All Things HORROR

orpheus said:
I think Adgy owns ten versions of Evil Dead. :P
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Yeah, but has he got one of these????

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Ooga Booga (2013) | Horror Movie, DVD, & Book Reviews, News, Interviews at Dread Central

What the hell did I just watch?

Charles Band’s Ooga Booga opens with a scene revolving around the drunken antics of a rinky dink children’s television show host named Hambo, an old white guy dressed like a farmhand except for his rainbow wig and pig nose, with a voice so raspy he sounds like Nick Nolte after gargling razor blades. I spent this entire sequence wondering what any of this had to do with the Ooga Booga doll.

It took at least 15-minutes to reveal that African-American med school graduate Devin is a lifelong Hambo fan turned friend ala Bart Simpson and Krusty the Klown. The freshly fired Hambo unveils to Devin his line of very politically incorrect action figures called “Badass Dolls” that he’s convinced will become the next big thing. He rewards Devin’s friendship with one of the first dolls off the assembly line: “Ooga Booga”, a stereotypical African bushman with a tiny spear in his hand and an even tinier blunt in his mouth.

I was marveled at the long road around it took just setting up how Devin comes to acquire the Ooga Booga doll. Not as marveled as I would be by the mere seconds it would take for a malfunctioning frozen Slushy machine to shoot lightning and Weird Science Devin’s soul into the doll moments after he gets gunned down by a racist cop in a convenience store.

The rest of the movie is the Ooga Booga doll possessed by Devin’s spirit and his girlfriend Donna going Death Wish on the three racist convenience store robbers whose murder of a clerk led to Devin being murdered by the racist cop who gets acquitted by a racist judge who it turns out employs all four of them as part of white supremacist drugs and prostitution ring.

What the hell did I just watch?

I’ll tell you what I just watched. I watched a movie where Donna gets gang raped in an alley by the three stooges. This rather unpleasant scene is immediately followed up by a humorous scene where her Ooga Booga doll boyfriend puts down his blunt long enough to watch her shower as he loudly masturbates.

I just watched a movie where there are only two white characters not portrayed as unabashed racists and one’s a cowardly cop and the other’s a lecherous drunk who probably does harbor some latently racist tendencies considering he dreamed up a line of action figures that includes a bucktoothed Asian called “The Gook”.

The three bumbling henchmen sit around an apartment adorned with Confederate flags even though I’m fairly certain the film is not set in the South. Stacy Keach plays a crimeboss judge who threatens to fire his housekeeper because, and I quote, “Leaving a window open like that is an open invitation to jungle-bunnies!” The racist cop who doesn’t even try hiding his racism in public is actually named Officer White. The white characters are themselves such racist caricatures the movie nearly becomes guilty of reverse racism.

With its combination of audaciousness and chintziness, had there just been more over-the-top gore and T&A I would have sworn I was watching a Troma movie and not a Full Moon production.

I feel the need to point out that Donna is possibly the worst vigilante in the history of cinema. She has terrible investigative skills, gets raped, beaten up, forcibly removed from an apartment by an old lady, leaves her wallet behind at the scene of a multiple homicide… Thank goodness Ooga Booga dispenses much of the eye-gouging justice because Donna’s actions would have Ms. 45 is spinning in her grave. Did I actually see her smile after getting sexually assaulted because she successfully used this as a distraction to swipe a set of their keys?

And yet compared to a film like Black Devil Doll Ooga Booga still comes across as a model of restraint.

Karen Black turns up as a crazy old shut-in so obsessed with television she thinks people she’s seen on the news are just reality show stars. Her two scenes were, I think, intended to be comical, except Black plays the role so believably out of touch with reality they end up being far more bizarre than humorous. Oddly enough, the best performance in the film in a role that’s so pointless cutting her two fairly lengthy scenes would have made little to no difference.

