Taking place on a secluded base in the Antarctic, the small crew of 12 men are getting ready to settle in for a long winter when they get some rather unexpected visitors. A couple of Norwegians in a helicopter chasing (well, and shooting at) a dog. When the helicopter lands and the Norwegians run through the base still shooting in pursuit of the dog, well, something just had to be done. The Norwegians end up dead, the dog ends up in the kennel and a couple of the guys take their helicopter off through the bad weather to see what might be up at the Norwegian’s base.

Of course, upon investigation, the Norwegian base is gutted and only corpses are to be found, including a very unusual one… What they also find is that those fellows seem to have uncovered an ancient spaceship and dug something out of the ice next to it. As our guys return to the base and the crew start to realize what is going on, we settle into a very unsettling case of rampant paranoia wherein everyone thinks that everyone else is not to be trusted. Scary, creepy and suspenseful with the great isolating environment of Antarctica, The Thing is a monster movie with great ideas.

Featuring one of the most outlandish and tricky monsters out there and a great cast. While the special effects are certainly starting to get pretty dated after 30 years, they still hold your attention with their great, grotesque and outrageous gore.

Once the credits are done we drop right into a badly rewritten re-shoot of the scene in Aliens where Ripley gives her briefing to the marines. Even using some of the same dialogue. So yes, they make it very clear that this is going to be bad. Plus, it’s directed by Bond son Jason Connery which creates another lack of confidence… Though it’s a whole different brand of bad than the bad films of Andy Sidaris that the other Bond’s son R.J. Moore frequently features in, as this doesn’t even feature any bathing/softcore nude scenes with busty ladies or even any attacks using remote control helicopters or cars!





After the video taped message in very Price of Darkness style made by a scientist who, in proper The Mummy fashion, goes missing in an archeological site, and his daughter comes in with a batch of proper Aliens style ignorant wise-cracking soldiers, they descend into this place where they find, in proper Prince of Darkness style, a devil encased in something. And, of course in still more Prince of Darkness style, their pals start getting taken over by the bad guys so everyone, in proper Aliens style, does lots of excited and ineffective shooting… And cursing.

Looking at a digital map that brings Raccoon City to mind, the movie then descends into a standard cliched American action film. But at this point you stop following the story anyway and instead start looking to see what scenes were taken from which movie.





What makes this mess even funnier is the casting.. Cuba Gooding JR? Ron Perelman? and yes, no, yes fuckin’ Henry Rollins doing a terrible, yet eager, job playing a priest. What the hell again? Who put this thing together?





And christ, is one of these marines actually named Hicks? Maybe the whole thing is intended as a homage to Aliens after all…

I imagine that some of the military flashback war scenes must be taken form some other movie but as I don’t tend to see those movies, I don’t know for sure, but maybe all of the helicopter scenes are cribbed from Blackhawk Down?

I know that all of this is probably unfair judgment, but as the movie isn’t original, scary or even suspenseful you’ve got to find something to think about while watching it.

Easily the best scene takes place 46 minutes in when the guy left alone (of course) upstairs with some messed up dying guy they found, wanders off in pursuit of a nude chick that happens to wander through the room. Of course, he ends with with something much different then his dream lady, and that was pretty funny.





Of course, it does have some things going for it: Rollin’s terrible performance, lot’s of fairly good gore, and you don’t have to pay much attention to it. A good to movie to have people over for some beers to, if you know what I mean.

The be-sored oozing baddies are fine and honestly, the second half is certainly more entertaining than the first half. Though towards the end it does bog down with the jibber-jabber. For some reason Ray Winstone is in this too. But honestly, all that I had been intending to do was see if Legion was available as an instant movie from Netflix.

Though it certainly isn’t in the same league as any of these, it is at times reminiscent of Night Watch, Dark City and The Matrix and it gave me occasional flashbacks to playing Myst. I didn’t think of it a copy of those though, as it seemed pretty original. Ink is the story of conflict between those who bring dreams and those who bring nightmares, played out via a strange big-nosed being named Ink who is desperate to belong, a little girl that he has abducted as a means of doing so, those who are trying to return her to the real world and a father who has lost his way. Sort of Sci-Fi and sort of fantasy, Ink is certainly a very low budget movie, which shows with the acting, the sets and the grainy “very digital” quality, but it has a fairly interesting storyline and plot and the special effects are pretty well done.





Though it begins with a boring segment of this bitter father who is too serious and disconnected to pay any attention to his daughter, after night falls things pick up. A group of folks with an unusual and interesting entrance go around to the sleeping people and give them pleasant dreams, after that appear some interesting looking fellows who give people nightmares…





Then comes Ink. He is a mysterious being who abducts the little girl, against strenuous objections from the dream bringer people. While Ink tends to remain somewhat mysterious and concealed, her protectors do not. Consisting of the cute girl who was watching over her when she was abducted, an irritating “Pathfinder” with electrical tape over his eyes (well, maybe not all of the effects are good) and a couple of others, they relentlessly pursue Ink as he carts the girl into his intriguing hallway and all over the place.





