Editorials
Special Feature: EPIC FAIL! Major Horror Failures of 2010!
The term “epic fail” gets thrown around a lot here on B-D (many in response to my articles!), and I think we can all agree it’s a little over-utilized. That being said, every year there are some things that happen that really, truly live up to the description, and 2010 was no exception. Though we still have a couple of months left to be disappointed by the powers-that-be, I figured it was late enough in the year to take a look back over some of the most egregious disasters in horror 2010 that have left me shaking my head, rolling my eyes and slapping my forehead in disbelief – the “epic fails”.
There are fails, and then there are “epic fails”. The definition of the admittedly over-utilized term varies slightly depending on who you talk to, but it generally connotes something that falls short on essentially every recognized measure of success. It’s a term that’s thrown around a lot here on Bloody-Disgusting, sometimes unfairly, but there are those instances where it truly and readily applies. You don’t need to look far – this year alone has seen several legitimate epic fails rock the world of horror with utter crap-tasticness, and below I’ve listed some of the most notable. After all – when things suck this hard, they deserve to be called out.
Audiences turning out to see Friedberg/Seltzer spoof “Vampires Suck”
Ok, this is starting to piss me off. Masters of suckery Friedberg and Seltzer release another lazy film, this one spoofing Twilight, and people actually go and see it, to the tune of a $36 million domestic gross. This is AFTER Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie…need I go on? Now, whose cock exactly do I have to suck to make a fortune off of making complete horseshit like these dudes? You may be thinking to yourself, “Well, $36 million doesn’t actually sound like a lot, Chris”, to which I would say you’d first have to consider another $40 million in international box-office, DVD/Blu-ray sales and rentals, and the fact that the movie only cost a reported $20 million. In other words, you can be damn sure this isn’t the last we’ll be hearing from those no-talent fucks. Thanks a lot, America. EPIC FAIL
How much did Fox pay these motherfuckers?:
Ali Larter’s acting in Resident Evil: Afterlife
How does an actress actually get less talented the more movies she makes? I have no idea; ask Ali Larter. While I’ve seen her do a serviceable job in a couple of films (Final Destination and House on Haunted Hill immediately spring to mind), she was absolutely horrendous in this year’s Resident Evil sequel. Like, senior year drama class bad (“Let me get this off you…”). She’s gorgeous, sure, but she can’t look good forever, and with younger and more talented actresses knocking down Hollywood’s door it’s practically a miracle she’s still getting work in studio films at all. At this rate I predict she’ll he hocking jewelry on QVC within the next five years. EPIC FAIL
Almost everything in Legion
How bad can big-studio movies get? Look no further than this year’s Legion, released in the wasteland of January for good reason. This was the first horror film I screened for B-D in 2010 and it started my year off with a whimper. If you didn’t see it, congratulations; as for me, I’ll never get that 90 minutes of my life back. While it kinda sounded good on paper and had a pretty good trailer, actual movie was god-awful, with one of the worst, most nonsensical, laughably bad scripts in recent memory. Um…if God really wanted to punish us, wouldn’t he just flood the earth or send an asteroid hurtling into us instead of sending a spindly ice cream man to murder us one by one? EPIC FAIL
Audiences failing to turn out for Let Me In
I know a lot of you hate remakes, but that’s mostly because we’re used to them being so bad. Which makes it inexcusable that so many should turn out for crap like A Nightmare on Elm Street and almost completely ignore a quality piece of filmmaking like Let Me In. We vote with our wallets, remember? Sadly no one voted for Let Me In, despite its “critical darling” status (our own Mr. Disgusting called it better than the original) – a rare feat for a horror film. As a result it grossed a meager $5.1 million its first weekend, on its way to a paltry $11.9 million total. People can bitch all they want about the despicable state of the movie industry, but as long as audiences fail to support quality cinema we’ll just continue to be fed more middle-of-the-road bullshit. EPIC FAIL
Trailer:
3-D post-conversion
