“… Browning made the normal
people the grotesque ones, showing how ugly they were because of their
intolerance.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Tod Browning’s (Dracula/The Unholy Three) outstanding
film has an opening long-winded rejoinder which addresses the point about
the main characters being freaks and about how this is not an exploitation
movie (this “crawl” was added to the film after its original release by
the producer who bought the film from MGM, Dwain Esper). It is basically
an apology to his audience for the freaks used in the film, taking note
of the usual revulsion most people have when they view the abnormal. He
points out that the majority of freaks, themselves, are endowed with normal
thoughts. Looking at those who are pinheads, limbless, dwarves, a bearded
lady and her baby bearded girl, twins physically attached to each other
by the hip, and the assorted other real freaks used in this film admittedly
has its initial shock to those not used to seeing the abnormal. But, that
should soon wear off and what remains is how sympathetic the audience becomes
to the freaks who are part of a travelling circus sideshow. They seem so
childlike and close-knit, as they bond together for protection from a hostile
outside world.
MGM has foolishly edited out 30-minutes of the film, thus reducing
this B&W horror film to around 63-minutes. The price paid, is that
character development for some of the subplots fails to materialize.
This movie was banned in Great Britain until 1963. Which is a revolting
statement about where that country’s sense of freedom of speech is at,
more than it was a reflection of how gross the picture was.
Browning had a background in the circus and made two previous films
about circus life, The Unknown and The Show.
He was tarnished by the studio system after he made this film — a film
that lost money for Irving Thalberg’s studio. It was one the executive
didn’t want the studio’s name attached to.
It is a film that will build to a climax, escalating in violence
and tension, turning into a nightmare, where revenge is called for against
the obscene villains who happen to be the so-called normal ones. The villains
are tormenting a midget to such a degree, where it only seems right that
the freaks gang up on them and give the heavies what they deserve.
The story revolves around two midgets who are engaged and are part
of the travelling circus, the sideshow ringmasters, Hans (Harry Earles)
and Frieda (Daisy Earles), who in real life are siblings. He lusts after
a full-grown woman, a trapeze artist in the circus who looks like Mae West,
named Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). She finds it amusing to be with him and
relishes her role in breaking up his engagement with Frieda, as she gets
him to keep giving her expensive gifts and laughs callously at him behind
his back. She is further encouraged by her boyfriend, the brutish strongman
in the circus, Hercules (Henry Victor). When Frieda confronts her to stop
making a fool of Hans, she mistakenly reveals to Cleo that Hans has inherited
a fortune. This prompts the cold-hearted Cleo to get Hans to marry her.
The wedding celebration turns into a macabre scene, that is both
vexing and titillating. Cleopatra passionately kisses her obnoxious strongman
in front of the groom. The normal friends of the strongman are laughing
derisively at the spiritually crushed Hans, but at that point a limbless
freak starts to insanely chant “gooble-gobble” while perched on the banquet
table. The freaks then all chant repeatedly in unison, “One of us; we accept
her;” but, Cleopatra turns colors as she defiantly says I am no freak and
then heatedly calls them freaks.
Back in Cleo’s carnival wagon she poisons Hans’ drink, but Venus
(Leila Hyams) confronts her former sadist lover, Hercules, and threatens
him unless he tells the doctor treating Hans about the poison. Cleo attempts
to poison Hans again, this time putting the poison in the medicine the
doctor prescribes as she gives him his dosage. But this time she is surrounded
by all the freaks who band together and attack her, as she somehow gets
mutilated offscreen. She is last heard clucking like a chicken.
Meanwhile, stuck in the carnival wagon in the heavy rain, Hercules
goes after the seal trainer Venus, but Phroso the clown (Wallace Ford)
comes to her rescue. When he can’t handle Hercules by himself, the freaks
stick the heavy with a knife and that’s the last we see of that dude. Reportedly,
the part of him being castrated was cut from the film.
The final scene which has the look of being tacked on, was indeed
tacked on, as the studio insisted on a happy ending. Hans has gone into
retreat, living like a millionaire in an elegant house, but is unhappy.
