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John Allman

If you’ve ever wandered the aisles at the video store or surfed the DVR pay-per-view options and seen a bunch of movies that you’ve never heard of, chances are John has watched them. Why? He loves movies. All kinds of movies. Good, bad, so-bad-they’re good, even the truly unwatchable ones. He mostly loves horror and science-fiction and drive-in exploitation movies that most upstanding model citizens wouldn’t dare watch. Then he writes up his thoughts so you can decide - watch, don’t watch or avoid at all costs. Sometimes he even gets to talk to the cool folks who make some of your favorite films.

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New Releases for Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011

Posted Oct 7, 2011 by John Allman

Updated Oct 7, 2011 at 08:49 PM

What’s new in stores and on video shelves this week:

Good Neighbors
Genre: Thriller/Serial killer
Directed by: Jacob Tierney
Run time: 98 minutes
Rating: R
Format: Blu-Ray

The Lowdown: A creepy Canadian import, “Good Neighbors” draws strong performances from its three talented leads as it twists and turns its way through a top-notch deconstruction of the typical serial killer thriller.

Most films in this genre tend to make the killer so obvious and so over the top that you can’t help but either root for him/her to succeed in their bloody campaign, or they implode, falling apart under the weight of too many plot contrivances piled high.

Jacob Tierney, director and co-writer, doesn’t seem interested in conventional thrillers, though. He constructs “Good Neighbors” like a play, focusing most of the action around two locations with just a handful of characters. There’s the tall brownstone apartment building where Spencer (Scott Speedman) and Louise (Emily Hampshire) live and Victor (Jay Baruchel) moves into at the film’s start. There’s the Chinese restaurant where Louise works. And that’s pretty much it except for the snow swept, shadowy alleyways of Montreal, Quebec.

Spencer is confined to a wheelchair following a horrific accident where his wife was killed. He’s a consummate host, but prone to caustic observations. Louise seems trapped in a life that she doesn’t love. She lives for her two cats, and for spending time with Spencer, often collecting newspaper accounts of an alleged serial killer terrorizing Montreal, one who strangles, sexually assaults and mutilates the victims. Victor is the new guy, a socially awkward teacher who tries mightily to fit in, making friends with Louise and forging an uneasy alliance with Spencer.

As the film progresses, two things happen that shape the course of events. Louise appears to become more and more interested in the killer stalking the streets, and someone in the apartment building does something terrible to her cats.

There are plenty of red herrings offered up throughout “Good Neighbors.” Based on the theatrical trailer, I thought (wrongly, I might add) that I knew who was the killer and who was the prey. I completely botched my initial assessment, and I couldn’t have been happier.

Going into “Good Neighbors” knowing as little as possible is the best way to approach the film. But know this, there is nearly zero blood. This is a psychological horror film, and a very good one at that.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Yes.
Nudity – Yes.
Gore – Minimal blood.
Drug use – Yes
Bad Guys/Killers – An established serial killer and his progeny.
Buy/Rent – Rent it.

Torso, aka Carnal Violence (Blue Underground, 85 minutes, Unrated, Blu-Ray): A killer is terrorizing co-eds in Perugia, Italy, strangling them with his red and black scarf, sexually assaulting them and then dismembering them. This 1973 Italian Giallo by director Sergio Martino is near flawless in its execution. There’s more sexual depravity and gruesome murders in this one film than in most director’s entire cannon. I was thoroughly floored by how stylized the film was. Despite its age, Martino’s vision still holds up. There are several scenes here that stand out: The most interesting to me is a 15 minute segment where one of the college girls leaves a marijuana party/sexual free-for-all and wanders, barefoot and high, into a foggy swamp where she ultimately meets the masked killer. It’s a phenomenal sequence that just commands attention. Blue Underground offers fans two versions of the film: A director’s cut of the original Italian release, or an unrated version of the U.S. release, dubbed “Torso.” The film comes with a wonderful little video intro by Eli Roth talking about how Martino’s movie influenced his own film, “Hostel.”

