Troll 2 (1990)

day 98, troll 2

TROLL 2 (1990) Three stars
It’s about time we get around to discussing the “good” bad movie, because none of the movies I have reviewed before fit the bill for this niche more than TROLL 2.

It took me years to finally watch the full movie, and I watched it twice on Christmas. Two on New Year’s Day for MAD MONKEY KUNG FU, and there you go, I wrote my “How I spent my winter vacation” essay. I’ll leave out the part about the 15 games at the Holiday Classic basketball tournament.

Of course, I had seen the infamous “Oh my God!” scene numerous times and I even watched THE BEST WORST MOVIE, a documentary from several years back on the TROLL 2 phenomenon directed by its child star, Michael Stephenson, all grown up. The documentary allows you to catch up with Darren Ewing, the first-time actor who played Arnold and uttered the line that should have made AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Quotes list. I mean, for crying out loud, couldn’t they have taken away one damn quote from CASABLANCA? Not only Ewing, but we catch up with several of the guilty parties from TROLL 2 in THE BEST WORST MOVIE.

TROLL 2 is not a good movie in any traditional sense of the concept, but it’s such a glorious train wreck that I was always entertained from stem to stern, all 94 glorious minutes. LEONARD PART 6 wishes it was this bad and this good.

We have an Italian director and crew who did not speak fluent English directing and writing an English language film, a ridiculous concept based on the screenwriter’s apparent contempt for vegetarianism (similarities with LEONARD PART 6 afoot), inexperienced and just plain bad actors behind every scene, and even an incompetent title, since TROLL 2 does not bear any direct relation to the 1986 film TROLL other than a marketing attempt by a studio that had no faith in a movie titled GOBLINS. See, there’s no actual trolls in TROLL 2 and its fictional town of “Nilbog,” which is oh wow Holy Toledo “goblin” spelled backwards. Haven’t seen that device for a while. Sheer genius.

Unfortunately, despite the Italian production with director and screenwriter Claudio Fragasso (under the pseudonym Drake Floyd) and vegetarian-hating screenwriter Rossella Drudi, there’s no soundtrack by Goblin, who did the work on several Dario Argento classics.

However, there’s a Boston based folk and punk quartet called Troll 2. On their website, they have releases “Death Magnanimous,” “Inheritance,” and “Nobody Cares.” They play the “Theme from Troll 2” twice on “Death Magnanimous,” their EP released in June 2018.

Lunaris Records released the soundtrack for the film and their hype includes “Composed by Italian maestro Carlo Maria Cordio, the soundtrack offers an eclectic mix of synth, bluegrass, and guitar rock jams.” Only $14! And they even provided samples on their site.

Why, you can’t piss on hospitality!

TROLL 2 was made on an estimated $200,000 budget and I’m not exactly sure where the money went. Oh, sure, probably on the special effects.

It was released October 12, 1990, not sure if that was theatrical or just straight to video infamy. Some of the other movies released that day include THE HOT SPOT, MEMPHIS BELLE, MR. DESTINY, and WELCOME HOME, ROXY CARMICHAEL. A week later, it was NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER, and WHITE PALACE.

I am not even sure that TROLL 2 made back its budget on first release. Not sure that I can even find a non-retrospective review. This is definitely one of those cases where I’d love to go back in time and see people’s original reactions to the movie.

Finding a poster for TROLL 2, I discovered that it says “Celebrate one of the most disrespected horror films in recent history and fall in love with this genuine failure. Troll 2 is coming to EAT a theater near you” at the bottom.

Guess the movie failed instantly and then became a success because it failed on such an epic scale.

On Rotten Tomatoes, there’s one positive review of the movie and 17 negatives, although the blurb for the positive review by Kevin Carr of 7M Pictures goes like “godawfulness in the best way imaginable.” No other movie deserves such a blurb, and the positive review is not very different from the negative ones.

In a 2010 review in the Chicago Reader, J.R. Jones gave TROLL 2 one star and BEST WORST MOVIE two. He attacks the “so bad it’s good” train of thought and starts off with a bang.

“Nobody knows the troubled movies I’ve seen. In the past eight years I’ve reviewed over 2,000 releases for the Reader, and at least half of them were bad. If we assume an average running time of 90 minutes, then since 2002 I’ve spent some 1,500 hours watching bad movies. For that reason I’m relatively immune to the blandishments of midnight-movie fans claiming that some egregious turkey, be it THE APPLE or THE ROOM or XANADU or THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN or PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, is ‘so bad it’s good.’ Life is short, given the choice, I’d rather watch something so good it’s good. I’ve yet to come across a movie so good it’s bad.”

At the start of 2019, TROLL 2 is ranked No. 26 on the IMDb’s Bottom 100. DISASTER MOVIE (2008) currently sits in the top spot and such icons of cinematic badness as No. 2 MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE, No. 3 SUPERBABIES: BABY GENIUSES 2, No. 4 THE HOTTIE & THE NOTTIE, No. 10 SON OF THE MASK, No. 11 FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY, No. 16 BATTLEFIELD EARTH, No. 18 GLITTER, No. 19 GIGLI, and No. 25 JAWS THE REVENGE are “below” TROLL 2.

I am far more forgiving of TROLL 2 than I am, for example, BATTLEFIELD EARTH, a movie that wasted $73 million and still looks like shit. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has four positive reviews and 144 negative; four positives are from Scott Chitwood (IGN Movies), Bob Graham (San Francisco Chronicle), JoBlo (JoBlo’s Movie Emporium), and Luke Y. Thompson (New Times). That’s just more proof that every now and then we all find things in certain movies that many, many, many others do not.

On a certain fundamental level, though, I am sure that I can quote from BATTLEFIELD EARTH just as much as TROLL 2, especially with all them damn references to the home office.

I remember BATTLEFIELD EARTH’s head villain loved to throw around the insult “rat brain.” Oh, how that Terl makes me wanna hurl.

I don’t know, BATTLEFIELD EARTH just made me feel glad that I won’t be alive in the year 3000.

Guess there’s a fundamental difference between an unpleasant bad movie and a pleasant one. You just feel it when you see it. I wanted to flee the multiplex during such cinematic mishaps as WHITE NOISE and THE HAPPENING, but I was gripped and did not want to miss the next potential bad scene or line of dialogue. I mean, I would be punching myself silly had I missed that “What? No!” scene in THE HAPPENING, but, other than that unintentional bit of hilarity, THE HAPPENING was THE CRAPPENING. M. Night Shyamalan’s PRETENTIOUS LOAD OF CRAP.

