The Blob (1988) – Review

In movies the effect of a meteorite hitting the Earth will most likely consist of one or two things, either we will see widespread catastrophic damage – tidal waves sweeping across major cities – or if the meteorite in question is of a smaller scale it will have undoubtedly brought an alien threat from outer space. In the case of 1988’s The Blob we not only get an excellent example of the latter but one of the rare horror movie remakes that even manages to surpass what the original had done.

Directed by Chuck Russell, and co-written with his friend Frank Darabont, this remake of the 1952 science fiction/horror movie The Blob takes the implied horror of the original, whose extreme low budget barely allowed the Blob to appear on camera, and gives us a balls-to-the-wall action horror film that not only doesn’t stint on the required monster moments but also ratchets the gore up to eleven. The plot takes the basic structure of the original, a meteorite carrying a nasty organism lands near a small town, an old man investigates said meteorite and soon has a corrosive creature on his hand, teens encounter the stricken old man and bring him to the local doctor – though here it’s a hospital not a private practice – and as the creature eats it gets bigger and bigger until it threatens the whole town. The creature's vulnerability to cold is also retained, as is the attack at the town’s midnight movie marathon, but the gore and the body count in this remake are much greater. Most of the deaths in the 1952 movie happen off-screen or in shadow while the remake hides nothing.

 

The Blob remake is easily one of the gooiest movies ever made.

Yet a bigger budget and improved visual effects weren’t all that Russell and company brought to this story – Note: Russell didn’t have all that big a budget compared to his contemporaries – because in this film we get a story that loves to subvert audiences expectations at every turn. In the original we had Steve McQueen as the hero, who along with his girlfriend and a trio of fellow “teens” tried to warn the townsfolk of the horrific threat the Blob held, but in this remake the roles are rather turned on their heads. We are introduced to Paul Taylor (Donovan Leitch Jr.) Arborville’s high school football hero, who is in love with cheerleader Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith) – whose decision to wear pearls on a first date must be a nod to her character from the original – and instead of a trio of possible teen delinquents this film gives us Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon), a leather jacket-wearing biker who has no respect for authority, but unlike the original things don't go well for the All-American boy.

 

This is not how audiences expected things to go for good ole Paul.

It’s clear that the Paul Taylor character was set up to be the Steven McQueen analog but instead he becomes the second victim of the Blob.  The Old Man (Billy Beck), who pokes the contents of a meteorite with a stick, is retained as the Blob’s first victim, and when parental figures and the police fail to believe what Meg states she witnessed, that of her boyfriend being dissolved alive by some creature, she becomes the film’s de facto hero and is forced to turn to town’s bad boy Flagg for help. The death of Paul, a mere thirty-minute into the film, tells the viewer that no one is safe, that all bets are off, and this all goes towards making the movie more suspenseful and terrifying. Earlier the film set up a cute romance between Sheriff Herb Geller (Jeffrey DeMunn) and sweet Fran Hewitt (Candy Clark) who owns the town’s diner, but their romance is cut dramatically short after the Blob makes a surprise late-night call.

 

Their relationship is abruptly dissolved.

Still, Russell and Darabont weren’t just relying on shocking audiences to justify remaking a horror classic by playing around with who dies and in what graphic manner in which they meet their fate, they also added to the original film’s anti-authority message. In the original film, Steve McQueen and company were either condescended to or ignored by the adults, even the kindly understanding Sheriff of that film wasn’t about to believe an oozing monster was dissolving the citizens of his fair town, but as this remake was a product of the 80s we get the added bonus of government conspiracy. No longer is the Blob some alien menace from another world, a mindless creature whose sole goal is to eat and get larger, in this movie our heroes discover that the Blob was a biological warfare experiment created during the Cold War, and the lead scientist Dr. Meadows (Joe Seneca) is all about capturing this amazing weapon without out a care for collateral damage.

Movie Note: In countless films that involve people wearing various helmets, from diving gear to hazmat suits, the filmmakers often tend to put lights inside so as to illuminate the actor’s face, which in a night setting would basically blind the occupant.

Stray Observations:

• Meg’s parents and the police do not believe her story about Paul being dissolved by a big pink amorphous blob but they offer no other explanation for the half dissolved old man or the gooey severed arm that once belonged to Paul.
• The Blob is shown to be very corrosive, it even drips acid at times, but somehow this doesn’t result in a destructive trail in its wake, one that should be easy to follow.
• Meg’s brother is forced to wear a jacket, even after he comments that it’s too warm out, which is a set-up for the jacket zipper to stick while trying to escape the Blob, but if it’s too warm outside for a jacket why in the Hell did the kid zip it up in the first place?
• The government villain's plan to seal off the two exits to the town’s sewers, thus containing the Blob within, kind of ignores the fact that sewers are connected to the town’s plumbing. Did they also plan on plugging up every toilet and sink in town?
• Meg is one of the best examples of the “Hero Death Exemption” that is found in many movies, she either manages to run away from the Blob, despite the great speed it is shown moving in many scenes, or it completely ignores her. When Paul is eaten she faints right in front of the creature but the Blob doesn’t bother to eat her for some reason.

 

Did her cashmere sweater put it off?

Despite being outfitted with some truly amazing plot armour the character of Meg Penny is still one of the more outstanding elements of this movie, she isn’t the damsel in distress of the original film, nor is she around just to provide a pretty face. Meg is the instigator of the plot as she refuses to be condescended to or ignored and Brian Flagg, who has to be almost pushed into the role of hero, is kind of her second banana. Meg is pretty much filling in for the Steve McQueen character here, she’s also the one who figures out that cold is the monster’s weakness, and though Flagg does save her from the clutches of the Blob at times if one were to count rescues she saves his ass more than he saves hers. A central female protagonist who is a bit of a badass was not something commonly seen in 1980s cinema and predates the likes of Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

 

“Come with me if you want to live.”

