Henenlotter Strikes Again

It was a cold, evil night in the dead of winter in 1986 around 9:45 pm. I ventured from my parents home, staggered to my 1983 Plymouth Champ drunker than a monkey, and set out for the Network Video, the first and only rental joint in town at that time. I was looking for a copy of The Evil Dead on VHS, but unfortunately, although the empty box was always there on the shelf in the horror section, the actual tape was never in stock. I have a feeling that the goddamned thing had been checked out under a false name by some miscreant who had no intention of ever bringing it back. The beta version sat there taunting me, a filthy arm reaching out from the grave on the smaller of the two boxes dragging a lovely brunette under the ground by her throat with the immortal words of one Stephen King ("...The most ferociously original horror film of the year...") floating in the dark blue sky above her head. Then, I see it. Fangoria had just run an article complete with the gory photos accompanied by jokey captions that would make the Cryptkeeper wince. A basket on the cover opened just enough to see two eyes and part of a deformed hand reaching towards me. Basket Case. And it was on VHS. I scooped it up, shelled out the $1.50, then stopped at the corner store with my newly minted fake i.d. for a pack of Marlboros, a twelve pack of beer, and some Cool Ranch Doritos. I arrived home, hit my basement bedroom, popped the tape in, cracked a beer, and settled in. Nothing would ever seem the same.

Since then, I've tried desperately to pitch Henenlotter to whoever would listen. No one listens. But I'm gonna try again now that I've just checked out his first movie in 18 years, a foul little foray into sexual deviance, Bad Biology. First a lil' background...

Henenlotter directed 3 brilliant films prior to Bad Biology. Basket Case (1982), his first, is the story of Duane and Belial, Siamese twins who, after their dad decides to split them up, develop a telepathic bond. Duane is a comparitively normal guy, and Belial is what you might call slightly deformed. And homicidal. They decide to head to the big city, Belial in tow in the titular basket, to seek revenge on the surgical staff who cut them apart and tried to dispose of Belial. Gory murders, romantic entanglements and general mayhem ensues. If you have somehow let this film slip by you, stop reading this right now, and go out and find it. It remains Henenlotter's greatest work. The director lensed two sequels to Basket Case, both of which are definitely worth a look, but the original is king.

After a six year wait, Henenlotter dropped Brain Damage (1988) upon an unsuspecting public. This is the tale of a boy and his brain parasite which happens to be about the size of a possum. It features brilliant voice casting for the Aylmer (or "Elmer" as Brian calls him) in the form of late night creature feature host Zacherle, who absolutely tears it up in a role that seems to have been created for him. Elmer supplies a hallucinogenic, highly addictive drug to Brian in return for victims whose brains he greedily devours. The classic scenes are plentiful here, but I have two faves. The first is when the previous keeper of the Aylmer returns to reclaim him and gives Brian the history of the parasite. The second is a showdown in a seedy hotel room as the Aylmer and Brian compete to see if Brian can go without the drug for longer than the Aylmer can go without grey matter. Rick Hearst does a nice job here as Brian, but went on to waste his talent in soap operas, where he continues to wallow as of this day.

After Basket Case 2 (1990), the director filmed his third masterpiece, a horror-comedy (although more comedy than horror) called Frankenhooker (1990.) This is the story of a med school dropout who proves that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Young Jeffrey Franken invents a self-propelled lawnmower that mutilates his beloved girlfriend. He decides to reassemble her with parts from hookers he murders for that purpose. As you can imagine, things go awry. Jim Lorinz is perfectly cast as Franken and its hard to believe that his career did not take off with this performance. He's still working, but not getting the type of roles that I was sure he would be getting after this. Henenlotter followed this up with another sequel to his original opus in the form of Basket Case 3: The Progeny (1992.)

Mr. Henenlotter then spent his time doing heroic work saving older exploitation films for Something Weird Video including one of my favorite films, The Curious Dr. Humpp, an Argentinian sci-fi sex flick that defies all description. Just see it.

So, here we are, 18 years after Basket Case 3, and Henenlotter has decided to once again assault us with an original creation. And that monstrosity is Bad Biology.

