Monthly Archives: April 2018

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A Sound of Thunder

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A Sound of Thunder

Today, I’m going to take a look at 2005’s A Sound of Thunder: an ill-fated adaptation of a classic science-fiction tale.

The plot of A Sound of Thunder is summarized on IMDb as follows:

When a scientist sent back to the prehistoric era strays off the path he causes a chain of events that alters history in disastrous ways.

The cast of A Sound of Thunder includes Edward Burns (Saving Private Ryan, Alex Cross), Ben Kingsley (Gandhi, Sexy Beast, Schindler’s List, Iron Man 3, Lucky Number Slevin, Suspect Zero), Catherine McCormack (Braveheart, Spy Game), Corey Johnson (Captain Phillips, Jackie), and David Oyelowo (Selma, The Cloverfield Paradox, The Last King of Scotland, Nina).

A Sound of Thunder is based on a short story of the same name written by science-fiction legend Ray Bradbury, which was originally published in 1952. While this is the only film adaptation of the story, it has been translated to the small screen twice: once on The Ray Bradbury Theater, and another time in parody form on The Simpsons.

The screenwriters for this wayward adaptation of the Bradbury story were Thomas Dean Donnelly (Sahara, Conan The Barbarian), Joshua Oppenheimer (Dylan Dog: Dead of Night), and Gregory Poirier (National Treasure: Book of Secrets).

A Sound of Thunder was directed and shot by Peter Hyams, whose other films include Timecop, Sudden Death, Stay Tuned, Capricorn One, End of Days, and The Presidio, among others.

The editor for the film was Sylvie Landra, who also cut The Fifth Element, Leon: The Professional, and Catwoman, among other films.

The music for A Sound of Thunder was composed Nick Glennie-Smith, whose other works include Heaven Is For Real, We Were Soldiers, The Man In The Iron Mask, The Rock, and Home Alone 3.

Renny Harlin was the original director for the project, and even had Pierce Brosnan on board as the star. However, he was fired by the producers after he apparently made a creative decision that displeased Ray Bradbury, paving the way for Hyams to take over.

During filming of the movie in 2002, heavy floods damaged the sets, causing significant delays. Also, the production company wound up going bankrupt during the post-production process, meaning there was little-to-no money to finish the film. The combination of these factors led to the film’s release date being delayed by a total of two years.

A Sound of Thunder brought in just under $11.7 million in its lifetime theatrical run. However, given this take was on an estimated production budget of $80 million, the film was a huge financial failure. Critically, it didn’t fare any better: currently, it holds an IMDb user rating of 4.2/10, alongside Rotten Tomatoes scores of 6% from critics and 18% from audiences.

In his review for SPLICEDwire, Rob Blackwelder described A Sound of Thunder as “a catastrophe of bad acting, ludicrous science and conspicuously cheap special effects.” Personally, I can’t imagine a more succinct summary of the film. While I don’t feel nearly as strongly about the acting (it wasn’t notable enough to be notably bad), the science writing and special effects are mind-boggling: there are misunderstandings about basic evolutionary concepts, and the creatures all look like they walked out of an MS-DOS computer game. Interestingly, I think both of these notable weaknesses of the film trace back to issues with the production: the bad effects are a direct result of the bankruptcy of the production company before the film’s completion, and the writing issues relate to the screenplay attempting to be both an adaptation and expansion on the Bradbury source material.

Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer made an observation in his review of the film that I definitely agree with:

Some of this might have passed muster in a Twilight Zone episode, which would have been an ideal home for such a tale.

This material is basically tailor-made for a short-form adaptation: had this movie been made for the small screen (and with a shorter run time), the screenplay would have side-stepped having to speculate the sequence of events after the source story concluded. The voice of the screenplay would have sounded more consistent, and the more scientifically illiterate later acts of the film wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place. The more I think about it, the more this seems like an ideal story for a 1 hour television movie: something that might have been more realistic for a production plagued by financial issues from the start.

All in all, A Sound of Thunder is a shockingly terrible exemplar of what happens when the money for a film runs out before the visual effects are truly complete, and should serve as a cautionary tale to those who seek to dramatically modify and expand on source materials in their screenplays. I can recommend giving it a watch up until the “butterfly effect” moment, in which the time stream is initially distorted: the ending point of the Bradbury short story. While the film still isn’t good up until that point, the initial dinosaur effects are awe-inducingly terrible, and worth the 20-30 minutes for the first act. After that point, though, I’d say it is more than worth bailing out: there is nothing of worth beyond it.

 

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Grizzly

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Grizzly

Today, I’m going to take a look at a 1976 creature feature: Grizzly.

