Big Foot looks scarier in this poster than he does in the movie

The “giant creature” subgenre of horror b-movies has never really been my favorite. The stories and plot development are usually pretty standard – the unaware soon-to-be victims + giant creatures + bloody death = The end.  I was mildly surprised however, in that “Abominable” was a pretty decent b-horror movie, full of drama and suspense. It was hampered by only a few of the usual b-movie faux-pas, and its good points eventually balanced out the negative ones successfully.

The main storyline of the movie follows actor Matt McCoy, as Preston Rogers, an author who’s wife was killed 6 months earlier in a climbing accident which also resulted in his own legs being paralyzed. Preston was traumatized psychologically by the accident and upon his doctor’s advice, he returns to the cabin where the accident occurred, in an attempt to speed up his emotional healing.

Otis, not giving Big Foot a dental exam

Accompanying Preston, is a miscast male nurse, Otis (Christien Tinsley), who reminded me of an older version of Danny Masterson’s  character on “That 70’s Show”. Strangely enough, he comes across not so much as a nurse, but as an unwilling companion, genuinely annoyed by Preston and his insecurities. Otis even goes so far as to spike his own milk with alcohol and chill out on the couch. Not something I would expect a home health nurse to be doing much of. I’m not really sure what his purpose actually was in the movie. Besides being generally apathetic toward Preston, he’s pretty much absent for a large portion of the film because he’s out looking for a store in the backwoods podunk town that carries Preston’s soy milk, which he forgot to pack.

One of the hot chicks next door, post-Big Foot

While Otis is out, a bunch of hot young girls show up to spend the weekend in the cabin next door, and Preston, being stuck in a wheelchair, has nothing to do besides spy on them with a pair of binoculars while feeling sorry for himself. During his spying, he sees one of the girls get kidnapped by Big Foot as she’s talking outside on her cell phone. Drama quickly ensues as Preston tries to get messages to the other girls, the police and Otis, but to no avail, as they all believe he’s some psychologically messed up, delusional “peeping Tom”.

Preston Rogers looking nervously intense

The character of Preston was generally likeable throughout the movie.  He had an innate nervous creepiness about him which I attributed to a vague resemblance to Anthony Perkins  as Norman Bates  in “Psycho”. This seemed to make it harder to determine if he was really a good guy or not, especially with his spying habit. However, his character seemed rather clueless for an author, and it seemed like he whispered his lines throughout the whole movie ( I guess to avoid being heard by Big Foot?). His lack of energy and overall monotone voice made the extended scenes involving him alone in the cabin even longer than they were.

*sigh* Lance rules the horror genre

About 45 minutes into the movie, we get a break from Preston with a separate subplot involving movie icon Lance Henriksen, as one of 3 local men camping in the woods, hoping to find and kill the alleged “Big Foot” creature. This scene, although excellently acted, did not quite mesh with the rest of the movie and seemed to run a bit long, almost to the point where it feels like you’re watching a different movie altogether. We see about 5 minutes of sarcastic macho banter between the woodsy men, that is actually amusing, before Lance’s character, Ziegler Dane, hears a noise and goes running off in the direction of where he thinks Big Foot might be. The scene is almost satirical in that the men are obviously not the “sharpest tools in the shed” and yet they are joking about people that died doing stupid things, a la the “Darwin Awards.” Soon after, we subsequently see Ziegler go running off after Big Foot by himself, into the creature’s cave no less, and becoming the first of the three to earn their own “Darwin Awards” at the hands of Big Foot.

Oooooh...scary lighting on white skin. Big Foot likes this.

The lighting and effects throughout the entire movie, especially the scenes involving Preston, were successful in helping create a “spooky” atmosphere. At one point, Big Foot knocks down power lines so a lot of the scenes inside Preston’s cabin are eerily lit, with a foggy glow highlighting Preston’s face, much like the spooky flashlight effect often used when people are portrayed telling ghost stories. The scenes toward the end where Preston and the last surviving girl, Amanda (Haley Joel) are trying to escape to the car are especially enhanced by rapid flashes of light in the dark which seem to add to the panicked effect on screen.

"Why the hell am I up this early?"

Separated at birth?

