The Devil’s Rock (2011) – Review

What is the true face of evil? When one looks back across history it's clear that mankind has had some rather spotty moments; the Mongols under Genghis Khan were genocidal murders, the Spanish Inquisition tortured and murdered in the name of God, and American colonist wiped out entire colonies of Native Americans - just to name a few - but when it comes to horror in the movies one of the more "go to" groups for exploring man’s darker side is, of course, the Nazi party. The area most explored by various media is the idea of Hitler being some dark collector of the occult as has been purveyed in literature, movies, and video games for decades – that this is mostly based on rumour and complete fiction is beside the point as he was an evil bastard and a complete nutter, which makes for a great antagonist in a horror film – which brings us to The Devil's Rock a horror film that uses the idea of Nazis dabbling with the occult to ensure victory.

 The New Zealand film The Devil’s Rock is one of many movies dealing with Nazism and the occult, most recently we had the fun Nazi monster movie Overlord where evil Nazi scientists were trying to create super soldiers with dark forces, and before that we’ve had some solid gems like The Outpost (2008) and Dead Snow (2009), but with The Devil’s Rock we get a film that works more as a stage play, what with its single location and small cast it could almost be considered David Mamet meets David Cronenberg. The basic premise to The Devil’s Rock is that two New Zealand commandos were sent to the Channel Islands as part of a series of sabotage and distraction raids to draw the German military's attention away from the planned landings in Normandy.

 

One has to admit this is a great setting for a horror movie.

Captain Ben Grogan (Craig Hall) and Sergeant Joe Tane (Karlos Drinkwater) paddle ashore to Forau Island - where the Germans have constructed a massive long-range gun and observation tower - with the intention of meeting up with other members of the raid to destroy the gun and the fortifications. Unfortunately, no other Allied soldiers arrive and so it’s up to  Grogan and Tane to pull off the job on their own, made more complicated when they hear horrific screams coming from within the fortification's imposing structure. Grogan wants to investigate while Tane points out, “This is not a rescue mission. That's not our war, that's not our fight. The gun, that's our mission.” But with the screams of a woman echoing in his ears, Grogan decides to enter the fortification, telling Tane to give him ten minutes. Now if Grogan had known he was in a horror movie he’d have thought twice before investigating strange noises let alone horrifying screams.

 

Needless to say, things aren't what they seem.

Poor Sergeant Tane is shot dead by German SS officer Colonel Klaus Meyer (Matthew Sunderland), because he'd stupidly entered the facility to look for his pal, while the heroic Captain Grogan is soon captured by Meyer. It’s at this point we get your standard Nazi interrogator stuff while slowly picking up all the occult trappings that seem to litter the place. Turns out Colonel Meyer was brought to his island after soldiers discovered a "Dark Grimoire" and the German High Command hoped to use the spells within the book to unleash demonic weapons against the allied forces, but the demon in question wasn’t too keen on playing nice with the Nazis – even creatures of Hell have standards I guess – and now Meyer is the last remaining German.

 

Is this the true face of evil?

We get a bunch of role reversals, with one or the other briefly getting the upper hand before Grogan finally makes his way to the source of those horrific screams, only to discover his wife Helena (Gina Varela) chained to a wall, that his wife died during a German air raid years ago making this all the more strange. We learn from Meyer that she is a shapeshifting demon who takes on the form of loved ones so as to more easily lure her prey and that the German plan was to let her loose in London where "She would make Jack the Ripper look like a kindergarten tale." Of course, the major flaw in this plan was in thinking that a bunch of idiot Nazis could make a deal with the Devil.

 

“You think you’re evil? Check out these choppers!”

As horror films go The Devil’s Rock is a decent little entry, and its small cast and claustrophobic location all work to great effect here, but where the film falters is in the delivering of actually chills or scares. The demonic visage is an example of excellent practical make-up effects but the design itself is rather generic – all horns and sharp teeth and something we often saw on Buffy the Vampire Slayer – while also not quite rising to the level of being frightening. I never once considered her to be a threat, all the snarling and wheedling aside she doesn’t come across as much of an opponent.  Was this part of writer-director Paul Campion’s intent on illustrating that a creature from the bowels of Hell isn’t on par with the homegrown evil here on Earth? If so Campion falters with this message as the third act turns into your generic supernatural confrontation, and if you don’t see the twist coming you probably weren’t paying attention. Overall, The Devil’s Rock is a decent occult monster movie, the cast all provide credible performances – if we forgive Kiwi Mathew Sunderland’s somewhat dodgy German accent – and the premise is solid enough if not all that original, making The Devil’s Rock a fine movie to catch on late-night television.

 

The film does a few delicious moments.

Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon (2012) – Review

Continuity and the Scooby-Doo franchise has always been an "oil and water" sort of thing, with retconning and rebooting happening with almost every new incarnation, but in the case of Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon two beloved characters were basically retconned out of existence. Back in the late 70s Hanna-Barbera released a 60-minute package show called The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour which starred the Scooby gang as well as the superhero team of Blue Falcon and Dynomutt, who themselves would often team-up with Mystery Incorporated, but with the release Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon the Blue Falcon and Dynomutt are now considered to be fictional characters.  Ruh-roh?