Basket Case (Image Entertainment, 91 minutes, Unrated,Blu-Ray): Low-budget exploitation cinema doesn’t get any better, or weirder, than the 1982 Frank Henenlotter classic, “Basket Case.” The film is a riot from the get-go because all of the actors approach the material completely straight and totally serious. Yes, this is a movie about a disturbed young man named Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck) who carries around a wicker basket. Inside the basket is Belial, Duane’s Siamese-twin brother, who really is nothing more than a distorted slab of fatty skin with eyes, a mouth, two T-Rex hands and an aggravating howl whenever he doesn’t get his way. Duane and Belial are on a killing spree, systematically taking out the doctors who years earlier performed a horrific operation in Duane’s parent’s kitchen where they sliced off Belial and threw him away with the trash. The “operation” scene is unbelievable, if only because it looks to be 100 percent medically inaccurate. The film opens with Duane and Belial traveling from upstate New York to New York City. They rent a room in a seedy hotel/flophouse, Duane makes friends with the prostitute living next door and he and Belial set out to locate the three doctors responsible for separating them. In between, Duane keeps Belial placated with a steady diet of hamburgers, raw hot dogs and more. Duane is the sweet one, who actually longs for real companionship. Belial is the unhinged, dangerous one, prone to slaughtering people for no reason. Henenlotter utilizes stop-motion photography to capture a few scenes of Belial roaming around outside the confines of his basket. They are a stark contrast to the rest of the film, but they’re also pretty funny and creative for that time. Imagine the Van Halen-singing cheeseburger from “Better Off Dead,” only on a larger scale. “Basket Case” was notorious for years given the amount of blood and carnage that Henenlotter displays on screen. By today’s standards, it’s not incredibly graphic. You’ve seen far worse in “Hostel.” But there is a definite creepy factor to watching “Basket Case.” It’s the type movie you can imagine watching in the dark confines of a seedy Times Square grindhouse theater with bums sleeping a few rows back and the strong stench of urine in your nose. This is a Must-Buy for fans of cult classic horror.

The Blood Trilogy (Image Entertainment, 233 minutes, Unrated, Blu-Ray): Here’s the thing about Herschell Gordon Lewis films. They really had some cool, interesting ideas. And a penchant for spilling lots of blood, no matter how fake it looked at times. Take “Two Thousand Maniacs,” one of three HGL classics collected here, in addition to “Blood Feast” and “Color Me Blood Red.” “Maniacs” had a really good premise – every 100 years, the ghosts of the residents of a small Southern enclave that was destroyed by Northern troops come back from the dead to capture, torture and eat a select group of Yankee travelers. You tell me that’s what a movie is about and I will watch that. That has potential. No matter the vision, the execution and the acting always undermined HGL’s work. Scenes are framed so lazily in so places that the composition almost resembles abstract art. And the quality of performance peaks and valleys enough to make you car sick. Having now seen the original and Tim Sullivan’s redo, “2001 Maniacs,” I had no idea how much of the original he kept and actually improved upon. But it just goes to show, both films, despite their flaws, work because of the story. The kills are creative and the characters, however stereotypical, still strike familiar chords. That’s why it worked back in 1964 and again in 2001.

Roger Corman’s Cult Classics All Night Marathon: Vampires, Mummies & Monsters (Shout! Factory, 330 minutes, Unrated, DVD): This four-fest picks two each from the early 1970s and 1980s, “The Velvet Vampire,” “Lady Frankenstein,” “Time Walker” and “Grotesque.” The first three cover the three genres offered in the collection’s title. “Grotesque” offers up something entirely different. This 1988 film, which I had personally never ever heard of, somehow manages to combine three wholly different horror genres – home invasion, stalk and slash and deformed monstrosity – into one over-long feature. “Grotesque” is about a family reunion gone wrong. The father is a Hollywood special effects wizard. His daughter is played by Linda Blair. There’s another daughter, a mom and a friend visiting. And then there’s the brother, who is deformed and lives in a separate, hidden part of the house, locked away. The family is terrorized by the funniest band of punk rock hoodlums since “Twice Dead.” The gang unfortunately frees the brother. There’s about 15 to 20 minutes of repetitive scenes of people running and/or being chased and stalked through the longest, densest forest in America. Main characters get killed in alarmingly fast fashion! And Tab Hunter shows up out of nowhere. Yeah, that’s right, you know you’re curious now.

