Movies And Metal

It has just been confirmed that legendary heavy metal singer Ronnie Jame Dio has sadly passed away today. Beginning his singing career back in the 1950′s, Dio came to prominence fronting Rainbow from 1975 to 1979 before replacing Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath. After leaving Sabbath in 1982 he formed his own band called Dio and recorded such metal classics as ‘Holy Diver’ and ‘The Last in Line’ before rejoining (and subsequently leaving) Sabbath again in the early 1990′s. In recent years Dio rejoined his Sabbath bandmates under the moniker Heaven & Hell (named after the classic Black Sabbath album) and recorded the critically acclaimed ‘The Devil You Know’ album, whilst still touring with his own band.

A statement from his wife/manager Wendy Dio reads:

So here it is – the one remake they’d dare not cock up.  Although there’s a lot of love for Jason Voorhees and Leatherface, the character of Freddy Krueger seems to hold a special place in many a horror fanatic’s heart, and although it was only a matter of time before A Nightmare on Elm Street was tackled – following the commercial successes of excellent The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the pretty good The Amityville Horror and the dire Friday the 13^th remakes – Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company must have felt the pressure of creating a new take on modern horror cinema’s most iconic villain that would satisfy the most hardened of gorehounds.

The plot is pretty close to Wes Craven’s 1984 original, albeit with a few little twists here and there.  In the town of Springwood, a group of teenagers are all sharing a collective dream about a horribly disfigured maniac with knives for fingers on his right hand who seems to be stalking them.  It turns out that the man is Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Hayley), the caretaker at the pre-school where all the kids attended when they were younger, who was burned alive by the vengeful parents of the kids after it turned out that Krueger was sexually abusing them.  Now seemingly unstoppable, Krueger haunts their dreams to extract his revenge on the children who told on him, but if he kills you in your dream you die for real.

No doubt most of you know the plot already, so let’s get down to the details you want to know – it isn’t as good as the original, JEH’s darker take on Freddy is good and as a short summary the movie is good but not great.  Do you notice the multiple use of the word ‘good’?  That’s because that is all this movie is.  The original movie may not have been perfect but it did have several things going for it – a truly frightening concept about a dream killer, characters that you cared about and a central performance from the genial Robert Englund as Freddy that was scary, yet so completely watchable, that you came away knowing you’d seen something truly unique and entertaining.  Obviously the makers of this one have to stick to some of the conventions set by the original, but most of the news ideas just come off as uninspired and mediocre.

Starting off strongly with a pretty decent dream kill, the movie lurches from one dream sequence to the next with the usual string of gormless characters that don’t encourage any sympathy from the audience.  Only the character of Kris (Katie Cassidy) is fairly likeable and deserves some of our attention, but the rest are pretty interchangeable with any other faceless teen from any recent horror movie.  Normally this wouldn’t spoil a movie like this too much as the more violent scenes would make up for it, but with the original …Elm Street it was the development of Nancy from apple-cheeked do-gooder to Rambo-esque heroine and her battles with Freddy that were so compelling; here, Nancy (Rooney Mara) is so bland and non-descript that whenever she’s onscreen then the urge to fall asleep becomes too much, and that shouldn’t happen in a …Nightmare… movie.  Also, considering the sub-text of blaming the kids for the parent’s wrong-doings that runs through both the original and this movie, there is a distinct lack of an authority figure to try and figure out what’s going on, like John Saxon’s commanding turn as Nancy’s dad in the original.  The normally screen-filling Clancy Brown (Starship Troopers, The Shawshank Redemption) appears as the father of one of the group but doesn’t actually do much apart from magically appear whenever somebody gets close to working out who Freddy is, and that seems such a waste of a great talent.

Of course, there’s only one character that audiences really want to see done correctly.  Robert Englund was so iconic in the role of the ‘Springwood Slasher’ that any actor taking on the role would have his work cut out, and all credit to Jackie Earle Hayley for making the character creepy again after Englund’s increasingly camp performances throughout the original series.  Making Krueger a paedophile, and showing evidence of his crimes, was a brave move by the makers and handled in the right way, and considering what Hayley was given to work with script-wise he does a decent job of making Freddy somebody to fear.  His facial make-up has been heavily criticised for looking too much like a real burns victim – making the character somewhat sympathetic and more like an out-patient – but remember how cheesy Englund’s make-up became as the series went on?  Hayley’s voice has also been frowned upon by many saying it lacks any charisma and is quite flat – again, compared to Englund’s theatrical delivery – but given the context of this character in this movie it does add an almost hypnotic quality that Krueger would no doubt employ to entice his victims.  No, the only thing really wrong with this new Freddy is the fact that, apart from the face, the costume is the same as the old Freddy – red and green stripy jumper, battered fedora hat and that glove – which sort of makes it look like they just transplanted a new face and voice onto the old character.  Another quality that Hayley adds to the character is the frantic twitching that he does with his claw before he goes in for the kill – not a major character development, but a nice little touch that adds an extra bit of menace.

