You Are Not Legend

I've watched some more films! This involved an ill advised jaunt through the film I Am Legend, but don't worry fans of enjoyable cinema - I also watched some good things as well. So, yes, ladies, gentlemen and animals I give you ... the films I have watched.

I Am Legend
No, you are NOT legend, William. Actually, that's a bit harsh on The Fresh Smith, I doubt it's all his fault *quick shufty at imdb* no, you are NOT legend Francis Lawrence (director of the turgidity), Mark Protosevich (co-writer and defiler of narrative) and Akiva Goldsman (co-writer and similar enemy of intelligence). Be warned - there will be a spoiling element to this unappreciative exploration of cinematic flaccidity. I won't be concealing it in any way, because if you cannot control your eyes or dare to skim read my lovingly crafted and remarkably informative entries on this receptacle of cranial wonder then, to be frank, you deserve to have it ruined for you. Thinking about it, it's more a case of doing you a favour than spoiling anything in this instance. I'd be saving you precious time, time you can spend on more productive and enjoyable pursuits than watching I Am Legend. Such as jamming your big toe in a dirty grid, or starting a swingers' circle with Michelle McManus and Ali Bongo.

The stupid, ignorant film entirely failed to engage, interest or excite at any point at all. But no! What of the trumpeted, vaunted and heralded eerie emptiness of Manhattan? Empty, certainly. Empty of just about everything, including point, purpose and ability to convince. Predictably feeling-free and devoid of soul or reality, as is generally the case when unconvincing and surprisingly obvious CG is relied on so heavily that it is squashed fatter than Mrs. Meatloaf on a thursday night. Christ, if you're going to make such a big deal about it, I would think that you should perhaps spend a little more time, effort (and probably money) on it and try to make it look a little less fake. The animals-at-loose-in-urban-America bit was done more convincingly in Twelve Monkeys and, in technology and hype terms, that may as well have been daubed on a cave wall in France by Les Neanderthales.

Poor The Will Prince. He doesn't do half bad, really. He plays his strong suit throughout - you know the one, the gruff, manly, soft at heart, friendly rugged-with-rounded-edges family man (the one he does in most films - and why not, he's bloody good at it) - and, when the film lets him, he impresses. Occasionally, he puts in a little turn that is genuinely classy, emotional and engaging - and then the film's overbearing leaden lumpenness drags him back into its morass of mediocrity. He should damn well fucking sue the film for turning an attempt at a career-defining performance into Tom Hanks Lite. And then he should be severely reprimanded for putting his name to the godforsaken attempt at a script in the first place.

But no! The creatures! The creatures! Surely, won't somebody think of the creatures?!? Okay. My thought is that they are shit on a very unappealing stick. Again, criminally obviously CG rendered, thus separating them from any vestige of reality, menace, or meaningful presence or existence. They are also one of the key representations of how the film gets matters so universe-threateningly, horrendously, motherfuckingly wrong. WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. Three times in the forty years or so they've made this film, and this is the first one to get it so arse-shreddingly, tit-grindingly WRONG. WRONG.

W.R.O.N.G. with a capital everything.

Not Right. Incorrect. Premise-dissipatingly so. The book and, to differing degrees, the previous two incarnations (Omega Man with the noted gun nut Charlton Heston, and The Last Man on Earth with the noted thing of wonder and global treasure Vincent Price) all have a particular point to make, a point that is the whole point and indeed basis of the story. Y'know, like, the thing that makes the book and films exist. THE FUCKING POINT. The one missed by I Am Legend to a degree not seen since [insert thing that was expected to easily hit the target] missed by [insert largest distance imaginable by which one thing could miss another] and ended up hitting [insert thing that is the furthest conceivable distance from the intended target].

Here comes the spoiler bit [/l'oreal].


Bruce Willis was a ghost! Sorry, wrong spoiler. The creatures, see. An increasing intelligence is hinted at, but a greater emphasis is placed upon a growing menace to The Fresh Robert of Bel Neville. Crude, inhuman, vicious (increasingly so) - they remain steadfastly the enemy of humanity, the humanity that endures in Robert Neville and his mighty crusade to save it from itself. Their intelligence manifests itself in cruelty and brutality, not in society or co-operation - it becomes Jazzy Neville Vs. the Most Brutish Night Seeker. But, as I may have hinted at earlier, THAT IS NOT THE FUCKING BIG BASTARD SHAGGING POINT.