Also Available:

Mimic: Director’s Cut – Guillermo del Toro makes two kinds of movies, and both of them stand head-and-shoulders above most directors. He makes his meticulously crafted, haunting Spanish ghost and fairy tales, and he makes glossy genre films disguised as traditional A-list Hollywood fare. “Mimic,” his first foray into English-language films, was an unnerving, fantastical vision of science gone wrong. It was a 1950s radioactive monster movie reduced to the scale of a cockroach, and it worked damn well. I dare you not to pull your legs up onto the couch by the movie’s climax set inside an abandoned, underground train depot teeming with mutated cockroaches ready to burst forth and devour New York City.

The Godfather of Gore – After you watch “Two Thousand Maniacs” on Blu-Ray, then check out this informative documentary about Herschell Gordon Lewis from Something Weird Video.

iCrime – Ah, the Internet. People post such nasty things online, nude photos, tapes, you name it. What’s a girl to do but try to stop one such tape from leaking out, if it doesn’t kill her first.

The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman, Dum Maaro Dum and Angel of Evil – Fox World Cinema makes a splash with three unique titles. “The Butcher…” from China follows a special, mystical sword as it passes hands between three men; “Dum Maaro Dum” spotlights Bollywood action cinema; and the crime drama “Angel of Evil” from Italy.

Gavin and Stacy: The Complete Collection – If you know British comedy, you know never to expect the usual, same old same. It’s not like American TV that finds a winning formula and runs it into the ground. This excellent six-disc set includes all three seasons, 19 episodes, plus the 2008 Christmas special for the BBC’s hysterical “Gavin and Stacey,” a show that began life as a relationship comedy and then grew into a wonderful examination of family and friends and how extended family can just about drive you crazy.

Go For It – This is a movie about a street dancer from Chicago trying to make it big. It’s like “Honey,” only better.

Hung: The Complete Second Season – I like Thomas Jane. He just seems like the kind of guy you’d want to hang out with at a dive bar, drinking beers and telling stories. I’ve always liked him, but not necessarily the career choices he made. Here, though, he picked a winner. HBO’s adult comedy about a man with nothing left to lose who becomes a male prostitute is the equivalent of Showtime’s “Weeds” – funny, irreverent, often scatological, and never what you might expect.

How to Make it in America: The Complete First Season – Another HBO show that seems poised for a long run, this dramedy tells the story of two young friend in NYC who try to hustle their way into the American Dream with mixed results.

The Ledge – It’s part morality play, part Sunday sermon, but the heavy-handed religious overtones work against the pulpy genre plot.

The Hour – Another great BBC show, “The Hour” will draw comparisons to “Mad Men” because of its setting in the 1950s, but it owes more to another top-notch British show, “State of Play,” than anything else. And Geek Alert: Burn Gorman of “Torchwood” fame is one of the featured cast.

The Stool Pigeon – Gritty Chinese crime drama at its finest from Well Go USA.

American Loser – No, it’s not the next chapter of the “American Pie” franchise, even if it stars Stifler (Seann William Scott) in a paycheck-accepting performance.

Kendra: Seasons 2 and 3 – The wonder here is not former Playmate Kendra Wilkinson’s freakishly hot body, but how they have managed to have already filmed three entire seasons of this reality TV series. What – did I lose track of time?

Holly’s World: Seasons 1 and 2 – It’s reality TV with boobs. Notice, I didn’t say ‘for boobs,’ even though that would probably be appropriate too.

The Lost Future – When does Sean Bean find the time to star in every medieval and/or future-past-present swords and dinosaurs B-movie made? I have no idea, but somehow he makes time for cinematic junk food like “The Lost Future.”

3 by Theo Van Gogh – A trio of films by the late Danish director Theo Van Gogh, this collection includes “Interview,” “Blind Date” and “1-900.”

Call Me Fitz: The Complete First Season – A Canadian import that airs on DirectTV, this Jason Priestly vehicle follows the daily misadventures of a drinking, drugging, used car selling lothario.

