The Mother That Rocks the Cradle

I have a long, complicated relationship with the 1980 exploitation flick Mother’s Day. See, my dear parents are known for, among other things like being great parents, being fairly lax about regulating what I watched as a child. Hence, when my older brothers brought home what seemed like just another holiday-themed slasher from the video store, why WOULDN’T I be allowed to sit down in the basement and watch it?

For years, I just didn’t remember Mother’s Day as being anything other than another peg in the hillbilly horror field. Hence, when my friend asked me to bring a “scary movie” from my VHS collection to her 14th birthday party, there didn’t seem to be any obvious reason NOT to bring Mother’s Day. After all, she asked ME because I knew “scary movies” so wasn’t trusting my instinct enough?

There was a minor problem with grabbing Mother’s Day from the video pile: 

It’s a little rape-y.

Or a lot rape-y, depending on how you rank your rape-y scale. 

Needless to say, I was unofficially banned from choosing the movies for slumber parties for the rest of junior high, a shame since we never even got to watch Slumber Party Massacre. 

That being said, I hold no grudge against the original Mother’s Day. It’s a terrible film, but one with a fairly snappy satirical edge buried just beneath its oozing layers of sleaze. When I heard it was being remade (in what feels like a decade ago, based on Lionsgate’s odd 2-year holdout of the film), I was happy. Remaking a bad film makes a motherload more sense to me than mangling something as good as The Wicker Man or (breath held) Total Recall.

Quick Plot: It’s a dark night in the maternity ward when a woman disguised as a nurse sneaks out with a newborn, aided by a mysterious man who spills a ton of blood out of a night watchman. And that’s all before the credits start.

Cut to a nice and new suburban housewarming (or birthday, even though the lucky aging guest is never acknowledged) party in Wichita hosted by the Sohapis, a sad but (this being a movie) attractive couple. They’re just kicking back in the basement with an assortment of early thirtysomething friends amid tornado warnings when a trio of baddy bank robbers crash the living room. 

Bandit brothers Ike and Aadley frantically tend their youngest’s gunshot wound, wondering why their house looks so goshdarn different. Turns out, their family home was bought up by the Sohapis (and yes, there’s plenty of comment on that name) after mom Rebecca DeFrickenMornay and sis Lydia lost it. Of course, once a few partygoers come upstairs, the brothers can’t just hobble out with a few bodies in their wake...especially after they make a phone call to mom.

Played by the gracefully aging De Mornay, Mom is quite a piece of work. Polite, classy, and seemingly well-intentioned, all she wants is to keep her children safe and on their way with her to the international border, something that requires $10,000 that *should* have been delivered to her former home. Maybe it was, and maybe frazzled wifey Beth (My Bloody Valentine star Jamie King) or her cheating hubby Daniel have been hoarding it. Mother's Day uses the missing cash as a nice underlying threat. De Mornay might indeed have kept the evening (fairly) bloodless if there wasn't the slightest scent of distrust lingering in her old home.

But come one: is "fairly bloodless" what you're looking for in a remake of Mother's Day? Directed by Saw 2/3/4 and Repo! The Genetic Opera helmer Darren Lynn Bousman, Mother's Day certainly feels like a slicker, higher end straight-to-DVD genre flick. The cast includes plenty of recognizable faces, including  Frozen's Shawn Ashmore, Saw 2/3/4's Lyriq Bent, Step Up 2/Burning Bright's 65 year-old-chain-smoker-voice-in-a 20something body Brianna Evigan, and the stunning but generally awful Children of the Corn & Carrie remake's Kandyse McClure (in fairness, she's much more tolerable here). All are capable enough, though none quite rise to the icy coolness of Ms. De Mornay.

A little more problematic is the portrayal of her brood. The actors aren't necessarily bad, but there's just something lacking in the human monster aspect of the family. They're a scary bunch because of the things they do--pit friends against one another in a knife fight to the death, force pals into hand-to-hand combat to determine whose wife beds their dying virgin brother, etc.--but all are simply too clean and, let's face it, easy on the eyes to fully inhabit the Last House On the Left caliber monsters inside.

So yes, a little more sleaze would have been welcome. But isn't that always the case?

