Watched Curse of Chucky last night, and I really liked it. I think scherp’s rating of a 6- is fair, but I’d probably go with a solid 7+. I haven’t seen Seed of Chucky, Mancini’s only other film credited as director, but I was very impressed with how he handled Curse and he certainly seems to know how to shoot a solid horror film. I can’t remember if its been done in the previous films, but the scenes with Chucky’s eyes dilating were a great touch. The film looks beautiful in HD. A fair few scenes of very graphic gore, and since a lot of the film is spent building up to the slashing, they have a bit of extra oomphf when they happen. I loved the whole ending sequences and Tilly’s scene is an excellent bit of creativity in tying things together. I felt like this was a really refreshing entry in this series of films and my hat’s off to Don Mancini on this one.
Now I must add that what I watched prior may have colored my perspective…
Zombies The Beginning - Bruno Mattei (2007)
Mattei’s second film which totally copies Aliens (the first being Shocking Dark / Terminator 2). This is basically Aliens with zombies, and an incredibly low production quality. All the budget seems to be not surprisingly used for gore effects, which are actually not that bad. There are obvious short comings in the make up and set designs, but it all works sufficiently well and still looks pretty strange and creepy. Several scenes from Crimson Tide are used since there’s no budget for submarine shots, and these even include the actors with new voice overs dubbed onto the clips. I’m sure the buildings exploding at the end are from another film also, but don’t know what film. Its easy to spot when Mattei’s ripping off these clips, because the film print doesn’t match the video at all. I mistakenly watched this before Mattei’s 2006 film, Island of Death, which comes before this one. Silly me, I thought that if its Zombies The Beginning, then it must be part 1.
I’ve also recently viewed The Tomb, which is a 2004 film from Mattei. Mattei is stealing the plot from The Mummy (1999) in this one, uses footage from Army of Darkness, and recreates the striptease scene out of From Dusk Till Dawn. Again, we have low-low production values, even more-so than with Zombies The Beginning. The text graphics for the title/credits are highscool-audio-vido-club level, which is baffling considering that this was made in a time when very easy for amateurs to do decent looking text in video.
The shot-on-video look of these movies makes it really hard to appreciate anything they do have going for them, although at times it felt like I was watching an old episode of Dr. Who, particularly with The Tomb. They’re pretty bad and in the category of films that make me wonder exactly what I’m doing with myself when I just need to watch them. Even having said that, they aren’t void of enjoyment, provided you’re of the type that can find enjoyment in films like this. Of Mattei’s last efforts, I still have to watch Cannibal World (2003) and Island of the Living Dead (2006).
Bad Biology - Frank Henenlotter (2008)
Wow, another impressive outing from Henenlotter. In a time when there’s quite a few filmmakers putting out exploitation-inspired films which are fun to watch but lack anything in the way of real originality or boundary-exploring, Henenlotter has put together a true piece of artful exploitation here. Bad Biology is extremely funny, both on a low-brow level as well as in the very intelligent subtext running throughout the film. There’s plenty to be offended by and a good helping of Henenlotter’s specific style of strange horror. The film is apparently funded by rappers and their involvement is at first a bit obnoxious (would have preferred a different soundtrack) but Henenlotter manages to use their roles in a way that takes advantage of their mannerisms and adds some quirky humor in the way of delivery. I really hope this isn’t the last seen from Frank Henenlotter, I can’t think of any modern filmmaker doing this kind of thing without compromise. James Glickenhaus also makes a pretty humorous appearance in the film.
And lastly, also watched Freddy vs. Jason - I had a slight inkling that I may be able to enjoy this time but still expected ultimately to not like it much. To my surprise, I mostly enjoyed the entire viewing and my opinion of the film has now raised from “hated it” to “kinda like it”. Ronny Yu certainly knows how to make a film look good and has done a good job here. The one exception I’d make to that statement is the usage of the choppy slow-motion effect which always looks horrible in any film.
Not a fan of the silly kills, like the airbag nail explosion and champagne bottle mirror death… it just seems like lazy nonsense to me. The film is handled well and looks good, some really great looking scenes like when Chucky gets loose from his cage in the beginning and is coming through the curtain.
.
![http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/837/tws5.jpg/[/url]](http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/837/tws5.jpg/%5B/url%5D){kind=link}