Unspooled.net

The Devil’s Rejects

Director – Rob Zombie

Starring – Sheri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, William Forsythe.

The music-video director turned movie director is normally someone to fear, but what about the musician turned movie director?  Can a person who masters one art form transfer his or her talents to another?  When Rob Zombie, of White Zombie fame, gave the world House of 1000 Corpses the answer was no, but then he followed it up with this half-sequel (in that it features some of the same characters, but not a continuation of the storyline) known as The Devil’s Rejects – a movie with a smaller budget and more input from Zombie rather than the studio.  So is this indicative of what he is capable of?

The Devil’s Rejects are a family of serial killers living in Alabama, who when we join them at the start of the film, about to get caught by the police at their rundown cottage.  However, the resourceful Firefly family – Otis (Bill Moseley, Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) and Mother Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook) – don’t come quietly and shoot their way out and head towards the sanctuary provided by their half-brother Charlie (Ken Foree), picking up daddy Firefly, Cutter (Sid Haig) on the way.  But little do they know they are being tracked by Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe) who is desperate for revenge.  

Rob Zombie obviously loves his 70s horror and exploitation films, and as he did in 1000 Corpses he homages many throughout The Devil’s Rejects, most notably, again, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  It’s influence is everywhere; the opening is a direct imitation of TCM’s, the family are similarly sick and disturbed and their home could be Ed Gein’s weekend place, there’s even a runaway victim who meets a would-be helper, only to find he’s no saviour.  Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw is the embodiment of the phrase ‘often imitated, never bettered’ and The Devil’s Rejects doesn’t come close to its visceral, relentless horror.

But this is not to say Rob Zombie hasn’t dreamt up some real nastiness, because the central part of the movie has some full fat ugliness which changes its entire tone.  Until 35 minutes in, it revels in being sickly amusing.  For example, when we meet Cutter, he’s dressed and made-up as his Captain Spaulding clown alter ego and happily humping Ginger Lynn Allen, a scene which abruptly ends with a nice punch line and some funny and very non-PC dialogue.  Then, elsewhere, Otis and Baby take some hostages and while we expect the same old, same old, Zombie steps up with a truly grim and nasty abuse sequence and all the joking stops.  It continues in this vein with some murders, torture and general unpleasantness until the uninspired and unsatisfying ending which is also ripped from several other sources, but to give away which would spoil the ’surprise’.

All this referencing other, better movies continues with the actors, so we have Ken Foree from Dawn of the Dead and Micheal Berryman from The Hills Have Eyes.  Much of the movie has been shot handheld and it has a washed-out, grainy look, plus there is plenty of exploitative nudity and tons of swearing.  All of this adds up to make The Devil’s Rejects a very odd film.  When it’s nasty, it does so very effectively, in characters like Sid Haig’s Captain Spaulding you have a proper, frightening horror villain and when the script is funny, you do have a giggle; it’s odd then that these ingredients don’t mix together to create a tasty horror movie.  

The Devil’s Rejects fails in this respect due to its lack of commitment, it just cannot seem to settle into being either an amusing/sick horror, a filthy serial killer account or a 70s grot homage.  It’s not bad at any of them, but when they’re all mashed together each loses a degree of effectiveness and the whole becomes confused.  There is a brilliant horror movie struggling to get out from inside Rob Zombie and although there are flashes of it in The Devil’s Rejects, it doesn’t quite get there.  That said, visually it hits the spot and each main actor portrays their family member with gusto, making it watchable, but frustratingly average.

The Disc

The two disc edition of The Devil’s Rejects is the one to buy for the second disc’s 30 Days In Hell Making-of documentary.  It’s longer than the film itself and covers pre-production and every shooting day.  There are also a few deleted scenes (including Rosario Dawson’s), other sundry music videos and a tribute to the late Matthew McGrory, who played Tiny, and to whom the movie is dedicated.  Disc One has two commentaries and the movie has a Dolby Digital and DTS soundtrack, neither of which were outstanding.

Buy The Devil’s Rejects from Play.com for just 4.99.

Amazon have started their summer sale and have a selection of DVD’s at special prices within it.  Here are our picks:

1.  Beowulf

We recommend picking up this 2-disc Limited Edition Steelbook of Beowulf for just £8.97!  It’s exclusive to Amazon too.