I knew coming into TROLL 2 that it would be awful, godawful in fact, and it did not disappoint on that level. For that, I give it a positive review. I am glad being in the movie’s not on my résumé, although I’m not sure that I’ll put liking TROLL 2 on mine.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

day 14, bride of frankenstein

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) Four stars
Boris Karloff movies could fill an entire year of daily movie reviews.

Karloff (1887-1969) undoubtedly is one of the most prolific actors who ever lived, working steadily from 1918 through 1968.

Karloff established an incredible work pace, especially in the 1930s.

Take, for example, the years 1931 and 1932 alone when Karloff appeared in 24 films, including such classics as FRANKENSTEIN, SCARFACE, THE OLD DARK HOUSE, THE MASK OF FU MANCHU, and THE MUMMY.

He was billed only as “Karloff” in several pictures after FRANKENSTEIN (1931) made him a phenomenon.

For example, a producer’s note before the start of THE OLD DARK HOUSE: “Karloff, the mad butler in this production, is the same Karloff who created the part of the mechanical monster in ‘Frankenstein.’ We explain this to settle all disputes in advance, even though such disputes are a tribute to his great versatility.”

Every time I watch both FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935), I am just amazed once again by what Karloff was able to do with The Monster.

He’s absolutely phenomenal.

It took make-up artist Jack Pierce four hours every day to make Karloff into Frankenstein’s Monster, with a concoction of cotton, collodion, gum, and green greasepaint. Pierce and Karloff worked together on a multitude of films during the Golden Age of Horror (1930s and 1940s).

The IMDb identified eight Karloff trademarks and I especially like the eighth one: “Making audiences feel sorry for his evil characters by displaying extreme frailty and vulnerability, even when the material didn’t call for this.”

We feel a multitude of things for the Frankenstein Monster, and that’s at the center of the character’s greatness.

We especially feel for The Monster during BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, a rare sequel that builds upon and honestly betters the previous film.

Karloff did not want The Monster to speak, feeling that it would eventually destroy the character. He looks a little differently here than in the first film, because in order to speak more clearly Karloff did not remove the dental plate in his face like he did in the first film. His cheeks appear less hollow as a result.

While giving The Monster the ability to speak could have miserably backfired, it works (like just about everything else) in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

The Monster is a quick learner and the writers give him some great lines.

“I love dead … hate living” and “Alone: bad. Friend: good!” might not seem like much on the page, but the way Karloff handles them, they affect viewers on a deep emotional level.

There’s much poignancy to be found in the plight of The Monster.

He’s more like an innocent child than pure evil in both FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

He can’t help what God or Dr. Henry (Victor in the novel) Frankenstein in this case made him.

Like Karloff, Colin Clive returns for the sequel as Dr. Frankenstein and he’s reluctant to the extreme (after the events of the first movie) to participate in Dr. Pretorius’ scheme to make The Monster a bride. Finally, he does though, of course, and it’s back to the laboratory; production designer Charles D. Hall’s lab sets in the first two FRANKENSTEIN films have been endlessly influential.

Clive and Dwight Frye (killed as two different characters in FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN) are two of the great scenery chewers of all-time, but this is largely Karloff’s and Ernest Thesiger’s show.

Thesiger plays Dr. Pretorius, Dr. Frankenstein’s former teacher and, of course, a rebellious mad scientist. He’s as explicitly homosexual as one could present in a 1935 film and, according to the book “The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror” by David J. Skal, openly gay director James Whale told Thesinger to play Dr. Pretorius as an “over-the-top caricature of a bitchy and aging homosexual.”

Frankenstein and Pretorius rank among the best screen mad scientists.

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN can be enjoyed at face value or can be seen as a daring gay parable that sneaked just enough content past the censors.

In the 1997 Gary Morris article “Sexual Subversion: The Bride of Frankenstein” printed in the Bright Lights Film Journal, the author postulates that the movie “assaults the notion of the sanctity of standard sex roles and ‘family values.'” Whale thus made the only sequel that interested him.

“THE BRIDE can be read from a modern perspective as a homosexual joke on the heterosexual communities Whale — a gay man — served and benefited from: his ‘masters’ at Universal and the mass audience to whom he could present unconventional images and ideas and see them unknowingly endorsed and approved in the most direct way possible: from the moviegoer’s pocketbook,” Morris wrote.

Under this theory, Whale’s attacks on hetero institutions can be seen most vividly when The Bride (Elsa Lanchester) rejects The Monster near the end, including a famous hiss that speaks louder than a thousand words. (Reportedly, Lanchester based her spitting and hissing on the swans in Regent’s Park, London.)

Not everything passed the censors enforcing the Motion Picture Production Code: Any references to the sexual arrangements of Mary Shelley (Lanchester in her first of two roles), Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron (especially this line of dialogue: “We are all three infidels, scoffers at all marriage ties, believing only in living freely and full”) and “too revealing” shots of Lanchester’s cleavage were cut.

It’s still amazing what Whale put into the film.

Others have dismissed the gay parable angle in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

That’s fine because any way you read it, though, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN is a classic.

Freaks (1932)

day 13, freaks

FREAKS (1932) Four stars
Tod Browning’s 1932 one-of-a-kind masterpiece had incredible difficulty passing muster with the British Board of Film Classification, failing twice before the third time’s a charm in 1963 when it was slapped with an X rating and the caveat “People should be warned of the nature of the film so that those to whom such sights are displeasing will not see it.”

That’s amazing, since 30 minutes of even more shocking content were excised after a disastrous test screening in January 1932. Apparently, one woman threatened suing MGM for giving her a miscarriage. Removed scenes and sequences possibly lost forever include a longer attack on female villain Cleopatra, her conspirator Hercules being castrated, several comedy sequences, and the original epilogue (replaced by a more traditional happy ending). When the film debuted February 20, 1932, it was 64 minutes in length and that’s what we have always seen.

It’s also amazing, of course, the film was even made in the first place, but MGM desperately wanted a piece of the horror market. Keep in mind that 1932 was a glorious year for horror: THE OLD DARK HOUSE, THE MUMMY, WHITE ZOMBIE, ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, VAMPYR, MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, THE MASK OF FU MANCHU, and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME.

Browning had the opportunity to direct anything he wanted after the Universal Studios hit DRACULA (1931) and his career would never be the same after FREAKS. Browning did not direct again until 1935’s MARK OF THE VAMPIRE.

What made the film so damn shocking? Perhaps it’s because the so-called straight characters are the freaks and the so-called freaks are everyday people just like you and I. Of course, there would be many people made to feel uncomfortable with the freaks’ matter-of-fact treatment.

