When Good Posters Happen to Mediocre Movies

Rio Lobo, director Howard Hawks' final movie and his fifth collaboration with both actor John Wayne and screenwriter Leigh Brackett, is along with Land of the Pharaohs, the only film of his I've seen (IE what's readily accessible on DVD) that I could not grant even a meager "thumbs up". A G rated western (with an admittedly rating busting final shoot-out) seems positively quaint in 1970, two years after Sergio Leone's landmark post-modern masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West and one year after Sam Peckinpah's ultra-violent requiem The Wild Bunch, and considering the clever temperament of Hawks' other work "quaint" counts as a dirty word. Rio Lobo suffers from a sense of redundancy, as John Wayne, clearly going through the motions here, is once again teamed with a young hot-shot(Jorge Rivero's no Montgomery Clift, Ricky Nielsen or James Caan), a snappy gal (comparing Jennifer O'Neill to Angie Dickinson is no fair to anyone) and a cagey old-timer (Jack Elam, who is the highlight of the entire cast), I guess they couldn't work in a drunk in need of redemption. The plot also recycles for the second time (the superior El Dorado being the other) the classic template created by Brackett in the screenplay of Rio Bravo.

But the poster....man it's beautiful, focusing on the film's highlight, the climactic battle, this painted work's framing recalls to mind the iconic final shot of John Ford's The Searchers and promises a raucous good time with it's hell-bringing and all. Sadly, there will be no hell giving to be found here.

Does anyone know an online reference to find poster artists? I would like to credit the person who came up with this image.

The Real Death Race

In the ten years that have passed since Gus Van Sant announced that as a follow-up to his first mainstream success (Good Will Hunting) he would film a shot-by-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's seminal Psycho--to which I will confess a bit of curiosity in revisiting with the intention of viewing it purely through the prism of a contextual exercise, which in fairness was Van Sant's intent--still the ultimate in the "how dare they!" camp of Hollywood regurgitation that has dominated production in the ensuing decade (seriously with Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street remakes in various stages of production, does there exist an influential horror film from the 1970's or 80's that hasn't been remade) I've moved from the anger to the acceptance stage and hardly ever find my fist vainly shaking mid-air in disgust anymore when the news of the latest retread gets announced. Still, with that said, I have little to no interest in seeing the Paul W.S. (so as not to be mistaken for the more talented director whose first and last name he shares) Anderson's remake of Death Race 2000 (1975, Paul Bartel), retitled simply Death Race for brevity and outdated time's sake, despite an interesting collection of cast members including the intermittently likable Jason Statham as well as the always sturdy Ian McShane and Joan Allen(!?). Judging from it's underwhelming performance at the box office this weekend, people seem to share my indifference (although I am sure most of the intended audience do not realize it's a remake to begin with).

It's no wonder that so many talented filmmakers, including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme and Joe Dante to name just a fraction, emerged from Roger Corman's New World pictures factory. After insuring all his productions contained a sellable hook, exposed breasts, gratuitous violence, a drive-in accessible running time and most importantly, a meager budget, Corman would grant his filmmakers carte blanche to make whatever they saw fit within those limitations. Only under these guidelines could a film as offensively brazen as Death Race 2000 crystallize. Paul Bartel, the eccentric actor/director who appeared in films throughout Corman's oeuvre, had the keen satiric eye to bring Robert Thom and New World house writer Charles B. Griffith's satiric vision of a future where the number one sport is vehicular manslaughter (extra points for the elderly or children). Bartel and his writers deftly create a future where the American past-time is a sport that combines two indelible 70's trends: the popular and increasingly aggressive NFL with special attention to two teams with a defensive mindset and a win at all cost attitude: the Pittsburgh Steelers and Oakland Raiders and the anti-hero archetype that became a staple in American cinema following Easy Rider. Death Race 2000 leaves you agape with its audaciousness and could only exists as a B-movie that slipped through the cracks to become a word-of-mouth sensation.