The plot of Grizzly is summarized on IMDb as follows:

An eighteen-foot-tall grizzly bear terrorizes a state park, leaving it up to a Park Ranger to save the day.

Grizzly was directed by William Girdler, who tragically died in a helicopter accident at the young age of 30. However, he made nine films in his six years as an active director, including Grizzly, Day of the Animals, and Asylum of Satan.

The central cast of Grizzly was made up of Christopher George (The Rat Patrol, The Exterminator, City of the Living Dead, Pieces, Day of the Animals), Andrew Prine (Gettysburg, The Miracle Worker), and Richard Jaeckel (The Dirty Dozen, Starman, 3:10 to Yuma, The Green Slime, Walking Tall Part 2).

The cinematographer for the film was William L. Asman, who is an experienced camera operator who has worked on shows like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 7th Heaven, and Melrose Place, as well as on movies like The Octagon, Brainstorm, Loverboy, Gremlins 2, Matinee, Speed, and The Rocketeer.

The editor for Grizzly was Bub Asman (cinematographer William Asman’s brother), who also cut Day of the Animals, and is a veteran sound effects editor with credits such as Sicario, American Sniper, Million Dollar Baby, 1941, Red Dawn, First Blood, Conan: The Barbarian, Speed 2, Demolition Man, and Prisoners.

The music for the movie was composed by Robert O. Ragland, whose other credits include 10 to Midnight, Q: The Winged Serpent, The Fear, The Touch of Satan, and The Thing With Two Heads.

The special effects work for Grizzly was provided by the duo of Phil Cory (Misery, The Aviator, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Cobra, Mannequin, The Wraith, The Monster Quad, Weekend at Bernie’s) and Bob Dawson (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Christine, Prophecy, The Day After).

In 1983, a sequel to Grizzly (called Grizzly 2: The Predator or Grizzly 2: The Concert) was partially completed but never released, and has become somewhat of an icon among lost films. In 2014, The New York Post wrote an article on the film, which was set to star the likes of Charlie Sheen, George Clooney, and Laura Dern. From the article:

the tale [of the movie’s failed creation] involves — among other mishaps — stolen money, malfunctioning special effects and a script that was rewritten by none other than its Hungarian caterer.

In addition to the uncompleted sequel, there is also a fake sequel that is occasionally marketed as Grizzly II. 1977’s Claws,  which is also about a killer grizzly bear, was re-released in the United States in 1978 in an attempt to capitalize on the success of Grizzly.

Grizzly was one in a large wave of Jaws knockoffs featuring any number of predatory animals that spanned throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. Others films in this sub-genre included Piranha, Alligator, The Last Shark, Tentacles, and Orca.

The live bear used in filming was named “Teddy”: he was an 11 foot tall grizzly bear who was, at the time, the largest bear in captivity. The cast and crew were kept separated from the bear by an electric barrier for their safety, as the bear was trained by not tamed. For the attack sequences, a robotic bear was used in his place.

Grizzly was made on a low production budget of $750,000, on which it took in $39 million at the box office. This made it the most financially successful independent film of 1976, and for a time, the most profitable independent film of all time (a title that would be taken by Halloween two years later).

Despite the financial success of the movie, it isn’t a film remembered very fondly. Currently, it holds a 29% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, alongside a 5.3/10 user rating on IMDb.

The first thing that is impossible not to notice about Grizzly is its similarity to Jaws. This movie is utterly unashamed about how much of a blatant knock-off it is. Instead of a shark, there’s a bear. Instead of a boat, there’s a helicopter. There are still three dudes making up the central team that faces off with the monster: a frustrated enforcement official, a salt of the earth quasi-sage, and a scientific naturalist. There are the same tensions with authority, as the Amity Island mayor is replaced by the head of the national park. Even the debate over species is the same: the authorities won’t acknowledge the presence of a grizzly bear in the same way that authorities didn’t acknowledge the unlikely presence of a great white. Swimmers are exchanged for hikers, rabid shark fisherman for game hunters, etc, etc, etc. One of the few points of departure is that the mauled kid gets to live, but the audience is shown some severed child-limbs for good measure.

That said, the Jaws formula, when done well, works. Grizzly is by no means Jaws quality, but the interactions between the three central characters are pretty interesting, and they seem pretty tangible and believable. The gore effects are kind of fantastic, and, shockingly, the attack sequences themselves are pretty decent. Unlike with Jaws, there is actually a fair bit of exposure of the big bad bear here, though the supposed scale isn’t well conveyed (a judicious use of miniatures would have won serious bonus points from me). I was actually surprised that this movie didn’t rely on stock footage for the bear, as most cheap knock-offs tend to do for wildlife. The actual attack scenes of course feature disembodied bear claws and fake bear replacements, which are also used to pretty good effect in their own right.