Early in Bad Biology, we get a look at a man piercing his member with a hypodermic needle. Jennifer picks up a guy at a bar and kills him during rough sex by slamming his head repeatedly into the floor during an orgasm. She is a sexual mutant of a sort, and the fetus fully gestates within her in two hours. She delivers the baby in the bathtub and leaves it there. Through her narration, she tells us that because the baby has only gestated for a short time, it is not a "real" baby and can be ignored. And this is all in the first few minutes of the film.

Jennifer is a photographer and physically addicted to sex. And completely homocidal. She beats another lover to death with a lamp. And then tosses the resulting infant into the garbage as she leaves his pad.

Batz has a reattached member that he has repeatedly injected with animal steroids that has developed a conscious of its own. His genitalia finds a way to detach itself and wreak havoc throughout his apartment building upon a number of attractive residents.

These two sexual freaks find their way to each other. And until you witness it, you won't believe how this one works itself out.

Don't miss it. Outside of John Waters, no one has ever made films that register on such a visceral level as Frank Henenlotter. This is the way movies should be made. 5 out of 5 stars.

Pandorum: He's Got the....Spaaaace Madnessss!

I'll start this with a minor quibble I've developed with sci-fi films. At the beginning of Pandorum, we get the past few hundred years of human history all wrapped up in a few seconds of text superimposed over the vast expanses of outer space. I used to think this was kind of a cool way to get us up to speed without wasting any precious screen time actually developing the plot. Who needs that? But the more and more I see of this technique (usually in science fiction films,) the more I'm thinking it's just plain laziness. It seems to me that with a few extra lines of dialogue (especially if those lines are shouted over a communicator that doesn't seem to work all that well, but I'll be getting to that later) all the material covered in that text prologue could have been conveyed quite nicely. And with the way Pandorum is set up, with two space travelers awakening to find that they don't remember who they are and what the hell it is they are supposed to be doing aboard this spaceship, wouldn't it have been more effective if we didn't know all the stuff we are told in a crawl at the beginning of the film? (A crawl? Is that what the Hollywood term for that? Seems I've heard that somewhere. I suppose I could look that up, but I just don't feel like it. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, laziness.) But, some of the greats are guilty of this as well (The Star Wars films) and although this film may not reach those heights, it's still pretty dang good, so I choose to forgive here.

So what we learn in that crawl(?) at the beginning is that the Earth is pretty much all used up. And the Elysium has been sent out to find a planet that can sustain human life so that we can ship a whole bunch of people out there and get busy destroying a new planet. Not a terribly innovative concept, but that's not really what's important here. That's just an excuse to get people on board a spaceship out in the middle of nowhere with some pasty, mean as heck, faster than greezed lightning space orcs who like to chase people around, and then, upon catching them, disembowel and eat them. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A guy named Bower wakes from hypersleep and finds that he can't remember a heck of a lot. Like what his name is and what he's supposed to be doing. Then Dennis Quaid wakes up and the two of them discover that the doors aren't working so they sit around being confused together until they decide that Bower needs to get up into the duct system and find his way to some reactor that powers the ship and reset it manually. Although he can't remember his name, he does know how to do that, which is weird. But, that's a minor quibble. So Bower, after some minor difficulty, squirms his way through the ducts and drops to the floor on the other side of the door. He soon befriends an oriental guy who's really good with a spear type weapon thing, but can speak no English, and a really hot chick who always seems to be sweaty. Hyper hydrosis is a good thing when you look like this, trust me. Bower convinces the two of them of what they need to do to save the ship and that they don't have all kinds a time to do it. Adventures ensue including many close encounters with the space orcs and a cannibalistic guy who's holed up in an orc-proof room and gets most of the best lines in his limited screen time ("I wouldn't have survived this long if I had a heart.") Poor Dennis Quaid doesn't get to do much in the first half of this film except walk around in his hidey-hole and say stuff like, "Hey Bower, are you there?" and "Bower, do you copy?" Which leads me to my next minor quibble. Here in 2010, you can basically talk to anyone on the planet, whether they're at the Pyramids in Egypt, the Mississippi bayou or the mountains in Montana with a cell phone they give you for free when you sign up for the service. So you're telling me that hundreds of years in the future we have somehow lost this ability? These are the worst communicators ever in the history of film. I seem to remember Kirk and Spock talking to one another from different dimensions back in the 60's, for God's sake. Anyway, after much trouble with the communicators, Dennis Quaid finally gets something to do. Which is basically go bat-s#@t. He discovers a slimy, nekkid guy in the ducts, and and away we go.

