October Horrorshow: [•REC]

October is upon us. Aliens are invading, wolfmen howl at the moon, vampires avoid mirrors, and the walls are bleeding. It’s the month of Halloween, which means it’s time for the October Horrorshow, a whole month of horror film reviews on Missile Test. The good, the bad, and the putrid will all be represented in these pages. It doesn’t matter, as long as there’s blood. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: [•REC]”

October Horrorshow: From Dusk Till Dawn, or, a Tale of Two Movies

From Dusk Till DawnOctober has come again. It being the month of Halloween, we at Missile Test choose to celebrate by watching and reviewing horror films. Ah, blood. There just can’t be enough in October. Today’s selection has plenty of it, even though it’s mostly green. But what the hell, it’s all in fun.

Quentin Tarantino was riding high after the success of Pulp Fiction, a film that had a strong case for winning Best Picture at the Oscars the year it came out. Was it Tarantino’s youth which kept his opus from taking home the top prize? Who knows? Some of the competition were no slouches in their own right, but none broke any new ground, nor did they spawn a whole genre of imitations that crop up in cinema to this day (just like Alien and all its clones). And the winner that year, Forrest Gump, felt like little more than the Baby Boomers trying to justify their actions in retrospect by infusing their youths with blandness and innocence, when naiveté (with a sharp edge, at least) would have been a more apt description. This trivializes the profound role they played in turning public opinion against the war in Vietnam, but their role was not nearly as important as that played by the news media who brought home the images of war to the American public. The youth had always been suspicious, and were never onboard with the war policy from the beginning, but every other demographic in America couldn’t have given two shits if we had been winning the war instead of losing it. Anyway, I honestly can’t tell if that film was an apology to their parents or an apology to the directionless void of malaise left behind by their sudden thrust into real adulthood that was then passed on to their slacker Gen X children. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: From Dusk Till Dawn, or, a Tale of Two Movies”

The Empty Balcony: Source Code

Written by Ben Ripley and directed by Duncan Jones, Source Code is a modern terrorism thriller that has an interesting premise. Using technology, a government agency has developed a method of melding a person’s consciousness with the last eight minutes in the life of a dead man. In this case, the dead man is a victim of a terrorist attack on a train that happened that very morning. For those eight minutes, the film’s protagonist, Capt. Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), experiences all the sights and sounds the victim did while aboard the train, but this isn’t a replay of recorded events. Colter can move around and interact with the environment, exploring places that were hidden from the view of his deceased avatar, strike up new conversations, etc., all in an effort to find out what happened aboard that train. Continue readingThe Empty Balcony: Source Code”

The Empty Balcony: Gojira & Godzilla, King of the Monsters!

Gojira is a very serious film. To watch it is to glimpse how grievously Japan was traumatized by World War II. Released only nine years after the end of the war, the film is heavy on imagery meant to invoke memories of the destruction that swept Japan’s cities. The origins of the monster Gojira are a pricking of the wounds left over from the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the firebomings that destroyed almost all large Japanese cities. What we see in this film is a generation of people still trying to cope with events from a decade past. At times, in scenes that take place in overflowing hospital wards or on streets where characters are surveying the devastation, I was struck by the realization that these people on screen were drawing from their own memories in their portrayals. Continue readingThe Empty Balcony: Gojira & Godzilla, King of the Monsters!”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Spice World & Trancers II

I never met a movie I wouldn’t watch.

— Missile Test

I thought I was being clever when I made that little play on the famous Will Rogers quote. I never thought it would get me in trouble, that I would be forced to live up to such whimsy as if it were a true declaration. I was wrong. One of my friends, Michael, over at Daily Exhaust, decided to challenge my integrity and the integrity of Missile Test by throwing out a suggestion for a shitty movie review. Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Spice World & Trancers II”

The Empty Balcony: Forbidden Planet

Half dated and half legendary, Forbidden Planet is one of the greatest science fiction films ever made. Hailing from 1956, Forbidden Planet tells the story of the crew of an Earth spaceship, landed on the planet Altair 4 to investigate the fate of a scientific expedition that disappeared there twenty years before. Led by Captain Adams (Leslie Neilsen), they find two survivors, Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) and his nubile daughter Altaira (Anne Francis). Captain Adams learns from Morbius that the other members of the scientific expedition were wiped out not long after landing by an unknown, all-powerful force. Altair 4 holds other secrets, as well. Namely, the remains of a once-great civilization called the Krell, whose cities have turned to dust with the passage of time, but whose technology survives deep beneath the planet’s surface. Captain Adams and his crew must unravel the mystery of the unknown force and its correlation with the Krell...if they expect to survive. Continue readingThe Empty Balcony: Forbidden Planet”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Raise the Titanic

Schlock on such a grandiose scale as Raise the Titanic only comes about on rare occasions. As such, it should be treasured, albeit briefly, until the novelty wears off. Raise the Titanic not only tells the story of an attempt to salvage the famous shipwreck, it is also a Cold War tale of epic proportions, the outcome of which would determine the balance of power in the world. In the cargo hold of the sunken ship lies the only known supply of a rare mineral, byzanium, capable of powering a laser shield that can disable all nuclear missiles heading for the United States. I am not making any of this up. This was the plot of an actual movie. Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Raise the Titanic”

October Horrorshow: Maniac Cop 2

It’s October, which means it’s also time for the October Horrorshow. The entire month will be devoted to watching and reviewing horror films here at Missile Test, and there is no rhyme or reason to it. The good. The bad. The putrid. If it’s got blood, it will get a viewing. Today’s film is Maniac Cop 2, from way back in 1990. Why Maniac Cop 2? Why not reserve one of the precious 31 days of October for something worthwhile, like The Exorcist or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or even the first Maniac Cop, of which you will find no review (so far) on this site? The answer is simple. Last night I was trolling the tubes looking for something to watch, and I saw Hulu had added Maniac Cop 2 to its lineup. Having never met a movie I wouldn’t watch, I watched it. I can’t believe I watched the whole thing. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Maniac Cop 2″

October Horrorshow: Halloween

Halloween, the granddaddy of all slasher flicks. Not the first, to be sure, but a film whose formula worked so well it is still being followed to this day in countless horror films, thirty years after it was produced. It also doesn’t hurt that, unlike many of the films it birthed and inspired, Halloween is well made. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Halloween”