Escape from Tomorrow (2013)

"In a world of fake castles and anthropomorphic rodents, an epic battle begins when an unemployed father's sanity is challenged by a chance encounter with two underage girls on holiday."

As someone who has never set foot inside a Disney theme park or watched any Disney cartoons in his life, I have no idea what the conspiracy theory fuss is about "Escape from Tomorrow". All I know is that Disney has made a couple of classic feature length cartoons to keep little kids quiet, and a few mediocre G-rated "family" movies for everyone else. I do remember a scandal about part of a castle on some VHS artwork looking like a dildo, back in the day, but I couldn't tell you the name of that movie without looking it up, or why it would even matter to anyone. Disney is nothing to me, never has been, and never will be. In fact, the only time I was ever in Orlando, Florida, I went to Universal Studios, Busch Gardens, Seaworld, and Gatorland instead.

Why am I telling you this? Well, it's because "Escape from Tomorrow" is set in a conflated, fantasy version of Disneyland and Disney World, and huge parts of the footage were filmed in both without Disney's consent. Thus, the novelty factor of this movie is for people who've never been to them and wonder what they look like inside. Although you could learn just as much by browsing YouTube videos, this is supposed to be better because it's in black and white, is all so subversive, and is likely to get sued, even though it isn't. No, I don't get that last part either.

There's also a lot of faux intellectual bullshit being spread about "Escape from Tomorrow" suggesting that it's like the works of David Lynch, but I didn't notice any similarities to "The Elephant Man", "Dune", "Blue Velvet" or "Wild at Heart". Some of the scenes were clearly filmed using greenscreens, but the overall effect isn't distracting. Is that what David Lynch does? Maybe they are talking about a different David Lynch who goes round theme parks with a handycam. Having said that, "Escape from Tomorrow" isn't a bad movie, but it's far from being a great one either.

SPOILERS!

"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?"

The crux of the story is that a henpecked, middle-aged man named Jim (Roy Abramsohn) is looking for a bit of the other on the final day of his vacation. Fired from his job, emasculated by his wife Emily (Elena Schuber), and with his mid-life crisis kicking in, he uses his kids (Jack Dalton and Katelynn Rodriguez) as a cover to clumsily stalk two teenage French girls who attract him by being so high on life (or whatever illegal substance it is that makes them unable to stop laughing). As clichéd and unoriginal as this rather neat borrowing from European-style dramas may be, this is the only bit of "Escape from Tomorrow" that's really good. The acting is decent, the stereotypical effects of a mid-life crisis are portrayed perfectly, and it's all quite believable.

A second "story arc" begins after Jim pervs on a nurse (Amy Lucas) who puts a bandaid on his daughter Sara's scraped knee, and then has an affair with a fairly attractive woman (Alison Lees-Taylor) of his own age instead of the Lolitas who, deep down, Jim knows that he doesn't stand a chance with anyway. Again, this is acceptable storytelling and nothing to strain your brain over. Maybe hooking-up with a stranger in a Disney park for a bit of kinky afternoon delight is far-fetched, but I'm sure stranger things have happened.

Later, although this is my interpretation rather than what is actually shown to happen, the two French girls (Danielle Safady and Annet Mahendru) and their boyfriends realise that Jim is a bit of a sad/creepy pervert, and send the plainer girl with braces on her teeth over to boldly spit in his face and end his little game. Everything else can be written off as Jim's fantasies, daydreams, his mind wandering, his "fever dreams" as he dies from flu, or whatever else you want to call it. Because, if you accept anything else as Jim's reality, the rest of the movie falls apart afterwards.

The trouble is that, for God knows what reason, writer/director Randy Moore decided to completely bollocks-up everything (after the "intermission" at the 61 minute mark) with a totally incongrous scene set inside a mini version of the Epcot dome, wherein it's revealed that Jim is some kind of "sleeper agent" who is being used by the Siemens company to monitor the effects which exposure to the Disney park at a young age would have on his adult life, and in particular, his imagination. So it's all a big experiment being run by the technologically advanced powers-that-be behind the scenes a la "The Cabin in the Woods"? Some might say that this is "intentional misdirection" or playing with the rules of filmmaking, but I call it a gyp! What a pile of horseshit!

"It's a giant testicle!" ...on his head!