When Phroso and Venus bring along Daisy, the two lovebirds will reconcile.
I think because of the way the film was cut the characters of Phroso
and his lady friend Venus were never developed and remain dry portrayals,
somewhat diminishing the film.
The final revenge of the freaks is that they made Cleopatra a part
of the sideshow; she is featured as the “Feathered Hen,” a limbless figure
with feathers, unable to talk, who puts a fright into the visitors viewing
her in a cage. She is introduced by a carnival barker, who manufactures
some story to go with her condition about a royal prince shooting himself
for her love.
The director did make three other films (Mark of the Vampire
(1935)/The Devil Doll (1936)/Miracles for Sale (39)) after this
one that were moderately successful and then retired to live a very rich
life-style, never regretting for a moment that he made “Freaks.”
The themes of the film are that there is strength in numbers, that
the beauty of an individual should be judged by their inner character and
not by their outward appearance, that we are all human beings, that to
mock someone else is like mocking ourselves, and that one shouldn’t prejudge
individuals in a biased way. If those aims are controversial, then it is
no wonder there is still so much hatred in the world. And by the way, Browning
did not exploit the freaks as the critics in the 1930s said — Browning
made the normal people the grotesque ones, showing how ugly they were because
of their intolerance.
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“Those to whom evil is done
Do malign in turn.” –W.H. Auden
It’s involved to imagine that the syndicate of actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott wouldn’t make anything but a victorious carriage understanding, but, in in reality, the 2008 espionage thriller “Body of Lies” lost quite a bale at the box office. Is it just a bad pic, or were there other factors in play? Well, it certainly isn’t a disagreeable pic. So I tend to go with the “other factors” theory, and I wonder if the viewing non-exclusive hadn’t just gotten fed up with espionage thrillers after a recent outpouring of them in 2007 and 2008. Insofar as “Body of Lies” is involved, it’s a respectable discern film, with plenty of tenderness and action, transferred to Blu-ray disc in terrific high-definition picture and appear.
As I venture, you couldn’t ask for a better filmmaking team for the engagement. The co-producer and headman, Ridley Scott, gave us such fan favorites as “Alien,” “Blade Runner,” “Thelma & Louise,” “Gladiator,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Kingdom of Heaven,” and “American Soldier.” The screenwriter, William Monahan, gave us “Kingdom of Heaven” and “The Departed.” And Monahan based his script on a 2007 novel by David Ignatius, a Washington, D.C. journalist and evidence on international affairs. If the film fails to ignite fully, it isn’t for lack of talent or lack of trying. Indeed, it may be that the filmmakers tried too dark to produce a straightforward movement videotape with serious contemporary overtones and wound up making a film that seems too pay pro its own material. “Body of Lies” is neither a arrant action fibre in the tradition of a Bond or Bourne film nor as introspective a spy film as “The See Who Came in from the Cold” or “Syriana.” It’s kind of in between, and as such not under any condition from A to Z satisfies a viewer’s longing as a service to something more.
DiCaprio plays Roger Ferris, a immature, idealistic CIA competition agent stationed in the Near East. He does the grunt work on the ground while his boss, Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe), gives him directions from the gladden of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Ferris is working on a objective to capture a bomber chief known as Al-Saleem (Alon Aboutboul), whose structuring is blowing up targets everywhere Europe.
As DiCaprio instances does, he plays an upstanding character intent on doing the right and honorable element at all times, which sometimes goes against the grain of his boss, who is more coldly pragmatic. One sees echoes of DiCaprio’s characters in “Blood Diamond” and “The Departed” in Roger Ferris. I don’t particularly be attracted to for uncountable of DiCaprio’s heroes, but he is a personable and congenial enough actor, and his characters always turn out resourceful and resilient. It’s hard to irrationally DiCaprio’s characters’ honoured intentions or the actor’s truthful attempts at bringing them to life.