Speaking of folks made uncomfortable, there’s always the account of MGM Studios’ reaction to the FREAKS cast from an article called “The Making of Freaks” (originally 1973 by Mark Frank).

“By late October 1931, carloads of freaks were beginning to arrive at M-G-M studio, much to the consternation of the personnel there, most of whom did not expect such a materialization of ‘talent.’ While the newcomers were getting acquainted with their new surroundings, popping in and out of alleyways, the weak-hearted secretaries went scurrying about in the opposite direction. During those first days of the freaks’ immigration, opposition to the production grew to alarming proportions. Louis B. Mayer, executive president, who had somehow allowed this enterprise to slip through his fingers, was now furiously against allowing the project to continue. Many of his executives, spurred on by producer Harry Rapf, were trying to organize a petition calling on (Irving) Thalberg to halt the ugly venture. Their argument concerned the Metro commissary, where they believed it would become unbearable to dine with Prince Randian or Zip the Pin-Head.

“Thalberg, having complete faith in his strange little undertaking, stood fast against the barrage of criticism, and continued his ardent support for the film. Within a few days, word came from the higher-ups that the freaks, with the exceptions of Harry and Daisy Earles and the Hilton Twins, were banned from the commissary. In order to accommodate them a private room, especially fitted for them to dine in, was constructed just off the set. Metro also had the cast quartered in a hotel in Culver City, where they were shipped every night as soon as work was over.”

Just another case of life imitating art or art imitating life, since one of the centerpiece scenes in FREAKS involves a wedding feast for “straight” Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) and “freak” Hans (Harry Earles). Cleopatra and her real lover Hercules have conspired to kill Hans for his fortune, slipping poison into his wine. Straights are the real freaks, indeed. Hans’ sideshow friends have joined him for this special occasion and they decide they will accept Cleopatra as one of them. They pass “a loving cup” around the table and begin chanting “We accept her, one of us. We accept her, one of us. Gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble” (later inspiration for the chant in the Ramones’ “Pinhead”). Cleopatra is so disgusted by this development that, with the loving cup finally in hand, she goes on a rant, “You dirty, slimy freaks! Freaks, freaks, freaks! You fools! Make me one of you, will you?,” and she tosses the wine literally back in their faces.

FREAKS leaves an indelible mark on viewers and that’s mainly because of its unforgettable characters. That’s definitely why it’s one of my very favorite films and has been since I first watched it on video nearly 20 years ago.

Here’s a few briefs on some of these incredible characters:

• English born conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton (1908-69) play basically themselves in FREAKS. They were born joined at their hips and buttocks and they shared blood circulation but no major organs. Their showbiz career began early, touring Britain at age 3, and they were exploited by their various managers throughout their careers; they formed their own jazz band and had been a hit on the vaudeville circuit. Their great moment in FREAKS involved one twin kissing her lover passionately while the other just stood there vicariously pleasured. The Hilton Sisters (better than Paris and Nicky) ended up working at a grocery store in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they were found dead at their home after neither reported for work on January 4, 1969.

• Johnny Eck (1911-91) was born Johnny Eckhardt in Baltimore, Maryland, 20 minutes after a twin brother. Johnny was born with no lower half, while his twin brother Robert was born a normal and healthy child. Eck not only appeared in sideshows and films, but he found time to be (most notably) an artist, a musician, and a photographer. Eck, hyped as “The Most Remarkable Man Alive,” performed for the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Odditorium at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago, to help support his family during the Great Depression. Eck and Browning became close friends.

• Prince Randian (1871-1934) plays “The Living Torso” in FREAKS and he gets another one of the great moments when he lights up a cigarette. This longtime carnival and circus performer earned names like “The Snake Man,” “The Human Torso,” and “The Human Caterpillar.” He fathered four children (three daughters and one son) with his wife, known as Princess Sarah.

• Real-life siblings Harry (1902-85) and Daisy Earles (1907-80) play Hans and Frieda, who are engaged before Cleopatra steals away Hans. Harry and Daisy were part of four siblings, along with Gracie and Tiny, known and billed as either The Doll Family or The Earles Family. They were all featured in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus for decades. Harry appeared in films THE UNHOLY THREE (both the 1925 silent and the 1930 sound remake, the first directed by Browning and both featuring Lon Chaney) and THE WIZARD OF OZ (where he’s a member of the Lollipop Guild). Daisy made her final screen appearance with a small part in Cecil B. DeMille’s THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

• Then there’s the iconographic Schlitzie (1901-71), a microcephalic who inspired Bill Griffith’s “Zippy the Pinhead” comic and the Ramones’ “Pinhead” (inspired by the film in general but especially Schlitzie and the wedding feast). Microcephalics were normally promoted as “pinheads” or “missing links.” From “The Making of Freaks”: “One of those selected (to be in FREAKS) was Schlitzie, the Pin-Head, who was a most unusual character. In a conquest of personality, it was claimed that she was a woman, since she dressed like one, but it was also rumored that she was a man. Furthermore, it was said that Schlitzie was neither one nor the other. This conflict of identity did not seem to affect her zeal to work in pictures, especially FREAKS, for on any day that she was not scheduled for filming she would make such a fuss at the hotel that they would have to bring her over to the set and let her sit there. She could very well afford this sort of behavior because, being very well managed, she had amassed a sizeable wealth in diamond rings and apartment houses.” Billed as female, Schlitzie was in fact male.

Day of the Dead (1985)

DAY 12, DAY OF THE DEAD

DAY OF THE DEAD (1985) Four stars
DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) showed more hope for humanity than NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968).

DAY OF THE DEAD (1985), the third entry in George Romero’s zombie series, heads in the opposite direction and it’s the bleakest installment of the entire run of films (six in total) as we see only just a sliver of hope for the human race. Honestly, we see more potential in the evolution of zombies throughout DAY OF THE DEAD than we do in mankind. Fans were blindsided after the more humorous DAWN OF THE DEAD.

The human characters in DAY OF THE DEAD mostly scream and shout at each other, they don’t listen to one another, and they’re just plain nasty and mean on a regular basis. You would think in a zombie apocalypse that they could put aside their differences and unite and fight toward a common goal, their survival. You would think they could get past their petty differences, their hostility for others who don’t fit their preconceived notions, their political and religious beliefs and prejudices, et cetera, but they are only human after all.

