There are some stories in the history of film that end up being repeated over and over again. Some of these are just simple categories like vampire, werewolf, and zombie films. Some of them get a little more granular and specific like the story of Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster. Finally, we can get even more granular and look at a specific title that has made the rounds a few times. I Am Legend by the wonderful and prolific Richard Matheson was made into three different movies with Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, and finally I Am Legend. While King Kong and Phantom of the Opera probably have the most, Invasion of the Body Snatchers has the most consistent offerings. The 2007 iteration was a bust but the other 3 are all incredibly solid. With the 90s version turning 30 we thought it was worth seeing if it was a generic replication of the real deal or if it stands the test of time.

Plot

A script for another version of Jack Finney’s seminal sci fi novel The Body Snatchers was written by the wonderful team of Dennis Paoli and Stuart Gordon and eventually Nicholas St. John with story credits by Larry Cohen and Raymond Cisteri. It was originally going to be directed by Stuart Gordon but when he had to back out, explosive and maverick director Abel Ferrara was approached to helm. It was already completely written and decently into pre-production when he took over and even though he wasn’t thrilled about some of the aspects, the love of the original, just like that of the 78 director Phillip Kauffman, kept him on the project. Its not like the script and story doesn’t have pedigree, either. Gordon and Paoli were a great team and between them or even together wrote some of the best horror of the 80s and 90s. Things like Re-Animator and From Beyond, Ghoulies II, Castle Freak, The Dentist, Robot Jox, and Dagon all came from these two.

Larry Cohen is a legend as well both in Blaxploitation and Horror with stuff like, well, The Stuff, Q the Winged Serpent, and the It’s Alive trilogy. He too was also a good writer for movies that he didn’t end up behind the director’s chair. The lesser-known gentlemen, namely Nicholas St. John and Raymond Cisteri, are no slouches either. St. John is actually Nicodemo Oliverio, and he would end up writing 9 movies with and for director Abel Ferrara. Cisteri only has one other title to his name from back in 1972. Ferrara is the gritty and hard shooting New York director behind things like Ms. 45, Bad Lieutenant, and King of New York. The Wikipedia page says that today’s movie is his first excursion into the world of sci-fi but I think this has a lot of horror to it just like the 78 version. He also did Driller Killer and a really cool vampire movie called The Addiction to add to his horror output.

The cast is a fun collection of talent that mostly weren’t huge stars. Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker is the exception here as he would go on to a star-studded career in both TV and film. For horror though he wouldn’t have much else in horror apart from his part in awesome creature feature Species. Meg Tilly may not be the horror mainstay her sister Jennifer is but her career has been great including horror like the Chucky TV show and Psycho II as well as being part of 80s classic The Big Chill and an Oscar Nomination of Agnes of God. The stunning Gabrielle Anwar had a heck of a run in the early 90s with Body Snatchers, Scent of a Woman, Three Musketeers, and Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead. She was also amazing on the underrated show Burn Notice but if I can make a suggestion, it would be to seek out The Grave from 1996. Christine Elise from Childs Play II and R. Lee Ermey need no introduction to horror hounds and the patriarch of the family is played by Terry Kinney who you will also know from his TV work in Billions, OZ, Inventing Anna, and Good Behavior.

The movie follows Steven Malone who works for the EPA and is sent to a military installation in Alabama with his wife, daughter, and son. He is there to check on what the military may have done to the environment there and what effects that may have on the soldiers. His daughter Marti is cornered in a gas station restroom by a hysterical soldier who tells her they get you when you sleep. The military base is full of what you’d expect with typical military soldiers and their nonmilitary families. Strange things start to happen with people not acting as they should, Steve’s son Andy getting scared out of school because the other kids are way too different, and reports of people not being who they say they are. The base doctor and Steve discuss the widespread fear of falling asleep that has swept across the base, but Doctor Malone doesn’t see any correlation.

His son sees what we have come to expect from this movie, a main character being taken over by one of the alien pod invaders that are taking over the base. While no one believes Andy, the very next night both Steve and Marti are almost changed into pod people and are chased out of their lodging with a screaming pod wife alerting the rest of the doubles of their escape. A soldier named Tim who Marti met the night before is also being chased and after Steve hides his two kids in a storage area, he witnesses the base doctor end his life rather than willingly turn into a drone. Steve goes back and grabs his kids, but it is revealed he has been replaced too. Marti, Andy, and Tim try to escape but the two siblings are captured. Tim goes back to save them and is successful with Marti but when Andy runs after the helicopter it is revealed that he, too, is now a pod. They dump him out of the ship and take revenge by blowing up the base and all the pods with missiles from the helicopter. They land at another base, but it is unclear if they are truly safe.