Pandorum, by he way, is apparently what Ren and Stimpy called "Space Madness" in the classic episode in which Commander Hoek and Cadet Stimpy are in space for an extended voyage and Ren goes insane. Pandorum however takes an hour and 48 minutes to tell the story, where R & S wrap up their tale in about 12 minutes.

I don't wanna give away too much here, because the fun in this film is in the discovery of what's actually going on, and in all the jump shocks which are cheap and easy, but damned good fun. The space orcs are fast and meaner than rattle snakes, and all actors acquit themselves nicely here. Ben Foster has been in some very cool films (3:10 to Yuma, 30 Days of Night, X-Men: The Last Stand and The Punisher) and is convincing here as Bower, the guy who gets to run all over the ship with a hot, sweaty babe (Antje Traue, who is very cool and has a great German accent as well) and shoot mutants while Dennis Quaid is stuck in his room. Quaid is his usual dependable self, and his character gets some much needed perking up in the last half hour or so. Supporting cast is fairly minimal, but a couple perfs stand out. Eddie Rouse as Leland, the aforementioned crazier than a s-house rat cannibal guy, gets all the best lines and makes the most of his minimal screen time. The slimy, creepy guy that Quaid pulls out of the ductwork is also quite good and it turns out he cleans up rather well too. Director Christian Alvart gets the most out of his people here and the film looks fantastic. Looking forward to his next project.

A couple of scenes stood out for me. The slow creep and crawl through a sea of space orcs was pretty suspenseful. And the scene in which our three heroes kill their first space orc is memorable for its extreme violence. Pretty good stuff. Again, I don't want to give away too much here so I think I'll just shut the hell up and tell you to go ahead and send this flick straight to the top of the Netflix list. Oh, and dig out that old VHS tape with the old Ren and Stimpy shows on it.

4 outta 5.

See "Saw VI" or Something Terrible Might Happen to You

Every time I decide to take in the next Saw flick, I plan on going back and at least watching the previous installment for a quick refresher. Then I quickly decide against it because the realization dawns on me that nothing at all ever goes on in a Saw flick that makes even the slightest bit of sense. The only things that matter are the twisted, utterly ingenious and gag inducing torture devices that some seriously warped Edison of Evil must be sitting up all night doing blow and drinking whiskey to come up with. 15 minutes after the credits rolled, if I hadn't taken a few notes, all I would have remembered about Saw VI is the shotgun merry-go-round with a bunch of insurance company slugs strapped to it, the hydrochloric acid sprinkler heads, the hold-your-breath-vice-grip-rig, and the contest to see who can cut the most body weight off themselves before one of those crazy headgear contraptions screws two big old bolts into your head and crushes your skull. Oh yeah, and the can-you-get-through-the-maze-with-hot-steam-shooting-in-your-grill-before-another-contraption- strapped-to-your-chest-shoots-a-spike-up-through-your-chin-and-on-outta-the-top-of-yer-melon. Did I mention that one?

All that being said, here is the plot as best as I could figure out without actually going back to watch the movie again or referring back to previous movies: John Kramer, aka Jigsaw, is one clever serial killer. And must have some kinda serious engineering degree. He gets himself all worked up after dying of cancer and seems to be (from beyond the grave or through a series of recorded messages) controlling his widow, and some cop named Hoffman, and an ex-junkie named Amanda, who may or may not be alive (I got confused there and went to the fridge for another beer when they may have explained that.) The motivations for any of these characters to buy into Jigsaw's plans are shaky at best, but who cares? It's all about the gore. So, through a series of insanely inventive and well thought out death traps and torture devices, our hero wreaks havoc on a set of deserving (if easy) targets, such as a health insurance company executive and his claim investigators, money lenders, an attorney and a smoker (who dies because he can't hold his breath as long as a health insurance exec!) There are envelopes with numbers on them, a couple of cops investigating the death of a colleague who seems to have been framed with the jigsaw murders by the cop who is actually committing them, but none of this really matters and thinking about it really has started to make my head hurt. What matters in a Saw film is the acting.