The 1980s were a great time for horror remakes as we were treated to John Carpenter’s Thing in 1982 and David Cronenberg’s The Fly in 1986 and though Chuck Russell’s remake of The Blob was not met with much financial or critical acclaim at the time, as was the case with Carpenter’s remake of The Thing, it has since gone on to be recognized as one of the best horror remakes and has developed a huge cult following.

With this take on The Blob Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont wonderfully expanded on what as a fairly thin premise and then populated their story with variety of engaging characters – Steve McQueen’s charisma the only thing salvaging his paper-thin character in the original – and the practical effects and make-up developed for this film holds up extremely well. If you haven’t seen this remake, and if you tend to enjoy some fun gore with your action, this version of The Blob is well worth checking out.

Note: The film ends with an epilogue showing the town’s Reverend (Del Close) had spirited away a small portion of the Blob, which he intends to use in bringing forth a biblical apocalypse, a hint at a sequel we never got, but interesting enough Del Close had a small part in the 1972 sequel Beware! The Blob.

Scooby-Doo! Moon Monster Madness (2015) – Review

The Scooby gang are no novices when it comes to science fiction as they’ve encountered actual aliens in Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders and battle computer simulations in Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase, but for Scooby-Doo! Moon Monster Madness our plucky heroes leave the safety of Earth and venture off into space in one of their most dangerous adventures yet.

 Egomaniac billionaire Sly Baron (Malcolm McDowell) intends to make space travel available to the average person – a clear nod to billionaire Richard Branson – and with the launch of his new spacecraft Sly Star One he will be inviting along five lucky lottery winners, who just so happen to be all five members of Mystery Incorporated. Shortly after the launch, a mysterious alien monster is seen scampering across the exterior of the ship, Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) witness this but are not believed – at this point in their careers why the gang wouldn't believe these two makes no sense – but then it’s revealed that the external air takes have been ruptured and is now jettisoning the ships’ air supply. With only minutes of breathable air left – because the writers forgot about the air supply of everyone’s suit as well as the air already inside the massive ship’s interior – Sly Baron reveals that he had constructed a massive hidden base on the Dark Side of the Moon.

Question: How did Sly Baron’s moon base manage to avoid detection from all the Transformers and moon Nazis wandering around on the Dark Side of the Moon?

Scooby-Doo! Moon Monster Madness is a lavish-looking production, with some of the best-designed set pieces ever seen in a Scooby-Doo animated feature film, and the alien monster itself was a terrifying hybrid of H.R. Giger’s xenomorph from Alien and Stan Winston’s alien hunter from Predator. As for the mystery itself, well we do get a plethora of suspects to choose from. Celebrated astronaut Shannon Lucas (Jennifer Hale) seems eager to drive a wedge between Daphne (Grey Griffin) and Velma (Mindy Cohn) for some reason, then we have football star Uvinous 'U-Boat' Botango (Kevin Michael Richardson) who resents the world's technological progress which has resulted in robotic automation costing many people their jobs, next there are retired astronauts Zip Elvin (Mark Hamill) and Colt Steelcase (Jeff Bennett) whose arrogance and denial of alien life could be a cover-up. Next, there is the robot H.A.M. (Diedrich Bader) whose dark humour could be masking a nefarious intent. Then we have Sly Baron’s brother Hudson (Fred Tatasciore) whose been living alone on the moon so long that he’s developed a definite case of Space Dementia, and finally, what about Sly Baron himself, could an alien attack on one of his ships be all part of a huge publicity stunt?

 

Anyone voiced by Malcolm McDowell becomes an immediate suspect.

As gorgeous looking as Scooby-Doo! Moon Monster Madness the treatment of the Scooby gang here is less than stellar. Right off the hop, we get Velma becoming insanely jealous of Daphne when the pretty redhead becomes buddy buddy with astronaut Shannon, the two get into a heated argument with Daphne questioning, “Is it too hard to accept that I might be more than a pretty face?” with Velma retorting, “What’s hard to accept is that you get to have it all. If you’re prettier and more stylish and smarter and a better astronaut, what’s left for me? If you are a better me than I am than who am I?” This is an interesting existential crisis but not very in keeping with Velma’s personality, as I’ve always considered Velma to be the more grounded one of the group, but her jealous feud with Daphne is small potatoes in comparison as to how they treat Fred in this movie. Throughout many incarnations of the Scooby-Doo shows and movie Fred has the most widely depicted character traits, from being the stalwart leader of the original Scooby-Doo, Where are You! to being the trap obsessed nut of Mystery Incorporated, but with Scooby-Doo! Moon Monster Madness he becomes a fawning and bumbling moron. The Fred in this movie you wouldn’t trust with the operation of a toaster let alone a trap to catch a monster.

 

Bloody Jinkies, mate.

