Chucked By An Angel

There are some movies that should only be purchased pre-viewed at a discount that competes only with whether or not you want to add an eggroll with your Chinese takeout order. These are the kinds of films that are a) not good and b) not worthy of your hard-earned or smoothly-stolen money. Movies that SHOULD be seen no doubt, but not at the risk of their production houses benefiting in any tangible manner.

What I mean by this is that Bells of Innocence, an incompetent yet hilarious biblical thriller conceived by and starring Chuck Norris’ son Mike, shouldn’t make any money. It’s no better written, acted, or filmed than that weird experimental short my cat made after he watched Un Chien Andalou and got a hold of my iPhone.

But glory be, it’s hilarious.

Quick Plot: In 1932, a Native American and a little boy wearing a plastic wig and Native American costume from the 1932 equivalent of Party City are tending a fire in Texas when a torch-baring mob storms their fun. The boy dressed like a Native American runs away to live on and tell the tale, perhaps to be influential in providing backstory for the film that we’re currently watching.

Except not really. We’ll get back to that.

Anyway, let’s move on to a present day, happy town church, where a trio of male members are about to fly down to Mexico to deliver boxes and boxes of Bibles. “The residents there couldn’t ask for a more gracious gift!” cries one parishioner who I assume is THE WORST secret santa in the American southwest. Our leads assemble:

There’s Conrad (weird Flash Gordon lookalike David A.R. White), the reliable family man.

Orin (Carey Scott), the obnoxiously “I’m the funny one!” sporting good salesman.

And, brace yourself, Jux—yeah, I know—played by Mike Norris as a man in turmoil. A wonderfully inept sunny day flashback reveals that some months earlier, Juggs was helping his daughter ride her bicycle, only to then cut to pure AUDIO flashback to hear “Daddy!” as a car presumably crashes into her (on the sidewalk?) and his wife walks out. Now, Jucks wakes up every morning with a beer and round of Russian Roulette. Surely that’s not a Christian thing to do!

You know what IS a Christian thing to do? Fly a private plane to Mexico to deliver bibles to the needy who REALLY NEED bibles. Unfortunately for those poor faithless Mexicans, Jocks forgot to load the plane with oil (or something) and then makes an emergency landing in the middle of the desert, where Orin pointedly points out is nothing but dirt and sky.

Montage #1:

The men walk. And walk. And walk. The sun shines. The men walk. The sun shines. The men walk. Music plays. The men walk. Music plays. The sun shines. Men walk. All walking and sun shining makes Emily something something.

Discover a creepy dry county without phones? Don’t mind if I do!

Enter the hamlet of Ceres, which we’ll later find out is a gateway to hell (much like the refrigerator in the much better The Refrigerator) and I imagine, has something to do with that opening prologue that never has anything to do with the rest of the movie. Moving on…

The fellas sit down in an all-too quiet bar where they meet Chuck Norris. I could tell you about how Norris is actually playing a mysterious shortwave radio owner on horseback named Matthew, who SPOILER ALERT! is actually a disguised angel, but that’s kind of beside the point (the point just being, Chuck Norris). After ordering iced teas that they don’t wait or pay for, the men leave to meet a single mother named Diane, who then gives them a lift to Matthew’s house.

Yes readers, you read that right. At the dry county bar, Matthew tells the guys to go to Diane’s house and get a ride….to his house. It’s as needless as it sounds, though surely you’re now thinking Diane must be important to the story. Sure…in the same way the Native American costumed boy in the cheap wig is important to the story.

So Ceres isn’t on any map, something Conrad’s shortwave radio tending wife discovers with horror from afar. There’s some dreadfully undeveloped action back at the boys’ hometown where an older (but not elderly, as in born in the late 1920s) Native American says something about Ceres being what Fulci based The Beyond on and then pipe cleaner spiders attack a librarian and come to think of it, I *might* be confusing things a little bit here. But yeah, the Native American is, I assume, some sort of throwback to the opening scene that HAS NO BEARING ON THE REST OF THE STORY.