Of more interest, after all, is Crowe’s Ed Hoffman. Hoffman is a departed strength agent who has crossed onto to the security of an appointment job and conditions heads up the CIA’s Within reach of East Division from a cushy leader in the States. While Ferris has a judgement and, wise, cannot always stomach the work he has to do, Hoffman is practical to the point of being insensitive, identical savage. He watches his men at all times from an eye-in-the-vault of heaven satellite, and he moves them around like so many chess pieces on a playing board. If he needs to sacrifice a piece now and then, well-spring, so be it.
Crowe gained a good deal of substance an eye to the situation of the deskbound Hoffman, weight that he outwardly had dispute shedding in real life. So, don’t reckon on the normal beautify-and-ready Crowe here. He’s supposed to look pudgy, and he is. The haziness intends in favour of us to see his character as a man dedicated to winning the in conflict on terrorism at all cost, so lives, no matter whose, don’t mean a lot to him. Expect Hoffman to be a choose off the track fish, a in olden days tireless man now lazy, casual, and generally gone to spare tyre.
Ferris faces four major conflicts in the experiences, which are probably three too varied. First, he is in conflict with the insurgent organization he’s out to destroy. Second, he is in at odds with Hoffman with how first-class to carry antiquated his assignments. Hoffman invariably asks Ferris to do things Ferris finds reprehensible. Compounding the problem, Hoffman never always confides to Ferris the exact stripe of their missions. Third, Ferris is in conflict with the origin of Jordanian Intelligence, a slick fellow named Hani (Mark Strong). Hani reminds a man of an Arabic Andy Garcia character: handsome, well dressed, charming, but with a hint of the unsavory about him. Can a person trust him? Hoffman tells Ferris on the spot not to trust him, even though he has to inflame with him. And, fourth, Ferris is in conflict with a beautiful progeny breast-feed he meets and likes, Aisha (Golshifteh Farahani), in conflict because of their cultural differences and because of other problems that get out of bed in the film’s climax.
“Body of Lies” comes across bigger than a division of the list inform 9/11 espionage films that Hollywood made in the ensuing years, films like “Lions on the side of Lambs,” “Rendition,” and “Redacted,” yet it still doesn’t come to life and view the viewer the procedure it should. There is surely enough action, but maybe the problem lies with the film being too long and too circumstantial for its discipline be of consequence. The thing is, for all its seeming intricacy, “Body of Lies” is actually a fairly difficulty-of-fact espy story; yet the filmmakers swell it out to 128 minutes. It’s only in the ultimate half hour that matters get really edgy, and that’s after an hour-and-a-half of what is essentially all exposition.
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Using only Morocco in favour of their overseas setting shooting, the filmmakers turn the territory into Manchester, England; Samarra, Iraq; Amman, Jordan; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Dar’a, Syria. It’s fun to father Ferris Terra-trotting all over the In the offing East, but it makes for a fairly sparse design, too. He’s here, he’s there, but it truly all comes down to that last half hour.
Quite self-wilful in its rash and awkward in its attempt to be edgy, “Ripe” is a highly over-sentimentalized continue on the dawning of female sexuality that only sporadically proves as convincing as it is life-and-death. This exploration of 14-year-out of date twin sisters’ dying of the ways after discovering sex in unlikely make may find a tailor of support at indie fests and specialized venues, but pic looks to wilt on the vine commercially.
Exec produced by two of the backers of “Kids,” this small-scale production creates an impression of filmmakers who imagine that what they’re doing is much more significant and devastating than it is. A number of scenes carry a certain charge, but any cumulative power is unwound by a violent climax that feels unmotivated and contrived.
After a short prologue that hints at parental abuse, fraternal twins Rosie and Violet survive a car crash in which their parents are killed.
Not sticking around to deal with the authorities, they determine to make their way to Kentucky and shortly begin to fancy themselves as “runaway outlaws.”
But their travels are cut short when they hide out in the back of a young guy’s truck and are unwittingly taken to a local military base, where the disheveled Pete (Gordon Currie) somewhat implausibly does odd jobs. One of his first, in a grotesquely awkward scene witnessed by the girls, is servicing a horny, lonely lady, whom Karen Lynn Gorney plays like a trailer park Mae West.
