WORKING THROUGH THE PILE OF DRAFTS AND FINDING THAT DAMMIT I HAVE TO WATCH THE MOVIES AGAIN TO MAKE SENSE OF MY NOTES PLUS MY MEMORY IS KAPUT AND GEEZ, HAVEN'T I ALREADY WATCHED THIS TWICE AND NOW I'M DOING IT AGAIN AND I HAVE YET ANOTHER NAZI MOVIE TO GO...

Frankenstein's Army (2013) US/Netherlands/Czech Republic

Somewhere in Hollywood we-don't-give-a-shit land, greedy overlords were desperate to find a way to earn their million for the week. They met around their solid oak table that approximated the cost of three houses and pondered for five minutes. Then they decided to write their ideas on a piece of paper and throw it in the I-don't-give-a-shit box. What they didn't count on was the president had had 'friends' over the night before (EXPENSIVE friends) and he had a hell of a hangover, so he hadn't heard that they were only going to pick ONE idea. Instead this genius took all the scraps of paper, laid them out on the table and said, "This is our next movie!"

So there you go. This movie really has no particular genre - no, scratch that. This movie can be put in any genre you choose, depending on your mood at the moment. It is a horror-creature-feature-sci-fi-Frankenstein-war-found-footage film. With whipped cream on top.

It does have its moments though. I wouldn't say run from this movie, maybe a slow walk would suffice. It also wouldn't hurt much to watch it just once. I'm just being a wussy 'cause to get this review done for good (instead of drafts I can't understand because it's been too long) I've watched this bloody thing at least three times. Pffft. Double DUH on me, I know.

You think they'd have run like
hell when they found Frank Tank...

So. This is WWII and we are with the Russians in this one. If I interrupt with a couple of 'facts', it's only because I care about your welfare and if you can at least learn a little bit of history it's worth it right? I know I learn from these 'cause school didn't do squat but teach me how to memorize facts for 24 hours, then forget everything. It wasn't a bad school, I was a lazy student.

Kentucky Fried Nuns... yeah, I know,
I already slapped my hands with a ruler...

Oh yeah, Russians. They are currently under the thumb of Stalin. At the beginning of the film a man, using what's supposed to be a camera of the age, announces that he is Dimitri and he is doing this for the mausoleum and for Stalin. Sigh. What's a mausoleum got to do with it? Short answer: That's where they put Lenin. Stalin was in it until 1961 before it was quietly removed. There were no ceremonies and no fanfare. 

About 300 feet from the mausoleum, Stalin's body was buried near other minor leaders of the Revolution. Stalin's body was placed near the Kremlin wall, half-hidden by trees. A few weeks later, a simple dark granite stone marked the grave with the very simple, "J. V. STALIN 1879-1953." In 1970, a small bust was added to the grave.

...and this is where techno came from...

Sorry, that wasn't very short, was it? Anywho, right now the Russians are fighting Nazis - their group has the required stereotypes - the peacemaker, the asshole, the lied-about-his-age-to-fight kid, the photographer of course, and others. Two are Jewish - one escaped Krakow as the Nazis invaded and so wanted to fight to avenge his mother. 

You're the only guy we've come across
but don't worry, we're too dense to figure out
that you're Viktor so you're safe...

Everyone seems to have their own agenda, and we are beat over the head with the message that 'no matter what side you're on if you war against others you are a monster' kind of thing. Just because this didn't have American troops in it doesn't mean they wouldn't have acted just this way. War is hell and people become desperate when the death of another means that you get to live.

And don't think I'm picking on Germans, 'cause this is a Nazi problem - the Nazis threw a lot of German people in the camps as well. There were many colored triangles delegated to the different 'undesirables':

• Red triangle - political prisoners: social democrats, socialists, trade unionists, Freemasons, communists, and anarchists.
• Green triangle - "professional criminals" (convicts, often working in the camps as Kapos).
• Blue triangle - foreign forced laborers, emigrants.
• Purple triangle - primarily Jehovah's Witnesses (over 99%), and members of other small religious groups. They were considered a triple threat because they were Pacifist (and therefore had to refuse both voluntary military service and conscription), were forbidden to swear oaths (and therefore couldn't swear loyalty to the party or allegiance to Hitler), and socially and politically opposed the Nazi party.
• Pink triangle - primarily homosexual men, as well as sexual offenders including rapists, pedophiles and zoophiles.
• Black triangle - people who were deemed "asocial elements" and "work shy" including Roma (Gypsies later assigned a brown triangle), the mentally ill, alcoholics, vagrants and beggars, pacifists, conscription resisters, prostitutes, some anarchists, drug addicts
• Brown triangle - Roma (Gypsies), primarily men. Previously wore the black triangle with a "Z" notation to the right of the triangle's point.
• Uninverted red triangle - an enemy POW, German spy or traitor, or a military deserter or criminal.

And in case the US starts feeling superior I know more than a few Japanese immigrants sent to internment camps in your country that would like to speak with you.