I dare say the puppeteers succeeded in getting a more believable performance out of the Ooga Booga doll than Band did most of the human cast. It helps that Ooga Booga can’t talk and only makes a loony “ooga booga” noise when ambushing enemies and, sigh, jerking off. The human actors aren’t as lucky saddled with dialogue that rarely ever sounds human.

There’s a voice in my head that keeps telling me I should be tearing Ooga Booga to shreds. There’s also that voice in my head that once told me to write a four-star review of The Gingerdead Man. They could be the same voice. For all its faults this one succeeds in its own loopy, sometimes sleazy, rough around the edges, b-movie sort of way. Had Ooga Booga come up out during the 1970’s heyday of blacksploitation it would probably have a minor cult following today.

What the hell did I just watch and why am I giving it three out of five?
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Anyone else need to see this like I do?
 
2 copies left on amazon.co.uk for ?8. Worth being impatient or should I just be patient?
 
Whats that in real money??? 12 or 13 bucks? Like I said, I liked it fine when I saw it. It wasn't earthshattering, but it was a solid movie. Hurm...judgement call.
 
jerseydevil said:
Whats that in real money??? 12 or 13 bucks? Like I said, I liked it fine when I saw it. It wasn't earthshattering, but it was a solid movie. Hurm...judgement call.
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Well, I wasn't a fan of Warm Bodies, so I'm on the fence. I'll probably flip a coin.
 
Benderspink Develops Ahmet Zappa’s MONSTER X | Collider

It seems neither heroes nor villains can do it all themselves in movies these days. A new project from writer Ahmet Zappa (The Odd Life of Timothy Green) is being compared to The Avengers as it features a mash-up of major movie icons. Zappa’s Monster X centers on a supergroup of famous monstrous icons like Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Mr. Hyde and more (ten in all). The story centers on the characters who assemble in order to defend humanity against a greater threat. Zappa co-wrote the script and will further develop it before shopping it to buyers, although Benderspink has optioned the initial iteration. Hit the jump for more.

Heat Vision reports that Zappa and Benderspink (Chris Bender, J.S. Spink and Jake Weiner) will develop Monster X. Zappa is immersed in monsters at the moment as he is also developing Monster Witness Relocation Program and The Monsterous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless at Disney. The former, based on Zappa’s novel, centers on “a brother and sister who discover they hail from a long line of monster hunters. They have to learn the family business quick when their father is kidnapped and they take on the most diabolical creature in the universe.”
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Monster Squad meets the Avengers????
 
EVIL DEAD Remake Review. EVIL DEAD Stars Jane Levy and Shiloh Fernandez | Collider

If your goal is to give the people exactly what they want, then you better give them the best you’ve got otherwise it’s obvious pandering. Fede Alvarez‘ remake of Evil Dead doesn’t not pander. It fiercely grabs the audience by the throat, and vomits as much blood and viscera as we can stomach it, and not everyone will be able to stomach what the horror flick has to offer. Alvarez and cinematographer Aaron Morton set a creepy vibe, but their primary interest is in gleefully laying out the implements of destruction. “We know what you came for,” the film says with a devilish smile. And then it lets loose violence beyond all reason. The fear eventually fades, the emotions recede into the background, but Evil Dead delivers on the bloody mayhem that needs far more than an MPAA rating. It needs a warning label.
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[BD Review] 'Evil Dead' Is A Thrillingly Gory Blast -Bloody Disgusting

After things kick into high gear Evil Dead becomes absolutely unstoppable. If you’ve seen the trailers, this is exactly the movie they’ve been selling all along – and somehow it still manages to surprise. For one, it’s even gorier than you’re expecting. I seriously don’t have a clue as to how they wrangled an “R” rating here. Blood, pus, bone fragments, limbs and brains are flung around with playful abundance and the result is both punishing and exhilarating.