High Notes

At just eight minutes shy of two hours, Mother’s Day is certainly longer than most films of its type but never once did I feel the running length. Yes, there are a lot of characters, and while some are more memorable than others, it never feels like the film is wasting time on such a large cast. 

Between kitchen utensil combat and finding new uses for boiling water, Mother’s Day is quite enthusiastic about finding new means for violence. Even a grizzly gunshot is staged a little differently, with half a head just subtly (did I say that?) oozing in the background of a surprise kill

Low Notes

By no definition is the original a better film, but the one thing it had that seems mostly lacking in the remake is the slightest edge of satire. In the 1980 version's case, it came out in the hillbilly son characters, all of whose understandings of females and sex seemed violently culled from television. Bousman's Mother's Day has hints of subtext in how the family lost their home, but it's never fully explored in a way that makes it feel any more relevant than 'what have you done to my house?' 

SPOILER

I’m all for girl power, but having the ending miraculously revive not one, but two female characters so that they can have a Sex And the City-like epilogue (which, admittedly, is then crashed by kidnapping and stuff) feels a little cheap. Bousman DOES address this in the commentary and admits that the ending(s) were easily his least favorite part of the film, so it’s not entirely unfair to chalk it up to studio meddling

SPOILERS DONE

Lessons Learned

Don’t bark: wait, and then bite

The best housewarming gift one can give: Ginsu knives

When will people learn? Cut the hand ties first, gag next. The person you free can ungag themselves, and doing so yourself (first!) just wastes precious seconds of escape time

Random Law &Order: SVU Connections Galore

Let me tell you something folks: this film is a GOLD MINE of SVU guest star territory. Just about everyone in the cast stopped by Special Victims at some point, including Mother herself who got to play a parapalegic lawyer who, it turns out, has been faking her paralysis for years to guilt her husband after his affairs. It’s hilarious, but not quite as hilarious as “Families,” an episode that costarred “Ike” actor Patrick John Flueger as a young man whose girlfriend is found dead, discovered to have been pregnant by him, who, funny story, was disapproved of by her family not because he wasn’t a nice guy, but because his father actually had an affair with HER mother 18 years earlier and--get this--it turns out that those crazy lovebirds were actually siblings, thusly prompting one of my favorite soundbites in L&O:SVU history:

“I had SEX with MY SISTER?”

Not quite on the same level as “Can you think of any reason why someone would want to sodomize your husband with a banana?”, but still. You can understand my excitement at the IMDB path of Mother’s Day.

And fun fact: cowriter of the original’s script was Warren Leight, renown playwright and current showrunner of a little program called--whaddya know?--Law & Order: SVU. 

Rent/Bury/Buy

I found Mother's Day to be the definition of a pleasant surprise. It doesn't revolutionize the genre, but it's a GOOD genre film made with skill in front of and behind the camera. Considering how many easy routes Bousman could have taken with the material, I think what he does--create a fairly complex narrative for what is essentially a simple home invasion--is admirable. Why it was shelved for two years is beyond me, but let’s hope its possible DVD success is attributed to it being a good, hard horror movie and not just another lazy remake. Take notes folks! There’s a reason this film works, and it has next to nothing to do with being based on preexisting film material.

Razzmatazz!

It’s easy to get angry over the annual injustice of the Academy Awards, but we can only mock Mira Sorvino’s luck or fruitlessly wave a David Cronenberg flag so many times before our own Oscar the Grouch routine sounds bitter. To thoroughly cite all the great genre performances and films neglected by the Academy Awards is as daunting a task as actually watching the ten Best Picture nominees of 2010 (mainly because that requires you to sit through The Blind Side), but there’s one annual national film society ceremony horror fans can, year after year, invest some stock in: The Golden Raspberries, aka the only trophy to be won by both Tom Green and Laurence Olivier.

We can be thankful that movies as awful as The Happening get recognized for the cinematic crimes they commit against the ticket buying public, but every now and then, the Razzies get it wrong. Sometimes it’s an oversight, as many voters probably try their darnest to erase the memory of certain bad films (I didn’t even remember that I’d seen Friday the 13th: Part XII this year. More often, the Razzmacademy gets a little too eager to punish some of the less critically acclaimed, but not necessarily awful cinema that’s simply an easy target. 