In this movie we find Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) distracted from mystery-solving by the upcoming Mega Mondo Pop Comic Con-A-Palooza in San De Pedro – a not so subtle parody of the San Diego International Comic-Con – where Shaggy and Scooby hope to win the convention’s costume contest, dressed as their comic book heroes Blue Falcon and Dynomutt. Velma (Mindy Cohn) is less than thrilled with the idea of attending a comic book convention, the concept of superheroes being too farfetched for her, but Daphne (Grey Griffin) is eager to attend as this will give her the chance to expand her collection of Littlest Fuzzies.  Meanwhile, Fred (Frank Welker) is looking forward to seeing the trailer for the new darker edgier Blue Falcon movie.

 

The Blue Falcon and Dynomutt as you’ve never seen them before!

Lucky for Velma there seems to be a real mystery on hand as the villainous Mr. Hyde (John DiMaggio), a character out of the original Blue Falcon television show, appears during the trailer presentation and then proceeds to wreak havoc at the convention. Like any Scooby-Doo mystery we are treated to several suspects as to who could be masquerading as the monster du jour but unlike many of the gang’s previous mysteries the case of the "Mask of the Falcon"  brings us several credible suspects, all with decent motives and an overall crime that if a bit implausible all goes towards making this one of the better entries in the direct-to-video movie series.
Note: As in many Scooby-Doo mysterys the villain here pulls off feats of engineering that would have made him more money in selling that technology than in any crime he could commit using it.

 

I'm sure the military would love a forty-foot killer robot with laser eyes.

And who are today’s suspects? First off we have actor Owen Garrison (Jeff Bennett) who played the Blue Falcon in the original television show and now finds himself banned from wearing the costume in public due to the studio releasing the new "darker" Blue Falcon movie and have since turned their backs on him.  They've also pulled the television re-runs as well as refusing to release the old show on Green-Ray. This all makes Owen a very credible suspect and his furious rantings against the new movie doesn't help much as it just puts him at the top of Fred, Velma and Daphne’s list. Next up is movie producer Jennifer Severin (Nika Futterman) who is the writer, producer and director of this new Blue Falcon movie and the Mr. Hyde attacks could easily be part of some elaborate publicity stunt for her movie, and then there is actor Brad Adams (Diedrich Bader) who is playing the new Blue Falcon and finds the character beneath his talents. Finally, there is Hank Prince (Gregg Berger) a comic shop owner whose booth at the convention is making a killing as the attacks have raised interest in the Blue Falcon and allowed him to jack up his prices.

 

How much would you pay for a Blue Falcon Fuzzie?

So which one of these suspicions characters are behind the Mr. Hyde attacks? None of them actually, turns out that the man responsible for Mr. Hyde is Jack Rabble (Fred Tatasciore) a former battle bots champion who now makes a living signing autographs.  Over the years he'd shared a booth at numerous conventions with Owen Garrison and he came up with the whole Mr. Hyde shtick after listening to Garrison bitch and complain about not being able to revive the Blue Falcon, and the whole thing was an elaborate scheme to divert an armoured truck carrying the $5,000,000 dollars entrance fees for the convention with the Blue Falcon motif  in place to make Owen Garrison the perfect patsy. This particular criminal plan may have been a little too elaborate, and the obvious robotic nature of Mr. Hyde’s attacks clearly pointed at someone with Jack Rabble's skill set, but the whole framing of the original Blue Falcon actor was a nice touch and made this movie stand out for having one of the better mysteries in the series.

Stray Observations:

• Daphne’s almost pathological need to collect Little Fuzzies is a cute running gag but it's a bit of a step back with her character from what we’ve seen in some of the later incarnations. Both she and Fred don’t get to do much in this movie other than providing goofy comic relief.
• Jennifer Severin is an obvious jab at producer-director Michael Bay, and her comment “When the studio asked me to put The Blue Falcon on the big screen I only had one question, instead of a story how about I just blow things up?” This is something you can picture Michael Bay saying.
• Brad Adams is a beautiful parody of the method actor of today, “I never studied the older Blue Falcon, in fact I’ve never even watched the show, instead I bring to the Blue Falcon a clean slate seeing him as a divided soul in the endless debate over the choices he’s had to make in very real and dangerous world. That the Blue Falcon is an enigma living a life trapped within the possibility of certainty.”
• Owen Garrison’s despondent television actor is very reminiscent of The Grey Ghost from the Batman Animated Series, which in turn was based on actor Clayton Moore's real-life struggle against the owners of The Lone Ranger property, who had prevented him from making public appearances in costume and went so far as to sue him.
• A despondent Scooby-Doo tosses his Dynomutt costume in a trash can stating, "I'm Dynomutt no more" a nice reference to the classic Amazing Spider-Man issue that followed Gwen Stacy’s death.
• This is not the first time we’ve seen a darker version of The Blue Falcon and Dynomutt, in the 2013 series Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated we got a Frank Castle/Punisher type vigilante version of The Blue Falcon.

 

I’d pay to see a movie based on this version.

Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon is an incredibly fun entry, one that lovingly lampoons the direction of the “Dark and Gritty” superhero films that followed the release of Tim Burton’s Batman, and the setting of this mystery at the "Not San Diego Comic-Con" opened up the show for some great visual gags – the art designers and animators must have had a field day coming up with all those costumed conventioneers – and then the mystery itself being rather clever makes Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon a personal favourite of mine.

The Sword in the Stone (1963) - Review

Disney's The Sword in the Stone was an animated retelling of the classic Arthurian tale, sadly it focuses solely on the period between Uther Pendragon's death and young Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone, which is not intrinsically a bad idea but the fun and fascinating stuff really doesn't kick in until Arthur meets Guinevere and forms the Round Table.  So what does Disney offer us instead?

