An American Werewolf in London

This movie fell flat to me, and I'm not really sure why. I guess its because everything about it was predictable. I had never seen this one before, but it still felt like I already knew the whole storyline.

Since this is a class about monsters, I'll talk about the werewolf first. I liked it. I liked that they showed the changing from man to werewolf, and the effects weren't totally bad, especially for a movie made in 1981. In the last scene with the werewolf, I was at a crossroads. Part of me thought it looked pretty neat, and it kind of really dated the movie as being early 80's--like gremlins or E.T. But then another part of me thought it was almost comical, and that the werewolf would have made an excellent stuffed animal. But overall, the werewolf, and the movie had a strong 80's vibe, and I have a soft spot in my heart for the 80's.

There was another monster of sorts in this movie: the undead. I wasn't expecting them and I'm not really sure how their presence made sense. Jack was completely ravaged by the werewolf, so I could see him just being dead. And then if the idea is that anyone killed by a werewolf must walk the earth as a ghost type creature that looks like a zombie, I can live with that. But the other victims that David killed, they didn't seem to be as badly wounded. I guess I'm just trying to understand why David didn't leave one or two of them alive to pass on his lycanthropy similar to what had happened to him. In David's case, I guess he was saved from being killed by the folks from the village that shot the werewolf. Does that mean werewolves always completely kill unless they are prevented by some third party? I guess it makes sense... just kind of thinking this through as I write. I always thought that a werewolf attack caused a person to rise as a werewolf, and never really thought about whether or not the person was killed in the act or not. I kinda figured they died and rose as a werewolf like vampires. But as I think of it now, I'm not sure why I even thought that. Werewolves die like anything else living, and if the attack kills you as a person you don't rise as a werewolf because you're already dead. Yet the victims rise as a ghost... an interesting ghost that apparently decomposes as the former body does. Interesting idea. But why do these ghosts suddenly know all about the werewolf lore and know that they need the werewolf's line to be terminated in order to find peace? Did they get a "Rules for the Dead" kind of book like in Beetlejuice to explain it to them?

What was up with that creepy town? I loved that, but logically, I couldn't understand why it was so important for them to hide the fact there was a werewolf about. I'd think they'd have wanted help dealing with it. But regardless, I did like the vibe. You knew something wasn't right in the village, and especially at The Slaughtered Lamb, but wasn't sure of the underlying reason. Yeah, you knew it was about the werewolf, but didn't know much beyond that. Turns out, by the end of the movie, you still didn't know.

So, is lycanthropy hereditary? Is it possible Alex now has a werewolf pup or two growing inside her? :)

Alien

It was nice to watch this movie again. After seeing all the sequels, you start to forget what happened in which movie. This one and the one with the marines are my favorites, not counting the predator cross-overs.

One of the things that makes this movie so good is that the audience knows how bad-ass the alien is, but never really gets to see much of it. In fact, the movie itself is so intentionally dark. A character just walking down a passage alone is scary in this movie. Ridley capitalizes on that with scenes where the cat jumps out and scares them. I loved the suspense, but the cat I could have done without. Its presence on the ship was illogical. Who's cat was it anyways? I think the cat was in the movie just to be able to have that scene where it jumped out and scared everybody. But, did that scene work? Hell yeah. The whole movie, once the alien was out and about, was a long ride in suspense and tension. It didn't matter that you already figured out everyone was going to die, except for maybe Ripley, the protagonist... you weren't sure until it happened, and the suspense to it happening was awesome.

As a minor critique, I don't understand how the alien could grow from that little eel-looking thing that burst out of Kane's chest, to a creature over six-feet tall, in less than 24 hours. Living organisms need to consume to grow. What did it consume that could have allowed it that kind of growth in such a short period of time? Not saying something couldn't be part of the alien's story there... just wish it would have been explained in the movie somehow.

I had a little bit of a "Barbara" flashback (from Night of the Living Dead" with the Lambert character, though she wasn't even half as bad as Barbara. But there was a little bit of a similarity there, and I probably wouldn't have picked up on it had Barbara not just annoyed me so much recently. :)

As far as a monster goes, the alien is at the top of the mountain. It may have company there, but its at the top. Fierce, practically indestructible, relentless, and offensive defense in its acid blood, and extra rows of teeth. A truly spectacular monster. Its the kind of thing that keeps coming, even after you thought you stopped it... but it always makes sense that it keeps coming. The first time I saw the movie (who knows when?), when it got burned in the flame from the shuttle and swung up, I thought it was going to re-enter the shuttle from some other point of access, even if it made its own way in. It was one of those... can I go ahead and breathe now?... moments. I wasn't even sure it was over til I saw the credits. That's a powerful monster.