Signs of the Time

Look at these people enjoying their pod apocolypse with nary a cell phone in sight. Just really living in the moment. All jokes aside, this was a movie of the moment. The director, replacement and all, was a staple of the late 80’s and early 90’s. Abel Ferrara was all over the place and from 1986 to 1996 released a total of 12 movies on either the big or small screen. He did things his way and while this was his first big studio backed film, it still has some of the style he brings to all his projects. Its clear from the opening scene that while the Steve character would normally be the main protagonist, his daughter Marti is the real hero, and we know that from her narration which is also something that was a prevalent framing device in the early half of the decade.

Two other trends that were big in the 90s were the opposite of the 70s nihilism and that’s the relatively happy ending. While the 50s version went nice, the 70s version has one of the best and most down beat endings of the decade. While it is somewhat up in the air on what our main characters are landing into while the movie ends, you could at least interpret that its possible the threat is over. While on the subject of the 70s, the cyclical phenomena of environmental fears also decides to rear its head again with things like The Guardian, Alligator 2, Dust Devil, and later on Mimic to name a few. Finally, the 90s was also a time where horror went back to the literary world both with readapting some of the classics with Dracula and Frankenstein but also taking chances on this remake or the previously mentioned Guardian.

What Holds Up?

The movie is just a solid experience all the way around for the most part. All of the military stuff is great from the analogy of the pod people and the stringent and logic of the military system as pointed out by Roger Ebert at the time to the PTSD that the soldiers and doctor have. You could even throw in the angle of the doctor not wanting to do something that the military, represented by the pod people here, want to force him into. The script and story hold up really well too. While the change to the military base seems like an obvious layup, they could have screwed it up really easily. How they jump right into it with the reveal in the gas station bathroom to the horror of how the people change and how quickly characters die are all sharp and biting. They even give no effs about killing off a kid, twice technically, with his human form poofing away into dust when he changes and his pod version being noped out of a helicopter. The horror is real here even if the scream isn’t quite as haunting as the previous iteration.

The acting here is really good too particularly by the two female leads in Meg Tilly and Gabriel Anwar. Meg Tilly going from playful younger mom to cold and calculated pod creature really shows her range and Anwars Marti is a good mix of scared victim and angry survivor. The other stand out for the movie are the effects. They are natural progressions from the 70’s version and look creepy and great. The pod creatures are well done and absolute nightmare fuel when they die and melt away into puddles of horror. It’s the kind of stuff you look at 30 years later and wish that CGI was never created.

What doesn’t hold up?

Some of the other performances can be wooden and I don’t mean in the requisite pod like attitudes either. The little boy is neither good nor bad, but the love interest Tim falls a bit flat. I used to think that Terry Kinny was William Hurt but he does a good job here and I wont hold that against him. One thing that does stand out is the score not quite fitting the mood of the movie. It’s not outright bad, actually it’s a good piece of music on its own, but it’s nothing special when looking at a horror film. The camera work tries a bit too hard to be 70’s and Avant Garde at times and there are a few scenes that are derivative or outright stolen from other versions that aren’t as good as they were when originally used. None of that is a deal breaker though and even my last gripe doesn’t ruin it. The one thing that stood out as kind of a cheat was that the pod people use deception at points to trick the characters and not just deception but EMOTIONAL deception which they really shouldn’t even be capable of. They do it more than a few times and while I’m all for changing of rules with anything from werewolves to vampires to zombies, but this seems to go against the very conceit of the pod people’s core. Doesn’t ruin the movie but I feel it could have been changed easily enough too.

Verdict

It’s very rare for a story to be told this many times and still be good but all three of the first tellings of this book come out on top. While the 50’s is a classic Sci Fi classic of the highest order and the 78 version is a downbeat, downtrodden, and downright downer example of peak 70’s oppression, today’s version has a few tweaks that make it unique and special on its own. It has different metaphors and changes some of the main characters and outcomes enough that its unique outlook and presentation shine. The follow up in 07 is as dull as the pod people it shows on screen, but Abel Ferrara adds some punch and elements missing from the other adaptations of the original story. While the movie was a huge bomb and failure, it’s worth seeking out and stands the test of time now 30 years on.

A couple of the previous episodes of The Test of Time can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

The post Body Snatchers (1993) – The Test of Time appeared first on JoBlo.

