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Before I talk about last night's Monster Kid meeting, I wanted to mention that I had two really great movie nights with my daughter.

On Thursday night we watched the U.S. theatrical version of Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD. I was a little nervous about that since graphic zombie movies are just about the only kind of movies still able to give me nightmares. But it's a new age. My daughter thinks that the SILENT HILL video games are the creepiest things ever. Creepier than this, even.

Anyway, she loved it. And she agreed with me that the truck-moving scenes were the absolute highlight.

Unfortunately, DAWN OF THE DEAD suffers from several problems that not only date it, but also stop it from being as great as it should be. These involve many of the zombie makeups (that gray skin tone just looks stupid) and some poor music supervision/music editing.

But man, the movie is simply amazing -- especially for an independent production. There are so many different setups it makes your head spin. So many super-cool ideas, too: the collapse of society; taking over the mall (with that exhilarating Goblin music); the truck scene (with even greater Goblin music); the zombie hunt; and the army-of-the-road invasion. It's just incredible. And why didn't Scott H. Reiniger ever go anywhere? He is absolutely "perfect, baby." Ken Foree and Gaylen Ross are great, too.

On Friday night, I was finally able to show her ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (thanks again to FXRH). Words can't express the greatness of this movie, and my daughter seemed to embrace it even more than I had hoped. In fact, she was so hyped that she wanted to watch another of my all-time favorites, which turned out to be...

TOTAL RECALL. Wow! It looked absolutely spectacular on the big Optoma screen. And this wasn't even an HD version.

Except for Rob Bottin's over-the-top makeup effects (since it's such an outlandish story, they're still acceptable), this is practically perfect. While the story is outlandish, it's also brilliant. Extremely well-conceived and with such a complicated setup, it's amazing how well Paul Voerhoven pulls this off. And that pulse-pounding Goldsmith score!

SPOILER ALERT!




I've never read much about the movie and I certainly don't know what the original story involved, but I'm convinced that Schwarzenegger's character got just what he paid for from Recall -- a package that gives him the memory of a trip to Mars where he's a secret agent that ends up saving the planet and getting the girl. "Blue skies on Mars? That's a new one!"


END OF SPOILER





Regardless, TOTAL RECALL is one of those movies that truly deserves the "rollercoaster ride" claim. Just wonderful.

Now to last night's Monster Kid meeting... Everyone was here except for Ryan Brennan and Kezilla. It was so great to have oldmanster Reed back after so many weeks. For some reason, whenever Reed's here the time goes by way too quickly. I always feel we just can't cram enough into the evening (both cinematically and conversationally) since he usually has to leave earlier than everyone else.

Taking a tip from Laughing Gravy, we started with three classic Warner Bros. cartoons: DUCK AMUCK, DOUGH FOR THE DO-DO, and ONE FROGGY EVENING. What a genius cartoon that last one is. Incredibly grim for a cartoon, and hilarious! And man, these Warner Bros. cartoons just blow you away on the big screen. Really.

Dinner was T-bone steak and Ranch style beans with extra onion. (Reed had a tooth pulled on Friday, so he was served my 'signature' spaghetti and toast.) Dessert was Boston Creme pie (courtesy of Reed), except instead of creme, the filling was sort of like chocolate mousse. I can't really comment on how good it was because it was all gone in about five seconds.

I also served a more-than-usually elaborate hors d'ouerve platter with pickles, gherkins, celery sticks with Ranch dressing, sliced Delicious apples, cantaloupe, cheddar cheese, Ritz crackers (are those about the best crackers in the world?), and tortilla chips with hot sauce and queso, of course.

The first feature was the unrated version of ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM courtesy of Reed. Unfortunately, I missed about the first thirty minutes since I was cooking, but everyone was able to catch me up pretty well. (TV's Steve got a long distance call he had to take and missed a lot, too. He also did that something that was pretty stupid while he was outside talking... again -- more about it later.) Reed had already seen it, but none of the rest of us had.

I thought the movie had big problems that were practically impossible to overcome. Most importantly, it's one of the worst photographed A-list movies I have ever seen. I thought it must have been the DVD transfer, but Reed said it looked that way in the theater, too. So there's no excuse. Seriously, you just won't believe how dark everything is. Even the few scenes shot in daylight were ridiculously muddied. It was insane. And it made most of the action scenes worthless; some of them would have been truly great, but you simply can not see what's going on. (Very much like watching a movie at a drive-in during the rain.) Couple that with the rapid-fire MTV editing style and you have to shake your head in dismay.

