Bad Moon - Review

Bad Moon kicks off in Nepal where photo-journalist Ted (Michael Pare) and his girlfriend Marjorie (Johanna Marlowe) are attacked by a werewolf. Although he is injured during the assault Ted manages to get his hands on a shotgun which he uses to blow he beast’s head to smithereens but not before it mauls Marjorie to death. The story then picks up a few months later. Tom has been home for some time and has been living in a mobile home by a lake surrounded by a dense forest. In the wake of several mutilated and partially eaten bodies having been discovered in the area, victims of a wild animal attack it is supposed, he contacts his lawyer sister Janet (Mariel Hemingway) and takes her up on her offer to stay at her place for a while. Janet and her son Brett (Mason Gamble) own a German Shepherd called Thor and it’s the presence of the latter as the hero of the movie that makes this somewhat unique in the annals of werewolf cinema. Once Ted arrives at his Sister's house it isn't long before thing get very hairy indeed.

The werewolf sub-genre is one that has held enormous appeal for me ever since at age twelve I saw An American Werewolf in London and The Howling within months of each other. My tiny Hammer Horror loving mind was blown. Add to this the fact that I’ve enjoyed every movie Eric Red has been involved in whether as director or scriptwriter and it’s therefore hard to fathom why I'm only now getting around to watching Bad Moon.

The Bad Moon script was adapted by Red from the novel Thor by Wayne Smith. I haven’t read the novel so can't comment on how faithfully it made the transition from book to script then to screen. Given that the movie only runs to eighty minutes I can only guess that a lot of the story didn't make the journey. The film’s brevity is both a good and bad thing. It doesn't outstay its welcome and rattles along at a lightning pace. At the same time, however, the movie is good enough that I would have welcomed it spending a little more time with the characters to develop who they are and their relationships to each other. The werewolf genre is somewhat unique in that the victim of the curse is very much an atypical villain. Those who die at the hands of a werewolf are often no less tragic figures than the human being in the grip of the curse who is apt to feel a crushing remorse in the face of the nocturnal carnage he has wrought. What character development exists is enough to make the viewer care about the characters and their ever worsening plight. But they could definitely have been more fully developed.

A crucial aspect of any werewolf movie and one that is often poorly realised is the design of the creature itself. Some movies get it right and some movies get it so wrong that it can derail the viewer’s enjoyment of the entire movie. Bad Moon gets some things very right and other things tragically wrong. The werewolf here is of the bipedal variety, the suit being topped off by a head c/w very effective animatronic features which make this particular beast one of the baddest, scariest looking motherfuckers ever to howl at the moon. In action it’s terrific and serves to highlight the benefits of having a monster that is physically present in the scene over the ongoing trend for rubbish CGI (An American Werewolf In Paris I am looking at you). 

There’s a caveat though…and it’s a substantial one.

The transformation, which Eric Red holds back from showing until the final act of the movie, is a crushing disappointment. It would have been far more effective had they gone full practical as with An American Werewolf in London but I guess the budget wouldn't stretch to that or the special effects team didn’t have Rick Baker’s mad skills with prosthetics. The transformation is realised via a combination of make-up effects alongside some very, very cheap looking CGI. However, the effectiveness of the final, fully transformed wolf man more than makes up for this and I enjoyed the fact that the creature continued to talk throughout the first half of the change, the voice growing more and more bestial and terrifying as the transformation took hold. Very effective.

The performances from all of the cast range from good to excellent but the stars of Bad Moon are undoubtedly Michael Pare and Primo, the German Shepherd who plays Thor. Pare succeeds in bringing some real pathos to the role of Tom which is remarkable given the economy of the actual script and the mostly perfunctory character development. He manages to make the character of Tom both sympathetic and ultimately terrifying as the moon gets fuller and the curse sinks it’s claws deeper into his soul. Primo is a revelation, delivering a nuanced, subtle performance which places him amongst the most talented canine thesps I've ever seen. There's an intelligence and sadness in his eyes and he really works as the hero of the movie out to protect his owners even if it costs him his life.

Overall Bad Moon is an above average mid-Nineties horror flick and I would recommend it to anyone who is already a fan of the werewolf sub-genre. It's neither the equal of any of Eric Red's other movies (including the batshit crazy Body Parts) nor anywhere near as bad as the critical reception at the time of its release would suggest it to be (it got a kicking). It's an easy movie to enjoy with the performances by Pare and Primo plus the outstanding werewolf design buying it at least an extra mark. Definitely worth tracking down.

Steve's score: 

Hell Comes to Frogtown - Review

Hell Comes to Frogtown follows the post-apocalyptic (mis)adventures of Sam Hell, one of the last fertile men on Earth, who finds himself tasked with travelling across a wasteland in the company of a couple of female escorts, one a scientist, the other a beautiful gun-toting badass, to a settlement populated and ruled by a race of humanoid frog creatures.  His mission?  To rescue a harem of kidnapped sex slaves from the town’s froggy overlord before impregnating them with his mega-healthy baby batter.  The end result is a ridiculous but energetic sex-comedy riff on Planet of the Apes.