James Mangold is no stranger to the musical biopic, having brought Johnny Cash’s story to the big screen with Walk the Line, which got Joaquin Phoenix an Academy Award nomination for that film. Now, Mangold takes on another musical icon with the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown. Searchlight Pictures has now released a comprehensive look with the new trailer, as it shows more of Timothée Chalamet‘s performance and the events of Dylan’s life that will be explored.

A Complete Unknown, which stars Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro. The film also co-stars Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler, Norbert Leo Butz and Scoot McNairy, with the studio also giving it a December 25th wide release. Given how well Chalamet’s Wonka did during the holiday season last year, the studio is likely hoping that lightning will strike twice. The date also gives is peak visibility during award season.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Set in the influential New York music scene of the early 60s, A Complete Unknown follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician Bob Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts – his songs and mystique becoming a worldwide sensation – culminating in his groundbreaking electric rock and roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.”

James Mangold directs from a screenplay written by him and Jay Cocks, who is known for working with Martin Scorsese on projects such as Gangs of New York and Silence. Producers on the film include Range’s Fred Berger, The Picture Company’s Alex Heineman, Veritas Entertainment Group’s Peter Jaysen, Bob Bookman, Alan Gasmer, Bob Dylan’s longtime representative Jeff Rosen, Chalamet, and Mangold via his Turnpike Films. Michael Bederman, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, and Andrew Rona are on board as executive producers.

Mangold recently talked about the setting of the film, saying,  “It’s such an amazing time in American culture, and the story of Bob’s — a young, 19-year-old Bob Dylan coming to New York with two dollars in his pocket and becoming a worldwide sensation within three years…First being embraced into a family of folk music in New York and of course kind of outrunning him at a certain point as his star rises so beyond belief.”

The post Bob Dylan defies expectations in the new trailer for A Complete Unknown appeared first on JoBlo.

Over a decade after it first landed on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Red Dead Redemption is finally going to be available to play on PC. Rockstar Games announced the hit open-world Western will arrive at the end of October alongside its zombie apocalypse add-on, Undead Nightmare.

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Over a decade after it first landed on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Red Dead Redemption is finally going to be available to play on PC. Rockstar Games announced the hit open-world Western will arrive at the end of October alongside its zombie apocalypse add-on, Undead Nightmare.

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Plot: Boston Detective Frank Shaw returns to duty after a career-altering injury leaves him with permanent hearing loss. Tasked with interpreting for Ava Fremont (Sandra Mae Frank), a deaf witness to a brutal gang murder, they find themselves cornered in a soon-to-be-condemned apartment building when the killers return to eliminate her. Cut off from the outside world; these two strangers must lean on each other to outsmart killers they can’t hear coming for their only hope of making it out alive.

Review: Joel Kinnaman has a trend going on these days with his role selection. After starring in last year’s John Woo action flick Silent Night, in which he portrayed a man who loses the ability to speak and goes on a vengeance-fueled rampage, Kinnaman is next headlining The Silent Hour, in which he plays a man who loses the ability to hear. While Silent Night benefited from John Woo’s eye for balletic action, The Silent Hour is closer to something we would expect Liam Neeson to star in. Set predominantly in a single apartment building, The Silent Hour wants to stand out from other formulaic action movies with a protagonist who uses a disability as a superpower, but aside from a solid supporting role from Sandra Mae Frank, The Silent Hour is boring and woefully lacking in any sort of energy.

The Silent Hour opens with Detective Frank Shaw (Joel Kinnaman) enjoying all of the sonic wonders of his life: jazz music, a coffee maker percolating, and all of the world’s noises outside of his apartment. Shaw meets up with his partner, Doug Slater (Mark Strong), to take down a suspect. The guy does not go quietly, leading Shaw on a chase through shipping containers. Shaw listens closely to pinpoint where the suspect is before eventually catching him just as Shaw runs into a car and falls, hitting his head on the ground. Fast-forwarding six months later, Shaw is suffering from hearing loss. He struggles to hear anything, and his hearing adds to the deadening of the world around him. Depressed, the divorced dad cannot even bring himself to attend his daughter’s band recital. Shaw’s partner comes to the rescue and brings him in to help question a deaf witness since the department interpreter is unavailable. Shaw and Slater head to see Ava Fremont (Sandra Mae Frank), who witnessed a murder.