Night of the Living Dead

Gotta love the old black and whites. You know you're in for some laughs when you see that. I watched this with two of my kids. Fun times.

The zombies were great. Like, real zombies. True zombies. They were exactly what I think of when I think of zombies. Slow. Beatable one on one. And coming in swarms. Eating people. I would have loved to hear one call for "brains!' This story had the best zombies of everything we've covered so far.

But, the characters were terrible. They were so flat. I wasn't sure I was going to make it far enough into the movie to see Barb die because she was driving me crazy. Such a poor, one-dimensional portrayal of someone dealing with tragedy. I couldn't wait for her to die.

Same thing with Conner. It was interesting to see Ben shoot him while he was alive, and kill him. I wasn't expecting that. I was happy to see him go but, honestly, I wish he would have been the one stabbed over and over by his daughter instead of his wife.

The knucklehead and his girlfriend, who couldn't see that he was going to die when they were in the house and Judy was like "But why does it have to be you?" I'm like, yeah, he's dead. That the girl was stupid enough to ad hoc the plan and run out there, and then get stuck in a seat belt... good riddance.

Ben was the only character I actually cared about, and he was the only one that had a little more dimension to him. He was all business about trying to solve the problem. He also tried to talk reason into Barb, until he just gave up on her. He started his relationship off with Conner reasonably. Tried to work with him and the other guy as a team. But because they were idiots, he turned to violence (at least on Conner), but had every reason to. He adapted. He was cool.

The ending was rough. It was like, hey, we want to kill all the characters in this movie, but we made Ben too good to die. Let's have him be accidentally killed by the rescue party. That was so lame. The movie showed its age, but it still stood on solid ground plot-wise (well, except for the stupid explanation of a satellite returning from Venus that was irradiating the eastern third of the US). It's crazy how a lame ending can undo all the hard work done in the middle. Of course, the only one doing the hard work was Ben. The rest of the crew was terrible. And the acting would best be described as "over-acting." The dude who played Ben though, he was as calm and cool as the character he played.

Very cool shout out to Greensburg in the movie! When I was hearing all the references to places around Pittsburgh, I was wondering if Greensburg was going to show up. It sure did. I thought that was cool.

World War Z (Max Brooks)

World War Z (Max Brooks)

I’m not going to say this was a bad book, but I don’t think it was a good example of a horror novel. There was a monster type present, and it was zombies. Similar to I am Legend, which had vampires that came about due to a virus, the zombies in World War Z came about by a sickness. In many ways, these zombies were like the vampires too. So much so, that I don’t really think there is much of a distinction. They both “pro-created” exponentially by infecting their victims. Some of the vampires could talk, none of the zombies could, but neither had the capacity for actual thinking. There was a second type of vampire in I am Legend that did form a society, but they were only involved in the ending of that book. Regarding the actual zombie monster of this book, I felt like we’ve already been there, seen that.

But it wasn’t a horror novel. Brooks went into incredible detail with the geopolitical representation of the world. He definitely put a lot of research into the governments and diplomatic relationships of countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, China and Taiwan (and its ambiguous status), Cuba, Russia, and Israel and the Palestinians. The book was really about how countries might respond to an epidemic like these diseased zombies more than it was about zombies. Isolationism and long-standing political tensions were what this book was about, and I never felt like I was reading a horror book. Sure, zombies were in the book, but Nazi concentration camps were also terrible. You wouldn’t classify a book about them as “horror,” though they were plenty horrible. This book felt like reading about something like that.

The journalistic approach of having multiple “survivors” give interviews was the other main factor that, for me, made this book anything but a horror novel. Everyone was telling the reporter their stories, and the problem with that is that you already know every one of them survived. There was zero tension in the book for me. There were a few scenes that described goriness, but I don’t think that is the definition of horror.