Even better is the film’s sense of escalation. There were literally moments where I felt like I was flying with joy. I’m obviously the target audience for something like this, but it’s been a long time since I got a charge so perfectly pitched between catharsis and repulsion. Stripped away from any sense of moral obligation, the violence and cruelty of Evil Dead is intriguingly warm hearted and comforting, probably because it stems from the film’s overriding need to please you. This film doesn’t condemn its audience, it exalts it – and as a result it’s able to achieve a sustained symphony of carnage that energizes rather than exhausts. By the time the film hits its climax – during which the sky literally rains blood for the entirety of the final battle – I was sort of wishing it would never end.

It’s also something you should see in a theater. While I’m sure I’ll get a lot of replay out of the eventual Blu-ray release, this is something you need to experience with your fellow horror comrades. You’re going to want to share this. You’re going to want to hear your friends laugh, scream and utterly lose themselves. This is your Avengers, this is your Avatar, this is whatever you’ve been wanting a “big” horror movie to be for over a decade. Not a perfect movie, but a near perfect experience.

Evil Dead is a *****ing blast.
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Evil Dead (2013) | Horror Movie, DVD, & Book Reviews, News, Interviews at Dread Central

There are pretty much two questions we all had going into Fede Alvarez's Evil Dead "rebirth" (a term the director used that seems rather fitting, more so than remake anyway): one, is it going to be good. and two, is it going to be good enough to stand on its own merits?

The answer to both those questions is HELLS YEAH.

Breathe a sigh of relief, fiends- Evil Dead delivers the goods and then some, even managing to step out and create its own universe that still wholly adheres to the one Sam Raimi concocted over three decades now. The amount of intensity, violence and downright nastiness that Alvarez manages to cram into Evil Dead is brutal, visceral and will prove to be an endurance test (in a good way) for anyone out there who goes into it thinking this is going to be another "by-the-numbers" studio remake.
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EVIL DEAD Sequel News and EVIL DEAD 4 News from Director Fede Alvarez | Collider


Talking about his Evil Dead 2, Alvarez says he’s not officially on board yet because it depends on where they plan to take the sequel:

Last night, you all mentioned you were in the process of writing Evil Dead 2. Are you attached to that film, and where do you see this going?

FEDE ALVAREZ: I think it’s going to depend on where we take it. Right now, we just got to write it. For me, it’s if we manage to agree, but we’re just starting to build a story and figure out what kind of movie it’s going to be, and it depends on what it is. It depends on the story we find, because personally, I think it has to shock everybody. It has to go to a different place just like Army of Darkness did with Evil Dead 2. It has to do that switch that every Evil Dead movie did with the previous one.

Well you now have this new Evil Dead brand, but what does that mean if you’re not copying the sequels, because Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 is slapstick. It’s a comedy, and that doesn’t seem like it would fit with what you’ve established here. What does that mean in terms of going forward with the vision you’ve now established?

ALVAREZ: Well, right now you have to create something different and completely new. And it’s exciting for me because in a long time, this, the new one—the next one—is going to be a completely new, fresh, 100% original, you bet. Because this one has so many ties to the first one that at the end of the day, being what it is, it’s like a sound of the original movie. But this next one, it’s not a remake of Evil Dead 2. It’s something completely new and different. I’m so excited to see where that’s going to go.

It sounds like Evil Dead 2 is at a very early script stage, which isn’t too surprising. The film is currently on the press circuit, so Alvarez probably has no time to get to working on the sequel. However, if Evil Dead is as successful with the main stream as it was here at SXSW, then you can expect Evil Dead 2 hit the fast-track.

I also asked Alvarez about a film that’s been on a much slower track: Sam Raimi’s long-promised Evil Dead 4. Since the two filmmakers are in communication, I asked about the status of the project:

Has Sam Raimi talked to you because he’s writing Evil Dead 4 now—

ALVAREZ: He’s not! He’s not.

He’s not writing it?

ALVAREZ: He wants to do it. I can tell you that because we’ve talked about it. He wants to try and find the best movie to do it. He has a story, he pitched it to me about what he wants to do with Bruce and Ash on Evil Dead 4. It’s definitely something he wants to do. At the end of the day, bringing this saga back to life is the best way to do it. And look, they don’t call him “The Master” just because.
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