Overall, “Abominable” was a smartly directed, tension-filled b-horror movie with fairly good acting. In fact, I was able to take the movie fairly seriously until a point near the end where the viewer is shown a close-up of “Big Foot’s” face. The face on the Big Foot creature was such a ridiculous caricature, that in the most intense escape scene at the end, I couldn’t help but bust out loud laughing because Big Foot looks like Fozzie Bear’s  maniac cousin gone wrong. I mean, it seems like a decent effort was put into the rest of the movie but someone didn’t quite understand the meaning behind making a “realistically frightening” creature. In fact, it seemed like they tried to create a brown version of the “Abominable snowman” from the stop-motion animation movie “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” from 1964. On my personal cheese wedge rating scale however, the Big Foot creature added many points to the movie’s cheesiness so it ends up with a total of 3.5 cheese wedges, for pretty good quality and average cheesiness.

Tara Reid looking confused after reading the movie script

I decided to review “Incubus” because invariably, every time I’ve sat down to watch TV in the past month, it’s been showing on Chiller, so I’ve unwittingly been subjected to portions of it enough times to equal watching the whole movie at least twice. Despite the repeated viewings, this movie is so poorly written that it took reading plot summaries on the internet (some of them even conflicting) to realize what the movie was really about. Bad writing, combined with disjointed scenes and my brain automatically tuning out Tara Reid’s monotonous drivel when she explained certain key plot moments at length, added up to one horribly frustrating disaster of a movie.

The premise of the movie is the overused, “friends on a road trip, car breaks down because of accident and they are forced to find shelter in a mysterious building” theme that makes you wonder why so many people seem to forget to use common sense when driving with a car full of people in deserted forest areas. Once the inevitable breakdown happens, Tara Reid’s character Jay, and her friends (except for one who decides to stay with the car for no known reason other than proving she is the smartest of the bunch) discover a deserted building/laboratory/abandoned zombie movie set, fall in through a roof and subsequently get trapped inside.

Scary androgynous skinny white boy

Of course, they proceed to alarmingly discover several dead bodies of scientists, plus one who’s still alive and insane, and a semi-naked unconscious bald guy locked in a glass cell with tubes protruding from all over his body, making him look like a skinny white boy version of Frankenstein. The remaining insane scientist kills Jay’s brother Josh while he looks for a generator. Soon after they all find a key to unlock the glass cell and so begins Jay’s obsessive attempt to solve the mystery of the freak in the cell, despite the fact that her brother just died a few moments before.

Jay, a medical student (what?) flips through a few folders and video tapes, and amazingly deduces that the freak in the cell is a convicted murderer who’s execution was faked so the government could use him as a test subject in “remote viewing” experiments. As a result, the “Sleeper” as he’s called, has the ability to invade people’s minds when they are sleeping and take control over their bodies, which explains the deaths of the scientists.

Tara Reid and friends, shockingly wandering the forest

The characters spend the rest of the movie alternately panicking about trying to find a way out of the compound, and trying to analyze the “Sleeper”. This somehow leads to them each falling asleep (like that would happen when you’re in a scary scientific compound full of dead people), being possessed by the freak, and killing each other to the point where the only ones left are Jay (Tara Reid, of course) and the Sleeper. I oversimplified this part, but what I wrote actually makes more sense when you leave out all the unnecessary specifics.

We are so excited to be filming this movie.

I won’t go into greater detail because this movie has so many incongruities it took me several days just to paste together this extremely basic summary. The bland hospital-like colors of the compound they spend the whole movie in, and the hazy, dim lighting further added to my inability to pay attention to the movie for longer than 30 seconds at a time. The only thing that occasionally startled me out of my zombie-like daze was Tara’s hysterical “hiccup sobbing” that occurred at random inappropriate moments throughout the movie.

Tara Reid's "Oscar moment"

It was not surprising that Tara Reid’s character was the one to survive since so much of the movie’s camera shots are devoted to her and her boobs. It’s clear that Tara was meant to stand out in her bright aqua low cut shirt, with gratuitous bend-over shots and repetitive bouncy jogs through the halls that had no direct correlation to the movie. At some point in my life and I can’t remember why, I actually thought Tara Reid was a good actress. I don’t know if it’s because of the excessive weight of her over-sized breast implants, but throughout this movie, it seemed the extent of her dramatic talent was having a constant look on her face that seemed to express a chronic state of painful constipation.