The cops go their separate ways after Shaw and Slater finish, but not before Shaw realizes he has forgotten his phone at Ava’s apartment. He returns to find Mason Lynch (Mekhi Phifer), the dirty cop who Ava witnessed commit the murder, attempting to silence her by faking an overdose. Shaw steps in to rescue Ava, and the pair heads on the run through the apartment building to try to survive. Ava, born deaf, must help Frank come to terms with his injury-induced hearing loss, and together, the two plan to escape and stop Lynch and his cronies from getting away with their crimes. Early on, I expected The Silent Hour to play like a twist on the Dredd and The Raid formula of the apartment building being a caged-in setting full of bad guys and escapes, but the story never really takes advantage of the location. Instead, much of the film shows Shaw making bumbling mistakes like stepping on bubble wrap or not remembering that he cannot hear as he tries to call for help. It borders on ludicrous at the best of times and sloppy writing the rest. The action is usually the bad cops shooting at the good cops as the characters use fire escapes and window ledges to move from one apartment to the next.

For a film with as solid of a cast as this, The Silent Hour wastes virtually everyone’s talent. Joel Kinnaman has played a cop so many times that he barely needs to try and emulate law enforcement, but Frank Shaw is so fixated on his hearing loss that it feels like a crutch to force the story along. In contrast, Sandra Mae Frank, who is actually deaf, does a great job playing a woman struggling with her own demons as she tries to stay alive, which now includes trying to make Shaw feel better about his recent hearing loss. Mark Strong is good but underused, while Mekhi Phifer spends more time as a mustache-twirling bad guy who runs around doing nothing, so it feels like they could have cast anyone in the role and saved a paycheck. The film never uses the talent at its disposal to deliver action that rises above shooting around corners or the tension of maybe someone hearing someone else walking around. It comes across as repetitive and just boring.

It is a shame since director Brad Anderson has made several films I have loved, including Session 9, The Machinist, and Trans-Siberian. His last decade of work has been hit or miss, with Beirut starring Jon Hamm a bright spot amongst multiple forgettable genre offerings. Anderson has always had an eye for atmospheric and moody productions, but the Canadian-filmed The Silent Hour has nothing distinctive about it. Based on a script by Dan Hall, I think Anderson tried to salvage some sort of entertainment value from this mess of a story but is left with a plug-and-play template used dozens of times every year with weaker actors in the cast. With Kinnaman and Strong, I had thought this movie could have been at least a casual watch, if not a great one, but it barely registers anything above mediocre at its best moments.

The Silent Hour is neither good enough to consider for a hate-watch nor is it bad enough to be awfully good. Despite a great filmmaker and two capable leading actors, the only worthwhile takeaway from The Silent Hour is the talented Sandra Mae Frank, who should be considered for bigger and better roles in the future. There is no action to speak of in this action movie, leaving it as a drama-less dramatic film. I would say there is an audience for this movie out there somewhere, but that would have to be categorized as Kinnaman or Strong completists who need to check off their Letterboxd viewing requirement as having seen all of the films by either actor.

The Silent Hour

TERRIBLE

3

The post The Silent Hour Review: Joel Kinnaman is a cop losing his hearing in this thriller appeared first on JoBlo.

In 1439, a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg was working on an ill-begotten project to create polished metal mirrors designed to capture the holy light from religious relics, to be sold to pilgrims visiting an exhibition in Aachen, Germany. However, after flooding led to the event being delayed by a year, Gutenberg…

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The hollowed halls of the Javits Center in New York City are accustomed to ferrying cosplayers around conventions. Whether it’s New York Comic-Con in October or Anime NYC in August, the Manhattan meetups always bring us some incredible costumes and fabulous fits. This year, Anime NYC was no exception, and as always,…

Read more…

In 1439, a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg was working on an ill-begotten project to create polished metal mirrors designed to capture the holy light from religious relics, to be sold to pilgrims visiting an exhibition in Aachen, Germany. However, after flooding led to the event being delayed by a year, Gutenberg…

Read more…

The hollowed halls of the Javits Center in New York City are accustomed to ferrying cosplayers around conventions. Whether it’s New York Comic-Con in October or Anime NYC in August, the Manhattan meetups always bring us some incredible costumes and fabulous fits. This year, Anime NYC was no exception, and as always,…

Read more…

It was a few years in the making, but Second Sight Films recently sent their 4K and Blu-ray release of the 1986 classic The Hitcher out into the world, and you can pick up a copy of the 4K release at THIS LINK. To celebrate this release, The Guardian got in contact with The Hitcher‘s director Robert Harmon and the film’s star C. Thomas Howell – and found that they both had some interesting things to say about Rutger Hauer’s contribution to the film and his approach to playing the homicidal John Ryder.

