What I'm Watching: The ABC's of Death

Welcome back, Triskelions!

So, what movie had the honour of being the very first thing I watched in 2014?  I hate to say it was "The ABC's of Death" but here we are...

I was going to get this when it came out on DVD, but the price made me scrunch my nose and say no.  Too much for an anthology movie of this nature; 26 short films, most about 4-5 minutes long at most, each one taking a letter of the alphabet, picking a word that starts with that letter, and then telling a story about that thing being responsible for death.

That sounds like it has potential, but having that many short stories, you are also going to have any number of misfires.

I kept the movie in the back of my head, and was poking around Amazon and saw it was free on Amazon Prime, so decided I'd watch it at last.

Let me tell you, I should have taken my computer completely turning itself off due to power issues on the D story as a sign and never gone back.  But I am persistent and pressed onwards.

Yeah, that kinda tells you what I thought right there, doesn't it?

I would say that out of over two dozen short stories, there is MAYBE five or six that are worth your time.  Some have decently cute twists, as much as you can pull one off in a handful of minutes, at least.  But so many stories are just meh and forgettable.

But worse than that, there are way too many that are just sheer fucked up.  And y'all know I have no problem with fucked up.  I like the Human Centipede movies, after a fashion, right?

However, having stories about a girl obsessed with how her teacher's farts smell, and would rather die smelling that than the impending doom of a toxic gas leak, and then gets sucked into her teacher's ass, which apparently also contains a pocket universe?

Yeah.

And then there's the stripping Nazi furry.

But then there's the Dogfight story, which is actually well done, told without words, and is amazingly shot.  The Q story poking fun at this whole thing by breaking the fourth wall in a glorious way.  Xavier Gens' X story, XXL is also really good, has something to say about society, and is super creepy and effective.

Some just don't make a lick of sense to me, like Cycle, which seems to be an endless loop of a guy going back in time to go back in time to go back in time to kill himself, but it also seems like that's NOT it and he was replaced?  The storytelling could have been clearer on so many of these shorts.  And they would have if they weren't forced to be only a few minutes long so this runtime didn't explode with 26 half hour movies, right?

So, a handful of gems, a few okay stories, then a whole back-acre of meh, bad, and WHAT WAS THAT?! stories.  That's normal with an anthology, but usually you can say, oh, there's one great story out of three, or two good stories, but there's just SO many shots going out here, and not enough of a hit ratio.  Which is a shame for the gold buried here.

There WAS some fun to be had, trying to guess what the word would be, since that's not revealed until the end of each short, wondering what each word for each letter would be the thing to do people in.  That was the best way I got through this mess.

ABCs really needed more storytellers that could deal with this short format, and maybe be a bit more creative without being so insane that you just don't care.

Which is another problem; with so many stories told so quickly, you just don't care.  Any one of these might be fine to go watch on YouTube and it would be a fine little short film.  But by story #19, you are being introduced to yet another set of characters that you're supposed to care about for a blink of an eye, in a row?  That's a big ask.  These work less well when seen all back to back, strangely enough.

And personally, I wish the movie hadn't been front-loaded with a handful of foreign language shorts, that kinda made the learning curve a little higher than I would've liked, and took me longer to get into it.  Mostly because I wasn't expecting it, to be sure.

I really can't recommend seeing this as a whole, but there's a few gems worth seeking out, if you want.

A strange experiment that just doesn't work, but has potential with a stronger focus and better creators, maybe?  I dunno.

What I'm Watching: Chillerama

I am SO sorry I have been WAY too lazy with these posts lately.  I've got a lot to catch up on, and for the time being, I'll be doing a bunch of these seperately, because a single post would just be too huge at this point.  The good news for you, fellow Philes, is that this means a lot of content in the next month!  The bad news is, they're movies that are long gone in some cases.

I was going to do this movie in its own post anyways, since it is two hours long, which isn't so special, but it is also four seperate stories in an anthology format, and each one really does deserve to be talked about.

First up though, overall, I really, trult LOVED Chillerama.  This movie is done in exactly the same spirit as this very site.  The anthology is a send up, and yet lovingly embraces, all the tropes of cheesy horror movies from the 60s-80s.  This was one of the single most enjoyable experiences in this genre in a long time.  Some of my friends will tell you I wouldn't shut up about this thing.

But it is not without problems.  Let's dive into each of the four segments, starting with Wadzilla.

After the movie starts off with a great wrapping story set in a drive in set to be closed down and paved over, they start playing Wadzilla, a hilariously disgusting sendup of 1950s radioactive monster movies.  Starring a sentient sperm going crazy.

My biggest problem here is the sheer disgustingness.  Now, I have no problem with disgusting content.  I *have* watched Human Centipede, after all.  But the copious use of fake sperm and semen did get to me after awhile.  But aside from that, the short is decent.  The humour is good, the style is spot on, and I especially love the extra work they did to add grain and make the colour wrong, like an old, poorly made movie.  They even did terribly horrible garbage mattes around people for cheap rotoscoping.  A spot on homage to the style and storytelling of this sort of movie.  Just a bit on the icky side.

Next up after a return to the drive in, is I Was a Teenage Werebear.  You can guess what this is sending up.  But it also takes from that same era, musicals.  Yes, a musical horror story.  Which isn't unheard of, but can be tough to pull off, and in all honesty, I don't think this one quite managed to do it either.  The story was okay, but the music got in the way.  However, I loved the music!  The songs were catchy, I *still* find myself humming them, it's just the two didn't quite mesh together for a solid whole.  Good, but not a home run.

Third on the all-night marathon was, quite frankly, the best of the four; The Diary of Anne Frankenstein.  OH my gods.  Such a brilliantly simple pun idea, and it even works to say that the Frankenstein family changed their name to Frank.  But the setup is incidental to the utter insanity here.  The story is done all in *ahem* German.  Except for Hitler.  He kinda speaks German, and it starts out that you THINK he's speaking real German, but as things go on and on, and things get increasingly insane, you realise the actor is just making shit up.  Most notably once his commands become Star Wars characters.  Definitely not German.  This seems like it might be an insanely offensive idea, and there are some cringey moments, but it is just SO over the top, so crazy, and mocks Hitler so much, that it somehow sidesteps all the potential controversy.  Brilliant.

Before the final story, it is worth noting that they tried to do a fake out with a fourth movie done in one of those arty horror films, with just piles of shit being flung around, and it made me cringe almost more than Wadzilla.  I'm glad it wasn't the actual fourth movie.

Instead, we return to the wrapping story at the drive-in, and it becomes a full on homage to zombie movies, appropriately called Zom-B-Movie.  The whole wrapper was a great, loving nod to the old drive in culture, which is sadly almost disappeared now.  There is some great nods to Orson Welles and how movies have changed from being just popcorn entertainment to be shamelessly enjoyed, to money making machines, and an awesome scene with the owner of the drive in hitting rock bottom and almost comitting suicide, but then manning up, and arming up, to take down the zombie horde.  He spouts SO many classic lines from horror and other genre flicks, that you will surely miss some.  I was practically on my feet cheering.  And much like Wadzilla's style, while this section of the anthology was mostly filmed to look 'real', once someone in the movie realised that they were living a movie, there was a jump in the frames, and the film became grainier, and more theatrical, less real.  So very meta, much like the entire Zom-B-Movie segment, which I loved and appreciated.  It was a great way to tie the anthology together, and wrap things up, making it more than just those interstitial segments.

So overall, Chillerama gets a HUGE recommendation from me.  This was pure enjoyment, and anyone who is a fan of the movies on this site, should watch it.  It made me so nostalgic for those sorts of movies, and the drive in, which was always an experience I did not get to partake in enough.  There's a few bits that don't quite work, but in a two hour movie, a few minutes of stumbling is not bad at all.

I eagerly await and hope there's a sequel someday.

J