Here are a few Razzie wins and snubs that just don’t add up:

Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body

There are a lot of people currently breathing who dream of watching the slow death/D-list descent of Ms. Megan Fox, but just because a person’s sound bites are more annoying than Mentos commercials doesn’t mean every single performance she gives is a total dud. In Jennifer’s Body--a film targeted as the second coming of Satan according to a vocal segment of the horror community--Fox is perfectly cast as a Mean Girl turned truly evil (not, like, high school evil) and hungry for the blood of horny teenage boys. Yes, Fox’s primary responsibility is to look hot in a cheerleader skirt, but she easily hits the right notes in a role custom made for her (probably limited) range. She’s no Jennifer Tilly in Seed of Chucky, but on a certain level, there’s some genuinely fun about her self-aware work. 

The Blair Witch/Book of Shadows

In fairness, the 1999 nomination for this juggernaut hit was probably more the result of general weariness from the onslaught of fan-films and true story debate than the actual quality of The Blair Witch Project. But a nomination for worst film? This in the year that was Baby Geniuses and Chill Factor? Similarly, the sequel continues to slowly build a late blooming audience who appreciate the film’s playful meta take on the very success of its predecessor. It’s not classic, but surely there were worse films to nab nominations in 2000. Don’t believe me? Hanging Up, Drowning Mona, Pokeman: The Movie, Digimon: The Movie, Autumn in New York, The Ladies Man, and Dungeons & Dragons might have something to say about that. If anybody remembered any of them existed. 

Paris Hilton in horror

I’m no Paris Hilton apologist. If I ever find a genetically deformed monkey’s paw, there’s a good chance its extra pinky may indeed be used to wish her fame into oblivion. That being said, there’s nothing about her underwhelming, if adequate performance in House of Wax that’s worse than Jessica Simpson’s slack-jawed mumbling in The Dukes of Hazard or, more importantly, Katie Holmes’ dull and unbelievable zombie stare in the nearly great The Dark Knight. I could easily call foul on the Razzie voting committee for her 2005 win, particularly when they gave her a hat trick four years later for one deservedly awful (beyond words) performance in The Hottie and the Nottie (please don’t ever make me type those words again) and one actual better than anyone expected (or wants to admit) performance in Repo! The Genetic Opera.

Anaconda

Great movie? Not by most standards. Damn good fun with decent production values and a rich sense of humor? You betcha. So why did 1997’s Anaconda earn a place in Razzie history with multiple nominations, including Worst Picture, Worst Supporting Actor (Jon Voight the performance of his career...seriously) and Worst New Star? More importantly, how is an animatronic/CGI snake considered a New Star?

The Shining

Stanley Kubrick was never a universally loved artist, but to cite him in the Worst Director  category at the Razzies debut ceremony is appalling in any time. At least he was in some highbrow company: Brian De Palma and William Friedken shared the honor.

The Horror of Hype

Genre fans tend to feel a little unpatrioritc pledging allegiance to the same mass-produced flag saluted by 80% of the general public. We’re far more comfortable digging our way through dusty, sometimes crusty DVDs in questionable basement or neon lit video stores than we are sitting amongst the Friday night crowd at the week’s big release. 

It’s no wonder then that movies like Paranormal Activity throw some of us for a loop. How, you ask, could I possibly enjoy the same film that my coworker with the Twilight screensaver has been raving about all month? At the same time, we also get stuck trying to evaluate our own opinions amidst the chokingly thick fog of fanboy enthusiasm that surrounds new cult favorites like Hatchet and Grace. 

So how, you ask, can one navigate the dead-end, it’s-not-as-good-as-people-say labyrinth that is viewer hype? To find a map, we first have to consider the type o’ hype, and I don’t just say that because rhyming is fun.

1.  Long Awaited Hype 

Admit it: you drooled like an overly hydrated zombie when details surrounding Land of the Dead surfaced, just as you giddily brushed off your boomstick at the sound of Sam Raimi returning to his horror roots with Drag Me to Hell. When our childhood heroes reupholster their bloodstained director’s chairs, our own expectations can grow to unreachable heights. Thus, when George Romero makes a decent, if weirdly clean smelling zombie film with a happy ending in the 21st century, we put aside the flaws of the obnoxiously acted Day of the Dead and its own cheat of a final shot in order to blast horror’s indie king for seeming to sell out for CGI and Canada. 

As hard--or maybe impossible--as it is, any film needs to be seen on its own terms and unless it’s in 3D, with no tinted glasses to fog our sight. Sure, it’s depressing to watch Dario Argento continue to roll down a hill of film quality and near impossible to not look up the address of the actress narrating Diary of the Dead in the hopes of slaying her puppies and tearing our her vocal chords, but I promise you that these directors didn’t make these films simply because they hate you. Maybe they’ve lost touch or maybe their visions were simply more startling in another era. Either way, the main thing to remember is that a film should be judged against itself, not your memory of its older brother.

2.  Defensive Hype

There’s a reason nobody makes feel good features documenting the NY Yankees. We don’t care about winners born into luxury, and while not all genre fans can latch onto a sports analogy, everybody loves an underdog. 

Hence, horror loyalists stand on virtual soapboxes to warn passerbys about studio-backed cash cows like Saw while gleefully catching rides on The Midnight Meat Train. Is it fair? In theory, yes, but this comes from a long-suffering Met fan well accustomed to disappointment. Likewise, Lions Gate earned genre fan disapproval when it failed to give a wide release to 2008‘s public transportation terror trip, and I waved my fist in solidarity. 

Then I saw the movie.

While it wasn’t nearly as awful as some recent remade offerings (I’m still washing out my eyeballs for the stain imprinted by Black Xmas)Midnight Meat Train just....wasn’t good. Well-acted and polished, but dank, oddly plotted, and ultimately, quite uninvolving. Aside from battle ready horror fans and Cliver Barker bookworms, would full price ticket buyers really have wanted to spend their Friday night allowance on such an unlikable film? The same could easily be said for Repo! The Genetic Opera, a polarizing rock opera that amassed an army of devotees alongside a migraine suffering horde of conflicted haters.

The best solution I can conjure is to assume nothing. Praise the idea of an original film and support its release for people to actually see, but don’t force yourself to love something that simply isn’t your taste pallet. This leads us to ...

3. But I’m Supposed To Love This, Right?

What do you mean, you didn’t want to marry Hatchet and have its pickaxe babies? And really: what are you doing going out to a Halloween party when you could be home rewatching Trick ‘r Treat, aka The Greatest Horror Film Of All Time, for the ninetieth time this week? 

Of all the hypes out in the cinematic universe, this may be the most difficult to overcome. After two years of nearly universal ravings about a little unreleased horror anthology, it’s hard to watch a film without feeling sadly underwhelmed, angrily disappointed, or unconsciously bullied into submission (remember: Alllllllllllllll the boys love Mandy Lane). 

We could certainly try to build our own Skinner boxes and block out any rumblings from around the genre community, but in the age of blogs, podcasts, and bootlegs, that’s about as realistic as Martyrs getting an Oscar for best foreign film (what, you agree? you didn’t like Martyrs? What kind of fan are you?) Ultimately there is no such thing as a universal opinion, even in a more isolated specimen like the horror community. There’s nothing wrong with not loving a film that makes Fangoria swoon, but try to not let your dislike grow with the positivity of others; don’t hate it more just to match the positive intensity of those who enjoyed it. The best way to handle this is to return to the film several months--or years--after its buzz has been died down. Sometimes, you can only discover what your genuine thoughts are after they don’t seem to matter anymore.

4.  Mainstream Mania

In many ways, Gore Verbinski has earned a rigidly uncomfortable seat for himself in the filmmaker realm of hell. No, the mini pirate boom of the 00s wasn’t that bad, but his fairly big budgeted Americanized take on Ringu is the heavily botoxed grandma when it comes to remakes, aka the Scourge of 21st Century Horror. And to think, most of 2002‘s The Ring‘s impressive box office return came straight out of the pockets of...well...everyone. Men, women, eighth graders...you couldn’t throw your popcorn without hitting someone raving about that randomly scary film they caught in the theaters, much as

Paranormal Activity and 1999’s The Blair Witch Project commandeered a normally neutral audience immune to the haunts of quiet horror.