2.  Seinfeld Complete Series Boxset

The best American sitcom ever on DVD.  If you haven’t picked any up yet, or have never seen Seinfeld before, then now is your chance to get all nine seasons for £87.97.  This boxset includes the coffee table book and an exclusive extras disc.

Friends Complete Series Boxset

The second best American sitcom ever has been on DVD forever and it seems hard to believe not everybody already owns at least some of them.  But if not, this newly packaged boxset featuring all ten seasons is only £79.97.

There are plenty of other cheap DVDs, but nothing which leaps out like these three.  If you plan to take advantage of the offer, Unspooled would be grateful if you purchased using our link!  Thanks and enjoy your DVDs!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Director:  Steven Spielberg

Starring: Harrison Ford, Ray Winstone, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf, Karen Allen

The fourth adventure featuring Indiana Jones was another of those will they/won’t they films which has been rumoured since the completion of the Last Crusade some twenty years ago. Harrison Ford was reported to say if Spielberg had not settled on a story by 2008, it should be left alone for good so, clearly not wanting to miss an opportunity, a David Koepp script based on George Lucas’s story was chosen and Indiana Jones’s 50’s adventure was go. The Russians replace the Germans and the Cold War provides the setting for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in which Indy is forced to assist the Ruskie’s in uncovering the secrets of the legendary skulls and their link to El Dorado, the lost city of gold.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s first act is certainly the best, Indy is re-introduced as he arrives at Area 51 in the Nevada desert to assist Cate Blanchett’s commie tyrant in finding a mummified corpse hidden in a giant warehouse. He’s joined by his sidekick Ray Winstone, who quickly becomes another pal who is really working for the other side…or is he…and we’re soon watching a typical Indy set piece as he escapes from the Ruskie’s clutches. All is well at this point, we’ve had the hat, the whip and amusing references to old adventures, but then he survives a nuclear blast by hiding inside a fridge.

That disregard for reality sets the tone for the remainder of the film. Instead of an exciting, twisting plot just the right side of unbelievable, we get a boring, linear story line relayed in tedious clumps of incoherent dialogue, all sounding like the archeological equivalent of Star Trek’s techno-babble, coupled with the sight of Indy becoming as indestructible as John McClane and a T-1000 combined. When the cast are not speaking the clearly Lucas-penned nonsense, they’re taking part in the soulless action sequences. Although sword fighting across two moving vehicles may sound exciting, it just wasn’t, and neither was escaping killer ants (really) or wandering around identi-kit sets avoiding clichéd natives.

But none of this is as bad as Harrison Ford’s mugging to the camera. Gone was that roguish charm that made the Jones character such a winner, replaced instead by feeble jokes, out-of-character tics – the speech when they get stuck in the quicksand for example – and a total loss of his sense of wonder when things got strange. And they got very strange indeed, as the Crystal Skull belongs to an alien! But none of this fazes Indy as he plods on towards the finale of A.I. which had somehow got stapled over the end of Indy 4’s script. Any fearful respect of powers greater than us, which made Raiders more thrilling and believable, was entirely missing from the Scooby-Doo meets the X-files final act.

Aside from Harrison following the plot’s megawatt A-B beacons we have John Hurt’s gibbering madman, Cate Blanchett’s wobbly accented baddie, Karen Allen’s throw-away reprise of Marion Ravenwood and Shia LaBeouf’s Mutt, whose good performance and first act motorcycle chase – which was the movie’s best – was spoiled by his later transformation into Tarzan. Add in a car attacked by monkeys helping our heroes, some less than impressive CGI and spark-free direction from Spielberg and you’ve got a film which is a crushing disappointment.

It’s not to say the film is so awful you cannot sit through it, but expectations have to be kept in check. Don’t expect Raiders, the Last Crusade or even Temple of Doom, forget this features a much-loved character and set something like Sahara as the benchmark and you may gain some satisfaction, however if you thought George Lucas should never have picked up a pen again after The Phantom Menace, or would prefer to keep your memories of what has passed clean and unsullied, don’t see this. In fact, let’s just put this down to experience and pretend it didn’t really happen at all.