Stray Observations:

· The movie opens with Daphne failing her driving test, which is odd considering we’ve seen her drive the Mystery Machine plenty of times before, and in The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo she even had her own vehicle.
· The gang win tickets for this space launch through a lottery, but how did the gang win all five available spots?
· The spacecraft Sly Star One is clearly designed to sit a lot of passengers, and we see dozens of empty seats behind our heroes, so why did they limit the draw to just five average citizens?
· Shaggy has a bizarre moment of realization when he points out, “Humor is often inspired by the same darkness from which it endeavours to escape.”
· Andy Sturmer’s music for this movie is very reminiscent of Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
· Scooby-Doo and Shaggy float around to Straus’s “Blue Danube” a nice nod to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
· Fred accidentally encases Daphne in a fire retardant coolant gel but as she was currently not wearing her spacesuit’s helmet this should have resulted in her dying of asphyxiation.
· At one point the artificial gravity generator on the Moonbase fails, causing everyone and everything to float around, but the Moon has gravity - 1.62 m/s² - and though lighter than that of Earth’s things don’t just float around.
· The robot H.A.M. is revealed to be a human is the reverse of what happened in the science fiction classic Alien where Ash was exposed as a killer android.
· There is a wonderfully surreal sequence where each of the Scooby gang depicts how they’d picture the human resistance to an alien invasion.

 

I love that in all versions Fred has an eyepatch.

The villain of the piece turns out to be Shannon Lucas, who concocted the whole alien attack hoax to convince people on Earth that space travel isn't safe for amateurs and should be left to professionals, also being the sole survivor and hero – after she blows up the moon base along with all witnesses – hopefully resulting in her becoming rich and famous as well. What’s interesting about the structure of this reveal is that once she is exposed as being the “Alien” she doesn’t just roll over with the typical, “And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling kids” instead she escapes, leaving them all behind on a base that she had laced with thermal chargers. Shannon is easily one of the most competent villains our heroes have ever faced.

 

She also designed a helluva scary alien monster.

Scooby-Doo! Moon Monster Madness gave our heroes a break from globetrotting ghost hunting to stretch their limbs in a truly fun space adventure, and aside from some strange character choices the writers of this movie chose to throw at us they still did a bang-up job with this particular mystery, not to mention landing a great cast of guest voice actors, making this a Scooby-Doo entry that I can heartily recommend.

The Blob (1958) – Review

The 1950s were certainly the glory days when it came to monster movies and science fiction – two great tastes that taste great together – and if atomic testing wasn't awaking creatures like Godzilla and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms then mad scientists were creating Monsters on Campus and giant Tarantulas, but in 1958 a new kind of monster crept its way into theatres, something to which had never been seen before a seemingly unstoppable blob.

Over the years the silver screen had seen a variety of monster but usually they fell into two categories; they were either humanoid-like Frankenstein’s monster or monstrous beasts like King Kong and Mothra, and they were mostly cases of either man “Meddling in God’s domain” or were exploring Lands Unknown, but in 1958 producer Jack H. Harris gave us a unique creature from the depths of space. Now, threats from outer space were certainly nothing new, such films as It Came from Outer Space revelled in such perils, but The Blob gave us an alien amoeboid that sported neither a veiny forehead or sharp talons, and it certainly had no interest in body snatching other than to dissolve said body as a snack.  The Blob was a faceless and seemingly mindless creature with only one goal, consume and get bigger, a creature that if left unchecked could threaten all life on Earth.

 

It’s lucky for humanity that these two were necking nearby.

Jack Harris’ The Blob is a classic example of the 50’s B movie, having an insanely low budget and a mostly unknown cast – Steve McQueen being two years away from starring in The Magnificent Seven – but it’s the simplicity of the story and the creature itself that has made this film stand the test of time. The movie opens with two young teenagers, Steve Andrews (Steve McQueen) and his girlfriend, Jane Martin (Aneta Corsaut), as they spend the evening kissing at a lovers' lane, but rampaging hormones are put on hold when a meteorite streaks across the heavens and lands somewhat nearby. Steve is all for checking out this astronomical event, much to his nonplussed dates desires, which leads them into almost running down an old man (Olin Howland) who staggers into the road looking rather distressed by the fact that he has particular nasty jelly-like globule stuck on his hand, which he had the misfortune to acquire after poking the contents of the aforementioned meteorite with a stick.

 

Safety Tip: Do not poke things from space with a stick.

The two civic-minded teenagers drop the old man off at Doctor Hallen's (Stephen Chase) office, a man of medicine who takes the sight of a gelatinous blob eating a man’s hand rather well, and then the Doc sends the kids back to where they found him to see if they could locate his people. But before our heroes can get all Scully and Mulder they are distracted by the appearance of some of Steve’s friends, one of which challenges Steve to a car race. Steve agrees to the race, adding the stipulation that they race backwards, and thus cemented my earlier conclusion that Steve was a bit of an idiot. Not only did he get sidetracked from making out with his girlfriend by a shooting star but almost immediately sets aside his mission to investigate the Blob so that he can goof around with a trio of fellow idiots.

 

Rebels without a clue.

The Blob may have one of the more interesting and original monsters in cinema history but. sadly, that’s where the originality stops as much of the film deals with Steven and friends trying to get the adults in town to believe them about the monster from outer space. We get the two counterpoints of the understanding in the form of Lieutenant Dave (Earl Rowe), who let's slide the whole racing backwards thing and the very angry Sergeant Bert (John Benson) who hates all teenagers because one reckless teenage driver caused the death of his wife, which one has to admit could skew one's belief in the today’s youths, but between these two police officers and Steve and Jane’s concerned parents, we find ourselves spending way too much time watching people argue and not enough time with the Blob’s oozing rampage.

 

We don’t get so much as a rampage as we do a murderous amble.

