling Stones being in the middle of a world tour.

These scenes were to be inserted into the final film at a later date using technology created by producer Refn from discarded Japanese robot toys.

It was this period that saw pre-production costs spiraling 12 years and 250 million dollars over-budget, almost bankrupting Warner Brothers and causing Jodorwosky to secretly escape from America seeking refuge in Mexico where he hoped to film the entire movie and where construction of the full sized Gotham City sets had begun in earnest. 

The Jean Giraud inspired Batmobile. 47 different versions were built for the film.

Trivia:

Some of the concept art by French cartoonist Jean (Moebius) Giraud were eventually used in Terry Zwigoff's stage adaptation of Marvel's Alpha Flight (2019).

Scarily Klaus Kinski was cast as the Joker for Argento's version and 70% percent of his scenes were in the can before he became increasingly deluded that he was being stalked by Mick Jagger in revenge for 'stealing' his role. 

Three weeks before the end of shooting Kinski disappeared on the same day that Jagger went missing from a Florida hotel room.

After a countrywide search it was discovered that after numerous phone altercations with the Jagger, Kinski had kidnapped the singer in an attempt to replace him on stage and during a gig in Washington blow himself and the rest of The Stones to pieces in revenge for what he said were Great Britain's crimes against popular culture.

No charges were filed.



























*If anyone from Warner's is reading this I'm available.

keep on trekkin'

 

Celebrate Star Trek Day with a 60 minute trip across the final frontier of sound.

naschy birthday!

Seeing as it's the late, great Paul Naschy's birthday today I thought I'd revisit an article I wrote for the late lamented Multitude of Movies magazine way back in 2015 which itself was based on (bits of) a review of the classic Curse of the Devil (AKA Return of the Werewolf, El Retorno de Walpurgis) for The yearly Paul Naschy Blogathon that used to run over at the frankly fantastic Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies site.


Plus it's worth a look just to see how much childish shite I have to cut out of stuff when I submit it for 'proper' publication.

Enjoy.

And happy birthday Mr Naschy!

Back in the days before t'internet (and, gulp even video) the only way you could find out about new (ok let's be honest here, any) horror movies was from local library books (usually written by Leslie Halliwell, a writer whose own ideas of good horror once noted that Night of The Living Dead had killed the genre and nothing of any worth had been made since) or one of the very few genre magazines available (stand up and be counted House of Hammer and on the rare occasions it got imported to a wee newsagent nearby Famous Monsters).

As a precocious seven year old force fed a Saturday night teevee double bill of Universal and RKO classics these greats of film literature were a godsend to me and I would spent all my spare time pouring over grainy black and white shots of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. as the tragic Lawrence Talbot.

I'll never forget though (I have a good memory) that one particular issue had a photo of the Wolfman I'd never seen before, true it was labeled 'the Werewolf' and although the accompanying picture of a fraught young man had a hint of Chaney about him his name wasn't Talbot, it was Daninsky. 

Like any curious kid of that age I examined the picture for a few minutes before completely forgetting about it and turning the page to reread an article on what looked like the greatest monster movie ever.

Ah Crater Lake Monster where are you now?*

The love of horror stayed with me (as did the love of Universal) and thanks to magazines like Starburst information became easier to find, the Saturday night double bills sometimes featured the films of Eddie Romero alongside the old faithfuls and movies like Dawn of The Dead and Phantasm had fueled my geek gene, forcing me to learn more about the directors and their influences. As a teenager you can probably tell I was never asked out on dates.

Ever.

The strange sad faced man with the foreign name seemed to have disappeared without a trace though and whilst Coffin Joe was being photographed with Christopher Lee at swanky Parisian horror conventions it would take a controversial censorship bill of epic proportions to bring the legendary Paul Naschy to the attentions of young horror fans in dear old blighty.

Yup, I hate to admit it but it's thanks to the 1984 'video nasty' furore and the inadvertent banning of Naschy's 1975 monster mash The Werewolf and The Yeti that finally introduced me to the great man's work. 

And oh boy did I hate it.

Bizarrely enough, of all the films I devoured at the time this is one of those that I have only the vaguest recollections of; something about the infamous Abominable Snowman playing the bagpipes during a fight scene and being sent out of the room to get biscuits when Naschy got involved in a wee bit of threeway action comes to mind.

But the most upsetting thing about it, and I'll admit this stayed with me for years, wasn't the gore or the sex (or even the lack of decent biscuits at my nan's), it was because this young upstart seemed to be taking all the ideas, the drama and heartache (plus the dissolve effects) of my beloved Universal movies and trying to make them his own.

How very dare he.

So being the sensible and knowledgeable film connoisseur that I was (you know, the way you can only be when you're 14) there was only one thing I could do.