It's not about saving the world, see. It's not about finding a cure. It's about realisation. Big Bad Bob Neville's realisation that he's got it wrong. He's no longer trying to save civilization, mankind - he's now the outsider. He's the monster, and the "others" are the society, the civilization. He's their nemesis, boogeyman, thing of terror. He's destroying, rather than saving. He is, indeed, legend, anachronistically so. Not because he invents the cure and saves the fluffy puppies and children, but because he is legend to the "others", the sort of legend that comes when your children are asleep and kills your family. So, when the lady comes with the portentous ending voiceover declaring Robert Neville to be legend for giving his life to defend the cure, I wanted to re-engineer the measles virus and destroy the world. And laugh in a dastardly way whilst I did, inflicting it first upon those responsible for the narrative mutilation. A thought-provoking, bleak yet moving, interesting and gripping theme is reinvented as Independence Day with an ickle dog. Actually, that's mean to Independence Day - that manages to cloak some nice satire in a publicly appealing gung-ho, GO USA set of threads. This is more the Littlest Hobo without the moral, excitement, or natty theme tune. It is patronising to children and pretends to appeal to grown-ups. Vincent Price and a bunch of Italian film-making dudes got a lot closer to the mark, and even the noted rifle-fondler extraordinaire Charlton Heston managed a lot better. I won't even mention the fantastically gaping plot holes.

SO FUCKING WRONG IT RUINED MY BRAIN.

Thus ends the spoiling bits.


There's Nothing Out There
Infinitely more enjoyable than I Am Legend, as is having shingles of the eyes. Fun, knowing, witty and articulate homage to horror film cliches. With tits. Lots of them. Scream before Wes Craven had the idea of ripping it off and making Scream. Piss off Wes Craven. Amusingly post-modern without taking itself seriously (which seems to be the odd hallmark of self-professed post-modern cultural items), a fun film, and cruelly overlooked when it comes to the appreciation of eighties horror - perhaps because it was released in 1990, but you get the idea. Night of the Creeps gets all the plaudits in the convention-toying stakes and this gets ignored. Night of the Creeps certainly deserves the plaudits, but it really should share them with There's Nothing Out There. Stupid, selfish films.


Monster Club
One of those portmanteau films, which means you can watch it and also keep all your papers and pens and things in it. I first saw this when I was ten. I wasn't ready for such things and it terrified me senseless (well, the last story in it did). I haven't watched it since and only now do I feel ready to face the fear that made me sleep entirely under the covers with pyjamas and a dressing gown on with the window closed in summer. Why I thought that would help, I cannot remember. It has Vincent Price! Donald Pleasance! John Carradine! Geoffrey Bayldon! Lesley Dunlop! B.A. Robertson! It's directed by Roy Ward Baker - a stamp of a certain quality to a certain type of person. Well, it turns out that the last story still unsettles me a little. Not like it did all that time ago, of course. That would be faintly ridiculous. But a little. Poor woman out of May to December. And, as much as the first story is a solid little traditional vignette, I think I may have ruined it for myself by getting it into my head that the whistling Shadmock looks quite a lot like Roger Lloyd-Pack. Ah well. Quality (of a certain, particular kind) throughout, with added Vincent Price-ness.


Creepshow 2
Another collection of vignettes, one that I prefer to the first in the series. Not much to choose between them really, but they both edge out Tales From the Crypt without a hint of a doubt. Fun with the obligatory Stephen King cameo (he plays a stupid trucker. No, that isn't a typo). Creaky, slow-moving Red Wooden Indian Death! Killer oil slick that looks suspiciously like a tarpaulin with twigs on! The hitchhiker that will not die! Some tits! Directed by George A. Romero! It's alright, I guess!


Deathproof
Shitproof. Except it isn't, and a load of shit seeped in, especially in the excruciatingly dire second half. Blow it out of your arse, Tarantino, and don't return until you've finish, wiped your bum and realised what a terrible error of film making you have made.


Planet Terror
WHOA THERE! Much, much, much, much better than its much more lauded neighbour in the Grindhouse. Both films are loving in their attention to the detail of their sources, the difference is that Lord Bobert of Bobdrigues turns his into a fun, camp, gory barrel of excited laughmonkeys and Quentin makes a big puddle of self-indulgent cinematic wank (Kurt Russell is excused, he's quite marvelous for most of it , especially in the first half).

So there you have it. It would have been a lengthier list (watched half of Atonement, for example - promising so far), but I've been distracted by the arrival of a collection of "This is Tom Jones" shows from the end of the sixties. Well, they were actually from Amazon (they didn't arrive in a time machine), but you get my drift. As the actress said to the snowman. Or perhaps it was the other way round. Also I can't shake the nagging feeling that I've forgotten some. If I have, then it is probably with good reason.

Hasta la next time cinema cementheads.