Evil kids!

See, when I get distracted, there are some key words that bring me back to the subject at hand. In this case, we get little children of the cornish brats who are supposed to be creepy—we know this because Orin, he of pointedly pointing out things, pointedly points out that they are “creepy kids!” Chief among them is Lyric, an Orphan wannabe who immediately latches onto Joks in the way that abused, bipolar, or satanic kids children sometimes do.

Stuff kind of continues to happen, sort of I think maybe. Orin tries to convert the townspeople to football players. Hilarity maybe ensued? Conrad’s wife continues to worry about him. Joggs keeps spending an inappropriate amount of time with the little girl he just met. At some point, there’s a big festival thrown where spiked punch leads our heroes to capture, only to be freed from afar by Walker Texas Angel. They run away from creatures vaguely modeled on the zombies from Tombs of the Blind Dead, mostly through the roundhouse kicking skills of Chuck Norris’ son, who leads them…back to Matthew’s house where they learn that 100 years ago—which, if you’re doing the math, HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH 1932—the town was invaded and evil took root.

Montage #2!

Upon learning that they must face the devil, the men need to talk. So they do. In montage. They stand outside in Matthew’s yard where three benches meet. Orin sits. Jox stands. Conrad sits. Joks sits. Orin stands. All sit. Orin stands. All stand. Conrad sits. Orin sits where Conrad had been sitting earlier. Three minutes later, they’ve made a decision and I still don’t care.

There’s a villain, then another one. Lyric is revealed to be Lucifer. Or something. It’s hard to stay focused when the softcore Cinemax score is playing louder than the dialogue, but I think it’s safe to say the men eventually face the devil, whose main skills involve forcing suburban churchgoers on their knees and flashing a lighting trick that lets us see everybody’s skeleton. 

At some point, the movie ends and a wonderfully cheesy feel-good song plays over the credits, which assure us that “no animals were hurt during the making of this movie and they were WELL FED!”

Must be a Texas thing.

Directed by Alin Bijan, Bells of Innocence is a horrible film. The dialogue is somehow both predictable and shocking (in how awful it is), the effects, level 1 graphic design, and the characters so bland that we can’t help but root for the devil until we realize even HE’S lame. I won’t trash the performances completely, as the actors are so ill-equipped that it’s hard to imagine Judi Dench and the ghost of Laurence Olivier doing much better. But then again, they and heck, even Tara Reid and Denise Richards are probably smart enough to avoid coming near this script. And THAT’S saying something.

High Notes

I normally denounce the use of the deep computerized demon voice (or as I like to call it, the Marlena Evans Possessed By the Devil Effect) but in the case of a movie like Bells of Innocence, the more the merrier! Especially when it’s being applied to a child

Low Notes

Well, the movie, but who’s judging?

Lessons Learned

The Spanish word for “joke” is “yoke”

Nothing’s better than faith!

Traveling with the golden girls means you won’t be going out to eat

The Winning Lines

“Children are special in these parts.”

“I think they’re special in all parts.”

Look, I get what they’re TRYING to say here but…I mean…just READ THE WORDS

Rent/Bury/Buy

Yikes. Don’t give GoodTime Entertainment your cash (because I don’t ever want big budgets to cloud their amazingly inept style of filmmaking) but do try to see Bells of Innocence. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. Mostly because you’ll be laughing so hard. It’s THAT kind of movie, and sometimes, the world needs that a bucketful more than faith.

Let's Get Leggy

The universe did not want me to watch this film.

Or at least, ‘the universe’ as defined by Netflix technology or my overly protective Blu Ray player. I was excited to see The Human Centipede 2 magically appear in my instant queue on the same day that Pet Sematary 2 (‘sup, Eddie Furlong!) did. But for whatever reason, my Blu Ray refused to acknowledge this pair of sequels’ slide into instant territory until several hours after the discovery. Sorry LG Player, a gal just can't resist.