The movie is a direct sequel to the first AVP in that the alien born from the infected Predator is a bizarre hybrid of both creations. I'd love to tell you what it looked like, but we could hardly see it. All we could tell is that the alien head now has the great Stan Winston Predator mouth. I think it probably looks pretty cool, but who knows? (And I have to ask -- how come alien embryos hatched from humans show no signs of any hybrid-ness?)

Although I enjoyed the relentlessly grim aspect of the film, it was also extremely mean-spirited. Pregnant mothers being forcefed alien embryos and having their stomachs ripped apart by multiple chest-bursters? Wow. Someone's kind of sick. And the movie sets up nice, innocent characters simply to have their heads bashed in by alien proboscises. And I can't even talk about the knee-jerk, vicious-government denouement.

But there are some good things. Several of the scenes of the lone Predator tracking down and destroying the aliens infesting the small town are pretty nifty, although they'd have been much better if we could have seen what was going on a little better. The Tyler Bates score combines some great stuff from both Alan Silvestri's PREDATOR music and James Horner's ALIENS soundtrack. Oddly, only Silvestri gets a screen credit.

The basic idea is really great, too. Aliens infesting a small town and systematically wiping everyone out -- what's not to love? It's definitely fascinating. But it's also just about as annoying as you can get. The photography and editing will drive you crazy, and the moment it's over you know very well why it bombed at the boxoffice. Too bad because it could have been a lot of fun. (I'm going to give the movie another try, though, since I missed a lot of it and because I failed to return the disc to Reed's case -- I apologize, buddy...)

It also runs a little long, which is why Reed, FXRH and Count Gamula had to take off after it was over. TV's Steve had already abruptly left, presumably because I insulted him somehow. But not before he did that thing that was pretty stupid. Again, I'll explain that a little later.

Anyway, right after they all left, I put on THE LAST DINOSAUR which Reed was kind enough to let me borrow. I got about twenty minutes into it when The Kid arrived, so I fed him and we watched the rest of it.

Man, that's what we should have watched earlier! In fact, I'm gonna try to force everyone to watch it next time. If you don't know anything about it, it's a Rankin-Bass production made in 1977 and it sure looks like Toho had a hand in it (one of the producers is even named Tsuburaya). I checked it out on the IMDb, but there's no mention of Toho involvement.

Helluvalota fun. Repulsive old hunter and billionaire Richard Boone gets an opportunity to hunt the last Tyrannosaurus Rex and to play around with Joan Van Ark (their love scenes will give you the shivers). What's odd is I remember seeing this when it was shown on ABC (it was supposed to be a theatrical release, but ended up just being broadcast), but I didn't remember that there were so many other dinosaurs, including an absolutely huge Triceratops that has a really nasty fight with the Rex that was obviously inspired by Harryhausen's Gwangi-styracosaurus fight.

The matte work and miniatures are top notch. That's the only reason I have any doubt that Toho had a hand in it. Toho just did not do the kind of elaborate work evident in this movie. Highly recommended.

I gave The Kid his choice of what to watch next and he chose LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN (really stupid title, folks). I bought it a long time ago and tried to watch it once, but wasn't into it at the time.

Boy, was I wrong. Definitely one of the best movies I've seen in a long time (can't wait to force it on FXRH Monday or Tuesday!). Ultra-clever, multi-layered tale of mistaken identity, violence and revenge. Lots of big stars (Bruce Willis, Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Lucy Liu, Josh Hartnett) who apparently worked free, or close to free. Wonderful violence and tremendous plot twists. Very highly recommended!!!

Now, back to what TV's Steve did...

When The Kid arrived, we noticed a weird burning smell. I looked all around inside and out and found nothing. The smell got stronger. I still couldn't find anything. Luckily, The Kid pursued it and found a smoldering potted plant just outside my door! Turns out that while Steve was on the phone, he threw a cigarette butt into my wife's huge peat-moss potted plant. When The Kid found it, it was just about to burst into big flames. It took four pitchers of water to put it out.

My sincere thanks to The Kid for not giving up!

Until next time...