For such a cheap movie, there are some seriously entertaining set pieces in Grizzly. The first one of note is when the bear takes down a forestry service guard tower, which is pretty fantastic and harrowing to watch, despite how obviously cheap it was. On top of that, there is a pretty cool finale sequence where the bear takes out a helicopter, which is exactly the kind of thing anyone would want from a giant bear movie.

Overall, I was surprised how much fun Grizzly was. It is definitely not a strong recommend, mostly due to the pacing getting pretty slow and the action getting repetitive after a while, but it is still one of the better cheap Jaws knockoffs I’ve found. For movie buffs, it might be fun to devise some sort of Jaws bingo to play along with Grizzly. Bad movie fans, and folks who relish the bygone era of late 1970s creature features will find plenty to like here.

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Dead Birds

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Dead Birds

Today, I’m going to take a look at the 2004 horror western Dead Birds.

The plot of Dead Birds is summarized on IMDb as follows:

A group of Confederate soldiers hole up in an abandoned plantation after robbing a bank and find themselves at the mercy of supernatural forces.

The screenwriter for Dead Birds was Simon Barrett, who also served as a producer on the film. He has gone on to write noted horror and thriller films like The Guest, You’re Next, Frankenfish, and Blair Witch.

The director for the film was Alex Turner, who has been behind a handful of other films, including 2009’s Red Sands and the upcoming film The Voyager.

The cast of Dead Birds includes Henry Thomas (E.T., Legends of the Fall, Gangs of New York, Suicide Kings), Patrick Fugit (Saved, Wristcutters: A Love Story, Gone Girl, Almost Famous, White Oleander), Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals, Pottersville, The Shape of Water, Revolutionary Road, Midnight Special, Kangaroo Jack), Mark Boone Junior (Memento, Batman Begins, 30 Days of Night, Sons of Anarchy, Vampires, The Quick & The Dead), Nicki Aycox (Perfect Stranger, Joy Ride 2, Jeepers Creepers 2), and Isaiah Washington (Exit Wounds, Hollywood Homicide, Grey’s Anatomy).

The cinematography for the film was provided by Steve Yedlin, who has been a go-to director of photography for Rian Johnson, shooting Looper, Brick, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and The Brothers Bloom, as well as other movies like San Andreas and the remake of Carrie.

The editor for Dead Birds was Brian Anton, who cut television series like Cold Justice and Sid the Science Kid, as well as a handful of independent films.

Dead Birds was filmed in and around Mobile, AL, which is also the approximate setting for the film’s story. In the handful of scenes that take place in the town of Fairhope, AL early in the film, the Dead Birds production utilized the still-standing sets from Tim Burton’s Big Fish for the backdrop, which was filmed in the area the previous year.

In February of 2010, after years of word-of-mouth circulation about the film, Dead Birds got a special theatrical screening in Los Angeles at the NuArt Theater, to the pleasure of many of the fans it gained along the way.

Currently, Dead Birds holds a 5.7/10 IMDb user rating, alongside Rotten Tomatoes scores of 50% critics and 40% audiences, which are far from ideal numbers. That said, the movie certainly has some fans.

First off, Dead Birds has an interesting premise. A cursed farm that tortures those who wander across it is an interesting enough start, but making it a Civil War period piece gives it an intriguing flair. The Western aesthetics and character types are interesting to see in a horror setting, and the entertaining cast of character actors add a lot of color to the scenario.

Unfortunately, Dead Birds has some serious issues. First off, the effects are a bit uneven: some shots are pretty cool, while others are jarring and rough around the edges (particularly the demonic facial contortions). Likewise, the story isn’t conveyed very well: outside of a choppy flashback vision sequence, there isn’t much in the way of exposition to walk the audience through the gang’s spooky predicament. Characters are also dispatched a bit too easily, and without either fanfare or gore, which should be most of the fun for a Lovecraft-inspired horror flick.

Last but not least, Dead Birds suffers from an inexplicably terrible title. I have gone back and forth in my head trying to figure out why they settled on that name, and I haven’t the slightest clue. I’m not sure how they thought that title would convey the sort of movie they had made, or how it would appeal to an audience looking for a horror-western, but it definitely doesn’t work. Honestly, with a better title, I suspect this movie would be a bigger underground success.

Overall, Dead Birds is a flawed, yet interestingly-conceived film. Even though it doesn’t much deliver on the promise of its premise, it is hard not to give it some credit for the effort. In a lot of ways, 2015’s Bone Tomahawk does what Dead Birds wanted to do: throw a colorful cast of Western characters into a horror movie scenario, and see what happens.