The movie plays out like a Troma production with almost all of the violence and gore that typifies that studio's output surgically removed.  It comprehensively checks all the b-movie boxes and with a playful, innuendo packed script and some spirited, if hammy, performances succeeds in becoming a surprisingly engaging, thoroughly enjoyable watch.  Certainly it's easy to see why it's become a cult hit and there was even some talk of an ideas-starved Hollywood giving it the remake treatment a couple of years back (please, no). 

Starring as the heat packing protagonist with a hard task ahead of him is none other than the aptly named Roddy Piper who in the same year featured in John Carpenter’s brilliantly subversive slice of sci-fi horror They Live.  Piper is perfectly cast as the wonderfully monikered hero of the day.  The rapport that develops between him and Spangle (Sandahl Bergman), the scientist who controls the booby-trapped cod piece he’s forced to wear, is frequently amusing.  Perhaps because of his relative inexperience as an actor at the time, Piper’s performance, probably more through accident than actual design, hits exactly the right tone for Hell Comes to Frogtown and is a large part of the reason the movie works as well as it does.  The rest of the cast's performances are all delivered with the same zeal and everyone looks like they were enjoying themselves.

The mutant frogmen that Sam Hell and company find themselves up against were created by Steve Wang who had previously worked on The Monster Squad and Predator under the tutelage of special effects legend Stan Winston. His work on Hell Comes to Frogtown is somewhat hampered by the low budget nature of the movie but the practical make-up he employs is, nonetheless, effective and in the case of Commander Toty, the ruler of Frogtown, downright impressive (if still more than a little daft).  The frog leader's costume gets the most lavish treatment and comes complete with a fully animatronic head and a trio of animated appendages that come into play during the movie's memorable Dance of the Three Snakes scene.

None of this is intended to suggest that Hell Comes to Frogtown is a great piece of cinema.  It’s as goofy as its title suggests and then some.  B-movies are by their very nature difficult to rate.  I wouldn’t say this is a good film.  But it is a great b-movie.  Just as there are good and bad a-list films so too are there great examples of low budget schlock.  Hell Comes to Frogtown is a moderately well executed film and that helps.  The director knows how to point a camera and the cast, regardless of the quality of their performances, are fun to watch and easy to cheer on.  With a delightfully bonkers idea at its core this is a movie that should provide 88 minutes of cheesy fun for anyone on the lookout for a pacy slice of unapologetically preposterous post-apocalyptic action.

Video/Audio

The movie looks stunning for most of it's run-time.  Far more so than you would expect from a b-movie of 1980's vintage.  Some darker scenes suffer from some excessive grain but for the most part the image looks sharp, detailed and colourful.  The only audio available is an original uncompressed stereo 2.0 PCM track which sounded great to me.

Special Features

The extras on the DVD are mostly of the interview variety.  In Grappling with the Gargantuans star Roddy Piper reminisces on his experiences making Hell Comes to Frogtown in a manner that is equal parts candid and delusional.  I found this interview a slightly uncomfortable if frequently funny watch as he veers between stroking his ego, referring to himself in the third person and rambling on about how he was misused by Hollywood and hates every movie he's ever appeared in.  Steve Wang gives us his perspective via the Creature Feature Creator interview segment and his attitude is the antithesis Pipers. He seems to have had a genuinely great experience making the movie and has nothing but nice things to say about everyone involved (Piper included).  Amphibian Armageddon, the third and final interview segment, shines a light on Brian Frank, the actor who brought Commander Toty to life.  The only other extras are an extended scene and the movie's trailer.

It's worth mentioning that this Arrow release is a limited edition of 1,000 copies.  So if you're a fan of the movie or think it might float your boat head on over to their online store and snap up a copy.

Steve's Score:

Director Spotlight: Ben Wheatley - Down Terrace Review

After their release from prison, Bill (Robert Hill) and his son Karl (Robin Hill) head home to Down Terrace in Brighton. Bill decides, with the help of his wife Maggie (Julia Deakin), to identify the rat in his criminal operation and a tale of recrimination, betrayal and murder ensues.

Down Terrace, which is the 2009 feature debut of Kill List director Ben Wheatley, represents one of the most exciting calling cards from an emerging talent in recent years.  The last time I saw a director come out the gates with something this strong it was Shane Meadow’s with the brilliant Twenty Four Seven.  Wheatley actually shares with Meadow's an innate ability to balance brittle comedy with shattering moments of violence (both physical and emotional).