Stray Thoughts:

• Did teenage girls in the 50s actually wear pearls when going to Lover’s Lane?
• Doctor Hallen has his nurse first try acid against The Blob but when that fails he tries to shoot the thing, which has to be about the dumbest weapon to use against an amorphous blob.
• The nurse gets eaten because she trips over a lamp allowing the slow-moving Blob to get her, which really sums up the Blob as a poor threat unless you are clumsy and incredibly slow.
• This town has a grocery store that closes at 10:00pm which must have been a rare thing for a small town in the 50s.
• The Blob attacks a midnight creature feature at the local theatre. You have to respect a monster that attacks with irony.

 

Noticing the smiling faces of the fleeing populace.

The Blob may not be full to brim with thrills and chills but the effects work used to create the title creature was a testament to low budget ingenuity, created with silicon and red die – sometimes coated over a weather balloon – The Blob is a rather effective monster movie and the use of matte paintings and miniatures all go towards making a credible creature from space. Unfortunately, as mentioned, the film’s meagre budget didn’t allow for much Blob on populace action and so the bulk of the film’s eighty-two minute running time is spent with a group of movie teenagers who one would guess had their dialogue written by dyslexic aliens who only caught a portion of Rebel Without a Cause, and certainly not helped by the leads not looking remotely like teenagers.

 

Steve McQueen, the twenty-seven-year-old teenager.

Director Irwin Yeaworth did the best he could with the limitations he was dealing with, such as not having enough money to afford proper coverage, thus we get an entire scene that only gives us the back of Steve McQueen’s head, but he still managed to generate a good sense of dread and suspense, which resulted in a film that if not the best of its genre is easily one of the more fun to watch. 1958’s The Blob is a film I can heartily recommend to fans of the cheesy 50s monster flicks but if you want a true horrific version of this outer space menace the 1988 remake was surprisingly good and worth checking out as well.

Sequel Set-Up: The Blob is defeated by being frozen by CO2 fire extinguishers and then transported to the Arctic, which leads Lieutenant Dave to state, “At least we got it stopped,” but with Steve pointing out, “Yeah, as long as the Arctic stays cold,” but the sequel Beware! The Blob just has some poor mook bringing a sample back from up north, so a proper sequel made today, one that deals with Global Warming, seems like a natural.

Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy (2014) – Review

The Scooby gang has encountered the likes of Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy and Frankenstein’s monster on multiple occasions, but with Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy, we get a movie that is more of a clear homage to the Universal Monster movies of the 30s and 40s than we've ever seen before, and then to add a little icing to the cake, we get a Scooby-Doo movie that ties into past mysteries that our stalwart heroes have solved over the years.

A live-streaming web show of Daphne’s (Grey Griffin) is interrupted by Velma’s (Mindy Cohn) family lawyer, Cuthbert Crawley (Kevin Michael Richardson), who informs her that as the youngest Dinkley, she has inherited her great-great uncle's estate in Transylvania — though not the one located in the Carpathian mountains — instead, this place is located in Transylvania, Pennsylvania, a place where ethnic Transylvanians can live peaceably in 19th-century style. Velma has absolutely no interest in claiming her inheritance, “I don’t want anything to do with my Great-Great Uncle Basil. They can give all of it away for all I care!” The gang is warned that a curse also comes with this estate, “It’s said that if anyone gets too close to the Baron’s legacy, they will lose what they love the most and then be utterly destroyed.” Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) is quite relieved that Velma has no interest in visiting her cursed homestead, but when a mysterious masked figure destroys the Mystery Machine with a car bomb… well, to say Fred (Frank Welker) doesn’t take it well would be a bit of an understatement.

 

“Oh, the humanity!”

Fred: “Together we've brought down more than our share of villains with nothing more than pluck, jerry-rigged traps, and a box of Scooby Snacks, and for no better reason than a love of justice, and my van, and a knack for meddling, and a love for my van.”
Daphne: “Did you just say van?”
Fred: “No. No... I-I didn't say van. But now, we find the forces of evil have come to us. Why? We don't know why. Who? We can't say. But there is one thing we can say for certain!”
Velma: “What?”
Fred: “They killed my van!”

 

“This time... this time it's personal!”

With the Mystery Machine demolished, the gang are forced to buy tickets for the Transylvania Express, a night train to a town they never knew existed, where once again, the mysterious masked figure attacks, attempting to derail the out-of-control train and kill all on board. While aboard the train, Velma explains that her family’s real last name is Von Dinkenstein which was changed and Americanized when her ancestors arrived at Ellis Island and that her great-great-uncle was Baron Von Dinkenstein, who was said to have created a monster that inspired famous novelist Mary Shelley to write her novel, Frankenstein. This family history is apparently also the reason why Velma has dedicated her life to debunking the supernatural, which brings adventures like Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island and Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost into question.

Note: Baron Von Dinkenstein’s monster was more of a lobstrosity than a re-animated corpse.

Upon arriving at Castle Dinkenstein, and after escaping the condemnation of the Inspector Krunch (Kevin Michael Richardson) and the unruly townsfolk who blame Velma’s family for the curse and bad tourism, the gang make their way to the castle and are greeted by Mrs. Vanders (Diedrich Bader), the castle’s housekeeper, who gives them a tour that leads them into the Baron’s laboratory where the equipment has been kept functional and the corpse of the monster on ice. Velma decides to follow the Baron's notes in recreating the circumstances of the monster’s reanimation as some bizarre way of proving that it’s all fake.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Vanders shows Velma an electro wheel machine which hypnotizes her into becoming a mad scientist.

 

Have you noticed that when women go evil they tend to become sexier?