By this point most of us seem to be in agreement that post-converted 3-D just isn’t the same – even a fun movie like Pirahna, which was actually designed for 3-D, suffered from a somewhat underwhelming transition. Sure, Clash of the Titans could’ve been cool if initially conceptualized and shot as a 3-D movie (let’s just forget that it was far too CG-heavy for its own good and suffered from a terrible script), but it wasn’t, and trying to piggyback on a trend just to squeeze a few more dollars out of the movie-going public is shameful. No matter what line the studios try to feed us, the fact remains that post-converting a standard horror film like My Soul to Take into the 3-D format makes absolutely no creative sense. Luckily, audiences seem to finally be catching on – My Soul made a forehead-slapping $14 million domestic since its release (let’s hope that trend continues). The message? Stop trying to rape our pocketbooks, Hollywood – the stench of greed has reached overpowering proportions. EPIC FAIL
Producers on “Giallo” don’t pay Adrien Brody what he’s owed
As much as I love Dario Argento as a filmmaker, this is pretty ridiculous. Did he and his producers actually think they’d be able to get away with cheating a major actor like Adrien Brody out of what he was rightfully owed? If so, they were seriously short-sighted, and there’s no getting around that what they did – keeping Broday from walking off the movie by lying about securing extra funding to pay his salary – is pretty disgusting. Now the thesp is rightfully suing them, and Argento and his cronies have egg on their faces. Even worse, fans now may never get a chance to see the film – Brody is requesting a permanent injunction against its release, all thanks to their tomfoolery.
Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner presenting the horror tribute at the Oscars
So horror fans finally get some recognition for their favorite genre at Hollywood’s snobbiest awards ceremony, and who do they pick to introduce it? Two of the dopey kids from Twilight, who wouldn’t know horror if it bit them straight in the ass. In yet another sign of how tone-deaf the Academy is when it comes to the genre, they failed to realize that Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner introducing the tribute to a genre that has produced some of the greatest film artists in the history of cinema was an insult not only to fans, but to the creatives who have been working in the genre for decades. Couldn’t they have asked a couple of true-blue horror veterans instead? Do they have any respect for the genre at all? The sad answer to that question was pretty apparent on Oscar night. EPIC FAIL
Clip:
The unrated horror “revolution”
In all honesty I like the idea of sticking it to the unaccountable shadow organization also known as the MPAA, but the fact that both horror films released unrated within a week of each other – Adam Green’s Hatchet II and Jason R. Monroe’s I Spit on Your Grave remake – were seen by a total of about three people combined made the idea that they could somehow change the way in which horror films were distributed completely laughable. Yeah, anarchy! Except…oh, uh, nevermind. As much as I like Green, his film was unfortunately lacking a key ingredient that would’ve allowed it to catch on with its target audience – quality. (I Spit on Your Grave was scarcely better) See, for change to occur the people leading the charge need the proper fuel to stoke the flames of dissent; alas, this fire died out scarcely before it had the opportunity to burn. EPIC FAIL
Jonah Hex
I have a confession to make: I haven’t actually seen Jonah Hex, which is sure to go down as one of the year’s most notorious flops. Neither have most of you, I’d gather, based on the film’s dismal box-office numbers. But the marketplace isn’t the only place it failed – it also received a meager 13% score on Rotten Tomatoes, apparently wasted a perfectly solid cast – Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Will Arnett, Megan, uh…ok maybe not her – and royally pissed off fans of the comics (yeah, I didn’t know they existed until the film was announced either). What went wrong, you ask? Everything. EPIC FAIL
Lionsgate’s handling of the Buried release
I’m not quite sure I understand what happened here. After coming off enormous buzz following its Sundance debut earlier this year, both for Rodrigo Cortes’ ability to wring maximum tension out of a film taking place entirely inside a coffin and a harrowing portrayal by lead actor Ryan Reynolds, Lionsgate picked up the film for an amount estimated between $3 and $4 million. It’s the kind of money that indicates a studio has quite a bit of faith in a film, and yet Lionsgate fumbled by not, you know, marketing the thing. And that’s unfortunate; with a buzz-worthy premise, a “name” lead actor and good critical notices, it should have done – and deserved to do – better. EPIC FAIL
Trailer:
The A Nightmare on Elm Street remake
What did any of us expect, really? While I actually kind of enjoyed 2003’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the quality of the Platinum Dunes “reimaginings” since then has been pretty dismal. Nevertheless, I hoped against hope that A Nightmare on Elm Street would turn out differently, and once again those hopes were stomped the fuck out. I wouldn’t actually say it was as bad as Friday the 13th, which was awful in more of a go-for-broke kind of way; no, A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s greatest offense was that it was incredibly fucking dull. For starters: the dream sequences were uninspired; much of the acting was subpar; and Jackie Earle Haley never had a chance to make an impression underneath all that cat-like makeup. At the end of the day, it’s simply inexcusable that the reboot of a franchise with such an intriguing premise and boundless visual possibilities should be so forgettable. EPIC FAIL
My Soul to Take Premiere “Stabbing”
I’ve seen some pretty fucking retarded publicity stunts, but this one really takes the cake. What to do when your film is tracking poorly and you’re desperate to drum up some extra business? Why, you hire a really bad actor and then have him pretend to get stabbed to death on the red carpet, duh! See, the American public is made up of a bunch of morons, who can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s complete fabrication (remember the way they ate up that “the Blair Witch is real” nonsense? Stupid!) We, as savvy publicists with genius-level IQs, should have no problem getting butts in seats to watch our shit movie once this baby goes viral. Sure, people will catch on that it wasn’t a real stabbing soon enough (their brains are tiny, mind you, so it may take a couple of days), but by that point they’ll be so enamored of the awesome power of our intellect that they’ll happily pay $15 to watch our horrible movie! Wes may not like it, you say? Don’t worry, we have him in the palm of our hands. Remember how easily he was duped into the 3-D post-conversion?
Auteur Filmmaking is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days in reference to big name directors like Quentin Tarantino and even Wes Anderson, but the truth is that film is a collective medium, and no one person can be responsible for every single aspect of a particular production. However, the smaller a film’s budget, the bigger the individual impact of every creative decision behind it – and the easier it becomes to identify a genuine auteur.
This isn’t necessarily a judgement of value, as blockbuster filmmaking comes with its own challenges and a good movie remains a miracle regardless of how big the crew is, but I’ve always been more interested in soulful b-movies produced by handfuls of passionate artists than blockbusters backed by creative armies.
That’s why I love exploring low-budget franchises that never left the hands of their original creators, as you really get to know the artists involved with these flicks and can accompany their evolution over a period of time. With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to join me in this multi-part series as we look into a vampire saga helmed by one of the most fascinating auteurs of the 1990s. Naturally, I’m referring to Ted Nicolaou’s criminally underrated Subspecies!
The Birth of an Unlikely Horror Franchise
A proud graduate of the University of Texas’ Film program, Nicolaou got his start in the industry as a sound technician working on Tobe Hooper’s original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. From there, the filmmaker would go on to work for notorious indie producer Charles Band, the founder of both Empire Pictures and Full Moon Productions. According to Nicolaou, Band would usually contact him with an offer to direct a feature after more prominent filmmakers, such as the late, great Stuart Gordon, had already refused, meaning that his projects tended to have lower budgets and more inexperienced crew members.
The plans for Subspecies began almost immediately after the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, with screenwriter David Pabian turning in an initial draft of the film after a Romanian producer contacted Band and explained that Romanian tax incentives could cover the cost of film production there so long as Full Moon took care of the post-production process. Since Stuart Gordon was unwilling to travel to Romania, Ted Nicolaou ended up taking over the picture.