Doesn't this pink lighting make me look scary...

The “Sleeper” character was the only part of the movie that was mildly creepy. Whoever did his make-up job succeeded in creating the unnervingly androgynous android/zombie that I didn’t know I feared until seeing this movie. Even more disturbing was the fact that he could sing creepy sing-song warnings to Jay (“Jay Jay, I’m coming to get you girl, I want to be inside you…[um, what?]) despite the fact that we learn earlier that he bit off his own tongue when he was a child. And although we think Jay kills him in the end, we get a flicker of an attempted movie twist when Jay is rescued (and arrested?) and her eyes glow at the camera as a “sign” that the “Sleeper” did in fact, get his wish of “being inside her”.

Tara Reid...or is it?

It was finally at this point that I was able to make the connection of why the title of the movie is “Incubus” – a lascivious male demon who possesses women while they sleep, impregnating them, or in this case, impregnating themselves into the woman’s brain. It might have helped if the title connection was a bit more obvious earlier in the movie to at least give the viewer some direction of its overall point.

A poster that actually makes the movie seem scary

Basically, this movie was horrid. I can’t believe Chiller played it so many times, forcing me to endure it’s horribleness repeatedly. I forgot to mention that this movie was created with the purpose of being the first “direct-to-download” film, sold exclusively through DVD. This was not a good movie to use to set an example for a new method of movie distribution. I think it doomed the assumed “quality” of all future “direct-to-download” releases.

Plus, I never realized how hard it was to construct a review of a movie that had a horribly disjointed plot. I wasted way too much time on trying to figure this movie out because I don’t really think it was ever supposed to make sense. The target audience of this movie was young males who would be hypnotized by the bouncing of Tara Reid’s giant botched boob-job breasts, thus rendering the need for a discernible plot pointless. Overall, “Incubus” gets one-half of a cheese wedge out of five for just being crap – no quality and not even any real cheesiness to enjoy. Just crap.

Children of the Corn 2009 on Syfy

I spent the whole week eagerly awaiting the chance to watch Syfy’s new “Children of the Corn” remake.  After all, the advertising proclaimed that the movie would finally be produced “the way it was meant to be written”. Hmmm…I wasn’t aware that the first one didn’t live up to certain expectations…presumably those of Stephen King’s,or the fans, or anyone else for that matter. After all, it is considered a classic.  A “cheesy” classic at that, but nevertheless, a classic horror movie based on a classic King short story. Isaac and Malachai, and the rest of the children who worshipped “He who walks behind the rows” will forever be burned into that “creepy” portion of our brains brings out the goose bumps. I wasn’t sure how that creepiness could be improved upon, if at all for that matter, but I would soon find out.

First off, I have to be completely honest. Prior to the airing of “Children of the Corn (CotC) 2009″, Syfy aired a day-long marathon that consisted of the CotC sequels 4 through 7. I thought this was a cool idea at first, but looking back now, I’m not so sure. I had seen most of each of those movies before, or at least parts of them, and I thought it would be an awesome build-up to the new CotC remake. Well,  I can’t quite put my finger on whether it was a result of watching 8 or so hours of mediocre b-horror movies consecutively, or that the 2009 CotC remake really sucked, but I fell fast asleep approximately 30 minutes into the feature movie I had waited all day to watch.

Kandyse McClure as "Vicky" and David Anders as "Burt"

I was disappointed that I missed out on the remake, but the first 30 minutes were extremely grueling to suffer through. As in the original, we are presented with a lengthy interaction between Burt and Vicky as they are driving cross-country. They proceed to accidentally hit the already “near death” kid that stumbles out of the cornfield, and consequently freak out over what to do next. This leads them to discover the freaky little town of Gatlin, NE.

"Vicky" being bitchy

Well, I have a few comments regarding this period of the movie. About the only good thing was the impressive cinematography. A 1970’s atmosphere was successfully recreated, from the giant boat-sized Thunderbird to the hazy, faded color of the film. However, this was all overshadowed by the fact that the character of Vicky, played by Kandyse McClure, is presented in this version as the biggest hatred-inspiring bitch on the face of the planet. I swear, the whole initial 30 minutes of the movie revolve around the constant harpy whiny insults that she hurls at poor Burt, played by David Anders, who’s just chilling, wondering why she’s having a constant bitch-fest. Oh my God, I have never wanted to see a main character killed off so fast as I wanted to see Vicky bite it. And from what I gathered (and sadly missed), her fulfilling demise did happen not too long after I passed out. I know in the original short story, the characters of Burt and Vicky were much more dysfunctional than they were presented in the original movie, but this rendering was just plain ridiculous, almost so over the top it was comical. If I were Burt, I would have left her in the middle of the road after getting out of the car and checking out the kid’s body.