Staying at Pete’s shack on the base on the flimsiest of pretexts, the girls become partially integrated into camp life. Violet (Monica Keena), the more attractive and seemingly intelligent of the two, begins a secret affair with Pete, while Rosie (Daisy Eagan), whose sensibility is on the coarse side, learns how to use a gun on the practice range and gets in over her head with some of the rough recruits.
Brief scenes devoted to the girls’ burgeoning sexuality — an apparent first period, masturbation, initiation — stop far short of offering any fresh impressions or insights, and pic disappoints in not really exploring the sexual psychology that would induce one of the girls to get involved with the wastrel Pete and the other to tempt fate by becoming overly familiar with the rowdy boys. In the end, there is too much concentration on hyped-up plot mechanics and not nearly enough on character.
The increasingly divisive sibling relationship creates a degree of intrigue, and a handful of moments ring true, but would that there were more of them.
Debuting filmmaker Mo Ogrodnik’s direction is on the stiff side, with the actors seemingly restrained from going all the way with their characters.
Picture of life on a military base is notably threadbare and unconvincing.
Seven Arts/M-G-M. Director Ken Hughes, Henry Hathaway; Producer James Woolf; Screenplay Bryan Forbes; Camera Oswald Morris; Editor Russell Lloyd; Music Ron Goodwin; Art Boss John Box
Kim Novak
Laurence Harvey
Robert Morley
Siobhan McKenna
Roger Livesey
Jack Hedley
There was the Leslie Howard/Bette Davis 1934 version of this story and the 1946 participant starring Paul Henried and Eleanor Parker. This stab, with Laurence Harvey and Kim Novak, will not erase the memories. Into those who meet up fresh as a daisy to Of Human Slavery, this perceptive but decidedly introspective fish story by Somerset Maugham may seem a baffling-to-take wedge of space meller.
The pic had a ruffled nascency, due primarily to clashes of opinion among top brass. Henry Hathaway quit to let in Ken Hughes as director and it's bruited that the star duo did not always see eye-to-ee on the chore in hand.
Story concerns a withdrawn, young medical student very conscious of his clubfoot who manages to become a doctor in London's East End despite being totally besotted with the tawdry charms of a promiscuous waitress.
Allowing for the fact that Bryan Forbes' screenplay is light on humor, Harvey nevertheless plays the role in such a stiff, martyred manner as to forfeit any sympathy or liking in the audience.
The role that made Davis doesn't serve the same purpose for Novak. Yet she gamely tackles a wide range of emotions and seems to be far more aware of the demands of her role than is her co-star.
Collectors of cinema trivia will notice, with interest, the fleeting appearances by highly-paid scriptwriter Forbes as a student-extra without any lines, an inexplicable throwback to his earlier business of being an actor.
(B&W) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1964. Running time: 98 MIN.
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If it’s true, as the showbiz saying goes, that dying is easy and comedy is hard, then political satire is akin to breaking rocks in the hot sun. Just ask Stanley Kubrick. In “War, Inc.,” deadpan actor John Cusack does his best to mine sharp polemical material from the rich vein of the Iraq war and the appalling combination of bumbling and malfeasance with which it was launched and executed. He meets with uneven success in a film that, in attempting to ridicule the Bush administration, finally just settles for being ridiculous itself.
Cusack plays Blackwater-esque operative Brand Hauser, who arrives in the ficitonal Turaquistan to off the country’s leader, who has had the temerity to take control of one of his own pipelines. Taking his orders from an Ozlike boss, Hauser finds himself in the center of a military-corporate trade show, a burlesque of cynicism, profiteering and pseudo-patriotism.
Marisa Tomei plays a Naomi Klein-like journalist (Cusack was reportedly inspired by one of her articles in the Nation), and Hilary Duff delivers a surprisingly effective portrayal of a Turaqui pop tart. But what might have had the teeth of “Wag the Dog” (let alone “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” or Hunter S. Thompson at his finest) finally loses its bite in taking too many cheap ‘n’ easy shots. Still, for critics of the war with an appetite for red meat, “War, Inc.” will prove filling, if not quite completely nourishing.