The action centers on an underground bunker where scientists are working on a solution to the zombie pandemic, while being protected from the hordes of zombies (who outnumber humans by 400,000 to 1) above by soldiers. Keep in mind that zombies, of course, are the test subjects and the soldiers are responsible for procuring more specimens. Whatever natural tensions exist between scientists and military professionals are only exacerbated by dwindling supplies, communication breakdowns, and not enough results from the scientists in the eyes of the soldiers.

Of course, we like some characters more than others and it’s quite obvious from the getgo that we are to be more sympathetic toward female scientist Dr. Sarah Bowman (Lori Cardille), black helicopter pilot John (Terry Alexander), and booze hound radio operator McDermott (Jarlath Conroy) than screw loose martinet Captain Henry Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) and mad scientist Dr. Matthew “Frankenstein” Logan (Richard Liberty).

That Romero always loved to mess with audience expectations.

Bowman’s an even stronger female character than Francine Parker in DAWN OF THE DEAD and it’s a joy watching her go toe-to-toe with Captain Rhodes and the boys.

Pilato makes for a great human antagonist and his demise provides us one of the great death scenes in any zombie movie.

Roger Ebert criticized the actors in DAY OF THE DEAD for overacting. Yes, these performances fit the definition of overacting with their exaggerated manner, but this overacting is for a very good reason. It demonstrates how much the human characters have lost the plot and degenerated into worse monsters than the zombies.

That’s apparent throughout by not only the behavior of the human characters but the behavior of the domesticated zombie Bub (Richard Sherman). Bub learns more than any of the characters in DAY OF THE DEAD and that’s a painful lesson for humanity.

DAY OF THE DEAD works today even more than when it was originally released on July 3, 1985.

Just go online and look at the comments section on especially a political story. Bask in relentless name-calling, abusive language, and hostility that only continue to get worse over time. You will probably come across words like “snowflake” and “libtard” (both especially popular since the 2016 Election) and other phrases from the main two sides of the political divide that show our increasing inability to have civil discussions about politics and religion. It should be alright to agree to disagree.

Reading an Oxford Dictionaries article from 2014 on the most common American political insults, it started with a quote from a Pew Research Center report conclusion, “Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines—and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive—than at any point in the last two decades.”

The article continued, “The lack of civility in our political discourse shines through in the frequency of taunts suggesting stupidity and irrationality. Such terms were brandished on both sides, but liberals were more likely to be called morons, fools, and loons, whereas conservatives were most often derided as nutjobs, nuts, and lunatics. Idiot was a favorite on both sides of the aisle.

“The type of adjective favored in insulting phrases varied by partisan affiliation as well. People insulting conservatives favored the adjective right-wing, which was more than twice as common as Republican and nearly four times more common than conservative. In contrast, the dominant adjective in negative epiphets for liberals was—liberal. Liberal was used more than four times as often as left-wing, and Democrat and Democratic accounted for only a fraction of the insults for liberals, with the former used twice as often as the latter.”

It concluded, “But there may be a ray of hope: partisans on both sides of the aisle accuse each other of being racists and bigots, demonstrating a consensus that intolerance and discrimination are universally reprehensible. And while there may not be much common ground between Democrats and Republicans, at least we can all agree on calling each other ‘idiots.'”

During a summer vacation in 2013, several months after the presidential election, a downtown Omaha, Nebraska artist displayed two posters combining both major parties’ candidates with silent movie classics, creating “Obamaratu” and “Mittropolis.” Of course, I bought both posters, because I love both NOSFERATU and METROPOLIS and I hated the 2012 Election. And the 2016 Election was amazingly even worse, a nonstop spitting contest between two jerks that brought thought and discourse to a new low. We’re being taken on a toboggan slide down the slopes of stupidity.

Every time I watch DAY OF THE DEAD, the shouting matches painfully recall so much of what life in 21st Century America has become. Increasingly strident, unpleasant, hateful negativity that’s become far less escapable with the social media boom providing us more convenient and diverse ways to hate. It’s so easy to be an asshole with the safe distance that social media entails. There’s very likely to be absolutely no repercussions for running one’s mouth online, especially when there’s an opportunity to hide behind the cloak of anonymity. Now, if we can develop the means to reach through our side of the screen and punch or kick the other person, we might actually get somewhere on the civility front. It would take just one legitimate punch in the mouth or kick in the crotch to curtail the snarkiness, and that goes for each party.

Being a sports writer by trade, I’ve found it bitterly ironic that over the nearly eight years in the sports writing business politics have become more “sports” than sports. Winning or losing and nothing else in between with much bellyaching, boohooing and bragging depending on which side of the outcome you’re on and increasingly partisan with passionate fans who can be fired up apparently so easily at rallies with platitudes and slogans mostly based on hating the other team. GO! FIGHT! HATE! TEAM!

Unfortunately, though, unlike sports, American politics gives us two basic teams, Democrats and Republicans. Why only two sides of the same coin? Should we not have far more diversity in thought or, if nothing else, evils? Pretend for a moment if the only NFL teams were the New England Patriots and the Dallas Cowboys or the only MLB teams were the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.

One of my favorite concepts in George Orwell’s 1984 is the Two Minutes Hate. Absolutely brilliant. Every day in Oceania, Party members must watch a film depicting the Party’s enemies (namely the traitor Goldstein) and express nothing but their hatred for two minutes. It’s also a memorable scene in Michael Radford’s film adaptation.

In our rather informal way, how many minutes of hate do some of us get in? Bet we don’t limit it to two minutes every day. I’ll be honest, I am guilty of it too, I react violently to certain stimuli like a true automaton. There seems to be only two ways to react to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Kanye West, Colin Kaepernick, and LeBron James, using the most prominent examples.

“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in,” Orwell wrote. “Within thirty seconds any pretense was absolutely unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one subject to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”

I generally avoid making explicitly political posts on Facebook, mainly because I do not want to contribute any more to the quagmire. This especially holds true after every mass shooting or the latest national anthem controversy, for example. Sure, I have my own beliefs and my own opinions, but a few years back I learned not to blurt them out because it doesn’t do any damn bit of good beyond possibly making me feel good.

Now we can generate memes that encapsulate our beliefs, our prejudices, and our thoughts in a most catchy (and generally rude) fashion, of course packaged together by somebody else. Orwell was clearly ahead of his time and one of the true meme pioneers before anybody even knew what the hell memes were. You might remember his greatest hits “Big Brother is Watching You” and “War is Peace / Freedom is Slavery / Ignorance is Strength.” Package them together with great images normally painting the target in a most unsavory light and why the Internet Wars are won.

