THREE MASSIVE MANIACS AND A REALLY NICE GUY - ALL SQUISHED INTO A SEVEN FOOT, THREE HUNDRED PLUS POUNDS MAN...






Kane/See No Evil 1/See No Evil 2 (1992, 2006, 2014)

Do I really have to say 'Watch out, there's spoilers!' at the beginning of each review? If I do, I quit. I mean really, if you want 'The kills were nasty, the ending satisfying and I give it three out of five' go somewhere else. I mean it. Leave. NOW.

Don't be disheartened young ones, this won't be a huge review of the life of Glenn "Kane" Jacobs. Just the basics: He was born in Spain, has been married since 1995, began his career in the WWE in 1992, is best known as "Kane", and in the horror movie world as "Jacob Goodnight".

If you've ever seen him as Kane, you know he looks like a nightmare. Towering over his opponents he has been known to smash everyone and everything in sight (in the WWE). To call him a nice guy out of the ring is not saying that the wrestling is fake. I know the score on that. 


They may have "stories" they make up for drama, but the moves and the routines takes strength, coordination, caution, and lots and lots of practice. THAT is not fake. One wrong landing, one wrong execution of a move, and a wrestler's career can be over in a second, if not his life. People have died in the ring, most notoriously Owen Hart, who died due to a mechanical malfunction in 1999.

They take very strict measures to insure the safety of wrestlers, and training in order for their time in the ring to be safe and precise. So in that way, no, wrestling is not fake. The drama may be, but the men pay for their fame with a lot of injuries during their careers.

See No Evil (2006): I reviewed this movie October 21, 2013, so I'll just touch on this one so we can go on to the new Soska take on the Jacob Goodnight story. Basically the WWE wanted to make an 80's type slasher movie so they have the monster, the evil mother behind the monster, a bunch of kids that nobody's gonna miss anyway, and a whole lot of unlikely coincidences to make sure they go to their untimely demises.

There were two things that, if you remembered nothing else, stood out. The huge chain with the hook on the end that 'Jacob' threw like it was nothing, and the fact that after (sometimes before) each person was killed, he also pulled out their glazzies - oops, appy polly loggy. Some Clockwork Orange is still in my system, I guess it takes some time for the gloopy stuff to get out. 'Jacob' plucked out their eyeballs, keeping them in jars of liquid.

They killed him pretty good in the first one too: Not only had he lived with a bullet hole in his skull for four years (nice shots of maggots and flies coming out of there - the sound of a fly buzzing meant he was nearby), so to really, really kill him, they shoved a pipe through one eye, then shoved him out a five? six? story window into an atrium, with an interior shot of a piece of rebar splitting his heart. He was dead, dead, dead.

See No Evil 2 (2014): "He's not dead anymore." That's my favorite line of this movie, which has gotten both good and bad reviews of how the sequel was treated. The second movie, much anticipated as it was to be directed by the Canadian Soska sister team, was bound to come under harsh scrutiny. I personally think that it was unfairly due to their youth and the fact they are women. Sad but true.

They loved the saga of Jacob Goodnight and felt he could be a long-living (sort of) character and wanted a sequel. Hey, they were bound to make a few changes, while sticking to the general formula of the movie, that is, to keep it close to an 80's type slasher film. Just with a lot more gore. You HAVE seen American Mary, right?

Not to say I don't have my problems with this movie. It picks up right where the first movie left off (never mind that it was eight years ago) as the bodies are removed from the dilapidated hotel and brought to the morgue.


I was excited to see that the Soskas had a cameo at the beginning as two bodies that had just been autopsied. Unfortunately, they do not appear elsewhere in the movie. They did bring with them favorites Danielle Harris and Katharine Isabelle (American Mary). Unfortunately (and my biggest gripe) Katharine Isabelle played a drunken idiot in this movie - Danielle Harris got to be the 'smart' girl.

So coincidentally (of course) the bodies are brought in on the night of morgue attendant Amy's (Danielle Harris) birthday, when all her friends have planned a surprise party. Nothing is more surprising than having a seven foot corpse get up and start picking off your friends one by one...

My problems with it? Let's do those first and get them out of the way. All the bodies should have been in bags yet none were. In fact the other bodies were not even present anywhere in the morgue yet the supervisor said they had received at least seven of the victims.