The film is loosely based on T. H. White's trilogy The Once and Future King, and as expected Disney took fairly large liberties with this version, and it begins with the standard Disney opening - a literal opening of a storybook - where we are told that the good King Uther has died of sickness leaving no heir to rule England.  Right off the bat one familiar with the legend will have noticed that Disney has decided to leave out the whole Uther "raping" the fair Igraine and the handing over of the child of this union to Merlin, as well his subsequent murder by his enemies. That this was left out of a Disney animated feature is not at all surprising – you can count on one hand the number of times Disney animated movies have included rape, the answer, of course, being zero - but the ongoing Disneyfication of classic tales still irks me a little. What does happen is that a sword miraculously appears in London (a version of London a few centuries too early I might add) embedded inside an anvil, with the inscription, "Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king, born of England." Unfortunately, no one is able to perform this feat so England is plunged into a Dark Age.

Note: In this movie young Arthur goes by the insulting nickname of Wart but for the sake of this review I will be referring to him as Arthur.

We are then introduced to twelve-year-old Arthur (Rickie Sorensen), an orphan boy being raised by boorish knight Sir Ector (Sebastian Cabot) and tormented by the brutish lug Kay (Norman Alden), and his days are either spent squiring for Kay or spending them as their kitchen slave. This all changes when Merlin (Karl Swenson) enters the picture and decides, for unknown reasons, that Arthur needs an education, but this so-called education mainly focus on turning the poor boy into various animals – stuff like mathematics and the sciences must have hit the editing room floor– so he's turned into a little fish to learn that brains are more important than brawn, into a bird to learn the majesty of flight, and then into a squirrel to learn about the power of love.

Now, this last sequence is truly baffling as Arthur/squirrel has a cute girl squirrel fall madly in love with him and when he asks Merlin for help he is told, "She has chosen you and squirrels mate for life." Merlin being a dick is a theme here and Arthur is only turned back into a boy when another amorous squirrel fixates on Merlin, which causes the wizard to change them both back to human form to escape her paws.  We are then left with the disturbing image of a cute girl squirrel crying as Arthur leaves her.

Note: This not only a rather sad and depressing moment in a kid's film but it's also not at all that accurate, either as male squirrels actually leave after their mating and never think twice about their families.

Sir Ector learns that the people have given up on waiting for some bloke to pull the "sword from the stone" and have set up a grand tournament where knightly contests will determine who will be crowned king of all England. This leads to our group heading to London so that Kay can enter the tournament, and it's while young Arthur is watching the fighting that he realizes he's forgotten Kay's sword. Unfortunately, the inn where he left the sword is locked so Arthur grabs the only sword he can find, which of course turns out to be the fabled Sword in the Stone. Arthur pulls the sword free and against his will, he is then crowned King of England. Which is certainly a strange way to pick a ruler but still better than the Electoral College.

Note: At one point in T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone young Arthur meets up with the legendary outlaw Robin Hood, sadly nothing that interesting happens in this adaptation.

To say this movie was in desperate in need of a plot would be a vast understatement, and someone should have explained to the screenwriters that if you're going to take one of the least interesting moments of the Arthurian myth you really need a more solid story to hang it all on, at least one with some decent conflict, but in this movie all we get in the way of conflict is the abuse from Arthur's boorish adoptive family and a mangy wolf that is a threat to nobody.

The Big Bad Wolf he's not.

Eventually, the great Mad Madam Mim (Martha Wentworth) makes an appearance, she being Merlin's magical rival and the sole reason to be watching this movie, and it's upon her learning of Arthur's importance to Merlin that she tries to kill the poor kid.  Now, this does lead to the best part of this movie's short running time, the very fun wizards duel, and it is in this sequence that we are treated to some truly excellent character animation as we watch Merlin and Mim transform from one brilliantly clever creature into another, sadly the character of Mim enters and exits the picture so quickly that she has no lasting effect on this movie's so-called plot.

Note: Mad Madam Mim is obviously a Disney creation, Merlin's chief nemesis in the legend being the very powerful enchantress Morgan le Fay, but as she was Arthur's half-sister, who has an incestuous affair with him to birth the vile Mordred, we can understand Disney not wanting to go in that direction

Disney's The Sword in the Stone is easily one of the more forgettable entries in the studios animated history and should be watched mostly out of curiosity or for the pure enjoyment of that magic duel between Merlin and Mad Madam Mim as there really isn't much else on hand to for a viewer to become engaged with. Merlin's a bit of a dick, poor Arthur has almost no character at all, and the entertaining Mad Madam Mim arrives too late to do more than briefly bolster the proceedings. The Sword in the Stone would have probably worked better as one of Disney's animated shorts because what we got here barely able to sustains its brief 79-minute running time. This may not be the worst adaptation of the King Arthur legend but from Disney, one expects a little more than a simple average tale, which is all The Sword in the Stone could generously be called. Now we just have to wait for the inevitable Disney live-action remake, I'm sure it will be brilliant.

 

"Wait till you get a load of me in glorious CGI."

Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays (2012) – Review

With Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays we are not talking about another animated movie but instead a Direct-to-DVD Christmas Special that simply runs a little no longer than an average episode. It premiered on the Cartoon Network before being released as part of 13 Spooky Tales: Holiday Chills and Thrills DVD, and if not as engaging as one of their “feature-length” outings it still managed to be a fun little Christmas adventure.