Mamma Mia!

Director:  Phyllida Lloyd

Starring:  Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard.

Tom Hanks has become something of a good luck charm for movies related to Greece.  He produced the last Greek smash hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding and is also attached to the forthcoming My Life in Ruins, another comedy from Wedding’s writer and star Nia Vardalos.  So it should come as no surprise to see his name as an Executive Producer for Mamma Mia!, which is all set to be another winner.

On the Greek island of Skopelos, Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) is preparing for her wedding to Sky (Dominic Cooper) which is to be held at Villa Donna, a guest house owned by her mother (Meryl Streep).  Sophie wants her father, whom she doesn’t know, to give her away, and thanks to her mother’s diary she gathers three paternal suspects, all of which she invites to the wedding without her mother’s knowledge.  Now all she has to do is work out which one is her real father in time for the big day.

Musicals always require some suspension of disbelief, but for this, you need to forget everything you know; in fact, it’s best to forget you live on planet Earth, as Mamma Mia will take you to a place where extras are the chorus line, James Bond sings, large groups of people appear from nowhere – including the sea – and the music of ABBA provides meaning to lives.  Sound ridiculous?  It is.  Worried the story line can’t support a 100-plus minute runtime?  It can’t.  Think you should run as far away as possible?  No, because if a laugh, a smile and an opportunity to leave your world behind sounds good; join the orderly queue outside the cinema now as Mamma Mia! may be nonsense, but it’s enjoyable nonsense.

All Mamma Mia!’s problems are forgiven thanks to two things.  The first is Meryl Streep’s wonderful performance as Donna Sheridan.  She flings her heart and soul into every moment of screentime and every song she sings, but best of all is that she looks like she is honestly having fun, something which gives her character a level of realness unexpected in such a fantastical film.  The second saviour is ABBA, whose songs make up not only the soundtrack, but much of the film’s dialogue too.  You have to be hard of heart not to enjoy these classics, each of which are accompanied by decent but non-showy choreography and plenty of background fun, with Dancing Queen being a clear standout.

Mamma Mia’s fast-paced and fun first act is the highlight of the film as all the characters jostle for position prior to the wedding, then things slow down to a crawl during the second act but improve slightly towards the finale.  The film just doesn’t have enough of a plot to sustain itself and would have benefitted from being a good 15 minutes shorter, with the entirely out-of-place Take A Chance beach number with its sex references and Streep’s Winner Takes It All (which is great, but just slows the film even more) being prime candidates for the chop.  

Then there is the issue of the male cast members.  Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard and Pierce Brosnan look occasionally embarrassed, often confused and sound uniformly bad.  Colin Firth holds his own, or a tune a least,  but this will probably end up as their only opportunity to ‘let loose’ on screen.  Donna’s friends Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski) round out the female cast as mysteriously, Sophie’s bridesmaids practically disappear after the first half.   But Rosie and Tanya merely appear to be tedious versions of Eddie and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous, characters which no amount of ‘wackiness’ can save.

Make no mistake though, Mamma Mia!’s destiny as a massive cult hit is one which has been carefully manufactured.  Everything needed to make this a favourite on the audience participation circuit in the future has been included, right down to egging viewers on to join in the fun.  Although it’s hugely entertaining for the first half, filled with ace music, beautiful locations and a high energy central performance, you just can’t shake the feeling it’s all one big cynical marketing exercise, which is rather unfortunate.  

Still, the best thing advice anyone should give regarding seeing Mamma Mia! is to ignore all this cynicism and just go and enjoy it for what it is – a celebration of some of most memorable songs ever recorded.  Be warned though, if ABBA makes your toes curl, it won’t be for you at all.

Each week we will line up a collection of our favourite DVD bargains found on our less wild journeys across the Web.  We hope you find something you want to add to your collection!

1. The Lives of Others – £5.99

One of the better foreign language movies of 2007, this is the HMV Exclusive edition which comes in Steelbook casing.  A great price for a limited run pack.

    2.  The Crazies – £3.99

Since Anchor Bay have become Starz, their genre output has lessened, however Play.com have many of their best releases, including this George Romero offering, for just £3.99.  Do a product search for Anchor Bay to find them all.