Quick Plot: Meet Martin, an overweight slug of a mama's boy who oversees a dank parking lot, the perfect profession for a man who prefers to spend the majority of his time masturbating to Tom Six's 2009 film The Human Centipede and subsequently kidnapping annoying customers for a future project. See, in the universe of this movie, The Human Centipede is a work of fiction, one that just so happened to capture the fancy of our lead character. 

You know how girls that dug The Hunger Games now braid their hair and kids that really liked Fight Club started their own fight clubs? Well, man-children that loved The Human Centipede don't show their admiration by collecting insects (well, Martin does, but that's just a side hobby). The more devout fans take it one--or twelve--steps further and, you know, create their very OWN human centipede culled from prostitutes, drunk party girls, surly neighbors, pregnant women (yup, that happens), and, if you REALLY want to prove your worth, one of the stars from the original film.

Yes folks, that's Ashlynn Yenni, aka "C" or The Rear of Dr. Heiter's original experiment. Yenni plays herself en route to a bogus audition for a Quentin Tarantino production only to instead find herself starring in Martin's own private fantasy. Sure, Marilyn Burns had to deal with 120º heat and Gunnar Hanson's body odor, but poor Ashlynn has now had her face stuck in another person's rump, her tongue yanked out, and a funnel diet of dog food and laxatives. Give the girl a Saturn Award or SOMETHING.

I found the original Human Centipede to be an interesting avant garde comedy that never quite rose up to its ambitious aims. Whether it was meant to be humorous or just found the right tone within its audience reaction I don't really know, but Tom Six certainly got the joke the second time around. As icky and brutal as The Human Centipede 2 is, it never once asks or expects you to take it seriously as a horror film. That is not to say horrific things involving butts, digestion, and birth don't happen, but the idea that we're supposed to feel anything by them seems fairly ridiculous. Tom Six is trying to shock us, trying to amuse us, and, I think, hoping to make the ones that 'get it' laugh and the ones that don't lobby their senator for tighter bans on filmmaking. I don't think this a good film, but much like the equally weird Rubber, I respect that it was made.

There are three aspects of The Human Centipede 2 that I admire immensely:

1. The casting of its lead character

According to IMDB, Laurence R. Harvey has been in two films: The Human Centipede 2 and The Human Centipede 3 (eventually filming, I assume). That’s hard to believe, both because a) he’s actually great in the role and b) I wouldn’t put it past Six to force Mr. Harvey into a sort of Blair Witch-like alternate actor identity. Then again, the reason I’m so keen on Harvey’s casting is the very fact that he doesn’t look like he should ever be viewed on the big screen. 

I’m sure that in his Sunday church clothes, Laurence R. Harvey is a more than presentable man. But give the guy credit for putting in the kind of physically unreserved performance that would have desperate bachelorettes on a singles cruise hurling themselves overboard in the hopes that even the seaweediest merman  might provide refuge.

2. Monochrome madness

To call The Human Centipede 2 one of the grossest films in recent memory isn't any grand or controversial statement. I don't care how many episodes of Jackass you watched while eating Doritos: seeing ten people have their teeth and kneecaps knocked out, only to then suffer through a hand-me-down Number 2 special dog food dinner is, to be coy, not appetizing. Even before that, we get the joys of watching the intentionally off-putting Martin cough up phlegm, urinate blood, and wipe away snot the way some habitual tickers bite their nails. The one thing we did not need from a film like this was any real sense of realism, and thankfully--well, almost--Tom Six is kind enough to comply.

See, the black and white filming isn't just stylish: it's necessary. To pile on that amount of body gore in color would result in either the results being disgustingly unwatchable or just plain laughable. Films like Hobo With a Shotgun or its inspiration Street Trash succeeded with a candy color wheel approach, while the more realistic-minded Salo and A Serbian Film work with a muted palette that makes the few blatant images extremely powerful. Tom Six is not a director of restraint, nor has he proven a visual genius. Hence, keeping the bodily fluids--from just about every organ no less--covered in gray is vital.

Of course, then Six goes and tosses in splatters of brown at a key moment and I'm left thinking I should negate the previous two paragraphs...