Sometimes I’ll laugh at memes, sometimes I’ll look at them rather unamused, and sometimes I lose a smidgen of faith in intelligent thought, one bad meme at a time.

That said, I haven’t blocked or unfriended anybody on Facebook just because their political or religious beliefs are different than mine.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

DAY 10, DAWN OF THE DEAD

DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978): Four stars
In a 2014 NPR interview, the late director George Romero (1940-2017) answered the question about how zombies were a vessel for commentary.

“I’ve sort of been able to bring them out of the closet whenever I need them,” he said. “They are multi-purpose, you can’t really get angry at them, they have no hidden agenda, they are what they are. I sympathize with them. My stories have always been more about the humans and the mistakes that they’ve made and the zombies are just sort of out there. … They’re the disaster that everyone is facing, but my stories are more about the humans.”

None of Romero’s zombie movies have been more about the humans than DAWN OF THE DEAD.

It gives us four characters that we grow to care about, Stephen (David Emge) and his girlfriend Francine (Gaylen Ross) and Peter (Ken Foree) and Roger (Scott H. Reiniger). Stephen’s a traffic reporter (light on traffic, heavy on zombies in this flick) and our four protagonists load up into his traffic helicopter and eventually take refuge and lock themselves within a secluded shopping mall (Monroeville Mall located in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, east of Pittsburgh). They kill all the zombies inside and literally clean up, with an endless array of consumer goods at their disposal. They’re like four big kids in a candy store. They become complacent fat cats in a sense, fattened up by self-indulgence, until a motorcycle gang descends upon the mall and these rough biker dudes have the unmitigated gall to go for the kingdom. Of course, our two remaining male protagonists take on the motorcycle gang to the bloody end.

These characters are much better than what Romero and fellow script writer John Russo gave us in the 1968 classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

First and foremost, Francine seems at one crucial point early on like she might be headed for the Judith O’Dea Barbra character in the first movie, a real drag of a helpless female who’s either in panic mode or a catatonic state throughout. Granted, Francine gave us other early signs that she would break the helpless female mode. Sure enough, Francine does break that stereotype and DAWN OF THE DEAD is all the better for it.

Not counting Russell Streiner’s indelible Johnny, who’s only in the movie for a few minutes, Duane Jones’ Ben was the best character in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Likewise, Foree gives us another strong black male protagonist and Peter’s the best character here. In fact, Peter’s even stronger than Ben. He’s a Superfly T.N.T. bad ass mofo zombie killin’ action hero, he says all the great lines including “When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth,” and he’s also far more upbeat than Ben. We end the flick happy little consumers when Peter decides that he will continue to fight rather than pull his trigger and end it all. Two downbeat endings in a row would have been truly horrible.

Romero told Rolling Stone in 1978, “Monsters do exist: in us, and among us.”

Through Stephen, Francine, Peter, and Roger, I think we can see the monster that’s inside us, especially after they become fat cats inside the mall. It’s because these characters all develop within our hearts and minds until they’re not just standard issue, interchangeable horror movie victims like characters in lesser movies. We understand them when they indulge themselves at the mall; they’re living out many people’s consumerist fantasies. We truly feel it when zombies happen to them. We’re there with them every step of the way during their incredible journey.

Not only are the human characters an improvement from Romero’s first zombie try, but the zombies truly come alive in DAWN OF THE DEAD.

At times, they are sinister and relentlessly terrifying. Other times, they are sad or they are funny at other junctures. Romero uses them like characters from different silent movie genres, for slapstick, for sentiment, and to scare us, and they also remind us of the Monster in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. The director said that he sympathized with his zombies and that’s apparent throughout DAWN OF THE DEAD. Like the four main protagonists, the main antagonists are not standard issue, interchangeable zombies. Anyway, they still just want to go shopping too, just like us.

Now, let’s talk about the gore.

Like the later EVIL DEAD movies and RE-ANIMATOR, the gore in DAWN OF THE DEAD passes through queasy to surreal and quite enjoyable.

On the other hand, in April 1979, former New York Times film critic Janet Maslin walked away from DAWN OF THE DEAD. Here’s the opening paragraph of her review:

“Some people hate musicals, and some dislike westerns, and I have a pet peeve about flesh-eating zombies who never stop snacking. Accordingly, I was able to sit through only the first 15 minutes of ‘Dawn of the Dead,’ George Romero’s follow-up to ‘Night of the Living Dead,’ which Mr. Romero directed in black and white in 1968. Since then, he has discovered color. Perhaps horror-movie buffs will consider this an improvement.”

No, I don’t view the color in DAWN OF THE DEAD an improvement over the B & W in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, but I do believe the 1978 movie improves on the earlier film in just about every single possible way. Better human characters and better zombies (who are still not all that different from us, despite their preference in food and their makeovers) especially make this a rare sequel that outdoes the original. Not to mention Romero’s biting satire on consumerism.

I mentioned DAWN OF THE DEAD in the review of THE FLY and it’s a fitting way to end this review.

“For example, George Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), a horror movie or a zombie picture that also passes through action and adventure, black comedy, silent and slapstick comedy, drama, gore galore, cinematic and social satire, surrealism, survivalism, and melodrama in addition to being great at the basic level of being a horror movie. All those extra traits put DAWN OF THE DEAD in the upper echelon.”

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

DAY 9, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) Four stars
The other day on Facebook, I thought I saw a fan ask others not to bring politics into their appreciation of a classic on the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD page.

Are you kidding?

As many fans would be quick to point out, George Romero’s films often have political themes and some of us fools love them even more for it.

I once wrote a review of the 2010 remake of Romero’s THE CRAZIES and lamented the fact the remake traded Romero’s sharp-edged content in for cheap trick, conventional jump scares.

That review included a mention of the scene in Romero’s original where a priest (infected by the virus) self-immolates because of soldiers rousing his flock, a harrowing moment that calls to mind Norman Morrison, the 31-year-old Baltimore Quaker pacifist who carried self-immolation out below Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s Pentagon office to protest American involvement in the Vietnam War, and the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc at a busy Saigon intersection to protest the corrupt South Vietnamese government’s persecution of Buddhist monks.

THE CRAZIES remake did not include such a scene, and that epitomized its lack of balls. (By the way, the references to the priest’s self-immolation in the movie, Morrison, and the Buddhist monk were all excised from the review that printed in the college paper, most likely for space considerations.)

Just thought it was strange that a Romero fan bitched about political conversation, because politics are part and parcel of each and every DEAD movie.

For example, it’s hard not to consider NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD in the broader context of 1968 (or any year) America.

