Posts by Brent Lorentson

It seems the new recycled trend in horror is the exorcism/ possession genre.  For me personally this is the only horror genre that tends to get to me, since I was brought up Catholic and the thought of the devil possessing me was thought to be a very real possibility.  The strange thing is The Exorcist seems to be the only film that I would consider great and would even say it’s one of the greatest horror films of all time.  Many films have tried to deliver, but in the end the films seem to just fall flat, the closest being The Last Exorcism though that film also has its fair share of naysayers.  But I believe one day we’ll get a film that will rank up there with The Exorcist.  But that film is not Devil Seed.

As the opening credits roll we are given flashes of an exorcism gone terribly wrong in Boston, Mass back in 1972.  We jump to present day as Alex (Michelle Argyris) returns from visiting her sick grandmother.  In the time she’s been gone Alex’s roommates Jess and Bree have moved into a bigger and nicer place, and lucky for them the rent is still the same.  One look at the house and you know bad things are going to happen here (for some reason it sort of reminded me of the Amityville house but on a smaller scale).  While Alex has been gone, the new place isn’t the only thing to change.  Apparently over the summer her boyfriend Brian has been sleeping with her roommate Bree.  Brian cheating on his girlfriend of two years is only the starting point to how much of a douche this guy turns out to be, but I’ll hold off on that for now.

It would be fair to say Lewis Black is not for everyone.  When in the mood for comedy, few people would decide on watching an old man rant and rave on a stage to the point you expect him to simply keel over from a self induced heart attack.  You won’t find any puppets or redneck humor when watching one of Black’s routines.  In fact what you can expect is at some point to maybe get a little upset if not outright offended.  But that’s okay.  He knows his routine is not for everyone, so much so in fact he even opens this show with a note of warning about what to expect from his show.  And then the anger-fueled rants continue from there.

When I first sat down for this I really wasn’t sure what I’d be getting into, since all I had seen to judge him on were from the times he appeared on The Daily Show.  But I have to say he had me reeled in once he started ranting about the absurdity of Valentine’s Day being six weeks after Christmas and at the height of flu season.  Granted I can’t even picture Black celebrating any holiday with the exception of possibly April Fool’s and using it as ammunition to simply degrade people even more.

“It’s times like this you need to think like a stoner.”

It’s not every day you get the chance to say the quote above and apply it with conviction.  But when you watch High School or any other “stoner” movie, you simply have to view them through smoke-filled glasses or the viewing experience will be in vain.  Kind of like watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show, as a movie it’s bad, but when you see it with a live performing act it becomes a completely new experience.  Now I’m not advocating that everyone light up before every movie, but to understand that some films ask their viewers to sometimes step outside their comfort zone.

Watching this film is like unearthing a time capsule, not just to another time, but what seems like another world.  It’s crazy to see how much has changed since this film’s original theatrical release back in 1975.  One moment that stuck out in particular: when they are driving along the streets of Los Angeles you might notice a sign at a gas station posting gas at 56 cents a gallon.  This is a family that is already sick of life in the big city.  I can only imagine how they would react to big city life now; would they run further into the hills or simply accept the advances in modern technology?

The family initially makes the decision to leave the city life behind for the sake of their sickly daughter.  Skip (Robert Logan) is tired of his job and fed up with the stresses of the city, so in the car returning from a visit to the doctor he asks his wife Pat (Susan Damante) what she’d think about moving out and into the country.  This is something the two of them had always talked about when they first got together, but having kids and jobs seemed to put these dreams on the back burner.  But with the health of their daughter being their biggest concern, the family sells everything they own and purchases some property in a remote area in the Rocky Mountains.