The new Death Race seems like a missed opportunity, especially in light of the in-fighting in NASCAR that is making it a more theatrical, and henceforth, popular sport. Of course, this being a mainstream film produced by a major studio and directed by a successful but not necessarily distinctive franchise starter (three of his seven directorial efforts spawned at least one sequel), a deft satiric hand is not to be expected. Instead of garnering points for running over innocent civilians, it appears that prisoners are chasing one another, because you know, who cares if prisoners get killed, right? (If someone has seen the film and can refute my assumptions, please let me know). I'm also assuming that the young and elderly emerge unscathed. And that, strangely enough, counts as a devolution.

While the remake will probably be long forgotten by the time it premieres on HBO next June, the original with it's iconic lead performances by David Carridine and a pre-Rocky Slyvester Stallone as his arch rival, it's matte painting vistas, and the still outrageous lack of good taste on display throughout (to reiterate--that's a positive) will still be discovered by generations throughout this millennium.

Here's the trailer for Death Race 2000....accept no substitutes!

Pictures from The Road

So what's the over/under on the amount of movie reviews for this November's release of The Road that will be titled "No Country for Any Men"?

The first pictures of the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pultizer Prize winning novel (book #10 in my New Year's goal of reading 52 books this year!), featuring Academy Award nominated actor Viggo Mortenson as the unnamed father, hit the web a few days ago, but in case you missed them, I am posting some choice shots here.

Judging from these released stills, director John Hillcoat has admirably evoked McCarthy's prose's atmospheric vision of an America dying from an unspecified apocalyptic event (environmental? nuclear war?) leaving the few survivors to salvage for what food and supplies remain. This should come to no surprise to those that saw Hillcoat's 2005 Australian Western, The Proposition, which was similarly desolate, sparse and gritty.

I'm guessing the intense bleakness of the project will keep away many of the best seller's readers who picked up the book per Oprah's recommendation, but personally it's the small yet poignant ray of hope of McCarthy's conclusion where I am longing for Hillcoat to remain faithful. 

Michael K. Williams (Omar Little!) leads a supporting cast that includes twelve year old Kodi Smit-McPhee as the son, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Robert DuVall and Garret Dillahunt, whom you may recognize from his two different roles on Deadwood and most recently from his role as Tommy Lee Jones' deputy in the last McCarthy film adaptation, No Country for Old Men.

The film opens on November 26th.

More photos can be found at USA Today's (!?!) website.

Bronson's Loose Again

Death Wish II (1982, Michael Winner)

In my review of Death Wish, I complained of director Michael Winner’s half-hearted third act attempt to suddenly position main character Paul Kersey's (Charles Bronson) actions as that of a deluded man who believes he’s living by the ethos of the Wild West after providing no earlier evidence supporting this. Death Wish II* which reunites Winner and Bronson, as well as co-star Vincent Gardenia as the detective on his trail, is a superior film for the fact that it actually utilizes the structure of a Western film and makes less attempts at being a legitimate social study, resulting in a film that is focused on the strengths of the director.

The Western archetype plot of DWII to wit: A reformed gunslinger (architect cum vigilante Paul Kersey) moves to a new town-Los Angeles (apparently having grown tired of the lack of attacks upon his loved ones in Chicago, the city he relocated to at the end of DWI), where he’s thrust back into action against his wishes for a new life when his close ones (specifically maid and daughter) are once again the victim of a brutal assault. If you would like to look at it in a more modern genre prism, you can make the claim it also conforms to the mechanics of a super-hero film; a mild mannered everyman hellbent on personal vengeance arms and disguises himself (his outfit consisting of a beanie and dark workingman clothes befitting a repairman, which in and of itself is a metaphor), to combat villains and keep the streets safe for the helpless.

In the first film, Kersey is not present when his wife and daughter are attacked (which resulted in the death of the wife and the daughter becoming catatonic) but in the sequel he is at home when his maid is raped and killed followed by his catatonia recovering daughter being kidnapped (she too will be…surprise, surprise…raped…and eventually leap to her own death in an escape attempt), so his vigilantism is focused this time around on the specific members of the (very P.C.) multi-cultural gang of hoods responsible (a post Apocalypse Now Laurence Fishburne filling the Jeff Goldblum role of the gang member that would go on to future fame). This helps to alleviate one of the more distressing issues of the original where Kersey never went after the actual gang that attacked his family, and who coincidentally were all Caucasian, instead choosing to randomly bait hoods who happened to be predominately African-American, and murdering them for the sins of the responsible. While I don’t doubt a compelling social study of the irony of Kersey’s action could be made, Michael Winner surely isn’t the director to perform such a subtle critique.