The radio and TV news reports about flesh-eating ghouls in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD would have been natural alongside such watershed events as the Tet Offensive, the My Lai Massacre, Lyndon B. Johnson’s announcement that he will not seek or accept presidential renomination, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the riots riots riots all through a turbulent 1968.

(NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was filmed in 1967 and officially released on October 1, 1968.)

When the black protagonist Ben (Duane Jones) gets mistaken for a ghoul, shot in the head and killed by a member of a white mob looking for ghouls, and thrown in a burn pile with the other ghouls at the end of the movie, of course viewers can draw parallels with MLK, Emmett Till, and numerous other horrifying incidents over the years. Or you can just take the scene at face value. Any way you read it, it’s a shocker of an ending.

Casting Jones as Ben changed the dynamic of the movie. Originally, this character was scripted as a white man (according to a 2010 article by Joe Kane that appeared in “The Wrap”), a resourceful but rough and crude-talking trucker. Jones brought a strong presence, an obvious intelligence, and an unmistakable rage to the part that would have been lacking with the original casting plan. The interactions between Ben and Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman) take on another dimension with the racial tension palpable between both men.

I’ll just go ahead and say it: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD would have been a lesser movie without a black male in the lead.

At one point, again from the Kane article, the filmmakers thought about changing the ending to allow Ben to survive. Jones was not having any. “I convinced George that the black community would rather see me dead than saved, after all that had gone on, in a corny and symbolically confusing way,” he said. “The heroes never die in American movies. The jolt of that and the double jolt of the hero figure being black seemed like a double-barreled whammy.”

There’s a multitude of whammies in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

Consider the plight of Mr. Cooper, his wife Helen (Marilyn Eastman), and their 11-year-old daughter Karen (Kyra Schon), who’s seriously ill after being bitten by one of the ghouls. Karen’s in the cellar for the duration of the movie.

Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, why you can just tell they do not get along very well. Understatement of the year. Nearly every word they say to each other, especially from her to him, carries an undercurrent of hostility. We feel there’s no love between the two.

Eventually, Karen dies and becomes one of the flesh-eating ghouls. She first eats her father and then bludgeons her mother with a trowel. The latter sequence calls to mind Detective Arbogast’s encounter with Mother in PSYCHO (1960).

You probably have noticed this sentence is the first mention of Barbra (Judith O’Dea), another main protagonist. She’s definitely the weak link in the movie, the epitome of the helpless female who spends nearly all her screen time in either panic mode or in a catatonic state. She’s not much of a help to anybody, and we delight in her fate near the end of the movie. (In the 1990 remake, Barbra’s more along the lines of Ellen Ripley in the ALIEN movies.)

Russell Streiner, one of the producers of the movie along with Hardman, plays Johnny and he’s absolutely fantastic during his screentime (just a few minutes) in the classic opening cemetery scene. He complains about virtually everything, he gives his uptight sister Barbra a hard time, and he delivers one of the great lines in horror movie history doing the latter, “They’re coming to get you, Barbra.”

Poltergeist III (1988)

POLTERGEIST III (1988) One star
Cheech & Chong said “man” 295 times in UP IN SMOKE (1978).

By comparison, characters said “Carol Anne” 121 times in POLTERGEIST III.

Still, I have this nice dream where the movies are spliced together via the miracle of modern technology and somehow Cheech & Chong say “Carol Anne” rather than “man” 295 times. Yes, rather than the characters played by Tom Skerritt and Nancy Allen, Cheech & Chong are tracking down Carol Anne and fighting the evil spirits. Skerritt makes a cameo in this alternate POLTERGEIST III, since he played Strawberry in UP IN SMOKE and that will be his character this second time around.

I do have this strange habit of imagining alternate scenes or alternate entire movies pieced together from two different movies.

For example, I remember Carey Mulligan’s character singing “New York, New York” in SHAME (the Steve McQueen and not the Ingmar Bergman version) and then all of a sudden, I had this vision of the Gremlins’ grand musical production number of the same song in GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH. Here was the big tender moment in SHAME and I wanted the Gremlins’ version instead to show up on the screen. It played out inside my head that Mulligan started before she was oh so rudely interrupted by the mass Gremlin chaos choir. I also sing the Gremlins’ version every time I come across Frank Sinatra’s standard, which must be one of the most overplayed songs in popular culture.

Fantasies like that help to pass time, especially during a bad movie like POLTERGEIST III where I often can’t stand the sight of what’s on screen.

In economics, the law of diminishing returns refers to a point at which the profit becomes less than the amount of money or energy invested.

In movies, diminishing returns refers mainly to sequels that are vastly inferior to previous films in the series. Just look at any number of movie series for examples.

This third POLTERGEIST tries our patience right from the start with its central premise and it only gets worse through its execution.

It’s rather sick.

I mean, that poor child Carol Anne (played by Heather O’Rourke).

Why couldn’t they just let her be after POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE?

What she endured in the first two movies would be enough for several lifetimes, but she’s back for a third installment and without her parents (Craig T. Nelson and Jo Beth Williams) and brother (Oliver Robins). Carol Anne’s been sent to live with her aunt (Allen) and uncle (Skerritt) at their high rise apartment in Chicago.

We know that she’s going to be put through the wringer for the third time as soon as we see her, no matter that she’s 2,000 miles and 30 hours by car away from Southern California, location of the infinitely superior first POLTERGEIST.

(By the way, Nelson was approached to return for POLTERGEIST III but he reportedly said “Two was enough.” That’s nowhere as brilliant as what Roy Scheider thought about JAWS 3-D, “Mephistopheles couldn’t talk me into doing (it). They knew better than to even ask.”)

POLTERGEIST III saddles poor Carol Anne with a psychiatrist named Dr. Seaton (Richard Fire). Of course, in the movies, psychiatrists normally do more harm than good and well, this Dr. Seaton character follows that character pattern to a T. Dr. Seaton encourages Carol Anne to chat with him about her experiences, though he believes her to be delusional, and, of course, this discussion enables the evil spirit of Rev. Henry Kane to find Carol Anne and wreak havoc on her once again.

This Dr. Seaton is a real piece of work. He belongs in the annals of bad screen doctors alongside such notables as the paranormal investigator played by Robert Joy in AMITYVILLE 3-D and the psychiatrist played by Bruce Willis in COLOR OF NIGHT.

A demon first burns Joy’s Dr. Elliot West’s face and then drags him to Hell. One of just a couple highlights in AMITYVILLE 3-D.

Dr. Seaton gets pushed to his death down the empty elevator shaft of the 100-story John Hancock Center.