CSI: Miami Season 9, CSI: New York Season 7 and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 11 – Funny that the best of the bunch should be the granddaddy, “CSI,” set in Las Vegas, but the flagship found itself adrift post-William Peterson and not even Morpheus could help steer the ship into a passable channel. Instead, it’s David Caruso, his constipated grimace and those deliciously soapy bon mots that he delivers to bad guys that sets “CSI: Miami” at the head of the pack.

The Cleveland Show: Season Two – More zaniness in Season Two from the first spin-off of “The Family Guy.”

How I Met Your Mother Season: The New Is Always Better Edition, Season 6 – NPH and Co. continue an improbable run with one of TV’s most inventive sitcoms.

Not To Be Overlooked:

Vamp (Anchor Bay, 93 minutes, R, Blu-Ray): This 1986 horror/comedy hybrid was an immediate hit with me when I was 16 years old.

If you have to ask why, you obviously know nothing of a horror geek teenager’s holy trinity, which I’m pretty sure includes vampires and strip clubs, and “Vamp” had both in spades.

It also featured a who’s who of 80’s cult cinema. There was Chris Makepeace of “My Bodyguard” and “Meatballs.” Robert Rusler of “Weird Science.” Gedde Watanabe of “Sixteen Candles.” And, of course, Grace Jones, the exotic amazon whose kooky cool music videos aired on Night Tracks on TBS over the weekend. And the story hailed from Donald P. Borchers, a Hollywood producer whose fingerprints are all over some of the 80s most campy classics (Tuff Turf, Two Moon Junction, The Beastmaster, Crimes of Passion).

I was excited to see the film for the first time in more than 20 years, as Anchor Bay wisely chose to upgrade “Vamp” to Blu-Ray as one of the cornerstones of its Midnight Madness series, which brings together some of the best and the cheesiest horror from that decade. I remembered loving the film, but if pressed, I couldn’t have named a single scene except for one (and now having watched it again, I got that scene wrong).

“Vamp” starts really, surprisingly strong with an extended intro designed to feel like a flashback to the days of the Spanish Inquisition. Makepeace and Rusler have a natural chemistry, and play off each other well. The basic plot is introduced, which involves them needing to acquire the talents of a stripper in time for a fraternity party to guarantee they will be accepted into the Greek order. The guys go see Watanabe who basically riffs off his Long Duck Dong persona from “Sixteen Candles,” playing up the stereotype to an uncomfortable level.

Watanabe agrees to loan them one of his cars on one condition: He gets to ride with them wherever they’re going, and they have to pretend to be his friends for a week.

So far, so good.

What happens next is one of those hallmark movie moments that practically defines 1980s cult cinema. Faced with having to logically get the characters from Point A, their college campus, to Point B, a strip club crawling with vampires, Borchers & Co. opt for the completely illogical ‘spinning car’ time warp technique. Basically, they bend the rules and magically transport the group to a place near the strip club without explaining how or why they got there.

After a ridiculous and unnecessary subplot involving a mad albino hoodlum and his hoodrat girls and several blatant vampire hints, the trio finally arrives at the club.

The club is nicely designed, the array of scantily clad dancers, including sexy bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, are all appropriately hot, and the cheese factor is kept to a minimum. In fact, the two best, and hottest, scenes from the entire movie take place in the first 35-40 minutes. I didn’t remember that.

The first best scene is Grace Jones’ entrance to the film, which is a strip tease unlike any other put to film during that era. It’s basically a melding of modern dance, fetish performance art and tribal ritual that must have caught everyone off guard when it was first pitched. Jones sports a reddish orange wig, white face paint and has her entire body painted with stripes to match an African art chair on stage. It’s an incredibly risky, but undeniably brave, introduction to her character, Katrina, and it works. Jones basically strips down, baring all, except what’s hidden by three carefully placed metal coils over her breasts and crotch. And, in a nice nod to how people in the theater likely felt, the “audience” on film for Jones’ act is left speechless when she walks off stage.