The story would have played out better if Jim had been tasered by park security for being a creepy stalker, and he then had to explain to his wife how he lost track of their daughter. The events which follow, including how he works out that his daughter has been kidnapped by the woman who he had an affair with, would then have a more satisfying flow to them and a solvable mystery rather than creating a load of headscratching for the hard of understanding. Unfortunately, I'm sure somewhere out there, there's an original European movie with precisely that plot (I just can't remember the name of it right now, but trust me, I will!), and Randy Moore didn't want to get sued by those filmmakers for plagiarism instead of being non-sued by the Disney corporation who couldn't give a damn about him. Scandal will sell a movie, but only if it's the right kind of scandal, eh?

There's more hogwash at the end in the form of Jim coughing up hairballs because he has "cat flu" (WTF?), and a group of "men in black"—or rather "men in overalls"—who take Jim's dead body away, implant his son Elliot with false happy memories of the Buzz Lightyear ride which he never went on instead of the sadness he probably doesn't even feel over the death of his father (if Jim even was his father), and clean everything up as if nothing ever happened: because nothing bad ever happens at Disney. Oh, it's all so "meta" and pseudo-philosophical that it makes you want to puke!

After two days of thinking about the epilogue and wasting my time by writing out a ten page ecphrasis of the movie to see if I'd missed something which would tie it together better, I can now happily explain it as nothing more than "a tragic reminder of the real life ambitions which the evil Disney corporation stole from one man". Jim isn't reborn, it isn't the afterlife. It's just a flashback to the "real" Jim in the part of his imagination which he never used, i.e. it's what we saw earlier in the mini Siemens minidome, hence why the Epcot dome is shown again just before the epilogue scene happens.

Yup, that's the big intellectual message of the movie and, give or take insulting the Disney Princesses/cosplay girls for being hookers for Japanese businessmen, and saying that the turkey legs (which are sold in the theme parks, not just Disney!) are really made of emu, that's all "Escape from Tomorrow" has got: Disney's brainwashing will stop you being what you are meant to be.

So will making or watching overhyped, shitty independent horror movies. Jog on.

Dracula 3D (2012)

I've been in two minds about writing anything about Dario Argento's "Dracula 3D" not because I'm a known hater of everything Dario Argento has ever produced apart from "Mother of Tears" (and Asia) but because everyone else in the horror movie reviewing universe has already been as negative as humanly possible about this film before me.

It's not that I usually care about being late in the game when it comes to movie reviews—I'm known for writing about what I want when I want—but this time it's annoyed me even more than having to put a lazy emdash parenthesis in the middle of my sentence. Really, what's left to say about "Dracula 3D" that hasn't been said hundreds of times before? Nothing. We all know that "Dracula 3D" is a terrible movie with mostly horrible performances, bad dubbing, cheap CGI, rushed action scenes, and no originality whatsoever other than a "WTF" moment caused by a giant praying mantis.

What makes everything worse is that every review reads like a carbon copy of the same thing. It's as if someone gave out a press pack before "Dracula 3D" was even released and said, "There ya go, have at it! Hate away!" Judging by the number of reviews which came out before any normal person had access to the movie, I wouldn't be surprised if that very thing happened either.

Yes, I know that the big name horror sites often get advance screenings and a ton of promotional goodies that the independent bloggers are unlikely to see, but even the little guys were hating "Dracula 3D" before it was available to the general public. That tells me two things: 1. They didn't even watch the film, and 2. They lazily copied what the "big names" had to say. While a few may have bothered to watch the trailer, the whole thing reeks of "Rex Reed Syndrome".

So just to be different and a total contrarian, I'm going to tell you what I liked about "Dracula 3D" based on watching it half a dozen times in its entirety. It will surprise you to know that, yes, I liked it. I don't think it's the greatest version of "Dracula" ever made or anything ridiculous like that, but it's not as bad as the "critics" would have you believe. Well, except for the giant praying mantis and other CGI of course.

The first thing that I noticed was how minimalist the set decoration was. While not exactly "Dogville", there's very little in the way of props which aren't necessary to the action. Now, while some people would blame that on the budget, it's clearly intentional. With a budget of over $5,000,000, it's not as if Dario Argento couldn't afford furniture or ornaments, he just decided not to clutter up the scenes with them.

I never thought I'd ever defend a Dario Argento movie, but stuff like this goes back to the "Chekhov's Gun" rule and shows that the director actually knows what he's doing. You can't write Dario Argento off as some hack who hastily threw everything together with the intention of making a bad movie. If you watch closely, you'll even see that more props and set dressing are added as the film progresses. Sometimes the reverse is true too. The effect is like a line drawing being filled in with more details the more you look at it or having unnecessary bits rubbed out. I'd say that was pretty damned clever.