Willis’ psychiatrist lives through COLOR OF NIGHT.

Well, you know, two out of three ain’t bad.

The POLTERGEIST movies, especially this third installment, have long been tinged with sadness and talk of the “Poltergeist Curse” almost overshadows the movies.

Dominique Dunne, who played Carol Anne’s older sister, died at the age of 22 five months to the day after the release of POLTERGEIST. Dunne’s ex-boyfriend, John Thomas Sweeney, strangled Dunne in the driveway of her West Hollywood home. Dunne went into a coma and died five days later on November 4, 1982.

O’Rourke died at the age of 12 on February 1, 1988 under extremely unusual circumstances. She died of cardiopulmonary arrest caused by septic shock due to intestinal stenosis, and her manager said at the time, “It’s weird. She was completely healthy Saturday, they thought she had the flu on Sunday and she was dead on Monday.” She had been diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease (chronic inflammation of the intestines) in 1987.

Dunne and O’Rourke are buried at the Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

POLTERGEIST III (released June 10, 1988) was O’Rourke’s last film and it was dedicated to her memory.

The Omen (1976)

THE OMEN (1976) One-and-a-half stars
The British have a great word to describe all THE OMEN movies: “bollocks.”

We can also substitute “poppycock,” “hogwash,” and “balderdash,” some of the best words in the English language.

THE OMEN movies are nothing more than an excuse to watch familiar and sometimes big-name performers be systematically eliminated in bizarre, gruesome ways. Sounds great, eh?

Not when the audience gets bludgeoned with the great significance of it all, unlike the average exploitation movie. We have some frenzied overacting, a whole lot of pretension, a relentless musical score, and a ridiculous storyline that’s like a Satanist soap opera.

Sometimes I like all of those elements in a movie but THE OMEN movies lay it on so damn thick with them all that I just balk and become an unrepentant nonbeliever.

Off the top of my old noggin, only THE AMITYVILLE HORROR movies compete with THE OMEN series for my least favorite horror series.

I’ll quote from the IMDb for a handy plot summary: “Robert and Katherine Thorn seem to have it all. They are happily married and he is the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, but they want nothing more than to have children. When Katherine has a stillborn child, Robert is approached by a priest at the hospital who suggests that they take a healthy newborn whose mother has just died in childbirth. Without telling his wife he agrees. After relocating to London, strange events (and the ominous warnings of a priest) lead him to believe that the child he took from that Italian hospital is evil incarnate.”

Robert and Katherine Thorn are played by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, respectively, and they’re our leading big names. Peck naturally plays the great reluctant believer and every OMEN and AMITYVILLE HORROR movie needs one main character to constantly postpone the inevitable. What will it take to convince Peck’s Robert Thorn that his son’s the Antichrist? Unfortunately for us and the movie, it will take a whole helluva lot to convince Robert Thorn. I lost patience with Thorn (and the movie) long, long before he takes action down the home stretch.

Mainly it’s because THE OMEN and its sequels gave birth to what I call “The Omen Syndrome” or any time any character figures out a dread secret and either spills the beans or merely plans to, you can just bet your bottom dollar that in the next few minutes that character will be killed in the most unpleasant way possible. THE OMEN movies all played on this basic scenario time and time again. That makes them deadly predictable, and that’s when you earn a syndrome named after you.

To be fair, THE OMEN does have a few effective moments, but they all probably add up to 10-15 minutes of screen time and we’re talking about a movie that lasts nearly two hours. Those 10-15 minutes amount to the death scenes and the moments of danger, but the rest of the movie irritated me to no end unlike, for example, THE EXORCIST, a film that involved me from beginning to end. Because of the few effective moments, I have awarded the first OMEN movie 1/2 star more than its sequels.

At this point, I’d rather talk about the actors who played Damien in the first three OMEN movies.

English actor Harvey Stephens played the devil child and it was his first role. I mean, wow, where the Hell do you go from playing the Antichrist? Stephens only took on two more film roles: Young Emil in the 1980 TV movie “Gauguin the Savage” and Tabloid Reporter No. 3 in THE OMEN remake (2006). In 2017, Stephens received a suspended prison sentence for his 2016 road rage attack on a pair of cyclists; Mr. Stephens knocked one cyclist unconscious with a punch and punched the other cyclist several times in the face. Stephens received sentences of 14 months, suspended for two years.

Brazilian-born English actor Jonathan Scott-Taylor played a teenage Damien in the first sequel that’s set in Chicago (before John Hughes) and stars William Holden and Lee Grant in the Peck and Remick parts. Scott-Taylor’s career peaked with Damien and his last film performance came in a 1985 movie named SHADEY.

New Zealand actor Sam Neill took on Damien for THE FINAL CONFLICT and he’s the only one of the three actors to sustain a film career. We’ve seen Neill in everything from DEAD CALM and THE PIANO to THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER and JURASSIC PARK.

By the way, isn’t anybody who names their child Damien just asking for it?

Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)

DAY 6, GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER

GODZILLA VS. HEDORAH (1971) Three-and-a-half stars
Greg Kihn’s “The Breakup Song” posited that they don’t write ’em like that anymore.

Well, they don’t make movies like GODZILLA VS. HEDORAH (Toho Company title and version in 1971) or GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER (American International title and version in 1972) or, for that matter, movies like INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS and INFRA-MAN anymore. Where do you start with movies like that? Where do you end?

GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER must be seen to be or not to be believed. It’s ridiculous, absolutely and sublimely ridiculous, in ways that only a truly great “bad” movie can be.

Honestly, though, I don’t think it’s bad at all and it’s definitely infinitely better than the 1998 American GODZILLA starring Matthew Broderick. I mean, come on, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, you create a pair of characters based on Siskel & Ebert after their negative reviews of your previous movies and then you don’t have the testicular fortitude to kill them off. Wusses!

This is the 11th GODZILLA movie in the series and it honestly features just a little bit of everything.

No, seriously.

The IMDb plot summary: “From Earth’s pollution a new monster is spawned. Hedorah, the smog monster, destroys Japan and fights Godzilla while spewing his poisonous gas to further the damage.”

That only barely scratches the surface of GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER. Even if the movie only revolved around that plot summary, I would be interested, but this flick goes the extra mile to entertain us.

Just yesterday I wrote about how I love it when a horror movie takes on more than just being a horror movie and gives us more.

That applies to Godzilla movies or any genre for that matter.

