Todd Garbarini
Entries from March 2012
By Todd Garbarini
New Zealand film director Peter Jackson is a favorite among
genre fans most notably for his early, off-the-wall gross-out comedy/horror
films. Anyone who has seen Mr. Jackson's
early work – specifically Bad Taste
(1987), Meet the Feebles (1989), and Dead Alive (1992) – cannot help but
wonder how in the world he managed to score the director’s chair for the film
versions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s massive epic about hobbits and Middle Earth. These three films, while highly entertaining,
are exercises in excess and were not embraced by the masses, although they have
all since developed cult followings. Bad Taste, about aliens who invade a
fictitious village in New Zealand in order to harvest human beings for their
outer space franchise of fast food, took four years to make on weekends and was
a gross-out success. It permitted Mr.
Jackson to secure financing for Meet the
Feebles in 1989, a black comedy about the entertainment industry, akin to The Muppets on acid. Like Bad
Taste, Meet the Feebles was shot
on 16mm. The film is comprised of
puppets and adults in oversized puppet suits and details a troupe of performers
called The Feebles, the antithesis of Jim Henson’s lovable group of which
Kermit and Ms. Piggy are the most recognizable members. The Feebles is a vulgar group of two-timing,
backstabbing performers who are caricatures of the worst people the business
world has to offer. A hilarious satire
with terrific music by Peter Dasent, the film is woefully in need of a deluxe
Blu-ray release.
His next film, Dead
Alive, was his first 35mm outing and is an over-the-top, cartoonish
gorefest that needs to be seen to be believed, and is now available on Blu-ray
from Lionsgate Home Entertainment. The
plot involves a creature known as the Sumatran Rat-Monkey who goes nuts and
bites people, spreading disease and contagion, resulting in one of the goriest
and messiest endings in film history involving limbs and a lawnmower. The style of the film is that of an
uproarious horror comedy and is by no means meant to be taken seriously, much
like Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator
(1985), and once again Peter Dasent is on board to provide a wonderful film score.
Timothy Balme and Diana Peñalver are
wonderful as Lionel and Paquita, respectively, two lonely souls who find one
another in a New Zealand town. Lionel
lives with his overbearing mother, brilliantly played by Elizabeth Moody. She is bitten by the rat monkey and the
contagion begins to spread. Despite his
best efforts, Lionel is unable to stop the spread of the virus and his house
becomes a battle ground of blood and guts as the townspeople turn into ravenous
zombies.
The late publisher Forrest J. Ackerman
makes a funny cameo and there is enough comedy and gore to go around to satisfy
the appetites of the genre’s most discriminating followers. The Blu-ray is a significant improvement over
the film’s previous home video appearances on VHS, laserdisc, and DVD and is a
worthy upgrade. The de rigueur trailer constitutes the disc’s sole extra; English and
Spanish subtitles are a welcome addition, too.
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By Todd Garbarini
Filmed in 2009 in San Juan and Vega
Baja, Puerto Rico, The Rum Diary
(2011) feels much the way that Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) felt in that it seems like two movies in
one. In Mr. Kubrick’s Vietnam War film, the
opening boot camp scenes took the audience through the Marine Corps Recruit
Depot on Parris Island, SC to see the demoralization process in action that
makes killing machines out of the marines. The combat scenes, which were shot
before the aforementioned training sequence, takes the audience out of the boot
camp and puts them into the heart of the action. In the The
Rum Diary, the first half of the film follows an alcoholic, Kemp (Johnny Depp), through his exploits in
Puerto Rico after he lands a job as a journalist for a dying newspaper in the
years prior to the Kennedy assassination; the second half almost feels like the
hangover and the after effects of too much self-indulgence. This is not a swing at the film, which is an
accomplished cinematic work and not the desultory meanderings of an idealistic
writer that the film’s detractors have intimated. Rather, it is a regard for
the differences in tone and style the film takes as the protagonist makes his
way through the underbelly of society which is bifurcated into the incredibly
wealthy and the outright dirt poor, with crooked politicians and corrupt police
officers galore.
Based upon the
novel by Mr. Depp’s longtime friend Hunter S. Thompson, who wrote the novel in
the 1961 and had it published in 1998 after Mr. Depp’s urging, The Rum Diary
depicts Kemp, writing
BS-stories and horoscope for a newspaper that is on the verge of failing. Lotterman
(Richard Jenkins), the paper’s Editor-in-Chief, knows the end is near and hires
Kemp, knowing full well of his romance with the bottle and; Sala (Michael
Rispoli), a staff photographer who runs cock fights on the side, philosophizes
about life in Puerto Rico and lands in deep dung with Kemp and what passes off
as The Law. The perpetually inebriated Moberg (Giovanni Ribisi in arguably the
film’s best performance), who mouths off to Lotterman, is another of the
paper’s staff members – he gives Kemp and Sala a drug that causes trips they
won’t soon forget. Hal Sanderson (Aaron
Eckhart, in a two-faced role not nearly as nefarious as his turn in Neil
LaBute’s In the Company of Men (1997)
but still crooked nonetheless) is a wealthy local aristocrat who takes Kemp
under his wing and asks him to write about a proposed hotel that he is involved
with. Kemp’s assignment is to paint Sanderson and his business partners in a
positive light even though the beautiful landscape would be severely
compromised by the deal. Sanderson's fiancé Chenault (Amber Heard) catches Kemp’s
eye, and before long she is out of Sanderson’s arms and into Kemp’s bed. Ms. Heard plays Chenault with the same aplomb
she has brought to her previous onscreen characterizations, most notably as the
AIDS-infected Christie in Gregor Jordan’s underappreciated The Informers (2009).
The critical
reaction to The Rum Diary reminds me of another of Mr. Depp’s films, Blow
(2000), which was unfairly overlooked upon its initial release, as it drew
comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s admittedly superior Goodfellas (1990),
with the former somehow being the bastard stepchild of the latter. Blow was as entertaining as is The
Rum Diary, and who better than Mr. Depp to bring it to the screen after his
collaboration with Mr. Thompson on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in
1998?
The Blu-ray looks terrific, with
minimal film grain and manages to capture the dark and light aspects of Puerto
Rico quite nicely. Extras-wise, the disc
contains: A Voice Made of Ink and Rage:
Inside The Rum Diary in high definition, which runs about twelve minutes. Mr. Depp talks about his friendship with Mr. Thompson,
while other members of the cast and crew discuss the story in general and
working on the film. The Rum Diary Back-Story is in standard
definition and runs about 45 minutes, discussing how the film got made.
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By Todd Garbarini
Sergio Martino’s Torso (1973) was originally recommended to me on VHS at a Chiller
Theatre horror film convention in 1999. I caught up with it later when DVD supplanted the inferior videocassette
format as the primary method of home video viewing and while that transfer was
a considerable step up, it was nothing compared to the new Blu-ray from Blue
Underground, which is absolutely gorgeous. The image is pristine and bright. Derived from the original camera negative, Torso, succinctly and mercifully truncated from the jaw-breaking I Corpi Presentano Tracce di Violenza
Carnale (Italian for The Bodies Show
Signs of Carnal Violence), falls into the category of the Italian giallo thriller. The word giallo
(pronounced gee-AL-oh), like the term splatter
films which is used for the brutally violent American horror thrillers released
in the 1970’s and 1980’s in the wake of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), describe an Italian genre of film and literature
which possess elements of both mystery and crime fiction. Giallo
in Italian translates into the word “yellow” in English and refers to the series
of paperback novels, better known as “penny dreadfuls,” which had yellow
covers. Gialli (plural) generally refer to films directed by Mario Bava and
Dario Argento, and these two gentlemen are certainly responsible for some of
the genre’s best outings. However, there
are other Italian directors who have produced such work and based upon Torso, this is a genre that horror fans should
familiarize themselves with if they have not already done so.
Shot primarily in the Perugia section
of Italy in the spring of 1972, Torso
is a tale of sexual violence seen in unusually graphic detail. A spate of brutal murders occurs in this
university town and young women are the target. The only clue appears to be a red and black
scarf used by the killer to off his victims, and just about every man in town
is a potential suspect. A quartet of
young female friends, one of whom is played by Suzy Kendall who previously
appeared in Dario Argento’s stunning debut film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1969), leave town and stay at a
mountaintop retreat until the killer is caught. Naturally, instead of fleeing from the killer, they unexpectedly lure
him right to their front door.
Torso is by no means original in terms of
plot or narrative structure, but it is head and shoulders above similar yarns from
a cinematic standpoint. The final reel
of the film is masterfully photographed and edited, literally with no dialog,
and really keeps the audience on the edge of their seat. As director Eli Roth quite correctly states
in his introduction to the film, this sequence is pure cinema. The films falters slightly during its denouement, as it contains a scene where
the killer reveals the reasons for killing, a device derided in many movies,
even Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
(1960). However, don’t rob yourself of
the experience of viewing this nifty thriller due to this minor quibble.
The disc extras consist of:
- · Murders in Perugia – an interview with Sergio Martino
- · Poster
and Still Gallery
- · Viewer’s
Choice of Watching the Uncensored English Version or the Full-Length Italian
Director’s Cut
Hopefully, we will soon get to see a
Blu-ray of Giuliano Carnimeo’s Perché
Quelle Strane Gocce di Sangue sul Corpo di Jennifer? (What Are Those Strange Drops
of Blood Doing on Jennifer’s Body?), better known as The Case of the Bloody Iris, starring French actress Edwige
Fenech.
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