3. Its structure as a sequel

Much like Paranormal Activity 2, I found myself enjoying the concept of The Human Centipede 2 far more than the actual film. Sequels are never easy goings, and while cinema of the 1980s generally followed a 'rinse & repeat' approach, there's been a refreshing trend here in the aughts (and now teens) to follow up a horror hit with a different sort of style. It would have been fairly easy for Tom Six to simply pick up where he left off, with one lone centipede middle trapped in a house alone until the arrival of say, Dr. Heiter's hinted about twin brother. Instead, The Human Centipede 2 tries something new, a meta take on what effect watching Tom Six's first film might have on an unstable mind. It's messy, pretentious, and incredibly self-serving sure, but at the same time, it's hard not to appreciate a filmmaker taking a chance when there were plenty of options not to.

Lessons Learned

You know what’s not that hard to do? Pulling out a human tongue in one piece. And here I struggle to get all that lobster meat out of the claw without major injury

One needn’t be cautious about kidnapping patterns in England. Apparently, one can swipe up to ten people in one location over the course of a week and still have time to pick up another would-be victim from a nearby airport before policemen even think to notice

A little duct tape and a single cro-bar go an awful long way in getting you what you want

Centipede (non-human kinds) bites really hurt

Rent/Bury/Buy

Well, there’s plenty of people who will rightfully hate The Human Centipede 2. Like its predecessor, it’s a messy, undisciplined film that’s about as pleasant a watch as Lucker the Necrophagous or your great aunt clipping her toenails. But then you have people out there like me--and hey! maybe you--who just can’t not seek out a film that tries so desperately to make you look away. If you found the first film to be an oddly enjoyable comedy (as I did) then I imagine you’ll get something similar out of the sequel. It’s frustrating and unpleasant and gross and not quite as smart as it wants to think it is, but...you know...it has more duct tape than dialogue, and that in itself is something that makes you think. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

All Dogs Go To Heaven (unless buried in a sequel)

What a strange, strange decision Mary Lambert made in following up her flawed but unnerving 1991 hit Pet Sematary with a pseudo horror comedy sequel no one wanted. But what a smart, smart decision she made in casting Clancy Brown.

Quick Plot: Jeff is an average teenager not destined to save the world (but played by a T2 era Edward Furlong) with a famous actress mom and estranged veterinarian dad played by everybody’s second favorite nerd, Anthony Edwards.

Look, I love the guy too, but all the medical knowledge in the world won’t make him more beloved to me than Rick Moranis.

Anyway, Mom dies in a freak on-set electrocution accident, sending son and pops to move back to her hometown Ludlow, the same New England hamlet where Gage Creed went No Fair on his family after being buried in Native American spiritual grounds.

Before you can remember the second verse to How Much Is That Doggy In the Window, Jeff finds himself on the same haunted soil, but this being something of a Stephen King knockoff, bullies are thrown in for extra measure. Tom Hanks' best friend from Big plays a mullety brat who lures Jeff into the Pet Sematary, but it’s the chubby Drew who tells him about its sordid history.

Did I mention Drew has a dog? Okay, he does and you know what shall become of it, but what I neglected to say is that it’s by the hands of the one, the only, the most underrated character actor in modern history, Clancy Brown.

Eff. Yeah.

Brown plays Gus, the town sheriff and jerky stepdad to Drew. For no reason other than Clancy Brown Is Awesome, he’s also the only character in the film with a New England accent. It’s a beautiful sound and were Mr. Brown to start his own phone sex company, I have no shame admitting that I’d fast be broke.

But back to Mary Lambert’s oddly toned story, one that eventually decides that the horror doesn’t seem to be hopping so hey! Let’s make you laugh. 

Or maybe that was just Clancy Brown’s decision.

Let me tell you something folks: if there’s one thing better than Clancy Brown hamming it up with a New England accent in a mid-90s horror sequel, it’s (minor spoiler) Zombie Clancy Brown hamming it up with a New England accent in a mid-90s horror sequel. As he slaughters rabbits, chews with his mouth open, and forces himself upon his wife (okay, that’s not awesome), Brown raises Pet Sematary 2 up a notch into something weirdly almost wonderful. 

