The Crow: City of Angels

Title: The Crow: City of Angels

Director: Tim Pope

Released: 1996

Starring: Vincent Perez, Mia Kirshner, Richard Brooks, Thuy Trang, Iggy Pop, Thomas Jane, Vincent Castellanos, Eric Acosta, Beverley Mitchell, Ian Dury

Plot: When mechanic Ashe (Perez) and his son are murdered under the orders of Los Angeles drug kingpin Judah Earl (Brooks) after they accidently witness a murder being carried out by his followers. Resurrected as the Crow Ashe now sets out to seek his revenge.

 

Review: It was always going to be a difficult task to follow on from the cult original film but believing that they could make a franchise out of the idea, the Weinstein’s offered the job to Music video director Tim Pope for his feature film debut. They also brought in David S. Goyer to write the script who at this point was yet to really make a name for himself having previously written the scripts for “Death Warrant” and “Demonic Toys” with this film sitting on the cusp of his mainstream success as he also working the scripts for “Dark City” and “Blade” at the same time he was writing this script.

Moving the story from Detroit to Los Angeles the look of the cityscape is still pretty much the same landscape of seemingly eternal darkness and urban decay. Despite this similarity Pope and Goyer had initially wanted to make a film which was different from the first film especially out of respect to Brandon Lee. who only for the Weinstein’s in their usual misguided wisdom to make demands for the film to be recut so that it was similar to original as possibly ultimately leading to both Pope and Goyer disowning the film as it no longer represented their vision. Goyer was especially dismayed by the changes having fought to cut out the resurrection of villains Top Dollar and Grange from the first film.

One character who does return from the first film as well as admittedly older is Sarah who is no longer the skateboarding tomboy of the first film but here is all grown up and working in the city as a tattoo artist and painter. Here she serves to fill in the mythology when required as she helps Ashe on his quest for vengeance. One of the potential scripts for the film had her returning as the female Crow, which while certainly a cool idea is one I was glad they didn’t go with for the film and even though Sarah returning wasn’t anywhere on the list of things I’d want to see from a sequel here it still works and her appearance also means we get to see Ian Dury showing surprising acting ability as her boss Noah.

Equally surprising in their acting ability is Iggy Pop whose acting C.V. is surprisingly more extensive than his brief appearances in “Tank Girl” and “Hardware” and here as one of Judah’s thugs “Curve” he makes up for turning down the role of “Funboy” in the original film and turns out to be one of the better aspects of the film and really gives us one of the more odious villains of the film and arguably the real villain of the piece had they choose to cut out the theatrical antics of Judah. It equally be noted that the amount of musicians appearing in the film would have been increased has the casting gone differently with Jon Bon Jovi originally being interested in playing the lead while Tori Amos was considered for the role of Sarah only for her to turn down the role.

The role of the Crow as played by Perez is thankfully not a rehash of the Eric Draven version of The Crow and even though the make up makes little sense that he would share the same dark Jester design. True Perez overplays the theatrical moments as seen during the scene he stalks Spider Monkey (Castellanos) which just comes off as deranged than intimidating. Still seeing him stalk his foes with his Spirit crow on his shoulder looks fantastic much like the scenes of him riding through the streets on his motorcycle. It’s just a shame that he’s not given anything to do which makes him any more than your usual action hero, only pulling out the one creative kill through the film and certainly giving us none of the themed kills while the Crow outlines often end up feeling forced.

The villains we get this time round are far from as defined as they were in the original film and ultimately come off as something of a mixed bag of undeveloped characters who like so many aspects of the film you can’t help but feel would have been much more effective had their characters been given chance to breathe. Sure they all have their own vices (drugs, voyeurism etc) but with the exception of the sole female member Kali (Trang) they are nearly all interchangeable. Worst of all is out supposed big villain Judah who is just a mess of theatricality and mystic nonsense. Perhaps Michael Wincott set the bar too high as “Top Dollar” in the first film but here everything about Judah feels like a poor imitation.

While the mythology of “The Crow” was kept simple in the original film here the film attempts to expand upon things so that its no longer the case that Ashe has his powers while the crow is alive, but also that its a power which can be transferred which feels like one of those ideas which might have worked in the script but only serves to take away from the film which in its final quarter ends up descending into mythical nonsense including Ashe being able to command a murder of crows which really add nothing to the film.

When I originally saw this film I honestly didn’t care for it, but now rewatching it and knowing what to expect it feels more frustrating to see glimpses of what could have been had it not been ultimately another casualty of Weinstein meddling. What it did give the franchise though was the potential to go anywhere it wanted essentially as no longer was “The Crow” just Eric Draven but essentially any person who was wronged and in the films / novels / comics which followed we have seen that principle creatively used aswell as the series “Stairway to Heaven” which ran for one season before being axed on a cliffhanger. In the scheme of the franchise this might not be the worst, but its a far cry from the best and as such provides little than a passing distraction for fans of the series and little really for anyone else.