This Christmas special opens with Daphne (Grey Griffin) and Velma (Mindy Cohn) shilling for Menkle’s Toy Store as elves during the town's Santa Claus parade, while Fred, Scooby (Frank Welker) and Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) enjoy the event from the sidelines – which will, of course, involve Shaggy and Scooby and candy canes, it being a Christmas special and all – but holiday merriment is short-lived when the parade is interrupted by the appearance of an evil snowman, a creature that can shapeshift, freeze its prey in solid ice, and even conjure up a terrible blizzard. The Scooby gang flee to the safety of the toy store, where they are all soon trapped inside…or are they? Even a snowstorm isn’t going to stop Mystery Incorporated when they’ve got ghosts to hunt.

 

Who needs a hot toddy?

Who could be behind this yuletide menace? The store manager Fabian Menkle (Crispin Freeman) reveals to Fred that if the store doesn’t sell enough toys this Christmas his uncle Havros Menkle (Carlos Alazraqui) will lose the store, but more interesting is the fact that according to Fabian his uncle has “really changed this year.” The concern level is raised when the Scooby gang goes to question Havros but the second they step into his office he starts ranting, “Get out, get out! Doomed, doomed I say. Get out!” This definitely raises him high on the list of suspects, but then the gang runs into Clete the Janitor who tells them, “I hope you weren’t thinking of leaving, cause you can’t, none of us can. The blizzards got us all snowed in and all the phones are dead, nobodies coming to save us, you kids better watch your backs” and then he walks off into the dark. Not creepy at all. Finally, there is the dude who played Santa in the parade as he clearly stated that he hates Christmas, “I’m an actor, I hate it! Every year I have to ride that float and wave and be happy and jolly and say Ho-Ho-Ho! It makes me sick!” This he says just before storming out into the blizzard to be apparently grabbed by the snowman, and as there is a history of supposed victims turning out to be the villains themselves this puts him on the list of good suspects.

Note: The snowman joins the long list of Scooby-Doo monsters that have abilities far beyond what “A guy in a suit” could manage. Its shape-shifting abilities, which rivals that of the T-1000, is explained away by Daphne as “ice pellets” which is complete nonsense.

Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays follows the standard formula of your typical Scooby-Doo mystery, a ghost or monster makes an appearance, we get the list of suspects, and the gang then splits up to look for clues – a tactic that Shaggy and Scooby point out is never a good idea – and then we get some spooky backstory to the mystery, in this case it’s Fabian telling them of “The Curse of the Sinister Snowman” where twenty years ago Vladimar Harsticore, a mean old man who hated people and wanted only to be left alone became enraged when the Menkle toy store was built across from his house. It drove him to such madness that the legend says he became pure hate, vanishing in a flurry of snow and bitterness, to form a snowman with a sinister and evil soul. As spooky legends go this one was pretty damn good and probably deserved more than being a simple throwaway red herring for this twenty-minute Christmas special.

Stray Observations:

• After retreating to the store Fabian comments, “That parade was our last hope, with that thing out there we’ll have to close the store and cancel Christmas.” It’s this kind of rhetoric that makes Baby Jesus cry.
• The real Santa (Fred Tatasciore) arrives to save the day which is pretty much a standard trope for this kind of Christmas special.
• Scooby-Doo drives around atop a remote control toy car, a clear nod to the opening credit sequence of The New Scooby-Doo Movies.
• Fred and Velma find skyrockets and silver iodide, which is a chemical used for cloud seeding and anti-hail systems, but it's not something that can form blizzards out of nothing as depicted here.
• We see multiple members of the Scooby gang being totally encased in ice from the Snow Monster’s ice breath attacks, which is later revealed to be liquid nitrogen, yet not only is no one killed by this icy encasement they don’t even seem harmed in the least.

 

That’s right Fred, just walk it off.

Both the animation and the acting in this special is very solid, with each of the gang given their moments to shine, and the monster itself while totally implausible was quite freaky looking and made for good nemesis to Mystery Incorporated.  The only downside to this particular mystery was the reveal that it was Fabian being the man in the monster suit - he'd been embezzling from the toy store and created to monster to make his uncle look crazy and thus rest control of the store from him, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense even as evil plans go - but that aside Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays is one of the better Scooby-Doo specials and well worth checking out.

Terkel in Trouble (2004) – Review

Over the years animated film have made leaps in bounds in both the quality of writing and the animation itself, ranging from family-friendly fair at Disney to the more adult works of Ralph Bakshi’s Fritz the Cat and Wizards, but with the Danish animated film Terkel in Trouble we get a crasser and lower budgeted entry, one that pushes the envelope of crude and violence to a whole new level. If you think Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut was an edgy movie wait till you see what stand-up comedian Anders Matthesen does with this story about parental neglect, bullying, and suicide.

Based on a long-running radio show for teens and preteens Terkel in Trouble follows the sad adventures of a 6th-grader named Terkel (Adrian Edmondson) whose home life is only slightly less stressful than his time at school. At home he has his chain-smoking mother (Olivia Colman) who, while creating clouds of cigarette smoke constantly fills Terkel with warnings about getting Anthrax from lack of sleep or contracting cirrhosis of the liver due to his milk allergy, and then there’s his father who responds to everything with a simple “No” and thus is somehow even less helpful in a bad situation than his clueless mother is. On the other hand school is even worse, made hellish by Nigel and Saki, the two merciless "bully-boys" who constantly refer to Terkel as a copycat and a momma’s boy. A vicious pair if a little uncreative, but they are just a couple of raw elements in Terkel's life.

 

Terkel’s life is bizarre to say the least.