Almost. Because even though there are children being gorily murdered by semis and mopeds in a somewhat light-hearted matter, there’s also fuzzy special effects and Skinemaxy blue-hued sex scenes...where Anthony Edwards gets mounted by his naked housekeeper with a wolf head. 

Hm.

It’s weird, plain and simple. Lambert probably would have been wiser to establish the horror-comedy vibe from scene 1. Instead, we’re stuck with poorly executed scares that rather suddenly turn into laughs at the 40 minute mark. It’s not the best way to make a movie.

High Points

Brown, Clancy

Low Points

Oh, I don’t know, the fact that the movie doesn’t come close to being scary but never commits to its own comedy?

Lessons Learned

Bringing a cat into the classroom on your first day at a new school? Not too smart

Working in LA as a veternarian might harden a man in the kind of way that leads to him keeping handgun handily sitting on top of his nightstand 

A great way to leave your audience deciding they’ve just watched a comedy: end on a fuzzy floating head portrait montage of all the characters killed in the film. Guaranteed laughmaker 

Confession Time

As much as I blast the original Pet Sematary and to a lesser extent, this one for having its characters make the ridiculous choice to bury their loved ones in evil ground after it has already proven itself, you know, eeeeeee-viiiiiiiiiiil, I would, without hesitation, reserve a double plot for Mookie and Joplin in a heartbeat if there was a Ludlow Pet Sematary in my neighborhood. Sure, they may come back and kill me, but you know...cute zombie cats!

Rent/Bury/Buy

Pet Sematary 2 isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation (or lack thereof) would have you believe. There’s something oddly admirable about Lambert’s decision to re-tackle Pet Sematary with a completely different and almost original take on the same basic story. It’s almost a shame that the end result is such a halfhearted mess, an inconsistently toned tale that only feels to find its footing when Clancy Brown is onscreen. The movie is streaming on Netflix and is certainly worth a gander for the curious or Clancy Brown fan (of which I assume is 100% of the human population) so give it a casual watch if you’re in the mood for a failed mid-90s horror experiement. It's...different.

Is That a Sausage In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Hoarding Food In the Bomb Shelter?

Time and time again I say: I love films set around the apocalypse. 

Set them on the last day of the world 

Set them as the world is slowly dying from a flesh-devouring plague

Set them as it tries to recover 

Set them just on the cusp of maybe/maybe not world destroying disaster 

Set them during a time when Tiger from The Brady Bunch helps Don Johnson get laid

Point is, if you ring the bell for the end of the world, I will skip to faster than Pavlov’s puppy being weaned on Red Bull. Hence, The Divide!

Quick Plot: As nuclear war wages on the streets of Manhattan, a gaggle of apartment dwellers follows grizzly super Mickey (Terminator’s Michael Biehn) down into his well-fortified bomb shelter. Among those who make it before John Connor’s dad seals the door:

Eva (Hostel 2’s Lauren German), quietly smart and strong

Sam, her twerpy French lawyer boyfriend

Adrian, a thoughtful 20something

Josh, his alpha half-brother

Bobby, their slightly punkish pal

Delvin (Courtney B. Vance), a paranoid (or IS HE?) middle ager

And Marilyn (Rosanna Arquette!) and her 10ish year old daughter

Funny. About a half hour into The Divide, I worried, as in the case in these types of ensemble films, that I had and would continue to have no real differentiation between the younger male characters. Yes, ‘Sam’ had an accent, but he also looked quite a bit like ‘Josh.' Meanwhile, I still had no real idea how ‘Bobby’ fit into any of it: was he Josh’s boyfriend? A drug dealer? A good guy or villain? A redhead who shares Matthew McConoughy's allergy to wearing shirts?

One of the many pleasant surprises about The Divide was that eventually, I knew exactly who Bobby was, even if I, well, still didn’t. He wasn’t The Hothead or The Jerk or The Horny Guy. He was Bobby. 