Black Christmas (2006)

Title:  Black Christmas

Director:  Glen Morgan
Released:  2006

Starring: Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert, Crystal Lowe, Kristen Cloke, Andrea Martin, Oliver Hudson, Karin Konoval, Dean Friss, Robert Mann, Jessica Harmon, Leela Savasta, Kathleen Kole, Howard Siegel

Plot: Bily Lenz has been locked up in a mental asylum for the last 15 years after murdering his mother and her lover aswell as gouging out the eye of his sister. Now on Christmas Eve he escapes and returns to his former home only to find that has in the time since his incarcinration

 

Review:  Yet another remake while one which chooses to tackle Bob Clark’s 1974 original which as I covered in my review of the original was also one of the first slasher and one which would have a much more subtle tone than the slashers which followed in its wake. The remake however is very much a different beast as here director Glen Morgan tackling his second remake after “Willard” attempts to update the plot of the film by adding a back story for Bily while also upgrading the body count and violence seemingly in an attempt to craft a more traditional slasher out of the original.

As a result of this Morgan spends the first hour of the film attempting recreate the setup of the original film while cutting out some aspects such as the abortion dilemma and the fact that everyone seemingly was a drunk. It’s also within this first hour that Morgan also randomly attempts to work in a back story for Billy as we are treated to a series of flashbacks to his childhood and the events leading up to his incarceration, however these are not shown as one sequence but bizarrely spaced out into three separate segments which are clumsily dropped into the film often at the most random of moments. What makes this worse is the fact that none of these flashbacks really add anything to the film and seemingly were only included as a way to explain why Bily is the way he is, much like Rob Zombie’s “Halloween” remake only with much less successful results.

Here the character of Bily still makes his unique prank calls, only now he inexplicably suffers with severe jaundice due to liver disease and which in turn means that we now have to deal with a killer who looks like he’s auditioning for a live action version of “The Simpsons”. If that wasn’t bad enough his sister Agnes is a product of his mother raping him after she locks him in the attic to stop him revealing the fact that she had killed Billy’s father. When it comes to the kills he now also has a fetish for removing the eyes of his victims. Needless to say this is a much more gratuitous slasher we have this time around as subtly is thrown out the window in favour of splatter and a healthy body count.

Surprisingly Morgan had originally planned for this film to be closer to the original, having been friends with Bob Clark and only tackling the remake when he’d got Clark’s permission to do so. However during the production he frequently found himself clashing with producer Harvey Weinstein who insisted that he make the film more gory and part of the reason why Morgan has since disowned the film. Its equally worth noting that the fact that this film was a flop along with his remake of “Willard” caused Morgan to retire from directing which as of the time of writing has yet to change.

Despite Morgan’s feelings about the gore in the film it is one of the stronger aspects of the film when it works, as several moments in particular those involving eye balls being gorged or munched on. The other kills however all come with a high level of creativity which includes a death by ice skate and a falling icicle. This film also might be one of the only occasions I can think of where someone is killed by impaled on a Christmas tree more so when most Christmas trees only have to be looked at wrong to fall over so you have to excuse my scepticism that someone could actually be impaled upon one. Most of these deaths come after the hour mark for this film and once they start happening they quickly start to rack up with no real spacing between them which would be more of an issue if they weren’t so entertaining to watch.

The other main issue here is that none of the girls are particular distinguishable from each other, as they all share seemingly the same personality while once more seemingly been cast for their looks than their acting abilities as unlike the girls of the original I couldn’t really tell who anyone was especially when none of them really have any sort of basic character to define any of them. Infact the only character who gets any sort of character is our crazed killer Billy and that’s more down to the gratuitous amount of flashbacks we get more than anything else.

Consider that Morgan gave us the wonderfully daft Final Destination 1 & 3 I was expecting more from this film, hoping that the critical lashing it had received had been uncalled for. Sadly though this film fails to improve upon the original, though its hard to say if the fault lies with Morgan or the interference from Weinstein, more so when the finish film is left so uneven as it tries to find a place between the two ideas of how the film should be shot.  As such this is now just another failed remake while one scattered with hints of how much better it could have been.