I was impressed with some of the things Brooks knew and put into this book. For instance, he knew the nickname for the B-52 as a BUFF, though the true breakout of the acronym is Big Ugly Fat Fucker. Fat Fellow was only used in situations where swearing would be frowned upon. I’d have thought in a book like this, the true breakout would have been more appropriate. But hey, like I said, I was impressed he got it in his book at all. His military terminology was very good. I think he did a lot of serious research for this book that showed. However, I found it hard to believe the story of the female pilot who parachuted down to the Louisiana swamps. Fighter pilots, which she was initially, don’t wear parachutes, but they have ejection seats that include parachutes. However, cargo aircrews on prop cargo planes, which is what she was when the plane accident happened, do not wear parachutes as part of their job. Maybe they “changed the rules” after the zombies or something, but if so, he should have called that out. It’s just not normal for an aircrew of a heavy (the term used to describe the large military planes like transports, recon, command and control, and tankers) to wear parachutes. Many heavy aircrews don’t even have parachutes. And then she also apparently wore a survival kit that included an electronic GPS, a radio, and a hammock, among other things. She had to have been wearing it, because she had just relieved herself in the piss tube when the back end of the plane broke off and she was sucked out the back. Wasn’t like she grabbed this stuff on the way out. I can’t even envision what she looked like relieving herself with all this supposed stuff on. Comical. So, what Brooks is implying is that these pilots wear parachutes and survival kits with all this equipment, at all times, in the course of their duties. That’s not the way it works. The plane will have an inflatable emergency raft or two, and bound up with those quickly deployable rafts would be survival kits that contain things like radios, water, compasses, desalination kits, and... well… no hammocks… but whatever. My point is that you don’t wear all this stuff. It would be impossible. I know I’m not really talking about the monsters here, just nitpicking the military stuff, but the book wasn’t really about monsters either.

Not a bad book, but I just didn’t feel like it was horror genre. More like a what-if scenario involving a plague and how countries would react to it.

I do have to give one major shout out to Brooks for including the metal band Iron Maiden and the song The Trooper in this book. Second best rock band of all time and one hell of a song. Bravo, Mr. Brooks.

The Yattering and Jack (Clive Barker)

I liked this story. I'm a big fan when you get into rules that demons or devils and angels have to follow, and how they either try and be successful within the rules and then fail (like the Yattering) or how they try to manipulate the rules or trick people with rules to their benefit. You could probably throw genies/djinn and efreeti into that as well, but I prefer the Hell-based creatures like the Yattering. As a minor demon, the Yattering was a very well-done creature. Going to or being from Hell is supposed to include suffering, and even though the Yattering is the predator here, you can tell its not all fun and games for him. He is suffering more than his victim, which is a really cool twist. The idea of the psychosomatic leprosy that the lower demons were susceptible was a very neat weakness and really helped round out the Yattering as a character. I loved the idea of the academy and of teaching the rules of Hell through beatings, the fear he had for even talking to Beelzebub, and the "obscenities of the ear" method of terrorizing victims. There was a good deal of world-building in this short story and I am a big fan of that, especially when it can be done so seamlessly in the overall story.

I was not quite as sold on Jack. The idea of him knowing what was going on and waging his own war back the the Yattering was cool. But what bothered me about it is that we have no idea how Jack got the knowledge he had of all of this. How did he know the Yattering was there in the first place? How did he know the rules of Hell so well? Who taught him? Why was he taught? His daughters were like normal people, why wasn't he? I don't mind that he wasn't freaked out and was able to wage the battle in a way that not even the Yattering realized his opponents knowledge, but without telling me anything at all about how he got that knowledge and/or why he has it, I lose some amount of trust with the author. Once we learned that he knew all about the Yattering, and there was no explanation for it, I felt cheated.

This story definitely had the "add some humor to the horror" vibe going for it, and I think it served as a good example as to how to do that. Conversely though, I don't know that I would actually classify this as horror. It wasn't scary at all, and the blood and gore was relegated to animals. Maybe I don't fully understand the definition of horror? But in any event, the humor in this one worked. The turkey dance was way cool, and I loved the three Freddys.

This was one of the best things we read in class. I have to say that I am glad to have been exposed to Clive Barker. I'm going to have to read more of him... when I get a chance to pick my own reading material again.. someday... ;)