Where the first film strives for legitimacy (people as varied as Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman and even Gregory Peck were mentioned for the role of Paul Kersey) and failed, the sequel has no such allusions. Perhaps due to the change of producer from mainstream schlockmeister Dino DeLaurentiis to low budget schlockmeisters team Yoram Globus and Menaham Golan (founders of Canon, the predominate Action B-Movie distributors of the 1980’s and home to the likes of Bronson, Chuck Norris and Michael Dudikoff) or perhaps due to the repetitive nature of the plot there is very little set-up or character building and within the first fifteen minutes Kersey’s life has been (re-)shook and he's roaming the streets for vengeance, set to Jimmy Page’s score. In my review of the first film I mentioned the laughable nature of the plot-driving rape scene, laughable not because of the severity of the actions obviously, but rather Winner’s inept presentation of the severity of the actions. That very ineptness is far more disturbing here, as the camera leers on the naked flesh of the stripped female victims in the gaze of the attackers.

While his inability to achieve a modicum of gravity reaches it’s nadir here, once we get to what we came to see—namely Bronson mowing down punks—he actually becomes a tight director and dramatically improved from his work on part one. Scenes are imbued with a palpable sense of suspense that was sorely lacking, some choice real location shooting and even some mood inducing lighting and shot compositions. Again, much like the New York of the mid-70’s, Winner paints the Los Angeles (specifically downtown and Hollywood Boulevard) of the early 80’s as being rife with decaying streets of rat-infested abandoned buildings where you can be murdered for looking at the wrong person, which in comparison to what Hollywood Boulevard is today, a corporate mall rife with nightclubs and infested with frat boys, Valley girls and wannabe reality stars actually counts as an improvement. To his credit though, unlike the first film where the poor are all coded as being potential murderers, muggers, rapists, et cetera, he does provide evidence of people in financial dire straits seeking salvation in makeshift storefront churches or just scraping about trying to make a living.

At the end of DWII (spoilers to obviously follow) Kersey has succeeded in eradicating the gang responsible for the attack, however, it comes at a cost, his chance for redemption when his fiancée, who is one of them rehabilitating criminals** believing bleeding heart liberals, leaves him after discovering his little after-hours hobby. Unlike the end of the first film where he was given an ultimatum to leave New York (and after all the shit that went down, why wouldn’t he?), Kersey’s action do have a consequence and he must face what his deeds have reaped. The last scenes show Kersey once again roaming the streets of Los Angeles, rejecting his chance at a legitimate everyman life. One hopes that Michael Winner follows suit and cast aspirations of serious filmmaking aside to play to his strength, exploitation filmmaker extraordinaire. We’ll find out, the duo reunited three years later for Death Wish III.

* I know this is petty but it still gets my goat: the DVD and it's menu lists the film as written with the digit 2, when the film clearly uses the Roman Numeral II

** This film’s view of rehabilitation is as disturbingly narrow minded as the first film’s view of class. This time rehabilitation is represented by a wacky therapist with bug eyes and messy manner of dress who can’t even give directions to the restroom competently.

To Double-Dip or Not to Double-Dip?: October 7th Edition

The studios are mapping out their DVD release schedule for the 2008 holiday season, and even though it's still July there has already been a bevy of announcements. Many of those said releases are of the dreaded "double dip" variety. So whose going to tell you whether or not the second time will be twice as nice or to save your bucks for the inevitable triple dip? Me, that's who! This time I am focusing specifically on Universal's slate for October 7th.

A personal note, I have made a conscious decision to no longer partake in the whole double dipping brouhaha until I get around to either purchasing a widescreen television set that would allow me to better appreciate the anamorphic transfers and remastered quality or make the inevitable transition to Blu-Ray. Although most of these release may force me to break that rule.

One last note, since all of these titles are classics films of high regard I am going to save us time and condescenion and not provide any unneeded plot synopsis.

Touch of Evil (50th Anniversary Edition)

Replaces: The 2000 Restored to Orson Welles' Vision Edition

New Features: The 2000 disc featured only the 1998 restored version, this new disc offers two whole other cuts: the theatrical version that has never been released on the DVD format and a preview edition that hasn't been seen since 1958. The theatrical version has a commentary by writer F.X. Feeney and the preview version by critic and Welles' biographers Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore. The restored version features two commentary tracks, one by actors Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh that was either recorded from beyond the grave or for the first release and shelved; the other commentary is from restoration producer Rick Schmidlin. Other special features: a reproduction of the memo that spurred the restored to Welles' vision recut and two documentaries about the film and the restoration.

Is the artwork an improvement?: Yes, the stark black and white is more in keeping with Russell Metty cinematography than the blue hued 2000 DVD.

Anything that's missing?: Pretty much no, although a documentary about the legendary opening tracking shot and it's influence would have been a nice feature.

Upgrade?: A resounding yay! Especially since it's going for a mere $20.99 on Amazon, a steal for this Criterion level edition. I might break my no upgrading until Blu-Ray rule for this!

Rear Window (Special Edition)

Replaces: 2001 Collector's Edition which was included in 2005 Alfred Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection

New Features: All the features from the 2001 release as well as: Commentary with John Fawell (author of "Hitchcock's Rear Window: The Well-Made Film"), Pure Cinema, Through the Eyes of the Master documentary, Hitchcock / Truffaut Interview Excerpts, Breaking Barriers:
The Sound of Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode: "Mr. Blanchard's Secret"

Is artwork an improvement?: I don't have the 2005 collection and have not seen it's individual packaging, but its miles better than the poorly designed 2001 version artwork which feature a still from the film cropped next to a bright blue silhouette of Hitchcock and topped by Hitchcock's signature.

Anything missing?: Again, no, seems pretty complete. I guess a feature about the film's inspiration over the year that would include scenes from Body Double and that Simpsons episode where Bart breaks his leg would be nice.

Upgrade: Yay!

Psycho (Special Edition)

Replaces: 1998 Collector's Edition which was included in the 2005 Alfred Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection

New Features: All the features from the 1998 Version, plus: Commentary by author Stephen Rebello ("Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho"), Hitchcock/Truffaut interview excerpts, Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Lamb to the Slaughter"

Is Artwork an Improvement?: There are two covers from the single disc edition, one featuring the figure of Norman Bates next to the house with a production still of Janet Leigh superimposed over it and a still of Leigh screaming in the shower scene with the Hitchcock silhouette and signature template from Rear Window. This is an improvement over both.

Anything missing?: Considering the Double Indemnity Legacy Edition Universal released a few years ago included the supposedly horrid television remake, it would have been nice if instead of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, which you can find on the individual season sets, they replaced it with the only Psycho related project never released on DVD, Bates Motel, the 1987 pilot for an anthology series that was never picked up by NBC, featuring Bud Cort (of Harold and Maude fame) as the new owner of the Bates Motel. Each episode would have been a self-contained story about the lives of a visitor to the hotel featuring Cort in the wraparound.

Upgrade?: A slight yay. The commentary should be nice considering how intricate Rebello's book is, and obviously if you have a widescreen television, the anamorphic aspect is appreciated, otherwise, wait til Blu-Ray.

Vertigo (Collector's Edition)

Replaces: 1998 Collector's Edition which was included in the 2005 Alfred Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection

New Features: All the features from the 1998 Edition, plus: Commentary with Associate Producer Herbert Coleman and Restoration Team Robert Harris and James Katz, Commentary with director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, French Connection, Sorcerer), Foreign Censorship Ending, Hitchcock/Truffaut Interview Excerpts, Alfred Hitchcock Presents Episode: "The Case of Mr. Pelham"

Is Artwork an Improvement: No: I love the original Saul Bass designed poster (it's framed in my living room) sans the creepy James Stewart insert

Anything missing?: Friedkin as a commenter is a bore, reiterating too often what's on the screen, if you want an Academy Award winning director whose a fan of the film, why not go with Martin Scorsese?