In this 11th Godzilla movie, we have a pro-environmental message replete with a song titled “Save the Earth,” we have a psychedelic freakout in a club with a tripping dude conjuring up partiers adorned with fish heads, we have weird animated interludes, we have little scientific lessons on nebulas and the like, we have a smog monster who looks more like a shit monster, and, last but definitely not least, a flying Godzilla, yes, a flying Godzilla using his atomic breath for jet propulsion. Was the similar scene in ROBOCOP 3 a tribute?

Those are simply the highlights.

Thankfully, the Save-the-Earth message doesn’t get too preachy or smug (it’s not ripe to be mocked by “South Park”) because of everything else surrounding it.

It’s a dark movie overall and genuinely scary in a few parts, because, let’s face it, none of us want to be killed by a shit monster.

Godzilla and Hedorah go 15 rounds in a heavyweight fight.

Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster could have been paired with Ali vs. Frazier, a creature feature before or after the boxing match.

The geniuses at American International ran GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER together with FROGS. What a pair! Best pair since Marilyn Monroe, right?

I’ve long been fascinated by what movies are titled in country from country. We’ve already covered a pair of titles for the 11th Godzilla movie and here’s four more. How about HEDORAH, LA BURBUJA TOXICA (Spain) or HEDORAH, THE TOXIC BUBBLE.

GODZILLA CONTRA MONSTRUOS DEL SMOG (Mexico) or GODZILLA AGAINST MONSTERS OF SMOG.

FRANKENSTEIN’S BATTLE AGAINST THE DEVIL’S MONSTER or FRANKSTEINS KAMPF GEGEN DIE TEUFELMONSTER in German.

GODZILLA CONTRE LE MONSTRE DU BROUILLARD (French) or GODZILLA AGAINST THE MONSTER OF FOG.

That’s just a brief international title sampler.

The Fly (1986)

DAY 5, THE FLY

THE FLY (1986) Four stars
I absolutely love it when a horror movie takes on more than just merely being a horror movie. These movies rank among the most pleasurable viewing experiences.

For example, George Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), a horror movie or a zombie picture that also passes through action and adventure, black comedy, silent and slapstick comedy, drama, gore galore, cinematic and social satire, surrealism, survivalism, and melodrama in addition to being great at the basic level of being a horror movie. All those extra traits put DAWN OF THE DEAD in the upper echelon.

Another example is David Cronenberg’s THE FLY (1986). It works on the most basic horror movie level but reaches greatness because it’s also a few other things it didn’t have to be. It grosses us out at times (rather, make that many times) but it also zaps us straight in the heart with its central storyline.

We’ve seen lots and lots of scientists over the years in loads and loads of pictures, but Jeff Goldblum’s Seth Brundle is one of those that sticks with you and stays in your mind. He’s not Colin Clive’s Dr. Frankenstein and he’s not Jeffrey Combs’ Herbert West, two other great cinematic scientists who embody more of the mad scientist archetype than Brundle. Brundle is more of the lovable eccentric that puts you in mind of what Albert Einstein must have been like in real life. We come to know this cinematic scientist more than just about any that spring to mind.

Brundle invents a teleportation device and he’s inspired to teleport himself one night after having successfully tried everything from Geena Davis’ stocking to a baboon. Of course, unbeknowst to him, a darn pesky housefly joins Brundle in the pod and throws a monkey wrench variable into this grand scientific experiment. Over the rest of the movie, Brundle transforms into Brundlefly.

Some viewers took what happened to Brundle as a metaphor for AIDS, but director Cronenberg said that his original intent was for an analogy for disease itself, terminal conditions such as cancer, and aging. This is one of the main sources for the emotional heft of THE FLY, because most of us grow old and die from a disease. Most of us are afraid, very afraid, indeed, it seems, and THE FLY plays on our fears.

On top of that, there’s a great tragic love story between Goldblum’s Brundle and Davis’ Veronica Quaife.

I highly doubt anybody expected such a moving love story coming in, especially considering Cronenberg’s previous films like SCANNERS and VIDEODROME.

And, let’s face a fact: Horror movies have not always been a great source for love stories.

Chris Walas deserved his Academy Award for Best Special Effects Make-up, but it’s the pleasant surprise love story and Brundle himself that elevate THE FLY.

Goldblum and Davis were a real-life couple, boyfriend and girlfriend during the making of THE FLY, and they were married from 1987 to 1990. They met during TRANSYLVANIA 6-5000 and later made a third movie together, EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY. For both actors, THE FLY would be their break into the mainstream and honestly, neither performer has ever done anything better.

Goldblum would play variations on scientists in seemingly every appearance for the next 30 years, in everything from JURASSIC PARK and INDEPENDENCE DAY to POWDER and THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU. It’s a role that fits him well and we can say that it’s become the Jeff Goldblum role just as we can say that Dabney Coleman (think NINE TO FIVE) and Hal Holbrook (think ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN) have come to develop their own respective roles.

Davis moved on to director Renny Harlin in both her personal and professional life, and her career never quite recovered after such flops as SPEECHLESS, CUTTHROAT ISLAND, and THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, the latter pair directed by Harlin. Davis’ career took off for a few years after THE FLY with hits like BEETLEJUICE, THELMA & LOUISE, and A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST.

This is the rare remake that has obscured the original, which was made in 1958, directed by Kurt Neumann, and starred Vincent Price.

Goldblum wrote Price a letter telling one of the great hams in history, “I hope you like it as much as I liked yours.” Price, touched by the letter, went to see the remake and unfortunately, he did not quite return Goldblum’s affection for the original and called the remake “wonderful right up to a certain point … it went a little too far.”

In addition to both FLY movies, there’s been a lot of great fly moments throughout history, both screen and sound.

I’ll briefly guide you through three of them.

Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), his stare, his voiceover, and a fly in the final moments of PSYCHO (1960): “They’re probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I’m not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching. They’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know, and they’ll say, ‘Why she wouldn’t even harm a fly.'”

Hungarian animator Ferenc Rofusz’s THE FLY (1980) won the 1981 Academy Award for Best Animated Short and it follows a fly on its journey from the woods to a house and finally on death’s end of a fly swatter. Oh, sorry, did I spoil that for you or the fly? Since it’s only three minutes long, this animated short might be a replacement if you have no desire to sit through 96 minutes of THE FLY (1986). In fact, you can watch the animated one 32 times in a row to substitute for the experience of the live-action flick.

English rock band Wire released the song “I Am the Fly” on its 1978 album CHAIRS MISSING and it features the great lines “I am the fly in the ointment / I can spread more disease than the fleas which nibble away at your window display / Yes, I am the fly in the ointment / I shake you down to say please as you accept the next dose of disease.”