Burke and Hare: (2010. dir: John Landis) Oh, for the love of God, is there no one who can write a comedy about grave-robbing that is in the slightest wise funny? Where's Martin McDonagh when you need him? There's the fellow to hire; he could write a Burke and Hare story that would stain your teeth and make your hair fall out. This one is even worse than I Sell the Dead, were that possible, which I'd have said it wasn't, not until I saw this pap. That, of course, was before I knew it was directed by John Landis, he of the excruciatingly anti-Midas touch. It's full of lovely actors and the worst gags you'll ever hear, the kind of gags that are too clunky and obvious to have made it into one of the Airplane! movies, the kind that a twelve-year-old would toss into the bin as unfunny without a second thought. Gags dependent on anachronistic elbows to the audience's collective rib about the origins of the phrases "protection racket", "funeral parlor" and "Listerine". The combined and considerable talents of Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis are helpless to create one single redeeming moment in this entirely humorless, completely retarded dungheap.
It's just possible that this is all a Byzantine intrigue on the director's part, a scheme to make movies so bad that Animal House looks like some kind of masterwork. And, yes, compared to this, it really, really does, so congratulations, and we're sending a squad of zombies to your house right now to brand you with a great U for Useless on your forehead, and simultaneously we hereby revoke your right to direct, for now and all of eternity. We, the horror-movie-going public, no longer quite believe that you directed our beloved an American Werewolf in London, but that thin sliver of doubt is the only thing standing between you and immediate death by silent, seething, hive-minded, undead mob. So watch your step, buster.
*SPOILER ALERT*
Deathdream: (1974. dir: Bob Clark) Low-budget horror-auteur Bob Clark of Black Christmas renown mines the monster-infested loam of post-war trauma, leaving an uneven but darkly creepy revenant story. A young soldier dies in Viet Nam, then comes home anyway by virtue of the sheer torque of his mother's iron will. But instead of the cleancut, happy-go-lucky boy they once knew, his family has a changeling on its hands: sullen, emaciated, pale, emotionless, addicted to injecting human blood into his veins to keep his undead flesh from decaying. Without overworrying his metaphors, Clark touches on the shellshock, drug addictions, alienation and loss of soul suffered by veterans returning to the desperate suburbias of America in the early '70s.
The casting is inspired: John Marley and Lynn Carlen are the stricken parents, six years after playing an unhappily married couple in Cassavetes' Faces. Christopher Walken was originally slated to play the lead role of young Andy, an idea which sends pleasant shivers down my spine, but his replacement Richard Backus hits just the right notes, oscillating in steady motion between unbreachable taciturnity and unflinching violence. Behind the scenes, this project also boasts gore-maestro Tom Savini's initial forays into hideous maquillage, fresh off the boat from the war himself.
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