Hello folks. Now that October is here; it's time to start planning Halloween festivities. For me, that means planning for the 3rd Annual Halloween Top 13. As usual I will be counting down thirteen of my favorite scary gems starting October 19th and running right through to the big day. Now anyone can count down great horror films, I should I know. I did it back in the original Halloween Top 13. Then I came back the next year and counted down all the best follow ups in Halloween Top 13: The Sequel. That left me only one way to go this year, and I will fully admit that it took a year for me to get ready for the task. I literally made my first notes on November 1, 2009 when I scribbled down a few films and the note, Halloween Top 13: The Remake!

And so my creature was born. Well, at least I got the first few parts for it. Over the last year, I have poured over dozens of horror remakes, even a few sequels to horror remakes (those scarred me for life), coming to a decision on what films will make up my monster and what is too rotten to use. I can tell you this. There are sure an awful lot of rotten remakes out there too, but what I can't tell you quite yet is what the best ones are, but maybe you can tell me.

As with every year of the Halloween Top 13, I like to include all my loyal readers and fellow bloggers in the fun. Each day along with my countdown post, I like to include someone else's picks. You can feel free to pick as many or as few as you'd like (13 is quite a task for those daring enough), choose to elaborate or nearly enumerate, but no matter how many I get I promise to publish them all. If you have a website or link you'd like to include, please attach it with the list. Mail all your Halloween Top 13: The Remake lists to thelightningbug@charter.net , and I hope everyone is ready for a scary, scary October!

From the first shot, a intense close-up of teeth that pulls out slowly to reveal the sweaty upper lip, the eyes, and the horn rim glasses of William ‘D-Fens’ Foster, director Joel Schumacher establishes the pressure cooker feeling pervades his 1993 film Falling Down. As he sits in a traffic jam, the inside of his car seems to be visibly steaming with heat as he sits motionless. The world is a cacophony of sound. The air conditioner doesn’t work. The window won’t roll down. A child stares. The sharp, pointed,painted on teeth of a stuffed Garfield doll suddenly become filled with malice. William Foster has had enough, and all he wants to do is go home. So he gets out of his car and begins a journey that will take him far into the depth of Los Angeles and far out of his mind.

These days Joel Schumacher is best remembered as the man who put nipples on Batman, but in the late ’80’s he was on an incredible run of films that conventional wisdom would say started with 1985’s St. Elmo’s Fire. If you ask me it kicked off two years earlier with D.C. Cab. I mean that film had Busey in it, and that alone merits it a mention in a post about crazy people in films. After looking at all sides of death with Flatliners, The Lost Boys, and Dying Young, Schumacher turned his eye to the world of the living with Falling Down. The script by actor and occasional screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith was so prescient of the tension building on the streets of L.A. that while the film was being shot, the riots that followed the O.J. Simpson verdict broke out.

After Falling Down came out, Michael Douglas’ performance as the out of work defense worker William Foster became the poster child for the “angry white man”. In many publications his character was cast as the embodiment of the marginalized white male. A man feeling attacked by the wilting economy, his broken marriage, and the perceived infringements of his liberty by government, immigrants, and big corporations. While there is always a fringe element that’s political or moral beliefs stray outside the norm, it always scared me that Foster was sometimes perceived as a heroic character. Falling Down is being included in 30 Days of Crazy not because the world around the protagonist had gone mad, but rather because Foster becomes completely unhinged, disregarding anything but his own rapidly warping moral compass. In simple terms, he was a massive, massive wing nut.

Many of us might have a passing daydream that we could leave our car in traffic, demand that the fast food place serve breakfast after the cut off time, or call shenanigans a construction crew repairing a road that seems just fine. The average person will stay in their car, settle for an apple pie and just call it breakfast, and just find an alternate route around traffic all the while saving up their anger to take out on friends, wives, husbands or other relations like normal people do. ‘D-Fens’ Foster felt that the world had taken everything from him and it was time to take something back. When I watch the news and see some extremist, homegrown or foreign, taking lives to prove their point or moral stance, my thoughts instantly go back to the special insanity exhibited by Michael Douglas’ character.

While Falling Down also features an excellent performance by Robert Duvall as the cop spending his last day on the job following Foster’s bloody path, Duvall’s solid acting is quickly overshadowed by Douglas’ more inspired character and performance. In 1993, Falling Down served as a warning to a world that would see homegrown terrorism and radicals rise up in the next few years during events such as Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Okalahoma City bombing. All of these groups were lead in some way by white American men who felt like their voice had gone unheard and had clearly also gone Kookoo for Cocoa Puffs. Today we live in a world where folks regularly show up at political rallies with a firearm in tow, and people like William Foster that sit in their homes absorbing a stream of politically television designed to feed the ostracized‘s paranoia. Falling Down should serve as more than just a reflection of the early nineties tensions. It is also a warning that there will always be a danger in society lurking as close as the next disturbed person that gets pushed too far.

Hey folks. First off, you might have been wondering where I’ve been this week. Well, I was on vacation from work so I had to take care of a lot of things that have been building up around The Lair. With October and wall to wall horror coverage coming soon, it was going to be my last fall turned my thoughts to ghosts and goblins. Today is actually the second full day of fall, and already there is crispness to the air down here in the South that tells me that soon all the green leaves around me with start fading to brown, orange, and gold. That first hint is all it takes for me to be ready for October and Halloween to get here. To quench my thirst for horror, today I have the selection for the film swap that Emily, from the Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense, and I have been doing for the past few months.

Warwick Davis Ruins the Wedgewood in  Skinned Deep

So far I’ve had a great time with this watching Baxter, We Are Going to Eat You, and Popcorn while choosing for her viewing pleasure Squirm, Hot Wax Zombies on Wheels, and Motorama. This month I chose for her the Fangoria produced hunk of schlock known as Skinned Deep starring the star of Willow as a plate throwing psychopath named ‘Plates’. Yeah I’m sure she’ll have a few choice words about the film and perhaps about my pick as well. For me she first chose the 1985 film Rumpelstiltskin, but either Netflix has lost all of their copies or people were compelled to keep it because they didn't know its name.So in its place, The Deadly Doll picked one of her favorites Stuart Gordon’s 1987 film Dolls, a film I had not seen before.

Now Stuart Gordon should not be an unfamiliar name to most genre film fans. With films like Re-Animator, From Beyond, Fortress, and Robot Jox to his credit, his name has been listed as one of the greats of horror cinema. However for each Gordon film that I love there’s a Castle Freak or a King of The Ants waiting around the corner to dash my image of the director’s catalog. So even though Emily had given this one her seal of approval, I approached it with some trepidation. That feeling only increased as the opening credits rolled revealing that the film was produced by Empire Pictures and Charles Band. Speaking of someone with a hit and miss career, Band seems to actively try to produce all levels of material. Sometimes you get Puppet Master, and sometimes you get Netherworld. Add to that the fact that Mr. Band’s track record with killer small things (Demonic Toys, Shrunken Heads, Ghoulies, etc.) contains more than their share of poorly scripted or acted films.

So I waited for the next hundred minutes for the bottom to fall out, for the script from Troll writer Ed Naha to run out of steam, for Gordon to take a departure into complete camp or total perversity, but it never happened. Instead what I received was one of the most enjoyable horror films that I’ve seen in the last three months at least. Dolls stars young Carrie Lorraine as Judy, a girl on a road trip with her asshole father (Ian Patrick Williams) and shrewish stepmother (played by Stuart Gordon’s wife Carolyn Purdy-Gordon). When they get caught in a sudden thunderstorm, they take shelter in a nearby house inhabited by a doll maker (Guy Rolfe) and his wife. The family, along with a pair of skanky punk rocker chicks and nice guy Ralph (Stephen Lee) are all invited to spend the night to ride out the storm. When Judy sees “little people” drag one of the punk rock girl’s away, the young girl tries to warn everyone, but no one believes her except Ralph, who is quite young at heart himself. When the two begin to investigate, it soon becomes apparent that their genial host‘s creations are something more than just innocent toys.

Dolls was filmed two years before 1989’s Puppet Master, with its script from Charles Band, made its way to the video shelves, and there are enough similarities here to think that Mr. Band might have been a bit inspired by the flick and enough differences to keep you from feeling sad about director David Scholar’s film. The real difference is this. Where Puppet Master contained some degree of origin for the creatures and a cast of characters that you felt good about getting torn apart, Dolls doesn’t bother with back-story (because who needs it, the titular glass eyed dolls are creepy as heck, I don’t care where they come from) and actually contains characters that you can feel good liking.

From her very first scene Carrie Lorraine melted my heart as the precocious Judy. I mean to the point to where this itinerantly childless writer had a passing thought that was something in the realm of, “if I could get one just like that”. I usually have the same reaction to child actors that I do of children in general. They’re ok if they’re not around much. Lorraine not only carried the film, but managed to be cute and precocious without being tiresome and irritating. Her performance was only enhanced by character actor Stephen Lee as Ralph. Lee is the type of actor whose face is so familiar that it will bother you for days on end thinking about where you know him from. It will distract you from work and your loved ones. You could make lose your job and life savings and end up on the street selling pencils for a dime out of a tin cup. It could make you so despondent that you lose touch with reality and start watching a "Jersey Shore" marathon. Before it does any of those things, I recommend just looking on IMDB where you’ll quickly find that you’ve probably seen him in a dozen things from his role as The Big Bopper in La Bamba to TV roles in “Nash Bridges” and “Bones” among dozens of others to his upcoming role in the Cher/X-tina epic Burlesque. As solid as his performance was in a film like Dolls, it’s a shame that Lee hasn’t gone on to more prominent roles.

The rest of the cast, her diabolical dad, devilish mother, and seemingly out of place and time British punk rockers (who looked more like they would rather be listening to the Material Girl than The Buzzcocks), are all suitably easy to hate. So while the film maintains a great light tone with Judy and Ralph, the rest of the cast get dispatched in a series of very unappealing fashions. Ian Patrick-Williams, who plays Judy’s dad, gives a great performance in the final moments of the film leading to a conclusion that is both extremely entertaining and a satisfying way to end the film. I do wish that Guy Rolfe, who I loved so much in William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus, had been given more screen time. Though I do think that his turn as Gabriel the Dollmaker would lead to him being tapped to take over the role of Andre Toulon the Puppet Master in many of that series’ sequels.

Now, I’ve been praising Dolls pretty highly, and I don’t really have much negative to say. Some of the supporting cast (especially Mr. Gordon’s wife Carolyn) grated on my nerves a bit, but it was just all the better to see them get bumped off later. The doll effects could occasionally be a tad campier than the overall tone of the film, but they had such an intrinsic creepiness to them that it kept the idea of killer toys firmly in check. While I may enjoy Puppet Master more, I do think that Dolls is the better horror film of the two. Where Blade and company have a campy appeal, I just couldn't see myself wanting to be in a room with any of Dolls titular characters. It has definitely made the shortlist of films I am sure to revisit again and again. So if you’ve never seen it or seen it a hundred times before, it seems like the perfect little eerie gem to help usher in the fall season and Halloween's impending presence.

So I have to give a big thanks to Emily for the great pick this month. Don’t forget that you can check out her review of Skinned Deep today at The Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense, and both Emily and I are now also writing for The Gentlemen’s Blog to Midnite Cinema to hop over there and check that out as well. I’ll be back tomorrow with my second entry into Blog Cabins’ 30 Days of Crazy Blogathon when I keep the season change theme going and start Falling Down.

Hey folks. Over the years I've mentioned podcasts time and time again. Hell, I've even been known to helm one or two in my time (a great example would be The Who Doctors, plug plug).Back a couple of years ago, podcasts really drove me back into the genre film world, and that was mostly thanks to the folks from Cinema Diaboica, Outside the Cinema, and The Gentlemen's Guide to Midnite Cinema. Now all of these podcasts (and many other great ones) can be found on itunes or through the forums at http://www.palavr.com/forum.php, but I'm here to talk about one specific podcast, and that is The Gentlemen's Guide. First off, let me say that there are not two nicer fellows around than Big Willie and the Samurai, and I love to listen to their show every week. Lately, they've been bombarding the airwaves with their coverage of the Toronto International Film Fest, and those are some of my favorite shows each year listening as they give a peek into genre offerings that hopefully will come to light soon.

Wanting to take the show and expand it into something bigger, the fellows came up with starting an online version of the show called The Gentlemen's Blog to Midnite Cinema. In order to do so they formed a special, elite, covert commando strike force of skilled, expert reviewers and writers for the blog. First off there is Aaron of the esteemed site The Death Rattle  who always comes through with an entertaining and informative review. Then there's writer and sometimes GGTMC co-host  Pickleoaf who hails from one of my favorite blogs Assorted Loaf. If it runs the gambit from trash to treasure, the The Loaf has probably talked about it at one time or another. Next up is some character called Matt-Suzaka. That's right. Matt didn't have enough on his plate writing for Chuck Norris Ate My Baby and Paracinema: The Blog, so he's agreed to bring his wild and woolly to the Gentlemen's Blog. I'm just hoping he doesn't bring his collection of mesh shirts as well. the next member of the Gentlemen team isn't a gentlemen at all, but that's only because she is one classy dame! I'm talking about my good blogger buddy Emily from The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense ( who coincidentally I'll be doing another film swap tomorrow ). I love Emily, and I'm sure he's put a real woman's touch on the place, a real bloody, messy, gory touch, but a touch none the less. The Gentlemen's Blog also promises to feature articles from Big Willie and the Samurai as well as co-host and blogger Rupert Pupkin of Rupert Pupkin Speaks. There seems to be someone I'm forgetting on this list. Oh yeah, me, Zachary of the good ol' LBL! I will also be joining the team and bringing my own personal brand of tomfoolery into the Gentlemen's Blog world.

So if this cast of deviants and degenerates doesn't convince you that you need to be following the Gentlemen's Blog, then I don't know what else to do. I suppose I'll have to send Henry Silva, George Eastman, and The Het to do a little personal convincing. I don't want to have to do that so head over to The Gentlemen's Blog to Midnite Cinema now and start checking it out!

In merely 59 days from now, the Cincinnati Horrorhound convention will open its doors on Friday the 12th of November. Forging new territory, I, along with my dear wife and Fran Goria, will be making the journey from South Carolina to Ohio. I must confess that I’ve never traveled that far North before, and all I know of Cincinnati is that you’ve got to watch out for falling turkeys if you’re there around Thanksgiving. I’ve been planning to travel to a large convention this year as there are literally none in local Southeast area. (At least no exclusively horror conventions, I did give lots of consideration to DragonCon in the good ol’ ATL.) There are three things that really made my decision to make the trip.

First up, it’s Horrorhound Weekend, and Horrorhound is one horror rag I try to never slip by me. So the name itself lends some gravitas. Secondly, there were a lot of folks that I know from around the blogosphere and pod cast world that were going to be in attendance, I won’t drop names because I don’t want to have to pick them all back up when I’m done here, but if you look down my blogroll you might find several attendees on the list. The third and I’ve got to admit the most important reason was the guest list which was packed with people that I’ve always wanted to meet. So in the weeks leading up to Horrorhound, I’m going to be looking at a film from several of the guests that are going to be attending.

Getting the first look is Meg Foster which I was very familiar with from her role as Holly Thompson in They Live, but what I didn’t realize was that she had been a part of one of the first total cinematic disappointments of my childhood, Masters of the Universe. When the movie made its debut in 1987, I was eleven years old, and just like all my friends, a big fan of the cartoon He-Man and the Masters of the Universe as well as the accompanying action figure line. I know I even had a He-Man themed birthday one year, and I wish I could recall when that happened in relation to the film. What I can remember is how excited I was to see He-Man, Teela, Orko, Battle Cat and Man at Arms mix it up with a big screen Skeletor, Mer-Man, Beast-Man, and possibly several other beings with the word ‘man’ at the end of their name. The poster looked great, and Dolph Lundgren, who was already a favorite from repeated viewings of Rocky IV, looked like the ideal He-Man. How he would pull of Prince Adam, I wasn’t sure. Little did I know that wouldn’t have to happen at all.

The world that the film opens up on did appear to be the Eternia from the cartoon, but after that things started falling apart. He-Man was just He-Man with nary a mention of the mincing Prince Adam. Man at Arms wasn’t wearing even a smidgen of Orange. Sure, Teela was there, but with nary a bit of the snake headdress or chromed out boobs look from the cartoon. This Teela looked like she was in Space Marine boot camp with Ripley, but she didn’t make the cut. Cringer or Battlecat didn’t seem to exist at all, and don’t even get me started on the fact that Orko was replaced by Billy Barty in makeup that made him look like the bastard child of Willow and Hoggle from Labyrinth. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The only thing that saved the film for me back there were the few shots of Castle Greyskull and some of the bad guys. I can’t imagine I knew who Frank Langella was when I was 11, but even though the makeup wasn’t quite right, it worked for me. Plus, Evil-Lyn, played by future Horrorhound Weekend guest Meg Foster, actually looked cooler than Evil-Lyn who always appeared to have a fin going the wrong way across her head. (The other henchmen were another story that I’ll get into in a moment.)

I remember overall that I left the theater with a great deal of disappointment and a heavy heart. In recent years people have complained that the G.I. Joe movie raped their childhood. I wouldn’t go so far as raped, but I was still a kid and I felt like I had been cinematically molested in some kind of way. Instead of an epic story set on Eternia, I had gotten a film here He-Man and crew come here by way of a time doorway, and their paths soon cross with a small town waitress (future Friend Courtney Cox) and her boyfriend (Robert Duncan McNeill, later of Star Trek: Voyager). In the place of clanging swordfights were endless laser battles, instead Mer-Man and company, Skeletor’s cronies were lame dudes called Blade, Karg, and Saurod, and worst yet in place of the awesome action film I had expected, they had shoehorned in a typical ‘80’s storyline.

I didn‘t watch it for years after that, and when I finally did give it another try about six years back, I didn’t find it nearly as painful as I once did. So I thought I would give it another watch, and lo and behold, I dug it. Far removed from the emotional connection I had with my Teela figure when I was eleven, I could just enjoy Masters of the Universe for what it is, a trashy ‘80’s science fiction film with elements of fantasy. Mostly though there are just elements of cheese, and I mean lots and lots of it. It’s easy to see that Cannon films would have liked Masters of the Universe to become a Star Wars size box office titan, but instead, they produced something that was less Lucas and more Corman. It doesn’t even seem surprising that the un-produced sequel to Masters of the Universe somehow mutated into the script for Jean Claude Van-Damme’s Cyborg.

Of course, the real reason I sat down and rewatched it twenty three years after that first initial traumatic screening was Meg Foster as Evil-Lyn. I must say that I found her performance really held its weight against Langella who always seems to give his best in any material. I’m sure the fact that she shares most of her scenes with the acting powerhouse doesn’t hurt, but Foster also displays the same kind of eeriness that she would the next year in They Live. Foster got her start in TV and made her feature debut with a small role in the obscure 1970 Michael Douglas film Adam at 6 A.M. After spending several years playing bit parts in everything from Barnaby Jones and The Six Million Dollar Man to Baretta and Hawaii Five-O, she got fourth billing in 1980’s Carny beneath Gary Busey, Jodi Foster, and Robbie Robertson. (She also appeared in The Stepfather II which someone will mention if I don’t, but I’m trying not to hold it against Ms. Foster.)

Over the years the film roles got more prevalent, and after being Evil-Lyn and appearing in Carpenter’s flick, Foster has continued to pop up in films like The Best of the Best 2 (1993) and 1999’s The Minus Man. Currently she is slated to appear in Go Straight To Hell alongside fellow cult icons Karen Black, Sid Haig, and Traci Lords. When I saw that Foster was going to be at Horrorhound, I knew I wanted to meet her. After all, who wouldn’t want Holly Thomson to turn that stare on them? (I better not bring any bubblegum just in case things go bad.) After reading about her long career, and discovering all the films that she’s appeared in, it’s just made me that much more exited that she’ll be there. That’s about all for this first mile on the road to Horrorhound Weekend, but I’ll be back next week with another film from the gargantuan guest list as the even itself draws ever closer.

Case File: Eddie Romero-01
Reason for Inquiry: Subject has made a number of cult films that have gone unrecognized for many years.


Background: The subject of this investigation is well respected Filipino director Eddie Romero (a.k.a The Other Romero). Born in 1924 in the Philippines, the subject began selling short stories to local papers at age 12 and graduated to film scripts by the time he was twenty three years old. Romero won award for his writing and eventually his direction for a number of films in his native country, but in 1957, he embarked on a different path. Romero began to make war films with the express desire to export them to the West. While he never broke through, a number of the films reached an American audience, including Day of the Trumpet. It got the attention of actor Burgess Meredith (a.k.a The Riddler a.k.a Mick) who then conspired with the subject on a film entitled The Kidnappers in 1958.

Furthering his desire to break into the American market, he made a number of low budget horror films, and it should be no surprise that a thrifty director making movies for less than nothing would get the attention of Roger Corman. During these years, Romero turned out genre and cult fare on par with any of his contemporaries and worked with shady characters such as John Saxon, Pam Grier, Jack Hill, Sid Haig, and Cherrie Caffaro.l. Then in 1975, Romero moved back to the Philippines once again taking on the mantle of Award winning film maker. While the subject might have perfected a perfect cover, this report is set to blow the lid off Romero’s little remembered genre entries. All that's left is to collect the research from our man in the field, T.L. Bugg.

Agent’s Report: When I first got asked to go into the field by the CIA (Cinema Intelligence Agency), I didn’t go because I knew such a thing didn’t exist, but when a couple of hardened agents showed up on my doorstep and threatened to make me watch Merchant Ivory flicks while strapped to a chair all “Kubrick style”. I don’t usually cave under pressure, but I could have changed my named to Carlsbad J. Caverns at they moment. So I took the file they wanted me to look at, and I realized why I was chosen for the job, I had already seen one of Romeo’s films. This past association with the subject was going to go a long way, but as I dug deeper into his dossier I found a film that I’d heard of many times but never seen. It turned out that the film in question, Black Mama, White Mama, was to be my first assignment.

Made in 1973 right during the middle of the blaxploitation boom, Romero’s film, produced under the prodigious banner of American International Pictures, starred one of the icons of the genre, Pam Grier, as well as cult cinema legend Sid Haig. The script by H. R. Christian, based on a story by Angels As Hard as They Come author Joe Viola and future director Jonathan Demme, combined a flash of blaxploitation with a healthy dose of Jack Hill inspired “women in prison“ drama. With all of these factors coming together, it is no wonder that Black Mama, White Mama is easily Romero’s most recognized film in the United States.

The film kicks off with a sleazy introduction that could serve as a perfect primer to Romero’s work. Lee (Pam Grier), on the run from a drug kingpin whose fortune she stole, and Karen (Margaret Markov), the girlfriend of the local revolutionary leader, get thrown in to a Filipino women‘s prison. They are stripped and put in the shower, and as they folic and play, squirting each other with water as if being in a jail shower was the same as going to a water park, a female guard spies from a hole in the nest stall over and masturbates. So, yeah, if you don’t like a hefty dollop of sleaze in your ‘70’s cinema, his work with AIP and others around that time will not be for you. Now, if you’re like me, and you enjoy flicks where chicks kick a lot of ass while sporadically showing skin, shooting guns, or having catfights, Eddie Romero is your man.

While Black Mama, White Mama is often billed as a “women in prison” film, Lee and Karen spend the majority of the film on the run from their captors, the drug runners, and even unknowingly Karen’s Guevara-esque boyfriend. They do spend most of that time chained to each other, and this leads to a requisite knock down drag out fight between the two as well as giant plot holes such as how the pair both manage to don nun’s habits while handcuffed. Not that picking apart a film like Black Mama, White Mama does it any kind of service. The girls naturally put aside their differences in the end, and Romero keeps the film well paced right up to the climax, a massive gun battle on a pier.

Grier gives a midrange performance that doesn’t rank near her best work, but it’s Pam so I forgive her. Markov, who also appeared with Grier in Joe D’Amato’s 1974 film The Arena, I was unsure of at first. She seemed too annoying for words, but as the film went on and her revolutionary stance proved to be more than bluster I warmed up to her. Other than the two female leads, there are really only two standout actors in the film, Eddie Garcia and Sid Haig. Garcia was a frequent collaborator with Romero from the 1950’s right through the 70’s, and while I had seen him in a sleazier role before, he impressed equally as the police captain. Sid Haig is a name that should be familiar to most genre fans. Sid really chews up the screen Rufus, a bounty hunter with an affinity for fringed western shirts. I don’t think I can mention his character without saying that he executes one poor chap just because he is pitifully endowed. How did the film ever get to such a point? Well, that is the beauty of an Eddie Romero film.

As is usual with Eddie Romero’s films, they were obviously made on the cheap, but he was out to make the most of every last penny he had to spend. While it doesn’t reach the heights of Jack Hill’s films like The Big Bird Cage, it is definitely an interesting offering that will please both fans the chicks in chains genre as well as those who just like to bask in the majesty that is Pam Grier. When it comes down to brass tacks, it’s a middle of the road offering made a tad more interesting by Romero’s hometown locals and willingness to really amp up the sleaze factor at all costs. Thus ends my first report on Eddie Romero. Next week I will diver deeper into the film to find out how Mr. Romero met The Saxon!

Welcome to the first of two entries I’ll be making for the 30 Days of Crazy event being put on by Fletch over at Blog Cabins. With wall to wall insanity from a great collection of bloggers, it is truly an event you will want to check out. For my first film, I’m taking a look at 2005’s The Jacket starring Adrien Brody. Recently, Mr. Brody has become something of a Scream King with his turns in Predators, Splice, and Dario Argento’s Giallo. If you look back over his career, he’s always chosen strange little genre films, like appearing as a scientist in Mario Van Peebles Solo. Though he cemented himself in the public consciousness with Polanski’s The Pianist (2002), only three years removed from his Academy Award winning turn as the tragic ivory tickler, he took on the starring role in first time feature director Maybury’s thriller.

The Jacket stars Brody as Jack Starks, a Gulf War veteran who is sent to an asylum after being accused of shooting a police officer. His doctor, Thomas Becker (Kris Kristofferson), begins to use an experimental treatment on Starks, putting him in a straightjacket and closing him inside a morgue drawer. Starks begins to have experiences that he believes are travels fifteen years into the future to 2007 where he learns of his own impending death in four days. He also meets a girl, Jackie Price (Keira Knightly), whose past he affected when she was a child, and he uses the experiences going back and forth through time to change her future for the better.

The real question when it comes to The Jacket is what, as a viewer, you want to accept as real. Brody’s character at no time seems stable, and the film's events can be taken two ways. Either Jack Starks, an already damaged war veteran and possible cop killer, had a series of visions where he absolves himself of past wrongs by saving Jackie or Starks, an innocent man, traveled through time and did a good deed before he died. So either he’s crazy as a bedbug or the human equivalent of the letter in The Lake House.  Personally, I could see it both ways. The hopeless romantic in me wanted his quest to rectify the bad things that happened in Jackie‘s life, but my cynical side kicked in, and I left the film feeling sorry for Starks as he spent his last few moments with his mind escaping into a fantasy world.

Speaking of crazy, one of the most fascinating things I learned while looking into The Jacket was the connection to Jack London. I know. Right now, you’re probably saying, “That Jack London?” Yep, Mr. Jack “White Fang, Call of the Wild, boring your ass to death in high school” London apparently wrote some books that didn’t have even a little Yukon in them. His 1915 novel The Star Rover, known in the United Kingdom as The Jacket, was a fictionalized account of San Quentin inmate Ed Morrell’s experiences in solitary confinement. In London’s book, his hero is subjected to a torturous jacket while he is in jail, but when he enters a trancelike state, he can travel across space and time. Though three writers are credited with the film, London’s name was not mentioned. However in interviews promoting the film director Maybury credited the book as inspiration.

For a first feature film, Maybury, who had previously directed short films and videos for Cindy Lauper and Sinead O’Connor, puts in an impressive effort packing the film with visually appealing shots. He also gets some solid performances from his actors. Adrien Brody is the rock that the film is built on. I am generally interested in him as an actor, and he did not disappoint, plumbing the film’s emotional depths for all they were worth. He even went method on the role insisting that Maybury lock him in just like his character and film him with a locked camera. The result is right in the film. When an emotionally raw Starks loses it, you are actually witnessing the real breakdown that Brody had while dedicating himself to the role. Veteran actor Kristofferson provides some great menace as the diabolical doctor who puts the treatment to Starks, and Knightly performs well as the damsel in distress including one of the better American accents that I’ve ever heard her perform.

The Jacket did have a number of weaknesses, and one of them is that I only had three actors to bother mentioning in the whole of the film. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kelly Lynch, Brad Renfro, Daniel Craig, Mackenzie Phillips, and Jason Lewis all make appearances, but none of them stuck out in my mind at all, and quite a few of them had the potential to make more of their brief appearances. I was also quite hard to follow at times, and I occasionally  needed a diagram to help me figure out what was happening. It added to the crazed atmosphere, but it did little to allow overall enjoyment. Altogether, The Jacket is a manic experience that lives up to being in a marathon of crazy films. It dabbles in interesting concepts, but it never can decide what it exactly feels about them. It wasn’t full of enough problems to put me in a straightjacket, but I was sure glad I had blog therapy to look forward to after.

That wraps it up for me, but don’t forget to check in with Blog Cabins for more Days of Crazy!