As Scooby-Doo mysteries go, Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy has to be one of the more bizarre examples, as not only do we get one of our heroes going full-on evil — Velma even tries to place poor Shaggy and Scooby’s brains inside the monster — but the Dinkenstein Curse simply ravages the Scooby gang. Fred is constantly reminded of the loss of his van and without it, he seems to have lost his confidence as well. After winning lederhosen in an eating contest, held by the town’s Burgermeister (Dee Bradley Baker), Shaggy and Scooby discover that they have not only lost their appetite but their cowardly nature as well. Daphne goes shopping for a new dress only to be told by the local gypsy girl (Candi Milo) that she is no longer a size two but a size eight, with her now puffy features and frizzy hair it's clear that the curse has caused Daphne to lose her looks.

 

Let me get this straight; Velma becomes hot and Daphne is fat-shamed?

Who could be responsible for such dastardly deeds? Could it be the sinister housekeeper or the hunchbacked Iago (Jeff Bennett) trying to bring back their master’s legacy? What about the townsfolk who blame the Dinkensteins for the town’s economic failings? Well, it turns out that everyone is guilty of something, and the whole thing was a revenge conspiracy to destroy Mystery Incorporated. The inspector is unmasked and revealed to be Cuthbert Crawley, Velma’s family lawyer, who is actually Cuthbert Crawls — the partner of Cosgood Creeps who haunted a mansion as green ghosts in “A Night of Fright is No Delight” from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? The Burgermeister is exposed by Velma to be C.L. Magnus, who posed as Redbeard's ghost in the mystery “Go Away Ghosts,” and then the gypsy is revealed to be Lila, a singer who posed as one of Mamba Wamba’s zombies from the mystery “Mamba Wamba and the Voodoo Hoodoo.” And finally, Mrs. Vanders is unmasked, revealing her to be Mama Mione, the cafe owner and criminal gang leader who dressed up as Old Iron Face from “The Creepy Case of Old Iron Face.”

 

She even recycled the iron mask to create the ghost of the Baron.

Turns out that there is a large online community of crooks who really hate Mystery Incorporated, and once this group discovered the history of Velma's ancestry, they bought the castle, which was sitting on a very explosive natural gas deposits, making it a perfect trap for those meddling kids, but how did they pull off the curse that almost destroyed the Scooby gang?
The dress Daphne purchased from the gypsy was, in fact, an inflatable suit and her puffy features were caused by her shrimp allergies. The lederhosen that Shaggy and Scooby won at the Burgermeister’s eating contest were rigged with acupuncture needles that removed their appetite as well as their fears. As for Fred, well the villains clearly knew about his van obsession so blowing up the mystery machine was all that was needed to undo him.
Also, Iago was an undercover operative from the Department of Defense, and he was after a military exoskeleton that was stolen from their research labs.

 

Sure, that all makes perfect sense.

Stray Observations:

• Once again, what was once Scooby-Doo canon is brought into question. In this movie, we are told that Velma Dinkley is the youngest in her family, which negates the fact that in Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo we met her younger sister Madelyn.
• This small-town version of Transylvania is more in keeping with the Universal backlot version of Eastern Europe than it is the actual Romanian region.
• Fred has the gang create a cheerleading pyramid atop the train to create drag to slow it down, but then later detaches the locomotive from the passenger car to prevent them from crashing into the town. Why was this not done first, and skip the ridiculous human pyramid?
• A 19th century set town, one with a history of monsters and curses, would more than likely bring tourists rather than keep them away.
• I love that the town’s economy centers on torch production.
• Mrs. Vanders is a combination of the stern housekeeper Mrs. Danvers from Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Frau Blucher from Mel Brooks’ satirical Young Frankenstein.
• Inspector Krunch, with his missing hand, is a parody of Inspector Krogh, the one-armed officer from Son of Frankenstein.
• That Daphne can’t tell she is wearing an inflatable fat suit is probably one of the dumbest ideas in the history of Scooby-Doo.
• A hypnotized person cannot be forced to do something against their will, thus Velma would not have attempted to remove Shaggy and Scooby’s brains. Unless, secretly, she’s always wanted those two dead.

Note: The brain swapping element is a clear homage to both Ghost of Frankenstein and Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

What makes Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy an interesting chapter in the history of Scooby-Doo is that this was the first time villains from their past make a second appearance, and even though the conspiracy plot was completely ridiculous — even Velma points out that they would have been better off selling the rights to the natural gas under the castle than this stupid revenge plot — the idea that multiple online message boards exist simply to hate on the Scooby gang is kind of brilliant. Another stand-out feature is the beautiful gothic/expressionistic art direction given to this episode, which harkens back to the fantastic look of 2010’s Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated.

 

Castle Dinkenstein in all its glory.

There may be story elements of Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy that are problematic at best, and the Daphne fat-shaming element will still leave a bad taste in your mouth, but overall, this was a fun Scooby-Doo adventure and seeing classic villains returning for revenge was a nice touch. Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy is an animated mystery that I can heartily recommend.

The Addams Family (2019) – Review

“They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky. They're all together ooky; The Addams family!” These opening lyrics to the 1960s classic television sitcom perfectly summed up what viewers were going to experience over the following thirty minutes of that original show, which mostly involved “normal” people encountering the delightful weirdness of the Addams Family. Now, five decades and numerous adaptations of the characters created by cartoonist Charles Addams later, we come to their first theatrical animated adventure — having already won audiences over with two live-action movies, starring Raul Julia and Angelica Huston — but has anything new been brought to the table?

 How about an origin story? Most adaptations of the Addams Family pick up with the family fully formed, so why not explore a little backstory, which is what this version decided to do… kind of. The film opens with Gomez (Oscar Isaac) and Morticia (Charlize Theron) finding their wedding being crashed by torch-wielding angry villagers, causing the two to flee the “Old County” to someplace where they can raise a family in peace, “Somewhere horrible, somewhere corrupt, somewhere that no one in their right mind would be caught dead in." Cue a smash cut to a New Jersey road sign. That's humour folks; nothing beats a cheap shot at New Jersey.