Directed by Harmon from a screenplay by Eric Red, The Hitcher has the following synopsis: While transporting a car from Chicago to San Diego, Jim Halsey picks up a hitchhiker named John Ryder, who claims to be a serial killer. After a daring escape, Jim hopes to never see Ryder again. But when he witnesses the hitchhiker murdering an entire family, Jim pursues Ryder with the help of truck-stop waitress Nash, pitting the rivals against each other in a deadly series of car chases and brutal murders.

The film stars Howell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Jeffrey DeMunn, with the late, great Rutger Hauer delivering one of his best performances as the title character.

Harmon told The Guardian, “John Ryder, the film’s hitchhiking serial killer, was originally described by Eric Red as having a damaged larynx, meaning he spoke using an electronic voice box. In those early drafts, he was much more monstrous – just a force of evil. I thought that approach was too simple and wanted to make him more appealing, to suggest there was a heart in there. Ryder is a deliberately ambiguous character – flesh and blood, but with room for a supernatural or mythic reading. While we were making the movie, I’d ask: ‘If Jim Halsey hadn’t been driving down that particular highway in the rain, would anyone have been standing there?’ Initially I was after Terence Stamp to play the hitcher. He turned the part down but years later I ran into him at a party and he said that, having seen the movie, he wished he’d done it. I think Terence and Rutger Hauer have qualities in common. Their eyes are like jewels – they look like they are not of this Earth. … Rutger came to me with an idea for the scene where Ryder lies on the bed in the dark next to Jennifer Jason Leigh as Nash and she assumes he’s Jim. He said: ‘I’d like to read poetry to her.’ I thought: ‘How can that possibly work? She’ll know it’s the wrong voice.’ But I was a very green director and remembered Rutger’s beautiful ‘tears in rain’ scene from Blade Runner. When we rehearsed the scene, Rutger recited his own godawful poetry and I thought: ‘This is the end of my career. I’m dead.’ He finished, came over and said: ‘It doesn’t really work, does it?’ ‘You know what?’ I said, ‘I kind of think you’re right.’ I felt like the luckiest man in the universe.“

Harmon went on to say, “I’ve often seen The Hitcher described as a horror movie, but that’s not a genre I’m interested in. The original script was much more violent and had moments I thought went too far. For example, when Jim finds a severed finger in his burger and fries, the script originally called for an eyeball and a note from Ryder saying: ‘I’ve got my eye on you.’ Still, despite the fight put up by HBO all the way through filming and even into post, there was never any question we weren’t going to kill the girl. So many people have said to me: ‘Oh my god, I had nightmares over that scene where Jennifer was ripped in half. I can’t believe you shot that!’ Well, we didn’t. You see her tied between two trucks and Ryder stepping on the gas and the tires spinning – but then the scene fades out. The movie encouraged audiences to use their imagination.“

Reminiscing about his co-star, Howell told The Guardian, “Rutger seemed to terrify everyone on the production and was pretty much left alone. I think he enjoyed the power he had over people. About three weeks in, he said: ‘I think we should have lunch together.’ I went to his trailer and we sat in dead silence as he chain-smoked filterless Camel cigarettes. After an eternity, I mustered up some courage and in my squeaky teenage voice said: ‘Rutger, what’s your secret to playing bad guys?’ He took a long drag of his cigarette, leaned into my face, slowly exhaled and whispered: ‘I don’t play bad guys.’ I just gathered up my things, thanked him for lunch and backed out of the trailer. That phrase rattled around in my head for years, until I had enough life experience to understand the importance of injecting humanity into villainous roles. There are moments in The Hitcher where Ryder looks at Jim with utter empathy. He expresses fear, too, the full body of emotions. I didn’t question any of Rutger’s improvisations – whether he was scooping a tear off my cheek with a knife, adding a little quartz rock to the handkerchief full of bullets he pushes across the table, or putting pennies in my eyes. The moments he added that weren’t in the script were unexpected gifts.“

To read more about what Harmon and Howell had to say about the making of The Hitcher, click over to The Guardian.

Are you a fan of The Hitcher, and will you be picking up a copy of the 4K release? Let us know by leaving a comment below – and share your thoughts on Rutger Hauer’s performance while you’re at it.

The post The Hitcher director Robert Harmon and star C. Thomas Howell discuss what Rutger Hauer brought to the film appeared first on JoBlo.