Red State (2011)

Red State (2011)

Directed by: Kevin Smith

Starring: Michael Parks, Melissa Leo, John Goodman

I was just as surprised to find out that Kevin Smith directed this as I was that he did Cop Out, and I was just about as impressed with the final product. This movie just seems like it really has no idea what it wants to be, so it just throws up its hands and says “I hope you think this is edgy or something, I dunno.”

Red State centers on a Westboro Baptist-like church, which stages protests at funerals for gay people… after they kill them. They kidnap three boys that they lured through the internet and are prepared to kill them too, when one breaks out and shoots a guy while the deputy is there to investigate. What follows is John Goodman and his ATF squad getting in a Waco-style situation with the church, whose members are heavily armed. The gunfight finally ends when the remaining churchgoes give themselves up willingly because they hear trumpets, believing that the rapture is upon them (it turns out it was just the neighbors fucking with them).

The movie starts out as a workmanlike horror film, but once John Goodman arrives (who was really good, to nobody’s surprise) it changes tone like, four times. Combine that with the really lame twist ending, and you realize that Smith was more interested in airing his personal hate towards the church and state than he was in actually making a movie. Also, for everyone who thinks that this is a totally crazy move on his part to make a horror movie about crazy religious folks killing homosexuals, then maybe you should take a look at half of all horror movies ever made.

Freaks (1932)

Freaks (1932)

Directed by: Tod Browning

Starring: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova

The reason I sought out this movie was because I was trying to look up where that “one of us, one of us” chant came from that everybody always quotes. As it turns out, this was a really cool movie, so hooray for quotes!

The movie is about a group of circus performers, most of whom are “freaks” in one way or another. One of the two “normal” people in the circus decides to seduce and marry a little person performer, so she and the circus’ strongman can kill him and take his inheritance. The other freaks find out about this, and exact their own revenge on the two… by turning the woman into… “one of us”.

This is a creepy film, and it does a fantastic job of portraying the freaks (who were all actual circus freaks) as kind and lovable people who are rejected by society because of the way they look. The point is basically that they’re just like anyone else, and they exact vengeance just like anyone else would. It’s good.

Man-Thing (2005)

Man-Thing (2005)

Directed by: Brett Leonard

Starring: Jack Thompson, Matthew Le Nevez, Steve Bastoni

Time for another five movie challenge! Today, it’s “lesser-known superhero movies,” which really plays to my interests. So much so, that I had actually already seen three of these before today, and I’ve been wanting to watch this Man-Thing movie ever since I found out about it.

Ever since that greedy oil tycoon moved into the area and started polluting and killing people, folks say it ain’t safe to go out into the bayou no more. The new sheriff in town (what cuz’ th’ old one done got et) don’t reckon there ain’t nothin’ to it but hokey native superstition. ‘Course, once he sees a big ol’ monster made outta swamp gunk that kills people, that sets him right on track.

This movie really has nothing to do with the Marvel comics character of the same name. They just took the name and vague appearance, then shoehorned it into an average SyFy channel horror movie, and that’s really too bad. Man-Thing is neat. Ah well.

Hydra (1984)

Hydra (1984)

Directed by: Amando de Ossorio

Starring: Timothy Bottoms, Taryn Power, Ray Milland

Who doesn’t like Italian monster movies? Besides… basically everybody but me. Most people just don’t want to sit through 70 minutes of boring people acting badly just to get to the 20 minutes of hilarious low-budget monster footage, I guess. Just think of all the Timothy Bottoms movies they’re missing out on…

A fishing boat captain sees a sea monster one day and it causes him to wreck his boat. Nobody believes that he saw a monster, for some reason, and they blame it on his well-known alcoholism instead. He hears about a woman who’s been institutionalized because she also said she saw a monster, so he breaks her out and they try to convince a crotchety old professor that they aren’t crazy or drunk. He begrudgingly believes them and the three go out to kill the beast before it strikes again.

Ray Milland as the angry old scientist is by and far the high point of this film, even beyond the stop-motion serpent puppet. He’s just so outlandishly angry about everything, even when he agrees with whatever’s going on. When the necessary romance reaches its climax, Milland busts between the two lovers, shouting profanities and dismissing love as the most worthless of all emotions. It was magical.

The Slime People (1963)

The Slime People (1963)

Directed by: Robert Hutton

Starring: Robert Hutton, Les Tremayne, Robert Burton

See that little arrow on the poster pointing at a monster’s mouth? It encourages you to put your ear there, so you can hear the “truth” about something. Was there originally like a little speaker behind the poster where they played spooky sounds or something? I can’t find anywhere that has any information about it, so I’m just going to pretend that yes, that’s exactly what it was. Because that’s cool.

LA and Hollywood have been evacuated because a race of slimy monsters from the sewers have come up to the surface to kill people. A small group of people are stuck in the city, as the fog the slime people use to lower the temperature of the surface so they can survive can also harden and become an impenetrable wall. Unfortunately, it turns out that both the fog and the slime people themselves are startlingly weak against simple table salt, and the whole invasion is defeated by four people.

This was the subject of an early (and honestly not very good) episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and it’s kinda cool to see it without that treatment. Mostly because the copy of the MST3K I have is really bad, and with this I finally got to see the monster costumes, which are actually pretty awesome. It’s also pretty neat that the monsters are intelligent and use spears to attack people, instead of the norm for these kinds of movies where they just shuffle along with their arms outstretched and hug people to death. Still, the rest of it is a really formulaic 50′s horror movie, and other than those monsters, it’s pretty unremarkable.