So where does that leave you? You can’t be the only one in the office without a take on why Michael was standing in the corner, and more importantly, you may be the only one with the sense to explain that no dear, Heather, Michael, & Josh are NOT still lost in the Burketsville woods. Plus, if you avoid a film just because everybody else didn’t, you might actually miss a good movie.

Think of the experience like dining in a fancy, highly recommended but seemingly overrated restaurant you’ve yet to patron. You have to make reservations. Wait 45 minutes and still end up in a less than desirable seating area, then deal with rude waiters. After all that, even a decent meal can’t live up to the hype. Likewise, when watching a too-talked about film, one must be careful to judge it on its own terms. Any extra effort only adds to the aggravation and inevitable unmet expectation. 

In other words, wait a month into a film’s run and hit up an economy priced matinee. Make sure that when you give the film your less-than-premium-price dollars, you can judge the film on its own merits, rather than the experience that surrounded your viewing.

5. Late-to-the-Party Classics

We’ve all hear our parents and grandparents wax nostalgic on how Frankenstein lurched through their nightmares and Psycho made Janet Leigh swear off showering, but depending on your initiation process into genre cinema, many older classics can fall flat on modern eyes. Some timeless films work in any era, but when you’ve eaten cereal shaped like smiling vampires, it’s hard to accept that Bela Lugosi’s Dracula was once a force to be feared.

In order to enjoy a film that’s been written about for 30+ years, it helps to understand why it’s still relevant in today’s cinematic universe. Something like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, for example, may seem rather--well, silent--upon a blind watch, but pop in the special edition after after Blade Runner, Total Recall, or Dark City and note some of the architectural inspiration. From Birth to JoshuaRosemary’s Baby as the matriarch of eerily sterile NYC thrillers. Sometimes, the only way to fully appreciate an older, possibly dated film is to go backwards and watch with your head, not heart.

So which films have you hated due to humongous hype, or felt never had a true chance in the face of overexposure? Share your thoughts but remember: don’t get too excited. Then I’ll have to figure out what the Hype-Over-Hype-Type-Hype means, and that gives me a bigger headache than hearing Bill Moseley duet with Paris Hilton.

Hate On Me, Not Horror

We horror fans are a surly bunch.

Opinionated. Angry. Easily disappointed and even more easily disheartened. When we’re subjected to hack job remakes and speedily rushed sequels at a rate that defies the speed of a cheetah, it’s no surprise that we tend to bash any movie that dares to appeal to our well-honed tastes. What I wonder now, as Saw VI prepares to land its bloody feet on our ticket stubs, is if we were always such cinematic snobs.

Perhaps it’s the extreme nature at the very heart of most horror films that breeds such intense negativity. I guarantee that just as many people disliked the last tepid romantic comedy as those who greeted Halloween 2 with sneers (I was among the latter group), but you won’t see IMDBers drawing petitions to remove Diane Lane from Must Love Dogs with quite the same levels of ire as those itching to go all Godfather on Sheri Moon-Zombie and her fine white horse. 

Hating bad horror films is nothing to be ashamed of, especially if the films in question are made and marketed with little heart or respect to what its fans actually want. My problem with the oft-irked horror crowd is our habit of cracking the bad jokes before we actually sit down in the theater. I can’t count how many like-minded film lovers whose opinions I respect have issued death warrants to Jennifer’s Body based on its trailer, cast, and one-credit writer who has somehow amassed mass hatred by penning a single successful indie screenplay. Oh yeah, and of those who have cracked smug grins at the mention of its failed box office, take a guess how many actually confirmed their judgment by seeing the film. 

“Things were so much better in the ‘80s,” we grumble to our babysitting charges while taking a gulp from a rusty can of New Coke. Right, cinema was more innovative when a burly mute was silently slaughtering topless bimbos whose only method of survival was virginity and whininess. What have we come to when the most successful face of horror is a wrinkled old man with actual dialogue about the nature of mankind?

I won’t--and can’t--argue that the Saw series is composed of quality filmmaking, but every Halloween, I never fail to take a deep sigh before issuing a defense of the 5 and counting blockbuster(ish) films. Yes, the gore is gratuitous and the soundtrack grating, but how can someone who forked over $50 for the Friday the 13th boxed set still huff and puff about how torture porn is ruining the horror industry when Jason brought the bar down so low, the only escape was outer space? My idea of date night doesn’t usually include watching Brandon Walsh’s sociology professor get her rib cage torn apart, but at least Dina Meyer’s ill-fated detective was a literate and developed character. 

There’s something charming about ‘80s slasher cinema and daringly dark in the grindhouse days and cannibal genre of the ensuing years. Then again, there’s also more forgettable slashers than a Sesame Street vampire could count before sunrise.  And hey, it took a lot of cruelly killed wildlife in painfully unwatchable movies before Cannibal Holocaust cruelly killed wildlife to make a statement about such painfully wrought cinema. Maybe Martyrs’ twisted analysis of torture is the evolution of “gorenography”; just like we needed eight ho hum Halloween sequels before we could get a Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, so each sub-genre needs to work itself out before it can achieve greatness. In the meantime, we as audiences watch what we like and judge what we actually see.

I can’t claim that we’re currently in a golden age of horror, as thus far, this decade has produced one masterpiece (Let the Right One In) and a few memorable gems that succeed mainly by honoring the old with a smart twist of new (Shaun of the Dead, The Descent, 28 Days Later). Still, there are plenty of modern films to make us celebrate the cinematic time we’re living in. Roll your eyes at Repo! The Genetic Opera for its headache-making chords, but don’t put it in punchlines and turn around with a ready-made rant about how filmmakers are currently devoid of creativity just because the few sparks of newness don’t appeal to your personal tastes. Most of all, bash nothing until you’ve actually basked in its badness. 

Rants and rusty sharp device heavy games are welcome below. Are we a glass of blood is half-empty kinda crowd, or has horror truly taken a dip into disappointing hell? Share your thoughts, preferably after downing a bag of sugar-coated happy thoughts.

Unhealthy Horror

At a recent Shadow Box performance of Repo! The Genetic Opera (chalk it up to research/ my addiction to seeing Anthony Stuart Head in leather on the big screen) I noticed the general unhealth of the genre fans around me. Perhaps it’s the unflattering fit of pleather, fishnets, and pre-shrunk t-shirts, but glance at any midnight movie or convention line and it’s hard to feel confident in the event of a surprise field day (though conversely, it does give you quite the edge in a surprise Battle Royale tournament). 

For a genre whose fanbase is often less than athletic (not to make any sweeping generalizations; I’m basing this on the unexplainable fact that nachos, beer, and chocolate covered anything tastes better when watching people eat or kill each other), you’d think that a few filmmakers would have tried their hands at addressing this issue. But despite their insatiable appetites and reluctance to exercise with any enthusiasm, zombies are generally reserved to symbolize human cruelty, apathy, societal breakdown, and stupidity, while slashers focus their lessons on premarital sex participants and users of illegal substances. Onscreen, such a definition has yet to include trans fats.

In any genre, the overweight are generally cast as comfortable furniture. In horror, they can be used to showcase creative killing (like the gluttonous spaghetti massacre of Se7en), comic relief (Dawn of the Dead’s Big & Tall swim trunks model), or to emphasize the grotesque in villains (the latest round of Texas Chainsaw Massacres). Even that perennial holiday favorite, Silent Night Deadly Night features a trim psycho killer, and that’s a film about Santa Clause, a character who has himself been accused of setting a bad example when it comes to eating habits.

I accept the whole escapist fantasy of film and television and wouldn’t expect to see a Lane Bryant model playing Friday the 13th’s next final girl. What surprises me is that, to my knowledge, there are few films that delve into obesity or the culture of weight with the same intellectual and/or horrific energy as, say, Cronenberg’s studies of the sexual body or even Ginger Snaps’ lycanthropic menstrual analogy. We like our struggles with religion, suburban psychology, and alcoholism metaphors just fine, but an ubiquitous health crisis, not so much. 

Perhaps the most obvious example of “fat horror” is Stephen King’s little loved Thinner. Sure, that film gave us a donut devouring stereotype of an antihero, but for all its incredible shrinking waistline, the horror was more focused on the diabolical power of Gypsies than the potential fright of diabetes. The recent Drag Me to Hell gave heroine Allison Lohman an interesting character history as a formerly chubby farm girl (because apparently Gypsies have some sort of vendetta against the overweight). While one message board posting I read insisted the entire demonic hunt was a representation of Lohman’s discomfort with her past, you’d have to find some pretty incredible spandex to stretch that metaphor over the whole story. 