Luckily for them, they end up in the heavily wooded part of the state where they run into Lurch (Conrad Vernon) — quite literally, as Gomez hits him with their car — and discover that he is a straightjacket-wearing escaped mental patient from the hospital for the criminally insane. Doing the only “sane” thing, they hand the man their luggage and make him their butler.

 

“Thank you, old boy, lead the way.”

This was a pretty good opening and the jokes, for the most part, worked rather well — stuff like Thing playing the song “Wild Thing” on the car radio being the one harbinger of tired jokes to come — and I wish the movie had spent a little more time within this unexplored aspect of the early Addams Family history. Sadly, that was not to be; instead, we get a painting montage that carries us through thirteen years to the present day and any ounce of originality is left far behind.
What follows is your standard Addams Family story, where their “weirdness” will cause strife within the local community, but then this plot has to share space with two other subplots which in themselves would have made far more interesting plots for a feature film. These two subplots consist of Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard) struggling to be ready for his “Coming of Age” ceremony, and Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) becoming distant with her mother as she desires to explore the outside world.

Note: In this movie, we are told that Wednesday and Pugsley have never set foot off of the Addams family property, not even for a vacation, and they are completely unaware of the outside world, which is bad parenting even by Addams standards.

This leads to the one aspect of the movie I wish had been given more screen time, which would be Wednesday’s desire to experience Junior High, much to Morticia’s dismay.  The two fight but Wednesday puts forth a good argument: “Mother, would you really wish to deprive me of the opportunity of tormenting children my own age?” In this subplot, we get Wednesday dealing with the school’s clique of “Mean Girls,” as well as a delightful scene of Wednesday in Biology class, where her reaction to being given a dead frog is to construct a Doctor Frankenstein assortment of equipment to bring the creature back to life. The stuff with Wednesday and her new best friend Parker (Elsie Fisher) are easily the best moments in the film and any time it cut back to Pugsley having to practice for his upcoming Mazurka I just groaned.

 

"I wish I'd been named Thursday."

Unfortunately, neither Wednesday’s school life nor Pugsley’s upcoming manhood is the central plot of this particular Addams Family movie. Instead, that honour goes to the planned community of "Assimilation" — yes, that’s the actual name of the town in this movie, which is an early clue that subtlety will not be on the menu here — a town that is being run by reality TV host Margaux Needler (Allison Janney), and who turns out to be this film’s chief villain. It seems that the Addams Family’s spooky home could jeopardize the selling of the remaining fifty homes in Assimilation, and with the Addams refusing a free home renovation, Margaux is forced to use the power of social media to turn the residents of Assimilation against the Addams Family.

Note: Why Margaux Needler has a secret lair, where she can monitor all the homes in this planned community via the hidden cameras she installed, is never explained.

The overused and trite message of conformity is about as subtle as a ball-peen hammer to the forehead; the kids of Assimilation even sing a song with such lyrics as, “What's so great about being yourself when you can be like everyone else? It's easy to be happy if you have no choice.” Now, this message of encouraging individual expression and fighting conformity isn’t a bad one, but sadly, it’s handled in the tritest and most boring way possible. I can picture even five-year-old audience members rolling their eyes over the ham-fisted writing on display here.

 

“Everyone knows pink is a gateway colour.”

Stray Observations:

• Lurch is found wearing a straightjacket from the “State Hospital for the Criminally Insane,” and he leads Gomez and Morticia up to the abandoned Asylum, which they decide to make their home, but if it had been abandoned for years, which the decrepit interior implies, what was Lurch still doing in the vicinity? Had he been wandering around in that straightjacket for a decade or more?
• Lurch’s choice of a musical instrument is changed from the harpsichord to a grand piano for some reason.
• The family lion is used as a garbage disposal in a gag that would be more fitting in an episode of The Flintstones.
• The classic schtick of Wednesday/Pugsley's attempts at murdering each other is strangely expanded to include Pugsley trying to murder his father as well.
• The new design for Wednesday, which included hangman’s nooses for braids, I found to be particularly inspiring.
• In Kick Ass 2, Chloë Grace Moretz’s character Hit-Girl ended up in Junior High, and as in the case of this film, that subplot was worthy of its own movie as well.
• How could Margaux Needler be completely unaware of the existence of the Addams Family mansion? And I don’t buy the idea of the swamp’s perpetual fog as an excuse because anyone constructing a planned community would have been aware of an old insane asylum that overlooked your prospective community.

 

Did she even check for zoning permits before building her town?

On the plus side, I did appreciate the filmmakers keeping the character designs of the Addams Family quite close to the original Charles Addams cartoons, and the overall look of the spooky house was excellent. I especially liked the fact that it wasn’t just an abandoned insane asylum, but a haunted one as well, and that it periodically screams “GET OUT” at people. In the area of voice casting, Chloë Grace Moretz and Finn Wolfhard did excellent work, while the performances of Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron I found to be rather underwhelming. One of my favourite elements of the Addams Family is in how deeply in love Gomez and Morticia are — they were even the first television couple to sleep in the same bed — and that passion is sadly absent here. This version of Addams Family would have been better served as an original Netflix movie or a Nickelodeon special, or maybe as a pilot for a new animated series, but it certainly didn’t warrant a theatrical release.

Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery (2014) – Review

It’s not unusual for the Scooby gang to run into famous characters or real-life celebrities, in fact, that was the whole basis of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, but with Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery it’s not so much a case of Mystery Incorporated helping out a group of celebrities as it is Warner Bros. Animation becoming a blatant promotional arm of the WWE and their upcoming 2014 WrestleMania.

While playing an X-Box 360 Kinect type wrestling video game Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) win all-expense paid tickets to WWE City to watch WrestleMania. Now, while this completely thrills Shaggy and Scooby the rest of the gang are less than excited - not that I'd blame them as it'd bore me to tears - but once Shaggy points out all the times that he and Scooby have been used for bait against various monsters they cave in and agree on the trip. Fred (Frank Welker) concedes that WrestleMania would be a great place to try out his new camera while Velma (Mindy Cohn) points out that, “This will give me an opportunity to explore the parallels between the modern world of WWE versus ancient warrior customs.” Sure, we'll go with that excuse.  Meanwhile, Daphne (Grey Griffin) remains rather despondent about going and it’s never explained why she just doesn’t stay home, but when she eventually comes face to abs with wrestling star John Cena she immediately jumps on the wrestling bandwagon.

 

Daphne’s love for Fred is a rather fickle beast.

As this is a Scooby-Doo mystery, and not just a commercial of WrestleMania, the gang soon encounters a monstrous Ghost Bear who they later learn has been vandalizing many parts of the WWE City. This particular creature is apparently the legendary ghost of an 18th-century wrestling bear that lost a match to the luchador wrestler known as Sin Cara Grande, and it went on a rampage before disappearing into the mountains. Unfortunately, for us, the Ghost Bear is only one of many uninteresting elements that makes up Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery with its borderline pathetic design – a red bear with a glowing head and what looks like some bones glued to the fur – and the reveal that it’s just an idiot in a robot bearsuit is way too long of a wait.

 

“The simple bare necessities of life.”

On the mystery side of things we get a few possible suspects trotted out - though the guilty party sticks out like a sore thumb - first we have Bayard (Corey Burton) a hillbilly-type loner who hates the WWE for gobbling up “All our land” but as building a robot Ghost Bear looks a bit out of this man's wheelhouse he’s not really in the running, then we have the wrestler Kane (Glenn Jacobs) who believes his title was stolen away from him, and finally, there is Cookie (Charles S. Dutton) a WWE trainer who wants his nephew Ruben (Bumper Robinson) to give up his dream of being a pro-wrestler and study computer sciences instead. Cookie used to be a wrestler himself but an injury left him using a leg brace and ended that part of his career, which points a neon arrow at him as being the man behind the Ghost Bear.

 

He never would have gotten away with it.

The Ghost Bear isn’t the only threat facing the Scooby gang as shortly after arriving at WWE City Scooby-Doo finds himself being arrested for stealing the WWE Championship Belt, which he actually did steal but only because the wrestling video game he’d played earlier had planted post-hypnotic commands, but before they can be carted off to jail by WWE security Mr. McMahon offers Scooby and Shaggy a chance at freedom if they defeat Kane at WrestleMania, and that is just one final bit of stupidity in what is a rather lacklustre and moronic mystery.

Stray Thoughts:

· Fred resistance to visit WWE City and WrestleMania makes little sense because he was a major wrestling fan in the What's New, Scooby-Doo? Episode “Wrestle Maniacs.”
· Fred, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo get a room with only twin beds, which strangely enough results in Fred sleeping on the floor.
· Bayard hates WWE City for gobbling up all of his land, but doesn’t this require him to sell the land? Or is the WWE able to declare Eminent Domain?
· John Cena speaks masked luchador which comes in handy when the silent Sin Cara has to relay the legend of the Ghost Bear.
· Does WWE City exist outside United States laws and thus one can be exonerated from a crime via Trial by Combat?
· Daphne and Velma get angry at Shaggy and Scooby for packing tons of snacks instead of their luggage, but Shaggy quickly points out, “What’s the big deal? We all wear the same outfit every single day anyway."

 

Though Daphne still has a variety of green scarves to choose from.

I have to admit I am not a wrestling fan so seeing all these “famous wrestlers” appearing in a Scooby-Doo animated film did nothing for me, and that the whole thing was basically an eighty-minute commercial for WrestleMania was just one more thing to stick in my craw, but if the mystery itself had been decent, or if the monster had been even remotely interesting, I could have forgiven the sellout aspect of this movie, sadly there is nothing here for anyone who isn’t WWE fan to enjoy as the Scooby-Doo mystery facet of this direct-to-video feature was paper-thin and lame.

Note: I would have forgiven all if Velma had revealed to everyone that pro-wrestling was fake.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) – Review

“You poor simple fools, thinking you could defeat me. Me? The mistress of all evil?” There is no more iconic Disney villain than that of Maleficent, a woman who commands “All the forces of Hell” and is most known for casting a death curse on a baby, yet with the 2014 live-action film Maleficent the good folks at Disney Studios tried to put a kinder spin on this classic character and box office receipts showed that many people were on board with such a radical change. Now, five years later, we have the sequel Maleficent: Mistress of Evil where we are to learn if there can be a “Happy Ever After” for both Maleficent and Princess Aurora.

 Taking place five years after the events of the previous movie we find Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning) has been given the position of Queen of the Moors, with Maleficent (Angelina Jolie ) as its guardian and protector – when or how the Moors became a kingdom is never explained as it was simply a magical forest realm bordering a human kingdom in the last film – but paradise is put on hold when Aurora informs Maleficent that she plans to marry Prince Philip (Harris Dickinson ) heir to the neighbouring kingdom of Ulstead. Maleficent is opposed to this union stating, “Love doesn’t always end well” but Aurora is insistent and before you can say “Look who’s coming to dinner?” Aurora and Maleficent are sitting down to dinner with Phillip's parents, King John (Robert Lindsay ) and Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer ), where an awkward dinner conversation quickly turns into nasty accusations.