Beavis and Join-pre-eminent, MTV’s metal-head morons, finally conquer the grown screen in this on-the-road, on-the-overshoot facetious enterprise. The boys run into intrinsic trouble when–and this at bottom sucks!–their all-powerful box routine is stolen and they journey catch on the wrong track as a pair of hit-men hired to ‘do’ a man’s provocative woman. Their misunderstood task takes them from Vegas to D.C., with quantity of mountain grade but nary a music video in sight. Beavis’ wired alter-ego Cornholio’s rampage through the White House is a especially twisted highlight.
Santa Kleinman just sent me a fist full of Pam Grier classics. We already talked about Foxy Brown a few weeks back, but rashly skipped right over the immortal Coffy, which burns a bit hotter and longer than its slick, non-sequel sequel. It won’t happen again, sugar. We’ll also explore the kinder, gentler side of Ms. Grier in the comic-strip-turned-motion-picture called Friday Foster. And finally, for the moment, the Queen of Blaxploitation revisits her women-in-prison roots in the sweeping anti-buddy picture Black Mama, White Mama (1973, 86 minutes). All-in-all vintage Pam. But where’s that Jackie Brown disc?
The movie: Several sweaty babes land in the Womens Rehabilitation Center of a far away tropical island of questionable political stability. The gal with the most attitude is, of course, Lee Daniels (Grier) who is on the wrong side of the law for peddling her bod. But running a close second is a beautiful blonde revolutionary named Karen (Margaret Markov). Salivating over both of them are the two lesbian honchettes who run the humid hoosgow and take turns trying to coax inmates into impromptu games of nekkid Twister. For plot purposes, Lee and Karen hate each other and are mighty steamed when they’re shackled wrist-to-wrist during a prison transfer. In a bloody, but semi-failed escape, the girls manage to evade their captors, but each remains chained to a wildcat who wants to scratch her eyes out. A fay-YAW to communicate? Nah, their priorities are just different. Lee wants to vamoose with the $40,000 she stole from her Jabba-The-Hunt pimp/sugar daddy, while Karen merely wants to overthrow the government. So after some gratuitous flailing about in bright-yellow nighties — er, prison uniforms — they decide to put aside their differences long enough to save their hineys. Among the fellas a-lookin’ for them is the incomparable Sid Haig as a wanna-be cowboy with a passion for western wear, country music and kickin’ ass. CineSchlockers undoubtedly know Mr. Haig has been cast as Captain Spaulding in House of 1,000 Corpses — rocker Rob Zombie’s upcoming ode to superior ’70s horror. A film that’s already sent Universal suits running scared due, in part, to a likely NC-17 rating.
Notables: 21 breasts. 37 corpses. Peeping with self-gratification. Heroic slow-mo death. Multiple gun battles. Catfighting. Guitar to the brainpan. Exploding car. Food fights. Panty sniffing. Nuns on the run.
Quotables: Warden Logan starts the movie off right, “OK, strip ‘em and get ‘em wet!” Rhonda knows the score, “To get a gun, you need something to trade that’s pretty damn valuable. What you got besides your ass?” Ms. Grier emotes, “I’LL KILL THAT BITCH!” Karen plays the race card, “We’re trying to set this island free! You’re black. You understand, don’t you!?” But Lee isn’t hearing it, “Some jive-ass revolution don’t mean s@#% to me!”
Time codes: The girls entertain themselves in the shower (4:05). Our heroines are tossed into “the oven” — topless, of course (16:33). Karen and Lee attempt to break the ice and each other’s skulls (25:00). Cowboy Ruben thinks size matters (56:15). Underage gals engage in some horseplay (1:03:35).