The only person that Terkel can turn to his best mate Jason (Ben Bishop) but he's not all there himself as carries an iron pipe around with him at all times because, “You never know when you’re gonna need an iron pipe."  Then there is poor “Dumpy” Doris (Helena Roman) an overweight student who is heartlessly picked on by Nigel and Saki, but when she declares her love for Terkel it’s his siding with the two asshats, "No, there's no way I love that fat cow!" which results in the bullies focusing on her and off him and leads to her suicide by leaping out of the fourth-floor window. To say Terkel in Trouble is a dark film would be a vast understatement, it was the first computer-generated film to be rated R and contains gore, profanity, and references to pedophilia, but as the movie progresses one starts to get the feeling that “Shock Value” might be all the film has going for it. For a film to work one must somewhat identify with the protagonist and though I’m sure many a viewer can relate to being a child dealing with school bullies and obtuse parents the problem I had with Terkel in Trouble is that Terkel himself was just so bloody unlikable. He’s callously cruel to his little sister and he even ditches his best friend to hang out with bullies Nigel and Saki – them now being friends after Terkel threw poor Doris under the bus – and his constant moaning and complaining do little to endear him to us. When some mysterious maniac starts to threaten his life we have to question, “Just whose side are we supposed to be on?”

 

And can child abuse be funny?

It’s the combination of crude behaviour and equally crude animation that works in the film’s favour – and it does have a bizarre charm to it – we are obviously not supposed to side with any of the main male characters, while the female characters themselves are either shrewish idiots or sad victims and are basically tertiary to the story’s central plot, but it’s apparent that this was part of the filmmaker's intent by achieving this high “shock value” and they clearly had no intention of delivering a “moral to this story” but instead we get a movie that runs the viewer over like a vulgar freight train, it's almost an assault on the senses, which could be very off-putting to some viewers but quite entertaining to others, which makes Terkel in Trouble a hard film to recommend because it depends heavily on the sensibilities of the audience.

 

And just how dark is this movie?

• Substitute teacher Justin (Toby Stephens) explains how their previous teacher died, “She tripped and fell down her stairs, rolled all the way into the main road during rush hour, the one you must never cross without a grownup, and the cars had no chance to brake in time.”
• Terkel's short-tempered, alcoholic and violent uncle bite’s off one of the bully’s ears, an injury the animators forget about later.
• The uncle also mans a “Child Support” phone line but he offers no real advice and often just leaves the answering machine on, which at one point resulted in a boy being beaten to death by his father.
• During a field trip Justin sings a song about a little boy in Thailand who gets up every day at 5:00 am to dive for pearls – among the sharks – to put food on the table for his family, supplies them with glue to huff, but he also makes extra money selling his body to older men for sex. Yikes!

 

There are just no words.

Disney and Pixar are certainly not worried about the Danish film industry horning in on their territory, and Terkel in Troubles follow up film Checkered Ninja was also not cutting into their key demographic, so in conclusion I’ll say that Terkel in Trouble was an "interesting" film and once you get past the wonky animation – which was most likely created with software they picked up at Wal-Mart – there is some fun to be had here, but like I’ve pointed out this is a dark fucking movie and not for kids.

Terkel in Trouble is dark with a capital “D”

Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur (2011) – Review

What could be scarier than a rampaging dinosaur? Why, a rampaging ghost dinosaur of course, which brings us to the sixteenth direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movie, Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur. This particular outing is more action-comedy driven than many of the other Scooby-Doo movies, focusing on having bigger action set-pieces rather than scary atmospheric ones, but the result is still a rather fun entry.

The movie opens with a visit to the local hospital, where we find a perpetually screaming Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) being examined by the ER doctor. We learn from the gang that they’d been spending “Just a normal evening, investigating an old mansion being haunted by phantom Naval officers,” when poor Shaggy got trapped in a wardrobe with a gaggle of ghosts. They were, of course, just a bunch of monster puppets being used by a couple of shady realtors trying to make the owner’s sell cheap, but it was enough to drive poor Shaggy into a non-stop screaming catatonic state.

 

I could see this breaking anybody, let alone someone like Shaggy.

After getting x-rayed, the doctor diagnoses Shaggy with Acute-Threat-Avoidance-Hypertrophy Disorder, “A very rare form of overreaction to fear stimuli that affects fewer than one in ten million,” and that Shaggy will now have to avoid anything even remotely scary, “So, no more ghost hunting, crime-busting or mystery-solving shenanigans.” The doctor even forbids Shaggy from riding in the Mystery Machine. Things look pretty dire for Mystery Incorporated, though why they are taking such information seriously when it comes from an ER doctor, one who uses an x-ray machine for the diagnosis of a mental issue, and not a psychiatrist, that is the real mystery here. Lucky for the Scooby gang, it turns out Fred (Frank Welker) is failing his science class — his teacher not appreciating becoming a trap subject in Fred’s attempt at demonstrating Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion — so the gang takes a trip to New Mexico to visit a new resort in La Serena, a town certified by the U.S. Bureau of Supernatural Forces to be the "Least haunted town in America,” a town that also just so happens to be right next to a paleontological dig that could land Fred those extra credits he needs to pass his course. Unfortunately, faster than you can say “Scooby Snacks,” the glowing monstrosity known as “The Phantosaur” is roaring across the desert landscape and threatening Shaggy’s mental health even further. But what exactly is a Phantosaur?

The Phantosaur Legend: With Spanish Conquistadors murdering and pillaging across the New World, the shaman of a local tribe of Native Americans tried to call forth the most powerful spirit in the land to drive the invaders away, but instead of getting the spirit of a mountain lion or a bear, he got something much more ancient, a beast too powerful to be controlled, one that ended up driving off those it was called to protect.

Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur checks off most of the boxes for your standard Scooby-Doo mystery: the gang travels to some far off location, Shaggy and Scooby eat tons of food and act like goofballs, then a mystery will soon enfold and a bunch of suspects will be trotted out. But on this particular excursion, a pretty nice wrinkle is thrown into the mix ... extra villains! And who could that person or persons unknown be who has unleashed a prehistoric monster ghost? Could it be Mr. Hubley (Fred Willard), the owner of La Serena Spa in an attempt to get the locals to sell their land to extend his spa? What about graduate student Winsor (Matthew Gray Gubler), who through working as a paleontology aid to Professor Svankmajer (Finola Hughes), his knowledge of computer graphics puts him in the running for creating a prehistoric menace. Then there is Ms. Deitch (Gwendoline Yeo) and Mr. Babbit (Michael Gough) who work for a mining company that has discovered a vein of silver but can't work the mine due to Professor Svankmajer’s dig.

 

Who wants to put money on it being the mining company?

The gang quickly figures out who is behind the rampaging dinosaur — in record time even — as they uncover Deitch and Babbit’s van being used to control the two animatronic dinosaurs, which they had taken from a real-life dinosaur exhibit their company-sponsored. But hold the phone, there is a more cretaceous crime in the wings. Moments after the police cart off Deitch and Babbit, our heroes find themselves being chased through the resort by a pack of velociraptors — through a kitchen in a clear homage to Spielberg’s Jurassic Park — and soon the entire town is being besieged by a fire-breathing Phantosaur.

 

Eat your heart out, Godzilla!

Could this truly be the legendary Phantosaur? Of course not! The gang exposes the raptors as being grad students in costumes that they stole from that same real-life dinosaur exhibit that Deitch and Babbit got their animatronic dinosaur, and the Fiery Phantosaur itself was a 3-D projected monster created by Winsor, with stolen hologram tech from the resort and operated by himself and Professor Svankmajer. This was all created to drive the townspeople away so that they could smuggle away a priceless crystallized Allosaurus they found in the caverns below La Serena. So with Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur, we get two groups of criminals working independently of each other, with separate motives and techniques to create a ghost dinosaur, making this a rather unique Scooby-Doo mystery, but that still isn't what makes this movie really stand out. Not only does this film have two criminal conspiracies on hand, but it also has two subplots. First we have Velma (Mindy Cohn) falling in love with fellow nerd Winsor — her mystery-solving skills derailed by this adolescent crush — and then we have Shaggy, in an attempt to cure his cowardice, being hypnotized by Hubley’s hologram projector into becoming a fearless and unstoppable badass whenever he hears the word “bad,” and then he switches back to normal when he hears it again.

Note: Shaggy wipes out an entire motorcycle gang while in this hypnotized state, in one of the most awesome action scenes in a Scooby-Doo movie.

Much of the film’s run-time is spent exploring Shaggy’s hypnotized-badassery, making the ghost dinosaur mystery very much a secondary element, even more tertiary when you throw in the time spent with Velma’s love interest, thus making Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur rather thin on the mystery side of things, but heavier on the comic relief. With so much of the movie focusing on Shaggy and Velma and their adventures — Shaggy gets into an extended motorcycle race with the biker gang’s leader and Velma tries for an "extreme" makeover before going on a date with Winsor — any sense of danger or scares is pretty much non-existent. Now, I don’t expect chills and thrills at every turn with my Scooby-Doo movies, but ghost-hunting and mystery-solving shenanigans really got the short shrift this time out.

Stray Observations:

• To follow the doctor’s orders of not allowing Shaggy into The Mystery Machine, Fred simply repaints it as The Mustard Machine.
• Fred continues to use a snarky GPS (John DiMaggio), which this time sends them on detours to five chili joints, an all-night bowling alley, a meteor crater, and a tattoo parlor.
• Shaggy switching back and forth between being a badass fighter and a cowardly idiot is a clear nod to the Danny Kaye film The Court Jester.
• The local theater is showing two classic Ray Harryhausen dinosaur films, The Valley of Gwangi and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.
• Once again we get cheats on the show’s “monsters” as the cable-controlled Phantosaur could not have been operated in such a fashion — rampaging around while connected to the control van being quite impossible — and the grad students in raptor costumes were somehow able to run as fast as The Mystery Machine.
• We learn that Daphne (Grey Griffin) learned to ride a motorcycle at the age of five.

Note: Watching all the various incarnations of the Scooby-Doo shows and movies, one thing has become perfectly clear: the Scooby gang had the most neglectful parents in the history of television.

Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur was a nice entry in the Scooby-Doo movie series, though not as frightening as such entries as Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island or Camp Scare, nor does it have as compelling a mystery as the likes of Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost, but regardless of any of this, we still end up with a very fun movie. The number of laughs we get makes up for any lack in the overall mystery category, and it gives us a Scooby-Doo movie that will entertain young and old alike.

The entire Scooby gang being accidentally hypnotized into believing that each of them is Shaggy was probably the most disturbing element of this entire movie.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) – Review

When a franchise deals heavily with time travel, each additional sequel can easily cause the wheels to wobble until they eventually fall off. Case in point, Terminator Genisys, but with Terminator: Dark Fate, producer James Cameron and director Tim Miller took a page out of Halloween (2018) by ignoring the existence of unwanted sequels and bringing back an iconic character. Does this work or do the wheels not only wobble off but explode into a fiery cataclysm?