(See what I mean about the shirt thing?)

He was all of these things. He was hotheaded, pretty jerky, and eventually, incredibly horny. Because that’s what people are like. They aren’t easily defined with one character trait, no matter how easy it generally is for screenwriters to create their cast as such. Hence, despite the characters of The Divide NOT necessarily fitting into easy stereotypes, I ultimately remembered every single one of their names.

But I’m getting ahead of myself with enthusiasm. I haven’t even told you what actually happens in the movie now, have I, and shame on me when film in question includes John Connor’s dad slapping people, jokes about cannibalism, threesomes in Hazmat suits, and Chekhov’s Law of Septic Holes. 

Well, maybe we should forget about that one...

Once safe and snug in Mickey’s decently stocked lair, the gang slowly falls ill to the worst form of cabin fever that doesn’t involve skin peeling and pancakes. Because this is a new DVD release, I’ll avoid spoiling anything specific, but trust me when I say The Divide doesn’t shy away from making some pretty dire decisions, from surprise early deaths to physically AND emotionally horrific side effects of, you know, being trapped in a basement during a nuclear holocaust.

Yes, some characters turn to the dark side when the future’s bleakness never lifts. You could sniff that out as soon as Delvin catches Mickey hoarding sausage while the rest of the gang sucks up canned beans. But for as easily as some characters follow the obvious path, The Divide packs plenty of surprises. Arquette’s Marilyn begins as a worried mother and ends as...

Well, let’s just say it’s a brave performance.

Similarly, German’s Eva is our clear heroine from frame one, and while she does serve as our stable center, she also takes turns we never see coming. Xavier Gens pulled off a similar tract with his lead in Frontier(s), an effective but slightly rote torture flick that demonstrated great promise from the French director. The Divide definitely proves Gens to be one to watch, with great skills at getting solid performances and an effectively escalating sense of doom. Credit also goes to screenwriting team Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean, plus a cast that probably ate from the lamest craft service table since Hunger.

High Points

Oh okay fine, I’ve held out this long, but here we go with one SPOILER

I kind of love that The Divide never REALLY gives us answers about its external conflict. We know that the city (and possibly the world) is indeed coated in nuclear fallout, but what that ultimately means for Eva and what went on in those Hazmat wearing soldiers(?) child-keeping lab is left a mystery. Not knowing is somehow so much more horrifying than any explanation would probably suggest.

THUS END'TH SPOILERS

Low Points

While I do think The Divide went further in uglying up its actors than most films of its type would, there’s a part of me that simply wishes one could take the complete cast of Jim Mickle’s Mulberry Street--another fine low budget New York-set horror film--and plug them in instead. The actors in The Divide are perfectly good once they get going, but how common is it to find that seven out of seven survivors of a nuclear apocalypse like, really really ridiculously good-looking.

For such a strong and different genre movie, it’s an absolute shame that the DVD (at least the one Netflix stocks) is naked of any special features. Considering the entire cast was apparently put on starvation diets (and boy do the effects show) it’s incredibly frustrating to feel deprived of a grumpy Dorito filled commentary track where they duct tape the screenwriters down to a chair for putting them through hell or behind-the-scenes featurettes catching Rosanna Arquette sneaking Milky Ways

Lessons Learned

Why you should never let a man pack a bomb shelter: there are certain, um, female toiletries that he might forget are needed on a monthly basis

Removing the helmet of a man whom you’ve just caused intense head trauma to is an act that should be done with extreme care

Nobody but nobody eats Bobby’s penis

Rent/Bury/Buy

I would be all too willing to recommend a bargain-priced blind buy, but since The Divide comes with nary a special feature (well, there IS a scene selection option which is more than one could say for David Lynch releases) then I’ll just say put it on the top of your rental queue. It’s a harsh watch, but if you’re one of those weirdos who really enjoys harsh watches about the end of the world and horror of mankind, then boy is this the movie for you!

Weirdo.