Kidding, of course, but there are a couple of perfs I would like to quickly mention. Costas Mandylor, who plays Hoffman, the cop who actually has taken over for Jigsaw, actually proves at the end of Saw VI that he can do a little more than just look angry and contort his lips. Upon regaining consciousness and finding he's strapped to a chair with one of those wonderful death lids strapped to his pouty mug, he looks pretty scared and then when the thing tears a big chuck outta his face, he screams in pain pretty believably. And Tobin Bell, who plays Jigsaw, should get some props for being effective enough to still be in these things even though the character died like 4 movies ago. No offense to Tobin (although the puppet on the tricycle is much scarier, and emotes a little more believably as well,) but if this character fell off the face of the planet and never appeared in another Saw film, I'm not sure I would even notice. It wouldn't be like an Elm Street without Freddie Krueger or a Camp Crystal Lake without Jason Voorhees. Now if the Saw guys retired those strapped on tuques of torment, I would seek out my torture porn in some other dark alley. No other perfs really stand out here, but acting really isn't why we watch Saw films either, is it?

What is the reason we return to the Saw franchise year after year after year? Cringe inducing scenes of bodily mutilation, spewing gore and inhuman torture and painful death, that's what! Three scenes stand out for me in this one. 1.) Jigsaw gets all Shylock on our asses. In the opening scene, a fat white guy and black lady who has, judging by her mid-section, apparently spent a great deal of time in the gym, are locked in two cages separated by two chutes that lead to a scale. We are given enough information to lead us to believe that they are money lenders of some sort (sub-prime mortgages?), but the reason they have been chosen for this gruesome episode is a tad vague. They have apparently lent people money who couldn't pay it back. Jigsaw is gonna be awful frigging busy if he sets out to kill everybody who was guilty of that over the past 10 years. Both of the offenders are equipped with Stetsons of Suffering which I mentioned earlier will cause one of them some minor discomfort if the other is able to slice off more of him/herself and dump it down the chute. Of course, our maniac hero has left the two unfortunates all the tools they will need to do the job. Carnage ensues. 2.) A flashback scene in which the aforementioned framed cop shows us what might have happened to Han, Luke, Leia and Chewie in the Death Star if R2 hadn't been able to shut down that trash compactor. The compound arm fracture and the aftermath are really something to behold. 3.) And the scene towards the end of the film in which a man is impaled by multiple spikes attached to hoses that pump him full of acid. The special effects money pays off here as he slowly melts from the rib cage down into a lake of goo. Tasty.

My favorite scene, however, isn't particularly gruesome, but extremely clever and effective. It involves a playground spin ride, a shotgun, and spike being driven through a guy's hand. Gotta see to believe. Good stuff.

As long as the makers of this series can continue formulating these bizarre and ingenious devices of torture and mayhem, keep the films right around an hour and a half, release them at Halloween time and bring them in on the cheap, this franchise could last longer than the Friday the 13th's. By my count, there are 12 Friday the 13's (including the Freddy v Jason thing and the "remake.") And the temptation must be overwhelming to make a Friday the 13th Part 13, so Saw has a ways to go yet.

The only problem may be finding a fresh bunch of "villains" for Jigsaw to grease. Maybe the fast food drive-thru kid who forgets to put a straw in the bag? Or the office co-worker who takes the last cup of coffee and doesn't start a new pot? (You kill the joe, you make some mo!) Or the horror movie fan who loses interest in a longstanding franchise and refuses to plunk down his hard earned cash at the local multiplex for the newest installment during a recession.

I guess the last 4 or 5 of these movies have started running together for me. I enjoy these movies, I really do. I just don't really remember much about them. Except the death pit full of syringes. And the hand crusher stopper thing for the swinging pendulum. Oh, and the circular saw hand choppers filling up the blood beakers. And there was the head-crushing blocks of ice/noose/electrocution gadget.....

4 outta 5.