While the movie was entertaining enough, I really thought it was the special effects that held my attention as they were not overdone and they fit the movie quite well. Though, honestly, the reason for this might mainly be that the effects involve light and the parts of the movie that those scenes take place in are shot in very high contrast, which serves to blur the line between the efect and the rest of the film. Regardless, I still thought that they were interesting, original and looked good.





Certainly not for everyone, but Ink is a great example of how, if you have some good ideas, you can make an interesting film with decent effects on a very low budget.

A week ago today, April 8th, was the Penguindevil’s 5th anniversary! With nary a posting to be found. As it is both finals week and tax week, my annual picks and summation post will have to wait a few more days. Sigh…

But I can bring up a funny little movie that I watched this week. While having one of those “fall asleep in front of a movie” evenings, I selected something suitably mindless for that… Hide and Creep! Oddly enough, I didn’t fall asleep once… Which means two things. One is that I only ended up with about 4 hours of sleep that night, and two, I actually watched the movie from beginning to end.

While I wouldn’t say that I recommend it, I also wouldn’t suggest avoiding it, either. Hide and Creep is a super-low budget (the production company is aptly named “Crewless”) zombie movie. Being also a bit of a comedy, with a bit of UFOish goings on, it was fairly entertaining. Starting off with two storylines, one the tale of a video store clerk beset upon by what is possibly the cheapest rendition of a zombie that I have ever seen (but so unapologetically lame and cheap of a zombie that it seems forgivable), and, two, a poor fellow who wakes up naked in a tree (where we are forced to start pondering either drunkenness of abduction, or both) who sets off in pursuit of his clothes and his “’64 and a half Mustang” (and potentially the girl he was with)…

These two tales converge in this small hick town in Alabama where zombies (yes, more of the same type as above) start appearing everywhere and the non-zom population begins to decline rapidly. Sadly, the sheriff is on vacation and the deputy is stuck in Florida so two groups of non-zom civilians struggle to make it through this mess. One group is the above mentioned folks who are “joined” by Barbara, the bitchy (but still somewhat charming) girl who works the phones at the police department and a Federal agent (again, the worst rendition of a federal agent that I have ever seen) who parachutes into town, and a second, more motivated group, consisting of Barbara’s brother and his hunting pals who end up driving all around the place shooting all the zombies that they can find in the head.

Hide and Creep is a fun and entertaining (and low-expectation) movie that features the requisite naked ladies (naked lady zombies, that is), references to anal probes, hordes of hungry zombies, corny newscasts, dopey hicks with guns and an arrogant video store clerk.

While it does have all of that going for it, and it most certainly does qualify as a zomedy, Hide and Creep is not (as “Kevin Smith” is quoted as saying on that poster over there) “even better than Shaun of the Dead”. Not in the slightest, really.

Nope.

Though I wasn’t sure if I felt up to watching Kurt and Courtney, being more in the mood for the Queen documentary that I came across, Caitlin said it was good, so we watched it!

Even for those who aren’t particularly interested in the subject (such as myself) Kurt and Courtney is a rather good film. These British filmmakers go to his childhood home, talks to friends and relatives, talk to Kurt’s ex-girlfriend and school teachers and even Courtney Love’s father (who, yes, has conspiracy theory), so it really tries to focus on what kind of guy he was and what his upbringing was. After watching the movie, I don’t want to offer any theories about Kurt’s death either way for fear of Love’s lawyers giving me a call, but let’s just say that the filmmakers don’t shy away from either the conspiracy story or the suicide story, they just let the people explain what they think. Regardless, you do get the sense that knowing Courtney killed him, one way or another… As she does come across as be the lame, shallow and selfish person that everyone (or everyone as far as I can tell) seems to think that she is. It was a bit startling to see so many “northwest” type of people, it really brought me back to the early 90′s…

We then did watch the Queen Doc, Becoming Queen… What it had in common with Kurt and Courtney is that no music from the band appears in the film, no members of the band talk to the filmmakers, and that it focuses on pre-fame days, but that’s about it. In its defense, as befits the title Becoming Queen is a good enough biography of Queen, focusing primarily on the youth of the band member and the originals of the band itself. They do interview a number (a small number) of people who knew them and played with them in the pre-Queen days. But there really isn’t too much to it. More so than the Kurt documentary, this one really did suffer from a lack of Queen’s music being in the film.

We then followed that up with The International. I wasn’t sure about it, but we wanted some kind of suspenseful thing, we were limited to Netflix Wi, it was directed by Tom Tykwer (though I’ve not seen Run, Lola, Run, I am a fan of his Winterschläfer) and it had Clive Owen, so I went for it. And, well, I didn’t have anything against it. A nice big conspiracy with banks and governments, hit men and all of that good stuff It was engrossing enough and entertaining, if nothing particularly special. There was a scene with, yes, a bit too much gunfire (who do they think made it, John Woo?), some small plot failures pop up and it was generally fairly predictable. But it was entertaining enough and had some good characters… And lots of nice scenery as the story popped all around Europe. I could have done without Naomi Watts though as I didn’t really buy her portrayal of her character.