Tamara (Katharine Isabelle) sits on Jacob's body and taunts him about the fact his mother tortured him as a child. If this movie is taking place just as they're removing bodies from the hotel, NO ONE could know who 'Jacob' was, what his motivation was, or his history. They wouldn't have known the significance of his wounds including the whip marks, the hole in his head, and the condition of his heart.

His mother had referred to him as the Hand of God and the media knew this when there was no way they could possibly have found out so quickly and broadcast it as the bodies were still being brought to the morgue. And they had his mother (with no wounds showing) already put in a drawer? Really?

From some magic room in the morgue Jacob managed to find the signature chain with a hook to use as in the first movie. There was also a freaking sweet looking knife they had to actually have hand made - but his mythology of 'seeing the sin' was gone and he didn't pluck out eyeballs. He did talk a lot more though - in the first movie I believe he had one line - in this he talks quite a bit.


Some complained there were too many 'flashbacks' but you have to remember - a lot of people have probably never watched See No Evil and it HAD been eight years so...

Lets go to the positives. Glenn Jacobs is a truly talented (and very coordinated) guy who can play mean and nasty like few others - not to mention do his own stunts (But then again, who the hell are you gonna get to do 'em for him?)

I usually don't list things like camera work, direction, shots, etc. 'cause, well, those things aren't funny. A lot of movies make 'em really stupid, but not funny.

The Soska sisters, young as they may be, pay a lot of attention to detail (if you ignore the parts they kind of just did away with) and several scenes were particularly well executed. One that stuck with me was when a rack of shelves with glass jars filled with liquid and other icky things was pulled on a guy by Jacob. The detail of the glass shards and flying stuff was neater than any 3D trick and this was not a 3D movie. You could just about see each individual shard as they flew through the air - very cool.

Originality: Embalming Jacob was a freaking sweet (and messy) idea, especially since the liquid was blue (watching blood and then blue gunk fly out of his eye socket was particularly gory) and a great device to keep him going for more movies; the whole cast dies for a change, despite there being the good, the bad, and the stupid; Kane was terrific - he talked this time - maybe a bit much but it puts him apart from the Jasons and the Mike Myers of the genre.

Overall I'm glad I have both DVDs and I can't wait to get hold of The ABC's Of Death 2 to see what letter the Soskas got to make into a gooshy, bloody mess.




                        

MOVIES YOU WATCH (AGAIN) BECAUSE YOU'RE LOOKING FORWARD TO THE SEQUEL - GO SOSKA SISTERS!




See No Evil (2006)

If you think this is about the classic 1971 horror film with Mia Farrow, you're reading the wrong blog. That's one of the reasons why I wish these guys would come up with something original - something without 'Paranormal', 'The Haunting Of', 'Of The Dead', 'Conjured' or 'Conjuring', or 'Massacre'. The title to this first outing of the WWE Films company went through several changes and each just made it worse. First it was Eye Scream Man - yeah that's stupid but no one else has used it. Except a villain in a Marvel comic book. Oops, Eye Scream Productions is what the WWE called their company for this movie. Sorry - not.

The next working titles were The Goodnight Man which I thought was the best one but... again it was changed, this time to Goodnight. Still... passable. But since this is a teenager slasher film I guess they went for the lowest common denominator and settled on See No Evil.


This is also professional wrestler Kane's first gig. Umm, as an actor - in the WWE circuit he (Glenn Jacobs) is well known. And before you pass off this seven foot tall, three hundred and change pounds wrestler as just some dumb guy they used for this movie, Jacobs earned a degree in English literature at Northeast Missouri State University where he played both basketball and football. Don't judge him by looks, people, no matter how much he growls.

Anywho, why would I care or even watch this get-them-together-and-kill-them-one-by-one slasher film that follows my horror worksheet (patent pending) to the letter? Well, the first couple times I watched it (you heard me) was because, honestly, I forgot a lot of what it was about. I remember the kids are snotty law breakers, made to work to clean an old hotel being turned into a museum to take time off of their sentences.


I remembered one chick not being killed right away because of her religious tattoos (later, later children) and I remember a HUGE guy dragging these people all over like they were made of paper. That's about it. But the Soska sisters, the Canadian twins and makers of the movies Dead Hooker In A Trunk and American Mary, heard that the WWE were interested in making a sequel and as they loved this film they batted their eyes and bounced up and down... Sorry - they did no such thing. Their thoughts: 



Jennifer Soska: "There are so many beautiful subgenres in the horror genre. We see this not as a slasher but one of those films like a Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street where you have this character, Jacob Goodnight, who by every right should be a horror icon, and we’re really going to develop that in this one. I think in the first one there was a bit of missed opportunity to not brand this character to bring it to that level where people can dress up as him for Halloween and have him on a T-shirt and talk about him, so that’s a huge thing that we’re going to be undertaking in this one."