Upgrade?: Yay!

2 for 1 Criterion Sale at Deep Discount

Getting sick of the relentless sound and fury of the summer blockbuster season? Feel guilty that your favorite film of the year is now a Batman movie? Well friends, you can repent at the alter of the foreign and classic selection of the finest DVD distributor around, the Criterion Collection. From now until July 29th, Deep Discount is offering a two for one special on selected Criterion titles (a quick glance over shows it to be a significant portion of their catalog). So get your Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, Bunuel and Godard on. Most non-deluxe DVDs run either $32 or $24 dollars, so that's either $12 or $16 per disc, and as an added bonus, Deep Discount does not charge shipping and handling fees!

Personally, I am going to use the opportunity to pick up some discs I have been putting off buying for far too long: Night and the City, Videodrome, The Man Who Fell to Earth and M--to name a few.

In other Criterion news, October 7th sees the first Region 1 DVD release of two new films from premiere French crime director Jean-Pierre Melville, who is already well represented by extras-leaden Criterion discs (including: Le Circle Rogue, Le Samourai, Army of Shadows and Les Infants Terrible)
the great Le Doulos featuring Jean Paul Belmondo as a morally ambiguous ex-convict and Le Deuxieme Souffle, the first collaboration between the director and Army of Shadows star Lino Ventura.

Artwork below:

An Optimist Would Say the Year is Half-Started: Film

I never did get around to doing a top ten film list for 2007 despite it being perhaps the strongest year of the millennium in cinema. As I stated in my 1980 List introduction (oh yeah, that thing) I never really feel comfortable providing a list that I will surely modify when I get around to seeing (or rewatching) all the titles from the year that interest me, a process which often involves waiting for the DVD releases of the blink-and-you-missed-them variety that is all too common amongst smaller and foreign releases. By time I feel confident that I have seen, if not all, at least like 93% of the films that either intrigued me, were directed (or were written by or starred) personal favorites, or garnered the critical acclaim of the handful of critics and bloggers I respect, well, it's July already, and who in this day and age of instant gratification really cares about seven months ago. Besides, did you really need another person telling you how the best three films of last year were Zodiac, There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men?

With that said, I will now present a list of my favorite films of the first six months of 2008 for no good reason other than my boss is on vacation and I can get away with updating my site at work. Also, out of the five films on the list only one probably made money, so some use may come if one of my (three) regular readers watches something on the list, likes it, and tells a friend to watch it, and so on and so forth. You know, the whole pay it forward theory.

Before presenting the list, I want to make a few general comments about this year. It's been kind of miserable financial wise for distributors of foreign and independent films (Picturehouse, Warner Independent and Paramount Vantage all will cease to exist soon), yet none of the films on my list were released by a major studio (although several are released from the secondary boutique arms of their corporations), so the whole quality (of film) versus quantity (of viewers) argument comes into play. Looking over the list of thirty-three 2008 releases that I have seen thus far, I would give the ol' thumb up to twenty of them (obviously some with more enthusiasm than others), a solid enough ratio, to give some perspective, if this year was a baseball player, this would be a record setting year in hitting. I've found there to be a lot of interesting, inventive and esoteric fare amongst the releases I chose to see (why oh why did I waste time with One Missed Call & the Prom Night remake?). However, I must conceded if all the films in my mid-year top five end up making my year-end top ten, this will have been a down year. The second tier level of quality of this year's fare surpasses last year in that area, but the top tier cannot compete. To compare: by June 30th, 2007, I had already seen the list worthy releases of: Zodiac (my favorite film of last year), The Lives of Others, Grindhouse, Black Book, Knocked Up, Hot Fuzz, and the re-release of Killer of Sheep.

One more delay before I present the list. In full disclosure I have not seen these films whose reputations suggest they might be up my proverbial alley: Wall-E (I know, I know), My Winnipeg, Encounters at the End of the World, Roman de Gare, Funny Games '08, The Fall, Shine a Light, Shotgun Stories, Mother of Tears, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Standard Operating Procedure, and The Duchess of Langeais.

Okay, here's my top five of 2008 so far:

1. Son of Rambow (Garth Jennings)

Garth Jenning's followup to his over-stuffed adaptation of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is this charming and sweet (two adjectives that have lost their positive connotations recently due to maudlin cinematic abuses) tale of the transformative power of cinema. Anyone who spent their youth recreating scenes from or plotting sequels to their favorite films in their backyard or at the playground will instantly recognize kindred spirits in the film's protagonists, the scheming, Dennis the Menace-ish Lee Carter and his new friend, and filmmaking partner, Will Proudfoot, who is growing up amongst the creative crippling throes of a devout religious sect. Jennings shoots his film entirely through the kid's eyes. When we see Will and Lee film stunts for their video project, an unauthorized sequel to First Blood that provides insight into each boy's fatherless existence, we see their vision of the impossible stunt, the low budget actuality only seen in fleeting glimpses of the end product. Rambow's far from perfect, things wrap up a little too cleanly and a scene that creates an adolescent’s version of a decadent nightclub is a little too cute and would have worked better as a music video, but Jenning's youthful exuberance is always affecting.

2. The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin)

Akin's novelistic approach (each Act is split into chapters which we see through the perspective of different characters) to the story of three parent-child combinations deals with the coincidences that bond us, but unlike Crash or Babel, he does not attempt to make any grand statements about racism or millennial communication anxiety, but rather focuses on personal concerns such as forgiveness and acceptance and how it relates locally (specifically for the film in terms of Turkish-German relations). The film is rooted in the natural heartbreak of the everyday moment but allowing for growth and change, encapsulated by the cinematography, which may be murky, a conscious decision I assume considering the visual command displayed in Akin's prior film, Head-On, but sprinkled with transcendent moments such as a slow-motion first kiss between two doomed lovers, the visitation of a spectral image and the final long uninterrupted shot that ends the film focusing on one character's anticipation.


3. In Bruges (Martin McDonagh)

McDonagh manages the impossible; he breathes new life into the stalest of genres, the hitman comedy. He brings fresh dialogue (he's a well regarded playwright, so natch) that's genuinely funny, a sure command of the visual medium and the ability to surprise, most notably displayed in a flashback scene and the shoot-out that concludes the film. Colin Farrell as Ray, an immature and impatient hitman who may not be only metaphorically stuck in purgatory in Bruges, gives a career revitalizing performance. And I can't believe I laughed at a midget joke in 2008! But the characters created by McDonagh and the glee that Ferrell imbues Ray with made it so. Let's be grateful for minor miracles.

4. Tell No One (Guillaume Canet)

"Hitchcockian" is a term that gets tossed around too frequently. Any thriller with a twist ending is anointed with the adjective. But Hitchock's films were always about playing with the form of narrative cinema and never about the single "game-changing" twist (well, Psycho, but there's so much of the former going on) but rather a byzatine labyrinth of twist upon twist presented with exuberance and humor, both of the manneristic and gallows variety. Canet gets this and understand the McGuffin, in this case a man's search for his wife who was presumed dead eight years prior, is only the story's catalyst, and the fun is the hell he puts our seemingly innocent protagonist to get there. Thusly, when the full mechanics of the plot are revealed in a one guy explains everything manner (again, like Psycho) the film temporarily loses momentum. Do all the threads add up in the end? Possibly not, but who cares, like the saying goes, the thrill's in the chase.


5. The Strangers (Bryan Bertino)

This tense throwback returns the notion of suspense to the horror genre, a virtue I thought disappeared long ago in favor of loud soundtracks, over-editing and an increased emphasis on gore. First time writer-director Bertino keeps things simple, Liv Tyler and Scott Speedmen are a couple in a rough patch and they are attacked by three people wearing masks and…that’s it. But if you are looking, there’s all kind of character revelation, not in the dialogue, but in body language and action. I will discuss the ending below, please skip if you intend to see it, but if a horror film that doesn’t assault your senses and utilizes visual compositions and practical tricks instead of CGI, then here you are.