After solar storms ravage the earth causing the soil to overheat and scorch our forests, the few who survive are left in a barren wasteland that stretches across the globe.  The concept is an impressive one to explain the desert world we are first introduced to in the opening moments of Hell, though what’s more impressive is how this low-budget, post-apocalyptic film managed this look with simple camera tricks.  With Roland Emmerich involved as executive producer, you may be expecting big-budget recreations of famous landmarks exploding and wiped away in a giant tidal wave.  Instead what you get with Hell is an intimate tale of two sisters struggling to survive in a world where their hope rests in simply finding a small part of the world where water is readily available.

When we first meet Marie (Hannah Herzsprung) and Leonie (Lisa Vicari) they are passengers travelling along an empty stretch of highway with newspapers taped over the windows with only a hole large enough for the driver, Phillip, to see out of.  Stopping at what remains of a gas station, our trio of survivors scavenge the place for gas and any supplies to take with them.  It’s here that they encounter Tom, a mechanic who offers his skills in exchange for some cans of peaches and to join them on their journey into the mountains to find water.

It’s not often, if ever that you’ll find me looking forward to a Hallmark Channel movie.  I have nothing against a good romance or sappy family dramas; it’s just that guys for the most part are not the target demographic.  To get to the point, this film is the chick flick guys fear being made to watch after losing the battle at the Red Box when all the other appealing titles are out and the wife or girlfriend is in no mood for action.  But thankfully the film isn’t all bad, and in fact it’s actually decent with the exception of a few clichés along the way.

Vivian (Jane Seymour) and Ray (Jeff Fahey) are living the dream after 30-plus years of marriage and still happily in love.  Together they live along the shore of Smith Mountain Lake where they have built the home of their dreams.  Everything is great till one morning Ray sets off to go fishing and ends up blowing himself up when trying to grill some fish along the shore.  This devastates the small town and the family, causing Sara (Scottie Thompson) to return to Virginia while she is in the middle of a making a deal that is sure to make her partner at her law firm in Los Angeles.  It’s been years since Sara has been back, but nothing has changed but her.  With Lily (Madeline Zima), her younger sister, Sara does what she can to get through the funeral as fast as she can so she can return to LA and make partner.  Of course Lily can’t understand why Sara always resented living in the small town, and Vivian feels nothing more than an inconvenience to her daughter ,so of course grief and tension bring them to argue and then move on to tears.

As the credits rolled for this film I struggled to remember the last time I’ve been so relieved that a movie had finally come to an end.  Christian Slater and Donald Sutherland are so much better than this. Can things really be so bad that they are slumming to do this “D” grade action nonsense?  I understand a gig is a gig, but these guys used to be at least marketable names to the box office.  They still have the talent and swagger to steal a scene, so why subject them to this?  Before I digress any further, allow me to take a breath…

Assassin’s Bullet is an action film about a female vigilante who is out to kill several members of a terrorist organization.  The assassin is haunted by her past after she witnessed her parents being murdered by a suicide bomber.  Sure, witnessing something as severe as this is enough to make anyone want blood, but the thing is, she doesn’t even remember what all happened that day because her memories are all repressed.  With the vigilante responsible for so many bodies piling up Robert (Slater), a former FBI agent, is brought in to hunt down the vigilante and discover who they are working for.  Slater just doesn’t seem into this role at all as he coasts with his charm but brings nothing more to the role.  For a character that is still in love with his wife after she died a few years prior, it doesn’t take much to distract him.

“I guess I kinda always liked cutting stuff up.”

Maybe it’s a little weird to admit this, but I dig movies where the characters are put in the position where they need to dispose of a body.  This is something of a sub-genre plot device that worked so well in Shallow Grave as well as Very Bad Things.  Sure, most of us would go ahead and call the police and report the body or the accidental homicide, but I always found these films amusing when they decide to let their characters do the wrong thing.  In the case of Breathless we get to see how far a jilted housewife is willing to go to keep the 100 thousand dollars her husband robbed from a neighboring town’s bank.  It’s a dark comedy and not for the squeamish, but it’s a fun ride with only a few hiccups that keep this from reaching its full potential.