So vacuous and underdeveloped characters, a bit of a naff script, gaping plot-holes (the kids all went to pre-school together but don’t remember each other as teenagers?) and some pacing problems aside there are some pretty cool moments here.  It is quite refreshing to see Freddy killing with his glove once again instead of using any number of fantasy kills (no death-by-Nintendo here!), and the deaths are pretty brutal.  Some of the imagery is quite startling – the scene where Nancy sees the body bag in the hallway is recreated in a much scarier fashion, although the death where Freddy throws his victim around in the air like Tina’s death in the original isn’t quite as effective – and Hayley, despite not being a very big man, casts a decently intimidating silhouette in some of the movie’s many dimly-lit scenes.  It’s also worth noting that returning to the ‘real world’ setting of dreams rather than the comic-book visuals used in the  Dream Master/Dream Child sequels was a wise move, making the dream sequences more realistic and effective.

Overall, then, what we have here is a movie that is better than expected, but doesn’t quite deliver the definitive Freddy film that we all wanted.  Apparently Jackie Earle Hayley has signed up to make two sequels, so maybe once the makers are free of trying to re-create scenes from the original then we’ll get something that feels a little less forced.  If you’ve never seen any of the original series then you’ll probably get more out of this than some of the more seasoned Freddy fans amongst us. But if you’ve grown up with Freddy constantly being a part of your movie-watching habits then you’ll probably find that you may have to wait for the ultimate …Nightmare… movie. 

Rating: 6/10

Summary: Underwhelming but still very watchable, this isn’t the worst remake from the current crop but could have and should have been much better.

If you like this then try: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), The Amityville Horror (2005), Rob Zombie’s Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Hills Run Red, Freddy vs. Jason.

 For more information on A Nightmare on Elm Street go to: http://www.nightmareonelmstreet.com/

It’s official – the zombie movie has now gone the way of the vampire movie.  Devoid of being able to inject anything new into the genre, pointless rehashes of all of your favourite moments from the classics are shoehorned into 96 minutes of brain-melting tedium that somebody reckoned was fit to be released, probably going on the theory that horror fans will fork out for anything with the words ‘…of the Dead’ in the title.

In case you haven’t seen any of George A. Romero’s original zombie movies, the uneven remakes or any of the other spoofs and affectionate tributes out there then you may wish to know the plot of this one, and here it is; Interpol agents escorting a prisoner across Eastern Europe come across a horde of flesh-eating zombies.  Yes, it’s hardly original but the big draw of this movie is the casting of Dawn of the Dead legend Ken Foree as Agent Mortimer Reyes.

So we have zombies, an established genre star and filmmakers with enough genre knowledge to throw plenty of knowing winks towards an audience who will no doubt lap it all up, so why doesn’t it work?  Well, bad acting, naff script, an overuse of obvious genre references, severe pacing problems, terribly thin plot and an identity crisis that tries to place the movie somewhere between the grim seriousness of Romero and the very knowing and clever Shaun of the Dead, except this movie spectacularly manages to fail at achieving either any sense of drama or any sense of wit.

Imagine the looks on the faces of the makers when Ken Foree agreed to be in this movie – just imagine how happy they were to have arguably the one actor most associated with Romero’s original zombie series on board for their ego trip project.  Then imagine how absolutely desperate Ken Foree must have been to agree to do it – with a recent return to the genre with appearances in such high profile genre movies as Rob Zombie’s Halloween, The Devil’s Rejects, Black Santa’s Revenge and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, it makes no sense as to why he would want to do it.  Maybe he didn’t want to do it, as his rather bored and uninterested performance smacks of just-doing-it-for-the-money.

As for the other elements, there’s no point going into it too much.  The movie lurches from uninspired talky moment to slightly improved action sequence and back again fairly infrequently, the point of the prisoner is never really explained – and neither is the Biblical quoting guy (there’s always one) who either can’t deliver a serious line or has no grasp of irony – and the zombie attacks are shot in a fast-editing style similar to Snyder’s Dawn… remake, although this might be because the zombie make-up isn’t that good and any long shots may show this up.