Audio/Video: Remarkably clean widescreen (1.85:1) transfer that’s as bright and crisp as it’s ever been. The utilitarian Dolby Digital mono track is strong enough to handle the gunplay while also showcasing Harry Betts‘ energetic score (sorta like the soundtrack to any episode of “Hawaii Five-O.”) This disc is part of MGM’s “Soul Cinema” line that each carry an unusually low suggested retail price ($15 and lower). The prints aren’t exactly pristine, nor is any real effort spent on creating superior audio masters, but most feature trailers and the occasional commentary. Titles include Black Caesar, Coffy, Cotton Comes To Harlem, Foxy Brown, Friday Foster, Sheba, Baby, Slaughter, Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off, Truck Turner and Black Mama, White Mama. Plus, the
Keenen Ivory Wayans parody of these films, I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka.
Extras: Fullframe trailer with voiceover that harps “WOMEN IN CHAINS!!! WOMEN IN CHAINS!!!” over and over, which certainly harkens back to a bygone era of up-front film promotion. But, in this case, the tagline WAS the original title of the movie. Static menus without audio. No printed insert or liner notes.
Final thought: Think The Defiant Ones with a much needed infusion of sex appeal AND explosions. Gimme Pam and Margie over Sidney and Tony any day. Highly Recommended.
G. Noel Gross is a Dallas graphic designer and avowed Drive-In Mutant who specializes in scribbling B-movie reviews. Noel is inspired by Joe Bob Briggs and his gospel of blood, breasts and beasts.
Dr. Richard Kimble is on the run again in “The Fugitive,” a blistering incident with enough rock-’em-sock-’em as six thrillers. A flurry of stunts, close shaves and deeds of precarious daring, it easily transcends its television origins to become a stylish pacemaker-buster on the order of “Die Inhuman, MD.”
Harrison Ford, bearded and numb with grief, breathes new life into the role last played by the stoic David Janssen some 26 years ago. Janssen played Kimble as the Lone Ranger with a stethoscope, moving from town to town, but Ford takes a darker, more gothic approach. He’s not only a good Samaritan, but the avenger of his beloved wife Helen (Sela Ward). Brutally murdered before the opening credits, Helen haunts him in fleeting flashbacks that only add to the sympathy we feel for him.
Heroes don’t come any more sympathetic than Kimble, who is not only wrongly sentenced to death for Helen’s murder, but is taking the rap for insidious health care providers that are violating the public trust. Then along comes the most lovable guy in all of crime prevention — Tommy Lee Jones as the human hound dog that is Sam Gerard, a rigid U.S. marshal virtually addicted to the chase. And when it comes to the law, he’s about as flexible as prison bars.
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“I didn’t kill my wife,” the fugitive tells Gerard. “I don’t care,” the cop growls.
Beautifully matched adversaries, they are actually two sides of the same coin: One represents the law, the other justice — and it’s the increasingly intimate relationship between them that provides the tension. Otherwise, “The Fugitive” would be little more than one long chase scene, albeit a scorchingly paced and innovative one.
Shot on the fly by Andrew Davis, the director who came into his own with “Under Siege,” the yarn is not only gripping, but ripping. Davis, working from a well-oiled screenplay by Jeb Stuart and David Twohy, manages to cram Helen’s murder, the subsequent police investigation, Kimble’s tragic conviction and the movie’s credits into a prologue as taut as a villain’s smile.
The story officially gets under way when the shackled physician and his fellow felons board a bus bound for the Illinois state prison. Still in a state of shock, Kimble has barely settled in his seat when the other prisoners shoot him and one of the guards in an escape attempt. The driver loses control of the bus and it swerves into the guardrail, where it teeters briefly before landing in the path of an oncoming train.
A man who values life above all else, Kimble saves the injured guard, then leaps from the bus with milliseconds to spare before the spectacular collision and derailment. When another prisoner offers him the key, he unlocks his shackles — knowing, though, that he’ll never be free till he finds the infamous one-armed man (Andreas Katsulas) who really murdered Helen. After narrowly escaping Gerard’s dragnet, Kimble returns to Chicago to pursue his obsession. But the pigheaded cop and his crack team are soon hard on his tail again.