Another criticism is that Dario Argento has too much nudity in this movie compared to his others, but I fail to see how that is a problem especially given that the source material is supposed to a analogous to sexual promiscuity in the first place. Although that oversimplifies the themes used in Bram Stoker's novel, the sexual and erotic nature of the story is one thing which every filmmaker has picked up on over the years. So what's the problem? Did people not find Miriam Giovanelli arousing as Tania? Or was it just that Dario filmed his daughter Asia naked in some perceived to be pervy way? We're talking about professionals here making a professional movie. In the case of Asia being filmed by her father, who's to say that he was even on set at the time? Let's face it, as someone who changed Asia's diapers when she was a baby, it's not as if Dario hasn't seen his own daughter nude before. There's no perversion here, just European arty types who aren't ashamed of their own bodies. Why should they be? It's how God created us! Anything else that you read into those few seconds of film are just your own sick fantasies.

The thing is, I thoroughly appreciate both Miriam Giovanelli and Asia Argento getting naked in "Dracula 3D". Both are incredibly gorgeous women although Asia does sometimes look a lot like her dad facially and it's slightly off-putting. The tease of nudity was always in the Hammer movies which "Dracula 3D" liberally homages, but it's well and truly realised here.

Yes, that's a segue (as I continue to write in a self-conscious and self-referential way just because I can) to all the other homages in "Dracula 3D". Of course the new Dracula (Thomas Kretschmann) dresses like Max Schreck in "Nosferatu" (1922), spouts the "Listen to the children of the night..." line from the 1931 adaptation, and crawls up the wall like Christopher Lee in "Scars of Dracula" (1970), so what? It's all inspired by Stoker. How is that anything to get bent out of shape over? Thomas Kretschmann's acting isn't exactly lousy, and the big action scene where he takes out a room full of peasants is absolutely fantastic. Even the hypocritical, prudish Americans should be appeased by the violence and gore which they find more acceptable than the horror of seeing a nipple or two.

People really don't like the love story aspect of "Dracula 3D", which is a shame since Francis Ford Coppola did well out of it. Again, Dario Argento is merely homaging all the other movie versions of "Dracula" which incorporated the same un-Stokerish plot. Thus, while not being the "definitive version" of Bram Stoker's "Dracula", "Dracula 3D" certainly ties up all the movie adaptations well enough.

Dracula fans have always hoped that someone will make a mini-series several days long which really puts the novel to bed once and for all, but it's not likely to happen any time soon. I can't fault Dario Argento for not overreaching himself here either. He's just not the right kind of director for an intrically detailed adaptation of a Victorian novel which nobody reads anymore. But why then choose to remake "Dracula" which is already the most remade horror story of all time? The answer is complicated, but I'll try to explain my theory at the end of this post.

What I enjoyed most about "Dracula 3D" was the languid pace which is so European and perfect for a vampire movie. I felt pleasantly relaxed and was able to get immersed in what little atmosphere there was. The lack of atmosphere is possibly my main criticism of the movie since it's neither Hammer-esque nor typically Argento. The CGI is weird and jarring although it fits as a new level of Dario Argento "surrealism". The correct interpretion of the giant praying mantis is to see it as an extension of Dario Argento's nightmare style. Imagine, if you will, that "Dracula 3D" is a cheese-induced dream of all the Dracula movies you've ever seen, and you can't dismiss it so easily.

The bad performances including Unax Ugalde's and Marta Gastini's woodenness, Rutger Hauer only stopping short of doing his trademark rolling of his eyes almost out of his head and back in again, every bit of bad dubbing, cheap CGI, the 3D gimmick, and fight scenes over before they properly begin, all point to Dario Argento making an intentional metamovie of a Dracula movie fuelled nightmare in the mind of one of today's typical 12-year-olds rather than the 12-year-old that the director once was himself. Dario Argento uses "Dracula 3D" to criticise contemporary horror movies. This is beyond Wes Craven's dated "meta" abominations for trendy teenagers by miles.