Preston Bailey as the cute "Isaac"

During my brief viewing of the movie, I also have to say that I was disappointed in the “normalcy” of the “corn kids” that were expected to be a major creep factor. In the original, the kids were ‘creepy’ in the glaring, dirty, zombie kid kind of way. In this version, they just looked like a bunch of Amish kids hanging out doing farmwork. The only thing scary about Isaac was the ridiculously huge hat they made him wear which made him look like a giant thumbtack. The kids just looked bored and definitely not mesmerized by the power of “he that walks behind the rows”. Preston Bailey, who played Isaac, was just plain cute, not freakishly sinister like the Isaac, played by the naturally creepy John Franklin, in the original movie.

John Franklin as the original creepy "Isaac"

Since I missed pretty much the whole movie, I checked out other websites and people’s reviews of “Children of the Corn 2009″ and realized that the rest of the movie pretty much left the same impression with other people as the first 30 minutes did with me. It is puzzling to me as to why there has always been so much interest in creating multiple “Children of the Corn” movies out of what was originally a 27 page short story. It seems obvious, that unless you can hire an excellent author to expand on those original 27 pages, you end up with an hour and a half movie full of filler and stretched storylines which really tests the limits of your attention span.

A "scary" version of the movie or just more "corn"?

To top this all off, I learned through various sites that Dimension Films is currently working on creating yet another remake of the original, this time with more emphasis on the religious overtones present in the story. I don’t know, but I’m not holding my breath on that one. “Children of the Corn” has been beaten to death, literally it seems, and filmmakers need to move on and find writers that can come up with some new, original horror stories with which to try to scare us, rather than continuing to create b-movie sequels that come off as more whimsical than scary. The original “Children of the Corn” was a classic. Let’s leave it that way.

Wolf Lake Promo Poster

I had never heard of the supernatural television series “Wolf Lake” until a couple of months ago when Chiller was running a day long marathon of its solitary season. When I first saw the commercials, I thought it was actually a movie because it has some relatively big name stars in it such as Lou Diamond Phillips, Tim Matheson and Sharon Lawrence. Subsequently, I also automatically assumed that since I had never heard of it, and the fact that it was on “Chiller” and not on network TV, meant it was probably a pretty crappy movie. However, when I started watching, I realized I could not have been more wrong.

"John Kanin" and "Ruby"

“Wolf Lake” is a combination mystery/suspense/angst-y love story/werewolf thriller set in a mysterious town in the Pacific Northwest, where a large number of the inhabitants (if not all of them) are human/wolf shape-shifters. It premiered on Sept. 19,2001 and ran for a total of 9 episodes, 5 on CBS and the last 4 on UPN. Lou Diamond Phillips played John Kanin, a Seattle police officer whose girlfriend Ruby is kidnapped on the night he proposes to her. His efforts to find her lead him to the town of Wolf Lake, where he’s immediately suspicious of the town’s strange inhabitants. He begins investigating how Ruby is tied to this town and he never quite has the whole picture revealed to him. In the meantime, the wolf families that control the town have their own underlying drama going on in regards to leadership, power, sex, and the ethics involved with living as humans who possess the power to become werewolves.

Mysterious "Wolf Lake"

While this description may sound like it has all the makings of a supernatural soap opera, “Wolf Lake” was much more than that. For anyone interested in wolves and werewolf mythology, “Wolf Lake” will engage you in a fascinating depiction of the struggle between the instinctual wolf pack mentality and the individual desires of the human being. It’s entirely possible that I’m reading too much into the show, but I found it ironic that when wolves are known to be intensely loyal to the pack and mate for life, the human-wolves in “Wolf Lake” are preoccupied with various degrees of gaining power using sex, murder and deception, to manipulate their fellow wolves. Adding to the mystery, we never really know exactly, whether or not everyone in the town is a werewolf, including John Kanin, who would actually be learning that fact along with the viewers if it were true.