As far as a recommendation goes, horror fans might enjoy this as a deep cut. There are also plenty of recognizable character actors in the cast that film buffs might get a kick out of, even though none of them get much time or opportunity to do much. For most people, I think this flick would be a bit too dull. For this most part, this is a skippable movie. However, if you haven’t seen it already, Bone Tomahawk is everything this movie could have been and more.

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Body Parts

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Body Parts

Today, I’m going to take a look at a bizarre body horror film from 1991: Body Parts.

The plot of Body Parts is summarized on IMDb as follows:

After losing his arm in a car accident, a criminal psychologist has it replaced with a limb that belonged to a serial killer.

The story for Body Parts is based on a French crime fiction novel from 1965 called Et mon tout est un homme, written by the duo of Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud. The pair published numerous works between the 1950s and 1990s, and have had a handful of film adaptations made from their stories. The most famous of these is certainly Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, based on D’entre les morts.

Body Parts was directed and co-written by  Eric Red, whose previous writing credits included Near Dark and The Hitcher. His co-writers for the film were Norman Snider (Casino Jack, Partners), producer Patricia Herskovic, and Joyce Taylor, who has no other recorded writing credits.

The central cast of Body Parts includes Jeff Fahey (The Lawnmower Man, Planet Terror, Machete), Lindsay Duncan (Birdman, Gifted), Kim Delaney (Army Wives, NYPD Blue, Mission to Mars), Zakes Mokae (Waterworld, Vampire in Brooklyn), and Brad Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dune).

The editor for the film was Anthony Redman, whose other cutting credits include Street Fighter, Highlander II: The Quickening, King of New York, Red Heat, and Bad Lieutenant, among others.

The cinematographer for Body Parts was Theo Van de Sande, who has also shot a handful of high-profile films, such as Blade, Volcano, Bad Santa 2, and Grown Ups.

The score for the film was written by composer Loek Dikker, a classical and jazz pianist from the Netherlands. It is one of only a handful of films scores he’s done over his career, and one that ultimately won him a Saturn Award for best music.

The special effects and makeup effects crew for Body Parts included common elements with films such as The Shape of Water, Resurrection, Jason X, Mimic, Near Dark, Jacob’s Ladder, Total Recall, Judge Dredd, Daredevil, Congo, and Cube.

In 1967, there was an attempt to adapt the source material for Body Parts (the novel Et mon tout est un homme) to the screen by Arthur P. Jacobs (Planet of the Apes) and James Bridges, but it never came to fruition.

Body Parts was nominated for four Fangoria Chainsaw Awards: Brad Dourif for Best Supporting Actor, Lindsay Duncan for Best Supporting Actress, Loek Dikker for Best Soundtrack, and Gordon J. Smith for Best Makeup FX. Of the nomnations, only Dourif took home the prize.

According to a Los Angeles Times article from 1991, television advertisements for the movie were pulled in Wisconsin due to the discovery of Jeffrey Dahmer’s collection of numerous dismembered bodies. A Paramount spokesman is recorded as saying:

We pulled our TV ads out of sensitivity to the tragedy in Milwaukee, even though the storyline is not related at all to what happened.

Body Parts was made on a budget of $10 million, on which it managed to only bring in a total of $9.2 million. On top of that lackluster financial performances, critics and audiences were hardly enthusiastic for it. Body Parts currently holds an IMDb user rating of 5.5/10, alongside Rotten Tomatoes scores of 40% from critics and 34% from audiences.

In a piece from Reel Film Reviews, Body Parts was referred to as:

An unapologetically ludicrous horror effort that often skirts the very edges of camp without going entirely over.

Personally, I find that to be a pretty apt description of Body Parts. The movie is centered around a weird original concept that could easily cross over into being goofy, but the film keeps its bearings. and is a lot of fun as a result. Jeff Fahey and Brad Dourif are pretty much perfect in their roles, as they are both sort of eerie character actors capable of chewing scenery. Without their presence, Body Parts could easily have been a real mess.

Appropriately, Body Parts is filled with fun (mostly eponymous) practical effects. However, what really steals the show is a car chase sequence, in which the driver of one car is handcuffed to the passenger in another. To say the lease, the sequence is an absolute blast, and was probably as fun to film as it is to watch.

Overall, Body Parts is a fun, mostly-forgotten horror movie with one of the more outlandish, bizarre plots I’ve come across. If you happen to stumble upon it, I’d recommend just about anyone give it a shot. Additionally, I would be remiss not to recommend the We Hate Movies podcast episode on the film, which is what initially brought my attention to it.