Inevitably Gerard comes to admire the cagey doctor — perhaps even to care more about justice than the law. But he never loses his passion for the hunt. Less of a zealot than his TV predecessor, Jones’s Gerard also has a keen sense of humor and an even sharper tongue. When his officers urge him to give up because Kimble is most certainly dead, Gerard snaps, “That ought to make him easy to catch.”
Fresh and imaginative for the most part, “The Fugitive” loses momentum as it moves toward its climax. The plot also becomes gummed up by an attempt to give it political relevance by vilifying the health care biz. But this allows the heretofore mild-mannered Kimble to get in his licks and beat a bad guy black and blue, the Hippocratic oath be damned.
“The Fugitive” is rated PG-13 for violence.
Heavy-metal rocker-turned-cult filmmaker Rob Zombie has fashioned another bloody grind house valentine in “The Devil’s Rejects.” Recycling the trilogy of butchers from his 2003 surprise hit “House of 1000 Corpses,” pic is a brutal, punishing yet mordantly amusing work that beyond the shadow of a doubt outpaces its predecessor in its grisly single-mindedness of perception. If you can suffer the violence — and despite the R rating, that’s a prominent if — it’s unkind to deny that Zombie has made exactly the flicks he set out to sort, guaranteed to deluge his considerable fan base and angle barely about everyone else.
Where “House” came across as little more than a ghoulish curio, set in an outre Texas deathtrap and steeped in arcane serial-killer mythology, “Rejects” takes a less self-conscious romp through 1970s backwoods Alabama. Shot on desaturated Super-16 stock that gives it a fittingly rough-hewn look, this is lean, mean exploitation fare that proceeds with a menacing clarity of purpose.
That homicidal brother-sister duo — Otis Driftwood (chillingly stoic Bill Moseley) and impish blond Baby Firefly (Sheri Moon Zombie, the scribe-director’s wife) — is back, as well as Mother Firefly (albeit played by a new actress, the spectacularly screechy Leslie Easterbrook). Wanted for a horrific series of satanic ritual murders involving organs and refrigerators, the family is ambushed by police in pic’s tense opening shootout, which sends Otis and Baby on the run while Mother Firefly winds up in police custody.
The siblings eventually reunite with wayward pop Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), a grinning, clown-faced sadist whose mugging in “House” suggested a cross between P.T. Barnum and Ed Gein. (Clown-phobic auds should, by and large, avoid Zombie’s movies.) Meanwhile, the police operation tracking them down is headed by Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe), who has his own personal agenda: His brother was one of the family’s victims.
Transplanting the action to the road turns out to be Zombie’s most inspired decision, excavating the film from the hoary funhouse cliches that bogged down its predecessor. It also lends a genuinely sad unpredictability to the quintet of innocents Captain Spaulding, Otis and Baby eventually terrorize: While the idiot thrill-seekers who stumbled into “House” more or less asked for their fate, the group here is simply in the wrong place (a rundown motel) at the wrong time.
What follows is at once the film’s most gratuitous, objectionable sequence and its gripping raison d’etre: The victims, holed up in a motel room, are dispatched in all kinds of sickeningly creative ways, the most inventive (and hilarious, to judge by the howling applause at premiere screening) involving a mask made from a human face and a giant truck. The women, in particular, Gloria (Priscilla Barnes) and Wendy (Kate Norby), are forcibly disrobed and reduced to the cruelest of physical spectacles.
On a basic narrative level, sequence serves no purpose other than to supply the requisite sadistic kicks, and it will be the likely walkout point for moviegoers not on Zombie’s particularly heartless wavelength. Those who stick around will find the story shifting gears and losing some momentum as the increasingly unhinged Sheriff Wydell, fancying himself the smiting hand of God, decides to take vengeance into his own hands.
He’s aided in this by two bounty hunters (Danny Trejo and Diamond Dallas Page) and an unwilling accomplice in the form of Captain Spaulding’s old pal Charlie (a solid Ken Foree). The violent climax could amount to a critique of vigilante justice, if pic did not take such obvious relish (which auds may very well share) at the sight of its predators turned into prey.