The worst part is, that we NEVER truly find out the all answers because the show was cancelled after only 9 episodes! As usual, it seems that the major networks don’t give the more obscure “supernatural” shows a chance…if they aren’t in the lead right out of the gate, they get axed, which doesn’t seem fair, considering it usually takes a couple of episodes before a viewer can decide if they are really into a show or not. This show underwent a huge transformation from the original pilot in order to make it more dramatic and interesting to a wider audience. The original pilot was actually scrapped and the focus re-written, a move that was questioned, but then welcomed by the actors and creators behind the show, so you would think that it would have had more of a chance to make it past the initial season “chopping block”.

The cast of "Wolf Lake"

I believe the show’s lack of popularity was due to a couple of unfortunate factors, neither of which have anything to do with the quality of the show. First, the title, “Wolf Lake” comes off as a bit too general and “soap-opera-ish” which could immediately turn some people off who may have gotten the wrong impression of what the show was about (think “Melrose Place” or “The Hills”). I think if the title was more focused on some aspect of the werewolf persona, like “Cunning Instinct” or simply “Alpha Male” it could have been more easily identified as a supernatural series. Second, maybe it was simply an awesome show that was “before its time”. The public’s current obsession with vampire mythology has begun to spread into the realm of the werewolf. Teens who favor Jacob in the “Twilight” series would have become loyal viewers of “Wolf Lake” because there is an active teen-werewolf-angst subplot that would satisfy their craving for “werewolf romance”. I’ve also noticed that there are several werewolf movies and TV shows currently in the works to satisfy those who have become bored with the surplus of vampire shows that have flooded the entertainment industry. This seems like it would have been the absolute most perfect timing for a show like “Wolf Lake” to become a runaway hit. Unfortunately, werewolves were not a trending entertainment fad 8 years ago when it was released on network television.

Lou Diamond Phillips and Graham Greene

With a high caliber of talent in acting and writing, “Wolf Lake” proved itself to critics and also to the viewers that took a chance and tuned in, that it was a captivating series. With outstanding acting especially from the lead, Lou Diamond Phillips, and an engrossing storyline, there was no reason that this series should have failed. I haven’t heard any talk of possibly bringing it back but wouldn’t it be nice for the fans to have at least a TV movie to tie the MANY loose ends together, especially now that the series has been running sporadically on Chiller? While searching the internet I did find a currently active petition to bring the show back at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/4/Bring-Back-WOLFLAKE that has over 500 signatures and still growing. If you haven’t had a chance yet to check out “Wolf Lake” the next marathon showing will be this coming Sunday, Sept 13th on Chiller. Regardless of whether or not anything happens with “Wolf Lake” in the future, make sure you tune in and check in out. It definitely will not disappoint fans of the supernatural genre and the actors and writers of this show deserve a little more widespread awareness of the amazing quality of this show.

Lance Henriksen as “Frank Black”

One of the plus sides of being addicted to SyFy and the Chiller channels is that I’m exposed to old TV shows of the supernatural/horror genre that I didn’t catch the first time around. One such show is Millennium, starring Lance Henriksen as Frank Black.

I am completely obsessed with this mesmerizing show! The show’s focus is based on the “end-of-the-Millennium apocalyptic conspiracies” that ran rampant some 10 years ago as we approached the beginning of the 21st century. So, the topic’s not exactly current, and it’s rarely shown in chronological order, making it extremely hard to figure out what’s going on, so why is it that every day at 4pm, I am glued to the TV to watch and re-watch every episode of this hypnotic series?

Why does this show mesmerize me so? Is it the writing? Somewhat. Is it the “conspiracy theory” topics? Likely. But seriously, the one thing this show has that makes me keep coming back for more, again and again, is the star of the show, Lance Henriksen. This guy is the smart man’s “Dirty Harry”! In most of his roles (even beyond “Millennium”), Lance rarely shows signs of emotion, except for a trademark penetrating glare that he directs at any wrongdoer to force them to crack and confess all of their evil deeds.