Sylvia Soska: "It’s so funny because after we finished American Mary, you would not believe the meetings that we had with various different studios and various different scripts and they wanted American Mary again. They wanted a medical horror starring Katharine Isabelle in sexy surgeon outfits where she’s doing underground surgery. We had done that. No matter what happened they were like, “Oh, just do it again, do it again.” It was so funny because when we were first selling American Mary nobody wanted it and now everybody’s like oh, we’ll do that again.

One thing I didn't find American Mary has that’s really exciting about the See No Evil project is: scary. I've always wanted to make a film with Jen that is so scary and upsetting, it just keeps you at the edge of your seat while you’re watching it. We’re big Hitchcock fans and he always says it’s the lead up, not the payoff, that really gets under your skin as an audience member. And remember, See No Evil 1 had a lot of payoff, but the lead up, the seduction, wasn't there."

Hmmm? The movie? Well we start with two policeman looking through an abandoned house. They find a woman held captive with her eyes torn out. One policeman is killed, the other loses his arm but still manages to shoot the guy in the head - saving his own life. They find seven bodies with no eyes and I'm starting to think is this an urban telling of Jeepers Creepers (2001)? Fortunately, not even close.

So skip ahead skip ahead and we've got some juvies looking to take time off their sentences. They're in for petty crimes - we're not talking murderers, we're talking lighter crimes idiots. What was a little different (very little) is that instead of the required five or six, we've got eight young 'uns to kill off. Oh goody.

And die they do - they might have lived if they had behaved and stayed where they're supposed to (says the old woman) but hey this is about teen rebellion and them having been caught and in jail shows they don't have a whole lot of smarts anyway. The same police officer who lost his arm and a female officer are 'supervising' this little project that happens in no city anywhere on earth. And they start to die.

You don't see Jacob Goodnight (Kane) except briefly at the start, but soon his huge presence is known (he does not speak, I don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing) as kids disappear, being carried off for those eyeballs he's so fond of. Why? We have to wait quite a while for some backstory to explain the motive behind his bizarre collection.

So sneak sneak, die die, out come the eyeballs, plunk they go in the jars of... something. Lather, rinse, repeat. That's why I saw it a couple of times - the teenagers are pretty unremarkable so except for this huge mountain of a man there's not much to see. Finally we're down to a couple of kids (the two supervisors biting it pretty early in the movie) and the kids discover that the sweet old lady who hired them is actually Jacob's mother (and if you didn't know that the second she showed up I've taught you NOTHING) who tortured him as a kid, telling him his natural urges toward females was sinful and dirty (hey lady you had a kid so...) and that the eyes were the 'window to the soul' so she started the gouging first, plus keeping him in a cage - all in the name of religion. Isn't that special?

Which is why the one girl who has some large religious tattoos is put in a cage instead of being killed outright. But his mother doesn't like that - she wants her dead NOW. The murder and mayhem is varied and almost interesting - anywhere from being 'hooked' to death, to being devoured by wild dogs. And Kane, even though he doesn't say a word, has some really impressive range of looks from mad, to really mad, to sadly mad, to... oh sorry Kane fans. 

Ultimately, as I guess they weren't expecting a sequel, Goodnight is shoved out of a window and even though he holds on to the windowsill he drops when a pipe is impaled into his eye, making a real good hole. Just in case though, they have him fall through a glass atrium and when he hits the ground we get an inside view of his body so we can see his rib break and pierce his heart, killing him. The last scene is of one of the wild dogs, pissing in his eye socket. Brutal.

I'm not dissing this movie at all - hey, I used to watch wrestling all the time, I know how it works - these guys are like ultimate heroes to some. So I will say, truthfully, that this seven foot dude (who I already mentioned is smart) did a great job as the tortured and torturer.

So I can understand and I'm actually looking forward to seeing (small pun) what the Soska sisters have come up with (the sequel is set for 2014) - how Goodnight is resurrected and who his next set of victims (I'm assuming that will include the Soska sisters since they like to act in their own movies) will be. It will still be yet another teenage slasher flick but since it will be a Soska sisters slasher flick that's not such a bad thing, right?