The second best scene follows minutes later when Rusler goes backstage to ask Katrina if she will accompany him to the fraternity party to dance for their group. Jones vamps it up (pun intended) in a wordless yet highly erotic back and forth with Rusler that culminates with them both getting naked and Jones transforming into her vampire alter-ego and ripping out his throat mid-coitus. It’s bloody, it’s hot, it’s totally out of place with the rest of the film, but damn.

“Vamp” follows a fairly predictable plotline after that. Makepeace begins to worry that his buddy is missing. Watanabe gets drunk, makes more uncomfortable stereotype jokes. A love interest for Makepeace is introduced, and they leave the club to go find Rusler. Eventually the albino and his gang come back into play, as does Rusler, who gets resurrected as a bloodsucker with a conscience. There’s a lot of inconsistency with the second and third acts. Rusler acts like he has been a vampire for ages, making jokes about his “condition.” The neighborhood around the strip club is revealed to be filled with vampires, as are the sewers.

Thankfully, everything ties together nicely in the end. Makepeace gets the girl. Rusler lives to party another night, as the case would be. The vampires are vanquished without much effort or serious scares.

For a good chunk of its first act, though, “Vamp” was something special. It nicely merged horror and comedy, combined some of the best elements from the decade (fashion, music, popular sayings) and surprised fans with some unquestionably erotic moments.

It’s nice to revisit after all these years. It’s not a classic, but it’s a keeper.

We Are The Night (IFC, 100 minutes, Unrated, DVD): At first pass, the new German all-female vampire gang gone wild might recall “The Lost Boys.”

That’s OK, there are plenty of homages to the iconic 1987 classic. “We Are the Night” features the same hyper-stylized editing, the lure of a not-quite innocent, in this case a petty thief named Lena (Karoline Herfurth) who stumbles upon a rave in an abandoned theme park being hosted by the vampiress trio, Louise (Nina Hoss), Charlotte (Jennifer Ulrich) and Nora (Anna Fischer).

Louise immediately notices Lena and decides to turn her, to introduce her to the hedonistic party life of a female vampire – all-night parties, unlimited drugs, private shopping excursions after-hours.

It’s here that “We Are…” makes a barely noticeable, but distinct, shift from being “The Lost Girls” to being an updated, 21st-century “Daughters of Darkness,” the European cult classic, lesbian-themed vampire film about a weary countess who longs for a soul mate to travel with.

Director Dennis Gansel and co-writer Jan Berger aren’t quite confident enough to make the leap necessary to go from lightweight eye candy to psycho-sexual exploration of need and desire and loneliness.

They opt for too many of the tired “vampire” clichés: Lena resists her transformation. Louise’s companions express dissent at her decision to bring in a fourth. A young detective chasing Lena refuses to stop trying to find her.

There are several well-done action scenes sprinkled throughout, culminating in a fantastic climax that offers several breathtakingly filmed shots of a vampire catfight high off the ground.

But too much of “We Are…” feels too familiar. If Gansel and Berger had gone with their gut and followed the rabbit hole further down the “Daughters of Darkness” pathway, they very well might have created a new vampire standard.

Instead, they have given us a highly enjoyable, but ultimately too easily forgettable, genre film. You’ll watch it, you’ll enjoy it, but I doubt it’s one that you will return to again and again.

Modern Family: The Complete Second Season (Fox, 528 minutes, Unrated, Blu-Ray): The comedic juggernaut returns with a three-disc set containing all the episodes from the second season of “Modern Family,” which just wrapped up a boatload of Emmy’s, both for acting and overall greatness. This one is not to be missed, especially if you’ve been hearing good things but have not yet taken the time to check out a wonderfully insightful, hilariously written look at the new nuclear family.

Nikita: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros., 1,012 minutes, Unrated, Blu-Ray): The CW’s ultra-sexy, uber-violent take on the oft-told tale of La Femme Nikita, this time just titled “Nikita,” works as a sudsy soap with guns. It works as an intelligent, often irreverent, take on counter-operations. And it has the eye candy to compensate when the weekly plot starts to drag. I love Maggie Q, and it’s awesome to see her finally getting the chance to take center stage.

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