'The Cabin in the Woods' is worth visiting

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Starring: Kristen Connolly, Fran Kranz, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Jesse Williams, Bradley Whitford, Richard Jenkins, Amy Acker, Sigourney Weaver, Brian White, Tim De Zern, and Jodelle Ferland
Director: Drew Goddard
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Five college kids (Connolly, Hemsworth, Hutchison, Kranz, and Williams) head to an isolated cabin for a weekend of fun, but things don't turn out as planned... for them, or the global organization that is secretly manipulating them.

"Cabin in the Woods" was the happiest cinematic surprise I've had in quite some time. Like most movies I see, I came to it knowing very little about it. Based on what little advertising I'd seen and what little "buzz" I'd heard, I expected a straight "Evil Dead" rip-off (at worst) or "Totem" done right (at best).

It turned out the film was closer to "Totem", but yet not anything like it at all. From the very first scene--which features a pair of stereotypical office workers having a mundane conversation by the water cooler--this is a film that surprises at nearly every turn... but does so through a solid, well-paced story rather than half-assed twists and forced scared. If more scripts were written with the care exhibited here, fewer people would be declaring the horror genre dead.

Because most of the fun in watching the mystery of what is really going on in the film come together, this is a hard movie to review. I can say that it's aimed squarely at fans of B- horror and sci-fi movies and that your level of experience with low-budget cheese will be directly proportional to the level of enjoyment you'll derive from this movie. Like the "Grindhouse" flicks from a few years ago, there is nothing terribly original here, as almost everything is a homage to, or a wry commentary upon, horror and sci-fi genre conventions and movies. But this is an effort far superior to those featured in "Grindhouse" (and the spin-offs), because the parts here add up to something greater than the whole and the movies being referenced.

I've already mentioned the exceptional script at the heart of the film, but the quality of the cast is also a major part of what makes the film so enjoyable. While the young actors portraying the teenaged victims in the cabin are all fine in their various roles as slasher-movie stereotypes, the real fun for me was had watching Bradley Whitford, Richard Jenkins, and Amy Acker as technicians working to manipulate events around the other characters. Although their characters are, more or less, the film's villains, I found myself rooting for them as the film moved into its wild climax.

It's been a while since I've had this much fun watching a movie, and I loved every minute of it. The only complaint I have revolves around a lidded coffee cup that Richard Jenkins' character Sitterson is seen fiddling with in the early scenes. That cup is later placed on a control panel full of buttons and levers, the kind of place you wouldn't want to place a coffee cup that might get knocked over and thus spill liquid on sensitive equipment. But, after this obvious set-up of disaster, the cup just vanishes from the story... and that bugs me. I'm a firm believer in the concept that if "there's a gun in the first act, it hast to be fired by the third." The lack of pay-off for the coffee cup business is the only flaw I could see in this otherwise excellent picture.

'Tales of Terror' is Roger Corman at his best

Tales of Terror (aka "Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Terror") (1962)
Starring: Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, Leona Gage, Maggie Pierce, Joyce Jameson, and Debra Paget
Director: Roger Corman
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

This is the film that convinced me that Roger Corman actually could make a good movie, when I first saw it. My first exposure to his work was "The Wasp Woman" and "The Terror", not exactly Corman at his best.

"Tales of Terror" is an anthology film that features three shorts loosely adapted from stories by Edgar Allan Poe, and further tied together by the fact that each star Vincent Price in a different role.

First up, we have the chilling and tragic tale "Morella", where a young woman (Pierce) returns to her childhood home in one last attempt to connect with the father who rejected her (Price) after the death of her mother. Moody throughout and downright terrifying at the end, this story is a excellent excursion into the dark corners of the human heart and a fabulous horror story.

Next, we have "The Black Cat", which folds the story of the same name and "A Cask of Amontillado" into one tale of dark comedy as a drunkard (Lorre) ends up in a hum-dinger of a drinking competition with a snooty wine-taster (Price) after he stumbles into an annual wine festival. When he later discovers that wine-taster has been having an affair with his wife, he decides to take drastic action. This tale is characterized by a taut balance between comedy and a brooding sense of dread, with the on-screen interplay between Lorre and Price being a fabulous bit of movie magic. (They're even better here than in "A Comedy of Terrors".)

Finally, we are presented with "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", an exceedingly creepy tale of a greedy mesmerist (Rathbone) who uses hypnosis to trap the spirit of a dying man (Price) between this world and the next... with terrible consequences for everyone involved. This segment isn't as stunning visually as the first two, but it gets plenty skin-crawly as it builds toward its climax.