However, while the financial incentives meant that this Romanian-American co-production could look and feel much more expensive than it really was, with Nicolaou scouting for locations in advance and selecting real castle ruins to be featured in the movie, the director was soon faced with an incredibly difficult shooting process. In interviews, Nicolaou would later describe the experience as something of a nightmare, with language barriers and the generalized distrust of capitalist outsiders sabotaging many of the team’s plans for the film.
In fact, the script, which had already been altered by Band, ultimately had portions of it rewritten by both Jack Canson and Nicolaou himself in an attempt to adapt the story to their unique limitations.
Radu Is One of Horror’s Greatest Underrated Villains
In the finished film, which was released directly to video in 1991, we follow a pair of American anthropology students, Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and Lillian (Michelle McBride), as they reunite with their Romanian colleague Mara (Irina Movila) in her native land. The group intends to study the folklore surrounding the secluded town of Prejmer, but their research is cut short by the return of Radu Vladislas (Anders Hove) – the evil son of a vampire king (Angus Scrimm) who had previously established a truce with the region’s human residents. It’s now up to Radu’s human-loving half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) to protect the girls from a fate worse than death as the power-hungry vampire seeks to control a magical artifact known as the Bloodstone.
Right off the bat, you may have noticed that the film’s premise sounds decidedly old-fashioned when compared to other vampire movies from around the same time. While the 1990s saw the rise of cool-looking bloodsuckers with badass elements borrowed from Westerns, as well as the sexy aristocrats of Anne Rice’s stories, Subspecies has a lot more in common with Nosferatu and the Hammer Horror series than any of its contemporaries.
This is both a blessing and a curse, as the film falls victim to overly familiar genre tropes while also standing out as a rare example of a ’90s vampire flick that isn’t afraid to flex its muscles as a Creature Feature. In fact, I’d argue that the presence of age-old clichés is a small price to pay when confronted with one of the most compelling vampire antagonists in all of cinema.
Named after Vlad the Impaler’s real-life brother, Anders Hove’s Radu is such a fascinating character and the main reason why Subspecies is still worth watching 35 years later. From his animalistic mannerisms to the joy he feels in simply existing as a chaotic creature of the night, and that’s not even mentioning the iconic makeup that almost certainly inspired the undead from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Radu is a hypnotic presence harkening back to a time when audiences didn’t mind purely evil villains that couldn’t be redeemed through tragic backstories or sex appeal.
Gothic Atmosphere on an Indie Budget
Of course, the film’s Romanian setting and authentic art direction do a lot of the heavy lifting whenever Radu isn’t around. From the masked festivals of the village to the visually interesting selection of local extras, Subspecies’ multicultural elements help it to stand out when compared to similar flicks from the ’90s.
That being said, Nicolaou’s unique eye for special effects and exciting action sequences – as well as Vlad Paunescu’s excellent cinematography – make the movie a delight for fans of expressionist cinema and old-timey gothic horror. While the crew is obviously dealing with limited resources, many of the flick’s blemishes (such as the odd stop-motion demons that serve Radu) end up feeling more like charming idiosyncrasies than actual flaws.
I’d argue that the only real issue here is pacing, as there are long stretches of film where the protagonists are simply bumbling around without realizing what’s really going on around them. Thankfully, the gorgeous visuals and surprisingly effective soundtrack usually make up for this. Besides, how can you dislike a movie where shotgun shells are loaded with rosary beads and our lead vampires duke it out in a dramatic swordfight that would feel out of place during the golden age of Hollywood?
Your overall enjoyment of Subspecies will mostly depend on whether or not you find low-budget corner-cutting and janky practical effects charming rather than distracting, but I know I’ll keep coming back to this Full Moon feature again and again in the future.
That being said, while this first movie is worth revisiting by its own merits as the birth of an indie horror icon, I’d like to invite you to join us as we look into the cult sequel Bloodstone: Subspecies II soon.
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