The best and worst moments in this movie are both lines delivered by Foree – the best has the group of survivors look for sanctuary and somebody suggests that they hide in the local shopping mall; Foree knowingly rolls his eyes and says they can’t as the zombies “would get in anyway” (if you need that explaining then you’re looking at the wrong website!).  Contrast this to the blatant rewrite of Foree’s original “When there’s no more room in Hell…” speech that he forces out like he was forcing out a turd after a heavy curry, and there you have the movie in a nutshell – forced, painful and not very satisfactory as you know there’ll probably be more to come.

Rating: 2/10

Summary: Dull and cringeworthy waste of time that, unfortunately due to Ken Foree’s appearance, completists will probably feel obliged to own.

If you like this then try: Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis, Resident Evil, The Zombie Diaries, Dawn of the Dead (2004), House of the Dead.

Click on images to purchase ‘Apocalypse of the Dead’.

Quick history lesson for those that don’t know – Burzum is a one man black metal project from Norway who were/are very influential in what has become known as the ‘second wave of black metal’.  That one man is Varg Vikernes – a.k.a. Count Grishnackh – who was jailed in 1994 for the murder of fellow black metal musician Euronymous, guitarist with the also influential Mayhem.  Since his incarceration, Vikernes has become a sort-of poster boy for far-right political groups, given that he is partial to the odd fascist outburst and has a rather confrontational attitude that ensures that anything that bears his or the Burzum name always attracts interest.  Whilst Vikernes has always kept his far-right political views out of his music, it is a rather difficult task trying to listen to this album without bearing in mind the events that led to it, although if you can keep the two things separate then there is a lot to enjoy here.

Completely disregarding the ambient directions of his two previous albums, Vikernes has returned to the raw and grimy black metal with which he made his name back in the early 90’s. Although this will be a move welcomed by most of the black metal faithful, it can be a bit of a double-edged sword; on the one hand, making a new album that sounds like it could have been released straight after the 1994 release of Hvis Lyset Tar Oss means that the new material will sit nicely with much of Burzum’s groundbreaking early releases. On the other hand, there is the argument that says there is very little progression in the music, and that with the black metal scene Vikernes helped shape all those years ago having moved on, to some it may sound slightly anachronistic. That said, the new-found maturity in Vikernes’ vocals does lift the quality of the songs above a lot of his previous works, the adolescent screeching of old replaced with a throatier growl and even some clean, whispered vocals. 

If Burzum’s first (i.e. pre-prison) handful of releases did nothing for you then Belus won’t change your mind, but if black metal is your thing and you can look past the controversies and troubled history, then Belus can be viewed as a great album and one that’s more than worthy of a look.

Rating: 8/10

Standout Tracks: Belus’ Død, Sverddans, Keliohesten.

For Fans of: Cradle of Filth, Darkthrone, Ragnarok, 1349, Abruptum.

For more information on Burzum go to: www.burzum.org

Burzum’s new album ‘Belus’ is released on March 8th 2010 via Byelobog Productions.

Click on images to purchase album.

There are some things in life that you can always depend on, and one of those things is that when a cracking album of fist-pumping street anthems from Sick of it All is released, you know it’s going to kick major ass. The first thing that should be said about this album is that song wise there are no major surprises here, but when talking about SOIA that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Being to hardcore what AC/DC and Motörhead are to hard rock, Based on a True Story rages like a pitbull with anger management issues as vocalist Lou Koller snarls his vitriolic lyrics over guitarist brother Pete’s razor-sharp riffs, with the bands typically bouncy breakdowns and shouted gang-vocal choruses all present and correct.  The only real difference to any previous SOIA album is the edgy, thrash metal production courtesy of Tue Madsen (The Haunted/Halford) that fills out their sound, making the songs heavier, yet still raw and snappy.

With some of the catchiest songs the band have written since their classic 1994 breakthrough Scratch the Surface, Based on a True Story can justifiably claim to be up there with the best of the band’s output, and with the crushing new production values adding extra weight to their already considerable punch, it goes to show that when firing on all cylinders there’s still nobody to touch these world-weary veterans of the New York hardcore scene.

Rating: 9/10

Standout Tracks: Death or Jail, A Month of Sundays, Lowest Common Denominator, Nobody Rules, Dirty Money.

For Fans of: Biohazard, Machine Head, Sepultura, The Haunted, Life of Agony, Anthrax, October File.

For more information on Sick of it All go to: www.sickofitall.com

Sick of it All’s new album ‘Based on a True Story’ is out on April 19th via Century Media.