The ever-present cheapness in a Corman film is invisible here. I've no doubt that every dollar is present on the screen, but the crew working on this film built some great sets, they're beautifully lit, and the camera work and editing is excellent; the material here looks far better than what I still think of as "typical" Corman. Further, there's no obvious padding to dispel the mood of horror and dread in any of the three stories.

All the principal actors (and even some of the bit-players) give excellent performances. I would even venture that Price might not be the best in this film--Lorre's comedic performance is fabulous, as is Rathbone's turn as a blackhearted villain. (That's not to say that Price isn't great in all the three parts he plays.)

If you like classic horror movies, I'm sure you'll love "Tales of Terror." If you tend to sneer at Corman films, as I used to, maybe this one will show that he can be really, really good when working with the right cast, writers, crew... and when he takes more time than 48 hours to shoot a film.

'Dead Like Me' was a great TV series

Dead Like Me: The Complete First Season (2003)
Starring: Ellen Muth, Mandy Patinkin, Callum Blue, Laura Harris and Cynthia Stevenson
Director: Various
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

"Dead Like Me" was a criminally short-lived television series that focused on Georgia Lass (Muth), a young woman who dies in a freak accident, only to immediately be drafted as a Reaper where she works with Rube (Patinkin), Mason (Blue), and other "undead" who are charged with the task of extracting human souls so they can move onto the afterlife.


The show lasted two seasons, and it presented a curious mix of the macabre and humorous, of the spiritual and the tragic. Much of the show's humor is derived from the way the Reapers have to make their way through their "afterlife" which turns out to be just as much of a grind as living is. An equal amount is also gained from the oblique bureaucracy of the "soul-collecting business" the Reapers are part of--Rube gets assignments from unseen upper-management, and he then gives assignments to the Reapers... usually by writing them on yellow Post-It notes. The tragic aspects of the show come mostly into play by watching Georgia's family attempt to cope with her death, and its disintegration.

For a show that features at least one grisly death per episode, and which often makes light of those grisly deaths, it is a surprisingly uplifting show. Just about every episode carries messages about love, friendship, responsibility, and how much of an impact our presence (and absence) in the lives of those around us has.

(I once saw some comments about the show online where the poster was calling show evil and promoted the occult... well, if a show about the Angels of Death walking among us and having to work odd jobs to pay their rent is tainted by the mark of Satan, then I suppose "Highway to Heaven" must have been the ultimate in evil TV, and Michael Landon must have been just this side of the Anti-Christ... because "Dead Like Me" respects the mystery of God and Heaven enough to NOT claim to have any answers about what lies beyond the Veil.)

The show does take the position that everyone, from the moment of birth, has a time at which they are slated to die. That "appointment" is unavoidable, and if isn't kept through inaction on the part of an assigned Reaper, Bad Things happen to the soul. Even worse things happen if someone is somehow killed (At best, it describes what happens if someone some how is killed before their appointed time, and no Reaper is there to deal with the situation. But the show never gets into exactly where souls go or what happens to them.

"Dead Like Me" is definitely one of the very best television series to ever be produced. It's too bad it only lasted two seasons and a made-for-television movie wrap-up.

'Against the Dark' is weak all around

Against the Dark (2009)
Starring: Jenna Harrison, Skye Bennett, Emma Catherwood, Stephen Hagan, Daniel Percival, Danny Midwinter and Steven Seagal
Director: Richard Crudo
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A plague that turns humans into crazed cannibals has swept the planet. Martial arts master Tao (Seagal) and his band of warriors sweep the city for survivors and help them evacuate to military posts in the coutryside. But will his attempt to rescue hapless survivors from a zombie-infested hospital before the Army bombs the area to rubble lead to all their deaths?



"Against the Dark" is Steven Seagal's first foray into horror movies... and it's a rather sad affair. Seagal once again shows that he is unable to handle the physical demands of extended fight scenes anymore. Based on his performance here, I wonder if he's even able to walk more than a few steps before needed to sit down, because that's basically all he does: He walks down streets, walks down halls, and waves a sword around in front of the camera in an attempt to make it look like he's actually engaging stuntmen in fights. This is no "Resident Evil", "Underworld" or even "Blade".

But, Seagal's insistence on embarrassing himself instead of finding a different niche within the world of film production is a fairly small part of the overall picture. Most of the film is spent following a group of generic survivors who are (for reasons that make absolutely no sense) trying to make their way through a hospital to the back door of the parking garage. The mutant zombies must be scared of driveways or something along those lines. These survivors are so generic and uninteresting that I've already lost the ability to keep them straight in my mind, with the exception of lead survivor/victim-to-be-rescued Jenna Harrison and the obligatory cute survivor kid Skye Bennett.

With the generic nature of the characters comes a state of being uninteresting. Couple that with a boring script that borrows from superior movies (ranging from "Dawn of the Dead" through "Resident Evil" and even "House of the Dead" [although that latter film is only slightly better than this one)) and is 100 percent predictable from beginning to end. The film is so badly written that they can't even properly pull off what should be a chilling moment--when one of the main characters returns as one of the zombies--and instead ends up like a ho-hum bit of violence punctuated by a lame quip.

You can read reviews of other Steven Seagal films at Watching the Detectives by clicking here.

Wilbur Whateley: Wizard of the Roofies

The Dunwich Horror (1970)
Starring: Dean Stockwell, Sandra Dee, Ed Begley, Lloyd Bochner, Donna Baccala and Sam Jaffe
Director: Daniel Haller
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A cute college girl (Dee) is fed supernatural Roofies by 1970s cultist and proto-Emo Wilbur Whateley (Stockwell). Before you know it, he's offering her asa one-night stand to the extra-dimensional horrors known as the Great Old Ones. Will her prudish girlfriend (Baccala) and the curmudgeonly Dr. Henry Armitage (Begley) manage to save her before she becomes a cosmic swinger?



"The Dunwich Horror" is a loose--VERY loose--adaptation of one of H.P. Lovecraft's most famous and most intense works, but, unfortunately, very little of that intensity manages to make it onto the screen.

The film has all the trappings of Lovecraft--the weird Whateley family, the hostile villagers of Dunwich, Miskatonic University, Henry Armitage, strange crystal rocks and even stranger rites and rituals that either summon or ward off invisible horrors and tentacle beasts the likes of which not even the Japanese could imagine! However, the film never comes close to evoking the mood of a Lovecraft story and it barely manages to be scary in a couple of scenes. To make an already borderline dull film even worse director Daniel Haller doesn't seem to know how to end a scenes. There literally isn't a single scene that doesn't go on for anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes too long; it's not that the film feels padded... it just feels like it's incompetently done. (And then there's those horribly long, loud, and garish dream sequences. I'm sure someone thought those were Lovecraftian but I simply found them annoying. Maybe they came across better to movie-goers in 1970, especially those tripping on who-knows-what.)

Except for the languid direction and the painful dream sequence, the film is decent enough. Every performer does a good job with their parts, even if the part merely calls for looking cute as does that played by Sandra Dee, and the cinematography and special effects are also quite well done. The same can be said for the film's score; the main title music seems a bit out of step with the nature of the film, but the variations of the theme featured throughout the film are spot-on. The Whateley House is also a great piece of set design, both inside and out.

"The Dunwich Horror" is one of those films that doesn't have enough good points for me to give it a strong recommendation, nor are there enough bad things about it to make me warn you off it. I was disappointed by it, but if a low-key Lovecraft adaptation that oozes an early 1970s vibe sounds interesting to you, then it might be worth checking out.

The mindblowing power of 'Scanners'

Scanners (aka "Telepathy 2000") (1981)
Starring: Steven Lack, Patrick McGoohan, Michael Ironside, Jennifer O'Neill and Lawrence Dane
Director: David Cronenberg
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

When a private security company's program to develop psychics/psionicists as a company resource (referred to as "scanners") comes under attack from the secret organiation of scanners led by crazed megalomaniac Darryl Revok (Ironside), Dr. Ruth (McGoohan) recruits powerful scanner Cameron Vale (Lack) to locate and perhaps even capture him. But as Vale investigates, he uncovers a tangled conspiracy that is even more frightening and deadly than the powers of the scanners themselves.


"Scanners" is a fast-paced, exciting movie that exists on the ground where sci-fi and horror meets the spy thriller. It's a John Grisham or Robert Ludlum novel with psionicists instead of lawyers and/or spies. The movie oozes atmosphere and tension in every scene... and the exploding head in the film's first five minutes really is a sign of things to come: The plot twists and the ethical issues raised in this film will blow your mind as you watch it unfold.

If you're looking for an intelligent, well-written and well-acted sci-fi flick with horror overtones, you can't go wrong with "Scanners". It's a film that was so good it not only spawned its own sequels ("Scanners II", "Scanners III" and "Scanners: The Showdown") but also two installments of the "Scanner Cop" series. None of these films come close to the original, however. If you haven't seen it, I can't recommend it highly enough.

(BTW, a dim memory of this film was one of the inspirations for my "Mind Over Matter" d20 Modern RPG supplement from a few years ago. I was gratified to see that this was one of those rare cases where my memory of the film held up to watching it again.)