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane

Title: All The Boys Love Mandy Lane
Director: Jonathan Levine
Released: 2006
Staring: Amber Heard, Anson Mount, Whitney Able, Michael Welch, Edwin Hodge, Aaron Himelstein, Luke Grimes, Melissa Price, Adam Powell

Plot: Mandy Lane (Heard) is beautiful and pure while also being desired by the majority of the boys at her school and also sharing a close friendship with outcast Emmet (Welch). Invited to a party at a friends ranch, Mandy soon becomes a target of lust for the boys, all eager to be the one who finally manages to sleep with her, but when a hooded stranger shows up at the ranch, its only the beginning of a real killer weekend.



Review: What is it about the Weinstein’s which causes them to make such lousy decisions, with the most bile inducing of these choices, especially for those us based in the UK being their decision to split the Tarantino / Rodriguez double feature homage “Grindhouse” into it’s separate features, rather than allow us Brits to see the original cut of the film, after it didn’t perform as well as expected stateside and this is only after a heavy international promotional campaign, making it only all the more of a kick in the teeth when they didn’t even bother with either a limited cinema release or DVD release of this cut. This decision did however prompt me to fly out to LA to see the film, in an insane weekend which saw me leave work to get on a plane for god knows how many hours, to then go from the airport on a hunt for a cinema showing the film, before then returning to the airport and flying back to the UK and pretty much straight back to work the next day, which might sound insane but was honestly was totally worth it! Due to the failure of that film, it would also serve to have a knock on effect on the distribution for this film, which at the time was also owned by the Weinstein’s, only for them to sell the film beliving that "Grindhouse" failing to make an impact was the begining of a decline in popularity for horror and sold the film to “Senator Entertainment US” only for them to go out of business and throw the film into distribution limbo, which meant that it has only now received a US release, almost three years after it had it’s UK release, though honestly despite this I have only now just gotten around to watching it myself.

From the beginning Director Levine chooses to shoot the character of Mandy with an almost siren esq aura, as a pure creature whom the boys in her high school are willing to do anything to impress and more to the point anything to get into her pants. This is only further proven by one member of the popular group of kids, who not only fails fatally with his attempt to impress her by jumping off the roof of his house during the opening pool party, but also provides a great example of what can be best described as “Thinning the herd”. Flash forward nine months and Mandy is non the less alluring with the story of what happened at the party only adding to her allure it would seem, somthing especially proven by the latest group of boys all wanting to try their chances. Still Mandy is the sort of girl that many of us remember from school who had that something about them, which made them seemingly irresistible to our hormone driven selves back then and it’s a credit to Heard that she has managed to not only capture this essence but also convincingly portray on screen and archetype which can’t truly be described, while the rest of the cast get the considerably easier task of playing more character with more traditional and cookie cutter style characterisation.

From the outset it might not seem any different from any of the other cookie cutter slashers filling the market, after all we have the usual group of oversexed teens, going to some remote location and meeting their maker in a variety of creative ways. So yep that’s all covered here, but were it differs is the clear desire by Director Levine to not obey the restrictions of the genre, as he plays around with camera styles and keeps an almost dream like feeling running throughout the film, only allowing the occasional moment of sobriety in which he shoots the film straight, all this aided by a soundtrack which avoids the usual noisy indie bands instead opting for chilled out shoegaze bands and a classical score to keep the calm feeling, which he sundrenched and isolated ranch setting only further instils, only making it the more effective when he takes his slasher from the traditional nocturnal stalk and slash pattern and continues into brilliant daylight, turning paradise truly into a nightmarish landscape, similar to the effect seen using the Australian outback in Greg McLean’s shocking debut “Wolf Creek” (2005), with the colour palette leaning towards yellows and browns providing an interesting washed out look.

When it comes to the gore, Levine gets pretty creative and gives us some different deaths than the usual Teen meets Axe / Knife / Random blunt object and even though the identity of the hooded slasher is revealed shortly after he is introduced, it still doesn’t take anything away from the film, as this killer is more about motive than mystery, especially when appears to enjoy taunting his intended victims and takes the time to play with each of them, before delivering the final death blows. Still Levine at least attempts to throw a red hearing into the mix, whom even after the slasher is revealed is still left with questionable motives, until Levine decides to remove them from the equation.

“All The Boys Love Mandy Lane” is a low key horror film and I think that’s why it works so well, as it doesn’t feel the needs to be big, brash and loud like so many of it’s slasher counterparts and while it’s style might turn off your more hyperactive slasher fan, for those of you who like an edge of indie cool to your films, then this might be what happens when you apply that edge to the slasher genre, especially with Levine not allowing his vision to be restricted and instead filming it how he wants to and forcing the rest of the world to bend to his vision and although it might turn of some, it’s a refreshing change from just going through the same slasher motions, which “Wolf Creek” also used if perhaps with a more brutal edge than seen here.