The movie was shot over eight days with a small cast and crew (sneeze and you’ll miss the end credits) on an equally tiny budget in the family home of two of its lead actors which is located on the titular Down Terrace in Brighton.  The story meanders from scene to scene in a fashion that shows a marked lack of respect for conventional plot development and pacing instead favouring a jigsaw puzzle approach with pieces that other film-makers would explore deliberately missing.  This perhaps suggests a criticism that the movie has little respect for traditional storytelling and requires the viewer to not so much read between the lines as invent for themselves something to fill that void.  In practice it all comes together beautifully. Down Terrace is more interested in exploring the characters in the moment than revealing all of the mental strings that are pulling them in one direction or the other.  By surgically removing most of the boring and, in this case, unnecessary exposition that can often drag a movie down into the realms of the banal Wheatley succeeds in conjuring up an enigmatic air.  Just what exactly is the criminal business that Bill is involved in?  What was the crime that landed them in jail?  So what if there are some gaps in the narrative. It’s a ploy that works in Down Terrace’s favour by reducing the viewer’s ability to anticipate the sequence of events to come.  It’s a clever tactic and a large part of the reason the movie feels so unique.

Another thing the movie gets right is the extent to which it embraces improvisation as a means of ensuring the dialogue feels unforced.  There’s a natural flow to the conversations throughout Down Terrace that lends the movie a feeling that we’re not watching actors reciting a script but instead makes the viewer feel more like a fly on the wall witnessing real conversations and real drama unfold.  It borders on cinéma vérité at times.  It helps that the movie is cleverly shot in a hand held fashion by the insanely talented Laurie Rose who after this movie has served as DOP on every subsequent Ben Wheatley film.  It’s easy to see what the attraction is.  This is some of the finest hand held camera work I’ve seen.  The way he glides around the actors pulling them into focus on the hop is truly graceful and without him Down Terrace wouldn’t be half the film it is.

With a cast made up of a peculiar mix of comedy actors and people with little to no acting experience at all its remarkable how assured the performances are from all involved.  Everyone is exceptional but the real standout is Julia Deakin as the matriarch of the dysfunctional family at the heart of the movie.  Having only previously seen her in Spaced (where she was brilliant) her performance in Down Terrace is something of a revelation.  Throughout the movie she shifts gears so subtly, with a performance that is at times heart-breaking, at times terrifying (sometimes both at once) but never less than utterly convincing.  Even in her moments of silence her face and eyes speak volumes.  Robert Hill and Robin Hill are also wonderful as Bill and Carl.  The fact that they are father and son in real life lends their relationship in the movie a sense of abject realism.  They feel less like characters and more like living, breathing human beings with all the history and failings that delivers.  Michael Smiley, who like Julia Deakin appeared in Spaced, is great fun as an incredibly ineffective hitman who turns up for a job with his baby in tow (a sneaky nod to Lone Wolf & Cub).  All the actors deliver here with not a single bum note to be found.

Something I’ve not mentioned yet is how funny Down Terrace is.  It’s a humour that comes out of the situations rather than something that feels forced.  There’s a natural flow to the dialogue that comes out of the movie's exploration of the already mentioned improvisation and much of it is funny.  And the humour isn’t limited to only the dialogue.  There are a number of very funny moments including a few inspired moments of violence that border on slapstick.  But beneath the humour and the violence there’s a real feeling of a family destroying itself from the inside and pulling anyone who enters their orbit down with them.  It’s some time into the movie before Wheatley assembles all his chess pieces on the board but once he does the movie enters into a downward spiral of mistrust, betrayal and errors in judgement that drive the narrative towards an utterly satisfying conclusion.

The movie is largely scored with folk music; some played and/or sang by the cast within some scenes whilst other pieces provide a haunting musical backdrop to a scene.  This is another area where the movie really scores by doing something quite unusual that ends up being entirely appropriate and is yet another reason why this movie feels so different and special. Particularly effective is a scene near the end where a revelation results in Robin Hill's character having a total breakdown.  His mother as played by Julia Deakin comforts him by holding him close and singing a lullaby.  It's a moment that is both sad, beautiful and as a result of the hurtful nature of the secret that is revealed, an emotional punch in the gut.  This isn't the only scene that is elevated by the use of music.  The movie is shot through with such moments and the choice of song or musical passage is never less than profoundly affecting and stirringly effective.

Down Terrace is a remarkable debut.  A happy accident that could so easily have gone very wrong if Wheatley hadn’t gotten lucky with the cast and crew he assembled.  With a slightly left of centre mood from start to finish and a narrative that isn’t afraid to follow the odd digression to consistently entertaining effect this stands as one of the most interesting British crime movies not only of the last ten years but of all time.  It also manages to juggle what is at heart a grim story of betrayal, mistrust, familial turmoil and murder without ever becoming the overly serious, depressing kitchen sink crime drama it could have been.  It may be a bit rough around the edges but this is more of a byproduct of the low budget and is a criticism that's easy to dismiss given everything it does right.  A lot of people discovered Wheatley either via Kill List or Sightseers.  I would recommend that anyone who enjoyed his later movies seek out Down Terrace.  I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Steve's Score: