>> Fantastic Fest 3: Blood, Boobs, & Beast (John’s Review, 7/10)

Don Dohler is extraordinarily ordinary. It’s this quality that makes it interesting that this is the man behind a dozen z-grade sci-fi/horror flicks, but it is also his ordinariness that keeps this documentary on his career as a filmmaker somewhat mundane. The film makes no real points about what kind of a man it takes to create video store schlock, instead offering a passive view of his friendship with collaborator Joe Ripple and the minor horror convention success Dohler has achieved.

A native of Baltimore, Dohler worked a nine-to-five publishing job during the day, and used his nights and weekends to create his chintzy alien movies, filling the cast with family and neighbors. He’s smarter than Ed Wood and more in-touch than Uwe Boll, but his movies are still inept little treasures, usually featuring a rubber-suited monster to fulfill at least one of the three requirements one of his distributors asked for years before: blood, boobs, and beast. It’s the adherence to that formula that provides the film’s tiniest bit of conflict. Dohler is never 100% comfortable with nudity and gore; Ripple finds it necessary to a fault.

There is probably an exceptional documentary somewhere in the two years worth of footage that filmmaker John Paul Kinhart shot–something close to the genius of Chris Smith’s superb American Movie. Dohler is exceptionally likeable, shrugging off his cult status with truthful modesty, and his collaborators are an interesting bunch, but Kinhart’s film lacks an emotional through-line. Kinhart keeps the audience at arm’s length from getting into Dohler, opting instead to focus on Joe Ripple’s scheduling conflicts and interviews with fans that feel, at times, remarkably staged.

I remember seeing the video for Galaxy Invader decades ago, but never rented it. The only time I even saw footage from it was plastered over the end credits of an entirely different movie on an episode of MST3K. Not once did I ever consider the proud Baltimorians that made the film. Blood, Boobs, & Beast did succeed in getting me interested enough to want to check out one of Dohler’s films, specifically Blood Massacre, a “cannibals vs. criminals” movie, with what appears to be a decent amount of sicko gore. The doc made me nostalgic for mom and pop video stores and lousy monster movies on UHF stations, things that are starting to feel like a lifetime ago. Basically, Don Dohler is a regular guy making awful movies, as a way to turn a buck and hang out with loved ones. That’s not so bad.

7 on a 1 to 10 scale

>> Fantastic Fest 3: Southland Tales (John’s Review, 4.5/10)

An unfunny, incomprehensible mess.

That’s the long and short of it concerning Richard Kelly’s sci-fi comedy satire follow-up to Donnie Darko. I’ll get into the details, and, lordy, are there details, but, first, it’s important to know that it sucks. It might not sound like it truly sucks, but, trust me, it sucks.

Leading this rambling, incoherent nonsense is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, wrestler turned actor, playing against type as a boxer turned actor, “Boxer” Santaros. He’s married to a high profile political candidate’s daughter (Mandy Moore), but disappears and washes up on the California shore with amnesia, where he is promptly taken under the wing of a talk show host/porn star/terrorist played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. The two collaborate on a screenplay about the apocalypse, as the events within the script begin happening in real life. None of this is shown in the movie.

Did you get that last part? None of that information is acted out in this film.

Instead, it is all told to us by Justin Timberlake’s character, an actor/singer/drug dealer/war vet, who sits in a turret all day guarding the West Coast when he’s not breaking out into Killers’ songs and narrating this baloney. After the world’s longest expositional voiceover, we pick up with Boxer as he’s being used as a pawn by underground Marxists (Nora Dunn, Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler), who are also in bed with a nutty energy guru (played by Wallace Shawn) and his cult-like followers, who are also in bed with Frost, the political candidate who is also Boxer’s father-in-law. Somewhere in all this is Sean William Scott as twins, one posing as a cop, one an actual cop, as part of a staged race crime involving Jon Lovitz’s cop character and the Marxists.

Sound confusing? Try watching it. It’s a grand failure, the type that rarely get made anymore, a throwback to the days of all-time overblown turkeys like Ishtar. It’s like the studio cut of Brazil for the Playstation Generation. By the time Kevin Smith inexplicably shows up in the film, sporting old age prosthetic make-up, you’ll have had enough (possibly even before that).

Someday, dictionaries will feature a picture of the Southland Tales movie poster beside the words “sophomore slump”. There’s ambition a’plenty–a sprawling two and a half hour satire based loosely on a mash-up of current events and the Book of Revelation–but, man, was this a misguided move. There’s a nugget of a decent film underneath the layers of headache-inducing backstory and the calvalcade of SNL alumni, and that’s a shame. If this was irredeemable, it would be forgotten in time. As it is, Southland Tales will join the annals of the great misfires of all time.

4.5 on a 1 to 10 scale

>> Fantastic Fest 3: End of the Line (John’s Review, 6.5/10)

End of the Line is possibly the best Stephen King movie ever made that has absolutely nothing to do with Stephen King.  Writer/director Maurice Devereaux has created a zippy, indy horror flick that reminds me of that author’s specific fear of crazy Christians and end-time prophecy.  It’s a small movie that thinks big, making the most of its cast and budget to create an efficient, effective creep-out.

A train full of strangers are interrupted from their travel by their subway’s sudden stop mid-route.  Suddenly, strangely uniformed men on the train reach for their buzzing pagers, read their synchronized message, and brandish bladed crucifixes.  Their mission?  To save the souls of the unbelievers in the world by murdering them.  What happens next is a grisly chase through darkened subway tunnels as a small group of survivors flee from the apocalyptic cult members while the outside world experiences the same mass killing spree, all in the name of God.

It’s a more-than-worthy addition to the “religious nightmare” subgenre of horror, and hardcore horror fans should eat this up with a spoon.  There’s plenty of blood splatter and mayhem, and it’s slightly smarter than other b-movie survival horror films.  The movie feels a little bit “been there, done that”, although I’m hard pressed to think of another movie like it.  I think the run-from-the-threat plot is where the film feels as if it’s going through the motions, and the peeks at the outside Biblical doom and gloom taking place while the ensemble stomp around in subway tunnels raise more interesting questions than the film answers.  The ending, however, is nearly pitch perfect–the visuals of the last 60 seconds being some of the most geniunely scary I’ve seen in a long, long time.

The simple pleasures of a well-made horror b-movie can beat any watered down big-budget “A-List” horror movie for me.  There’s usually some level of imagination at work that sets it apart from the rest, no matter how mediocre the actors are, or how easily the film might teeter into genre cliches.  End of the Line feels both familiar and different–a solid first feature film from Canadian Maurice Devereaux.

6.5 on a 1 to 10 scale