Ahem. The soapbox is in the closet and we are gonna do this movie if it kills you... umm I mean kills me. Let's see, Russian detail with a movie maker in tow to catch the 'action' for Stalin. Yay. While in battle the men act all brave and noble, but when they approach a small cluster of houses, they kill all they find and steal the rest. And that was normal for all sides.

They find a monastery with a pile of burning nuns - all the religious trappings are piled in corners and huge generators are providing electricity to... something. They find a "man" hooked up to electrical wires, stitched all over, blind, with a drill for a hand. He manages to kill one of them before being shot up by the soldiers. 

After lots of monsters (the most interesting part of this movie - definitely puts 'creature feature' into the movie) they discover they've been chasing a 'radio signal' set up for them to find - and the cameraman, Dima, is involved. He's the one who'd been blocking their transmissions so they could stumble onto the monastery. He outranks them all and blackmails them with the lives of their families in case they want to kill him.

They keep going down, down, down, until they think they've found the actual 'lab'. To get there they have to go down a blood-slick shute and the others decide that Dima should be first - whether he has the ability to get their families killed or not. They throw down all his gear and leave him groaning on top of a pile of assorted body pieces. After cussing out everyone he can think of (including Stalin) Dima watches as another monster grabs his gear bag (probably thinking it another body) and throws it on the pile he is pushing in a mine cart. Dima follows. 

Teddy Ruxpins always did creep me out...

It's a regular assembly line of monsters making more monsters. Dimitri realizes he's gonna die. On his last roll of film, he apologizes to his mother and father, as they too were being held captive unless he did this job for Stalin. Now they will die too. For one last dash at freedom he runs and finds the doctor's office - full of everything a mad doctor could want - including a teddy bear with a woman's head belonging to Viktor's mother apparently (Just in time for Christmas!).

After watching more... gore, he decides to make a run for it. The movie becomes like the POV of a video game player, running down hallways, meeting monsters, turning to different hallways, meeting more monsters, etc. It's nauseating. He runs into what was formerly Ivan and being movie-stupid assumes that means it won't kill him. It tries. But nope. Now we FINALLY see the actual doctor as he tries to figure out how to work the camera (it's upside down for a bit) and he has another man sitting at his table. 

It's Dimitri. The doctor wants to film him and Dimitri together. He feeds him Eintopf, a traditional type of German stew which can consist of a great number of different ingredients. Technically, the term refers to a way of cooking all ingredients in one pot, not to any specific recipe. Dimitri gags although he's fed by force because he realizes that there's got to be at least chunks of human in the stew but the Dr. wants him 'strong' to film his work. 

Viktor's specialty was novelty Halloween decorations...

The doc explains his dad told him man needed hammers and screwdrivers for hands to be more efficient, but when the doc tried it on cats the dad said it was against God and beat him for it. So he's been screwed up since birth.

Dad died (Viktor killed him) and he was sent to the camps until the Sturmbannführer (equivalent to a major) asked about his cats and whether he could do the same to people. Yup. He used his grandfather's techniques but had generators instead of thunderstorms. He gets mad when Dima suggests their automated machines - he insists they're alive and they eat Eintopf. He shows his next project - the fusing of two soldiers brains together, the right side from one and the left from another (massive duh - like pulling out half a brain and plunking it into another skull would work - meh, who am I kidding - they don't care).

Jabba's gonna be pissed when he
finds out that Oola is moonlighting...

The gist of the deal is the Russians want Viktor to help them win the war and since the Russian front is closing in on them he hopes Viktor will take the deal and they can both make like a hockey stick and get the puck out of there. But Viktor believes that a half-n-half soldier will end the war. No, it'll just hit itself in the face 'til it dies, asshole, sheesh. Dima's fine when the skull comes off the Nazi, but when his 'comrade' gets the drill, he passes out. Waking up he finds there is no deal and he's about to become one of the 'experiments'.

Viktor has already been in a Nazi camp, he expects no better from Russia. But alas, the bombing begins before he can cut Dima open. He decides to leave Dima tied up and take his camera, but he is shot in the back before he can grab it. Who shot him? Sasha, the youngest I-lied-about-my-age soldier. 

Dima has a shitfit because it was Viktor that was going to save his own life and his parents. Sasha takes Viktor's head, the camera bag and, of course, the camera. He leaves Dima behind.

Our last picture is a (supposedly) old photo of Stalin, with Sasha right beside him. Huh. I don't seem to feel bad for Dimitri at all.

                        

FOREIGN MOVIES THAT DON'T SUCK





SL8N8 aka Slachtnacht (Slaughter Night) 2006 Belgium-Netherlands

Foreign films are sometimes hard to follow or understand - different customs, different things to be scared of,  trying to make sense out of sometimes poorly translated English - it all adds up to a headache unless the movie is particularly good. This was the first Dutch movie I've run into and I'm really glad I did. Foreign movies, in my opinion, sometimes try harder and this one really delivers.