 

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The Darkness

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The Darkness

Today, I’m going to take a look at The Darkness, an already forgotten 2016 horror movie starring Kevin Bacon.

The plot of The Darkness is summarized on IMDb as follows:

A family unknowingly awakens an ancient supernatural entity on a Grand Canyon vacation, and must fight for survival when it follows them home.

The central cast of The Darkness includes Kevin Bacon (Tremors, Apollo 13, Cop Car, R.I.P.D., Super, Hollow Man), Paul Reiser (Stranger Things, Whiplash, Aliens), Radha Mitchell (Man On Fire, Silent Hill, Pitch Black, Phone Booth), David Mazouz (Gotham), Matt Walsh (Veep, Dog Bites Man), and Jennifer Morrison (House, Warrior, Once Upon A Time).

The Darkness was directed, co-written, and produced by Greg McLean, who also directed 2016’s The Belko Experiment, 2017’s Jungle, and the Wolf Creek film series. His co-writers for the film were Shayne Armstrong (Bait, Johnny Bravo Goes To Bollywood) and Shane Krause (Bait, Monster Beach).

The cinematographer for the film was Toby Oliver, whose credits since The Darkness have included the financially successful horror films Get Out and Happy Death Day.

The Darkness employed the work of two credited editors: Sean Lahiff, who was an assistant editor on The Babadook, as well as a visual effects editor on The Hunger Games and Green Lantern, and Timothy Alverson, who cut Sinister 2, Orphan, and The Astronaut’s Wife, and also did assistant editing duties on movies like Con Air, Theodore Rex, Prince of Darkness, and Equilibrium.

The musical score for The Darkness was composed by Johnny Klimek, whose credits have included the cult favorite television show Sense8, Cloud Atlas, Kill Me Three Times, Deadwood, Perfume: Story of a Murderer, Run Lola Run, and One Hour Photo.

The Darkness shares a name with a flamboyant English rock band, who experienced a brief run of success in the early 2000s. Regrettably, neither the band, nor its iconic single “I Believe In A Thing Called Love,” appear in the film.

Financially, The Darkness turned a not-insignificant profit: on a production budget of $4 million, it took in a grand total of just shy of $11 million in its lifetime theatrical run.

However, The Darkness had a dismal critical reception, including a 3% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, alongside a user score of 4.4/10 on IMDb and a 20% Rotten Tomatoes audience rating. On top of many critics pointing out its use of numerous overplayed genre conventions, as well as more than a few specifically notable similarities to Poltergeist, Peter Sobczynski of RogerEbert.com wrote the following:

There are times when it feels as if the producers challenged themselves to see how little it needed and still meet the legal definition of a movie.

Personally, I agree passionately with Sobczynski’s point there: everything about The Darkness feels low effort, and the result is a dispassionate product that pushes the maximum limits of boredom. While a lack of action is certainly part of that problem, the bigger issue is that all of the actions that do occur feel scripted out: with even an basic familiarity with horror films, you could predict all of the actions well before they happen. The result is a zero stakes, dull experience.

Another notable aspect of The Darkness was a clear attempt to portray an already-troubled family life at the story’s center. While most horror movies like to present a peaceful home inflicted with an external, supernatural force, this protagonist family is a train wreck from the time they are presented to the audience. Through a combination of bafflingly-portrayed conditions like semi-magical autism, eating disorders, and alcoholism, there is a definite sense that the writers wanted this to feel like a real family with tangible problems. However, each of these normally humanizing issues wind up making all of the characters less likable and identifiable, due to how they react to their other family members’ issues. By the end of the movie, I was pulling for the dark sky gods: they seemed to take better care of the autistic child than his family.

Speaking of the band of animalistic, possibly-alien sky gods, I did appreciate that there was a nugget of an original concept here. As much as everyone is familiar with the idea of “disturbing native american burial grounds” in horror movies, the resultant haunts never usually present as particularly native, but rather as generically demonic. Unfortunately, as much as that concept is different in the details, the big picture is all too familiar. The mechanisms and story beats are all well-worn and clearly copied and pasted from the latest generic horror movie, which is a shame for a screenplay that appeared to have had interesting ambitions at one time.

On the whole, there isn’t much of anything to recommend about The Darkness: it is a forgettable movie experience, plain and simple. That said, there were some elements that got me scratching my head, mostly in regards to the portrayal of the family and their myriad crises. One reviewer even said that  it “is more interesting for its family drama than for its scares.” While I do think that is true in a relative sense, the word ‘interesting’ is a bit strong in this context. This is a movie to skip.