 

“I distinctly remember asking for the vegetarian meal.”

Maleficent flees the castle, after seemingly cursing King John, and while taking wing she is shot out of the sky by the Queen's top henchwoman Gerda (Jenn Murray ), who was armed with a lead shot firing crossbow, but before Maleficent can perish she is rescued by the Conall (Chiwetel Ejiofor ) the leader of the Dark Fae who also wants to broker peace between humans and fairy kind. Conall and his people all sport the same trademark horns and wings of Maleficent and from them, she learns that these fellow fae have been forced into hiding and have nearly been driven to extinction by human oppression and that she herself is a direct descendant of the Dark Phoenix Fae, a legendary being of great power.

 

“Welcome to my Cave of Exposition.”

To say a lot is going on within Maleficent: Mistress of Evil’s two-hour running time would be a vast understatement – I wasn’t much of a fan of the first film but at least its plot followed basic fairy tale logic – yet this movie practically needs a flow chart to keep track of what’s going on. First, we have King John who, like his son, wants peace between Ulstead and the Kingdom of the Moors, and then we have Queen Ingrith who’s secretly building an arsenal in a massive hidden weapons factory located below the very castle itself. She also has henchmen sneaking into Moor to steal fairies so that the Queen’s de-winged pixie Lickspittle (Warwick Davis ) can experiment on them in the hopes of developing a lethal weapon that will annihilate all fairies once and for all. This plan will also involve inviting all the fairy folk from Moor to the wedding, which is just one big trap. Then we also have Borra (Ed Skrein ), a warlike member of the Dark Fae who favours open conflict with humans and he can’t wait to launch a full-scale attack on Ulstead so that his people can stop living in caves.

 

“Fly, my pretties, fly!”

Messy plot mechanics aside one of the biggest problems I had with this film was the bloody title, for at no point in this film does Maleficent perform a single act that could even remotely be called evil, so why is this film called Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and not something more apt like Maleficent: Mistress of Sharp Cheekbones?

Let’s look at her track record in this film; she agrees to let Aurora marry Prince Philip, is framed for cursing King John, and then she survives two assassination attempts before eventually making peace between the races. That doesn’t sound too “Mistress of Evil” to me, but hey, what do I know? With Queen Ingrith’s plans involving the desecration of fairy burial grounds and the genocide of their entire species the film really should have been called Queen Ingrith: Mistress of Evil. I wasn’t all happy with the neutering of Maleficent in the previous film, where she went evil because she was basically date raped, but in this outing, she's practically useless throughout the film’s entire running time. Maleficent has no agency of her own as we only see her simply reacting to events being flung at her, and she's not all that effective at doing even that.

 

She’s allowed to give the bride away, so that’s nice.

I guess I should be happy that this wasn’t just another soulless live-action remake like Tim Burton’s Dumbo – which was terrible on so many levels – but the character assassination of one of Disney’s premier villains is almost worse. In the first film, Angelina Jolie seemed to be having a little fun with the twist on the classic tale, even if the Broadway play Wicked had already covered that ground years before, but this time out Jolie seems to just be going through the motions. Jolie will most likely still go down in history as the best looking live-action interpretation of an animated character but the heart of Maleficent has been truly gutted.

Stray Observations:

• Why is Maleficent completely unaware of the Dark Fae? Even if Maleficent had been separated from them as a baby you’d think some other fairy creatures would know of their existence and filled her in on what species of Fae she was.
• Queen Ingrith somehow managed to acquire the spinning wheel from the first movie and used its spindle to put King John into a magical coma, but the curse Maleficent used was directed at the baby Aurora, with the spindle being just the catalyst, and thus should have had no effect on anyone but the Princess.
• We learn Queen Ingrith has been twisting the events of the previous to put Maleficent in a bad light, stoking the fear in her subjects, and she explains that “It doesn’t matter who woke Sleeping Beauty, their all terrified, and the story became legend.” Excuse me, but how does something become a legend in just five years?
• That Aurora’s fairy friends somehow survive the lethal fairy killing gas, despite being trapped with the castle’s cathedral, is the very definition of plot armour.
• We never get a backstory as to why the de-winged pixie Lickspittle was in cahoots with the Queen to kill his own kind but I bet it’d have made a more interesting story than this one.
• In the previous film Maleficent turned her flunky Diaval (Sam Riley) into a dragon and in this film Maleficent turns into a Dark Phoenix. Do the people over at Disney have something against Maleficent herself turning into a bloody dragon?

 

Granted, this was still better than Fox's Dark Phoenix.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a mess from the first moment to the last frame, that the cast includes such great actors as Angelina Jolie and Michelle Pfeiffer and then wastes them in such a way is a crime against cinema – the less said the better about Harris Dickinson, who replaced Brenton Thwaites as Prince Phillip as he had about as much screen charisma as soggy toast. Elle Fanning is given a little more to do this time out but as it's mostly “Damsel in Distress” schtick her performance can’t be put in the win column, and overall the acting in this film ranged from phoning it in to swinging for the fences. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a worse cash grab than all those live-action remakes combined because it took a character I loved and turned her into that cranky aunt you dread seeing on Thanksgiving.

 
Question: Does Angelina Jolie file those cheekbones to get them to look like that?