It didn't quite work, but I got what Dario Argento was trying to do here. I enjoyed it. I don't think it was an entirely sensible decision to get so radically experimental again at the end of his career or to alienate his dopey fantards who are still stuck in the '70s and '80s, but Dario has earned a lot more of my respect for doing this (and for making "Mother of Tears") than I ever would have given him before. I probably can't explain why as well as I could because there's always the danger of reading too much into a movie which was never intended, and I'm holding some things back in case I end up looking like a total fool when Dario Argento reveals that he just made a bad film because he couldn't be bothered to make a good one, yet the evidence of the movie makes me willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

If you have time, I suggest you all watch "Dracula 3D" again and think about what you're seeing. This isn't a product to be dismissed like the hobby horror DVD-Rs which get shoved in your faces at conventions. Like it or not, Dario Argento doesn't make "products"; he's an auteur. Should you choose to accept it, there's a message here about the nature of horror movies, remakes, and the state of the younger generation's levels of artistic appreciation from an old man's perspective.

"Dracula 3D" is the quintessential metamovie of every Dracula movie that you've ever seen before and is meant to be viewed as a half-remembered nightmare of a dissatisfied modern horror fan. To see it as anything else completely misses the point.

King of the Castle (1977)

There are some TV programmes from my childhood which I thought I'd only imagined even though I fondly remembered important parts of them. On the other hand, there are quite a few which I wish really did only exist in my imagination because watching them as an adult makes me cringe. HTV's "King of the Castle" has a foot in both camps because, having spent a few hours today rewatching it, it's not something that I ever want to see again.

If you've never heard of "King of the Castle", here's the blurb from Amazon:

Macabre, fantastical and a benchmark production for children's television in the 1970s, King of the Castle was created by Doctor Who stalwarts Bob Baker and Dave Martin as one of the run of outstanding children's dramas HTV produced in that decade. Featuring strong direction and a script which expertly melds fantasy and reality, the series boasts solid performances from genre stalwarts Fulton Mackay, Milton Johns and Talfryn Thomas as well as Philip Da Costa as the series' hero, Roland. One of the most memorable television series of the '70s is available here, for the very first time in any video format. Episode three no longer exists in the archive in any format and the version included on this set is taken from an off-air VHS.

I'm not sure what I was looking for on YouTube when I discovered that the whole "King of the Castle' series had been uploaded by several people, but I was in one of those moods where I randomly click on the recommended videos until I end up watching some very strange channels indeed. Before I found "King of the Castle", I'd been watching highly embarrassing episodes of "Grange Hill", "Chocky" and "The Tomorrow People" and feeling dirty about doing so. If there's anyone of a similar age to me who didn't see at least one of those when they were originally shown then they probably didn't have a television.

Since I didn't recognise the title of "King of the Castle", all I remembered from the series to identify it was that the kid who got beaten up by bullies had a model kit of Frankenstein's monster, and somehow he ended up in a dungeon ruled by some ratty-looking guy who told him to always go up if he wanted to escape. What I'd forgotten was how the story was filled with clever socio-political subtext and commentary which I'm ashamed to say that I still don't quite understand even as an adult.

The big messages of the fantasy part of "King of the Castle" are apparently that work is pointless, comfort and ignorance is bliss, and there's too much bureaucracy in the world. There's a lot of Oedipal stuff going on too whereby the hero, Roland, has to take his father's role by force and has a crush of some kind on his stepmother. The latter doesn't surprise me in the slightest since Angela Richards, who plays the dual role of June and the Lady, is absolutely gorgeous.

Very recognisable faces include Fulton Mackay (the prison officer from "Porridge") as a Frankenstein-style scientist, Milton Johns as his monster, creepy Talfryn Thomas as the ratty-looking caretaker, and Jamie Foreman (who now plays Derek Branning in "Eastenders") as Ripper the bully. Bizarrely, I didn't recognise the lead, Philip Da Costa, as being the same guy who went on to play Jackson in "Scum" (1979).

In spite of the badly-timed, obviously stagey acting, and cheap sets which look better than the cardboard and curtains that they are really made of, "King of the Castle" isn't a bad piece of kids' entertainment for the time. Unfortunately, as a grown-up, I can see that it's really just a slightly darker, and very British, rip-off of "The Wizard of Oz" with the genders of the protagonists changed. Both nostos stories go back to Homer's "The Odyssey" anyway, but let's not get too highbrow about them.