He doesn’t ever need to express any other emotion because his intense “Don’t mess with me” glare would make any serial killer freeze dead in his tracks. Lance Henriksen has the innate ability to achieve an expression on his face that I would give ANYTHING to be able to flash to customers in the pharmacy when they tell me that they don’t know why it takes me 15 minutes to put pills in a bottle!

On top of his intimidating demeanor, the character Frank Black is incredibly smart. I don’t know about you, but when it comes to most of my pop culture heroes, “smart” and “badass” usually aren’t seen together in the same character…AND, Frank Black has psychic powers! But he does not have the normal psychic powers that you see on your average “supernatural” show. HIS psychic powers are the ability to see what a serial killer sees when he’s killing people! How “badass” is that! It’s off the chart! As Frank Black says, “It’s my gift, it’s my curse.”

As Charles Bishop Weyland in AVP

Amazed by his portrayal of the character of Frank Black, I researched a bit into Lance Henriksen’s career and discovered that he has literally been in hundreds of TV shows and movies, most of which get regular play on the SyFy and Chiller channels. What’s crazy is that I’ve actually seen most of these shows, but never realized who Lance was, because he does such a good job of playing the “creepy old guy who could be a serial killer”, or the “possibly shady law enforcement guy” that he literally becomes a part of the movie.

Did you know Lance Henriksen is the guy responsible for the summoning of “Pumpkinhead”? He also was the creepy slimeball of a movie producer in “Scream 3”, the elder leader of the nocturnal undead family in “Near Dark”, and of course, the self-aware android, Bishop in the “Aliens” movies. Digging deeper, I also learned that James Cameron even originally wrote the character of the “Terminator” with Lance in mind, imagining a machine that could “blend into a crowd”, but he ended up re-casting Lance as Det. Vukovich when they decided to take the “Terminator” character more in the direction of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Like, seriously! How have I never been aware of Lance Henriksen before?! On top of his impressive acting resume, the man himself is even more amazing, in a “normal guy blending into the crowd” sort of way. He is by no means your typical “actor-type”. Lance is originally a painter and currently a ceramicist by trade and hobby and is very philosophical about the spiritual aspects of his art. As a child, his dad was a merchant seaman and his parents divorced when he was 2. Lance dropped out of school at the age of 12, hitchhiked across the US picking up random jobs such as shoe-shining and fruit-picking, and was actually illiterate until the age of 30. As a result of this, he has an extremely serious work ethic which he applies to his acting. It’s also the reason why he accepts most roles and takes them all very seriously. His dedication to acting makes you forget that you’re actually watching a low-budget Sci-Fi B-movie as he mesmerizes you with his intense performance.

Lance has described his dedication in this quote:

“You know something, if you’re not acting, you’re not an actor – you’ve gotta work. No way around it. I remember Andy Garcia – we had done Jennifer Eight (1992) together. And Andy, I think, was probably making a couple of million for that movie, and he looked at me one day and he goes, “Hey Lan, you work too much, you shouldn’t work so much”. And I said, “Alright Andy, if I was making a couple million a movie, I wouldn’t work too much. I wouldn’t need to work ‘too much’!” Everybody has their own life to live, and I love doing the work, so what I am I gonna do? He hasn’t done the same kind of roles I have. But it’s lucky for me, because I’m really having a good time”.

Frank Black action figure

This is just a brief glimpse into the man that is Lance Henriksen. The more I read about him, the more I had trouble limiting the info that I was putting into this “blog post tribute” to him. He is not just the iconic Sci-Fi B-movie/TV actor that I originally saw him as, he’s also your regular “guy next door” who worked his way up through the ranks to become a star and still remains as humble as he was when he used to sell his own handmade pottery out of the back of a truck. He truly enjoys himself when he is acting and it shows in his work. What I consider his greatest role, that of Frank Black in “Millennium” deeply affected me in the intensity of his portrayal, no doubt a direct reflection of his deep love and commitment to each of his acting roles. I hope to meet Lance Henriksen someday and have him sign my “Frank Black” action figure that currently glares at me from a shelf in my closet, so I can tell him just how much I admire him not just as an actor, but also as the “down to earth, blend-into-the-crowd” kind of regular guy that he is.

To learn more about Lance Henrisksen as “Frank Black” and the fan campaign to bring back “Millennium” in TV or movie form, please visit the excellent site, BacktoFrankBlack.com and join the movement!