One of the best genre pictures about dieting--and America’s obsession with making it look cook, in particular--is Larry Cohen’s quirkily genius 1985 The Stuff. Pre-dating the Atkins Diet popularity explosion by a good 18 years, this satirical riot of a horror-comedy targets American consumerism with a product eerily packaged with a logo similar to Target. Once again, the real subject is corporate advertising and our inability to resist it, but it does a decent--and thoroughly entertaining--job of considering one sector of the weight issue on camera.

So does cinema need to pork up, or am I missing a few delicious treats that explore or exploit the rotundity of the modern age? 

Repo! The Aggressive Opera!

As a firm believer in organ donation, a lifetime lover of musicals, a proud owner of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Seasons 2-7 (because I refused to pay the same price for the shortest season, even if i did get all the others at a bargain price of $16.99), and, in case you haven't guessed it, a fairly enthusiastic fan of horror, the concept of Repo! was almost too good to be true:

Quick Plot: In the near dystopian future, the demand for fresh body parts has grown so large that a corporation has started a megamillion financing company to pay for those transplants with very steep interest rates. Paul Sorvino and Sarah Brightman lend operatic cred, Anthony Stewart Head provides the eye and soulful voice candy, and the director of Saw 2 tosses in all the leftover bits from Tobin Bell’s autopsy. The casting of Paris Hilton was almost a relief; nothing could be perfect.

And Repo! isn't. But I still love it.

Maybe you will. Maybe you won't. This could be the dictionary definition of a polarizing film because there's no way to enjoy it if you can't get past its rock opera-iness. Or the ridiculous plot, brain squishing, grave robbing, Spy Kids alum, and Bill Mosely’s dance moves. Anybody that says they hated this film, I can't argue. It's loud and crass, messy and cheap, over-the-top and proud of itself. But c’mon: there’s an exclamation point in the title with no real logic (Repo! The Genetic Opera makes me want to rename some past titles like Pinball! The Who’s Tommy, Barber! Sweeney Todd’s Victorian Tale and fix Broadway’s Spring Awakening to Fuck! The Teen Sex Musical). I normally don’t approve of aggressive grammar, but this one just tries so hard and hey, maybe it’s an homage to past musicals of yore like Oklahoma! and Oliver!

High Points:
Sarah Brightman has always been a kind of dark-haired step-child of the theater world, but she is right at home in the world of this film, with an incredibly haunting voice and gorgeous look.

Picture the Nixon mask Patrick Swayze wore in the opening scene of Point Break. Now cut out the mouth and listen to it sing with a wacky and foppish Italian accent. That’s Ogre’s Gabi, and it’s kind of a beautiful and horrifying thing.

Seeing Anthony Stewart Head singing and in black leather is sort of like fan fiction wish fulfillment pornography for the Buffyverse...and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that

Low points
Of all the musical lines this film, the single one I can’t get out of my head is Bill Mosely's “I will find a hole and fuck it.” That’s a tad inconvenient in real life.

Lessons Learned:
The near future will kind of suck, but at least opera will make a comeback

Much like today, the lending crisis will yield some rather serious consequences for the general public, with dismemberment and gutting replacing foreclosure and bankruptcy.


It is possible for goth guys to be kinda hot, providing they have rich singing voices

Rent/Buy/Bury
Buy it, if nothing else, to send a message to studios that horror fans crave and will accept something different. As much as I'm giddily counting the days left to see Jason’s rebirth*, I would much rather get a Repo! cycle or surge in crossover genre experiments than another 12 films with the same story and stock characters for the next 12 years. If people complain that Saw is the same recycled garbage Halloween after Halloween then those folks need to prove that they want and will pay for something else.


*Generally, my opinion on remakes is one of disdain and annoyance, but the Friday the 13th series has never actually been good (despite the softest of spots I hold in my heart for Part 8, where Jason takes over a Canadian New York City) so as far as “reimagining” goes, I say go for it. It can’t be worse than Part 5, and maybe 12 times is the charm.