   3.  Elf Limited Edition – £5.99

Jon Favreau directed this 2003 Christmas movie starring Will Farrell and you can pick up this limited edition disc complete with free clock from Blah.com for only £5.99.  A limited edition of anything is always good!

This is the first DVD Bargains post at Unspooled and one which will be updated each week, so make sure you check back for more soon.

Diary of the Dead

Director: George A. Romero

Starring: Michelle Morgan, Shawn Roberts, Joshua Close and Amy Lalonde.

At the Gerardmer Festival of Fantastic Arts 2008, George Romero’s Diary of the  Dead was awarded the Critics Award.  Coincidentally, Cloverfield was also playing  at this festival and the similarities between the two are obvious; both are shot  handheld guerilla-style and cover a catastrophic event through the eyes and lenses of amateur moviemakers and both were released within a few months of  each other at the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008.  What makes this  important?  Well, seeing as Cloverfield is a tight and exciting thriller and Diary of the Dead is tedious and embarrassing; how on Earth did it win?

Diary is the latest in George A. Romero’s line of zombie movies, but instead of continuing the narrative built through Night, Dawn, Day and Land of the Dead, it sets itself up at the start of a zombie plague in modern day.  A group of student filmmakers happen to be shooting a horror movie when the dead start to walk and the director, Jason Creed, decides to document the events to bring the truth to the people via online video.  His documentary is called The Death of Death and this is what we watch as Diary unfolds.  Creed is accompanied by his leading man and lady, his girlfriend, his professor and a couple of other forgettable non-characters, all wanting to return to the safety of ‘home’.

It’s not the idea behind Diary of the Dead which is bad, it’s the execution.  To see the dead returning to life filmed intimately by terrified citizens has the potential to be a frightening movie, in the way Cloverfield is a scary personal view of something invading Manhattan, but instead it concentrates on bickering characters and their pointless exploits, while the zombies are treated as a distraction who serve only to stop Romero from returning to the endless, meaningless dialogue.  The script issues are only part of the problem though.  Because we are watching a film within a film, the inclusion of editing and musical queues tend to make you forget it’s supposed to be ‘found footage’ and you catch yourself thinking it’s just a very poor horror movie.  Unfortunately, it is.

For a start, it’s packed full of cliches.  We get characters stating the obvious at every opportunity, we have a gun jamming at an inopportune moment, a dead family terrorising their daughter and a zombie we thought was dead leaping back to ‘life’ to deliver a shock.  If it didn’t say it was directed by Romero at the end of the movie, I would assume it was directed by Catchphrase host Roy Walker, whose only advice to the cast consisted of  ’say what you see’.  Even the voiceover offered by Creed and his girlfriend Debra gives up halfway through as if they ran out of things to say.

Thanks to the poor script, the actors fall into one of two categories, bland or irritating.  Either way, you won’t care when they are inevitably picked off by the zombies.  The only character who offers some originality and the movies one and only laugh is Samuel the Amish guy – and he is featured for less than five minutes.  The zombies themselves should have been an ever-present terror, however when they do turn up, they are despatched with ease but only after they have done the damage they need to in order to move the plot forward.  The bare minimum of prosthetic make-up is used (if any at all) and is substituted instead by CGI, which fails to match the wonderful wetness of Dawn and Day’s FX.  

Cloverfield absorbs and thrills for 85% of its 75 minutes, Diary of the Dead bores for 99% of its overly-long 90 minutes.  Fans of Romero’s previous work won’t even find anything to like, as none of his trademarks, such as social comment, suspense and unique characters, are present, giving the film a faceless hack-at-work feel.  Diary of the Dead deserves to be forgotten both as an installment of the Living Dead saga and an example of Romero’s ability as a writer and director.  He, and you, are worthy of spending their time on far better things than this.

Welcome to a new movie and DVD review website, written in a blog style.  We hope you like it!

Unspooled.net will be reviewing every movie we see at the cinema or in the comfort of our home, and won’t concentrate on just the big releases.

Please feel free to comment on any review and if you want to drop us an email, just visit the Contact page for more information.

Thanks for reading Unspooled.net.