One thing which really irritated me, perhaps because I've been away from Britain for so long, was the choirboy singing the "I'm the king of the castle, and you're a dirty rascal" theme tune which is full of the mispronounced "Estuary English" which I despise. It sounds like "I'm the king of the CARsul, and you're a dirty RARscul". Ugh. I hate that and "BARth" instead of "bath", "GLARss" instead of "glass", and the "someFINK" instead of "something" which even Gordon Ramsay has fallen prey too. I've always noticed it, but maybe it doesn't show up so much when you are constantly surrounded by it or you're a bit thick.

I don't recommend "King of the Castle" although I've embedded it as a playlist at the top of this post. It's not an accurate reflection of life in Britain in the late 1970s or anything, and it's certainly not scary for anyone over 7 years old. If you are into nostalgia, it's interesting to see a "Hammer Horror" magazine and a "Howard the Duck" comic at one point, but that's about it really.

Isn't it funny what you can find on YouTube when you are looking for something else? If only I could remember the name of that weird poltergeist story with a load of cushions flying around a room which I caught the last five minutes of. Whatever it was that left the image of someone tied to a chair with a washing line and a bottle of Sarson's malt vinegar stuck in their mouth is another matter.

Brazil (1985)

"A bureaucrat in a retro-future world tries to correct an administrative error and himself becomes an enemy of the state."

It's not often that I don't know what to say about a movie, but having watched "Brazil" for the very first (and second) time today as part of my Christmas movies selection, I don't know how to categorise it. I'm not even sure if I enjoyed it or not. I think I did in some ways, but I still wanted to hate it all the way through.

"Brazil" is a surreal, sci-fi fantasy set in an Orwellian future which annoys me almost as much as "1984" itself. I've been watching a few sci-fi movies on the side lately and, since I'm a natural pattern finder, all these dystopian futures are the same from one movie to another. There's always a big, bad government and some neo-noir style lead character who turns out to be the unprepared hero of the piece amidst a load of technology which makes absolutely no sense.

I'll eventually review them, but I've also rewatched "The Matrix" (1999) and "Dark City" (1998) this weekend for absolutely no good reason at all other than entertainment. I'm not sure if that's the purpose behind them, but I keep feeling that I've seen the same story over and over ever since "Metropolis" (1927). It makes me glad that I'm not a real sci-fi fan because the clones and lack of originality in that genre even outweigh the current problems with horror.

In some ways "Brazil" is also a horror movie. There's some nice gore and definitely a nightmarish atmosphere to the arty-farty nonsense which makes it suitable for a horror fan, but there's comedy too which really messes things up. If it wasn't for the slapstick and satire, I think I would rate "Brazil" as a great film rather than a turd trying to be cleverer than it is. As I said, I don't really know how to classify it or rate it properly because it's not in a style that I'm used to.

The funny thing is that I got caught up in the story even though the plot is as simple as they come with a predictable twist at the end which I thought was going to be an even bigger cop-out. I honestly expected it to be another "it was all a dream" movie or to go into "brain in a vat" territory. I hate those "we don't know what reality is" pseudo-philosphical stories especially as the whole concept is "meta" in the first place. If I'm willing to suspend my disbelief to watch a movie, I don't want any more layers of unreality to throw me right back out of it. That's where bullshit like "Inception" (2010) failed to impress me.

All I can say for sure about "Brazil" is that it has a great cast of some bigger names than I thought I'd ever see in the same movie, and it pretty much wastes the talents of every single one of them. I'm surprised that they ever worked again. Robert DeNiro? Well, he's never been that good anyway, but Bob Hoskins playing Mario before actually playing Mario is just plain weird.

Kim Greist, who plays Jill (the girl of Jonathan Pryce's character's dreams), looks a lot better in a wig even though she does nothing for me, but I could say that about any of the actors and actresses in this. They all look the part, but their characters' reactions to each other and their lack of depth ruins everything they do. It's impossible to care about any of them except in short bursts and then it's like they never existed. I swear it's possible to forget about everyone in the movie within seconds of hearing their last line.

"Brazil" is all style over substance at the end of the day and not very memorable except for the way it looks. I get that it's a satire or parody of some kind, but it's not funny. If it's a satire of the sci-fi genre itself, it's kind of insulting.

Sci-fi masochists everywhere who want to enjoy a combined brain-numbing and ass-numbing can now appreciate the new Criterion Blu-ray of the 142 minute long "fifth and final" director's cut which was released last week. Allegedly, it's better than the Universal version and my DVD version, but I'm sure that's like saying eating hot vomit is worse than eating cold vomit. I never want to watch "Brazil" again.