In this film, our new protagonist is Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), an average working woman trying to make a living in Mexico City, that is until an advanced Terminator known as a Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) arrives and attempts to kill her. Luckily for her, a cybernetically augmented human named Grace (Mackenzie Davis) has also been sent from the future, with her mission to protect Dani at all costs. So basically Cameron, Miller and screenwriter David Goyer have combined the plot of the first two Terminator films to make this entry — which, to be fair, worked really well for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, so I guess we can't fault them too much — but here we have the added wrinkle of Dani and Grace being aided by a grizzled Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), who arrives in the nick of time to rescue them from the pursuing Rev-9.

 

Girl Power!

But how are Terminators being sent back to the present if Judgement Day had been successfully stopped way back in 1991? Well, it turns out mankind seems really hell-bent on causing a robot apocalypse, so even though Sarah and company had stopped the formation of Skynet, the military later created a cyberwarfare system called Legion, an artificial intelligence that one day decided to wipe humanity off the globe. Dani is considered a threat to Legion’s future and thus, she has been targeted for termination. But can these three strong women stand a chance against a Terminator that consists of the robotic endoskeleton of the T-800 as well as being covered in the mimetic alloy of the T-1000?  Maybe they could get a little hand.

 

He’s back!

Turns out that over the years, Sarah had been getting encrypted texts from a mysterious source, giving her the locations of arriving Terminators, allowing her to continue her “One-woman war” against the machines, but with the help of augmented Grace, they are able to track down her benefactor only to discover that it is a T-800 model Terminator, one that now lives under the name of Carl (Arnold Schwarzenegger). This Skynet retiree has taken up living with a woman and her kid and he hangs drapes for a living. Does this make any sense to anybody? Well, a time-stranded cyborg has to make a living somehow, so why not interior decorating? This leads to one of the film’s key problems: the Rev-9 doesn't stand a chance against our heroes. We’ve got Grace, the super augmented human, the incredibly badass Sarah Connor, and now the classic T-800 to fight alongside them, which takes the threat level of the Rev-9 down a notch — even if it can separate its liquid metal self from its endoskeleton to fight as two separate Terminators — especially if you include Dani in the mix, as now it's four-to-one in favour of our heroes, and two of them are almost a physical match to the Rev-9.

 

“Can I call for reinforcements?”

Stray Observations:

• For those of you who hated Newt being killed off at the beginning of Alien 3, you will most likely be pissed off with what happens in this movie.
• In The Terminator, Reese told Sarah, "It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop ... ever, until you are dead!" I guess he left out that part about once she's dead it will most likely settle down to raise a family.
• We learn that Sarah has been spending her time between drinking binges by hunting down and killing Terminators, but how exactly was she doing this? Sarah Connor has proven herself to be a supreme badass, but the first two films clearly illustrated that taking out a Terminator is a group effort.
• And who exactly was sending these Terminators back for Sarah to fight? It can’t be Skynet because our heroes stopped it from existing back in 1991, so was the computer system known as Legion sending random Terminators after her for some reason, or were they after other unexplained targets?
• Sarah shows up on the freeway to save Grace and Dani from the Rev-9, but how exactly did she know they’d be there? Carl was sending the information that gave her a heads up on where Terminators would arrive, but the freeway was nowhere near where the Rev-9 arrived in the present.
• Carl has a pet dog, but wasn’t it established that dogs didn’t like cyborgs?

 

Carl, a kinder, gentler killer robot from the future.

That all aside, if you go into Terminator: Dark Fate hoping to see some amazing action set-pieces, you will most likely leave happy, as the film certainly does supply a decent amount of them — though the big opening freeway chase is never really topped by what follows — and the scenes between Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger are excellent as they provide intense drama (what with her traumatic history with this particular T-800), and these two characters also give us some of the film’s funniest moments as well. I also quite enjoyed Mackenzie Davis as this augmented soldier; she managed to infuse a good amount of pathos into her character, as well as giving us great fight sequences that were particularly spectacular, but this, unfortunately, also highlighted just how uninteresting Dani was as a character. Script-wise, actress Natalia Reyes is not given much to work with here, so I don’t fault her for how bland Dani turned out — one need not look further than screenwriter David Goyer to find blame for this — and if one can look past such things, as well as the film’s nonsensical continuity and even dumber take on time travel, you could find yourself having a grand ole' time watching Terminator: Dark Fate, just don’t expect there to be a next chapter in the Terminator saga.

 

“I doubt we’ll be back.”

Scooby-Doo! Camp Scare (2010) – Review

Scooby-Doo and the gang have crossed paths with some true legendary monsters in their time, from the Loch Ness Monster to the Abominable Snowman, even tackling such classic foes as Dracula and the Wolfman, but with Scooby-Doo! Camp Scare our heroes must face off against something altogether different, the 80s slasher genre. In a clear homage to films like Friday the 13th this direct-to-video Scooby-Doo mystery sends Mystery Inc. deep into the woods where camping and horror go hand in hand.

Fred (Frank Welker) is quite excited about bringing the gang to his old summer camp of Little Moose, where he will now be “Counselor, mentor, hero!” and can inspire a new generation of Little Moose Campers, unfortunately the camp doesn’t impress anyone else, with Velma (Mindy Cohn) pointing out that it’s basically a dump. Sadly, the ramshackle nature of the camp is the least of their problem, as there are no little campers for Fred to inspire. Seems that one of the old campfire stories has come to life in the form of The Woodsman (Dee Bradley Baker) who has scared all the campers away. Lucky for Fred a bus arrives to drop off three new little campers and pulls away before Burt (Stephen Root), Camp Little Moose’s head counselor, can tell the driver that the camp is closed.

