Night Visions - Back to Basics 2011

This weekend it was again time for Night Visions, though this time in a bit smaller scale than the Halloween event. Again there was a great mix of old and new and this time I didn't focus just to the new. Here's the catch of the weekend.



Sucker Punch (2011)

I have to admit I fell in love with the trailer when I saw it. It had everything that makes an entertaining action flick, hot chicks with automatic weapons, zombies, giant robots, samurai warriors, dragons, nazis, old fighter planes and pretty much everything you can think of. And the movie surely had them all, but too bad the glue that held the action extravaganza together was missing. Well it was there, but it was like trying to hold a tank in the ceiling with tape, so it came crashing down quite often. It's a story about an abused young woman who gets slammed into a mental institution where she fantasizes alternate realities in a big plan to escape. The story moves in multiple layers, but you really don't need to bother your brain too much to keep track of it. I remember seeing an interview with the director, Zack Snyder, where he said this is a female empowerment movie. I'd like to know which planet he's talking about. This movie is nothing but exploitation aimed for the younger male audience. And there's nothing wrong with that, I love good exploitation movies, but the thing is that they are either seriously made but end up being so bad they are good or they are done tongue-in-cheek with the right kind of attitude. This was neither and both at the same time. The times it took itself seriously the bad acting and horrible script made it unintentionally funny only to lead to the part which was actually supposed to be funny that really wasn't. So it's a rollercoaster in every meaning, taking you to heights only to drop you down and this goes on. Had the movie been purely exploitation, this would have been one of the best movies I've seen, but as it tries to take itself seriously you are forced to try and use your brain on it and when you do, you notice how bad it is. Nevertheless I was entertained and I'd go see it as exploitation and forget to even try to get a deeper meaning of it as otherwise you'll end up being quite disappointed.
69%



Finisterrae (2010)

Like I've said before I really don't like surrealism that much. I tend to think that if you really have something to say, just say it and don't go creating something that the audience may or may not understand how you intended. This movie was pure surrealism. It's a story about two ghosts who travel through limbo on their way to the end of the world so they can become human. I have to admit I didn't understand anything about this movie, it just made no sense to me at all. But surprisingly I really enjoyed it. I mean it looks gorgeous, it sounds great and actually has no dull moments. I was so completely in the state of "what the fuck is going on here?" that I just sat there with my mouth open staring at this facinating piece of cinema art. I burst out in laughter in couple of parts as it went so weirdly over the top, no idea if that was intended or not and really don't care as that was just how I interpreted that moment. So basically if I would love a surreal movie I guess it would be this one as I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I need to watch this one again to see how it works on another time, but for now I really liked it, even though it made absolutely no sense at all.
80%



Devil's Playground (2010)

Oh no, the world is being over run by zombies yet again. But this time they are not the usual slow moving brain eaters, they are virus infected monsters who can parkour. There's a badass mercenary who is protecting the only woman in England who might have the cure for the virus. They team up with the woman's boyfriend, her bff and a few strangers. Together they go through pretty much a scrap book of the most common cliches in zombie movies. This movie offers absolutely nothing to the genre, it's just a copy of the most notable classics spiced up with the style of the newer zombie flicks. As such I'd love to slam it to the ground as a piece of shit, but yet I have to admit I wasn't bored while watching it. So it's nothing you haven't seen before, actually it's exactly what you might think a modern zombie movie is, so it kind of serves it's purpose I guess. But in the end you just wonder why did they make this as it's been made so many times before and most of the times a lot better.
32%



I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

This is a remake of one of the most gruesome vengeance movies I've ever seen, I Spit on Your Grave (1978). The original is already so devastating that I really wondered why would someone want to remake it. I mean you really can't fix much from the original. The story is pretty much the same with a bit of tweaks to it, nothing special there. A woman travels to the countryside to write a book in solitude, but is brutally raped by a gang of rednecks after which she takes revenge on them. The surprising thing is that this remake is even more graphic than the original. So it has more of that disgusting shock value to it, but at the same time it's not as disturbing as the original. It's kind of when you see all these prosthetic makeups you also lose the raw reality of it so it's in a way not as horrifying as the original was. The direction is quite straight forward without that much finesse to it and the movie looks quite basic. The cast is not great, I mean they are not horrible either, but still at parts the acting is quite bad. Have to give them some credit though, this surely wasn't an easy movie to act in. Even though it's a bit of pointless remake, I still have to give it the credit that it didn't water down the original idea and that it actually tried to bring something new to the story as well, all be it that it really didn't work as intended.
71%



Love Camp 7 (1969)

Well you have to give this movie some credit as it started the nazi sexploitation genre and spawned quite a many similar movies about nazi sex camps. Though where some of it's followers took the soft core sex into hard core porn and the mild violence into very brutal and graphic gore fests, this however is quite soft on both sides. And that certainly isn't a bad thing, but to be honest it's certainly not a good movie either. If you're a fan of soft core sexploitation movies this is most likely a good choice, but I got quite bored. It wasn't bad enough to be funny and while sure the women were plenty and naked most of the time, it wasn't really sexy either. So all in all it's quite a pointless movie with only a few odd scenes that are somewhat amusing mostly because of the bad film making.
34%



The Late Great Planet Earth (1979)

This was the biggest disappointment of the festival. I was really looking forward of seeing this after reading the synopsis of it. It's always fun to laugh at religious nutcases and it's always fun to laugh at failed prophecies so a "documentary" about the apocalypse which was supposed to happen sometime during the 80's sounded like great fun. Turned out it really wasn't, I was expecting some religious nutcases to praise the bible and trying to put the fear of God into the viewer and that's actually what I got. But it wasn't funny, it was just mind numbing propaganda that abuses the fear of dying to sell religion. And the prophecies, despite there being the hilarious killer bees and such, they were quite idiotic even back then. But not idiotic enough to be funny, just enough to make you angry towards the blatant propaganda you're being served. The "document" is short sighted and close minded for sure, but that wasn't funny either. After seeing this, I mostly just felt angry that there are people in the world that believe this crap.
1%



Pieces (1982)

This movie is one of my guilty pleasures and getting the chance of seeing it on the big screen was like a dream come true. Don't get me wrong, this is a bad movie, a very bad movie. But it's so horribly bad that it's absolutely hilarious. The tagline of the movie "You don't need to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre" says a lot about it, Spain is certainly far enough. The story is basically a typical slasher movie, but all the little things in between the chainsaw swinging are what makes this one quite a special little gem. There's all the right ingredients with tons of nudity and gore, but the main thing in this one is the sheer craziness of it all. Coherence, logic and credibility are not phrases the director is familiar with, you don't just have to leave your brain off when seeing this, you have to turn your soul off as well. It's literally so braindead that you're basically forced to laugh at it and there are more "what the fuck?" moments that you can count. The director, Juan Piquer Simon, is like Ed Wood of the late 70's and early 80's, taking exploitation to whole new levels of craziness so that it almost becomes art. This movie is best served in good company with a few beers and you'll have a blast.
90%