On first look one might instantly think of My Bloody Valentine ('Nothing says love like a pickaxe to the face') but this one has a much more elaborate backstory which some may find slows down the beginning a bit but once it picks up the action... I've got to give this one props for good locations, neat sets, great makeup and effects and really decent gore. The fact that the poster chooses only to say 'A Whole Lot Of Gore' kind of cheapens the movie - there's a lot more to it than that.

Not exact, but you get the idea.

If you check the wiki you'll get a poorly translated (sigh) view of the movie. This is how it actually went down but first I had to check a story out to see if it was historically accurate because hey, I'm just twisted that way. But I struck out so if someone knows of a source to check I'd really like to know. In Belgium, early coal mining was extremely hazardous, with many explosions reported and high fatality rates by the 1850's because they had the deepest mines in Europe. That much I could find out. Now this movie claims that before the invention of a special lantern that worked without igniting the methane gas and the canaries that they kept around to keep check on whether there was a methane leak (since it is odorless), which are facts and was the case back then, they used convicted murderers as 'firemen' (the 'firemen' part was in the movie and I could not find a source to confirm that as fact).

The movie claims that when there were convicted criminals that were sentenced to death they had a choice - either execution or becoming a 'fireman'. If they chose the latter, they were dressed in wet rags to keep from catching fire and given a torch and sent on ahead to purposely explode all the methane before the miners went down. They usually died, but if they survived that, they would be pardoned. 

That sounds... yeah. But much as I tried to look I couldn't find anything to confirm or deny this. Sounds very... brutal but hey, if you wanted to go around killing people, at least your death could serve a useful purpose, right? Anyway, if you children can find anything about it, I'd sure like to know.

The reason is that our backstory is about a man in the 1800's named Andries Martiens (or Martins depending on which translation you look at) who was convicted of killing eight little girls, beheading them and putting their heads on poles. When caught and convicted he chose the latter punishment. The father of our heroine was researching his story for a book since he writes about serial killers.

Kristel, our smart heroine (there's always one) wants to go off with her friends and bum around Australia for a while. And despite the poster she is NOT blonde. Duh. One of her friends goofs and mentions that in front of her father (the author). While he drives her home they argue about that but it's cut short by a large truck hitting the driver's side of the car. She gets out and another driver works to get her dad out while the car starts to burn. Unfortunately, while the good Samaritan is half in the car, it explodes. Slight whoops here when it's very apparent there's nobody in the car while it burns and there's no body outside either.

Now Kristel is having strange visions which she keeps to herself and offers to go with a group of friends to gather her father's things. After she does a friend of his suggests she tour the mine where Andries was sent. He pushes a bit hard, another duh but hey, they're trying. So we've got our setup finally - four friends, three others who happen to be touring the same day and the guide. The guide knows his way around, he's been there for decades and tells everyone the Andries story, using corny props for cheap laughs.

And here we get our massive duh (on the part of the teenagers) and your lesson for today: Don't mix being stuck in a mine (conveniently the employees have gone home, not knowing they're down there DUH) with ecstasy and a Ouija board. Bad, bad little piggies. Of course this 'invokes' Andries spirit who's massively pissed - and through Kristel's vision we see why. Andries had nasty parents who tortured him and so he escaped by joining the Navy. After years he came back and they were dead - without telling him where they put the family fortune. All he has are some beans and... sorry, just kidding. They left a couple of trinkets including a very heavy music box (and if you all go AHA right about now good for you). 

So since he's been around the world and permanently pissed he gets into voodoo and finds out that sacrificing eight souls will get him into hell and back. Why go to hell? 'Cause that's where mummy and papa are of course, and he's gonna, uh, persuade them somehow to tell him where the gold is and then come back. Riiiiiight. But he got caught and chose the fireman's way out except he survived the flames. But he was double-crossed and they shot him anyway. I say good riddance the movie says injustice. Oh well.

So now we get the kill-them-one-by-one scenario which is a bit gorier than usual since all their heads have to come off so the spirit of Andries can come back (assuming with his belief that he's been in hell) and get that gold. And we already know where that is, don't we children?

Finally down to Kristel and... some guy who looked like a young Rutger Hauer. They rig up a trap, figuring that only fire, which was supposed to kill him the first time will 'put his soul to rest'. Okay that's a massive duh to the story but bear with me. 

He's been 'possessing' those not killed one by one (yet) so the body he's currently in finds their trap - a lamp and the music box which is made of - say it with me children - solid gold. He picks it up, the lamp falls and bursts and he (or rather whoever he's in) burns. Great pyrotechnics, assuming it's not CGI'd but as massive as it was, eh. As the two crawl their way out of the mine she sees the spirit of her father and knows she did good. Sort of.

Okay typing this out makes it a bit more stupid than I thought but for a foreign horror flick it was pretty good. It's always interesting to see that no matter what the language, there's always some English mixed in there (all the curse words for instance) and at one point a guy made an 'L' on his forehead and mouthed 'loser' and another says 'Nice idea.... NOT!' Okay they're a bit behind our sophisticated lingo, but it was still interesting, much better than the dreck I've been stuck with lately.