What rescues “Rejects” from puerility, aside from the indelibly raw perfs (especially from Moseley and Forsythe), is the sharp, undistracted focus of Zombie’s direction. Every scene feels stripped down to its bare bones, with deft handheld camerawork and editing by Phil Parmet and Glenn Garland, respectively (although print screened featured a few unintended jump cuts that will be removed before theatrical release).
The tasty soundtrack is pure ’70s heaven — not a word that can applied to this film in any other context — and makes memorably ironic use of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.”
A sequel, and not a remake, to the 1971 Rankin/Bass TV dearest, “Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie” follows the misadventures of Peter’s son, Peter Jr., as he journeys across the seasons in order to rescue appear itself. The CG-impassioned feature premiered on Cartoon Network in 2006, and despite the music video interludes and one or two AMPLIFY-driven action bits, it’s actually a lighthearted, enjoyable mini story that fits skilfully with the stop-motion original.
Seymour S. Sassafras returns as our narrator, this time with the voice of Christopher Lloyd. After reminding us of the original story-line, we pop into the present: Peter’s running a booming duty in April Valley, a factory of Easter goodies that runs analogous to clockwork. His son, however, keeps neglecting his duties, preferring instead to wander off and exert oneself on his inventions, in the mood for the automatic egg delivery system (a catapult). Peter Sr. (Tom Kenny voices both characters) hopes to inspire task in his son by giving him the key to the Clock of Fount, a very important timepiece that helps regulate the seasons.
Ah, but that nasty grump Irontail (Roger Moore!) has teamed up with femme fatale Jackie Frost (Molly Shannon) to seduction Spring forever. With prominent ease, they manage to steal the very heart of the clock, the Spring of Burst forth originate, which turns April Valley into a winter wasteland. As they clique free to steal the other seasons, Peter Jr. decides to leave April Valley and atone in the interest of his mistake by stopping the villains and saving the day. Along his journey, he meets a summer robin named Flutter (Kenan Thompson) and an autumn mouse named Crunch (Miranda Cosgrove) - they’re three kids who cotton on to a leave to recover the world.
A few times, the movie comes a bit close to falling into that “trying to hard to be modern” accessories that’s ruined many a cartoon. Jackie’s introduction (”Jack Frost is soooo form century”) is a little too winking for its own good, and her main song is a composition of trashy Euro cut a rug-fizzy drink that feels way non-functioning of categorize. Other tuneful numbers - including a crunchy-guitar-and-whiny-vocals report-rock hidey-hole of the “Peter Cottontail” prevarication - also jeopardize to date the song rather quickly.
Fortunately, director Mark Gravas and his screenwriters requital off from more such trappings; the solitary palpable pop culture connection I could find was in Moore’s introduction (”Tail. Iron Brush of a fox.”) that most kids won’t get anyway. The position is refreshingly missing of “Shrek”-style humor. Sure, it’s piles lightweight, and there are placid a hardly too many dips into cartoon cliché (when aching for for an action sequence, plunge in a long ride down a cavernous slide), but the filmmakers mainly prefer a straightforward story that will prolong a rob up just entertaining in the coming years. (Surprisingly, it’s also relatively ridiculous when it wants to be, above all with its take effect on Antoine the French caterpillar, also voiced by Kenny, or a running gag involving the mysteries of nougat.)
Most powerful is the liveliness itself, clear-cut and colorful and magnificently complicated despite its use of simplistic forms. For a coarse-budget CG effort, it looks charming, with characters that flow and colors that beam. The animators even throw in some smart touches; watch how Jump hops just like a valid robin, or how Jackie’s evil penguin minions (!) waddle enveloping on cute overcharge. Our first look at April Valley is a visual treat, as is our heroes’ stampede flee through the night sky, all swirling clouds and stars.
For a prepare that could have been a throwaway between engagements, something cheaply constructed for a prompt buck, this upgraded “Peter Cottontail” in preference to works pitiless to deliver charming storytelling and quality animation. It’s successful on both counts. This is a charming little sequel.