Yup, I laughed loudly at the screen and flounce back to my 'serious' horror movies, tutting audibly at anyone who even mentioned that film. Looking back I find myself dying a wee bit inside at the thought of being such a know all little brat, so caught up in my own (movie-based) importance that I totally failed to see the irony in the situation.

The whole fact that they reminded me of the Universal series was that Naschy was a fan too. It's just that he knew how to have fun with his 'fannishness'.


But who was this Paul Naschy fella and why is he so revered in the world of horror cinema?

Well herein lies a tale worthy of a movie itself.

Born Jacinto Molina Álvarez in Madrid, Spain on September 6, 1934 into a fairly well-to-do family - his father Enrique was a highly regarded furrier (as in he worked with fur not that he dressed up as a rabbit and attended conventions) – Naschy's first love was surprisingly, not cinema but weightlifting, a profession he actually pursued upon leaving college.

As he entered his 20's Naschy's career took a number of more and more eclectic turns, moving as he did between writing pulp western novels, illustrating comics, weightlifting and acting, his first on screen appearance being as a Mongol warlord in Luis Lucia's El Príncipe Encadenado in 1960.

No me neither.

More and more (albeit small) roles followed – including an uncredited appearance in the Jesus-tastic King Of Kings (1961) and as his understanding of the film making process grew so did his appreciation for cinema in general but it was a chance encounter in 1966 with horror legend Boris Karloff whilst appearing in an episode of the Bill Cosby starrer I Spy that set Naschy on the road that would finally lead him to success.

Reminiscing with the actor about his time at Universal, Naschy admitted his love for the character of The Wolf Man, a fascination that dated back to his viewing of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) as a child.

Whatever Karloff said to him isn't on record but we can assume he didn't tell him to piss off and have him thrown off set, otherwise I reckon his career would have taken a more bizarre turn and you'd be sitting here reading about an actor who portrayed a nasty aging Thespian in a series of increasingly demented revenge flicks set in the twilight world of episodic TV.

Actually there may be a book in that.

Naschy spent the next few years working on his first screenplay and in 1968 La Marca Del Hombre Lobo hit the big screen, introducing the world to the tragic tale of the doomed lycanthrope Waldemar Daninsky, a character – or descendants of – that Naschy would go on to play 12 times between 1968 and 2004's direct to video Tomb Of The Werewolf.

Bizarrely though he never actually intended to play Daninsky, only stepping up to the role after original choice Lon Chaney Jr. proved too ill to travel and a suitable candidate couldn't be found.

And from such accidental beginnings a horror legend was born.

But portraying one iconic character was obviously not enough for Naschy who, as his career grew went on to give us his unique takes on several classic screen monsters including Count Dracula and Mr. Hyde, alongside assorted mummies and demons as well as a host of vile villains and black-hearted bad guys in a career that spanned over 100 movies and 4 decades.

Frequently writing the scripts for the movies he appeared in, he added directing to his list of not too inconsiderable talents with the 1976 Devil worshipping delight Inquisition (in which he also starred and wrote) and later, when the horror genre fell from favour within the Spanish film industry, Naschy became a producer, at one point bizarrely enough making documentaries for Japanese television resulting in a slew of Spanish-Japanese co-productions, including the frankly fantastic (if not slightly bonkers) La Bestia Y La Espada Majica (1983).

If you don't believe me then you try and name another film that features a werewolf taking on a (real) tiger as well as assorted Ninjas and a sub-plot featuring a magic monster slaying sword.

In 1984 Naschy faced a crisis in both his career and personal life, firstly with the death of his father – with whom he'd always had a close relationship and latterly when his production company, Aconito Films, filed for bankruptcy – partly due to the aforementioned lack of interest in horror movies but mainly due to the total commercial failure of the ahead of its time spy spoof Operacion Mantis.

Imagine a Spanish Austin Powers by way of The Naked Gun channelling Benny Hill via 70's Burt Reynolds and you're halfway there.

Things got worse for Naschy in 1991 when he too suffered a heart attack during a weightlifting session at his local gym, forcing the once seemingly indestructible star to take stock of his life leading to the publication in 1997 of an incredibly honest and deeply touching autobiography, Memorias De Un Hombre Loco.

As the new millennium dawned though so did a new found respect and interest in the masters work when in 2000 noted American horror magazine Fangoria inducted Naschy into its Horror Hall of Fame, thanks in part to his many – worldwide - fans championing his cause but his highest accolade was to follow when, in 2001 King Juan Carlos I presented Naschy with The Gold Medal Award for Fine Arts (the Spanish equivalent of a knighthood).

Paul Naschy passed away from cancer on 30th November 2009, still working away on new and more terrifying horror projects until his death, the lonely lycanthrope had finally come home to the love and affection he truly deserved.

Daninsky and his creator resting among the likes of Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. as true greats of horror and set to thrill and terrify fans of the fantastic of all ages for years to come.










































*Scarily enough it took 40 years but I did finally get to see The Crater Lake Monster.