 

"Child Endangerment isn’t really a thing, is it?"

Stepping off the bus we have Luke (Scott Menville) a young Fred in the offing, Trudy (Tara Strong) a goth kid who’d rather be texting than canoeing, and Deacon (Mark Hamill) a short fat kid with asthma who later in the movie makes a startlingly keen observation, “Let me get this straight, there’s a crazy man with an ax in the woods, a ghost in the canyon, a fish monster in the water, and you guys want to split up and look for clues?” One must admit that this is a remarkably astute statement and pretty much sums up the Scooby gang's mentality. Our teen mystery solvers give it their best attempt at having some summer fun, with swimming, canoeing, and archery, but faster than you can carve “GET OUT” on a cabin wall our little group of campers and counselors find themselves besieged by a trio of campfire horror stories.

The Woodsman, a cruel counselor who went insane after a prank set up by his campers went awry and left him with severe brain damage, now he’s back and wielding an ax with a vengeance.

Neil Fisher, a camper who spent all his time swimming in the lake to avoid being picked on, in fact, he spent so much time in the water that he grew gills and fins and became The Fishman, who haunts Big Moose Lake to this very day.

Shadow Canyon is haunted by the ghost of a lost hiker still looking for her way out, “They call her the Spectre of Shadow Canyon” and legend has it if you hear her terrifying wail you’re a goner.

Scooby-Doo! Camp Scare wins big points for being a Scooby-Doo movie with a pretty high threat level, especially considering the scenes with the Woodsman brandishing his ax against kids and camp counselors alike, but what makes this particular entry stand out is that the three monsters are incredibly well designed and truly frightening. Then there is the mystery, which itself is quite well orchestrated if a little obvious – especially when an old newspaper article basically points the finger at the culprit – but the movie does provide us with a few suspects and some nice clues along the way. First we have Ranger Knudsen (Dee Bradley Baker) who tries to get Burt to close the camp, then there is the local shop owner, a creepy dude (Mark Hamill) who runs a museum that covers the areas darky history, and finally we have Jessica (Lauren Tom) a gorgeous counsellor from the neighboring camp of Big Moose Lake, who catches Fred’s eye and makes Daphne a tad jealous. Could one of those people be behind this trio of campfire furies?

 

Sadly, Velma is pretty obtuse throughout this movie.

Stray Observations:

• When our heroes arrive in Camp City they encounter this movie’s version of Crazy Ralph from the first Friday the 13th movie, who tries to warn them of the trouble at the camp.
• There is a calendar in one of the camp cabins indicating that the date is Friday the 13th. This movie is certainly not being subtle with its references.
• The Woodsman was clearly inspired by the legend of Cropsy, a classic campfire tale that was turned into an 80s slasher film called The Burning.
• In the Kim Possible episode “Camp Wannaweep” camper Gill Moss spent too much time in the camp’s lake, later to be discovered toxic, and was turned into a vengeful fish monster. So, pretty much The Fishman minus the toxic waters.
• Once again a character mistakes a stick of dynamite for a candle. I wonder, in the history of dynamite, if this has ever happened.
• The flooded town location reminded me of Deliverance and a particularly great issue of Swamp Thing where vampires lived in a submerged town.
• Both Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) and Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) performs some serious acts of bravery and heroics in this movie.
• The Mystery Machine can surprisingly outrun the torrent of water from a burst dam, and with Scooby-Doo doing the driving.
• If this was a real 80s slasher film Jessica would not have made it to the end credits.

 

If this was Friday the 13th or The Burning she'd have died right about here.

This is one of the better looking Scooby-Doo movies, with several great locations and action sequences thoughout its 73 minute running time, from flooded towns and underwater caverns to dark and spooky woods, rickety rope bridges to treacherous rock canyons, with our heroes being a hairs breath away from being killed at every turn. The clues dropped along the way make up for a fairly good mystery – a missing RV with sonar gear stolen from Camp Big Moose, boxes of dynamite hidden in a subterranean cavern, and a newspaper clipping telling of the story of how notorious gangster named Ricky LaRue had buried his stolen loot in Moose Creek, before a dam was constructed and flooded the town, and that before his death he told his cellmate, Baby Face Boretti (Mark Hamill), where it was located.  That is a literal smorgasbord of clues.

 

Could this be anyone we know?

Sure, the big reveal that short and chubby Deacon is actually Baby Face Boretti may have been telegraphed a little bit too much – one look at that  picture from the newspaper and Velma at least should have figured it out – especially when throughout the movie Deacon kept insisting that everybody should evacuate Camp Little Moose, and of course all three monsters turn out to have been Ranger Knudsen in various costumes – The Woodsman and Spectre to scare the kids away and the Fishman to explore the flooded town – but I’m sure younger viewers will be pleasantly surprised with the outcome. Simply put Scooby-Doo! Camp Scare is a solid Scooby-Doo mystery with some best-designed monsters of the entire series – I could see The Woodsman genuinely scarring some kids – making this entry a must-see for Scooby-Doo fans of all ages.

Note: Even though the three monsters were orchestrated by Baby Face Boretti and Ranger Knudsen there is a post-credits scene where it is revealed that the Spectre is actually real. It’s nice to see the writers throwing in real supernatural elements even if the main story is about a hoax.