SPOILER FOR THE ENDING…The audience I saw this with, mainly a bunch of teenagers and kids who snuck in after buying tickets to Kung Fu Panda, were totally into the film, audibly scared, yelling at the screen, et cetera, until the conclusion when they jeered once the credits started. While I understand their reaction to the extent that it didn’t provide the closure that they are usually fed; there is a complete lack of explanation and, even more significantly, comeuppance to the titular attackers, but it’s this very reason I found the film all the more effective. There is not a lot of mystery left in horror films, too often things are either completly over-explained, see the first hour of Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake, or unnecessary and/or lame connections are arbitrarily included to tie everything neatly together, see funnily enough Halloween II making Laurie Strode Mike Meyers’ little sister. Personally, I find the idea of a 10 year old boy snapping and inexplicably murdering his sister chilling without limp attempts at psychosis. Same goes for three people who randomly choose a couple to play sadistic games with before tying them up, removing their own masks, and stabbing them. END OF SPOILERS.

For shits and/or giggles, here are my favorite moments of the year in cinema thus far presented in no particular order and with some cryptic descriptions to avoid spoiler-dom:

--Will Proudfoot runs home jumping, kicking and shooting a make believe machine gun after watching First Blood, which is probably the first movie he's ever seen, Son of Rambow

--A kiss in a nightclub, The Edge of Heaven

--A fatal trip to the top of the tower, In Bruges

--Footchase, Tell No One

--Shotgun blues, The Strangers

--Amputation!, The Ruins

--The entire opening montage of Speed Racer

--Tony Stark's revelatory press conference, Iron Man

--Upside-down kiss, My Blueberry Nights

--The post-coitous horsing around of two teenaged lovers, Snow Angels

--"The shit gets real": the assaulting third act of Rambo

And because I don't know when to stop, here are the films I am most anticipating for the remainder of the year: The Dark Knight, Pineapple Express, Burn After Reading, The Brothers Bloom, The Road and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Terror in the YouTubes

Terror in the Aisles (1984, Andrew J. Kuehn), a rare example of a studio distributed, theatrically released documentary that consists almost entirely of clips and scenes of other films, think along the lines of Celluloid Closet or Los Angeles Plays Itself only less academic, whose main function is to serve as an advertising tool for the home video sales and rentals unit of it's parent company, Universal Pictures (at the time a subsidary of MCA). To that extent we get scenes from the classic Universal monsters but most notably heavy use of scenes from recent (in 1984) Universal released product such as Jaws II (which gets as much play in Terror as the far far superior original), Halloween II (ditto) and in the most obvious example of corporate cross pollination, the Sylvester Stallone vehicle, Nighthawks, which may feature a great psycho turn by Rutger Hauer, but, and this has rubbed me the wrong way since I saw Terror as a kid, is in no way a "horror" film, but rather an action film with suspenseful moments and a good villain.

In the pre-internet days (set wayback machine to mid-late 1980s), Terror served as a reference guide for this budding horror genre fan. I would often compile lists while watching it which I would take with me to the video store (remember those things, kids?) as a tool for my rental activity, so job well done on that front after all Universal.

Terror intercuts film sequences ranging from the classic, modern and bizarre (I really need to see Alone in the Dark, featuring Martin Landau as an escaped lunatic in the disguise of a milkman) with a discussion lead by co-hosts, Halloween star Donald Pleasence and Carrie's Nancy Allen into the psychology that drives viewers to pay money to get their scare on.

Due to the legal entanglements in clearing the rights of the many featured films and it's relative obscurity, Terror has not, and probably never will be, released on DVD. Although apparently it shows up from time to time on the all-Horror network, Chiller, which I guess is allowed clearance rights since no one actually gets the channel.

Fortunately, some kind soul put Terror in the Aisle on YouTube. Unfortunately, said kind soul decided that instead of cutting it up into approximately eight increments of the maximum allowed 10 minutes intervals to split the film into about 24 three to five minute increments. Further unfortune, of the 24 segments, there are about five missing that were either never embedded or removed from YouTube (those would be segments 19-21 and 23-24).

Here are the first few minutes of Terror, if you enjoy please go here to view the rest of it (or more specifically, most of the rest of it)